Ageless

ALIGHT RAIN begins to fall into the dark night air. Just a few wet drops splattering on dry leaves, tinkling on trash can tops and plopping on a glossy motorcycle. It shouldn’t be enough to wake him up, and normally it wouldn’t be, but tonight Arthur and sleep can’t seem to unite.

He’s felt the rain coming all day. Arthur’s been told that when you reach a certain age you begin to feel these things and today he felt it. Ruth had discounted his predictions of rain: “No, no, Arthur. It’s not going to rain. What makes you think you can tell whenever it’s going to rain?”

He tilts his head and gazes at Ruth’s body concealed beneath the thick quilted comforter. Her breathing sounds wheezy, as if she were about to snore. Arthur thinks how gray her hair’s been getting. There are still faint traces of her young, brown hair exposed like autumn leaves scattered among wisps of new snow. A first snow; a snow that begins a steady constant winter that knows no season and finally covers not only the rich autumn leaves but the warm tans of the skin and the clear lucidity of the eyes. An unhealthy snow.

Arthur’s winter came a few years before Ruth’s. It has made him reluctant to shave in front of the mirror each morning. His hair is not only graying, but thinning, too.

It’s a shame to be growing older so fast, he thinks. It seems so unfair. So untimely. I’ve spent all these years working to attain something. What was it? Well, the kids are raised, college-educated, married. Is that an achievement? It must be; I’ve spent my life for it. But not all of it, not all of my life. Ole Arthur’s still kicking. Hell, I’m not getting older. Maybe my hair is. Maybe my wife and my kids are getting older; but inside . . . that’s what counts . . . inside I don’t feel old. That’s why I bought the motorcycle.

Ah yes, the motorcycle. A beauty. But there’s trouble there. Damn it. Why does she have to be so darn mule-headed about that? What does he ask for himself? Why not a motorcycle?

“Anything but that, Arthur! A motorcycle! No, no, no, no. Never. You can’t ride one of those things any more. You’d better take it back, Arthur. You don’t need a motorcycle. Take up fishing.”

She’s probably right. She usually is. Fishing would be safer. At least it would be less apt to make her worry. She’s really been a pretty good wife. Always trying to steer me in the right direction, always there to help me make the decisions.

Arthur remembers the rain once again and decides to go to the patio and throw a tarp over the motorcycle. Being careful not to awaken Ruth, he slides out from. under the covers and lifts himself from the bed gently. The little night-light spots the hallway with a muted yellow softness that creeps into the bedroom. It’s just enough light for Arthur to find his bathrobe on the closet door hook. He drops slowly to his knees and blindly fumbles for his slippers. Rising to his feet, he carries his bundle out to the kitchen, puts his robe on, and dropping his slippers to the linoleum floor, he steps into them and quietly opens the door.

The rain has stopped. Maybe it hadn’t even been raining, but it had sounded like it. A pale disc slices its way through dark puffy clouds and brings a silvery-blue tint to the night. Chrome-plated steel and polished alloys catch this night magic and glisten from a dark cave-like corner. Arthur weaves through the rose-lined pathway to the garden gate and crouching low, maneuvers between the large white bed sheets hanging on the clothesline. As he passes through them, he makes a mental note to take them inside when he returns.

In its corner of the patio the motorcycle seems unreal; incongruous to the paint-spotted step-ladders, broken firewood and mud-clotted garden tools that Arthur keeps there. He looks at the motorcycle with an eye adjusted to see only its solitary beauty. Arthur decides to move it elsewhere. It doesn’t belong there. It isn’t fair.

He pushes his hand against the seat and holding the handlebars, tilts the motorcycle off of its stand and backs it out of its dismal corner, wheeling it into the center of the concrete patio beneath its silver lunar spotlight. Moonlight on a great glistening machine, a deep glossy black; not a thin crackling paint but a deeply rich lacquer. It seems too pure, nearly sensual, for something inanimate. Every bit of hardware is either glossy black or glistening chrome and alloy. Its deeply finned barrels have a symmetrical geometric beauty. Little highlights gleam and sparkle here and there on the machine.

Arthur mounts his steed. His robe pushes up around his waist and his striped pajama legs tipped with leathery red slippers jut out onto the concrete. A certain feeling, a mixture of sensory contacts and mental responses, fills Arthur. Perhaps it’s just a memory — of days when his old Indian would race through spirals of dust, between rows of corn, down a hard-rutted dirt road, and onto the main highway going towards town.

A vibrant young highschool boy enters Arthur’s mind. He sees him — thick, wavy hair, straight white teeth, limber young muscles - bouncing into the small midwestern town. The guys envied him, the girls adored his gusto and the excitement he engendered. His elders thought he was crazy, but that was fine. They saw the picture he wanted to paint. He was someone; a leader. He’d snap the girls on their rear ends and they wouldn’t mind. They might protest feebly, but they wouldn’t mind. He laughed a lot. That’s what he sees: a laughing young buck on his gaspowered pinto. No one else had one. Nobody was like him then.

There’s a dank smell in the air that’s always there when a rain falls just lightly enough to moisten the dusty air. Arthur leans the motorcycle back onto its kickstand and dismounts. He steps backwards and stares at his machine, slowly shaking his head. A smile arcs across his face as he hurries towards the small spiked gate. The sheets on the clothesline ruffle against him. He reaches up, and holding the line with one hand, releases a clothes pin with the other. No. No time for that. Do it later. When he reaches the kitchen door he has to forcibly slow down his anxieties, afraid that the excitement he feels might awaken Ruth.

Ruth, her silent form still warm and secure beneath the quilt, isn’t awakened by Arthur’s movements. Nor does she even turn in her bed, as Arthur fumbles through the clothes closet. Again he changes clothes in the kitchen, leaving his robe and his slippers on a dinette chair.

Maybe I should leave a note, he thinks. Yeah, I’ll leave a note in case she wakes up and gets worried. That’s only fair.

He reaches for the note pad on its wooden frame with “God Bless our Mortgaged Home” painted on it, takes the small score-keeper’s pencil in his right hand and writes:

“Ruthie Dear:

I couldn’t sleep so I thought . . .”

No, she won’t get up. I’ll be back soon. Just once around the block. Well maybe a couple of blocks — but I’ll be back soon . . .

* * *

Quietly, he pushes his machine down

the driveway, past the old station wagon beneath its undersized carport and onto the street. The streetlamps and the moonlight nearly make daylight of the night. Arthur’s nerves tremble. It seems like the whole neighborhood is peeking through curtains to see Arthur sneaking out in the middle of the night. He feels like he’s

committing a bold crime. A mischievous

type of crime; one that makes a young boy tipsy with the excitement of doing something wrong.

Flick, clomp, squish, smack. Clomp, squish, smack. Clomp. Blam! The engine crackles, almost resentful of being aroused from its slumber and then backs off into a loping, deep-throated grumble. The toe of Arthur’s right shoe nudges the selector lever into first gear, a positive snap. He flicks the light switch, and after a brief warm-up, he releases the clutch lever and accelerates. Slowly at first — the machine bogs down and Arthur tweaks the throttle and progressively taps it up through the gears, settling smoothly at the bottom of fourth.

Ageless

RON GYALOG

Ah, this is it. If Ruth could only feel this. If she only knew what Arthur was feeling now. Even Arthur is unsure of what this feeling is, but it makes his blood run fast and intoxicates his whole body.

The moon slips in and out of its cloudy sheath. In and out and back in again, silhouetting dark patterns among silvery star specks. Arthur remembers that it’s probably very early in the morning rather than late in the night. There is no traffic on these residential streets now, not even an occasional milk truck. Arthur’s machine runs smoothly and he rejoices at the thought of controlling it.

It’s a combination of brutal power and firm grace and he controls them both. Perhaps nervously at first, but after all, it’s been many years. It’s been years since . . . a silent film rolls through Arthur’s mind: the laughing youth, bumpity-bumpity over the dirt road, onto the smoother highway, into a dusty town; people see him coming and either sneer or smile. He’s attractive to both attitudes because he’s part of a special attraction; a person stepping out of the town’s regiments to enjoy himself. There’s always a giggling girl with silky blonde hair blowing across her eyes. She sweeps away the hair with one hand and, eyes sparkling, waves to Arthur with the other. She sits on the rear fender and holds Arthur as they scoot out of town, bumpitybump down the dirt road, bounce among corn stalks, arriving at last at the abandoned barn.

Even love was different then, so alive and real. Everything’s changed. There’s so little remaining to be stimulated now. It’s gone and it hits him like an axe that this part of his young masculinity has been spent before knowing its full value. Ruth never wanted it much, but it sparked his vitality to think of it. To think of his hidden power; of the man growing secretly within the man and exploding within the woman. Now it has become a void, an empty space that can’t be refilled but must be replaced.

Emasculated by a matriarchal family, a self-martyred woman, a community that determines virility by wage, possession and position, Arthur has thought about it before, but lately it has become a growing shadow over the word man. The word itself isn’t totally important, but what it implies to his fellow workers, his neighbors, and to his family is calculated at all times by the people who constantly dissect others, perhaps to escape evaluating themselves.

Arthur winces at these thoughts and relocates himself to his immediate being. He should be home, sleeping with his wife. Later this morning he should arise, kiss her, brush his teeth, drink his coffee and follow the herd to the daily eight-hour exchange of life to retain the privilege of being middleclass and secure. The thrill and exhilaration of his daring ride at this secret hour threatens Arthur with a challenge to his own existence. It is a duel with the very fiber from which man weaves himself into the webs of a uniform pattern, doing little of his own pattern-making and having only a minor role in the conscious design of his own life. This void, the emptiness that can’t be refilled, Arthur now realizes, must be replaced by some other masculine pleasure.

The motorcycle won’t stop. It keeps moving and although it slows down for corners and comes to a halt at stop signs, it won’t turn back, return home and stop. It has been awakened and now it feels healthy and alert. It’s been tickled and punched and cranked through until the muscles respond violently, like a hibernating bear, resentful of consciousness. It’s been aroused and it won’t rest again until it’s been tired out.

The highway stretches forward and the beam of Arthur’s headlight races ahead, bobbing and dipping with the surface of the road; sweeping and flooding the road’s trajectory as Arthur’s unsteady eyes strain the darkness beyond the beam for the patch of sunlight into which races his ambitious youth. It’s there, but Arthur’s too far behind to catch it.

The road signs indicate a right curve followed closely by a railroad crossing. Arthur shifts down, down again. The engine whines and the motorcycle glides into the curve. The brake controls are tapped and the machine skids bumpity-bump across the tracks. A little too fast — the rear wheel slides out a bit. Arthur whips the throttle, and angered by these inanimate things that try to put him down, punches the gear lever, snaps the clutch out and speeds through the blanket of night.

The night is his, the road becomes his, the machine answers to him and he makes the decisions. Arthur makes the decisions. He decides to go faster and the motorcycle goes faster, the road bows humbly before him, the night splits open.

A bright funnel of sunlight appears once more on the road ahead. The ray spirals down on, and illuminates the laughing boy, the gas-powered pinto, and the girl who pulls her hair from across her eyes. The three of them speeding together through their own sunbeam. They’re ahead of Arthur, but not really as far as he had thought. If he’d just push it a little more. Sure, that’s it. They’re at the top of his throttle. He races towards them. The revs accumulate and the sunlight grows brighter.

Arthur drives his wedge into the blackness. The night speeds past his ears with an acute whistling that sucks up the scream of the engine. The sunlight is nearer. The whistling becomes louder and the screams aren’t heard. The machine vibrates and shakes. Arthur’s jaws jam against each other. His hands crush the grips and his eyeglasses drive against the bridge of his nose. Night opens up and sunlight envelops him.

The girl’s hand sweeps her face, pulling the silken hair from her eyes. Her eyes and mouth smile with each other and reflect the sunlight together. Her arms and fingers tug at Arthur’s stomach and as her head rests against the back of his shoulder, her soft hair drifts up against his cheek. Her arms grasp him tighter and Arthur smiles and then laughs. Soon their abandoned barn will be seen.

* * *

The sunlight falters, dims, and shades into constant night again. Arthur’s cheeks begin to feel a moist spray in the rushing air. The rain, the damn rain. Arthur recalls his predictions, Ruth’s skepticism, the rainlike noise that awakened him. The road wets down and the damp, dusty smell begins to settle again. Adhesion soon escapes from beneath the tires and Arthur realizes that his body is trying to straddle a sliding, skidding motorcycle. His aging reflexes need a time lapse before they’ll react. He turns into the slide and reverses it. Snaps it again, reverses again; not able to correct it, just reversing it to an opposite slide. Kicking the gears down, steering out, accelerating, throwing his body into the balance of this tight-wire maneuver, Arthur and the machine slide off onto the shoulder of the road. The motorcycle scrapes and Arthur is tossed across the soft, wet dirt and into some leafy roadside shrubs.

It happened so quickly that Arthur does not know when it began or if it has ended. With his glasses hanging from one ear, he shakes his head and wonders how it could have happened so quickly. He feels himself for injuries. Nothing. Nothing at all. He wants to be hurt; to have his strength challenged. Perhaps it was. Maybe it was challenged and maybe he won. But it happened so fast. He couldn’t even savor the challenge as it was threatening him.

Onto his knees, and upon his feet. Everything’s okay. The motorcycle is scraped up but Arthur isn’t. He pulls the heavy machine upright and pushes the kickstand down. He runs his hand over the scraped metal — the spots on the tank, forks and fenders that are bared of its glossy black lacquer. The rain moistens his shoulder and the muscle movement brings his attention to the burning abrasion on his arm. Funny, he hadn’t noticed that before. A raw wet slice of meat glistens red. Pain, like an electric shock sears through Arthur when he touches it. Arthur smiles and a proudness that’s more important in pain than pleasure subsides the electric shock. This battle wound is Arthur’s reward, proof of his conflict and challenge. It is unlike the mundane accidents of garden tools, broken dishes, sunburns. This one is his and he sought it. He made the decision. Yes, he’s still making the decisions. Right or wrong, they’re his.

He sits aboard his motorcycle tasting the rain on his lips and thinks of Ruth. She’ll be waking soon and looking for him. Her body beneath her gown, looking for no one but sometimes finding Arthur. He should be with her. He should have written that note for her. That would have been only fair.

The skies begin to gray and dawn seeps into the night. Soon Arthur feels the warmth from the sun on the back of his neck and wonders how long he’s been sitting here with his machine. He wonders why he feels strangely different. He wonders, too, what he’ll tell Ruth.