Biker

Biker

         Darrel cruised westbound on the interstate, his Harley purring through the cypress swamps between Baton Rouge and Lafayette. With his suitcase of mostly dirty clothes strapped to the rack, he was traveling from his apartment in Baton Rouge, where he worked hanging sheetrock, to his Grandma's house in Breaux Bridge about forty miles away. Ever since he started at LSU three years ago, he spent every other weekend either at Grandma's or at his parents' house in Lafayette, about ten miles past Breaux Bridge, to wash his clothes and eat real Cajun food. He'd dropped out of LSU in his third semester, but he planned to go back when he paid off the Harley.

         He cruised at a steady seventy-five, getting passed more often than passing. When he did pass, he did so with ease, accelerating into the fast lane and passing the slower vehicle in an instant. No car, truck or SUV could hope to accelerate as powerfully and quickly as the Harley. Once a guy in a new 350-Z tried to overtake him as he passed, and he left the Z in the dust.

         On the ten-mile long overpass across the Atchafalaya basin, another motorcycle came up beside Darrel but didn't pass. Darrel turned his head and, through his helmet windshield, glanced at the other bike and driver. It was a much older Harley, maybe an eighties model. The driver was a biker, middle-aged, wide-assed, pot-bellied, helmetless with sunglasses, and bearded. He gazed over at Darrel with a hairy grin and revved the old Harley. He wanted to race.

         Darrel scanned the flat miles ahead for any police cruisers parked in the narrow shoulder of the overpass. He saw none, and no other place for them to hide. He pulled the clutch and revved, utterly confident in the superiority of his year-old Harley. The biker kept his gaze on Darrel through the blank sunglasses above the same hairy grin. Although Darrel shared an enthusiasm for motorcycles, particularly Harleys, with bikers, he found middle-aged bikers like this guy pathetic and scary. He hoped he never ended up like that.

         Just then the biker downshifted and opened the throttle, and the old bike shuddered twenty feet ahead of Darrel for a couple of seconds. Darrel immediately opened his throttle to get the revs on the upswing, then downshifted in a smooth explosion of revs and speed. In three seconds he jumped a hundred feet ahead of the biker as the world flashed by in a blue-green blur. In five seconds he couldn't even hear the old Harley's engine any more.

         Ten seconds later, at a hundred and twenty miles per hour, Darrel glanced back. He didn't see the biker. He coasted down to seventy-five and glanced back again. A truck followed in the distance, but still Darrel didn't see the biker. He slowed to sixty, expecting to hear the roar of the old Harley approaching, but heard nothing. Finally, he stopped on the shoulder with his engine idling. The truck was still too far away to hear, and the surrounding swamp was silent except for the quiet rumble of Darrel's Harley and the sound of an approaching car on the eastbound overpass.

         Maybe the biker was behind the truck. That was not likely because the truck was so far behind them, but Darrel waited for it to pass anyway. When it did, Darrel exclaimed aloud, "Wo!" The truck pulled a trailer like an eighteen-wheeler, but it was like no tractor-trailer truck he'd ever seen before. It was wedge-shaped from bumper to wind dam, it had no exhaust that he could see, and it only hummed. Must be some new hybrid from Japan, he thought. Behind it, the biker still didn't show.

         The concrete rails of the bridge were about waist high. Darrel removed his helmet and set it on the seat behind him, pushed his bike to the rail, and looked over the side. Black water spread below and beyond the highway as far as he could see, with the straight trunks and knurled knee-roots of cypress trees grasping skyward out of the water here and there. If the biker went over the rail, he was in the water.

         He probably just broke down, thought Darrel. But if he crashed, he might need help. Two cars whizzed past, and again Darrel exclaimed, "Wo!" They were bullet-shaped, and like the truck, they only hummed. There must be a car show in Lafayette or something, he thought.

         He motored slowly down the shoulder to where he could see the next mile marker. Another wedge truck and three more bullet cars whizzed by, and each time Darrel gasped in wonder. He made out mile marker ś-C" and killed the engine, took his cell phone out of his pocket, and dialed 911. Nothing but static. He ended the call and tried again. Still nothing. And still no biker. He had to get to a pay phone.

         He put his cell phone away and went for his helmet, but it was not on the back seat where he'd placed it. He looked for it down the shoulder of the overpass behind him as another bullet car approached and passed with barely a whisper. The helmet was nowhere to be seen. He started the engine and thought about heading east on the westbound shoulder to look for the helmet, then thought better of it. He started pushing his bike backwards along the shoulder and realized that wouldn't work either. Damn! And he still needed to call about the biker.

         He reached for his sunglasses in a side compartment, but they were gone too, just like his helmet. Completely frustrated now, with no helmet and no sunglasses, he tore off along the overpass. Then, just after the end of the bridge, a guy sitting on a motorcycle appeared on the shoulder of the highway. It looked like the same biker, with the same hairy grin, and Darrel almost snapped his neck as he passed him.

         Immediately Darrel braked and coasted onto the shoulder of the highway. He had to confront the biker. He went off the shoulder, made a U-turn on the grass, then motored back up the highway along the edge of the shoulder as more bullet cars and wedge trucks zoomed by. But now there was no biker in sight. There was only a small dark object on the pavement near the end of the bridge where the biker should have been. When Darrel got there, he found a pair of sunglasses. They were just like his, and when he put them on, they fit.

         Darrel turned back onto the highway and accelerated toward the next exit and Grandma's house. Along the way he was astonished to see not only more bullet cars and wedge trucks, but also bubble cars, tank trucks, tube vans, and long, winding busses that looked like short passenger trains. He also noticed strange crystal globes on top of all the telephone poles, and no wires. What was going on in Breaux Bridge?

         In ten minutes, he pulled up to Grandma's house and stopped in the street at the foot of the long drive. A month ago the drive had been just two tracks of shells and dirt, but now it was paved. The house was changed too. It used to be a wood frame house on blocks, but now it was some kind of stucco, and the blocks were not visible. A black bullet car, instead of Grandma's white New Yorker, was parked under the carport by the side door. Darrel thought somebody put the gris-gris on him for sure.

         He motored up the drive and parked beside the bullet car. He usually swung off his bike without even thinking about it, but when he tried to get off this time, he had to struggle to get his leg over the seat. His leg felt so heavy he had to grab his thigh and lift and pull, and he noticed his relaxed-fit jeans were suddenly skin tight on his thighs and about to burst at the waist. He also noticed his once baggy t-shirt and semi-flat stomach now bulged over his waistline in a flabby gut.

         With his head pounding in horror and confusion, Darrel stumbled toward the parked bullet car and tried to look inside the windows, but the glass was so dark it was impossible to see anything. Then in the dark glass he saw the face of a bearded man wearing sunglasses, and he jumped back and jerked his head around, expecting the biker, but no one was there. Slowly he approached the glass again, touching his face and the hair which somehow had grown on his cheeks and chin and around his mouth, and he saw that the hairy, fleshy, grimacing reflection in the glass was his own.

         Nauseated, Darrel threw his arm out to rest against the car. What was happening to him? Where was Grandmamere?

         He went to the door and noticed a new doorknob. It had no keyhole; instead, it had what looked like a glass eye. He tried to turn the knob, but it was locked. He knocked on the door.

         "Can I help you?" a woman's voice said from somewhere above the door.

         Darrel looked up and saw a rectangular black metal box with holes in it above the door. "Grandmamere?" he said to the box. "Is Grandmamere here?"

         "There's no Grandmamere here," said the voice in the box. "Who are you looking for?"

         "My Grandmamere lives here," said Darrel. "Sophie Duet. She's my Grandma."

         "We've been here eighteen years," said the woman's voice. "The lady who lived here before died."

         "No way," said Darrel. "I saw her last month. This is her house yeah." He flinched at the Cajun accent he'd been trying to lose since he moved to Baton Rouge.

         "Please leave, Sir, or I'll release the droid and call the police."

         The droid? thought Darrel. But he understood what the police were, so he staggered away from the door and went to his Harley. At least his Harley seemed the same. He hefted his leg over the seat, started the engine, and drove down the drive and away from Grandmamere's house. He had to get to his home in Lafayette.

         He didn't get back on the interstate but took the back roads he knew so well, hardly noticing all the odd vehicles along the way. Still, he was confused by so many new and changed buildings and roads. Some kind of refinery occupied what used to be sugar cane fields down the bayou along Gros Beak Road, and Henderson Street now had four lanes instead of two. And he remained acutely conscious of his bushy beard and fat biker gut.

         Finally, Darrel came to his parents' house. Except for the bullet car in the driveway and the absence of the big oak tree in front, the house looked very much the same. He parked his bike in the yard, lumbered off of it and slowly approached the front door. The doorknob had a glass eye instead of a keyhole like the one at Grandmamere's house, but he didn't see a black box. He rang the doorbell.

         To Darrel's surprise, the door opened. His mother, much older, appeared in the doorway.

         "Mais yeah?" she said.

         Darrel just stood there, shocked at how his Mamit had aged, but relieved to see her. His lip trembled as he waited to see if she recognized him.

         "Mais Vieux," she said. "What's the matter sha?"

         He took off his sunglasses and held out his arms. "Mamit," he said, almost in tears. "It's me Mamit."

         In an instant she recognized him. "Mon Darrel! Ti bebe!" she exclaimed, rushing into his arms and hugging him tightly. "Bon Dieux, jamais d'la vie!"

         "At least I think it's me," he said, holding her tight and looking away as tears streamed down his face for real now.

         "Mais oui it's you," she said. "Sha bebe."

         "I don't know any more," he said, wiping the tears. "But I know you, Mamit."

         "Sha it's you and we missed you much. I had hope yeah. Always hoping, and here you are." She stepped back, holding his shoulders and looking him up and down. "And you're such a big man now!"

         "But what happened, Mamit?"

         "Mais we never knew. The last person saw you was in Baton Rouge, leaving your apartment on your Harley motorbike. And somebody reported to the police maybe a motorcycle accident on the Atchafalaya bridge. But they never found nothing no."

         "That was today?" asked Darrel. "I think that was today--on the bridge."

         "No, that was twenty years ago, sha. Twenty years ago."

         Darrel touched his flabby, bearded face and shifted his bulging belly in the tight jeans. Twenty years would make him forty-two, just like that. A little while ago he had his whole life ahead of him; now all of a sudden he was an old fat fart with a Cajun accent. He still hadn't finished college like he planned, and he guessed he didn't have a job any more. And what about a home or a wife and kids? He was nothing and he had nothing--nothing but his Harley. So what did that make him? A biker--a bearded, sunglass wearing, helmetless, pot-bellied, wide-assed, middle-aged biker.

         Mamit hugged him again. "But none of that matters now. Later you can tell Papit and me all about how you been."

         "There's nothing to tell. I went to see Grandmamere. She wasn't home. Then I came here."

         "Sha, your Grandmamere passed eighteen years ago in two thousand six."

         Darrel rested his forehead on Mamit's shoulder. "That's what they said at Grandmamere's house."

         Mamit took his arm and led him through the door. "Come down inside, Boo," she said. "We pass you something to eat till Papit come back from the bayou."

         With his pot belly protruding, Darrel straightened up and followed Mamit into the house. "I can shave first?" he asked.

         "For sure."