Yesterday I took a new bicycle out on an old trail. I rode through cornfields and cow-fields, taking it all in, enjoying myself. But when I shifted gears, the day caught a little. I pedaled; it protested. There was an odd sound or two, then smooth again. Back in place, I thought.
But not exactly.
The day had slipped with the gear, into someplace new — or, rather, old. One of those August days in ’91, when the Russians were trying that coup that didn’t work. The one that left us with Boris.
I knew this because it because it was all over the front page of the Chicago Tribune, trapped behind glass in a yellow-painted dispenser box by the bike rental place. It might have been in color. That red stain on Gorbachev’s head.
But anyway, my bike was red. Red Schwinn with pedal brakes. My father went in to get a map, and then we rode, he and I, up hills and down them, how many hours, I couldn’t say. August day a long time ago. Somewhere in Michigan.
I don’t think I shifted gears again, did nothing, really, to bring myself back. But back I was. To my left, horses bent over a water trough. To my right, corn between the gaps in the trees. Then a second shifting, this time to no place in particular. No map or newspaper to tell me what country I had come to.
It might have been a story he told me once. Or maybe one he’d only thought and then let drift. Perhaps it drifted up. Gathered in the white clouds overhead and waited there, all these years, until the time was right for falling.
The little girl knew she shouldn’t ride her bicycle into the field of horses. Hadn’t she been warned? She didn’t always listen. She wanted to touch the tall one on his black-and-white nose. Her hand was reaching when he said, clear as day, “Just what do you think you’re doing?”
She almost fell off, into the mud. And if she’d been another little girl, she might have; left the bicycle wheels-deep in horse dung, taken off and run.
But she said, “Oh!” and then, “You talk!”
The horse said, “Naturally. Would you like to take a ride with me?”
She didn’t have time to say she didn’t know how, because underneath her the bicycle was growing warm and also growing — wider, taller. She felt hair against her bare legs, looked down and was atop a chestnut mare.
How they sailed then, across the fields, following that black-and-white horse until fields gave way to forest, and forest gave way, too, trees parting onto white sand by blue ocean.
“I didn’t know we were near the ocean,” shouted the girl to the black-and-white horse.
He whinnied. The mare tossed her head. He said, “Everywhere is near the ocean.”
How their hooves sent up the sea spray. She held on, but not for dear life, just for the joy of it.
And even though she’d never seen a pirate ship, she knew that’s what it was, sinking there a ways out, mast and prow still above the waves, but only just.
I’d tell you how they found the treasure — horses wading into water become dolphins, you know. And I’d tell you what they did with it, back at the farm, the old widow.
But the gear was shifting. Stories fall away, in time. Leave you riding beside yourself through a strange country. Fields you don’t recognize. White clouds gone silent.
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