A twist of the fist. The choked scream
below is awful to hear.
Forearms stretch ahead. Taut, veined as
the hands strangle the blue motorcycle bars, bucking like hell.
Street’s an incline, a stone corridor
with carved-out chunks. Someone was careless, too fast, like this, like
now.
The cobblestones are murky brown and
curved like rows of chocolates in a box. Rattling over them, below they melt
with speed. There’s a hard jolt that could loosen my teeth. I force my eyes out
of a squint.
PAHHHhhnnn, POHHHhhnnn…
PAHHHhhnnn,
POHHHhhnnn...
Sirens are strange here. Not the howl
I’m used to. French police sirens are nasal, they sneer and have distinct
notes, like the language. Like an imperious bird.
The blue motorcycle’s pleas rip the
air. They volley off the walls and slap your ears like flat hands. Gear changes
chop up the old girl’s cries.
Jerky climb. Losing ground. Losing.
Seconds ago the sirens were distant,
scolding. Now they’re fresh, they’re hungry. Getting harder to hear the
engine. Splitting the skull. They really mean it. And they don’t even have to
try.
Speed flattens my clothes to me,
rippling nervously on the ends. Sweat makes the t-shirt mould like chill paint
on my chest. I want to sneak a glance back but don’t. I can hear their motor
now. Their two front tires thudding into the cobblestones, sure and strong and
right.
Getting caught isn’t part of this
story. Getting caught is their story.
The blue motorcycle roars through a
mucousy cough to the top of the incline. I see now. My jaw clenches and pray it
makes me look brave. The street forks, too hard in either way. A sharpened
street corner cleaves like the bow of a ship. Dead ahead.
Handlebars almost wrenched off.
A black espadrilled foot shoots down at
an angle to balance out the insane turn. Black cotton and a straw sole. All
that shields the foot as it skitters on the paving. The rear wheel careens to
line up with the front and there’s a wounded clang from the suspension. A
warning not to try that too often.
And now?
No more incline?
Thank God! Straight shot, wide, almost
a slalom, momentum will do most of the work.
Smells of the town rush at me, too
much. I love it. Gutter water, cold and crystal-hard rinsing out the night's
filth. Stone, dusty and dull and damp. Dog shit. That odor of a nestled town,
coiled and drowsy. It's not a smell of cooking or of gardens. It's a smell of
patient history and sun and remoteness. All in a wall of wind. Too much. I love
it.
PAHHHhhnnn,
POHHHhhnnn...
PAHHHhhnnn,
POHHHhhnnn…
Oh, right. Them.
The gendarmes in the boxy squad car,
still gaining. Only seconds stolen. Width makes their mimicked turn clumsy. I
want them clumsy. I want to see shaking fists and mouthed curses through a
receding windshield.
Focus. Not that clever by a mile. Not
even by fifty metres.
Sneaking a look back. Didn’t dare
before. Stomach hollows out.
A grimy trickle of exhaust. The trail isn’t dense enough to blind them
and it pulls apart like spun sugar. Just enough to betray. The rude snout of
the cop car rams through it.
Turn? Look left, right. Blocked.
Storefronts and wooden doors and shutters are a tunnel of smears, all dirty
cream and russet brown and grey.
Lucky it’s midday, lucky it’s summer.
Lucky that the shops are closed and people holed up with curtains drawn. Lucky
it’s too hot for coffee and too early for drinks and the town is dead.
Straight shot, no swerves. Tires mushy.
Not fast enough.
I feel the gnawing of the after, the
ugly what-if.
Not fast enough.
Hate the after, glares at me. My palms
go slick. I think of home. It's restful there, after lunch. It's assured there,
they don't know.
I'll fail them with this. Who'd scream,
who'd cry, who'd be silent.
Jolts below, they hurt, the wheels
whine. Rough paving. Like the Earth kicking me in the ass.
PAHHHhhnnn,
POHHHhhnnn…
PAHHHhhnnn,
POHHHhhnnn…
Turn! Left, a side street. Hook, coast,
then hard push. Blue motorcycle belches, sour. Diesel fumes. Front tire shudders
between cobblestones, like an abused animal snapping to. I feel the tug of
force and tighten my fingers.
Narrow, high walls. A sliver street. Shadowy.
Ash grey, cold purple. Streetlamp thorning out like brier.
The squad car lobs its rumble ahead.
Made the turn, it says. Not too narrow for us.
I see the climb of bitter windows that
overlook nothing. The sun doesn't know this street exists. Defeat is this
place.
Know where you're going...? I imagine their
laughter.
Maybe you can’t control it.
Maybe crashing is what you deserve. Grit
of teeth, spasm, flinch, dead. You aren’t bigger than this.
Being caught, alive but caught… Is that
worse…?
Wind rakes its claws over my ears.
Alive, but losing? No time. No time.
Pull over?
Eyes tearing. Speed streaks the drops.
Through my bones, the angry tom-tom of
the street thrashes. Can’t think.
THINK. What’s that
saying…?
‘Sang froid’…?
‘…Cold blood’?
None of this feels cold.
It feels hot enough to scream.
But then. Quick
right lean, skid. Quick left lean, clip a corner. Gash in blue paint. Keep on!
I'm a flash, a wink with every zigzag. A fish's tail,
that's what the cops see then don't! Silvery, slippery. Darting, neat little
cuts.
But then. A miserly
alley? Soot, quiet.
Hard stop.
...Hard stop?
Engine killed. Fist
releases, done its job. Choking ends, spent. Blunt silence.
Nothing. Then more
of it, thick slices of nothing. Still, keep still, don't drop the arms, clothes
rustle.
Waiting,
for...?
PAHHHhhnnn, POHHHhhnnn…
PAHHHhhnnn, POHHHhhnnn…
The cop car wails,
muffled around bends. Motor grumbles by, impotent, seeking. Fades, feebler,
almost pitiable. Gone.
Unblinking, more
nothing. Really gone.
The forearms
stretching ahead, taut, veined, finally soften. Hands lay on knees, sweat wiped
off on the pants. The espadrilled foot balancing the right side, the left foot
drops to even out. A calming exhale bubbles out.
The foot nudges out
the kickstand. The hands cup my ribcage and spin me around. The exhale turns
into a lighthearted question. "Ça va?"
I look up into a
troublemaker's smirk, my uncle's calm face, lean and young and caring. The
hands lift the helmet off my head and I can see and breathe easier.
True I was four. But
I remember his half-laugh. Sly, but not a braggart's.
Impossible. Defying
the police! Unthinkable. We might as well have leaped over the cathedral.
Scofflaws, for a
minute or two. Worth savoring. We’d gotten away with it!
I remember my
uncle's closed-mouth grin, his chuckle at the idiocy of it. Our escape. I
remember the crinkle of mischief around his eyes.
I remember we took
the small streets back home.
"I remember the
whole thing," I told my uncle a few weeks ago when I was in France.
Nearly midnight,
just he and I. The old family house. He'd dropped me off after dinner. We
talked lightly but well on the drive back. We always did, and even when topics
evaporated and thoughts knit in the air, it was just as good.
I'd walked him out
to his car and was locking up after him. September, early flinches of cool. I
wore a thin sweater, he wore a jacket. We stood at the end of my grandparents'
courtyard, by the heavy iron gate with the spikes stabbing on top. It used to
be forest green. It's red now. My grandparents used to live there, but they don't
now. The white metal shutters clamped. The climbing roses a little wild. It
felt quieter than sleeping neighbors, looked darker than the hour. Things
change.
Others don't,
though. That same crinkle of mischief around his eyes, only three decades
deeper. "A four year old. Don't know what I was thinking."
"You were in
your twenties. Harmless joyride," I said with a shrug.
“Illegal. A little
boy on the bike, that's why they chased us."
"I wore a
helmet!"
"I didn’t,"
he said with a happy, fraught headshake.
"And," he
looked up at me, a wry point firing his eye, "It was a blue moped. Old,
beat up. Loud. Your grandfather never owned a motorcycle."
My grin broadened
through the dark. "I know."
"Leather
satchels on the sides. He rode it to his garden and loaded it full of what he'd
grown. It wasn't a Harley or anything. We were probably carrying green beans."
I nodded. "Oh I
know."
"The moped
couldn't really go that fast! You stood on the board in the center. It was only
supposed to be a trip around the block."
"Maybe. But we
gave them the slip! That was your quick thinking. We got away," and I
heard flecks of wonder in my voice.
My uncle stood
there, hands deep in his jacket pockets, feet wide apart and head down, watching
the ground as if it might crack. That closed-mouth grin creased his face. His
ears slightly flared, silvering hair cropped short. His shadow craned away from
him. Just then, and for the first time, I asked myself why the hell he hadn’t
pulled over at the sirens? What silent dare had he laid down, what began in his
gut and made him twist the accelerator? Playful? Pissed off? Impulse only? Why
had he pushed his luck against those odds? I could have asked aloud. Instead I
looked at an orderly man remembering mischief.
"Do you
remember what you said?" he surprised me, without looking up.
I let him go on.
"When I asked
if you were alright, you demanded that we not go home. That we ride over to the
gendarmerie and knock on the door. Bait them into chasing us again."
I didn't know what
to say, only laughed.
"I was braver then,"
I said finally. My head tilted down now. I was amused, but oddly a little
ashamed for something I'd said more than thirty years prior.
"It's been a
good year for you, for your work I mean," my uncle said. "I'm very
happy for you. You've got to carry on."
My turn to shrug
too. "I've been very fortunate."
"No."
Abrupt halt, clipped. "Not fortunate."
I looked up at him.
My hand still gripped the iron gate.
"You've started
to make it happen. Not just good fortune. You haven’t been able to visit in a
few years, but you’ve worked hard and it’s brought you here. We have this time
because of it. But it’s only the very beginning! Now you've got to find a way,
always. It's never enough."
I stared. I was
grateful for the dark. Not because I wept, but because my face must have been
riddled with chaos. I never feel in control, or cunning when I must be. Losing.
Alive, but losing. I feel as though luck and near misses keep me just out of
grabbing range.
But then he gave me
this. This breath that clears the head, that shimmers the humor, that might well win the day. Well, then and now.
Knocking on the police's door, for Christ's sake.
I should have thanked him. I wanted to. But maybe he
knew.
Beyond there was the
indifferent rattle of night traffic, a delivery truck. A dog barked at nothing.
"You'll find a
way," my uncle said simply.
Hands still in his
pockets, he broke away back to his car. His voice warmed and over his shoulder he
told me to sleep well. I hinged the iron gate and felt it click, then spun the
key three times and it bolted. I wished him the same.
At the driver's door
though, he stopped, his head peeking above the roof for an instant. Streetlamp
light seared the grey in his temples.
"You
know," he hesitated. I waited. Surprise spun in his voice, a promising
note I knew so well. This very precise man with a taste for disobedience, my
uncle.
"Yeah?" I
said.
"...That story,
the cops, the bike..."
"Yeah."
"The way you
tell it. You take some liberties with it, don't you? Here and there?" he
asked. I couldn't see them, but I know those crinkles around his eyes were in
place.
"We find a
way," I said from the other side of those red iron bars, as lighthearted
as after a joyride.
His single chuckle.
“À demain,” as he ducked into the car.
“Sans faute,” I said
to the car.
And my uncle drove
off, and I turned away to unlock the front door, next to the little atelier
where an old blue motorcycle was stashed away.
Forgive me.
A blue moped.
© Eric Yves Garcia 2014
