I’m afraid these other characters will sleep all day if I let them. The sky outside is sparkling and clear, it’s a shame to waste it like this.
I go over finally and give Chris a shake. His eyes pop open, then he sits bolt upright uncomprehending.
“Shower time”, I say.
I go outside. The air is invigorating. In fact… Christ!… it is cold out. I pound on the Sutherlands’ door.
“Yahp”, comes John’s sleepy voice through the door. “Umhmmmm. Yahp.”
It feels like autumn. The cycles are wet with dew. No rain today. But cold! It must be in the forties.
While waiting I check the engine oil level and tires, and bolts, and chain tension. A little slack there, and I get out the tool kit and tighten it up. I’m really getting anxious to get going.
I see that Chris dresses warmly and we are packed and on the road, and it is definitely cold. Within minutes all the heat of the warm clothing is drained out by the wind and I am shivering with big shivers. Bracing.
It ought to warm up as soon as the sun gets higher in the sky. About half an hour of this and we’ll be in Ellendale for breakfast. We should cover a lot of miles today on these straight roads.
If it weren’t so damn cold this would be just gorgeous riding. Low-angled dawn sun striking what looks almost like frost covering those fields, but I guess it’s just dew, sparkling and kind of misty. Dawn shadows everywhere make it look less flat than yesterday. All to ourselves. Nobody’s even up yet, it looks like. My watch says six-thirty. The old glove above it looks like it’s got frost on it, but I guess it’s just residues from the soaking last night. Good old beat-up gloves. They are so stiff now from the cold I can hardly straighten my hand out.
I talked yesterday about caring, I care about these moldy old riding gloves. I smile at them flying through the breeze beside me because they have been there for so many years and are so old and so tired and so rotten there is something kind of humorous about them. They have become filled with oil and sweat and dirt and spattered bugs and now when I set them down flat on a table, even when they are not cold, they won’t stay flat. They’ve got a memory of their own. They cost only three dollars and have been restitched so many times it is getting impossible to repair them, yet I take a lot of time and pains to do it anyway because I can’t imagine any new pair taking their place. That is impractical, but practicality isn’t the whole thing with gloves or with anything else.
The machine itself receives some of the same feelings. With over 27,000 on it it’s getting to be something of a high-miler, an old-timer, although there are plenty of older ones running. But over the miles, and I think most cyclists will agree with this, you pick up certain feelings about an individual machine that are unique for that one individual machine and no other. A friend who owns a cycle of the same make, model and even same year brought it over for repair, and when I test rode it afterward it was hard to believe it had come from the same factory years ago. You could see that long ago it had settled into its own kind of feel and ride and sound, completely different from mine. No worse, but different.
I suppose you could call that a personality. Each machine has its own, unique personality which probably could be defined as the intuitive sum total of everything you know and feel about it. This personality constantly changes, usually for the worse, but sometimes surprisingly for the better, and it is this personality that is the real object of motorcycle maintenance. The new ones start out as good-looking strangers and, depending on how they are treated, degenerate rapidly into bad-acting grouches or even cripples, or else turn into healthy, good-natured, long-lasting friends. This one, despite the murderous treatment it got at the hands of those alleged mechanics, seems to have recovered and has been requiring fewer and fewer repairs as time goes on.
There it is! Ellendale!
A water tower, groves of trees and buildings among them in the morning sunlight. I’ve just given in to the shivering which has been almost continuous the whole trip. The watch says seven-fifteen.
A few minutes later we park by some old brick buildings. I turn to John and Sylvia who have pulled up behind us. “That was cold!” I say.
They just stare at me fish-eyed.
“Bracing, what?” I say. No answer.
I wait until they are completely off, then see that John is trying to untie all their luggage. He is having trouble with the knot. He gives up and we all move toward the restaurant.
I try again. I’m walking backward in front of them toward the restaurant, feeling a little manic from the ride, wringing my hands and laughing. “Sylvia! Speak to me!” Not a smile.
I guess they really were cold.
They order breakfast without looking up.
Breakfast ends, and I say finally, “What next?”
John says slowly and deliberately, “We’re not leaving here until it warms up.” He has a sheriff-at-sundown tone in his voice, which I suppose makes it final.
So John and Sylvia and Chris sit and stay warm in the lobby of the hotel adjoining the restaurant, while I go out for a walk.
I guess they’re kind of mad at me for getting them up so early to ride through that kind of stuff. When you’re stuck together like this, I figure small differences in temperament are bound to show up. I remember, now that I think of it, I’ve never been cycling with them before one or two o’clock in the afternoon, although for me dawn and early morning is always the greatest time for riding.
The town is clean and fresh and unlike the one we woke up in this morning. Some people are on the street and are opening stores and saying, “Good morning” and talking and commenting about how cold it is. Two thermometers on the shady side of the street read 42 and 46 degrees. One in the sun reads 65 degrees.
After a few blocks the main street goes onto two hard, muddy tracks into a field, past a quonset hut full of farm machinery and repair tools, and then ends in a field. A man standing in the field is looking at me suspiciously, wondering what I am doing, probably, as I look into the quonset hut. I return down the street, find a chilly bench and stare at the motorcycle. Nothing to do.
It was cold all right, but not that cold. How do John and Sylvia ever get through Minnesota winters? I wonder. There’s kind of a glaring inconsistency here, that’s almost too obvious to dwell on. If they can’t stand physical discomfort and they can’t stand technology, they’ve got a little compromising to do. They depend on technology and condemn it at the same time. I’m sure they know that and that just contributes to their dislike of the whole situation. They’re not presenting a logical thesis, they’re just reporting how it is. But three farmers are coming into town now, rounding the corner in that brand-new pickup truck. I’ll bet with them it’s just the other way around. They’re going to show off that truck and their tractor and that new washing machine and they’ll have the tools to fix them if they go wrong, and know how to use the tools. They value technology. And they’re the ones who need it the least. If all technology stopped, tomorrow, these people would know how to make out. It would be rough, but they’d survive. John and Sylvia and Chris and I would be dead in a week. This condemnation of technology is ingratitude, that’s what it is.
Blind alley, though. If somone’s ungrateful and you tell him he’s ungrateful, okay, you’ve called him a name. You haven’t solved anything.
A half hour later the thermometer by the hotel door reads 53 degrees. Inside the empty main dining room of the hotel I find them, looking restless. They seem, by their expressions, to be in a better mood though, and John says optimistically, “I’m going to put on everything I own, and then we’ll make it all right.”
He goes out to the cycles, and when he comes back says, “I sure hate to unpack all that stuff, but I don’t want another ride like that last one.” He says it is freezing in the men’s room, and since there is no one else in the dining room, he crosses behind a table back from where we are sitting, and I am sitting at the table, talking to Sylvia, and then I look over and there is
John, all decked out in a full-length set of pale-blue long underwear. He is smirking from ear to ear at how silly he looks. I stare at his glasses lying on the table for a moment and then say to Sylvia:
“You know, just a moment ago we were sitting here talking to Clark Kent — see, there’s his glasses — and now all of a sudden — Lois, do you suppose? — ”
John howls. “CHICKENMAN!”
He glides over the varnished lobby floor like a skater, does a handspring, then glides back. He raises one arm over his head and then crouches as if starting for the sky. “I’m ready, here I go!” He shakes his head sadly. “Jeez, I hate to bust through that nice ceiling, but my X-ray vision tells me somebody’s in trouble.” Chris is giggling.
“We’ll all be in trouble if you don’t get some clothes on”, Sylvia says.
John laughs. “An exposer, hey? ‘The Ellendale revealer!’ ” He struts around some more, then begins to put his clothes on over the underwear. He says, “Oh no, oh no, they wouldn’t do that. Chickenman and the police have an understanding. They know who’s on the side of law and order and justice and decency and fair play for everyone.”
When we hit the highway again it is still chilly, but not like it was. We pass through a number of towns and gradually, almost imperceptibly, the sun warms us up, and my feelings warm up with it. The tired feeling wears off completely and the wind and sun feel good now, making it real. It’s happening, just from the warming of the sun, the road and green prairie farmland and buffeting wind coming together. And soon it is nothing but beautiful warmth and wind and speed and sun down the empty road. The last chills of the morning are thawed by the warm air. Wind and more sun and more smooth road.
So green this summer and so fresh.
There are white and gold daisies among the grass in front of an old wire fence, a meadow with some cows and far in the distance a low rising of the land with something golden on it. Hard to know what it is. No need to know.
Where there is a slight rise in the road the drone of the motor becomes heavier. We top the rise, see a new spread of land before us, the road descends and the drone of the engine falls away again. Prairie. Tranquil and detached.
Later, when we stop, Sylvia has tears in her eyes from the wind, and she stretches out her arms and says, “It’s so beautiful. It’s so empty.”
I show Chris how to spread his jacket on the ground and use an extra shirt for a pillow. He is not at all sleepy but I tell him to lie down anyway, he’ll need the rest. I open up my own jacket to soak up more heat. John gets his camera out.
After a while he says, “This is the hardest stuff in the world to photograph. You need a three-hundred-and-sixty degree lens, or something. You see it, and then you look down in the ground glass and it’s just nothing. As soon as you put a border on it, it’s gone.”
I say, “That’s what you don’t see in a car, I suppose.”
Sylvia says, “Once when I was about ten we stopped like this by the road and I used half a roll of film taking pictures. And when the pictures came back I cried. There wasn’t anything there.”
“When are we going to get going?” Chris says.
“What’s your hurry?” I ask.
“I just want to get going.”
“There’s nothing up ahead that’s any better than it is right here.”
He looks down silently with a frown. “Are we going to go camping tonight?” he asks. The Sutherlands look at me apprehensively.
“Are we?” he repeats.
“We’ll see later”, I say.
“Why later?”
“Because I don’t know now.”
“Why don’t you know now?”
“Well, I just don’t know now why I just don’t know.”
John shrugs that it’s okay.
“This isn’t the best camping country”, I say. “There’s no cover and no water.” But suddenly I add, “All right, tonight we’ll camp out.” We had talked about it before.
So we move down the empty road. I don’t want to own these prairies, or photograph them, or change them, or even stop or even keep going. We are just moving down the empty road.
5
The flatness of the prairie disappears and a deep undulation of the earth begins. Fences are rarer, and the greenness has become paler — all signs that we approach the High Plains.
We stop for gas at Hague and ask if there is any way to get across the Missouri between Bismarck and Mobridge. The attendant doesn’t know of any. It is hot now, and John and Sylvia go somewhere to get their long underwear off. The motorcycle gets a change of oil and chain lubrication. Chris watches everything I do but with some impatience. Not a good sign.
“My eyes hurt”, he says.
“From what?”
“From the wind.”
“We’ll look for some goggles.”
All of us go in a shop for coffee and rolls. Everything is different except one another, so we look around rather than talk, catching fragments of conversation among people who seem to know each other and are glancing at us because we’re new. Afterward, down the street, I find a thermometer for storage in the saddlebags and some plastic goggles for Chris.
The hardware man doesn’t know any short route across the Missouri either. John and I study the map. I had hoped we might find an unofficial ferryboat crossing or footbridge or something in the ninety-mile stretch, but evidently there isn’t any because there’s not much to get to on the other side. It’s all Indian reservation. We decide to head south to Mobridge and cross there.
The road south is awful. Choppy, narrow, bumpy concrete with a bad head wind, going into the sun and big semis going the other way. These roller-coaster hills speed them up on the down side and slow them up on the up side and prevent our seeing very far ahead, making passing nervewracking. The first one gave me a scare because I wasn’t ready for it. Now I hold tight and brace for them. No danger. Just a shock wave that hits you. It is hotter and dryer.
At Herreid John disappears for a drink while Sylvia and Chris and I find some shade in a park and try to rest. It isn’t restful. A change has taken place and I don’t know quite what it is. The streets of this town are broad, much broader than they need be, and there is a pallor of dust in the air. Empty lots here and there between the buildings have weeds growing in them. The sheet metal equipment sheds and water tower are like those of previous towns but more spread out. Everything is more run-down and mechanical-looking, and sort of randomly located. Gradually I see what it is. Nobody is concerned anymore about tidily conserving space. The land isn’t valuable anymore. We are in a Western town.
We have lunch of hamburgers and malteds at an A W place in Mobridge, cruise down a heavily trafficked main street and then there it is, at the bottom of the hill, the Missouri. All that moving water is strange, banked by grass hills that hardly get any water at all. I turn around and glance at Chris but he doesn’t seem to be particularly interested in it.
We coast down the hill, clunk onto the bridge and across we go, watching the river through the girders moving by rhythmically, and then we are on the other side.
We climb a long, long hill into another kind of country.
The fences are really all gone now. No brush, no trees. The sweep of the hills is so great John’s motorcycle looks like an ant up ahead moving through the green slopes. Above the slopes outcroppings of rocks stand out overhead at the tops of the bluffs.
It all has a natural tidiness. If it were abandoned land there would be a chewed-up, scruffy look, with chunks of old foundation concrete, scraps of painted sheet metal and wire, weeds that had gotten in where the sod was broken up for whatever little enterprise was attempted. None of that here. Not kept up, just never messed up in the first place. It’s just the way it always must have been. Reservation land.
There’s no friendly motorcycle mechanic on the other side of those rocks and I’m wondering if we’re ready for this. If anything goes wrong now we’re in real trouble.
I check
the engine temperature with my hand. It’s reassuringly cool. I put in the clutch and let it coast for a second in order to hear it idling. Something sounds funny and I do it again. It takes a while to figure out that it’s not the engine at all. There’s an echo from the bluff ahead that lingers after the throttle is closed. Funny. I do this two or three times. Chris wonders what’s wrong and I have him listen to the echo. No comment from him.
This old engine has a nickels-and-dimes sound to it. As if there were a lot of loose change flying around inside. Sounds awful, but it’s just normal valve clatter. Once you get used to that sound and learn to expect it, you automatically hear any difference. If you don’t hear any, that’s good.
I tried to get John interested in that sound once but it was hopeless. All he heard was noise and all he saw was the machine and me with greasy tools in my hands, nothing else. That didn’t work.
He didn’t really see what was going on and was not interested enough to find out. He isn’t so interested in what things mean as in what they are. That’s quite important, that he sees things this way. It took me a long time to see this difference and it’s important for the Chautauqua that I make this difference clear.
I was so baffled by his refusal even to think about any mechanical subject I kept searching for ways to clue him to the whole thing but didn’t know where to start.
I thought I would wait until something went wrong with his machine and then I would help him fix it and that way get him into it, but I goofed that one myself because I didn’t understand this difference in the way he looked at things.
His handlebars had started slipping. Not badly, he said, just a little when you shoved hard on them. I warned him not to use his adjustable wrench on the tightening nuts. It was likely to damage the chrome and start small rust spots. He agreed to use my metric sockets and box-ends.
When he brought his motorcycle over I got my wrenches out but then noticed that no amount of tightening would stop the slippage, because the ends of the collars were pinched shut.