Silverlocks

I'm gonna keep my sheep suit on

Until I'm sure that you've been shown

That I can be trusted walking with you alone

- Wolfman Jack, ”Lil Red Riding Hood”

eventually we all have silver locks because the only alternative is death.

Once upon a time in a place that was more green than anything, there was a road.  Now, in this place, the grass outnumbered the concrete a thousand to one.  This is where the bugs lived.  You rarely saw them, but they sang all of the time.  The sound was incessant and inviting, like the song of the siren.  The bugs weren’t alone, oh no.   The animals scattered their homes about, here and there, willy-nilly and haphazard.   Or so it seemed.   Some wove homes into the vegetation, some burrowed in the earth, some found places up in the trees and down in the rocks.  When it was time, new ones were born and old ones passed on.  Some hunted and some scavenged.   And, left to their own, they grew quite large.  In fact, some of the were as large as their skylines allowed.   The cycle was undisturbed, because one who lived among them had dominion and he was fair and just.  Nevermind terrifying.

But back to the road.  As it left the city, it stretched for unknown miles twisting through the wilderness. The only other concrete made up occasional walkways along the scattered houses.  Sometimes they were simple concrete circles a stride or so apart that connected homes to gravel like a dot-to-dot on an elementary worksheet.  That gravel connected to the road, as several others did here and there, but mostly, the road was alone.  That is why the music man liked it so much.  He liked to look at the trees.  In fact, he liked to look at the trees until he could no longer see the forest.  He would muse that the road brought him from the concrete jungles “back to where I belong”.  And whenever he dwelled on it, the leafy branches that  grew out and over the road would reach down and out as if to  claim him as their own.

He pedalled fast to cover the ground between his apartment and the road, but geared down with a flick of his thumb and let the bike coast when he arrived.  His ride was about the destination as much as the ride.   He sat upright and released the strap at his chin, riding with no hands--a feat that used to amaze him as a kid.

They make you wear these things in the city, he thought to no one but the forest.  In fact he had once been ticketed for not wearing a helmet in city limits.  Seventy-five smackeroos, clams, bucks, greenbacks.

Before taxes.

But not here.  No such rules on the road, no rules at all, save the ones which nature imposes.

And so he relieved himself of the burden of the helmet, and the warm breeze was cool along his forehead and through his hair.  His hair was getting long and on its way to longer, nearing  that length in which he must soon choose:  cut it back to tame, or let it go to time and nature.  He secretly hoped he choose time and nature although he knew he probably would cut it.  Time and Nature, after all, cannot be trusted.  They had already begun to turn steaks of his dark hair gray.   Some liked to call it silver, as though it has value.  Others tried to soften the blow by equating it to wisdom.   Some joked that they earned every single one of those grays.  The Bible calls it a crown of spendor.   Every silver lining has a touch of grey, so says the Grateful Dead.  However you color it, the simple truth is the hair is dying.  A sure-fire, no-two-ways-about-it, fo-shizzle-my-nizzle sign of aging is dying.  Sometimes the hair goes first.

He had one bicycle route and he never strayed from it.  There was no reason to; it had everything.  Once outside the city limits, the road ran past a line of ranch style brick homes on one side, while the other was farmed field all the way to the river.   A thin but leafy tree line grew around on old wire fence and puzzled the view of the field and its giant round hay bales.   This went on until the neighborhoods took back over on both sides.  The road was perfect for morning biking.  It was heavily shaded,  the asphalt was smooth, and traffic was rare.  When a vehicle did pass it left behind a friendly wave and a belching breeze of warm fumes.  Thankfully they, too became as scarce as other signs of human progress further down the road.

He circled a couple of times in the gravel parking lot of the country store waiting for a gap in traffic to cross the highway where the road would disappear down a hill and be swallowed by the trees.

On the other side, he didn’t pedal at all for a while, or sometimes backwards because he liked the sound the chain and gears made- the reverse ticking.  The sound of unwinding, like maybe you could set time back.  Perhaps just a wee bit.  He stretched his arms to the sky to pay homage to the cooler air.  The light dimmed through the leafy filter and on hot days, the temperature drop was drastic.  He coasted down the bowl and up the other side and let himself slow until it was either pedal or topple over.

The trees thinned and homes sprang up again on one side, but it was different.   Occasional newly constructed brick homes neighbored faded single-wide trailers who had claimed the land back when no one else knew about it.   The yards were long enough to support a football game should the need arise.  The opposite side of the road became lined with a white boarded fence that rolled on and on with the bumps and hills of the land.  Sometimes the cows would be grazing near the fence, sometimes off in the distance, and there were days like today, when they were no where in sight.

Where the fence line turned, nature took over once again, and the sound of insects grew.  Grew in fact, to overpower the music from his earbuds.  He tugged them from his ears and Tom Petty sang into his shirt, with no one heeding “you don’t!  have!  to live like a refugee”.  

The sun reappeared, and the descending road dissected an expanse of what could only be described as a swamp.  Green foliage topped with stems of tiny white and pink balls disguised the water as land along the edges.  Tell-tale glints of sunlight gave it away until it opened up.  Near the centers on both sides, wide leaves floated on the water providing islands for dragonflies and frogs.  Wire-legged things skimmed the surface.  Here and there a polished and mossed burl of a stump broke through, making a potential perch for long birds with long beaks.  This section of road would flood every spring, and he would ride right through it.

As abruptly as it started, the swampland ended, and the hill led up to another miniature neighborhood.  The houses were similar to one another, but spread out and a little haphazard in their facings.  Each one distinct.  One had a basketball court, another had a tire swing.  One had a giant silver propane tank, another, a stack of firewood.  One had a pickup truck with a fishing boat in tow, the next, a Buick sedan and a crotch rocket.  The last house on the left before the road became lost in the forest, was farther alone than the others, not quite overgrown,... but well vegitated.  It had four flag poles attached to the house and yard: one Old Glory, one Confederate, one POW MIA, and a  Don’t Tread On Me flapped, advertising the identity of the occupant.  A man in a rocking chair and red cap nodded him a two finger salute, and he fired it right back careful not to look too long.  It was their daily ritual, and usually the point where the music man would increase the volume in his headphones, and and his momentum.  It was his turn-about point.  Time to head back, back toward the other world.

Usually.

But, the gears were clicking today and he had a hard time relaxing in spite of the surrounding serenity.  His bicycle kept going straight.   He had ignored his screaming mind as long as he could, but Bruce Springsteen egged him on, “tramps like us, baby we were born to run!”  He pumped the pedals hard.

We gotta get out before its too late, Bruce sang to him.

Is it already too late?  The oldest is now in college, the youngest in elementary, and the middle one is having an identity crisis.  There’s a stiff mortgage and two cars, one of them upside down.  Fifty plus hours a week at the grind where his bosses’ bosses were millionaires.  His wife loves wine a little too much.  And riding his bike was the best part of his day.

Still, it wasn’t all bad- not by a longshot.  He discovered he minded less and less.  minded less and less, minded less, mindless.

After all, it could be worse.  One neighbor lost his job.  The vacancy sign popped up in the yard of apartment complex he lived in.  A guy at work was going through a divorce and his eyes were always red.  The music man rode a thousand dollar bicycle.

It could be much worse.

There’s the danger.  The trap,   The stuff that makes slavery possible.

because “tramps like us, baby we were born to-”

What the-?

Something just moved back there. Not a rabbit either, something big.

He braked gently and swung the bike around in a u-turn, staring into the forest.  His head and   eyes darted to pierce past the limbs and leaves deeper into the dimmer parts.

Somewhere back there the darkness moved again-this time deftly.

He felt a spidery skitter up his back and neck.  When he decided to pedal, the creature stopped hiding.

There was a crash of snapping twigs and stuttering popping of pulled vines ripped from their roots and for a moment the thing that moved was recognizable as a silhouette.  An inflated frame of muscle and fur. Wolf he thought and he pedaled hard, maxing out the gears in moments,  Wolf! A big f-

He actually felt the thing hit the pavement behind him, it’s nails, claws, clapped like an army drummer drumming.  There were four legs a leaping and only two wheels a spinning.  The music man pedaled the chain right off the gears, but the stab of fear only lasted a second.  The rear tire was bumped hard enough to pick it up and turn the entire bicycle and rider sideways, airborne for a very long split second where the music man was facing the beast.  It was huge and mostly jaw, hot and red inside between two rows of foamy fangs. The black and pink lips curled on themselves like a burned window blind releasing a snarling growl.  The sound was solid matter that touched the man’s entire head and left behind thick warm drool.  Time to face the music, he thought, without knowing why.

The wheel regained contact with the pavement with a flipping jerk that dumped the man skidding on his back.  His head hit and sent merciful stars to blot his vision.  The haircut question was answered for him by concrete clippers snatching out tufts with scalp chunks still attached.  His sliding changed to a roll which ended abruptly in the bottom of the weedy ditch with his legs above him and his lungs burning

He had no time to adjust to a face full of dirt and grass before he was dragged back onto the pavement.  He barely felt it when the jaws clamped his ankle, being preoccupied with the sudden searing headache that deafened him, amplified light,  and locked his mouth in a scream.  He couldn’t tell if he made any sound and it didn’t matter.  Then something matched the pain  and even overpowered it; The animal bit through his thigh and tore out the muscle with a few shakes of its head.  The music man cried, screamed, cursed, and begged all in one long sound that set the birds to flight.  The pain exploded and became all there was until it engulfed itself and sent the man’s mind outside looking in.  

There was disbelief that this could really be happening.  There was disgust at the savage gnashing.  The animal raised its head to chew once or twice before throwing back a wad of flesh.  Bloody strings spattered the immediate area and painted the fur of its chin.  Shock sent him away, but he watched the beast shake the limp body like a ragdoll while ripping out chunks of bloody meat.   There was fear at the realization that this is it.  This is how it ends.  Would you take an effing look at that?  

Just die already so it will be over, he told himself.  

Ghastly and grisly are inadequate adjectives for the show he watched.  His starring role, his five minutes of fame.  His exit stage left.

A shot cracked the air and the animal froze, snarled, then bolted, disappearing back into the forest.

The man from down the road stepped into view holding a rifle.  The veteran.  He looked down at the music man, wrinkled his nose, and gave the familiar two-finger salute.  

The veteran adjusted the brim of his cap while he surveyed the situation.  He pulled a toothpick out of his shirt pocket and pointed it at the music man and spoke like he was scolding.

“Whatchu’ve been doin’,... you cain’t do no more.”

He stuck the toothpick in his mouth and rolled it around before continuing.

“You wanna know why?”

He nodded to the treeline.

“‘Cause he just bit your leg off...

They got a song for that?”