The bike burbled beneath me. Rounding the twisties, the sound of the inline four radiated under, around, and through me. The treetops held the sound in, bringing it back to me in muffled cadence.
I’d chosen to take the UJM that weekend. Universal Japanese Motorcycle.
I’d bought it in the mid nineties. This UJM. Kind of a plain Jane kind of ride, no frills, with simple maintenance. The valves are hydraulic, requiring none of those pain in the ass routine adjustments with phrases like: bucket under shim, valve lash, and threaded screw adjuster. Ah! Viva la simplicity.
My other motor, an evolution Sportster in a tight little rigid, spent the weekend without me. I’m a total slut when it comes to motorcycles. Love em’ all. If I hear one more asshole on their crotch rocket say, “This’ll out perform a Harley and it’s cheaper.” I’m gonna puke.
It's apples and oranges. Marilyn and Brittany.
Going to visit my father and brother one fall weekend, I took country roads with rolling farmland and sweeping vistas. Going to visit my brother, whom I’d not seen for awhile, I was both excited and dismayed. Excited for the opportunity to get away and ride, dismayed by the fact of seeing my brother and the ensuing guilt associated with said visit.
An interesting character, my brother. Raised by the same man, we were, however, the seed of different men. He took after his biological father in that they lived a bit closer to the earth than I cared to. Or perhaps maybe was even able.
I was and am a wage slave. It is all I know. I wish that it were different but that is the way it is.
A high school graduate, I jumped into the factory life. I'm grateful to be employed but I like referring to my job as going in, being served a hot steaming turd, eating it and complimenting the chef. All with a smile on my face.
My brother feeds himself as best he can. Given an artistic bend, he paints and sells paintings. No Rembrandt but impressive to people who don’t paint and fancy it genius.
I think he, my brother, views my life as one of privilege. The heir to the fortune.
My father was a working stiff in a factory just as I now am. He was just good with his money and enjoys a comfortable retirement. No wealth. Just the pleasure of seeing his seeds sown.
Using an ATM machine one day, my brother was amazed at the apparatus and the cash it gave me.
"You just push buttons and it gives you money?" I told him a little more than that was involved.
It was October when I went to visit them. My brother and father.
The best course of action, I decided, was to check into a little old motel I was fond of, using it as a base of operations to visit them both and not feel obligated to stay with either. In the secret folds of my brain, those little spots that are hidden from others, I referred to this motel as my BOO. I shall not explain these initials and insult your intelligence for I am confidant that you have ascertained their meaning.
The wind blew through the changing color of leaves.
I’d discovered the BOO A few years before. At that time it was ran, the BOO, by a cool older couple who'd operated it for the last twenty-five years.
I love the shit out of motels. I’ve stayed in a lot of them in my many motorcycle travels. I had many favorites, but this was the favorite of favorites. However, this year, the motel had been sold to a mid-eastern couple.
I am not a racist. Nor do I care to discuss race. It is one of the many topics we humans, in our discourse, should perhaps not discuss. Just with me maybe. You can refrain from discussing race, as well as religion, abortion, the weather, and hell, whatever war we might be mired in at the time. I care, yes. But when I’m my on my bike going everywhere and nowhere, I-me, don’t give a shit. So when I’m at a motel, when I’m at BOO, don’t bug me. Okay?
I checked into BOO, the mid-easterners being very nice. I drank some vodka and watched some telly. That is how I strengthen myself for things I want not to do. Booze and telly, late night, clears my head. Somehow in the muddling of mind in reruns and alcohol, I find clarity. The clarity that is essential for me to visit my father and brother.
Some dumb ass had to bother me at BOO my first morning there that October morning, right in the middle of a chain adjustment, as usual, the first questions came. The same questions asked by many a dumb ass on many a journey.
“Where ya going? Where ya been? What year is it? My brother has a Harley. Zat a Harley?
I try to look the bike over early in the AM so as to avoid the dumb ass questions.
As stated earlier, it is difficult visiting my brother and father. Difficult, for different reasons in each case. I feel guilt when I leave my father. He is seventy five and I always feel as if there is something I should do or be doing for him. But he is fine. He gets around well, and, I believe, might just be sharper mentally than I.
I start the bike and leave the motel parking lot. Looking right and left then right again, I notice the blue glow of the fluorescent lights overhanging each door to each room. The bike warms quickly as I head into the metropolis. The teeming city of sixty thousands that holds the home of my father. The inline four purrs contentedly between my knees. I am at my father’s home much too quickly.
Dad’s place is quite stately. He retired from the factory in management. He lives a simple, humble life. He likes a nip of vodka himself. After our usual greeting, we sit. I tell him of my plan to visit my brother.
“God,” says Dad. “Ya sure?”
“Yup.”
“Okay.”
Their relationship was always, a bit strained to put it mildly. Mother had my brother four years before she and my father married. Dad had always resented the little shit. No judgment call here. Dad was a good provider and a good man. Principles before personalities.
So I take the ride from my father’s home to my brother’s….er….home. I have to ride through the small town where I went to high school. Wow. No change here. Same one stoplight, same one bar, same one gas station and same old narrow minded attitudes. I could see it in the gas stations attendant’s eyes as I filled up. Or, perhaps it was me. This was what I expected to see so this is what I saw.
I puttered out of the village down a winding, hilly, country road littered with views of farms, farmland and farm animals. Beautiful-beautiful and peaceful. I entered the drive leading to the old farmhouse. It was much more lane than driveway. Weeds kissed my handlebars on each side. The growth was enormous. Thistles and any which weed you could name. I thought perhaps I’d taken a path to nowhere. A wrong turn that would end with the cued music and Rod Sterling’s voice. Just when a huge bump sent my ass off the seat and my knees up around my ears, just when I settled back on the seat, regaining my composure, a figure stepped from the foliage. I dropped anchor. No skid. Just the binders sending the message received to the drum brakes that resided inside my cast rear wheel.
Stepping from the weeds, a man, gray hair long to his shoulders, stood. His legs were apart, shoulder width. Facing me but just a little sideways which I assumed was to make himself a smaller target; he held a staff in his hands. It was wooden and smooth. He did not smile. I on the other hand, silly-ass that I am and happy to see my brother, took my right hand from the throttle and waved. Flashing my toothy grin I then cut the e-stop. The burble of the inline four stopped immediately. It had been a few years since we’d seen each other and I’d never been to his current “home.” Had he not recognized me, I'd be easy pickings. That thought ran through my helmeted noggin' and just after it sent the message to click the e-stop into run mode and mash the starter button with my thumb, he smiled. I lived another day.
We were at the drive-in years ago. I believe the movie was Darker Than Amber with Rod Taylor. It was a double feature with There Was A Crooked Man. I could be wrong at the latter movie title although I knew for sure it had Henry Fonda and Kirk Douglas in it. My brother was home on leave from the Corps. Doing my paper route I’d found him an old Nova. We spent two days patching the body with putty and painting the car primer gray with the rims brush painted black, by me. He taught me how to mix the putty and how to spray paint in the wind. We drove the Nova that night. I cannot remember at what point he said it. He said how ashamed he was to have me as a brother. He was nine years older. He was in the Corps. He was my hero.
