o’mahoney’s grill at Two Wheels To There

Frigid river water washed the countless casualties from Surtch Pherther’s glasses and visor, and the workday’s salt and the evening’s dust from his face. Ten feet out, given the chance, the Shamton Waterfall could have washed away so much more, but Surtch hadn’t taken this path on his O’Mahoney’s Grill trip the year before, back when food had no flavor, the jukebox no tunes, sunlight no warmth, and he no desire.

Here it was a midweek worknight a mere three days after he’d got the ’09 XR1200 “Riot Machine” with just 300 miles for a steal from a DeLusiville dealership because this bike was never given a fighting chance stateside because it seldom saw the showroom floor because Harley’s typical customer didn’t give a realtime damn because it just can’t seat a big spare tire… And though Surtch was fine with all that, he thought it a shame just the same.

He’d bombed the eastbound I at 80 to 100 mph after work because he’d craved it, because Riot Machine had roared for it, and because broad Big Canyon, with few lurk-spots for cops, had beckoned. On the back side he’d throttled down and let the naked bike’s 1200 ccs rumble-vibe through Silvervale’s ranch-lands turned rec-lands and cash cows for the one percent and then down Middlefield Draw to the midweek-empty diner for a pastrami on rye with chips and a dill spear and coffee as the sun nestled west in the virga-streaked and cloud-strewn sky. Afterward, with nowhere to be and anywhere to go, he’d set off southeast for West Cairn Road and into the mouth of the Shamton drainage at a speed to match the meandering route and its swift shifts from sunlight to shade.

Riverside, Surtch rinsed and wrung the microfiber, wiped his glasses and visor of lingering streaks, and folded the cloth and tucked it damp into his jacket’s right pocket. Pebbles on the path back crackled under his boots, and the cooling air raised aromas of evergreens and damp soil and cradled the spray from the waterfall that continued to shush as though to hush others with whom it had been babbling before the rider’s arrival. It was shift change in the woods–day was turning in, night was stirring to stalk a bite to eat, and Surtch, fresh from the riverbank, was aware.

With a turn of the key and a press of the starter, road-hot Riot Machine barked right back to life, and soon thereafter Surtch was clearing Bardom Pass. Taking the tight switchbacks slow, he sank into the other side, into the Mackenzie drainage that for 15-ish miles runs along the Cairn Mountains Wilderness, and into a night that seemed to fall as suddenly as its dangers arose. He’d seen no deer before the waterfall and the pass, but now there were only signs of their abundance: fuzzy forms in the brush, just within the headlight’s reach, and here and there large eyes glinting like early ornaments among the boughs.

A few miles beyond where the mouth of the drainage yawns wide, where lush graze-land lies out flat and far, he crossed the state line and then thundered into the first fuel stop he came upon in weeknight-quiet Booth Union. After filling up and then sipping a Gatorade and munching a granola bar at the station’s front walk, he joined the westbound I, busy with cagers and big rigs to serve as possible blockers against wildlife would-be tacklers.

Combined with the increasing mugginess and the drone of steady revs, the pastureland links between Bromley’s Draw, Silvergate Gulch, and Big Canyon might have rendered Surtch body-bored and mind-numb had it not been for a coming storm: The sky, which had been building tension and making threats all late-day long, was finally throwing a fit with light but steady rain–refreshing, really–and random, remote flashes that silhouetted the tall and toothlike Westwitness Peaks on the otherwise blackdrop backdrop.

Finally, at about ten o’clock that night, after over 200 satisfying miles, Surtch raced Riot Machine to a fork-squeezing stop at the back of his drive and shut it off. Behind him–speeding, crashing, enfolding, and companioned by the tink-plunk tune of cooling cylinders and pipes–rushed that intoxicating odor of hot V-twin exhaust, something that proper Escape Artist never could and never would produce. Of course, Surtch loved Escape Artist: It could take him remote, to where his soul was closest to the surface. But Riot Machine roared to his flesh and his blood, was a wild thing. Indeed, where Escape Artist was spirit, Riot Machine was body alone–tautly muscled, hot and lusty.

Are you occasionally able to fit in a longer ride during your work week, or is the risk too high–that you’ll just keep heading away, from home, from work, from responsibility?…

Now, don’t rub it in too much, you… you retired people. You know who you are. 🙂

Big Canyon’s sweepers and the cool-down of Middlefield Draw were not self-significant, but symbolic of Surtch Pherther’s fleeing and pursuing. In between, he must have passed the road to Silvervale, crossed that windswept basin from which routes bear toward the cardinal points, junction-swung south toward Witt and then diverted, and nearly dangled his toes in Keetstone Lake. Must have…

For almost a year, Surtch’s “significant” hadn’t resembled itself, couldn’t stand, had no bones, just evaporated. All he’d get when seeking it lately was silence, and voids that should have been memories of moments lived. He’d always believed that significance didn’t have to be sought, but simply realized. That was before. Now he merely wanted for something–anything–to be meaningful.

He was fleeing mundanity, the middle of the week, swelter in the City of Contradictions, many motorcycling fails, and long days for which for years he’d been malcompensated. He was fleeing abusers whom he’d generously served for too damn long. Surtch was fleeing a fucking mindquake that had swooped in swiftly and silently nearly a year back and had not relented.

As for pursuing, it wasn’t everything opposite. That would have been overambitious. Under the oppression, he had to pursue piecemeal. He still could reason, at least through the simple: He wanted to want, just had to remember how, wanted to feel alive, to feel anything… Surtch wanted connection, something else he’d always believed didn’t have to be sought, but simply was embedded in living. Suddenly, yet again, preconceptions and reality were very different things.

On a rare whim, he’d aimed for north Middlefield and O’Mahoney’s Grill, an old diner in a new place, and he arrived to only one car in the lot. Up to the entrance he stepped, and through the vintage doors.

“Evenin’, hon. Sit wherever.” With tangerine curls and lipstick, and eye shadow and outfit of emerald, Sis (by name tag) could have been of another time, seemed unreal. Surtch wondered if the notebook in her apron and the ear-perched pen were just props or were additional props.

He took a spot near the door at the green marble counter and plucked the menu from its holder. He knew the routine.

“Can I getcha somethin’ to drink?”

“Yes. Coffee, please.”

“Mud comin’ up.”

He replaced the menu and skimmed the jukebox pages at the nearest selector. It held mostly modern songs and many others that didn’t belong. Surtch wanted time machine tracks, to transport him, maybe to Rick’s Garden Party or to go a-Walkin’ After Midnight with Patsy or, better yet, to sittin’ a while on The Dock of The Bay with Otis and gazing longingly at dear Patti’s Old Cape Cod, gazing, as he would, wistfully into an era he hadn’t known, peopled with his grandparents in their prime, an era of scrap drives, war bonds, and ration books–yeah, he’d always thought he was born two generations late. He settled for a weary Summertime with Janis.

Sis returned with a steaming pot and filled Surtch’s cup in a torrent. “Somethin’ from the grill?”

“A Reuben with fries, please.”

“Suits me.” To the kitchen she hollered something about whiskey and frog sticks.

Yeah, Surtch knew the routine: During his wave-tossed youth, he’d spent innumerable nights and wee hours at the mottled pink and gold-glittered counter of since-razed McHenry’s Place, a holdout from the heydays of the ‘40s. He had downed untold gallons of mud, Reubens with fries, and on Sundays, bowls of turkey soup with homemade noodles and with hard rolls for sopping.

He’d lost a fortune in quarters to the pinball’s siren song, scrawled numberless pages of free verse fine and fair and flawed, countless times fallen hopelessly in love with none-the-wiser young women, and of course, pondered the inscrutable, and interrogated mute Purpose. He’d lugged out more mental baggage the last time he left than he’d packed in on his first visit, the contents all questions. At McHenry’s he’d been a restless youth of madness, often self-destructive, fleetingly suicidal, but mostly wild and wide-eyed and wonder-full.

At O’Mahoney’s, Surtch tossed in the last of the Reuben and slurped the dregs of his second cup. Oh, what he wouldn’t have given for a taste of that madness now. Sure, it had been turbulent, but at least it had been alive, a far cry from the raped-up void into which the mindquake had flung him. He paid the check, thanked Sis, and glanced around once more before stepping out the door to the empty lot. It was late evening, and the shadows were long. “They’ve been this way for fuckin’ ever,” thought Surtch. He wondered when the hell the sun would get around to shining again.

Two Wheels To There

Pherther-Grams

Worknight Runaway – 2011.08.30

Wanting to Want – 2010.08.12