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I.
Preston bows
his chin to the gas tank, locks his arms, squeezes, like a nutcracker,
his knees to the neon lizard painted tank, violently snaps the
throttle of his recently broken-in 2006 Kawasaki ZX-10
and screams, man it’s fu***ng loud, through second gear,
the acceleration eating his breath, thinning his vision from the
sides like a tv going cold, the front wheel light, in the air,
and it drops when he shifts to third, 110 mph and wormholing faster,
the farm houses detritus specks in the peripheral, trees formless
dichromatic blurs bleeding into the streaked green fields, 142
mph on a two-lane highway, this section swingarm straight and
flat for 3 miles
—fourth gear, 157 mph, the bike the inside of a hornet’s
hive, the wall of air splitting and screaming in defiance, a mutiny
of bagpipes, his vision tunneled into a cardboard tube, beyond
that a darkened gray slate—
—fifth gear, 173 mph, the engine still pulling, barely noticing
the featherweight rider, worried more about the reinforced wind—
his adrenaline races laps in his bloodstream, a cadence with the
bike’s speed, and it’s an addiction, a rapture, like
listening to your favorite song in a sealed car, screaming at
your lung’s capacity, the volume not loud enough
the wind roar around and in his helmet a whitewash static onslaught,
boring into his ears, annihilating his mental voice
the bike’s engine a jet turbine (how far away can it be heard
on this azure afternoon?), maniacal, screaming with elation at
the freedom
at 181 mph (sixth gear) he relaxes the throttle, and the wind
immediately surrounds the bullet, tames into submission, his speed
plummeting, 169, the engine still a turbine banshee, 154, downshifts
to fifth, raises like a gopher over the windscreen, defying his
head and chest to the wind, 131, downshifts to fourth, the open
fields gaining clarity, his vision restored as the g-force blackout
tumbles behind him, sees a yellow diamond sign with a black squiggly
line, 108…and now he eases the back brake, downshifting,
95…he’s going so slow the engine chuckles at the boring
gait; 72, and this is agonizingly fu***ng slow, his plastered
smile now a grimace, Preston feels he could run this fast
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II.
Sheriff Ohmbach sees the onlooker gaggle, the miniscule used-car
lot scrunched onto the narrow shoulder, leaving the two-lane road
a one-lane gauntlet, the people clumped in groups, no hands or mouths
moving, all facing the same direction, but he doesn’t see a
motorcycle, so he furrows his brow, pulls behind a Tahoe and walks
to the nearest clump; the closest man sees the uniform, says, “Hope
you brought a spatula—that’s the only thing that’ll
pick up the mess” as he squints, and Ohmbach nods and continues
walking, the clumps staring as he passes, still not seeing
the motorcycle hisses, a roach farm of broken and bent parts, plastic
bent off the bike like torn wings, the muffler a broken hinged leg,
the levers and mirrors skewed antennae, the windshield a crushed
head, the dented tank a smooshed thorax, the seeping fluids the
blood; fifteen yards beyond the bike, in the open field, a visceral
mass of jelly—red, brown, and yellow poured into a concrete
truck and dumped over white sticks (from overhead it might appear
as a target, this multi-colored heap on a green backdrop), a fresh-baked
pizza put in a box and shaken and then thrown on a table for Ohmbach
to approach first, bile like magma slinking up fissures, his hand
on the walkie-talkie but his vocal cords locked…he clamps a
clammy palm to his mouth, damming the flow that threatens—oh
my fu***ng god that used to be a person; what is, what was this
thing?; how are they going to pick this up?—but within three
feet, his knees aching and cold, like someone injected ice water
behind the kneecaps, he hears a moan, and thinks it issued from
himself, subconsciously, but it resonates again, a moan clawing
at the baby breeze but definitely audible—there’s no way
in Heaven this guy is still alive!—and the glob shifts, like
a crab under churning water, rolls, and everyone is stunned mute
except for the one girl who screams until a hand plasters her mouth,
and the glob creeps to a square shape, gelatinous goo dripping from
its sides, and then it raises, becomes an L, and Ohmbach recognizes
a helmet, angular useless limbs trying to touch it, and Ohmbach
rushes around, talking to him, punching in on the handset and ordering
an ambulance, and gingerly unlatches the helmet
are you okay?
aawwhhhhhhhhh nnnnnnnnnhhhhhhhhh
be still; lie down; an ambulance is on the way
nnhhhnnnhhhhhhhhh
what’s your name?
Preston
what hurts, Preston?
bloody, bathed in a horror movie spaghetti fruit salad, from the
shoulders down, some of it streaked on his face, his swimming eyes
focus on the voice before him, thinks about asking of his bike,
answers, slowly:
my shoulders; back; right leg; left arm
do you know what happened?
deer
huh?
deer: ran out in the road; I missed the first one, the second one
(it’s rarely the first deer that does the damage, it’s
the trailing deer, who drivers don’t see because they’re
watching the bounding—as their hearts bound—terrified
deer scamper to safety)
I saw; a third one leapt in front me, and I think I speared him
do you know how fast you were going?
maybe one-ten
chunks continue to slide off the stained jacket; Ohmbach stares
at him, doesn’t notice the surrounding goo, the white sticks
and brown tufts, hears the shuffle of feet as gaggle fragments sidle
closer to witness the unbelievable-
Ohmbach persuades him to lie down—away from the soup—and
he discerns the bones and hair of the deer, impelled by and wrapped
around the rider, follows the trail of broken grass back to the
road, finds in a ditch a dismembered and empty deer, the head (tongue
lolling out) and neck and shoulder nine feet away from the haunches;
he walks back to the rider
and when the breeze abates, the buzz of flies can be heard, the
aroma of death can be smelled, and the crowds, sated with a glimpse
of the just desserts and the miraculous in one setting, amble to
their cars and file, slowly, back to the highway, and Ombach sits
beside Preston in a grass field with an overgrown, mangled lizard
green wreckage and a rent deer carcass
while the clouds whisk over a ground spinning in the opposite direction. |
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