The Lone Rider

The Lone Rider
A Winter's Tale

That day started off like any other day. I woke to the ringing of the
alarm, not adequately rested, rubbing sleep off my eyes. My wife didn't
even stir on her side of the bed. I climbed out of the warm cocoon that
promised me so much sweet sleep if I would only crawl back into it and
shut my eyes, and made my way into the cold tiled kitchen to make a cup
of coffee. Half an hour later, I shut the front door behind me.

I sat in my patrol car munching a sad doughnut and sipping insipid
coffee from a Styrofoam cup. I was wearing two sweaters and my coat
over my uniform, and wished I hadn't forgotten the gloves. The heater
in the car never really worked, even when it had been new, and somehow
I'd never gotten around to getting it fixed. Maybe it was the labyrinth
of bureaucracy that put me off... Maybe I was meant to freeze every
single day that I held this job.

Martin, my partner, was sitting next to me, chewing thoughtfully on a
toothpick. He said, glancing at me, 'The newspapers say today is the
coldest day of the coldest year in a hundred years.'

'It sure doesn't feel any different from any of the other days this
month,' I said.

He took his toothpick out of his mouth and considered it carefully as
he said, 'True. True. When you get really cold, colder than you can
possibly imagine, so cold that you can't feel your toes anymore in
spite of wearing thick woollen socks, and your earlobes actually stop
stinging from the wind and just stay there numbly on the sides of your
skull, it doesn't make a difference if the temperature drops a few more
points. You can't feel the difference.'

I usually didn't care much for it when he spoke like this, and Martin
spoke like this more times than I care to remember. But that day, he
seemed to be echoing my own thoughts, so I simply nodded. He and I had
been partners the last three years, and got along fine except at the
end of really long shifts.

The radio crackled for an instant and went silent again. There was
nothing to patrol. The long road was dead, beaten white and empty.
Nobody ventured out this day when the air was mist and every breath was
a fog and the sky simpered grey. Nobody ventured out in their little
cars with brave little heaters puffing warmth, because the swirling
cold rapped at the window and sucked all the warmth out in a second,
before you could even think about taking your gloves off or turning on
the radio.

A thin draft whistled mournfully through the crack in the window on my
side. No matter how hard I cranked the lever, the window wouldn't go
completely up. It blew over my tepid coffee and got inside our
collars.

'What's the silliest thing you've ever done in your entire life Al?'
Martin asked some mighty silly questions sometimes.

'Whatchu wanna know that for?' I asked gruffly. I wasn't in the mood
for chatter.

'Come on, just to pass the time. Ok, I'll tell you what's the silliest
thing I've ever done,' he paused, and looked thoughtfully over the icy
long road. He looked at it for such a long time that I thought he'd
forgotten that he was about to speak and was falling asleep.

He cleared his throat. 'It was a day just like this. I was young, and
in love. I had met Catherine a couple of times and had decided I was in
love with her. I asked her out on a date, and dropped her home without
even a kiss. The next day, I had gone to visit my parents in Syracuse.
I was eating dinner with them, roast potatoes and salmon I remember,
and father was telling me all about this new weed that was choking all
his geraniums, when I suddenly sat up, dropped my fork and said, ''Mom,
dad, I have to go. Something urgent I forgot all about.''

'Before they could get any questions out, I was accelerating out their
driveway. I drove all those miles in that November night to Buffalo and
knocked on Catherine's door. She opened the door and I drew her out and
kissed her. She said, ''Aw how cold you are," and glanced at my car.
Then turned to me shocked and said, ''Did you drive all the way from
Syracuse with your windows down?'' ''I didn't notice,'' I said, and
kissed her again, and we were married in a week.'

'I thought you were never married,' I said. Martin was looking a bit
peaky, eyes watery and cheeks puffy, as if he was coming down with a
fever. He usually never spoke about his personal life; he had never
mentioned his marriage before.

'It lasted a year, the marriage. She said I was too smug in a shitty
copper's job and didn't have enough ambition in life. She married a
stockbroker and moved to New York.' He sniffed, and drew out a blue
handkerchief from his shirt pocket. 'Damn the sniffles.'

'I think you're coming down with the flu.'

'It's the only thing that loves me more than any wife ever would, this
flu,' he said and laughed, mirthlessly.

I reached for a plastic bag from the dashboard, shoved the doughnut
paper bag and coffee cup inside it. Then I tied a knot with the handles
and threw it on the back seat, to be dumped in the trash can
later.

Martin had been watching me with the fascination of an understudy
observing a surgeon perform a delicate operation. He said, 'What's the
point? Might as well throw it out the window.'

'Dunno,' I said. 'It's just a habit that's all, not because I care
about the planet or anything.'

'The planet will survive whether or not we care about it,' he said. His
cheeks had high spots of pink, and eyes seemed brighter. 'Imagine the
nerve we have to think that we are capable of destroying it. The earth
is 4.6 billion years old, and the first form of life, bacteria appeared
almost 3.6 billion years ago. Dinosaurs lived and ruled for 200 million
years, and man, puny man just appeared a mere three million years ago.
And he has the nerve to think he's capable of destroying this old
powerful earth. Just wait and watch, we're going to be brushed off the
face of the planet with one giant swat; like mosquitoes.' To emphasise
the point, he swatted an imaginary mosquito on his arm.

I looked at the road again. It had started snowing. Clumps of white
started settling on the black road, and on the brown verges and thick
stumps scattered along.

A man on a motorbike zipped by.

'Jesus, did you see that?' I revved the engine and shot out after him,
all in a second.

Martin craned forward and frowned. 'See what? I didn't see anything.
What are you chasing after?'

I shot a look at him before I turned back to the road again. 'Come on
Martin. Didn't you see the motorbike zip past? He must have been doing
at least a 100.' I pressed the accelerator to the floor. 'There he is.'
The motorbike came into view through our foggy windshield. It hadn't
been very foggy a minute ago, but now the murky air was swirling
thickly, the bike was spouting dense smoke, and I couldn't see the
wheel spinning on the road. It seemed as though the bike was floating
away in a cloud.

'Yes, now I see him.' Martin craned forward again, I took a swift
sideways look at him. His mouth was slightly open, and his eyes were
wide, bulging a little. He seemed entranced. 'Looks like a ghost. Where
did all this fog come from all of a sudden?'

The bike seemed to be a racing bike. There was no way I could catch up
to him. Our car's maximum was probably the cruising speed of that bike.
I ought to have radioed ahead, and asked for them to be alert, and try
and stop the bike, but something in me wanted to lash out at the black
motorcycle. There was something in the fog and mist and inside of me
that said, 'Keep at it. Stick to him like a shadow. It's you and him in
this race, not anyone else on the dead snake road. Not even Martin.'
Something prickled up my spine, something whispery weaved through my
hair.

The fog cleared abruptly, and the dead snake road came into view, and I
could see the biker's wheels spinning. He was about ten metres ahead,
and he was neither speeding up nor slowing down.

When I was ten, my best friend Tommy H had told me that he was writing
a story about roads. He had always been a bit strange, this Tommy, and
I was the only one of the kids who spoke to him. Tommy said that in his
story, men took long black snakes, stretched them out, and steam rolled
them again and again till they were flat enough. Flat enough to be
roads. Tommy moved away with his parents a year later, but his story
has stayed with me, deep inside my head, and it made me a bit light
headed to remember it so suddenly now.

'Why isn't he accelerating to get away?' said Martin. 'Look at that
bike, that's definitely a racing bike; and he could outstrip us by a
mile in a couple of minutes if he wanted. Why isn't he moving his
ass?'

The car was edging closer. We were now five feet away. I could make out
the colour of the hubcaps on the wheels. Silver. The figure on the bike
was swathed in black leather, and a silver helmet. He didn't turn and
look at us even once, for that is what I would have done, if someone
was flashing lights and sirens behind me.

'Wonder where he is coming from,' said Martin.

Even though it was an unusually reflective question in such a tense
atmosphere, I answered. 'Not from far away I suppose, or he would have
been stopped long ago.'

Martin said, after a couple of long seconds, while we were still five
feet away, and not getting any closer, 'Maybe he can't hear us. Maybe
he has some loved one waiting for him, maybe his wife is having their
baby right now, and he has to rush to meet her, and his ears are full
of the baby's cries that he's going to hear soon. Or maybe his wife is
not giving birth, maybe she is dying. Maybe he has just been informed
that his wife is lying on her death bed, and his eyes are rolling out
tears even as his bike is speeding, and he really can't see or hear us
cops shouting at him to stop, because all he can see is her
face.'

I nodded in mute sympathy. Imagining a biker with a loving wife on her
deathbed was probably the last thing that a cop did, but it seemed
natural and inevitable to me, the way Martin put it.

I felt a great weight upon my chest, as I pushed the car to a handspan
behind him. The car seemed to have moved almost through the force of my
sheer will, so close that I could see the letters R and S painted white
on the back of his jacket. He was moving dead straight, and I was
almost touching him, but at that speed even if I grazed him, he'd fly
into the night and hurt himself badly.

As I looked at his moving form, perplexed, both of us locked in a
horrible sort of trance, vehicles racing along at top speed, mine being
pulled like a magnet behind his, him being pulled inexorably toward god
knew what, it happened. His bike spluttered, spun, and just dropped on
the road, his leg underneath. There was no sound, either from him, or
the bike. He didn't move. I almost swerved off the road and crashed
into the verge in shock, but recovered composure at the nth second, and
stopped the car. Pausing just a moment to mumble a swift thanks
upwards, I ran with Martin to where the biker lay.

As I knelt down to feel the pulse of his still form, the fog swirled
around again, viscous and heavy. His gloved hands were still curled
around the handlebars, but his body had lifted off in the same sitting
position, and fallen sideways. Now the bike and he lay, connected at
the hands, like a trapeze artist holding another midair, for a
breathtaking swing.

There was no blood anywhere, and he appeared to be uninjured. Martin
put his hands on the helmet strap. I said, 'Whoa, Martin, you know you
aren't supposed to do that. Wait for the medics.'

'I have to see his face,' mumbled Martin, and before I could stop him,
pulled the helmet off with one jerk. As if he couldn't help himself.
And I hadn't really tried to stop him either. I wanted to see his face
as well.

I aimed a bright beam of flashlight into his face. His eyes were open,
the pupils didn't contract in the sudden light. They were frozen stiff,
as was every other inch of his body.