Red bicycle

Nights like these when the cold season wanes foretelling the longer days of summer he dreams again of his sister’s red bicycle.

The dream recurs inside a seasonal pulse. Always, he sees his mother and him at the top of the grand staircase of their old ancestral home in the country. They, pounding at it with a carpenter’s hammer.

They are not doing a good job. The hammer is too small for the hard metal of the pedal bent now so out of shape it will not turn a full cycle. In his mind he knows they could succeed if they could only take the bike pedal apart. Then they could hit it with the hammer much more effectively. But they did not have the right tools for that. At that time, he had not yet ever taken apart a bicycle pedal. He knew he could do it. But it is late afternoon. His father will soon be home. He will get the belt. But that is not why he is crying.

He is crying out of a sense of helplessness. This helplessness coming from a sure knowledge he knew what needed to be done.

And yet, he could not do it for the lack of the right tools. Instead, they pound away at the pedal navigating the hammer through the frame of the whole bicycle at a most unwieldy angle. With every blow, they succeed only in scratching the paintwork, making the bicycle look uglier. Pound as they would, the bent pedal would not straighten out.

Every strike of his hammer came with the full measure of regret. It was early afternoon. He must have been only five. He should have been asleep when his next door neighbor, a child only a few years older than he called him through the window.

“Let’s drive around town with your sister’s bicycle.” the neighbor yelled.

He knew this neighbor to be quite capable of mischief, especially mischief involving a slingshot. Once he stopped a passenger bus by shooting a small rock into its windshield almost breaking it. This neighbor had a thing about buses. He also had a thing about birds and lizards, and almost anything that flew or crawled over earth. Anything that moved was for him exciting target to practice his aim. But especially the bus. And before the incident of the broken bike he always wondered why.

But as fate would have it, he himself had a yen for mischief. And when the plan to steal his sister’s bike was hatched, it did not take much to convince him. After all, what could possibly go wrong? And so it came to pass how they spent that afternoon riding all around town, his friend doing all the driving while he perched over the rear wheels back-riding, as they always called it.

And he still remembers now what a good time they had. The sky was a deep blue blanketing a perfect summer day. They rode near the beach at the town plaza, rode over the pathways around the old church, followed parallel streets. Barking dogs chased after them as they laughed. All these, while the whole town slept in its regular afternoon siesta.

The world seemed to him deserted of all life. He did not worry at all when they sped into the intersection that would return them to the national highway on their way home. At exactly that fateful moment, a bus appeared seemingly out of nowhere rushing at them from the right. Had they stopped right then, they would be dead by now. Instead, his friend cranked at the pedal with all his might. The bus narrowly missed them. But they went straight into the canal which lined the road.

He does not remember exactly how he survived. But by the time he realized he was still alive his friend was gone. He was always as good a runner as he was mischievous. He had to face alone the ire of a whole busload of people. But that was not quite as bad as the scolding from his mother. She handed him a hammer saying, “Now, fix it.”

As he grew older in time, he will remember how this might have been the pivotal moment of his life. How in time, he would become a master of taking machines apart and forming steel with a hammer. How even to this day he still has a passionate affinity for tools. Especially those tools that are essential to bending metal. He did not realize it then, but in his later life and after his mother passed away, he would recall this afternoon as his most vivid memory of his mother. The two of them pounding away at metal they could not for the life of them move.