Easing the bike onto the highway’s shoulder wasn’t dramatic, luckily. It was late, and nothing was around but farmland with shadowy lumps at their distant centers. A truck full of dirt shot past me, rocking me over with the back-draft. I shouldered off my backpack and set it on the gravely ground, then pulled a small LED flashlight from its clip.
The flashlight showed some of the frame had fractured. There had been no potholes or anything, just the vibration of the engine too large for the frame, an engine that now only had a single bolt to keep it from flying off completely. The guy who had sold Frank to me was waiting for me to arrive, somewhere in the direction I was headed. He had invited me to join him and his friends at a jungle eco-lodge. I had no idea how I would make it there now.
I only had myself to blame, really. He had told me he crashed Frank head-on into a car, and that should have been a deal-breaker. In fairness to myself, I didn’t believe most of what he said. He told stories of scaring off Vietnamese mobsters, being a judo champion, breaking his jaw and then wiring it back together with dental floss before teaching a kindergarten class. The very first thing he had said to me wasn’t hello, it was an anecdote about having sex in a Burger King with a stranger he had met in the line minutes before. That he had smashed Frank into a car and front-flipped over it had just made him sound like more of a ridiculous liar. But these stress fractures that came undone in Frank’s frame told the truth.
Another construction truck blew by, making the air lousy with dirt and noise and movement. I took my helmet off and spit grit onto the side of the road.
He was a Jerk With a Capital J. Maybe that was why I had wanted his bike. He demonstrated how loud it was outside of a packed restaurant. He said his neighbors slashed the tires once when he roared home late, that was how you knew it had style. He tried to do a wheelie on it right there and failed, but promised he could do them. I felt like I was watching him slap around a chained dog, a wild possession, a beast he had to humiliate because it would always be nobler than him. I couldn’t let it go on. I should have shunned him after that, but he provided the promise of new friends and adventure. What was going to happen when I saw him? Were his friends just like him? Would I even make it there? Did I almost just die? Where the hell am I going to sleep tonight?