CRUSHER RUN

It's a cold night to be riding a motorcycle on the interstate, and Ezra has three hundred miles ahead of him. The temperature will dip further because the bike is pointed north. The Impala would have been his choice, with its heater, but it sits in the shop because of a computer malfunction that was causing the loss of power--yet another item of modern life that, like the marriages of his son and daughter, favors whole replacement of the module as the method of repair. And while either of his neighbors and any of his friends would have been only too glad to lend him a car, he has never been a borrower of money, tools, implements, or anything. As for the old pickup, it is sunk on its rear axle because a ton of crusher run lies in the bed, hundreds of pounds above Detroit's rating for the vehicle. Shoveling the stone off into the potholes of his long dirt lane just wasn't an option; he'd worked all day like a penned-up wild dog. He was too tired.

Which was a concern when he'd left, one hour after learning the news. All the time it took to clean up a little, call the kids on the coast, and collect his leather jacket and gloves, favorite riding boots, helmet, a change of clothes, whiskey flask. Still, there wasn't an alternative. She could die at any moment. The trooper hadn't said that, he didn't have to. Under the circumstances both knew he didn't have to. Between the worry and the cold he believes he'll stay awake. Anyway, who's ever heard of a biker falling asleep.

He'd bought the motorcycle with her encouragement, a new touring model for which he paid cash. The year was 1995.

"You've always wanted to see the country," she said, "and I know you've wanted to do it on a motorcycle. Now's the time. Anna and Little Ezra are on their own, and you've still got your health."

"Well sure, Else," he said hesitantly, "but what about you? You'd like to see the country, wouldn't you? I figured maybe we could swing ourselves a small motor home, or even a van and have it customized."

Oh, the grin that day, so big and unrevealing. He's never forgotten it. And then she disappeared from the stove where she was frying eggs, and before he could finish "Where are you going?" she was back, still grinning, only now from the inside of a brilliantly white, visorless helmet. He couldn't help but drop his head and laugh. Not loud, just laugh. She was something else, she'd always been.

And she wasn't done. She next pushed him onto one of the stools at the breakfast nook and slid another behind him for herself. She wrapped her arms around his waist, which despite middle age remained more muscle than belly.

"That time Ezra, Jr. considered getting one to save on gas, you told him they were too dangerous," he reminded her.

"I know, and that hasn't changed," she said. "But if we were to crash and die, it's not like he or Anna would be losing their children."

As cold as it is tonight on the four-lane highway now leading him through higher elevations where bowls of fog are forming in the valleys, this memory produces a tear that is distinguishable from the rest of the water in his eyes brought on by his rushing through the chilly air.

But her enthusiasm that day hadn't entirely convinced him she would enjoy traveling around the country on two wheels.

"You know we won't be staying in a motel every night," he warned as she returned to the eggs. "Most nights we'll camp. Pitch a tent if the weather calls for it. Otherwise, we'll be bedding down in sleeping bags right out in the open. Not at a campground either, except when we get too ripe for each other and need to shower."

She smiled, turned back toward him. "Do you know there are sections on the Snake River, Ezra, where, if you jump in, you'll be ten feet downstream before you can count one thousand and one?"

Snake River?

He really wished he had the words to tell her how much he loved her. So many things about her. There was never anything not to love.

The first outings were day trips. "We both need to season our butts," he had said, and off they went to circle a few of the small lakes that were on the map but which they'd never seen, to visit a museum in the city and a couple of wineries on the way, to travel to an air show and a popular mushroom festival.

She had never been a querulous partner, but following those early trips, she got across to him that staring into his back wasn't the best for taking in the scenery. He was broad-shouldered and taller than her by several inches. He quickly fixed the problem by replacing the long double seat with a single saddle for himself and a built-up, cushioned pillion for her. When next she climbed aboard, she not only could see what he was seeing in the road ahead and the distance beyond, but she also was able to talk into his ear without always shouting.

Without a watch, Ezra surmises the time is well after midnight because the cars are mostly gone and the behemoth transports have taken over the road. Up until a few minutes ago, the motorcycle was cruising at seventy, but a mile back he saw a deer near the shoulder and more are certain to appear. Plus the fog, thickening and beginning to spread like lava, swallowed the guiding taillights of an eighteen-wheeler. At the moment he is feathering the throttle, trying to keep his speed at forty, but more often letting it drop to under thirty. It's just impossible to see.

He wants to keep thinking of her, because if there are forces at work in matters of life and death, forces that can alter starts and finishes, he wants the God behind them to know how deeply in love they are and always have been, to realize a mistake might be in the making that is not in the best interest of life on this earth. But facing unsafe conditions, he must concentrate, think hard about what he is doing; otherwise, like her, he could end up in the I.C. unit of a hospital.

He throttles down further because he's starting to jerk the handlebar, fooled that the road is angled one direction when it's the opposite. The dense moisture in the air is collecting on his face, dribbling down his neck and inside the leather jacket and layered shirts. He can feel his feet growing wet as well. It makes him colder, and he shivers.

The muster of fog onto the darkened landscape finally thins in waves, and just like that, he is out of it, and his vision is magically extended. Ahead is a rural exit. He pulls off.

After filling the tank on the bike, he goes inside the Marathon and picks out a couple of candy bars for later. The attendant looks him over as he tugs out his wallet. "Coffee's free with the fill-up." Ezra shakes his head, replies, "No time."

Outside again, beside the pump, he opens one of the fiberglass saddlebags and finds the flask. He stands next to the front tire and windshield, staring up at the interstate, taking a few swigs. The whiskey courses through a body like coffee doesn't, and he shivers once more, only this is the welcome kind. He returns the flask to the bag, swaddling it with his underwear, and then it's back aboard the bike.

The first of the longer trips in both time-on-the-road and mileage took them to the coastal beaches of the Florida panhandle--a week with the overly warm Gulf water, six days for down and back. Then, before that summer was officially over, they returned to the beach, only this time in South Carolina where they also spent a day with their daughter, who seemed unsure what to make of her aging parents riding a motorcycle. The next year, there was no actual destination. Instead, they avoided the interstates and traveled through the river towns along the Mississippi, and in several summers to follow they took similar journeys, including ones along the Grand Army of the Republic Highway and old Route 40 with its cracked macadam. Mostly they toured and camped alone, but on occasion they met other bikers and traveled with them for hundreds of miles, as they'd done with Jasper and Lucy who were their age and with whom they became friends. Then two years ago, he announced to her his biggest surprise, and didn't she announce her own right back.

"Want to know where I think we should go this summer? Come July, when it's as close to a guarantee as you can get there won't be snow, I think we should head west to the Rockies and the Snake River." And for a joke, he pointed his eyes at the floor, then moved them rapidly to the right, as though she had just leaped into the river and was being swept away by the current.

"Ezra," she said. "I don't want to ride with you anymore."

The candy bars are gone, the flask empty, he's wet and freezing and wondering why hypothermia hasn't set in. His hands feel like cold steel. For a while he was flexing them, but when that failed to boost the circulation, he began reaching down and cupping them around the transverse cylinder heads, holding on for a minute or more, first one, then the other, absorbing heat from the engine. But this, too, no longer works.

The sky remains dark, but morning is approaching. There's an increase in vehicles, and the big trucks are rushing so they can be off-loaded first, or at least without the normal delays, by the morning shifts. Glancing at the odometer, he estimates another hour of riding.

Her expression, he remembers, fooled him. He'd read fear in her face and thought maybe their close call on the previous trip was the reason. They'd topped a rise at a speed too fast for the unexpected sharp bend on the other side, and he instinctively leaned as much as his mind would allow, while pushing hard on one grip and pulling up on the other. And just as they were coming out of the curve with not an inch of pavement to spare, another surprise. Six, seven, maybe more--he never did go back to count how many--tractor tires were rolling off the end of a flatbed truck and bouncing directly at them like bandits on a tear. There was nothing to do but brace and take the hits. And hit they did, three of them, thick knobby donuts of black rubber that rocked and jolted them all over. The bike wanted to go down, but with all his farm work strength he managed to keep it upright. When the ordeal was over, they were staring into a deep open embankment.

"Why not?" he asked her. "Else, is something wrong?"

"Ezra, I want to ride alongside, behind, or ahead of you. I don't want to sit on the back anymore."

It took him more than a moment to realize she was asking for a motorcycle of her own to operate. Then, surprising her further, and maybe himself too, he replied, "You're on the short side. We'll have to look around to find one with a seat set low enough so your feet can touch the ground."

And that was pretty much that! Two months later, they were touring the Rocky Mountains on separate machines and scaring the daylights out of themselves with a dip in one of the swiftest stretches of the Snake River.

Throughout the long night the air has been motionless, stirred only by the hurtling vehicles. Now it is beginning to stir of its own. Short gusts coming out of the west sporadically strike Ezra and attempt to shove the motorcycle and him off the roadway. He prays rain isn't in the offing.

Of course it's much too late to wish she hadn't gone, but he can't stop himself from wondering. Perhaps he should have been less agreeable. What if he would have said, "I wish you wouldn't, Else"? Might she have decided to stay home? It was four hundred miles to Lucy's, not a trivial jaunt for someone motorcycling alone her first time. Still, it was a sonovabitch who ran a red light. And that happened every day all across the country at thousands of intersections.

Afraid of a weather change for the worse, he now cracks the throttle. The bike rapidly eats up the concrete between itself and a pair of taillights; a red, white, and blue garbage truck, and the motorcycle's by in an instant. He doesn't let off, racing around a dawdling empty church bus and a compact car with a bent frame, then a dump truck and a van, and another dump truck. Next up, a tractor-trailer. Only it is barreling, and considerable time passes before the motorcycle creeps alongside the double rear wheels. The diesel's powerful roar from the belly is the first embrace to reach Ezra, joined by a moving cone of unexpected heat. He gives in freely to the surprise as it warms the body's insides, dries its flesh, thins the blood that's turned to syrup, invigorates his every cell like the first beautiful day after a long winter. He rides in this wonderful pocket for he doesn't know how long, and he can see the driver of the truck looking in his mirror again and again, and he knows what the man is thinking, but it doesn't matter, not to Ezra whose biggest concern is to safely reach his injured wife; and a body that isn't frozen, isn't tensed, will help insure he does. He'll linger in the warmth for as long as possible.

Yet, no sooner is the thought completed, a violent blast of air from the left jerks the motorcycle to within inches of the truck, and an all-out ripping crosswind arises. The warmth comforting Ezra is gone in an instant, torn away, shifted to the other side.

For a time he maintains his speed, hoping the heat will return. But it does not. The wind persists like the dedicated courier of change it often is.

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