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Tough Guys |
by Fan Li
Forty miles outside Rapid City, South Dakota, I bowed to the road. I dug my feet into the pedals and pushed my legs down left, right, left, right, shifting my shoulders like a boxer in the ring. The highway rose alongside. A car flew by. Then I heard the metal rim of my back wheel grinding against the asphalt through a flap of rubber.
Fuck.
I called ahead to Ken. He stopped, propped up his kickstand and I wheeled my bike over.
Flat tire.
He squat down to examine it.
Patch kit?
None left.
Spare tube?
That was the spare.
He ballooned his bearded face and let out a sigh.
I took out our map, plastic and rainproof, and estimated where we were.
Might be easier just to go back to Sturgis.
Ken stood back up, gave his legs a stretch. No, let's push forward. Three miles till the next town.
I hadn't seen any mileage sign but I didn't say anything. The cloud overhead was gathering weight and swooping down over the tarmac.
Let's get on then.
***
Ken married my mother when I was ten, then they divorced four years ago.
Don't worry, kid, Ken put a hand on my shoulder, you're going to be all right.
Whatever, I said. But he didn't seem to hear me.
They hadn't been in love for a long time but they stayed together until I was off to college. As grateful as I should have been, I was an angry teenager who acted out all the stereotypes of my age. I moved away from Pittsburgh, got a job washing dishes near Arizona State U and, at the sight of my first paycheck, decided that I had no need of a broken family henceforth. I called my mother less and less, and stopped talking to Ken altogether. It's difficult now to look back and explain why, but at the time it felt like the only way.
***
Occasionally a car or two zoomed past us, no one stopped to help. We traveled side by side without talking. I glanced at Ken. He looked older but only because of the grey hair. The skin on his face was still taut; only a few wrinkles betrayed his age. At sixty-two, he was at most five pounds over his boxing weight.
I look old to you? He asked.
I shook my head.
Well, I am. He turned to me.
I tried to imagine how it would feel to look at a twenty-year-old when I'm in my sixties, but for some reason I couldn't. That made me feel even younger.
I still bench two hundred, Ken said. You still lift?
I didn't but I nodded.
How much?
One-eighty, I replied, regretting it immediately. One-eighty on a good day.
Hmm.
I still work the bag, too.
Hmm.
I'm quitting school.
Ken looked back onto the road.
He knew the last one wasn't a lie.
***
In the first couple of years, after we had gotten past a pretty rough start, Ken and I began to go on short bike trips around town. Male bonding, my mom called it. But all we did was pedal nonstop for two or three hours then take a break, have a sandwich, lie on the grass for a while, then cycle back. When we had exhausted all the nearby places, we planned to one day bike across the country. It was part of the bucket list, you know, things you want to do before you kick it. But we never got around to it, and I was starting to fear that we never would.
So I called.
I was dropping out of school. I had nowhere to go. My mom wouldn't talk to me on account of my life decisions as well as, I suspect, what I had said to her when she was going through her divorce.
At the time, September 11 had just happened. I figured I'd blow my last couple of hundred dollars on an epic journey to raise some money for the Red Cross. There was the same tinge of excitement in my stomach as when I had left home, but I knew I needed a partner this time. Naturally, I thought of Ken. I thought maybe I could undo some of the damage I did when I had stopped talking to him. It was a long shot and I didn't expect much.
Please, I breathed into the receiver.
He had remarried, had found a comfortable job as an instructor in a gym, and his two stepdaughters visited every weekend.
All I had was please. It was the only word I could think of besides sorry, and I had already said that.
***
When the rain finally came, it drowned out my thoughts in little explosions on the dry dusty blacktop. The highway, being washed, turned a shade darker. The humidity so thick you could feel it under your fingernails.
I took off my shirt and tied it in a knot on the handlebars of my bike. Ken rubbed his head, brushing his palm against his short Army haircut though he was never a soldier.
So what are you going to do? He asked.
I don't know, I answered, not wanting to tell him that I had spoken to a Navy recruiter a day before we embarked. It seemed a better plan than having no plans.
List your options.
I shrugged once. Don't have any.
Sure you do, he insisted.
I shrugged again.
A silver Toyota sped past us, its wheels hidden in a mist of tiny splashes. From the corner of my eye I caught the driver turning her head to stare at us. She must've thought we were crazy.
You're a bright kid and you're a fighter, Ken said. You can be anything you want.
I'm not a kid anymore, I told him.
He looked away. He thought I was putting him in his place and that place was not as my father, but that wasn't what I meant.
I don't know what I want, I tried to explain. And no, I can't be anything I wish because I don't have the skills and nobody would give me a chance. I tried to make him understand the reality in front of me. That the world today measures a man by pieces of paper. That everywhere I looked people wanted work experience and not the kind I had. I wanted him to see the rut that I was stuck in.
But he didn't. He shook his head, disappointed.
You can do better.
How? I felt something boil over inside me. You couldn't find a job either.
I never went to college, he said. You've got things I never had! You ought to do better than me.
How? I asked. Show me! How? But he didn't answer.
We passed a side road with power lines running along it. The farms on either side were harvested and dry stalks stood wet in the field. As I looked up I noticed a pair of shoes hanging from the wires several feet up. I wondered how long they had been there and if anyone will return them to the ground one day.
***
Half a mile up, just beyond the bend, the woman we were about to drag out from underneath her car has already stopped breathing.
When we got to her she was long gone though we didn't know it.
Ken ran to the upside down Toyota in the ditch as his bike fell onto its side. I followed.
We looked at the car and didn't know what to do except that she needed to come out of that wreck and she needed to start breathing. So I crawled in and cut her seatbelt while Ken pulled her out with his hands under her arms. The inside of the car smelt like blood and urine. It took us ten minutes to get her out. Had she sustained a spinal injury, we would've ruined her. Still, we tried our best. When Ken began to do CPR on her, she looked like a life-size doll on the gravel beside the highway. Only her streaked blond hair was unkempt and there was a gash on her pale forehead. I could see where the flesh split along her skull.
Grab my bike! Ken yelled. Go to the nearest house and get help.
I don't know what happened then, but I froze. I just stood there, blinking the rain out of my eyes.
Hey, he rushed over and put a hand on my shoulder. It's all right, kid. But I need you to get some help, okay?
I ran back to where we left our bikes, unhooked both panniers from Ken's and tossed them on the ground.
Be careful! He said, puffing away as he pumped the woman's chest.
I stood up on the pedals and sprinted down the road.
The sky was breathing down on me, bolls of black clouds like the dark face of some angry god.
C'mon, I said to myself. Left, right, left, right. At each word I kicked back against a pedal and the bike lunged forward beneath my stride. Between my breaths I could hear my heart beat in sync with my feet.
It was half a mile to the house we had passed, where the shoes hung from the power line, then a mile and half to the next town because no one was home and the doors were locked. I felt I had failed Ken. I screamed as I ripped down the wet tarmac on his bicycle. I clutched the handlebars until my knuckles stiffened and hurt. I was becoming delirious. I nearly thought Ken was the one lying on the gravel and some woman was pumping his chest and blowing air into his lungs, waiting for me to bring back a miracle.
It was forty minutes until the ambulance had finally reached him. He was still working on the woman when they arrived. Thirty chest compressions for every two breaths. A paramedic wearing surgical gloves knelt down on the other side of the woman and checked her pulse while Ken continued to labor.
How long has she been in this state, sir?
Since we found her.
Sir, you can stop now, we'll take it from here.
He touched Ken on the shoulder.
Sir?
Ken tried to stand up and keeled over onto his side. His knees were a bloody mess. Dirt and puss oozed from the wound and I could see pebbles of gravel embedded in his flesh.
Two other paramedics appeared with a stretcher. They rolled Ken onto it and lifted him away. I watched as little streams of water dripped from my hair down to my chin, a wet streak on either side of my nose. The paramedic ran a pair of scissors up the front of the woman's shirt and opened a yellow plastic case beside him. I took one last look at her and went over to the ambulance.
Families only, the driver said.
He's my son, Ken groaned from inside. He's my son.
***
My dad died on September 11. I don't think Ken or my mom knew. He wasn't in the Twin Towers, so he wasn't mourned by the nation. Clutching his chest in his little apartment, he might have heard the news and known that the ambulance would not arrive in time.
I received the call from New York during a make-up exam for a course I had failed the year before. My cell phone rang and I was escorted out of the room. The woman on the phone told me that I had inherited five thousand dollars. After attorney fees and various taxes, I'll be receiving three thousand two hundred and some loose change.
When I tried to reenter the exam room, the proctor wouldn't let me. I glowered at him and he cocked his chin up. I told him as calmly as I could that it was a very important call. He didn't budge. I focused my eyes on him and tried to set him aflame with my intensity like sunbeam through a magnifying glass. He stared back. I suppose I could've explained the details but I felt indignant. I didn't want to announce my father's death to a stranger just so I can get back into some lousy exam. I was done negotiating. I took a step towards the door and he cut me off with one hand on my chest. Out of instinct I pushed him back, and when he stepped forward again I laid him down with a right cross. You're going to be fucking expelled, he shouted down the hall as I ran.
Ken didn't say anything when I finished telling him that. He lay there on the hospital bed and kept his eyes on the ceiling.
He was a real tough guy, your father.
I leaned forward, elbows on knees.
But he loved you and you ought to know that.
He left, I heard myself say. I barely knew him.
Ken sighed, not to me but to himself. You're right, the corners of his mouth drooped, he left. Don't take this the wrong way, but sometimes your mother is hard to live with.
I can see that.
He glanced at me, then said, it wasn't all her fault though. I could never make things work. I could never bring in any money. It was hard living with me, too.
I stood up and walked over to the window so I had my back to him. I wiped my face with the palm of my hand.
You did all right, Ken.
No, I did shit.
At least you were there.
The pillowcase rustled as he turned his head.
I'm the one who left, I told him. You did good, you were there.
A nurse came in to do a final check up before discharging Ken.
***
Next morning at the motel, I unpacked and repacked. I dumped out the contents in all four panniers onto my bed. My eyes separated the necessities from the rest as if I had been doing this all my life.
Ken sat in his wheel chair looking at the floor, watching a bug crawl towards his feet.
I'll be OK, I said.
He didn't reply.
I laid the map open on the table. We were only halfway. I considered the options, then considered them again. There were only two.
You gonna get home all right? I asked.
Don't worry about me.
There was nothing left to be done. I sat down on the edge of my bed. We faced each other, staring at the opposite corners of the room.
I guess this is it, he said.
I nodded.
Maybe we'll finish it another summer. I tried to be cheerful.
He shook his head. I'm getting too old for this.
That's not true, I said. But it was.
We looked at each other. I leaned down and put both of my arms around him, over his shoulders like a mother hugging her child. Then I walked out of the room, my panniers containing half of the things from his, and his mine.
Fan Li was born in China, raised in Vancouver and now lives in Toronto. He likes to travel. If you take the first letters of all the cities he has been to and put them in chronological order, they spell gibberish. Don't waste your time.
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