Boys Life

It’s a reward for a good deed.”
    Dad continued his circling. He stopped and prodded his shoe at the front tire. “This must’ve cost her an awful lot of money. It’s a fine bike, that’s for sure.”
    “Can I keep it, Dad?” I asked.
    He stood there, his hands on his hips. He chewed on his bottom lip for a moment, and then he looked at Mom. “It’s not charity?”
    “No.”
    Dad’s gaze found me. “Yeah,” he said, and no word was ever more welcome. “It’s yours.”
    “Thanks! Thanks a million times!”
    “So now that you’ve got a new bike, what’re you gonna name it?” Dad asked.
    I hadn’t thought about this yet. I shook my head, still trying to get used to the way it held my body forward like a spear.
    “Might as well take it out for a spin, don’t you think?” He slid an arm around Mom’s waist, and he grinned at me.
    “Yes sir,” I said, but I got off to chop the kickstand up and guide it down the porch steps. It seemed an indignity to jar the bike before we’d gotten to know each other. Either that, or I feared waking it up just yet. I sat on the seat again, my feet on the ground.
    “Go ahead,” Dad told me. “Just don’t burn up the street.”
    I nodded, but I didn’t move. I swear I thought I felt the bike tremble, as if with anticipation. Maybe it was just me.
    “Crank ’er up,” Dad said.
    This was the moment of truth. I took a breath, put one foot on a pedal, and pushed off with the other. Then both feet were on the pedals, and I aimed the bike toward the street. The wheels turned with hardly any noise, just a quiet tick… tick… tick like a bomb about to go off.
    “Have fun!” my mother called as she opened the porch door.
    I looked back and took a hand off the handlebars to wave, and the bike suddenly lurched out of my control and zigzagged wildly. I almost went down in my first crash, but I grasped hold again and the bike straightened out. The pedals were smooth as ice cream, the wheels spinning faster across the hot pavement. This was a bike, I realized, that could get away from you like a rocket. I tore away along the street, the wind hissing through my newly cut hair, and to tell the truth, I felt as if I was hanging on for dear life. I was used to an old, sluggish chain and sprocket that needed a lot of leg muscle, but this bike demanded a lighter touch. When I put on the brakes the first time, I almost flew off the seat. I spun it around in a wide circle and gave it more speed again, and I got going so fast so quickly, the back of my neck started sweating. I felt one pedal-push away from leaving the ground, but the front wheel responded to my grip on the handlebars seemingly even as I thought what direction I wanted to turn. Like a rocket, the bike sped me through the tree-shaded streets of my hometown, and as we carved the wind together I decided that would be its name.
    “Rocket,” I said, the word whirling away behind me in the slipstream. “That sound all right to you?”
    It didn’t throw me off. It didn’t veer for the nearest tree. I took that as a yes.
    I started getting bolder. I sideslipped and figure-eighted and curb-jumped, and Rocket obeyed me without hesitation. I leaned over those handlebars and pumped the pedals with all my strength and Rocket shot along Shantuck Street, the pools of shadow and sunlight opening up before me. I zipped up onto the sidewalk, where the tires barely registered the passing cracks. The air was hot in my lungs and cool on my face, and the houses and trees were whipping past in a sublime blur. At this instant I felt at one with Rocket, as if we were of the same skin and grease, and when I grinned, a bug flew into my teeth. I didn’t care; I swallowed it because I was invincible.
    And such ideas inevitably lead to what next occurred.
    I hit a patch of broken sidewalk without slowing down or trying to miss it, and I felt Rocket shudder from fender to fender. A noise like a grunt ran through the frame. The jolt knocked one of my hands loose from the handlebars, and Rocket’s front tire hit an edge of concrete and the bike bucked up and twisted like an angry stallion. My feet left the pedals and my butt left the seat, and as I went off into the air I thought of something Mom had said: The Lady wants you to ride easy on it until it gets used to you.
    I didn’t have much time to ponder it. In the next second I crashed into a hedge in somebody’s yard and my breath left me in a whoosh and the green leaves took