(eight) The Assembler’s Special

(eight) The Assembler’s Special

Craig had come home on Sunday afternoon and picked up Jake in his Duster. Jake assumed that this meant he was going to be spending the next hour vacuuming out his brother’s car at the local coin-op Car Wash while Craig Armor-Alled the wheels. For his labor, Craig would buy his little brother a large glass bottle of Coke, instead of the piddly cans that his mother and father would purchase. His mother would always admonish Jake with “That’s just too much pop for one boy. You’ll wet the bed”. Jake knew that the real reason behind the purchase was that pop in a can was less money. That icy-cold-slush-in-the-neck-of-the-bottle Coke and a crisp dollar bill were Jake’s payment for his hard work. He earned it. Jake normally thought that the deal was a good one, but with the recent demise of his transportation, his poor mangled two-wheeler, he was inconsolable.

Craig had instead taken Jake on a scouting trip. Their objective was a boy’s twenty-inch bike frame in good condition and a couple of rims. The following day, Monday, was trash collection day and Craig was determined to find his little brother a replacement ride.

They had tumbled out of the car a few times to scrounge through some discarded bike parts and had come away with two slightly worn knobby tires, a remarkably straight front wheel and a rear wheel dusted with a film of surface rust.

“Some steel wool’ll take that rust right off”, Craig said as he slid back behind the wheel of the big Hemi. “Now, we gotta find a frame”.

They looked until dusk had started to settle. They were at the edge of the section of Clayton that had their trash day on Monday. One street over, the trash day was Tuesday. Jake was taken with the purposefulness of the zoning for trash pickup. What to some may have seemed arbitrary and meaningless, to Jake was extremely efficient. The governing body had deemed this day as the day the people’s trash would be collected. It was a weekly holiday in the life of a poor kid. It was a routine that never changed and it was one of the only constants in his chaotic life. It was sometimes, when he was being shunned by his fair weather friends, his only entertainment.

Jake would imagine himself as the kind of boy that would throw out a reasonably fixable air hockey game or a perfectly good Twister game board. His family’s economic position had forced the children of the household not only to hold on to everything they got but to engage their respective imaginations to pass the time when they had to go without.

Kay dove into crossword puzzles, which she thought would improve her vocabulary. Occasionally, during a mad cleaning fit brought on by the depression of living in a dismally lit and cluttered house, Jake and his sister Denise would find dozens of half-done crosswords under the tattered couch. While Denise was angered at the fact that her older sister had created a fire hazard, Jake was saddened at the extent that the crosswords were done. Simple phrases and trick clues popped out in Jake’s mind as he mentally tried to finish the puzzle. He tried to make out the words through the different layers of corrective overwrites and pencil erasures that flecked the black and white checkerboard with hairy little holes. Jake was saddened at his sister’s attempt to improve herself so much that this made him laugh a halting, empathetic chuckle.

Denise too had attempted to have some impromptu fun once, but it was an abysmal failure. She had gotten it into her head to create her own version of a Slip and Slide. This was a water toy that was basically a long sheet of rubber that connected by special hose to a household waterspout. The water would keep the surface slick and provide hot kids with endless hours cool wet, slippery, sliding fun. Denise’s version was two Twister game boards held together with duct tape and a length of sun-baked garden hose.

For a while it was just like the real thing. The surface of the Twister boards was slick and it did cool the kids off on an unusually hot June Saturday afternoon. Evidently the noise from the neighborhood kids yelling in delight, had roused Jake’s mother from her restful mid-day, depression-induced slumber. She screamed at Denise to turn off the water.

“You want to pay the water bill young lady?”

“No”, Denise yelled back.

“Turn the water off this minute and get rid of that thing before you break your leg”.

Denise mouthed this phrase mockingly as she turned the water off. She came back to the head of the makeshift water slide.

“We better do what Mom says”, Jake whispered.

“One more run”, Denise said.

The haunting echo of this phrase stuck in Jake’s head like a tape loop. For on Denise’s final run, she miscalculated the viscosity of the remaining water, slid right off the end of the Twister boards. She plunged feet first into the warm waiting embrace of the pile of bricks stacked scattershot across the back of the house, breaking her leg in three places. She spent the better part of that summer lying on the couch scratching at her thigh inside of her full-leg cast with a bent coat hanger and drinking lots of Faygo Rock-N-Rye. Jake’s Mom, on the other hand, spent the rest of the summer finding every little way to work the phrase, “Next time you’ll listen to your Mother” into every conversation.

Jake had taken his lot in life in stride and spent the time wisely, delving into the world of books in the musty hall cabinet beneath the bookshelf. This was strictly a rainy day activity in the summer. Like all good boys, Jake spent most of the day outside, soaking in the sun of the summers he would later recall as somehow brighter, somehow sharper than those in his grown-up days. He spent those sunny days riding bikes with his friends.

This summer had started on a bad note with the Accident and the subsequent loss of the cheap Polish bike that his father had bought him. He was in dire need of a replacement before Summer got into full swing or he would be left out when it came time to cruise up to Burger King or even the rare all-day trip to The Oakland Mall.

As the light faded from the sky, Jake held the rusting wheel in his lap, rubbing the surface of the rim with his thumb. He looked down the cross street to see the optic orange sun sliding behind a silhouette of a line of maple trees.

“Maybe next Sunday, Sport”. Craig pulled one of his patented U-turns in the intersection of the cross street and headed back the way they’d come.

“Wait”, Jake had pulled the handle and was out of the car before it stopped. He ran to the edge of the lawn two houses up. Craig pulled up to the curb as Jake turned around. He was holding the scratched frame of a moto-cross bike. It was painted white over its original color and had been scratched badly so the first coat shown through. It had tube forks and the neck had no bearings in it. Jake stood there in middle of the street with the trashed skeleton of a spoiled kid’s bike, struck with a look of wonder on his face. He had found the Lost Ark and now beheld its power.

* * *

They spent the rest of the night stripping the frame of its paint and scrubbing the rust from the grooves between the spokes on the back wheel. Craig set up the work light out in the back yard. Both he and Jake rubbed on some Avon Skin So Soft to keep the bugs away and headed out back to primer the frame. Craig moved his car out into the street--he didn’t want the grey mist to drift onto his Duster--and began to work. He had finished the second coat of primer and had enlisted Denise to dry the coats with her hairdryer. Big Jake had come home and ventured out into the yard to see what his kids were up to.

“What color are you gonna paint it?”, Big Jake asked.

“I don’t know”, Jake answered. “Maybe just primer colored”.

Big Jake whispered to Craig and Craig disappeared around the front of the house. Moments later, he returned with four cans of spraypaint.

“I got these when I got my car painted. They’re for touch-ups. We can use these”.

Jake stood still, silently gasping in shock as Craig popped the cap on the first can and began to shake it. He was going to have a bike the same color as the coolest car in Clayton. He was going to be the envy of the entire neighborhood. Perhaps the whole street from 14 Mile to Normandy would gaze in awe at the boy on the kick-ass bike.

The painting process was tedious and when the chill came into the air Jake retired to the basement. Down in the warm mustiness, he finished tightening the spokes and putting the tubes into the new knobby tires mounted on the newly polished rims. The bike was still missing handlebars, but the rest of it was there.

At about 1 a.m. Big Jake came down the stairs to find his youngest asleep sitting up with a rust flaked clump of steel wool in one hand. He jostled him barely into consciousness and packed him off to bed.

* * *

Jake awoke late the next morning in his upstairs bedroom, not quite remembering how he got there. He could hear the boys down below and outside, riding their bikes up and down the street, jumping curbs, doing tricks. He could hear the buzz of the knobby tires whizzing along the pavement. He could hear them laughing and talking. He knew he wouldn’t be able to join them today because his bike wasn’t whole. He had resigned himself to spending the gloriously sunny day indoors reading.

He had walked down the stairs after throwing on his corduroy shorts and a striped shirt with the sleeves ripped off. He turned to enter the kitchen where he’d planned to make himself a giant bowl of Jacque Le Feet cereal, his favorite. He stopped and turned toward the living room. The drapes where open slightly, which was rare. The sun shone through the sheers. It illuminated the thick cloud of dust settling onto Kay, who had fallen asleep on the couch and Jake’s new bike; including its shiny black moto-cross handlebars.

Jake finally put it all together. When they went to Meijer’s Thrifty Acres, Craig had made him stay in the Duster. He had come out with a bag bigger than what would hold the inner tubes and primer he had gone in the store for. He stopped to put something in the trunk and then got in handing the bag to Jake.

“That’s what was in the trunk”, Jake mumbled into the bright shiny dust cloud.

He threw his shoes on, without socks, and opened the front door. The sound of the large heavy wood door pulling loose from its resting-place woke Kay.

“You like it?”, she yawned rubbing the crusty sleep from her eyes while simultaneously reaching for her pack of Winston 100’s.

“Absolutely.”

She laughed at his choice of word and lit her cigarette. Jake opened the screen door, ran down the front steps and mounted his new bike. He rode it around the front walk and then up the driveway. He then turned and drifted into the street.

Richie and Morris were sitting on the curb in front of Richie’s house killing ants with the pads of their thumbs. Alex and Scott were circling their Schwinns in lazy arcs with the precision of circus clowns. Eddie wasn’t out yet.

Jake rode past the group. He was nervous that they’d leap for him and beat him down, but he figured that without Eddie there to actually tell them, they would be lost and never be able to come up with the idea on their own. Scott looked up from his concentrated effort of steering to look at Jake’s new wheels. He plowed straight into the back tire of his brother’s Schwinn.

“God, Scott, You’re such a dork”, Alex yelled and then followed his brother’s gaze to the gleaming olive iron horse.

“Where’d you get it?” Morris asked.

Jake stopped the bike.

“Are you talkin’ to me?”, Jake asked hardly concealing his mirth.

“You steal it?”, Richie asked.

“No, I’m not you”, Jake returned. Both twins laughed. Morris cracked a smile.

“Eddie’s pissed at you”, Richie said steering the conversation away from his favorite past time.

“Yeah, well, he fucked up my bike”.

“Yeah, well, you fucked up his bike and his leg. He’s gonna have a scar”, Richie returned.

“How’s your chin?”, Jake asked. Morris and the Carson boys laughed at this. Richie moved his jaw back and forth as if feeling the sense memory of the elbow he'd received.

“It’s fine.”

“Hey, I’m sorry about that”, Jake added. The apology was unanticipated. Richie didn’t know how to process it. He blushed a bit and avoided eye contact with Jake. “Ya mad at me?”

Jake held out his hand in front of Richie. Richie waited then grabbed Jake’s hand in a Soul Handshake, wrapping his fleshy hand around the base of Jake’s thumb. Things were slowly returning to normal. There was still a thick post-Accident haze hanging over the boys adding to the general malaise that set itself off in sharp relief against the sunny warm morning.

“We’re cool”, Richie added in response. Alex and Scott smiled at each other. Morris went back to killing ants.

“What kind of bike is that?”, Eddie asked. He had come up slowly, carefully walking his bike across the grass so as to not make a sound. He had seen the exchange. He had heard everything. Jake bristled at his voice. He looked down and saw the bandage running the length of Eddie’s left leg. Jake had just forged an uneasy peace with the rest of the group, but he knew that with one word or action Eddie could veto it and he would soon be chased across the street by boys who knew their hearts weren’t in the act.

“An Assembler’s Special”, Jake answered.

Eddie paused looking up and down the bike.

“Tube forks”, Eddie said flatly.

“Yeah”, Jake returned.

“If it weren’t for me, you wouldn’t have that bike you’re riding”, Eddie then stood up on his pedals and cranked his bike into the street, heading toward 14 Mile Road.

Jake stood holding the rubber handle grips tightly, his face flushing from fishbelly white to hot pink. Eddie, in one phrase, had sullied his brother’s selfless act. He had ruined the warm feeling pulsing inside his chest that was the direct result of this selfless act. With his words he had reached in and stolen his sense of joy and left a tight dread-filled anger in its place.

The other boys mounted their bikes and followed their leader. Jake turned and rode behind, slowly pushing the pedals of his Assembler’s Special