Short Story - Tranquility in Cordona Loop

I step out into the blanket of the heat’s embrace. My Jiddo and Baba done filling up fallen tires, and adjusting gears, I amble my way to the bike. It isn’t my bike, in fact, I am not entirely sure whos bike it is, but we packed on our way to Ohio. At first, I just eye it to estimate how high the bike seat should be, but after this proves to be futile, I ease my legs over the leather. I cannot help but feel like a kid far younger than 15, teeter-tottering aimlessly about the driveway in attempts to pedal. My legs are a little shorter than where the saddle sits, but after a few helping hands, traction stirs to life under my feet.

Countless tentative turns and I am over the silk runs of the streets, weaving about the whirring of the two bikes beside me. It takes some time for me to ease into this. These days have been slow motion, almost lifeless, and now once more I am pushing through life, with my grandfather I haven’t seen in so, so long. It seems, just only now, in August, that my summer has started. And so I start. Quiet at first, meekly mouthing Hellos to passers-by. Quiet so I can hear Baba above the graceless rushes that whip the trees: Jiddo’s turning to the left. I smile at this thought, that Jiddo does not tell us which way he maneuvers his bike across the asphalt. Leading with a blissful expectancy that we will take to each road like a duck to water. And so I repeat, To the left, to both myself and Jiddo, searching for some confirmation. He gives nothing, but he turns, and so I do too. Mostly, despite moving, he remains in a state of stillness and observation. I can tell from the way he carries his head, taking long, wistful laps at each direction the street leads him to.

But other times he speaks, John, look to the right. And he does. So do I, a few stretches behind the two of them. We turn our heads to see a gaggle of geese consumed in their every pace about each other, like the mayhem of a micro-city among the greater stretch of nothingness. And as these characters melt from my line of vision, I see (without notice from Jiddo) a cluster of people, working tirelessly in the upper edges of the heat, atop the bare shell of a roof. Pounding and drilling, shouting orders that fall short to my ears. This same sense of moving skyward sifts upon me. The workers become ants, crying out in triumph that they conquered the hill, their prideful creation. And at the same time, I am the ant, or fly rather, on the wall of life, staring at the motion, or task at hand that consumes, from a safe stillness. It has been so long since I have last moved through my surroundings like this, to be so insouciant, even content as the road unfurls.

As we milk our way back to the house, we lean our bikes in Jiddo’s refreshingly clean garage. I am reminded of what life can look like in its cleanest, calmest state. Floors unstained and walls uncluttered of broken pogo sticks that were promised a revival, yet hang there restlessly awaiting nothing. This, this is a different kind of bliss. In some state of a miracle, my legs remain unscratched by the rugged plastic pedals of the unknown bike as I waddle it to the far corner, around the cars. This same stumble that commenced the ride. I open the stiff door from the coolness of the garage into the house. Where am I? I laugh, confronted by an unfamiliar hallway of their new house. 

But I am not lost, I am just consumed by the fragile freshness of this life.