Reckless

by Lesley Choyce

  chapter three

  I wasn’t three steps off the bus when Anton noticed I was limping. “Fall off that piece of crap you ride?” he asked. “Or did it finally just fall apart underneath of you?”

  I glared at him but didn’t want to get into anything. “Yeah, I fell,” I said. And I limped on. My leg hurt worse today. I wondered if I should go to a doctor. But if my parents found out, I might never ride again. They had shown me pictures of motorcycle accidents and stories about kids getting hurt, even killed, on bikes. I tried to explain that all you had to do was use good judgement and not push the limits.

  But, of course, I broke those two sacred rules all the time.

  I turned and realized that Anton was right behind me. “When you feel better, you should come down to the pit with me and some of the boys. We can show you some stuff. It’s wild down there.” Anton’s father owned a few dump trucks, bulldozers and front-end loaders. He hauled stone and gravel from a gravel pit on their property where Anton and his friends biked.

  “Thanks, Anton. Maybe later.”

  “Yeah, later,” he said and laughed. He was laughing at me. “I’ll say hi to Sonia for you.”

  That was pure Anton. Right then I hated his guts. But I wasn’t going to do a thing about it.

  The rest of the week I limped from class to class. I didn’t let my parents see me limp at home. The scrape on my leg looked ugly, but it was healing. My ribs still ached, but it was a dull ache.

  At night I watched dirt-bike videos in my room and got depressed about losing my bike. I didn’t have any money to get another bike. I’d have to get a part-time job. But that would mean working after school and weekends, the very times I’d want to be on my bike. And the only part-time job I knew of was working for Anton’s rich old man. It was all pretty dismal.

  Before I became fully conscious Saturday morning, I found myself being happy.

  Saturday. I’d hop on my bike and…That’s when I really woke up and remembered.

  I jumped out of bed and looked out my window. It was a beautiful day. And that made me mad.

  I got dressed, found my backpack and threw a few things into it. I tromped downstairs and packed water and sandwiches— one peanut butter and jelly, one bologna.

  My mom showed up just then. “What’s up, Josh?”

  “I’m going for a hike,” I said.

  “That’s great. Anyone going with you?”

  I thought about telling her Kyle was coming just to make her feel better. But I hated lying to my parents. “No. Just me.”

  “Can I pack you anything?”

  “No. I’m good.”

  “Don’t forget your cell phone.”

  “I’ve got it,” I said. I unzipped a pouch to show her. The phone was there with my Swiss Army knife. I didn’t point out that where I was going, the cell phone wouldn’t be of much use.

  She hugged me. “Be careful,” she said. “Don’t get lost.” I knew that my parents worried, and they could tell that something was wrong this week.

  Then I was out the door and walking down the street. The sky was blue. It was warm. My leg was stiff, but it was much better. My ribs only hurt if I took a deep breath or if I laughed. I doubted that I’d be doing much laughing.

  I reckoned it would be a two-hour hike to get to where I’d dumped the bike. I tried jogging some of it, but that made my leg hurt. Eventually, I came to Loggerman Creek. I hadn’t seen a soul all morning. And now the sky was overcast. I hoped it wasn’t going to rain. I hadn’t packed any rain gear.

  I sat on a rock, ate half a bologna sandwich and wondered which way to go. They called him the hermit of Loggerman Creek. He must live near the creek. I followed the logging road north along the creek for another half hour. There was no sign of a shack or a hermit. When the trail went east again, I figured I would follow the creek. I couldn’t see any sign of a footpath, but a hermit probably didn’t want to lead anyone to his house.

  I picked my way along the shoreline over the boulders and fallen trees. The air had turned cooler. Then it started to rain.

  I was going to get soaked even if I turned around and headed home. I cursed myself for not packing rain gear. How stupid could you get? I thought about giving up and going home. But I soldiered on.

  About twenty minutes later, I saw a narrow footpath leading away from the creek. I decided to follow it. Water dripped down on me from the overhanging branches. I was starting to feel a chill. This was not good.

  The trail had dwindled down to nearly nothing, but I smelled smoke. I followed my nose. This was a good way to get lost in a forest. But once I made my decision, I could see no turning back. It was wood-smoke for sure. Somebody was burning spruce in a woodstove.

  I stopped when I saw the shack. It was a rough log cabin with one window and a door made of planks. The roof was covered with an old green tarp, and there was a small metal pipe for a chimney. It was small, probably one room. I imagined it was dark and smelly inside. There was a distinct odor of old fish mixed with the smoke. Behind the cabin was a shed also made from logs with another tarp over the roof.

  I was shivering and wet, but I was here. There was no turning back. I walked to the door and was about to knock when the hermit swung the door sharply open and stood inches from my face. “You!” he shouted at me.

  I couldn’t speak.

  “What do you want?” he demanded.

  “Give me back my dirt bike,” I said.

  He laughed. “No,” he said.

  “It’s my property,” I said. “You stole it.”

  “I found it lying in the woods.”

  “Where is it?” I demanded, but he could tell I was scared. My voice was shaking.

  He closed the door on me, and I heard him slide a bolt, locking it.

  I stood my ground.

  “I called the cops,” I lied.

  Silence.

  Then the door opened again. He looked scared. “You what?”

  I was feeling weak now, and cold. I looked down at the ground. “No, I didn’t.”

  “This is between you and me,” he said angrily. “No one else.”

  The hermit picked up a long-handled ax that was leaning against the shack. “Follow me,” he said.

  He walked toward the shed. I thought about running, but my leg was hurting again. And the hermit knew these woods better than anyone. I wouldn’t stand a chance. So I followed him.

  When we got to the shed, he motioned with his ax. “Your noise toy is in there,” he said. The rough plank door was latched from the outside. There were no windows in the shed. This did not look good. I stood and waited.

  He raised the ax high over his head. With a grunt, he swung down hard, embedding the ax blade deeply into a chopping block. I nearly jumped out of my skin.

  The hermit looked annoyed and shook his head. “Lost,” he said. “All of you. Hopelessly lost.”

  He slowly opened the door and propped it back with a stick. He walked into the darkness of the shed and returned, wheeling my bike out into the rain.

  I stared at it.

  “You fixed my bike?” The front wheel was fine. The fork was straightened. The gas tank had the dents taken out as well. It was still scratched-up and ratty-looking, but the old guy had fixed my bike. I couldn’t believe it.

  “Uh-huh,” he said. “And tuned it too. It was running terrible. You waste fuel that way. Ruin the planet. You should take better care.”

  His face was serious. I didn’t know what to think.

  “You cold?” he asked.

  I was shaking.

  “Wanna dry out?”

  I nodded.

  “I’ll put her away till you’re ready,” he said, sounding like a kindly grandfather. He rolled the bike back into the shed and then led me to his cabin. “Xanadu,” he said.

  “Pardon me?”

  “Xanadu. X-A-N-A-D-U. You pronounce the X like a Z. It’s the name of my home. Every home should have a name. What do you call yours?”

  �
�I don’t know. Just home, I guess.”

  “See what I mean? You’re all hopelessly lost,” he said as I stepped into the semidarkness of Xanadu.

  As my eyes adjusted to the dim light, I looked at my bizarre surroundings. The log walls were shiny, as if they had been polished. The woodstove was not a stove at all but an old washing machine with the glass part of the door missing. Hanging from the rafters were dozens and dozens of fish and what looked like snakes.

  “Eels, not snakes,” he said as if reading my mind. “Stand by the fire. Dry out. Ever eat dried eels? Nothing like it.” He grabbed one and offered it to me. He took down another and began to munch on it himself. “Lots of protein,” he said. “Try it.”

  chapter four

  I nibbled at the eel. It was disgusting. The hermit laughed. “It’s ’cause you’re used to store-bought food. This is the real thing.”

  I smiled, handed him back the dried eel and hovered over the washer-woodstove for warmth. I watched him strip the dry flesh off the bones. When he finished eating the eel, he tossed the remains into the fire. The room was quiet except for the sound of the logs burning and the rain pelting on the tarp.

  “I’m sorry about the other day,” I said. “You okay?”

  He sort of snorted. “That was nothing. I’ve had much worse. Hurt my pride though, I guess. Lost my cool.”

  “How do you know about bikes?” I asked.

  “I know about a lot of things,” he said. “It’s all up here.” He pointed to his head. He paused, looked at me intently and scratched the hair on his bearded jaw. “So they say I’m crazy, do they?”

  I shrugged, afraid to say the wrong thing.

  “Maybe it’s them that’s crazy. The whole world is crazy. Maybe I’m the only one who is sane. Hmm.” He walked to a shelf of books. “Let’s look up the definition of sanity.” He turned some pages. “Here it is. ‘Soundness of mind. Mental balance of health.’” He held the book out. “Look here. It’s a picture of me by the definition.”

  I thought it was just a joke. But out of the pages of the dictionary he took out an old photo and handed it to me. It was a snapshot of a young man, not much older than me. I studied the face of the skinny young guy in the photo. Then it clicked. The eyes. “This is you.”

  “Was me. Back in the day, as they say.”

  Even though I was warming up, I shivered again. I found it impossible to connect the boy in the photo with the old man in front of me. I turned the photo over and it said simply, Jonathan at 17.

  “My mother had elegant handwriting,” was all he said.

  “Jonathan,” I said out loud.

  “All three syllables. I don’t let anyone call me John. You?”

  “Pardon?”

  “How many syllables in your name?”

  “One.”

  “That’s no good.”

  “Well, my full name is three. Josh-u-a.”

  “Like in the Old Testament.” He turned to his bookshelf and grabbed a Bible. “Read it six times so far. Thinking about going at it again. Might have missed something.”

  “You religious?” I asked.

  “Not really. Just like to read. I’ll read anything I can get my hands on. Go down by the creek on a nice day with a good book—or a crummy one—and sit there and read. Makes me feel peaceful.”

  I had a million questions, but the thing that popped into my head was about the hundred men he’d killed. Maybe he really had kept count and then deserted. No, I wasn’t going to go there.

  It grew quiet again, and I realized the rain had let up.

  “Which syllable?” he said.

  “What?”

  “Which of the three? Ooh? Do they call you Ooh? Or is it Ah? Either one sounds odd to my ear.” The guy had a weird sense of humor.

  “Josh. They call me Josh.”

  “In the Bible, Joshua was a rather fierce leader. You like that? Fierce, I mean?”

  “Not really.”

  He studied my face in a way that made me uncomfortable. He was looking directly into my eyes. “No,” he said, breathing a stench of dried eel in my face. “I don’t see fierce. I see confused, but I also see determined.”

  “A little of both,” I said. I inched away and looked up. “Rain’s stopped. I should get going.”

  “Back to the land of the crazies?”

  “You’re right. There is a lot of craziness. A lot of things don’t make sense.”

  “You got that one right.”

  I reached for the door, but in the dim light of the room I couldn’t find the door handle. I felt a thrill of panic. Jonathan was walking toward me. Then his arm shot out quickly like he was going to push me into the wall. But he didn’t touch me at all. He flipped a latch and the door opened.

  “I’ll get your bike,” he said and walked quickly past me.

  He rolled my old Kawasaki out of the shed and held it while I got on.

  “Thanks for fixing my bike. It means a lot to me.”

  “I know,” he said. “So take better care of it.”

  When I kicked it to start, it miraculously started right away. I was shocked. It idled smooth as silk. The old guy must really have tuned it up. “I will,” I said. And as I was ready to split, I said, “I owe you one.”

  “Yes, you do. Can I put in my request now?”

  “Sure.”

  “Bring me a five-pound bag of brown rice. And a book. Any book.”

  I gave him a thumbs-up.

  “And one more thing. Don’t mention this to anyone.”

  I nodded, let out the clutch and eased away slowly, threading the bike through the trees. It wasn’t until I got back on the logging road that I realized I didn’t have my helmet—another promise to my parents broken. I decided to take it easy on the way home.

  chapter five

  It was just my luck to be coming out of the woods as Anton was roaring down the street. His Yamaha was the loudest I’d ever heard. It was an amazing red firecracker of a bike. I should have hung back on the trail and just let him go by. I don’t know what got into me. I raced out of the ditch at the end of the trail and shot out in front of Anton. He had to swerve to avoid me. It was a truly stupid thing to do.

  Then I let up on the gas and headed home. I should have known Anton wouldn’t think this was funny. I heard him make a quick U-turn and head back toward me. He pulled up alongside and nodded toward the side of the road. I pulled over.

  He yanked off a helmet with a dark faceplate. It looked like something an astronaut would wear. Then he turned off his engine. I did the same.

  “Riding without a helmet,” he said. “And harassing the public.”

  I immediately regretted my actions. Why didn’t I just let him ride by?

  “Just fooling around,” I said, trying to make light of it.

  I thought he was going to get really pissed off. Instead, he smiled. There was something about the smile that made me angry. It was like he was laughing at me. “Good,” he said. “I like fooling around on bikes. It’s what I live for. I’m headed to the gravel pit. Nobody’s working there today. Why don’t you join me?”

  I shook my head. “Nah. Like you say, I don’t have my helmet. And I gotta get home.”

  “Not up for a little challenge, you and that pile of junk?”

  I gave a look that conveyed what I thought of him, but I didn’t say anything. I kick-started my bike and began to ride off slowly. I heard Anton’s bike fire up with a raspy roar. He pulled directly into my path, and I had to jerk hard to the right and skid to a stop. “What?” I said.

  “Tomorrow then. At the pit. One o’clock.

  A little one-on-one.” The words were innocent enough, but it was the way he said them. I’d had kids taunt me all my life. I had learned not to let them get to me.

  But I found I couldn’t do that. “Sure,” I said. “I could use the exercise.”

  My dad was in the front yard, and he watched me pull the bike into the shed. “Josh,” he said as I walked to the house,
“you’re not supposed to ride without your helmet. That was the deal.”

  “I’m really sorry. I forgot it. I won’t let it happen again.”

  “Sorry doesn’t cut it this time,” he said. “Your bike is grounded for a week.”

  “But…”

  “We had a deal. You broke it. No helmet: no bike.”

  I didn’t say anything more. How could I explain? This was so unfair.

  That night we ate dinner in nearly complete silence. I don’t think my dad told my mom about the helmet, because she would have been mad too. She might insist I get rid of the bike. I guess my dad was doing me a favor. I needed to keep a low profile, be good and get back on my bike in a week.

  Except I had a problem. Anton. He’d make a fool out of me at school if I didn’t show.

  Saturday night I read motorcycle magazines and dreamed about a road trip in the wilderness for days and days. I’d camp and have the world to myself.

  My cell phone rang. It was Sonia.

  “Hey, Josh.”

  “Hey, Sonia.”

  “Anton told me you’re going to the pit tomorrow.”

  “I guess so,” I said, sounding like a wimp.

  “I want you to be careful,” she said.

  This was strange. This was the girl who had been acting like I no longer existed. “Why?” I asked.

  There was a pause. “Well, Anton was talking about it. It seems you really ticked him off.”

  “Doesn’t take much to tick off Anton.”

  “I know. He can be a jerk.”

  “Then why do you like him?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. He’s interesting, I guess,” she said matter-of-factly. That was more like Sonia. Liking a guy who acts like an egomaniac because he was “interesting.”

  I didn’t say anything. There was another awkward pause.

  “Look,” she finally said, “it’s just that he said he was going to make you eat dirt.”

  “That’s just a biking term.”

  “Yeah, but he seemed like he was going to try to hurt you. Push you too far. Something.”