If Rock and Roll Were a Machine

by Terry Davis

  * * *

  Bert’s high spirits evaporate at roughly the same time his cup of complimentary motel coffee is empty. Bert is not used to drinking coffee. As he waits at the light watching the kids in the mall parking lot sitting on the fenders of their cars talking, laughing, listening to music, he is sure he feels the corrosive liquid working its way through his stomach. Not the way stuff is supposed to go through a stomach, but eating through the lining, bubbling back out the top, spilling like toxic waste through a flawed container.

  And Bert is indeed a flawed container this morning. He’s not used to drinking coffee and he’s not used to functioning on three hours’ sleep. The light goes green and the motorheads behind him are on their horns in a millisecond. Bert’s stomach makes sounds like a volcanic mud pot as he accelerates through the light. By the time he has covered the last mile, ridden the roller coaster of speed bumps into the school lot, and slipped the Bug between two yellow lines, a band of pain has emerged inside his head and is trying to expand its way through his skull at the equator of his eyes.

  Bert breathes through his mouth as he walks by the office. There’s a good chance he’ll throw up. The fulmination in his stomach is producing gas bubbles the size of carp. Some rise to the surface, and others dive to the depths. Maybe if he allows a little one—just a little minnow-sized one—out the lower pipe, he’ll feel better. He’s passing the trophy cases, his head bent, his eyes open just enough so he can see a few inches beyond the toes of his Reeboks, when he lets one go.

  Most of Bert’s sensory awareness is concentrated in his head where the pain is, but there’s enough feeling left below to alert him to emergency conditions there as well. That is not gas escaping down here, the nerve fibers on the backs of Bert’s legs tell him. If this were once vapor, it has now condensed into something more substantial.

  You have shit yourself, Dude. And in the main hall at school. How’s that for the way to begin a day? How’s that for a new life?

  Bert stops to lean his forehead against the cool glass of the trophy case and sees that he has come undone in the most ironic of locations: in front of the epitome of self-discipline, the late Louden Swain, Thompson High’s Olympic wrestler, Spokane’s famous astronaut.

  Bert steps back and looks into the photo. The crew, in full gear, stands in front of the space shuttle. Swain is smiling like a little kid, like he can’t wait to get up there on top of that rocket and have somebody light the fuse. Bert reads, as he has read many times, the lines in memoriam:

  Major Louden Swain, USAF, Thompson High Class of 1972. Born December 2, 1954, Spokane, Washington; died January 22, 1985, on his way to space.

  Usually Bert reads in these lines the message that heroism is possible. But this morning the message is this: Some people are something and some people are nothing. And you, Bert Bowden, are among the nothings.

  At least I can keep my word, Bert thinks on his way to the bathroom. I can do that, at least. He continues to tell himself this on his way to Tanneran’s room.

  But Tanneran isn’t there, and he isn’t in the journalism room next door. A girl looks up from a keyboard and says The Big T is in the darkroom.

  Bert can’t wait long. He’ll have to disturb him. He crosses the room and knocks. A voice that’s not Tanneran’s yells, “Don’t open that door!”

  “I’m sorry to bother you,” Bert says. “My name is Bert Bowden, and I need to see Mr. Tanneran.”

  Half a minute later the door opens. At first it’s like a cave—deep black, just tinged with a purple glow at the end. But then it floods with light. A guy with fuzzy red hair like Poindexter, the guy with thick glasses in Revenge of the Nerds, stands at the back of the room holding a pair of long tweezers in front of his chest like a sword and glaring. Another guy, an Asian, is hanging photos on a wire. Tanneran is standing beside this shorter kid looking at the photos, then turns and walks toward Bert. “Close the door, please,” says the redheaded kid. And Tanneran closes the door.

  “Bert Bowden,” Tanneran says. He looks at the sheet of paper Bert holds out to him. “The young man who keeps his word.”

  “I’m sorry to bother you,” Bert says. “But I’m not feeling well, and I want to give you the essay before I go home.”

  Tanneran takes the sheets. “One, two, three . . . fourteen pages,” he counts. “Good Lord!”

  “I would have typed it, but I wasn’t where my computer was,” Bert says.

  “Go home and go to bed,” Tanneran says. “You look bad.”

  “I feel bad,” Bert says.

  On his way to the car Bert sees a crowd of football players at the gym door. They are jocking around like yearling killer whales when it’s raining fish. The cut-list has been posted. Mike Jackson and Christman and McDougall and other guys who didn’t have a worry in the world about getting cut are high- and low-fiving Camille Shepard.

  Bert squeezes through. He reads the names. He reads down the list again. It’s no surprise that his name is not here. It’s no surprise, but it hurts.

  He will walk to his car. He will drive to the bank. He will buy the Sportster. He will keep his word.

  Chapter 7

  Scott Shepard Meets Bert’s Father and Resolves to Return a Kindness

  Donald Bowden observed the woman and the two bikers from the McDonald’s lot across the highway. She sat in a green sports car with the top down. She was in her mid-thirties, wore her straw-blond hair in a long, thick braid, and radiated that healthier-than-thou attitude Donald found so detestably attractive.

  The older guy sat on his bike with his arms folded, smiling. There was gray in his hair, the stubble of his beard, and his moustache. The younger guy wore an old-fashioned black half-helmet out of which his ponytail hung. They were both big.

  Donald would not have been surprised to see the three exchange drugs, but they exchanged only smiles, and then waves as the woman sped away.

  The younger biker dismounted, walked to the older biker, and kissed him on the cheek. Donald watched them knock their fists together like steroid-addled athletes, vicious subliterate pimps, dumbass bikers. Then the younger one returned to his bike, kicked it into a roar, and shot out through the colored band of cars like a black bullet through a rainbow.

  The older guy left his bike and walked to the door of the shop. This must be Shepard, Donald said to himself.

  * * *

  Scott Shepard watched his son sitting at the light, revving his engine. Aside from his worry about Camille’s safety on the Harley-Davidson, Shepard felt a profound sense of peace. It was a sense that his life had finally dialed itself in and was running right.

  Camille chirped the tire when the light went green. His father’s heart did a wheelstand. “Stay off your head!” the elder Shepard yelled. But the younger was long gone.

  Shepard walked up to open the door. He was standing in the doorway looking out at the beautiful early September morning when the silver Acura pulled up. A man in a suit stepped out. His jaw was set as he started for the door. Shepard couldn’t remember having done anything that would occasion such an aggressive posture in someone this well dressed.

  “My name is Donald Bowden,” Donald said. He wondered if the guy would want to do some stupid power handshake.

  Shepard shook Donald’s hand in the traditional way. “I’m Scott Shepard,” he said. “People call me Scotty. I’ll bet you’re Bert Bowden’s dad.”

  “I’m Bert’s father, and I’m upset,” Donald replied.

  The kid must take after his mother, Shepard thought. This guy is dark, wiry, over six feet. “Step inside, Mr. Bowden,” he said. “Let’s get you pacified.”

  Donald looked up at Shepard. The man filled the doorway in height and width. Donald was six two, and not accustomed to looking up at people. He wasn’t intimidated by Shepard, but he was surprised the man spoke standard English. He followed him across the showroom to the counter. Shepard hung his jacket on a peg and turned. “Your son doesn’t want the bike? You don’t want him t
o have the bike? What?” he said.

  Donald was looking at the tattooed letters on Shepard’s forearm. RIDE FAST, LIVE FOREVER, they said. He’s a moron, all right, Donald thought. His philosophy of life is not only self-contradictory, it’s brief enough to wear on his arm.

  “He wants the bike,” Donald replied. “He wants it bad enough to have moved out of the house when his mother and I told him he wasn’t buying it. We don’t even know where he slept last night.”

  “Maybe he’s embarrassed,” Shepard said. “I won’t give him a hard time. I’ve got a teenage boy of my own.”

  “We’ve decided to let him buy the motorcycle,” Donald said. “He’s never acted like this before, so he must need to have it worse than we need him not to.” Donald looked steadily into Shepard’s face. “It was a shitty thing to take advantage of a kid like Bert,” he said.

  Kid like Bert? Shepard thought. He thought a second or two more. “Maybe I did take advantage of his enthusiasm,” he replied. “I tried to get him to consider the downside of owning a classic bike, but maybe I didn’t try hard enough. I’m sorry I had a part in bringing trouble into your home,” he said.

  Donald felt better. He’d said his piece, taken care of business, and now he was ready to get out of this place.

  Shepard followed him to the door. “When Bert shows up I’ll tell him he’s out of the doghouse.”

  Donald Bowden climbed into his car and drove off without a reply.

  * * *

  Shepard got the coffee going and turned on All Things Considered. His partner would come rolling in soon. They would drink coffee, do some light work, and yell at the radio until the news was over.

  National Public Radio was interviewing members of Congress about President Bush’s battle plan for his war on drugs. Another morning this would have held Shepard’s attention. Nine years ago Shepard was pensioned out of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, and news of this kind involved men and women who were still his friends. But this morning his thoughts were on two boys—his own and Donald Bowden’s.

  Shepard stepped to his tool chest and lifted the top. Taped to the inside were photos of Camille from age two, when his mother took him to live in Paris, to eight, which was the last time he came to the States for a visit. Shepard had flown to Paris for Camille’s thirteenth birthday, and then they hadn’t seen each other until three months ago when Camille came to spend his senior year of high school.

  None of the photos looked much like the boy who had ridden off on his motorcycle a few minutes before. He’d shed his baby fat, grown six inches in four years, and his hair had darkened. It was no point of pride with Shepard, but now Camille looked more like a Shepard than a Laval.

  More important than how the kid looked was how he felt, and as far as Shepard could see he was a happy boy. He kept looking for cracks in his son’s character that would signal the fault he was afraid had to be there somewhere as a result of this transcontinental family life. But he hadn’t spotted any yet. It could be, he supposed, that the son had not been critically flawed by the father. If this were so, it was a stroke of good luck Shepard knew he didn’t deserve. Camille deserved it, of course. All kids deserved good luck.

  Scott Shepard didn’t believe in a loving God, nor did he believe in a just universe. He did not believe that in life or afterward people got what they deserved. If people sometimes seemed to get what was coming to them, Shepard figured it was a fortunate accident. He did, however, try to live his life as though justice would be dealt out to him sometime, somehow. He wished life were this way, he thought it should be this way, so this was how he tried to live it.

  Shepard turned away from the photos, but he could still see them in his mind. They were always there.

  So many people on both sides of the Atlantic had been kind to his son. If this were not so, Camille would not be the happy kid he was. His mother, his stepfather, his grandparents, teachers, coaches, his day-care mom and their families, his therapist when he was six. Shepard knew some of these people well, some he’d met, some he was able to imagine from what Camille told him, and others had shown his son kindness, love, patience, had treated the boy decently, and would never pass through Shepard’s thoughts where he could thank them face to imagined face.

  There was luck in the way his boy had turned out, of course. But there were also these good people. Some of them got paid to be good to kids, but that didn’t matter. Plenty of people got paid to be good to kids and treated them like shit.

  Whatever opportunity Shepard had to be kind to Bert Bowden, he would take. Maybe Bert was Shepard’s chance to return some water to the well.

  Chapter 8

  Bert Keeps His Word Again

  Bert withdrew fifteen hundred bucks from savings for the bike and a jacket. His parents haven’t alerted the bank as he feared. The fifteen one-hundred-dollar bills lie in a bank envelope on the passenger seat of the Bug, which Bert pilots north on Division. He can stay on this road, cross the Little Spokane River, climb the hill on the other side of the valley, and keep going until he burrows into the mountains. But he won’t burrow into the mountains today. Today Bert will keep is word.

  * * *

  Shepard is sitting in the back of the shop playing cribbage on an empty shopstand with his partner, Dave Ward, who looks like Billy Gibbons, guitarist for ZZ Top. Dave’s gray beard reaches to the cribbage board and enmeshes like cobwebs the green and red plastic pegs. They didn’t hear Bert come in, and they don’t notice him standing beside the cash register. He clears his throat, and both men turn.

  “Bert Bowden,” Shepard says. “Had lunch?” He gestures with a remnant of fishwich. “I could eat a couple more of these.”

  Bert is feeling better. He could eat something. But “I came to pay for the Sportster” is what he replies.

  “Let’s pop across the road, get a bite, and talk about that,” Shepard says.

  Bert and Shepard are standing on the island waiting for a break in traffic when Bert realizes they are wearing identical T-shirts as well as jeans in the same degree of fade. The faces in the car windows all turn with looks of disapproval. Biker and biker junior, the looks say.

  Shepard can really motor for a guy with two bad legs. Bert is hustling after him, taking note of this, as the toe of his Reebok catches the curb. He is airborne. He throws his hands out and knows that for him today’s lunch will be fillet of concrete. But Shepard catches him at the shoulder.

  Bert gains altitude as he flies over the sidewalk. Shepard is lifting him. Bert feels his weight shifting in relation to the fulcrum that Shepard is making of his shoulder joint. This guy is holding me in the air with one arm, Bert thinks as he descends against the tension Shepard applies.

  Bert hears a crack simultaneous with his landing. That sounds an awful lot like bone, he thinks. But I’m not in pain. He looks down. He has landed in a low shrub. Each of his tennies rests on a branch, and at the base of each branch the wet white flesh of the shrub is open in a compound fracture.

  “Oops,” comes Shepard’s voice from behind him.

  Shepard eats a fishwich while he tells Bert that his dad visited the shop and he no longer needs to look for new lodgings. Bert works on a fourteen-box of McNuggets and listens. This is good news. He’s already begun to miss his room.

  Shepard gives Bert a chance to back out of the deal. He notes again the various ways classic bikes can be a pain in the ass. He reminds Bert that this is the month of September, and that if they’re lucky with the weather and wear their longies, they have until Thanksgiving before they put the bikes away. Shepard can’t guarantee that the Sportster won’t sell, but he can guarantee he’ll have something really neat for Bert to buy for the same money come spring. He can understand that Bert wants to keep his word. But coming back when he said he would is more integrity than most people show.

  No, Bert wants the bike.

  Is Bert aware that he needs a motorcycle endorsement for his driver’s license? Yes, Bert knows that. Has he
heard how nasty the test is? Not exactly. But how tough can it be? Other people pass it. True, Shepard agrees. Not only true, but an excellent way to look at it.

  “I guess I can’t talk you out of this,” Shepard says.

  “If you don’t want to sell it—”

  “No,” Shepard says. “I’m happy to sell it. You’re acting out of integrity, and I’m trying to act out of integrity too. I don’t want you to feel stuck.”

  “I don’t feel stuck,” Bert says.

  “Okay,” Shepard replies. “But let’s say this: You decide you want to sell the bike, you bring it back and we’ll get you at least what you paid for it, plus the tax and license.”

  “Okay,” Bert says.

  “Let’s go do the deed, then.”

  “Let’s go do it,” Bert says.

  And they go and do it.

  Chapter 9

  Reflection

  Bert looks down at his motorcycle. He owns a 1969 Harley-Davidson Sportster. He can’t believe it. He twists the throttle and the tension running from his hand into his forearm is a thrill. He really cannot believe it. And yet these are real, physical sensations: the hard rubber handle grip tight against his palm, the cold cement floor of the garage against the bare soles of his feet. It’s not a dream. It’s like a dream, but it’s not one.

  Bert Bowden owns this old motorcycle, all right. And he’s also got a permit to ride it—during the day in the company of a licensed rider. After Bert signed the papers at Shepard’s, he drove to the license bureau, read the booklet, took the written test, and only missed one question. When he feels confident enough on the bike, he’ll take the riding test. He drove back to Shepard’s, then rode the Sportster home and tucked it away in the garage. It was scary, but Shepard rode beside him and they took the less traveled roads. Bert sat behind Shepard on the way back to the shop to get the Bug. Bert didn’t know where to put his hands at first, and Shepard told him just to set them on his shoulders. The little pillion seat on the rear fender made Bert sit higher than Shepard, and it felt natural to rest his hands on the man’s shoulders.