She Rode a Harley

by Mary Jane Black

  Dwayne takes a sip of iced tea with a click of ice. “What would you think of my going to the new Harley shop tomorrow and talking to Bruce about a job? That would take care of my being on the road so much.”

  I lean over and kiss him. “You’ll be home every night,” I say. “I think I found a job in the classifieds. At the television station KBTX. Maybe those journalism classes in college will help.”

  He swivels around to face me. He holds his glass up for a toast. I clink mine against his. Together we chant, “To new jobs for both of us!”

  I borrow Stephanie’s car the next morning to go to the TV station to apply for the job. Dwayne drives our truck to the Harley shop to talk to Bruce. I push open the glass door with KBTX on it in gold-painted letters.

  A tall woman behind the front counter with her stiff blond hair piled high on her head greets me with a smile. “Hello there! How can I help you?” she asks in her soft drawl as she faces me over the front counter.

  I introduce myself and tell her I’m here about the job as a sales associate. She asks me to take a seat. She pushes some buttons on her telephone and tells someone I’m in the lobby. I wait for a short time. Then a tall thin man in a blue pinstriped suit walks briskly through the door. He sticks out his hand and I shake it. He tells me his name is John Bosworth. I tell him mine.

  I follow him down a long hallway to his office. Pictures of John with what must be famous Texans, even though I don’t recognize any of them but Ann Richards, crowd the walls, along with awards for outstanding news reporting. Haphazard piles of papers cover the surface of his desk. A cup of cold coffee sits on top of a book.

  John drops down in his chair and swivels to face me. He jerks down the knot of his Aggie-maroon tie with the Texas A&M logo on it in an effort to loosen it. He takes off his jacket and rolls up his sleeves. He folds the jacket and searches for a place to put it. Then he drapes it over the phone. He pushes his hand through his thick blond hair, moving it away from his face.

  He opens a drawer and begins to pull out sheets of paper, adding them to the stack on his desk. Finally, he finds an application and hands it to me. I start looking for a pen in my purse.

  “Hey, why don’t we just chat, and then you can fill out the papers later?” He slaps his hand down on the nearest stack of paper on his desk.

  I agree. He asks me some questions about my college courses and experience with newspapers or television. I tell him about my working for my college newspaper and my teaching high school journalism classes. He takes notes on a yellow legal pad. We laugh together at my story of the television newsman, my college professor and mentor, who terrified us with his bloody stories of covering wars around the world.

  Finally, John leans back in his brown leather chair. “You are totally not suited for a sales associate job.”

  I nod in agreement and pick my purse off the floor. I start to stand up.

  “Hey, I didn’t say you had to leave.”

  I sit back down and look at him in surprise. I hold my purse against my chest and push my hair behind my ears in nervousness.

  He offers me a job in the newsroom. He warns me it sounds way more glamorous than it is. I will be the assignment editor and assistant director of the morning news. He grins and tells me to think about it.

  “You’ll really be babysitting the morning anchor and answering the phone in hopes of a news story in a little Texas town. The biggest story last month was a possible bomb threat at the Walmart. Even that was a hoax.”

  I tell him I don’t need to think about it. I accept the job on the spot. He walks me around the station and introduces me to people.

  I rush home to tell Dwayne the news. His truck is sitting in the driveway when I get there. I run through the back door and shout the news that I got a job.

  Dwayne joins me in the kitchen. “I’m the new Harley mechanic and parts guy at the Harley shop.” We slap our palms in a high five. Harleys will now be a part of his life again. And mine.

  Over dinner that night, Stephanie congratulates us on the jobs. She looks up from her plate and says, “I’ve met a really nice guy named John. I want you guys to meet him soon.”

  Dwayne says, “He’s welcome here anytime.”

  The next morning Dwayne drives to the Harley shop. “You should come with me,” he says. “You’re going to be spending a lot of time around Harleys now.”

  We walk through the line of Harleys parked outside the building. A neon-orange Harley bar and shield gleams by the front door. I step through it and stare at the mass of motorcycles sitting side by side on the showroom floor. The fluorescent light bounces off the glossy gas tanks.

  Dwayne takes my hand and points to a long counter at the back of the room. “That’s the parts counter, baby. I’ll be working there.” He kisses my forehead. “Thanks for letting me be a Harley guy again.”

  I put my hand on his shoulder. “Remember, we agreed. Neither one of us lets the other do anything. We are partners, right?”

  I was Tom’s wife but never his partner. I asked his permission for my every move. Going to the store. Buying clothes. Eating dinner with friends. I woke up each morning wondering what mood he would be in.

  Dwayne knows I’m thinking about my life with Tom and says, “I love you and want you to do whatever the hell you want to do.”

  Here on the Harley sales floor I take Dwayne’s hand and squeeze it. He presses mine back.

  A muscled, bearded man with thick curly red hair interrupts us. He sticks out his hand, and I shake it. He introduces himself as Bruce, the owner of the shop. He tells me, “Hiring Dwayne is the smartest thing I’ve done since I opened the door. He’s kinda the godfather of Harleys here in Bryan. None of us could believe he stopped riding for over fifteen years.”

  After we chat with Bruce for a minute, Dwayne tells him he’s going to take me into the shop to introduce me to the mechanics. We walk into the large, noisy space. Smoke hangs in the air from the exhaust pipes.

  The rhythmic beat of rock music pours out of speakers hung on the wall. Motorcycles perch on lifts. The men working on them twist wrenches or drill off bolts with a burst of sound. Over the sound of the music and the tools, the mechanics laugh and shout at each other. We visited Harley mechanics during our days of working together before we were married. Now Dwayne will be working with them every day.

  Raising his voice to be heard over the noise, Dwayne says, “I’ve known some of these guys since high school. I rode with most of the young guys’ fathers.”

  One of the mechanics spots us and walks over to us. “Hey, I’m Wild Bill. I sure am glad to meet you. Dwayne told us all about you yesterday.” He sticks out one hand, and tattoos curl around his muscled arm.

  I shake his hand, and Bill yells at the other mechanics to come meet me. “Y’all come over and meet Dwayne’s Mary.”

  SHOVELHEAD

  On a July Sunday morning, Dwayne shoves his Thrifty Nickel paper toward me. “Look, baby, a 1980 FLT for only one thousand dollars!” We are sitting at the kitchen table and drinking our morning coffee. I am writing my community events calendar for the morning news at the Bryan television station, where I now work.

  I peer at the tiny, blurry black-and-white picture of a motorcycle. “Is that a good deal?”

  “It’s a shovelhead!”

  I am not aware of the unique features of shovelhead Harleys. He grabs one of my pencils, and in the margin of the paper, he draws a shovelhead engine as he describes its unique components. The defining feature is the top of the motor shaped like an overturned shovel blade. The shovel-shaped head brings more air into the motor. More oxygen increases the power of the motorcycle.

  “After we get through with it, it will be fast as hell,” he assures me. I will be his Harley mechanic apprentice. My experiences with him as his work assistant have helped us develop a rhythm of working side by side. I only hope I can learn about Harley motors.

  Dwayne quickly calls the number in the paper. He worries that such a good
deal will evaporate if we don’t jump on it quickly. We climb into his old Chevy pickup and drive out into the country where the man lives.

  Hounds bark and jump wildly about our truck when we pull into the driveway of an old farmhouse badly in need of paint. An older man with a ring of white hair on his bald head comes out onto the porch. Dwayne and the man shake hands and exchange the usual Bryan greeting, which consists of establishing who your family is and where it fits into the social structure of the town. Bill is a fourth cousin of the guy Dwayne worked for ten years ago.

  We walk through the high grass of the yard toward a large garage in the back. The garage is freshly painted bright blue, and as he swings open the door, I notice the spotlessly clean concrete floor and tools hung in neat rows around the room. Dwayne and Bill go to the corner of the room, and Bill pulls the canvas tarp off a large lump in the corner. It is the Harley. It is mostly red, and rust flakes off the chrome parts. Since this is an FLT, the motorcycle is a Harley bagger, which means it has metal saddlebags attached to the rear fender and a plastic curved front section called a fairing with a large windshield now cracked and yellow.

  Dwayne squats down by the motorcycle and lays a reverent hand on the inverted pyramid of the motor. He looks at me, and I smile. We are going to buy the Harley.

  Bill points to the Harley. “I bought that Harley when it was brand new. It was my first one.”

  “I’ve had over twenty Harleys. I haven’t ridden since 1982, when my daughter was born—fifteen years now.” Dwayne reaches out and draws me into their conversation by taking my hand and gently pulling me toward him. “My wife, Mary, and I are going to buy and build this one together. We made a promise on our wedding day to buy one.”

  “My wife is making me sell it,” Bill says.

  Dwayne and Bill shake hands on the selling price. Bill digs through a cardboard box at his kitchen table and finds the title. He signs it and hands it to Dwayne, who signs as the buyer of a 1980 Harley-Davidson FLHT. Dwayne insists I sign below his name, since we own this motorcycle together.

  We load the Harley into the back of our truck and take it home. Dwayne puts the ramp against the tailgate, and I straddle the seat and roll it down the ramp. He guides it as it glides into the garage. It is my first time on a Harley since I rode on the back of one with a high school boyfriend.

  For the rest of the day, we peel off parts of the motorcycle that will need to be painted or to be replaced. Dwayne rips off the useless windshield and throws it in the corner. He tells me that the guy who sold him his first Harley had to tear off the windshield for him. “I couldn’t see over it, since I was thirteen and too short.”

  As I fix dinner that evening, he sits at the table with his drawing pad and sketches out the design for the finished motorcycle. He skillfully lines up the shape of the new gas tank and with a ruler aligns each angle of the frame to fit his new vision. He draws and tells stories of his Harleys over the years: the 1953 Panhead he rode during a freezing December from Washington State to Buffalo, New York; the first Shovelhead he owned; and the FLHT his second wife made him sell—one just like our new bagger.

  Over the next weeks, we transform the shovelhead from a dusty wreck to the custom chopper Dwayne always saw beneath the outer shell. I learn how to remove a Harley motor and then to take apart each piece of it. Dwayne patiently explains how each part works together to be a unique Harley V-twin engine. He tells me the V shape allows the large, powerful engine to fit in a small space.

  My hands soon match his. My fingernails are cracked, and grease packs into every crevice of my hands and arms. I go to sleep at night with phrases like spark plug gap, derby covers, and cylinders running through my head.

  His Harley mechanic buddies begin to hang out in our garage on Sundays to watch the transformation. Leaning against the wall with coffee cups in their hands, they offer occasional suggestions and praise. Most of the time Dwayne and I are alone together working side by side.

  As the true Harley expert, he does the major mechanical work. He talks through each step of the process. He wants me to understand what he is doing. He says this will come in handy when I have my own Harley to build. His strong, muscled hands, scarred by years of slipped wrenches and screwdrivers, assemble the random pieces into a rebuilt motor.

  I specialize in rewiring the headlights and turn signals. Using the Harley manual, I memorize the electrical circuit charts. It proves to be more difficult than deconstructing a Shakespeare play for students. Sometimes I sit in my lawn chair nearby and polish an endless pile of pitted chrome pieces.

  Finally, four months later, we gaze in pride at our Harley-Davidson shovelhead motorcycle. Its ebony paint and the silver steel of the engine gleam in the fluorescent lights. Dwayne rolls the Harley into the driveway and prepares to fire it up.

  “Baby, this is the moment we’ve been working for. When we know if the engine we built will fire up.”

  I give him a thumbs-up. “Turn the key!”

  He turns the barrel key in the ignition on the gas tank and then pushes the starter button on the right handlebar. It starts. The motor rumbles in the morning air, and the signature potato, potato sound fills the air.

  Dwayne places his hand on the throbbing gas tank. “Damn, she sounds good.”

  After the engine warms, Dwayne throws his leg over the seat and rolls the throttle forward. The motor roars. He takes it off the kickstand and skids forward slightly. I step up on the passenger peg on the rear wheel and slither my right leg behind him. I settle onto my part of the seat. He pushes backward until his spine is pressed against me. I wrap my arms around his slim waist. He lifts his feet and shifts it into first gear. We take off in a shower of gravel.

  I feel the vibration of a Harley motor through my feet and thighs for the first time since I was seventeen. I bounce slightly with the bump of the tires on the gravel. As we pull onto the paved road, he increases the acceleration and gradually shifts up to fourth gear. At sixty-five miles per hour, I release my hold on Dwayne and swing my arms straight out. I close my eyes. I fly through the rushing air around me. Dwayne reaches back and lays his forearm on my leg. The fingers of his left hand curl over my knee. We speed down the highway joined together.

  FATHERS AND DAUGHTERS

  The stinging drops of water bounce off the metal surface of the motorcycle and the asphalt pavement. The wetness creeps up my jeans under my leather chaps. Dwayne and I sit in the middle of his friends and coworkers with the rain pouring down on us and our Harley. The Santa hat I wore for the Christmas parade now hangs dripping down my shoulder.

  Bruce thought it was a great idea to have all of his employees and their friends on motorcycles riding down College Avenue as part of the parade. The persistent thunderstorm has now ruined the holiday feeling for all of us.

  I lean forward and whisper in Dwayne’s ear, “How much farther is it to the end?”

  “Too damn far. A hot motor and wet underwear are not a good combination.” He rolls the throttle slightly. The motor complains with a damp putt putt sound. Around us the other motorcycles stutter and mutter in the heavy fall of water.

  Suddenly our friend Pete rolls up beside us. “This old man is wet and tired. I need a damn beer.” Doris, on the back of his motorcycle, and I look at each other. Her red-and-green bandana has slid down over the top of eyes. She peers out at the rain with mascara lines running down her cheeks. I laugh at the sight of her and know I look just as hopeless. She giggles and then laughs out loud. Water drips off the end of my nose.

  Dwayne and Pete say in unison, “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  With a roar and a splash, we curve out of the line of motorcycles. The hot wind from the exhaust pipes shoots water onto the wheels. My legs become even more soaked with water. Behind me I hear Pete’s motorcycle. Then one by one each of our friends joins us. We roll into the parking lot of a nearby bar. With military precision we back into spaces one after the other.

  As our shovelhead tilts into the
kickstand, Dwayne stands up to let me slide from behind him. My leather chaps pull away from the wet seat with a squish. I set my left foot on the pavement and into a water puddle. I hop sideways until my right leg edges off the back of the Harley.

  Dwayne slings his arm around my shoulders and pulls himself off the bike. “How do you like the Harley life now, baby?” Water drips off his mustache. We grin at each other, and raindrops blast us.

  Thirty wet bikers march into the bar. The hostess yells at a bus boy to bring a mop. We stand in the entryway and strip off our leather chaps, boots, and vests. A waitress brings us chairs, and leather soon drapes over them in a ghostly, black, dripping parade. The bus boy vigorously mops up the flood.

  Pete yells, “Beers for everyone. We’ll be back in a minute.”

  We slosh our way into the restrooms. I peel off my T-shirt, jeans, and socks. In my underwear I hold each one under the hot air hand dryer. I take my three minutes of drying time and begin drying myself off with the rolls of paper towels someone brought in their saddlebags. We all agree she is a genius.

  Back in my warm, damp clothes, I walk back to the table where Dwayne and Pete are sitting. Doris walks behind me as we weave among the crowded tables. We sit and watch the rain glide down the window while we drink and talk.

  I look at the clock over the bar and see that it is almost six o’clock. I need to call Stephanie to let her know we’re waiting for the rain to end or to at least let up before heading home. She invited her boyfriend, John, to the house while we rode in the parade. They were going to watch the parade on TV and then eat dinner with us.

  Dwayne and I are glad that she has made some friends and found John. The move to Bryan the summer before her senior year meant she had to find new friends—never easy for any teenager. Now she has graduated from high school and has a job at a loan company owned by one of Dwayne’s friends.