She Rode a Harley

by Mary Jane Black

  Now I have arrived with two gay women on Hondas, and C.C., with her size and confidence, always draws attention. Suddenly a blast of reverberation rattles through the bridge. All bikers love to roll their throttle forward to create a boom of noise on bridges and in tunnels. I roll my throttle forward while holding the brake, adding my roar to theirs. People in cars on our left wave and take pictures.

  I survey the long stream of women on motorcycles ahead of me and think how far I’ve come since I married Dwayne five years ago. He told me I would make a million new friends when I rode a Harley. I thought they’d be Dwayne’s biker friends, but now I have my own circle of motorcycle friends.

  Ahead of me I see someone near the front stick their left hand in the air. They swing it back and forth to tell us we are turning left. The gesture is repeated down the line of motorcycles. Two by two the riders and motorcycles lean through the turn while one woman on a motorcycle stops traffic at a stop sign. The smooth movement of the women resembles a snake undulating through the corner until we are all on the freeway. The woman stopping traffic blasts by us on the left to take her place again at the head of the line.

  We ride on freeways and side roads until we come to a ramshackle restaurant and bar at the edge of a muddy river. The wooden building leans slightly to the left. Paint peels off in strips. With precision we park and back up against the curbs on both sides of the narrow paved road. Some women pull into the parking lot of the church across the street.

  Gail and I push ourselves off our motorcycles. C.C. joins us. She jerks off her bandana, and her hair springs up into its usual bristly form. She takes Gail’s hand and walks toward the bar.

  The darkness inside the bar makes us blink after the glare of the sun. Tangled strands of hair hang down in my eyes. I pull them back into a ponytail. I haven’t worn a head wrap under my helmet today, so my hair has been whipped and tangled by the wind.

  The three of us maneuver our way through the crowd of women until we elbow our way up to the scarred wooden bar. C.C. grabs the harried bartender by the elbow and orders three beers. The noise of the raised voices and a heavy metal song on the jukebox deafen us. We don’t try to talk. We just stand and watch the crowd.

  After an hour, we are tired of watching and are ready to move on. We empty our beer bottles and decide to ride south to the Hell’s Angels party in Oakland, which follows the motorcycle ride. I find one of the women I know and tell her we’ll meet her there. She tells me the men are already there and waiting for us. We swing out of the parking lot and ride in a line down the busy city street.

  Once we’re on the freeway, C.C. shoots into the traffic. I watch her weave through the heavy traffic. I shadow her and hope Gail is close behind us. In traffic like this you are on your own. At times I need to ride the white line and split lanes down the middle of the freeway between the stopped cars.

  Eventually, we pull off the freeway onto a long straight stretch of empty road across the rolling brown hills. C.C. accelerates rapidly. I grab my throttle and speed up beside her. I check the speedometer and see I’m going ninety miles per hour.

  Then I accelerate and move ahead of her. The wind slams into my face. My helmet skates back on my hair from the force. I watch the needle on the speedometer jump past one hundred. I release the throttle and feel my Harley slow down beneath me. My heart bangs against my ribs, and I shove my helmet back in place. I pat my gas tank with appreciation for the ride.

  C.C. rides up beside me and shouts, “Felt fucking good, didn’t it?”

  I grin at her with a thumbs-up.

  Soon we’re pulling into the parking lot of a steel-sided warehouse. Hundreds of newly washed Harleys, shimmering in the setting sun, stand in regimented rows all around us. We find a place for us to park and turn off our engines. I can hear the music drumming inside of the building. Large groups of men in leather vests with the Hell’s Angel skull and wing patches stand around with beers in their hands.

  I search for Dwayne in the crowd. He was riding here with our friend Desmond—the owner of Motor Shop, where we take our scooters for repairs, and a Hell’s Angel himself—and some of Dwayne’s customers and friends from the Harley shop. Finally, I see him wave from where he’s leaning against a truck parked against the building. I wave back. We weave our way around the bikes and bikers between us until we meet.

  We hug each other, and our sun-warmed leather vests press together with a sticky sound. “How was it, baby?” He rubs his whiskered cheek against mine.

  “The ride was sort of boring. I did get to race C.C. a little.”

  He leans back and raises his eyebrows to ask for more details.

  I lay my hand on top of my flattened hair. “I found out my helmet slides back at ninety miles per hour.”

  Dwayne breaks an ironclad biker rule and leans against someone else’s windshield when he bends over laughing. “My teacher wife and now a badass biker. I love you more now than I did on that day in Eureka Springs when we got married.”

  He grabs me and pulls me closer. “I’m damn proud of you, Mary Jane. Some assholes want their wife to stay the same, but your changing only made you a better wife. And riding buddy.”

  I lock my arms around his waist. “All because of you, sweetie.”

  We wade through the crowd to find a beer. Two thirsty bikers who happen to be married to each other.

  BROKEN WING

  As I round a corner on my Road King, a woman on a Honda Goldwing slams into me. I feel a bone-shaking thud on my left leg. I look down at my boot and see the footboard curled around it like a fist. My motorcycle shudders beneath me. I focus on trying to keep it upright and to stop it. I fail at both.

  I see the front wheel lift off the pavement, preparing to somersault backward. I release the handlebars. I swing my left leg over the gas tank, and I dive onto the asphalt below me. I carefully keep myself upright by placing my hands palms down onto the rough surface, feeling the tar and gravel dig into my fingertips. I finally glide to a stop and see my fractured Harley lying on its side to my left.

  I hear Dwayne yelling my name before I see him. He drops to his knees by me. Tears run down his face and drip into his mustache. “Mary. Baby.” His voice cracks on the words. A man I’ve never seen at a loss for words can’t find any.

  I shout at him. “Goddamn it. What the hell just happened?”

  He starts to respond, but I interrupt him. “You need to get my motorcycle off the road. Then you can help me get up. I don’t think I can stand.”

  Around us we hear other motorcycles shutting off, and we see riders working to clear the road before more cars on the road appear. A woman wearing a Honda jacket squats down by us and asks if she can help. I ask her to help Dwayne get my bike off the road and to find out if the other rider is okay.

  Dwayne returns in a few minutes and scoops me up in his strong arms. He leans his forehead against mine and fiercely whispers, “Don’t you fucking die on me.”

  He carries me to the side of the road and sits me down in the warm grass. He helps me take off my helmet and then the bandana beneath it. The wind lifts my sweaty hair and dries the blood on it into a stiff brown mass I can feel with my fingers. Dwayne dabs at a cut on my cheek with his bandana. He grips my knee with his other hand. We both stare at my left foot, which hangs at a strange angle.

  “Can you move it?” He lays a hand on my left knee.

  I try to move my foot upright. A stab of pain shoots up my leg. It doesn’t move. I tell Dwayne he has to take the boot off. He tries to unlace it, but I grab his hand to stop him. A wave of dizziness hits me. My foot throbs with pain.

  He takes out his pocket knife and looks at me. I nod. He saws raggedly through the back of the boot with the sharp knife and then slips it off my foot. The once white sock glistens red in the sun. We agree a doctor will have to remove that.

  Suddenly a large man in a bright blue riding suit marches up to us. “You fucking hit my wife.”

  I feel Dwayne tense beside me. He sta
nds up. “Your fucking wife hit mine,” he replies softly. When Dwayne is the angriest, he becomes very quiet first. He is seldom angry these days, but I know he will always protect me.

  “Hey, both of you! Let’s get the two of us to a hospital, and we’ll worry about blame later.” My teacher’s voice commands the situation.

  Suddenly we hear the whump whump sound of a helicopter landing. We watch one with a red cross on the side land in a nearby field. The rotor wind whips the tall grass. The paramedics jump out before the motor shuts off.

  For the first time, I notice the other rider sitting near a tree to my right. The woman sits and leans slightly against the trunk of the tree. She’s still fully dressed in her riding leathers. The paramedics go to her. I watch them talk. She waves her hands wildly in the air. Her husband turns away from us suddenly and rushes to join them.

  Soon one of the medics walks away and approaches us. The young man in his blue EMS shirt crouches down by me. He gently lifts my left foot. I bite my lip to keep from screaming. Dwayne clutches my hand tightly. Then the medic wraps a tan elastic bandage around my foot and straps it into a splint.

  I feel the nerves and bones protesting the stiff support. Waves of nausea sweep over me. Beads of sweat pop out on my forehead, and Dwayne wipes them away with a gentle hand.

  The young man kneels in front of me. “We can only take one of you in the helicopter. You’re the most critically injured, but the other couple is threatening a lawsuit if we don’t take her.”

  Dwayne starts to answer. I stop him by putting my hand on his arm. “Take her. I’m sure an ambulance and a wrecker are coming soon?”

  He assures me they are. He runs back to his partner. They roll a stretcher to the woman and lift her into the helicopter. The rush of the wind pushes across us as they lift and leave.

  Twenty minutes later an ambulance arrives with a rush of red lights and sirens. Earlier I watched the wrecked motorcycles being boosted onto a trailer. Now it’s my turn to make my way to an emergency room. Dwayne follows us on his motorcycle. I hear the rumble behind us beneath the shrill siren.

  In the emergency room, people in a variety of colored scrubs rush around silently. Curtains around the beds fly open.

  Dwayne sits perched on the side of my bed, rubbing my arm, then my thigh. He strokes my hair. Every five minutes he asks, “Are you okay, baby?”

  Suddenly he stands and leans over me in the bed. “You know what this whole thing made me realize?”

  I shake my head no. I lay my hand over his on my stomach. The joined hands warm me through the thin sheet.

  “I have to die first. I watched you come off that motorcycle and hit the road and knew I couldn’t live if you had been killed.” He leans closer to me. “Don’t you leave me alone. Promise.”

  “I’m never going to leave you.” I try to smile. My cheek aches as the edges of the cut break open again with the effort. “We’ve got to die together, because I couldn’t live without you either.”

  A doctor and a nurse interrupt our talk. I am sent down for x-rays and tests. When I return, Dwayne and I look in amazement at the x-rays on the screen, and the doctor taps them with his pencil. Fragments of bones in my toes gleam white against the black background in the glare of the light. They look like pieces of a jumbled and scattered jigsaw puzzle.

  “Every toe is crushed,” the doctor pronounces. “In fact, the whole foot is shattered. The good news is we can reassemble your foot and hold it in place with a cast. You may need surgery.” He pauses. “You know, sometimes injuries like this require amputation. Somehow your foot has maintained enough integrity to require only a cast.”

  “She rides a big Harley. The footboard wrapped around her foot and protected it. She’s tough.” He strokes my hair with one hand.

  Soon they bind my shattered foot into a bulky white plaster cast. My foot tingles and throbs beneath the surface. A plastic surgeon wearing glasses with a magnifying glass extension sews the cut under my right eye from my broken sunglasses. He assures me when it heals, no one will even see it.

  During my x-rays, Dwayne rushed home on his motorcycle and returned with our car. Someone pushes me outside now in my wheelchair. The darkness around us is split by the bright lights outside the hospital. Dwayne takes both of my hands and pulls me up. I slide into the passenger seat. He swings my legs into the car. We drive home, his right hand on my knee all the way.

  The next morning, we go to the motorcycle shop where my Harley was taken after the accident. The owner and our friend, Desmond, along with his mechanic Mike follow us as Dwayne wheels me in my wheelchair into the workshop. My motorcycle sits on a lift in the center of the floor. The front wheel bends drunkenly toward the floor. Raw metal shines through the gouges and scrapes on the paint. Handlebars twist sharply at an awkward angle.

  Dwayne and Desmond take turns pointing out the damage with admiration for my getting off it alive. I feel tears welling. “Damn it, I love my Police Special. I feel like you two are talking about my injured baby.”

  Mike looks at me. “Yeah, they just don’t understand. If it were my knucklehead, I’d be sobbing out loud.” He pats my shoulder in sympathy.

  Dwayne assures me this just means I get a new Harley, because the insurance company will total it.

  I put my hand up to stop him. “I don’t want a new one. Can’t you fix mine?”

  Desmond and he exchange looks. They shake their heads at my stubbornness and say they can’t. They take turns telling me about how they’ll fix up my new Road King to make it mine too.

  Dwayne lays his hand on mine where it clutches the wheelchair arm. “Hell, we can get you another Police Special Harley if you want.”

  We drive home in silence. The next few weeks I spend the weekdays teaching in a wheelchair and then on crutches. On weekends we visit Harley shops to look at new Road Kings. Eventually the cast is removed, and I wear a stiff black walking boot.

  When the doctor tells me I won’t be able to ride for a year after surgery to repair the nerve damage, I refuse it. Dwayne and I have intense conversations about my riding again and the possibility of another accident. I remind him he always told me I made my own decisions.

  I practice walking without a limp. I sit on Dwayne’s motorcycle and push back the kickstand to get used to doing it with my healing foot. I practice shifting the weight from my tingling left foot to my right in an easy motion. He always watches me from a distance when I am on the Harley. But he keeps quiet.

  One Saturday morning I sit in a rocking chair on the front porch with my foot in its plastic walking boot propped on a wooden chair. Dwayne has ridden off to work after he brought me my coffee and settled me into the chair. I can walk without help now, but he still wants to be sure I’m okay before he leaves.

  Suddenly I hear the pulsating sound of Harley motors approaching. As I watch, I see Desmond, Mike, and Dwayne ride up and back each bike against the curb. I squint and peer into the morning sun at the motorcycle Dwayne parks. It looks just like my wrecked one. I stand up quickly. I balance myself by placing my hand on the railing. Then I walk stiffly down the sidewalk to meet them.

  The three of them stand facing me with their helmets in their hands. All three wear broad smiles on their faces. Dwayne waves his hand toward the motorcycle he parked. “Are you surprised, baby?”

  “What the …” I stammer. I stand by my resurrected Police Special. Its black paint gleams again in the California sunshine. The white of the ghost flames beneath the paint flickers again. “How did you do this?”

  Desmond explains they thoroughly checked the frame to make sure it wasn’t twisted. “We didn’t want no death wobble.”

  Then he tells me that Dwayne enlisted their help to rebuild the motorcycle I loved. That explains the large number of overtime hours Dwayne has been working.

  I wrap my hand around the left grip of the handlebars and lift my right leg. My left leg protests as my weight balances on the mending foot. I push my leg over the shiny black lea
ther seat. I sit quietly on my rebuilt Harley and clench the grips tightly.

  “We ain’t done yet.” I turn to look at Dwayne. He opens up one saddle bag with a snap. He pulls out my black leather vest. He hands it to me. “Look at the back, baby.”

  I clutch the soft leather in my hands and stare at the large Harley-Davidson bar and shield symbol with an eagle patch newly sewn on the back. A few snowy feathers drop from the outstretched amber-and-gold wings of the eagle. I rub my fingers over the silky fabric of the patch. I look at Dwayne.

  “It’s a broken wing patch. When you have an accident and an arm or leg is injured, it’s traditional to wear it on your vest. You’re one of the broken wing club members now.”

  I reach out my left hand, and he takes it. Desmond and Mike take turns slapping the palm of my right hand in celebration. We plan my first ride on the motorcycle in a few weeks, and I will wear my broken wing vest. I am back on the road again.

  THE BREADWINNER

  My mentor professor slips my blue-and-white-striped hood over my head with its silky fabric lying against my neck. I move forward on the stage, and behind me, my two teacher friends Thomasine and Stephanie also receive their Master’s hoods from him. They join me, and we walk together down our row of seats. We turn to search the crowd for our husbands.

  There in the front row of the bleachers I find Dwayne, snapping pictures and waving. Across the grass of the football field, I hear his shouts. “Whoop! Gig ’em.” The Texas A&M Aggie chant of victory.

  I wave back and give him a thumbs-up. A flash of memory comes to me. When I graduated with my undergraduate degree, I invited my mom. Tom stood by her with his arms crossed and a scowl on his face. He refused to go to dinner and told her to go home when we left the ceremony.