Dirt Bike Runaway

by Matt Christopher

  Sick with despair, Peter lifted the bike upright, turned it around to face the direction of the street, and got back on it. What was Giff going to say when he saw the damage? Would he have it repaired, regardless of the cost? Or would he be so sore that he’d change his mind about Peter’s racing in Saturday’s motocross?

  Clamping his lips hard together, Peter started the bike and rode ahead, wishing now that he had not listened to Giff. He should have gone on to Fort Myers as he had planned to do in the first place.

  10

  It was D.C. who first saw him as he entered the kitchen door. Her eyes lowered immediately to his pants, where smudges of dirt covered his knees and his right thigh.

  “What in the world happened to you?” she said, incredulous. “You look like you were in a smashup.”

  “I was,” he said, closing the door behind him. “Is Giff still in his room?”

  “I think so. But —”

  “I tried to keep from running over a stupid armadillo,” he started to explain. “Instead, I ran into him and lost control of the bike. It was dumb.”

  Her eyebrows arched. “Armadillo?”

  “Right. Dumb,” he repeated.

  “If you say so,” she said, and turned slowly around and walked away.

  He watched her back a minute and had it on the tip of his tongue to explain to her why he had run into the stupid animal, why he had accelerated the bike, causing him to run into it. But he was afraid it would sound like a poor excuse to her. And anyway, why should she care?

  He wiped his shoes off on the mat and went upstairs. The door to Giff’s room was closed.

  He knocked on it.

  “Come in,” said Giff’s voice.

  Peter opened the door and stepped into the room. Giff turned away from his desk, looked at Peter, then at the dirt smudges on his pants.

  “Oh, no!” he exclaimed. “What happened, Pete? You get into an accident?”

  Peter sat down on the edge of the bed and told him, starting from the minute he had heard the sound of the two bikes.

  Giff listened intently, his eyes darkening at the mention of Dex’s and Jess’s names. When Peter was finished he got up, and Peter could see the book of stamps on the desk, the loose stamps that lay beside it. Giff must have thousands of them, he thought.

  “Damn his guts,” Giff swore as he brushed past Peter and out of the door.

  Peter got up and followed him down the stairs and outside to the driveway, where he had left the Muni parked on its kick stand. Giff drew up beside it, looked at its bent fender and fork and damaged headlight, then walked around it, looking for other signs of damage.

  “That’s it,” said Peter. “And some scratches. You want to call the cops?” The words had barely left his mouth when he realized what that might mean. “I don’t want to press charges.”

  “Right. So forget the cops. We’ll fix it up, Pete. You’re going to ride her in Saturday’s moto. Okay?”

  A smile spread from ear to ear on Peter’s face. He hadn’t expected Giff to say that.

  “Okay!” he cried, jubilant.

  Giff’s insurance on the Muni, covering collision, took care of most of the repair that Giff had to spend on it.

  Peter fixed the bike himself, buying the needed parts from Max’s Motorbike and Parts Store. It took him till Wednesday evening to finish it. Then, on Thursday morning, he and Giff rode out to the Bumble Bee Speedway to try out the Muni.

  D.C. went with them, driving her blue YZ 125 Yamaha and wearing her bright-red satiny suit and polished leather boots.

  Peter had secretly wished that she would go along with them, but had not said anything because, deep inside, he was too shy. But Giff had invited her, and she had glanced at Peter and said she’d be glad to go if he didn’t mind. Mind? Was she crazy? Of course he didn’t mind. Anyway, she had quickly gotten into her gear, hopped onto her bike, and ridden along.

  There was a fee to get on the track, and Giff paid it for all three of them.

  They lined up at the starting line as they would in a real race. Then Giff took off first, and Peter and D.C. a second later. They zoomed up the hill, D.C. gaining a quick lead and reaching the summit first.

  She was ahead by about five lengths by the time Peter and Giff were at the bottom of the hill, the long, level stretch straight ahead of them. Then Giff streaked ahead of Peter, and Peter gunned it, too, catching up to him, then slowly edging past him.

  He could see D.C. rounding the curve ahead and then executing the jump gracefully. He and Giff came upon the jump-hill simultaneously, and for a split second he and the bike were airborne, his body — except for his hands gripping the handlebars — entirely free of the bike.

  The rear wheel of the Muni hit the ground first, and a second later the front wheel hit the ground, too. Peter landed hard on the seat and bounced up again as the wheels rolled and bounded and thundered down the track. The suspension forks were getting a workout that they had not had, Peter was sure, in a long time.

  The three of them completed a run around the 1.3-mile track, no one pressing his or her machine to its limit, but all riding as if to acquaint themselves again with the curves, the berms, and the jump-hills.

  Peter was pleased with the performance of the Muni, and by the third time he’d circled the track he gunned the engine to really see what the machine could do.

  He passed D.C. going down the stretch after making the sharp turn at the finish line, and couldn’t help smiling when he saw her head turn his way.

  He was about two lengths ahead of her when, from the corner of his eye, he saw her creeping back up beside him. He slowed briefly as he approached the jump-hill. There was no use running any risks now by taking the hill as fast as the Muni could go, he thought. But D.C. seemed to be oblivious to risks. She zipped by him just as they reached the peak, landed before he did, and was back in the lead.

  He tried to catch up to her again, but during the next two laps she didn’t relinquish her lead to him by more than the length of a bike, and at times, she even led him by about three lengths.

  He was surprised, and amused, by her valiant driving. Never before had he seen a girl drive a bike as well as she. He knew now that she was indeed a competitor, a factor he had scarcely considered before.

  They ran a few more laps; then Giff slowed down at the finish line, pulled up to the side, and stopped. D.C. slowed up and stopped beside him, and Peter pulled up beside her.

  “Well,” Giff said as he looked at Peter through his visor, “how does the baby run?”

  “Fine. I think I’ll check the nuts and bolts when we get back, though. The rough drive might’ve loosened them up.”

  Peter glanced at D.C. and saw that the legs of her satiny crimson uniform were covered with dirt. He smiled and wondered if she’d wash the uniform before she’d trial-run, or race, the Yamaha again.

  “Peter?”

  He looked up at her eyes, which he was scarcely able to see through the visor of her helmet. “Yes?”

  “I’m sorry about the way I acted toward you in the beginning. I was dumb. Giff told me everything. I hope you’ll forgive me.”

  Her voice was soft, sincere. Peter knew she meant every word. His heart warmed, and began to pound. “There’s nothing to forgive, D.C.,” he said, his voice catching in his throat for a second. “But I’m glad. Thanks.”

  He turned and looked at Giff. Giff smiled at him and winked. “Hey, think the Muni will be set to go Saturday?” Giff asked, his voice booming.

  Peter grinned. “I guarantee it!” he cried, jubilant.

  “Great!” Then Giff goosed the engine of his bike gently and started to lead the way back toward home. D.C. followed, riding up close beside him, and Peter rode up next to her. Somehow, Peter thought without glancing again at her, even a dirty uniform looked good on her.

  Back at the garage he found that some of the nuts and bolts on the Muni had loosened slightly from the hard, jarring ride, and he tightened them.

  A
fter lunch they washed, cleaned, and polished their bikes, then gassed them up at the local gas station.

  It was about three o’clock when Peter, wishing he could do something around the place to help pay for his room and board, saw that the lawn could stand a mowing. Without mentioning it to Giff, or to Mrs. MacKenzie for that matter, he went out, got the lawnmower out of the utility building behind the garage, filled it with gasoline from a two-gallon metal container, and proceeded to mow the lawn.

  The sun was lost behind a gray, overcast sky, and the day was hot and humid, causing the shirt to stick to his back. He took it off and laid it over a corner post of the porch steps, then continued to mow the lawn till he was finished. It wasn’t a very big lawn, and he didn’t think he had spent more than fifteen or twenty minutes mowing it.

  What else could he do? He just couldn’t sit around all the time. He liked to draw cartoons, but he wouldn’t look busy sitting in the living room, drawing crazy pictures. Doing that was fun, not work.

  He gazed at the shrubbery and at the sea grapes that grew along the back fence with a bed of huge, brown, dried leaves lying beneath them. Though the MacKenzies kept a clean backyard — and front yard, too — it looked as if the fallen leaves had gotten ahead of them.

  He went back to the utility shed, carried out one of the two garbage cans sitting in there, and piled the dried leaves into it. Then he stood back, studied the growth of sea grapes, and saw where he could improve their looks by a snip here and a snip there. Whistling softly through his teeth, he ran back to the shed, found a pair of shrubbery clippers, and went to work.

  He didn’t stop with the sea grapes. He trimmed the hibiscus plant, too, and some of the other plants that he couldn’t identify by name. He had done the same for the Bentleys, except that he found doing the job here was much easier.

  Why had he found it so hard to do it for them and not for the MacKenzies? he thought. Why had he always felt that he had to ask the Bentleys if he could trim their plants? Ask if he could mow their lawn? Yet feel free to go ahead and do those things here without asking?

  He was almost done when he heard a car drive up into the driveway and recognized the rasping sound of Mr. MacKenzie’s Buick. Maybe he’d let me work on it someday, Peter thought. Smooth it up for him.

  He was still out there when he heard the back door open and close and heard Mr. MacKenzie’s voice addressing him. He turned from the plant he was working on and saw the tall, broad-shouldered man come down the steps and head toward him.

  He must be around 220 pounds, Peter guessed, and hardly any of it fat. He jogged every morning before breakfast — three miles down alongside the canal, three miles back — and played golf twice a week. “If he didn’t do those things he’d go up to two-fifty,” Giff had said.

  “Hi, Peter,” Mr. MacKenzie greeted him, tiny wrinkles forming at the corners of his dark brown eyes as he smiled. “How are you doing?”

  “Just fine, sir, I think,” replied Peter.

  The man’s black eyebrows stood out like rolled-up shades as he bit into an apple he was holding in his left hand. Suddenly he made a motion with his other hand, and Peter saw something come floating through the air at him.

  “Catch,” Mr. MacKenzie said.

  It was another apple. Peter dropped the clippers and caught the apple, a large, shiny red one.

  “Thanks,” he said, and sank his teeth into its sweet, juicy pulp.

  “Did a nice job,” Mr. MacKenzie observed, looking over the plants that Peter had trimmed. “Do you like that kind of work?”

  Peter shrugged. “I don’t mind it. I did a lot of it for the Bentleys.”

  “They appreciated it, I’m sure.”

  “I suppose they did,” said Peter.

  “Didn’t they say so?”

  “Once.”

  “Well …” Mr. MacKenzie smiled. “Once is better than never.”

  He took another bite of the apple, looked at it while he chewed, then shot his eyes back to Peter. “You don’t aim to go back to them?”

  “No, I don’t.” Peter didn’t flinch a bit from Mr. MacKenzie’s cool, appraising gaze.

  “You’re sure?”

  “I could never go back there, Mr. MacKenzie,” Peter replied seriously. “Not as long as their son lives with them, anyway.”

  “What about them? Mr. and Mrs. Bentley?”

  Peter shrugged. “They’re okay.”

  “Did you get very close to them? I mean — did you get to like them very much, and did they like you?”

  Peter hesitated. The big man was looking at him intently, waiting for him to answer. “I don’t know,” he said. “I’m not sure about that.”

  Mr. MacKenzie’s face seemed to relax. He looked at the apple in his hand again, took another bite of it, then glanced around once more at the work Peter had done.

  “Look, Peter,” he said calmly, “it seems to me that you’ve done plenty for one day. Why don’t you clean up now and come into the house? Okay?”

  “Okay.” He was nearly finished anyway, he thought. He’d do the rest tomorrow.

  11

  Nobody seemed surprised when the name of the winner of the first twenty-minute heat, run Saturday at the Bumble Bee Speedway, was announced.

  Dex Pasini had won it by four bike lengths.

  “Well, he did it again,” D.C. said, taking off her helmet and wiping her sweating forehead with the palm of her hand. Then she shook her head, letting her hair cascade down over her shoulders, where the sunlight flashed onto it.

  “Yeah. But he won’t always be so lucky,” said Peter, hanging his orange helmet over a handlebar of the Muni and wiping his own sweating face with a handkerchief. He was hot and uncomfortable under the orange uniform that Giff had let him borrow, even after having unzipped it. And his feet seemed to be burning inside the short leather boots in spite of the sweat socks. But he wasn’t going to complain. Being with the MacKenzies was paradise compared with The Good Spirit Home or the Bentleys, or even living in Fort Myers, where he’d be a total stranger.

  He had finished in fifth place in the heat, and D.C. in sixth. Giff, who had finished in third place, now stood beside his bike, mopping his face and forehead with a red, oversized handkerchief.

  “Maybe not,” Giff said. “But how long is it going to be before somebody breaks his lucky streak?”

  Peter shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe it’ll happen in the next heat,” he replied, grinning.

  He didn’t want to say what he thought — because Giff and D.C. might think he was too cocksure if he did — but he felt that he had a good chance himself of beating Dex. Twice during the heat he had come within two bike lengths of Dex, only to lose ground — once at a sharp turn, the second time at a jump-hill. The next heat could be a different ride altogether.

  The three of them strode over to the concession stand, where they each had a Coke while they waited for the second heat to start.

  Promptly at two o’clock, the gun went off and the second heat was on.

  A green-tanked Husky 125 bolted over the dropped gate first. Giff was second and Dex third, followed by the rest of the fifteen riders. Four of the original nineteen had to drop out for various reasons — mainly engine troubles.

  Only one biker failed to make the first hill on the initial try. He lost his balance and fell over backwards, miraculously escaping being hit by another bike. By the time he got up, scrambled to his vehicle, and got it moving again, he was about fifty yards behind the next rider.

  Peter, ninth behind the leader — the Husky 125 — saw the green-tanked machine execute the first jump-hill with the ease of a bird. Giff was next, and then Dex. A Derbi 125, No. 38, was fourth; Jess Kutter, No. 123, was fifth. D.C. was seventh.

  In seconds Peter was approaching the jump-hill, too. Then he was soaring over it, his hands steel-tight on the handlebars as he stood tense and anxious during that brief flight in midair till the wheels hit.

  His rear end came down and made contact with the seat.
He held on, thoroughly in control, and in seconds had the bike breezing over the track again.

  The washboard ride came up next, jarring every bone in his body, and he was thankful for a few moments of respite when the track smoothed out so that he could find a line and stay on it, even if it was for only a short while.

  The first lap ended with a few changes in the front runners. Dex was now in the lead, the Husky was second, and the Derbi was third. Peter was still ninth or tenth, he wasn’t sure which. By the third lap he gave up trying to keep track of his position. He wasn’t even sure who was leading now. He was just interested in passing the bike in front of him, and then the one in front of that.

  But by the end often minutes, he saw that he was sixth behind the leader. They were all bunched up in front of him. On the previous lap he had passed D.C. and figured that she was now in about seventh place. Or even farther back if she wasn’t able to hold it.

  Twice during the next four minutes Peter lost ground and fell back into eighth position, and didn’t see D.C. But going into the final seconds he was again near the front of the pack. Dex was leading; No. 101 was in second position, Giff in third, Jess in fourth, and Peter in fifth.

  Peter crept ahead, knowing it would feel good to let Jess Kutter see his tail for awhile. He had been looking at Jess’s long enough.

  He inched forward — only a few seconds were left now — and ahead of them a jump-hill was coming up fast.

  Then he was ahead of Jess and widening the gap between them. Eat my dust for a change, Jess, ol’ kid! he cried exultantly to himself.

  Then, out of the corner of his left eye, Peter saw the front wheel of Jess’s bike turn toward him. Surprised, Peter turned to get a better view of Jess’s bike and saw that it was headed toward him.

  A rush of panic sent chills down his spine. What did Jess think he was doing?

  Peter reverted his attention back to the track ahead, turned the wheel of his bike slightly, and goosed the engine to demand more speed out of the Muni. But Jess was too close to him, and suddenly the front wheel of his bike touched the back fender of Peter’s.