Chapter 2: Hell and Angels

IT TOOK LONGER to get the bike put back together than it did to take it apart. Dad told me it would. I just knew he wanted to get in there and ‘help,’ but he had to go to work first thing in the morning. I was determined to get it all put together before he got home.

You see, I’m not really a mechanical genius. I could probably find the plug on the oil pan and change the oil in the car if I had to. I’d had to check the oil and the filter in the Falcon. But Dad was content to know I could change the oil and a tire. He’d gotten all the stuff that fathers do with their sons out of the way when Deborah was born. She could disassemble and reassemble a car. Literally.

I guess she was about sixteen or seventeen when he called home from work and said he had a new water pump for our car. I think it was a 1950 Studebaker Champion or something. He told Deborah to remove the old pump and he’d install the new one when he got home, so we could leave on vacation in the morning. Deborah laid out a big tarp in front of the car and started at the grill, disassembling everything until she got back to the water pump. When Dad got home, all the parts were laid out on the tarp in the order she took them off. He installed the water pump and Deborah put all the parts back on the car. She still did all her own maintenance on her car and I was pretty sure Cameron would get more experience as a mechanic than as a photographer. I don’t know. Maybe as her Uncle Nate, I’d give my little niece a camera for her tenth birthday.

I took after the more domestic arts, if you count photography as a domestic art. Anyway, I was determined to get the bike put back together before Dad got off work. And I managed it. Barely. I was still struggling with the chain because I failed to load it on the rear sprocket before I put the wheel back on.

“Does it work?” Dad asked.

“I think so. The wheels turn. I was just going to test it out.”

“Let me adjust the seat for you. You’ve grown since your last bike. Longer legs than you used to have,” he said.

I agreed. I recognized the tone of voice. He really wanted to be a part of getting my bike ready. We set the post and he held the back of the bike between his legs and adjusted the seat as I stood on the pedals. I rode out to the street and back.

“I think an inch lower would be more comfortable,” I said. “Maybe I haven’t grown quite as much as you thought.”

He reset the seat and tightened the bolt holding it in place.

“Let me see if I can ride it,” he said. I handed the bike to him and he mounted, wobbling all over everyplace until he got to the end of the drive and then he dismounted and walked it back. “They lied,” he said.

“Who?”

“All the people who said you never forget how to ride a bicycle. I forgot!”

“How about all the people who say something is as easy as falling off a bicycle?” I asked.

“I think they had it right,” he laughed. He went into the house to get cleaned up. I picked up the tools and put them all away, folding up the corrugated cardboard I’d used as a work space. When I finished, only my bicycle and the car were left in the driveway.

No time like the present. I ran in the house to get my camera and stuck my head in Mom’s office.

“I’m going to test drive my bicycle,” I said. “Won’t be gone long.”

“Okay, dear. Don’t get lost.”

I wondered where there was a place I could get lost around here.

I took a spin around the town, just to get more familiar with the half dozen streets. I took a few pictures of the churches and the school and Main Street. Then I headed out of town on the highway. There was a good wide paved shoulder on the highway out of town, so it was a smooth ride. The freshly greased sprocket and chain worked okay. Maybe a new chain would be a good idea, but it worked fine for now.

I pumped hard to see how fast I could get it going. It wasn’t that fast. It had no extra gears to shift into and this old bike just had coaster brakes. The bike I’d looked at in the Sears catalog was a Spyder with a banana seat, raised handle bars, three-speed, and hand caliper brakes. Just as well. The more I thought about it, the more childish that bike seemed.

I was lost in my thoughts when I heard the roar of a motorcycle coming up on me. I coasted and made sure I was well off the road.

“Hey, kid!” the rider of the lead bike said. I saw there were two others with him. He throttled down to match my speed. It was no good trying to ignore him. “Nice new bike. Be a shame if it were to get all scratched up.”

The girl riding behind him giggled. She started to reach out to give me a shove and I had to think fast.

“It’s not new. It’s really an old bike. I just sanded it down and spray-painted it.”

The rider slapped his girlfriend’s hand down.

“No kidding? You did that paint job yourself?”

“Yeah. It was really in crappy condition. I’d rather not have to do it over.”

The motorcycles sped up and pulled off on the shoulder ahead of me. Crap! There was no sense in turning around and running. They could easily catch me. I was at least a mile out of town. The guy put his stand down and waited for me to come up behind them. He just raised his hand and I stopped. I’d had experiences with gangs in Calumet City at school. It was usually better to just let them have what they wanted. I didn’t have any money on me and hated the idea of losing my camera, but what could I do. As Dad would say, “Better your camera than your eyes.” The guy walked around my bike looking closely at it.

“This is some nice work. Could you do a paint job like this on a motorcycle?” he asked. His girlfriend was walking around me, too, and reached out to stroke the cross bar between my legs. I kind of stiffened.

“Smooth,” she said. She shook her head and her blonde hair flipped around her shoulders. I didn’t think she could really be that blonde.

“I guess anybody could do this. It just takes some sandpaper and paint. Motorcycle, though, should probably have automotive paint. This is just a can of Rust-Oleum. I’ve never worked with automotive paint.”

“Yeah. Paint’s paint. Come up here and take a look at my bike.” I kicked the stand down and walked up to his bike. The whole left side of it was scratched up. I whistled.

“What do you think? Could you sand and repaint this?” I started to answer and noticed his girlfriend turn my bike around and ride back toward town.

“Hey!”

“Don’t worry. She won’t hurt it. If she does, I’ll spank her ass. What about this?”

I examined the scratches closely.

“A couple of these are pretty deep,” I said. “I could probably sand them down close, but to do a good job, I’d need some filler. Then it’s just a case of tearing the bike down and sanding everything smooth and coating it with new paint.”

“Tearing it down?” he asked.

“Well, you see how the frame gets hidden by the tank here and by the engine back here? You wouldn’t want a new paint job to be everywhere except where these parts come together. I’d need to remove the parts, sand them, paint them, and then reassemble it all.”

“You could do all that without making a mess of the engine and tranny?”

“I could probably get my dad to help. He’s pretty handy with this stuff. Can I take a couple of pictures to show him what we’re up against?”

“Yeah, sure.” It looked like he just noticed my camera, but now that I had pictures of his motorcycle so I could do an estimate, he was less likely to just grab it and go. “Where do you live?”

“Back in Tenbrook. Um ... I just moved into the Methodist parsonage.”

“No kidding? Well, I’ll swing in that way on Sunday afternoon. You can tell me what you think it’ll take. It will probably keep your bicycle looking nice a lot longer.”

I looked up and his girlfriend was standing on the pedals headed toward us as fast as I’d been going. She slammed on the brakes and slid to a stop.

“This old bike could be some serious fun!” she said. She jumped off and put the stand down.

Another motorcycle roared up behind us.

“Warren’s headed out this way,” the rider said.

“Damn pig,” the guy I’d been talking to swore. “Why can’t he just stay in his nice little office and play with his gun? Let’s ride!”

The girl mounted the motorcycle behind her boyfriend and he kicked it to life, followed by the other three bikes. They hadn’t seemed to be interested in me or my bike at all.

“See you Sunday afternoon, kid!” he said as they rode off. I didn’t even get his name.

I rode like hell getting back home. About half a mile toward town, I saw the village police car pulled off to the side of the road.

“Um ... Dad? Could I talk to you for a few minutes? Out in the garage?” I said after dinner. He raised an eyebrow and followed me to the garage.

“Should I cut a switch?” he asked. That was only partly a joke. I’d been on the receiving end of a willow switch a few times.

“Um ... I don’t think so. But I might have a problem. When I was out riding this afternoon, I got stopped by a motorcycle gang.”

“What? Damn it! Moving all the way out here was supposed to get us away from gangs and violence! I’ll call the village constable.”

“No, Dad. Wait. It was a little tense for a minute or two, but we reached a point of um ... respect.”

Dad put a hand on my chin and turned my face left and right.

“You weren’t in a fight.”

“No, sir. They were admiring the bicycle. The guy ... I guess he’s the leader of the pack ... had some damage to the side of his motorcycle. He wanted to know if I could sand and repaint it. But I think the tank, engine, and transmission need to be removed from the frame in order to do a good job painting it. I’m not sure I can do that.”

“You want me to help you?”

“I don’t know if they’ll pay much. They offered to protect my bike from scratches.”

“That’s not enough. You’re talking about a week’s worth of work, son. I wish I could see it.”

“I took pictures. I figure I’ll have to set up my developing stuff in my closet tonight.”

“We need to find a better place for that. What about that room in the basement?” he asked.

“It was really damp down there. I don’t know that I could work there. It would take me days to clean out all the cobwebs and crap in there, too. For now, the closet will work. I’ll have to figure out something better later.”

“Okay. Set up your equipment. If it doesn’t look like it’s too bad, I’ll help with the engine, but you’ll have to do the disassembly yourself. Examine it carefully before you start. In the case of a motorcycle, it would be best to remove things in large chunks, not every wire and sparkplug individually.” He laughed at that and I understood he was referring to Deborah’s removal of the water pump. The story was well-known in our family.

“I think I should get the garage in better shape before I start a project like that, too,” I said. “I’ll work on that after I get the photos developed. Um ... Thanks, Dad.”

“Just do a job that will make us proud, son. And, uh..., it would probably be best not to mention this to your mom. It would break her heart to think we moved clear out here and didn’t escape the gangs.”

I took all my clothes out of my closet and dumped them on my bed. I could probably still sleep there if I shoved them over to one side. Then I set about getting my equipment unpacked. I might be able to develop the negatives in the bathroom if I waited until late at night when everyone was in bed. Then I’d only need to worry about the prints in the closet. Once I got the chemicals mixed and the film in the tank, it wasn’t as sensitive to light. I just needed to keep swishing the handle back and forth.

I didn’t have a table for the enlarger, so I needed to set it up on the floor. Then there was the problem of having a red light. Oh, I had bulbs, but there was no light in the closet. I had to run a trouble light into the closet and then I could plug the enlarger into it as well.

Everyone was long in bed and asleep by the time I started processing the film.

Dad looked at the prints Saturday morning. He said he didn’t have to work because Henry hired high school boys for the weekends. He figured he’d get more hours when school resumed in the fall and felt Henry was giving him a break but didn’t really need him in the summer.

“Well, those look like some pretty deep scratches on the frame and tank. You need to drain the tank and clean it thoroughly. You don’t want any gas fumes when you’re raising sparks sanding,” he said.

“I’m gonna raise sparks?” I asked.

“With scratches as deep as these appear, you’ll need to sand with the disk sander, and strip as much of the paint off as you can, too. The 220-grit paper you used on your bike, followed by steel wool, was adequate for your purpose. But this kind of job will put you into genuine auto body work. You’ll need 1000-grit paper to get this smooth enough to paint. Then you’ll need to prime it all before you begin painting. I’ve got a spray gun in there somewhere. Don’t know where it got packed. You should practice spraying some kind of surface before you start on the bike. It takes a little experience before you learn how to control a nice smooth flow.”

“Will you help me with this, Dad?”

“I’ll show you how. You do the work. Now on the engine, I’ll clean it up and tune it. You reassemble everything. I don’t expect you to be an engine mechanic when you’re learning to be a body mechanic.”

“I didn’t really want to be a mechanic,” I sighed. “Guess it’s not a bad skill to have, though.”

I spent the rest of the day cleaning the garage and putting away as many of Dad’s tools as would fit on the shelves and bench. I found the sprayer. It had never been out of the box.

Dad ... Well, he was an orphan. He knew his brothers and sisters, but his father didn’t consider them suitable to raise his last child. So, he put him in an orphanage. How miserable do your siblings need to be for your father to consider an orphanage a better choice to raise you than your brothers or sisters? My grandmother died when Dad was only three or four years old. My grandfather was gone when Dad was in his early teens.

Anyway, Dad never really owned anything but a few clothes and some old poetry books until he left the orphanage at seventeen. He was kind of obsessed about having stuff. Especially tools. There were a lot of times when he left the refinery on payday that he stopped at Sears to see what was new and great. I think Mom wanted to move clear out here partly for Dad’s sake—to get him away from easy access to tools for sale.

The first person I met who was in my class was Andy. He was handing out bulletins on Sunday morning as people came into the church. I’d been meeting a bunch of people who all were welcoming the new preacher and her family.

“Here,” Andy said, after we’d been introduced. He handed me half the stack of bulletins. “Cover the other door, would you? Usually, one of the older guys handles that side, but he’s not here this morning. Can you handle passing the offering plates? When the preacher says it’s time, you take the plate from the left aisle and I’ll take the right. We have to pass it across the aisle so we catch the people on the other side. Then we walk up to the front when the congregation sings the Doxology. I don’t know if this preacher will pray over the plates while we’re holding them or when she takes them and places them on the altar. Do you know?”

“Most of the places I’ve been take them to the altar, but Mom might change things up. Best to stay loose and go with the flow,” I said, laughing. I took the bulletins. “Talk to you later.”

I knew about this stuff. You don’t have perfect attendance in Sunday School for sixteen years without learning some of it. I walked up the aisle to see if there were any people who came in on that side who hadn’t gotten a bulletin. They thanked me for handing them one. When the service started, I spotted where Andy was sitting and sat on the opposite end of the last row of pews. In the city, the back row was the first to fill. Apparently, the people here wanted to get a closer look at the new preacher.

The service went smoothly. I was happy Mom kept the sermon short, including her own preacher joke at the beginning.

“There was a new preacher assigned to a church out in the country to take over in the middle of winter. He fought through the snow to get to the church, only to find that just one person had showed up for the service. He apologized to the old farmer and said he guessed they’d just cancel the service.