What the Thrush Said

                                                
           Frankie pushed his bicycle uphill, listening as the stream behind the hedge went laughing and gossiping its own way in the other direction.  He knew if he listened carefully he’d decode the ancient language of the water sprites.  The water babble was like a kaleidoscope which, if tumbled ever so carefully, would someday resolve its coloured shards into a stained glass window of magical beauty.  “Listen,” he thought, “someday you’ll understand.” Sunshine warmed Frankie’s face, taking the bite out of the early spring morning.  As the stream gambolled on, a small thrush joined in the conversation.  A short way further up the hill was an old stone church and graveyard.  Frankie’s Dad was there and it was time for them to have a talk.  Dad would understand.

          Arriving at the churchyard gate, Frankie leaned his bike against the wall and removed a pair on hand trimmers from the bag attached to his handlebars.  The grass in the cemetery was still wet and, going to the well-tended headstone, Frankie picked his way trying to keep from soaking his school shoes.

         "I’m here by myself today, Dad.  I’m ditching school and Ma would be angry.  I want talk to you about something that’s more important.” 

 

        As the morning warmed, Frankie worked carefully, weeding and trimming the grass around the stone monument.  He paused and listened, but could no longer hear the stream and thrush.  A breeze stirred, but almost silently, caressing Frankie’s face.

     “Tommy Kennedy brought a dead rat to school yesterday, Dad.  It was dry and stiff.  He took it out of his lunchbox and Mrs Quirk took it away and sent Tommy to detention.  Me too.  Tommy wanted to trade if for my jack-knife, but I wouldn’t.  You know, it’s boring in detention, but better than a spelling lesson.  Besides, I found the rat outside the classroom window.  I’m giving it back to Tommy.  It’s his rat, innit?”

        “Dad, you know that girl I was tellin’ you about, Lizzy Cooley, that girl with long braids and braces on her teeth? Well, she smiled at me as I was going off to detention.  She’s pretty an all, but I don’t understand.  What do girls want?  Do you know?  I’m going to look for her in a little while, when it’s lunchtime at school.  She usually goes home.  It’s not too far from here and I can catch up with her on her way back.  Should I tell her I’ve got Tommy’s rat? Maybe she’d like to see it. Anyhow wish me luck, Dad.  I’ll tell you all about it the next time I come here without Mom.”

          Frankie stood, crossed himself and walked slowly away, turning once as he reached the gate.  Again, a breeze touched his face. Unnoticed, Marie, Frankie’s mother, stood still and silent in the shadow of the arched doorway to the church.  She watched as her son closed the churchyard gate and swung up onto his bike. 

The lane home from the churchyard was downhill.  As he gained momentum, Frankie imagined his bicycle was a swooping dragon.  He and his dragon would incinerate the school! (But only at lunchtime when nobody was there.)  Then something happened.  The world went silent and, in that moment, Frankie again heard the stream prattling on, but he began to understand the water’s language.  It was saying something about Lizzy Cooley.  The thrush agreed.

 

Surfer Girl

          

One summer, when I was ten or eleven,   my pal Scotty and I left home at 3:30 in the morning to begin a 50 mile bike ride to Doheny Beach. When we left home it was pitch black outside except for the stars and our puny lights.   Dogs barked as we passed.  We shared city streets with milkmen, paperboys, and night janitors getting off work.     Outside town,   the road was empty; a river of inky darkness.   Scotty had his bedroll tied between ape hanger handle bars.  Mine was lashed to a pannier rack which weighed as much as a modern bicycle.   We pedalled across the San Gabriel Valley, over the Coast Mountains at La Habra Heights, and rolled down old Route 39 to what was then called “Tin Can Beach,” an unregulated strip of the coast now sanitized as Huntington Beach State Park.  In my imagination,   rogue Japanese submarines lurked just beyond the breakers, ready to lob shells at nearby oil fields.

        Highway 39 was mostly rural, truck farms and orange orchards punctuated by ramshackle hamburger stands and beer joints.  Franchised fast food hadn’t been invented.  Knott’s Berry Farm, now an amusement park, still sold homemade jams from a roadside stand.  Next door, the Hollywood Alligator Farm hid behind a high, gaudily painted, but impenetrable, wooden fence.   I imagined veteran Hollywood alligators in Hawaiian shirts and sunglasses at poolside, sipping Bloody Marys and tanning in the morning sun.

The Korean War was history, but sailors and marines still haunted the ramshackle towns which peppered Highway 101, the north-south corridor along coastal California.   Scotty and I saw our first board surfers that day.  There weren’t many, only a hardy handful.  None wore wetsuits, these being things of the future.   Most of the surfers had fragile varnished balsawood boards.  Some old timers still rode gigantic redwood boards.  I watched a big surfer astride one of these boards gliding down a wind crested comber.  It was like seeing a Rolls Royce on Main Street.  This board, this surfer, were regal to me, royalty from a far different world and life.

We camped that night at Doheny State Beach, pitching our army surplus pup tent on the bluffs behind a thick hedge overlooking the ocean.   We dined haut cuisine, canned beans, cold franks, and chocolate crème biscuits.   Although we went to sleep at sundown, I woke later when a courting couple went laughing by our tent on the path to the sand dunes.  I smelled perfume and heard the familiar clink of long neck beer bottles.   A girl’s baby powder voice cooed,   “Bobby, honey, you didn’t forget the blanket?”   After they passed, I crawled out and stood hugging myself in tee shirt and boxer shorts, a skinny kid shivering in the moonlight.  I thought maybe I’d look where the couple went and,  if I were really lucky,  see a  girl naked. 

Looking down the bluff,   I saw instead huge waves building about three hundred yards off shore.   As each breaker crested, phosphorescent plankton flashed in rippling neon surges of blue-white light running down the wave’s spine for hundreds of yards in each direction.  The surf was alive with colour and light.  I smelled jasmine, bougainvillea, and the salt green Pacific Ocean.   In that lost summer night, that very moment, I knew what I really wanted in life - a surfboard and a girl whose voice sounded like cotton candy. 

 

Long Riders:

Long riders are children of the wind and sky, land-lost sailors who ramble alone or in pairs, strangers where they sleep.  Their bicycles often look like dusty camels borne on strange, ragged wheels.  Their faces are weathered, sunburned and worn.  Ratty road maps protrude from the well-worn pockets of blue jeans home modified to Knickerbocker length.  They grin and sometimes they hear voices in the air.

Seventieth Spring:

Springtime is when an old man’s fancy turns to cycling.   A few months ago I spent a sunny day servicing Ms. Raleigh and her stable mate, Sir Dexter, for the season.  You know my palfrey, Ms. Raleigh.  Sir Dex is an old Specialized cross-bike, built of sturdy chrome moly steel with wheels to withstand pot holes and ruts while fully loaded with groceries.   I should, perhaps, post his photo too.

I’m feeling grateful for this life.  My children, family, and friends are plenty to fill the emptiest cup, but mine holds more.  I am grateful for bicycles and books, kites and music, children, and, yes, for the love of the women who’ve had the grace to walk a few miles in my company.  I am profoundly grateful for a body healthy enough to ride a bicycle, climb a mountain, and paddle a kayak.  This undeserved bounty feels like the grace of God and I am filled with gratitude.  My heart soars and spirit sings.

 A Score for The 17

The Silver Feather Band:

Visualize a lonely, isolated band of forest dwellers living in some niche in pre-historic or post-historic time.  Their world, their very survival is precarious.  They hunt and gather, avoiding all contact with others who may also occupy the forest.  Contact with strangers is fraught with risk of attack, extermination.  They live quietly, without music and unnecessary speech.  Yet, the band is lonely and too small to propagate itself.  They must communicate with others and somehow, without a common language, transmit their peaceful intent. 

The Silver Feather Band has gathered in the mist and ferns along the banks of a pool in a clear running stream.  Water and forest sounds gently caress the velvet darkness of early night.  Insects thrum synchronically.  A few stars glitter in through the forest canopy.  As they wait and listen, they hear the faint sounds of another band approaching the other side of the pond.

The Red Feather Band:

They too are in the same situation.  They need, but fear with good cause, contact with another band.

 *  *  *  * 

A woman from the Silver Feather Band rises and sings a single note.  Her group joins her, fearful, but full of hope.

A man from the Red Feather Band rises and responds.  His group joins him.

The two groups exchange tonal message intending to communicate peace and goodwill, ultimately circling the pool and singing their notes together.  The full moon rises over the forest canopy, occasionally penetrating to the floor.  The singing fades to silence. The forest and water sounds continue.   The insect chorus resumes.

No one knows what will happen next. 

(With thanks to Jared Diamond and his recent The World Until Yesterday.)