I went home Friday dog-faced and hurt.
But woke up with her Saturday morning.
This was a first.
She normally rolls out after the fun stops.
I feel privileged if a woman lets me see her without makeup.
Like I’ve made her shortlist.
I walked into the kitchen to put on coffee.
Picked up my practice mute and trumpet to play on the terrace,
waiting for it to brew.
Applause was new too;
I turned around to find her wearing nothing
but my white dress shirt from last night.
Michael, what happened to your torso?
‘Your dad and I had words.’
‘Well, he had words with me.’
‘How did you get here, Valerie?’
‘I borrowed the housekeeper’s minivan.
It’s better that way.’

She walked over, putting her head on my shoulder.
Started kissing her way down my chest.
Undoing my belt.
I picked her up to carry her back into the bedroom.

Let me make you some breakfast.
I whip up a spinach omelet for her.
She said she feels special with me.
So, what do you want to do?
Valerie smiles…
‘Run away with you.
Somewhere no one will find us
A place we can’t be found.
My parents are in Florida this weekend.
I’m yours until Monday.’

Have you been up to coal mining country?
No one will find us there.
We can pull the seats from your housekeeper’s minivan,
and drive there with the motorcycle.
Cruise the mountain roads by day, camp in the van at night.
She laughed, she’d never been camping.
Daddy booked them in resorts.
Sounded like a crazy adventure,
Why not?

We ransacked my apartment for my comforter, pillows & sleeping bag.
Grabbed snacks, bottles of wine, and some firewood.
We drove for an hour or two.
Pulled into a truck stop for coffee and fuel.
You coming inside?
‘Truck stops are scary.
My dad always made me stay in the car.’
Really?
Truck stops are fun!
You don’t know what you’re missing.
I took several steps before I heard the door open behind me.
We walked in together.
I tell her I’m hitting the men’s room.
By the time I catch back up with her, she has her arms full:
Hoodie, trucker hat, beef jerky, shot glasses, and French ticklers.
‘What’s Shoofly Pie?’
About perfect with coffee – want a cup?
We laugh about her purchases over coffee and pie.
It was good seeing her be herself.
Free of what they told her to be.
She looked like a redneck dream in that trucker hat.
We had become partners in crime.
She trusted me.
We sought freedom on the road together.

I’d been dirt biking in coal country before,
And love the rugged beauty.
Old rusting bits from the boom days,
The black landscape around the mines looks lunar.
Alien stuff for a pair of suburban kids.
I knew a camping spot off the beaten path.

I couldn’t take my eyes off her in that trucker hat.
She turned it backwards as we offloaded the bike.
We kissed as the bike warmed up.
Helmetless, we meandered down gravel access roads,
Soaking up the magic of being in the woods, together.
My 500 might be a street bike,
but it does ok on hard-packed dirt.
We rode back to the van and grabbed our street gear
to hit the pavement.
Today is not about corner speed.
Not about dragging pegs or carrying momentum.
I know doing sketchy shit would ruin everything.
Gotta keep my monsters at bay.
And just be with her.
I keep things mellow.
Route 125 is a narrow ribbon of asphalt
Snaking up and over the mountains.
It cuts through small towns and crossroad villages that time forgot.
Paths laid out long before highway engineers.
Twisty steep grades with hairpin corners,
Mile after mile of rugged beauty.
It’s a crazy piece of a road that’s just for a motorcycle.
My usual pace would be brutal,
I would attack this road with everything,
Shooting apex to apex, either on the throttle or braking.
Shooting that grey ribbon,
Wanting to kill everything in my path,
With my world become narrow.
I’ll keep those urges to push at bay,
I want her to experience the beauty of this place.
For her, I’ll slow my pace.

It’s been a perfect day of two-up riding;
Valerie is a great passenger.
The air gets cooler as the sun sets.
That’s my signal to loop back to our campsite.
I build a fire as she opens the wine.
We talk over the day’s highlights.
The wine flowed as the fun ensued.
We lay together after, skin on skin,
under the blankets in the back of the minivan.
The van’s sliding door made a great view of our fire.
The smell of autumn, burning wood, and her.
I couldn’t imagine life being more perfect.

Nothing like a Sunday morning to bring you back to reality.
I snuck out of her body hug.
And straighten up to face the day.
Got the fire going as she sleeps.
Made coffee while cooking breakfast over open flames.
I wake her with a cuppa.
We lounge
Enjoying the silence
Punctuated by the scream of an occasional dirt bike.

We know our time has come,
And solemnly pack up.
She follows me, driving the van up to the truck stop,
Happy to finally have cream for her coffee,
plus clean restrooms.

We park the van to roam the back roads,
Rolling through the remains of Centralia.
I feel her bewildered vibe.
‘What happened here?
There used to be houses and streets?’
This is Centralia.
An underground coal fire was ignited by burning trash in a landfill,
Long ago.
They couldn’t extinguish the fire,
The government bought out the townspeople,
Then bulldozed everything over.
They say the underground fire will burn for generations.
Snow doesn’t stick to the roads here.
It’s an eerie place.
Another man-made disaster swept under the carpets.

Heading back, I showed her Graffiti Highway,
The colorful road alive
In a dying landscape.
Our time was running out.
We had to go back to the world we knew.
The ride home was quiet.

Arrrgh!
Overslept again.
I never know when to stop drinking on a Sunday night.
No time for coffee.
Or food – if I had it.
Putting on helmet and gloves as the bike warms up,
It’s a flat-out sprint to work.
Winging by cars to save myself getting chewed out.
I walk into the chaos and commotion of the car business,
Hungover and strung out.
I worked with several clients,
The people are the good part,
In all the stupidity.
The greeter walked over, smirking,
‘Hey, there’s some guy on the phone saying he’s your lawyer.’
She walked away, saying out loud
‘as if he has an attorney.’
I took the call in private.
‘Why, good morning sunshine, it’s your favorite lawyer.
I was at a function recently.
Turns out you and I have a common friend in the unions,
We spoke about you.
Look, I can help you with your legal issues.
But not so much with the Teamsters.
My professional advice to you?
Find someone else to shtup.’
That’s Yiddish slang for sex.

I survive the daily bullshit and lies of my job,
By ripping around the back roads,
Pushing my motorcycle as hard as I can to forget.
I treat roads like my personal racetrack,
Using every inch of my lane,
From yellow line to white and back again,
Just chasing corner speed.
Nothing like the intensity of dragging a peg through a blind bend.

After numbing myself with a 1.5 of red,
Glass in hand, thinking life is a nasty circle.
I do a job I hate to support my habits.
Happiness is fleeting; freedom is just a word.
I wake up wearing the clothes from yesterday.

 

Michael Lawless [@electric_horseman], our ‘Poet of Packed Earth’, is the Flat Track Editor for TheVintagent.com, and has his own blog: Electric Horseman. Read all his work for The Vintagent here.
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