I stood up on my pedals for the climb’s final push, motivated by visions of finally winning one of these local mountain bike races. Clenching my teeth, I leaned forward and stomped my foot down, only to hear the grating metallic snap of a broken chain. My feet spun aimlessly, I lost my balance, and I fell to the side of the trail – right into a Carhartt-clad, muscle-bound man, the guy everyone in town referred to as “Rasta.” He’d been posted alongside this steep hill with a first aid kit and a radio, assigned to call in the bib numbers of passing riders and to help with crises as they arose. I think the only crisis that day was mine. “Looks like you might could use some help,” he said, once I’d unclipped from my pedals and crawled out from under my bike.…
“I hear you,” I reply, holding the phone at a distance. Maya’s voice comes across the line at a higher decibel level than usual. “Are you sure you’re feeling contractions?”
“Daniel!” It is nearly a shout. “I know what this is and I know that you have to be on the next flight.”
“Alright,” I say, wondering if this isn’t another case of false labor, like the symptoms that sent us to the hospital prematurely just two weeks ago. “I will order my ticket for tonight.”
“I don’t know if I can last that long!”
It is early afternoon so there’s plenty of time to make a reservation. There is no doubt in my mind that there will be an empty seat on the plane.…
I watch as the crinkled, bright orange edge of a Reese’s candy bar slowly makes its mechanic descent before getting caught on one of the spiraled spokes on the way down. It hangs from D1, taunting me. I bang a fist against the glass of the vending machine, but the candy bar just swings lazily, happily. A child on a makeshift tree swing. Dammit. I give one final kick before turning away, sipping acerbic, cold coffee from a Styrofoam cup.
I have been here before. Not on this floor exactly, although the steely gray tiling and the white, cinder block walls accented with a single stripe of inexplicable pink along the molding is replicated throughout the entire hospital. My dad got me Junior Mints the first time I was here, Mike and Ike’s the second.…
Hunger will whimper in your chest until you know it’s there.
Beneath my wrists are the black horns of a ram. I clench, and they give for my fingers.
The horns are not horns but the drop handlebars of a bicycle. The smell of olive oil is really the musk of a garage. This was a dream distinctly American—
the horn of the harvest was full. I had everything I needed and my stomach only growled at strangers.
The house was a plain yellow rectangular structure with an awning above the front door and a long porch in the back, white window trim, gray shingles on the roof. I was relieved when I saw it. My mother had predicted doom and gloom when I told her I was moving in with Roy, not to his condo in town, but to his childhood home upstate. She had conjured pictures of trailer parks and double-wides. My mother has a very dim view of the standard of living in rural areas. She’s a die-in-the-wool New Yorker and anything lower than four stories is a hovel. I told her she worried needlessly. Nothing would change much for me, just the location. I write for an online publication and with a decent connection I can work anywhere.…
