Image by Guillermo Riera from Pixabay
(Every Sunday, I release a new short story in the ‘Sunday Story Time’ series! I write these stories the day they are published, usually within 2-3 hours. These stories could be about anything, but they will all be brief, 2-3 minute reads. Enjoy! )
A Traveler’s Life
The sound of the birds woke John up from a restless night’s sleep. He and Trent had ridden into town late the night before, stopping to make camp at the first open patch of ground they could find.
A car whizzed past, crossing over the white line into the shoulder.
Christ, we’re much closer to the road than I thought.
John was usually awake before Trent. He was older by more than a few years and his body ached from decades of sleeping on the ground. He recalled that he had taken the last of his Advil the day before.
God damn it.
He stowed his bedroll; an old foam camping pad, a green woolen military blanket, and a full-sized pillow. He remembered passing a convenience store on the way in, so he set off in search of pain relief.
—
John is a traveler. Mode of travel: motorcycle. He rides a first-run 1985 Honda CMX250. A cruiser-style bike with a passenger backrest and leather saddlebags that have seen better days. He’s modified just about every surface of the bike to carry everything he owns. Whatever can’t be zip-tied, bungee corded, or thrown into a saddle bag, must be forgotten.
He’s been on the road since his early twenties. With prolonged stops in Denver (broken leg), Waco (met a girl), and San Diego (pristine weather).
At 53, the life of a traveler is starting to wear him down.
He’s never paid rent.
—
“Well look who finally got up,”
“Fuck you too,” Trent replied.
“Here. Breakfast,” John handed him a hotdog and Hostess cherry fruit pie, half eaten.
Trent flipped John an appreciative middle finger.
The two have been travel companions since John’s prolonged stay in San Diego 3 years ago (pristine weather). They met at a flea market of all places. Sorting through a pile of old bike parts. Trent had lifted a Honda CB450 from outside a Starbucks in North Park. One of those gentrified, hipstery, bullshit neighborhoods for people living lives they bought off the shelf. He needed a new ignition switch before he could sell the bike. Having learned over the years that jamming a flathead screwdriver into the ignition of an old Honda will usually be enough to start the bike, but it will always ruin the ignition switch.
—
“How’s the back?” Trent asked.
“She’ll hold” offered John.
They both knew this was a lie. John has been in excruciating pain for the last few weeks. Unbeknownst to both of them, he has two ruptured discs in his lower back. The L4 and L5 vertebrae. In a couple of months, he’ll be told by an ER doc he can’t ride anymore. He needs surgery. If he keeps riding he will risk permanent damage.
“I’m gonna head back towards that big intersection today to get some cash,” said Trent, “I need cigs”.
“I’ll meet you there after a while, I’m going to check her over,” John motioned towards his bike, “she was running rough on the way in.”
John’s bike was running fine on the way in last night. He just needed some time on his own. He enjoyed Trent and had even grown to rely on him in some ways, but he missed the days of solo traveling. He missed the solitude. And the simplicity.
He sat down in the shade next to his bike and leaned his back against a saddle bag.
Nowhere to be.
—
Back in San Diego, John had shared his cash-making strategy with Trent. It was an old, crinkled, and stained piece of cardboard on which he had scribbled the words:
Motorcycling across USA
Need cash for GAS
GOD BLESS
John was always able to get by with what his sign would provide. He didn’t see it as begging. He felt he was letting people in on his adventure. Giving them a small role. An anecdote they could carry with them through their predigested lives.
And at the time, Trent desperately needed a new way to earn. Stealing bikes had put him in jail twice and landed him squarely on the radar of law enforcement. A hard place for any transient to find themselves.
John had lessons to teach from his years on the road, and Trent was a willing student.
Lesson one: asking for donations is better than taking them.
__
“I thought you were going to meet me there,” said Trent. He had made his way back to the bikes to find John carving a stick into a sharper stick.
“I lost track of time,” said John, “How’d you do?’
“$46 bucks and some change.”
“Well now, look at you. I think that’s a new record for a weekday.” John had learned over the years that strangers are always more generous on the weekends. He thought it had to do with the misery of the commute. A futile exercise in his view, commuting from one cage to another. Nobody in that state can break out of their malaise long enough to help their fellow man.
“I met a girl out there,” said Trent. John knew where this was going before Trent could even finish his sentence “She’s in an old Econoline. Names Kora. She’s a traveler like us. Heading down South to see the gators she said.”
“And she invited you along,” said John.
“How’d you know?”
“Don’t forget I’ve been a traveler for a lot longer than you have. I met my own Kora back in Waco. Spent a good long time with that woman.”
“She’s leaving this afternoon,” said Trent.
“You should go with her and don’t think twice. That’s the life.”
“Here take this,” Trent tried handing John the cash he’d collected. But John wouldn’t take it.
“No charity needed here, kid. Hang on to that.”
Trent gathered his things, stowing them carefully away on his bike. There was a silence in the
air that neither man knew how to address. They had been traveling companions for 3 years. And while nothing in the life of a traveler is permanent, they had settled into a good routine with each other.
Trent owed much of his skills as a full-time traveler to John, from his cash strategy and how to pick good campsites, to how to safely (ish) ride a fully loaded bike down a dirt road in the rain.
It was all ending after a single morning of cash collecting.
Trent started his bike, “I’ll see you if I see you.”
“Stay vertical out there, kid.”
Trent gave him the finger and pulled out into the road.
And John watched as his friend disappeared into the distance.
MW 