The heretic had gone back to his errors, the inquisitor shouted to the villagers over the roar of the flames and the wails of the dying, “like a dog returning to his vomit!”
Pleased with that chapter-closing sentence, I decided to return to my beloved bike path. It had been a long day of torture and burning.
Within minutes my two-wheeled destrier was groaning under my weight and we were creaking over the bridge. As it was late afternoon and the days were shortening, I would not go all the way to the path’s end at Bristol, Rhode Island, fifteen miles’ distant. Instead I would turn around at the six-mile mark, at the Extramarital Parking State Park. That’s not its real name, but past experience of pedaling through the parking lot of the pretty seaside spot had usually included seeing a couple of rocking pick-up trucks and hearing the joyful squeak of shock absorbers.
On my way there I whizzed past a tanned twenty-year-old Adonis clad only in what seemed to be a handkerchief. He was sprinting, but I effortlessly distanced him, allowing myself a brief thrill of intergenerational supremacy. Then I realized I was on a bicycle, and had I been on a roadway, a World War Two veteran in a beat-up Buick could have done the same to me.
The cars in the parking lot were not dancing. Just truly stationary. Oh well.
There was a reason for this: a farmer’s market was being held alongside the lot, so this was a day for vegetable voyeurs. Before investing in an organic tomato, I called a friend in Bristol, who has a plantation of tomato vines. As I waited for her to pick up, I felt a zephyr of wind tickle the back of my neck. “You’re on the bike path?” she said, in alarm. “There’s a huge storm down here.”
I looked to the south. Black, black, black.
Almost immediately on returning to the path, the wind kicked in. If the storm’s coming from the south, I muttered, why is a north wind blowing in my face?
Pedaling became harder, much harder, as the wind strengthened. I made it to the four-mile mark, past the Dari Bee ice cream joint. Its roadside sign – Kids! Scream Until They Stop! – was buffeted by the gusts.
Then alongside the bay as it narrows toward Providence. The water was choppy, angry. Even a gargantuan oil tanker tied up at the dock could be seen rocking as if extramarital.
Adonis came barreling toward me, propelled by the wind at his back, Buick-like. His hanky fluttered.
At Voldemort’s Cottage – a country club on a big rock in the sea – the wind became a howl. I moved into lower and lower gear, it seemed as if I were pedaling in place.
Then on to the wide-open space of the Fallopian Straightaway. Here the bike path sits on an old railway bed, arrow-straight. To the east, a large pond; to the west, the open expanse of the bay. Water everywhere, just a foot or two beneath the straining spokes.
The wind became a wall. No, I was in Boulder, Colorado, going straight up a mountain. I looked out at the bay to get my bearings. The water churned white – and it was on fire.
OGM! (Oh Goodness Me!), I thought, my mind unhinged by panic, it’s the apocalypse!! A cloud of brown smoke skittered demonically over the heaving sea. Where’s the Antichrist? And what will he be wearing?
I heard the flap of a plastic bag and a sudden whoosh. Even my tomato had deserted me.
The smoke was coming closer, coming toward the Fallopian Straightaway. Brown, choking, brimstone… No, wait… it wasn’t smoke, it was sand. On the far shore stood the industrial port of the city, home to great pyramids of crud. I glimpsed a geyser of brown stuff whip into the air from one of them, and head out to sea.
The cloud got closer and closer, and then was on me. Sahara, Gobi, Star Wars. Although the sun was still out, I could barely see. The whipping wind and the tiny particles… I wouldn’t need a facial for months.
Through the swirling brownish murk I could see a figure approaching. A cyclist. Young woman. She came nearer. A very low-cut top barely suspended by spaghetti straps. Of a blinding, otherworldly white, to match her teeth. She bent low, very low over her handlebars. I stared. Was she the Antichrist? No! OGM! I can’t believe it! It’s Selena Gomez!
She flashed past me. Then came her companion. A billboard for bad tattoos disguised as her boyfriend. For some reason, he glared at me.
By now the cloud had lifted, but not the wind. I struggled past another jogger, a stocky, lego-like woman, blonde to the point of albino. She seemed not even to notice the impending global cataclysm. A wicked gust of wind struck me in the chest, almost toppling me over. If I fall off, I thought, at least I’m wearing my…
Oh no! In my haste to escape the dog vomit, I had forgotten my helmet. What if I get blown off the bike, fall on my head, crushing the centers of reasoning and intellect? What would happen? Would I join the Tea Party? What about my family? My block? My neighborhood? My city? Hell, what about the whole country…
Humbly, I thought back to the episode when Captain Kirk has to let his pacifist girlfriend get run over by a car, or else the whole course of history would change and Hitler would win the Second World War. How could I have forgotten that helmet? Had I no sense of responsibility?
I was almost at the end of the the Straightaway. A Vietnamese couple with a baby carriage and a long fishing pole stood laughing in the wind, looking out to sea.
The fools!
I heaved myself into the home stretch. The sun still shone, the birds still sang, people still fell in love.
Unbelievable.
At last, in front of my fridge, I tried to make sense of it all, to recollect in tranquility. I reached in for a tall boy of Narragansett beer. Yes, it was possible to live the heroic life, to face down certain death, to emerge triumphant. There was nobility to every action.
I looked at the can I was holding. Below the brand logo, a message read: “The Official Beer of the Clam.”
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