Into the Twilight, Endlessly Grousing (20 page)

Question 308: Do you have an extra .410 shotgun lying around that you will send to me?

Answer: No.

Question 310: Have you ever been lost?

Answer: “Lost” is a relative term, Donald. If you are asking if I have ever spent three days and nights in the woods looking for where I left my car, the answer is yes.

If you are asking whether search-and-rescue parties have combed the mountains looking for me, the answer is yes.

If you are asking if I have ever taken a shortcut over a mountain pass in Montana and ended up knocking on a door in a small town somewhere in Canada, the answer is yes. But if you are asking if I've ever been actually lost, the answer is no. The truth is, I have a superb sense of direction, even to the extent of proving compasses wrong.

Question 318: Do sporting goods manufacturers send you all kinds of neat equipment free so that you can test it and promote it for them on television?

Answer: No, they don't. It is true that most other outdoor writers get a lot of neat free stuff to test, but not me. Even when a manufacturer hears that I've
bought
a piece of his equipment, a representative will show up and try to buy it back from me, often at double what I paid for it! Sporting goods manufacturers have absolutely no regard for my feelings.

Well, Donald, that is all the time I have for answering your questions. Now I must get busy and write another column for
Outdoor Life,
provided that the Board of Health hasn't shut down Kelly's Bar & Grill yet again.

Your favorite author,

Pat

It was said of the Huns who conquered Rome, “Their country is the back of a horse.” (And a sorry country it must have been, too, or so I judge from my own experience on the backs of horses.) In the days of my youth, if not today, it similarly could have been said of boys, “Their country is the back of a bicycle.” We lived on our bikes. These one-wheel-drive, all-terrain vehicles transported us to our hunting, fishing, camping, and swimming, and indeed, to adventures too numerous to extract from memory. In fact, the mere act of riding my bike could count as an adventure, and a harrowing one at that. I now regard that old bike with a certain degree of fondness, but only because the passage of much time has erased the fear and loathing I once felt for that misbegotten piece of mechanical malevolence. If a machine could be possessed by evil
spirits, I'd have nominated my bike as a prime candidate for exorcism.

After I had grown up and had children of my own, I bought them all shiny new bicycles, which were never available as a means of transportation, because they were busy accumulating dust in the back of the garage. As most parents are aware these days, Mom or Pop and the family car are now a child's preferred means of travel from one place to another. When I as a boy suggested to my own parents that they drive me to a friend's house and later retrieve me, they dissolved into such an unseemly state of mirth that I could not help but consider myself one of the world's great wits.

“Did”—
wheeze
—“did you hear what Patrick just said?”

“Yes! Drive him over to”—
gasp
—“Lester's house!”

“And actually return later to …!”

“Oh, stop, stop! No more! My sides ache!”

Once their spasms of hilarity had subsided, my mother would ask, “And what's wrong with your bike?”

What was wrong with my bike? Well, let's see. First of all, it was not store bought. Its parts had been cannibalized from assorted wreckage of other bicycles and then assembled by a sadistic local handyman, who must have chortled evilly all through the process of creating the two-wheeled monster. The seat, apparently salvaged from a racing model, was slightly less comfortable than riding about on a hatchet head—bystanders sometimes thought I was
yodeling
when I shot by them on my way home from a long day's ride. (“Better work on that yodel, kid!”)

Because the seat was permanently fixed at a height unsuited to my short legs, I could reach the pedals only with my toes. (“You'll grow into it.”) The front wheel had a habit of bouncing off, a malfunction that would have
flipped me over the handlebars, except by then the chain would have eaten my pants leg in order to prevent me from ejecting before the crash. By the end of the typical summer, I looked like a poster child for bike safety: “Kids, ride carefully. Don't let
this
happen to you!” And Mom had the audacity to ask me what was wrong with my bike.

The bike was equipped with coaster brakes, the only kind of bicycle brakes available at the time, as far as I know. My brakes never seemed to work properly, and so one day I decided to undertake their repair. As it turned out, the brakes consisted of what seemed to be a series slotted steel washers, which upon removal from their shaft immediately became a glob of slotted steel washers on the ground. I reassembled them as best I could, carefully wiping off most of the dirt and grass, but with the panicky sensation that I had succeeded only in destroying my sole means of transportation. And the panicky sensation was right on. I now had a bike that was still serviceable, except in any situation where I needed to stop.

There was nothing to do but empty out my life's savings and take the bike back for a brake job to the sadist who had built it in the first place, Mr. Eli Croaker. Unfortunately, Mr. Croaker's shop was located at his farm atop a long steep hill on the highway that led through the main street of town. One warm September Saturday, I trudged up the mile-long hill, pushing the bike. When I finally arrived at the farm, a pack of mangy dogs rushed out to see if I might be edible, but I managed to fend them off with a few well-aimed kicks as I pounded on the shop door. No response. I then tried the farmhouse. Still no response. I wandered about calling, “Mr. Croaker! Mr. Croaker! Are you home?” Silence. My exhausting hike up the hill had been in vain.

I plopped down on the house porch, wishing I had paid
more attention to my stepfather's vocabulary when he mashed his thumb with a hammer, because I could have used some of those colorful expressions at the moment. They had seemed to improve Hank's mood considerably, and my own mood was in serious need of improvement. As I sat there recuperating for the trek back down the hill, I suddenly noticed a movement in the woods on the far side of the highway. What a stroke of luck! My cousin Buck and his two cronies, Red Higgins and Sid Lasky, soon emerged from the trees and began urgently tromping in my direction, each carrying a shotgun. They'd been out grouse hunting. Surely they had driven a car up to the top of the hill and could give me and my bike a ride home.

“What you doin' here?” Buck greeted me. He was several years older than I and twice as big. He had a job and a car and all kinds of neat stuff that I could use anytime I wanted, as long as Buck was safely at work. He had recently reached the age where he knew everything worth knowing. He often told me so himself, so I knew it was true. Later, he would turn out to be only slightly smarter than celery, but at this age, he knew just about everything.

I started to explain my predicament. “Well, my bike—”

“Forget the bike. Where's ole Croaker?”

“He's not home. My bike—”

“Drat! Wanted to bum a drink of water off him. We're dying of thirst.”

Red pointed down at the town far below. “Man, I can see Lulu's Drive-in from here. All those icy drinks just waiting for us, but so far away, so far away. Aiiigh! I can't stand it!”

“Don't even talk about it,” Sid rasped. “Otherwise, I'll have to shoot you.”

“I'll be dead of thirst by the time we walk all the way to Lulu's,” Buck croaked, staring down at the drive-in, faint and tiny in the distance.

“You didn't bring a car?” I said.

“No, stupid, we didn't bring a car,” Buck said in his mimicky voice. “We hunted up the other side of the mountain, and …” He stopped. He was studying my bike.

“Wait a minute,” he said. “I think I'll just hop on Patrick's bike and coast down the hill. Be at Lulu's in no time! Hot dang!”

“But, Buck, my bike—”

“Don't get your tail in a knot. I'll pay you a whole dollar for the use of it.”

“But, Buck, my bike—”

“Oh, all right, you miserable little rat, two dollars! And not a penny more!”

“Deal!”

“Hey, wait a minute,” Red said. “How about me?”

“You can ride on the back-fender carrier,” Buck said. “But it'll cost you a dollar.”

“Hey, no way, you guys,” Sid whined. “I ain't walking down the hill by myself!”

“Well, then, get on the handlebars,” Buck said. “It ain't like I'll have to pedal. Cost you a dollar, though, Sid.”

Buck was always a shrewd businessman. He wasn't even out of the yard yet, and he'd already made back his investment. They stashed their guns and game bags in Mr. Croaker's woodshed, and climbed on the bike. That's when I had a terrifying thought. Suppose they crashed and had to spend weeks in the hospital and Buck would lose his job and …! It was time for me to speak out.

“Hold up a second, Buck,” I yelled.

Buck twisted around and glared at me. “What now?”

“Pay me my two dollars
first!
”

Buck dug out the two bills Red and Sid had just given him and graciously threw them on the ground. Then the
three of them wobbled out to the highway, hit the down slope, and glided away, gradually picking up speed.

“Lulu's, here we come!” shouted Red.

“Hoo boy!” yelled Sid from his precarious perch on the handlebars. “Here we—uh, better slow up a bit, Buck! I said, slo—OOOOOOOoooooo … ooo … oo … o … !”

I lost sight of them after they careened around the first curve, but reports from various eyewitnesses drifted about town for months and even years afterward. The reports improved considerably with age.

Wally Hedge said he was thinking of buying a used motorcycle and was out testing it to see what it would do, when three guys shot past him on a bicycle. Disgusted, Wally immediately returned the motorcycle to its owner.

Old Mrs. Wiggens, who was driving up the hill at the time, reported that when the bike went into the last curve before it hit the straightaway into town, Buck and Red were both skidding their feet along the pavement. She said she wasn't sure if their boots were actually on fire but they were trailing wisps of smoke.

About the time the bike reached the town limits, Fred Perkins heard a loud noise, or so he claimed in later years, after he'd learned about sonic booms caused by objects passing through the sound barrier.

Ed Cominskey had just ordered another beer at Billy's Tavern when he glanced out into Main Street. “Better hold that last beer, Billy,” he said. “Either I'm hallucinating or three fellows just buzzed Main Street on a bicycle. Weren't no more than a foot off the pavement!”

The raucous teenaged crowd at Lulu's Drive-In fell into stunned silence after the bike streaked past. Then Lulu said, “Wasn't that Sid Lasky on the handlebars? It looked kinda like Sid.”

“Naw,” one of the kids said. “That guy was at least fifty years old. Couldn't be Sid.”

“You'd think an old guy like that would know better,” Lulu said. “Riding on handlebars at his age! My word!”

“Well, the guy on the seat wasn't much younger,” someone else said. “But I'll say this for him—he can sure pedal a bike!”

The bike finally coasted to a stop on the far side of town. Its occupants escaped unscathed from their ride, except for Sid, who had the imprints of several large flying insects embedded in his forehead, kind of like a human fossil. It was neat. I would have liked to take Sid to school and enter him as my science project. Buck said later that for a while he thought they might have to have Sid surgically removed from the handlebars, but after a while Sid relaxed a little, and Buck and Red were able to peel him off without too much trouble.

Buck, Sid, and Red came over to my house that evening and asked my mother to send me out. They said they just wanted to return my bike and thank me for the loan of it. But I made it over the back fence and into the woods before they had a chance to show their appreciation.

I have recently been thinking about shaving off my beard. My reason for growing a beard in the first place is a bit obscure to me now, but I'm sure it was a good one. Some of my associates probably think I grew it because the beard makes me almost indistinguishable from Ernest Hemingway, even though they are careful not to mention that striking resemblance. Their silence on the matter clearly arises out of jealousy. My former friend Fenton Quagmire once observed that I reminded him of a famous writer who lived in Paris during the 1920s.

“Ernest Hemingway?” I suggested.

“No, Gertrude Stein! Ha!”

So, there is yet another example of jealousy rearing its ugly head.

Growing a beard is not something to be undertaken
lightly. For at least the first three weeks of the process you go about looking as though you haven't shaved for three weeks, which is, of course, the case. So you feel compelled to explain your unseemly appearance to anyone you meet.

“I'm growing a beard,” you casually explain to each person you encounter. Typical responses:

“Yes sir. Now, did you want the soup or the salad with your dinner?”

“Bully for you, sir. Now, if you'll show me your driver's license, perhaps we can discuss why you were doing forty in a twenty-five-mile-an-hour zone.”

“That's real nice, guy. Now do as I asked. Hand over your wallet and watch so we can get this robbery completed.”

To counter the impression that you're a hobo waiting for the next empty boxcar out of town, you are forced into wearing a suit and tie everywhere you go, and even that doesn't help much when it comes to cashing checks. The picture on your driver's license is of a clean-shaven person.