Part 18 (1/2)
Luz nodded. ”Or like your board when you were a girl, eh, abuela?” Unlike all of Luz's other relatives, her grandmother hadn't been born in Kentucky, but in California, so far away as to be a legend. Luz's abuela had seen an ocean; she had swum in it. Most fascinating of all to Luz, she had surfed it.
Before her grandmother could answer, Luz's brother Caleb brought his bike to a sliding stop next to the stall. He was two years younger than Luz, but six inches taller, all elbows and knees where Luz had already been all curves and muscles at that age. He had a wide grin on his usually somber face.
He had a sheet of gray paper rolled up and stuck in the waistband of his shorts, clearly a worksheet he'd pulled down from the post outside the community workhouse. Luz's grandmother smiled and said, ”I suppose you're leaving early today, eh, Luza?”
Caleb nodded respectfully at his grandmother but spoke to Luz. ”Invasive plant removal at Raven Run,” he said. ”They've got gloves and hand tools out there, so nothing to haul along. And we get four hours for travel time.”
This was a good community service a.s.signment. Raven Run was a nature preserve about fifteen miles away, on the limestone cliffs above the river. The old roads were still in decent shape in that end of the county, and there were some good hills along the way, especially if they took a route that went down to the river and back. Luz could make the ride straight to the preserve in forty minutes, and she wasn't even the strongest cyclist among her friends. They would have time to take a good long ride.
”How many slots?” asked Luz, heading around the back of the stall to her own bike.
”Four,” said Caleb. ”Um, Samuel was at the workhouse and already asked to come along. He's bringing one of his sisters.”
Luz felt irritation pa.s.s over her face at the thought of Samuel and his hopeless crush on her. It wasn't that she didn't like him; it was just that he was like everything else in her life - known. Predictable. But she shrugged and said, ”OK. Go round them up and meet me at the zero-mile marker in ten minutes. I'm going down to the shop to top off the air in my tires.”
The shop was the stall run by their father that served as the main bike shop in town. He fixed the post office's long-haul cargo bikes for free in exchange for good rates on bringing in parts from the coast, but he always insisted that his children - and his other customers - make an honest attempt at repair before they settled for replacement.
Luz rolled in and nodded at her father. He was talking as he worked on a customer's bike, running through his bottomless inventory of crazy stories about old races and bike equipment made from the same material they used to use to make s.p.a.ces.h.i.+ps. He had even been to see the Tour de France, back before, when pretty much anybody could go overseas, even people who weren't rich or soldiers.
The customer made his escape while Luz was using a floor pump to air up her tires. When she looked up, her father was carefully routing a brake cable through an eyelet brazed onto the downtube of an old steel frame. He had his tongue between his teeth, concentrating, and greeted her with nothing more than a raised eyebrow.
”Just needed some air,” said Luz.
Papa finished with the cable. ”Off for a ride?” he asked.
”Community service at Raven Run,” she said. ”With plenty of time padded into the a.s.signment for us to go down to the river and back.”
Papa laughed. ”They should weight the time allowances on those a.s.signment sheets according to youth and vitality,” he said. ”Y'all should have to spend the extra time doing whatever needs doing out there instead of doing hill sprints up from the ferry. They figure the travel time based on old slowpokes like me.”
Luz rolled her eyes. She'd tried to follow her father up the ferry climb a few times and never managed to hold his wheel.
”What needs doing at the preserve?” he asked. ”I haven't been out there this year.”
”I didn't see the sheet,” said Luz, spinning the cap back onto the valve stem of her rear tire, ”but Caleb said something about nonnative species removal. Chopping out honeysuckle and English ivy, I guess.”
Her father nodded. ”We've been working on that for years.”
Luz shrugged. ”It does seem like it always comes back. But we have to try.”
He mounted a wheel on a truing stand and spun it. ”Why?” he asked. This was something else she knew to expect from her father, in addition to his stories. Lessons disguised as questions.
Luz pretended he was talking about the wheel and watched the considerable wobble as it turned. ”Looks like maybe they T-boned a curb?”
Papa shook his head. ”No. Well, yes, that's what happened to this wheel. But I meant why do we keep trying to pull all of the honeysuckle out of Raven Run?”
Luz knew this one. It was one of the central tenets of Localism. ”Because they're invasive. They don't integrate; they displace.” And then she added, ”I'll see you tonight, Papa.”
She shouted this last, because she was already rolling out of the stall and down the street, clicking up through the gears, weaving among carts pulled by pedestrians and cyclists and tall horses.
Caleb was the mapmaker and route finder. He usually based their rides on arcane themes, like Ride to the Location of Every Post Office Closed in Bourbon County Between 1850 and 2050 (a circuitous hundred miler through spa.r.s.ely populated farm country) and Turn Right Instead of Crossing Any Creek or Stream (also circuitous, but very short). The inevitable starting point of all his routes was the county's zero mile marker, an old statue of a camel set atop a dolmen in Phoenix Park. They'd grown so used to starting there that it was their common meeting point even for unplanned rides like today's.
Luz found Caleb waiting, talking with Samuel and, unexpectedly, his youngest sister, little Priscilla. Samuel was Luz's age and the only son in a family of many daughters. His mother doted on him, and he could almost always get out of whatever work he was doing at the pottery they ran. This was the first time, though, that Pris had ever come along on one of their rides.
The twelve-year-old girl sat on the saddle of a road bike that was just barely small enough for her. She'd lowered the seat all the way and was balancing herself against the mile marker. She studied the marker while the others talked.
”Hey, Miss Priss,” said Luz. ”Gonna try to keep up with the big kids today?”
Priscilla gritted her teeth and pointed to her flexed quads. ”Don't slow me down too much, Luza!” She laughed at herself before pointing to the inscription below the statue. ”What's AAA?”
”You asked for it,” said Samuel. ”You get to ride in the back with Caleb while he explains.”
Luz led them out along Main Street, quickly leaving downtown behind and racing the long straight lane through the necklace of orchards that encircled the city. She heard Caleb's voice floating up from behind when the wind was right, catching phrases like ”automobile a.s.sociation” and ”U.S. route system” and ”the call of the open road.”
”I know what that means,” she said, half to herself.
Samuel was drafting her closely and overheard. ”You know what what means?”
They had just pa.s.sed between the crumbling concrete pillars of an old divided highway and had topped a rise. The road stretched out straight before them, sloping down along a gentle grade for a couple of miles, smooth and empty but for a few people walking along the gra.s.sy shoulders.
Luz pointed ahead with her chin. ”Call of the open road,” she said. ”I know what that means.”
Luz couldn't believe that tiny Priscilla was steadily pulling away from her on the long climb up from the ferry. She pushed harder on her bicycle's pedals, trying to match the rhythm of the turning wheels to her rapid breathing. Still, the younger girl danced on ahead, standing on her pedals and apparently unaware that she was leaving Luz and the others behind.
Near the top of the hill, Priscilla signaled a stop, and Luz thought she was finally tiring. But then the girl spoke.
”Is that an engine?” Priscilla asked, eyes wide.
Luz stopped beside her, struggling to slow her breath so she could better hear the howling sound floating over the fields. Hard to say how far away the noise was, but it was clearly in motion. And moving closer, fast.
Caleb and Samuel stopped beside them and dismounted.
”It is,” said Caleb, curiosity in his voice. ”Internal combustion, not too big.”
”Not like on any of the Federal machines, though,” Samuel added. ”Not like anything I've ever heard.”
Luz thought of the last time one of the great Army recruitment trucks had come through Lexington, grinding and belching and trumpeting its horn. It had been the previous autumn. Her parents had made her hide in one of the sheds behind the house, even though she was still too young for the draft. She had stood behind a tidy stack of aluminum doors her mother had salvaged from the ghost suburbs south of town and listened to the engine closely.
The Army engine had made a deeper sound than this, though whatever was approaching was not as high as the mosquito buzz of the little motors on the sheriff's department chariots. If the deputies rode mosquitoes, then the Federals rode growling bears. This was something in between: a howling wolf.
The noise dropped away briefly, stuttered, and then came back louder than ever.
”Whatever it is, it just turned into the lane,” Luz told the others. She dismounted and waved for them all to move their bikes into the gra.s.sy verge to one side. They'd stopped at a point where the road was bound on either side by low dry-stone walls. A pair of curious chestnut quarter horses, fully biological, not the hissing machine-hybrid mounts of Federal outriders, ambled over briefly, hopeful of treats, but they snorted and trotted away as the noise came closer.
Suddenly, the sound blared as loud as anything Luz had ever heard, and a . . . vehicle rounded the curve before them. Luz flashed on the automobile carca.s.ses some people kept as tomato planters. She saw four wheels, a brace of fifty-five-gallon drums, and a makes.h.i.+ft seat. The seat was occupied by a distracted-looking young man wrestling a steering wheel as he hurtled past them, forcing them to move even farther off the road.
The vehicle fishtailed from side to side on the crumbling pavement, sputtering, and came to an abrupt halt when it took a hard left turn and hit the wall on the south side of the road. The top two layers of rock slid into the field as the noise died away.
They all ran toward the crash. Luz could see now that the vehicle was a modified version of a hay wagon, sporting thick rubber tires and otherwise liberally outfitted with ancient automobile parts. The seat was a cane-bottomed rocker with the legs removed, screwed to the bed. The driver was strapped into the chair and had a dazed expression on his face.
He was younger than Luz had first thought, just a little older than she, maybe. He had tightly curled black hair and green eyes. He blinked at them.