Grace

by Randy Tierce

I would often lie awake in that tiny country farmhouse just listening to the sounds of the night. The lamentations of the whippoorwills. The yipping of the coyotes. The complaints of northbound cattle trucks downshifting, their jake brakes blapping strong objections to slowing down.

The metal roof magnified the sounds of the seasons, marking time during my nine months in Repose. Different meteorological phenomena meant different timbres. Sleet rattled like buckshot. Hail clattered, rain whispered. Even sunshine had a sound. Oftentimes a groan, other times a moan, sometimes a sigh.

Variations in wind direction meant different pitches. The north wind created a unique high-pitched fluting sound, like a pennywhistle. Once, during the coldest part of the year, a rare wind blew from the east. That night, I heard the lonesome wail of the Amtrak Texas Star as it passed through Clifton, headed to McGregor Station, then points south.

During the late winter and early spring, I would sometimes drive into downtown Repose in the middle of the night. I’d park in the Methodist church parking lot and use the faint illumination provided by a dim streetlight to try and read a book. More often, my mind would wander and I’d just watch the dark square of the young girl’s window across the street. Torturing myself over a choice that was inevitable.

 My last sunrise in Repose was still several hours away. I was anxious, dreading telling her about my decision. Seeking some kind of cockeyed divine guidance that would provide absolution for my sins, I drove into town. Slowed as I passed her house. No lights were on, and why should there be? It was only a quarter past three in the morning.

I did a U-turn and parked my truck along the curb in front of the Repose Café. It didn’t open until six. Time to kill. I walked around the corner and sat on the dilapidated park bench tucked into the shadows under the overhang outside the pharmacy. Something about that spot. I liked it. The Rexall sign squeaked as it swung back and forth in a light breeze that kicked up the sidewalk detritus and silently pushed it into the alcove around my feet.

Hidden from view, I spied on the sporadic nighttime traffic. Most vehicles were headed south. A few were going north. None had east or west as their destination. Each driver’s face was illuminated by the pallid glow of their instrument panel lights. Very few checked for cross traffic. They’d slow, tap the brakes, roll through the blinking red light at Repose’s sole intersection, and move on. All were lost in a middle-of-the-night white-line trance.

I dozed off, sitting upright on the bench, waking only when my head dipped forward and hit my chest. When I looked up, a spectral figure sat astride a southbound Harley Sportster stopped at the blinking red light. The motorcycle made a comforting and throaty potato-potato-potato sound as it idled.

The biker backed the motorcycle closer to the curb and hit the kill switch. A single word, in an elegant orange calligraphy script, was painted on the black teardrop tank: Enigma. With one heel, he lowered the kickstand, dismounted, and walked around to the curb side of the bike.

He was lean and lanky. Had the look of intense, bitter hunger about him. He wore a faded long-sleeve denim shirt tucked into the waist of matching denim jeans that hugged his hips.  A wide leather belt served no purpose other than decoration. Scuffed square-toed leather boots with tarnished brass rings on the sides.

A tiny cross made from two common cut nails dangled at the end of a brown leather cord that hung around the biker’s neck. Sandy blonde hair parted in the middle. Despite the night, he wore aviator sunglasses. He paused before placing them on top of his head. Then, he leaned back against the bike, one boot on the ground and the other on the foot peg.

The biker crossed his arms and spoke in a tired baritone voice. “Almost didn’t see you there. Thought you were one of those life-size drug store Indian thingamajigs…can’t sleep, huh?”

“Nope.”

He yawned like a cat. Said, “Me neither.”

In my undergraduate psychology course, we studied the “stranger on a train” phenomenon. The prof described it as the secrets you’ll tell someone you don’t know, things you’d never consider sharing with those closest to you. And that’s what happened to me during the smallest hours of the morning of my final day in Repose. In less than thirty minutes, I divulged to a complete stranger—on a Harley, no less—everything that had happened during my nine months in that sorry little shit-hole town. My wrecked plans and bad decisions. The unblanched, unvarnished, authentic truth of my most intimate encounters with the girl, one of my students, and the decision I faced later in the day.

The biker didn’t judge me. Merely commiserated by telling his story. Said he was a Baptist minister’s kid from Van; his dad had wanted him to be a preacher. His mom was the high school choir director for the Van Vandals; she’d wanted him to be a music major. His high school sweetheart had wanted him to be a rich and famous professional baseball player. He said that if anyone had bothered to ask, he’d have told them that all he ever wanted was to be a writer.

He said, “There was no way I was going to be a preacher. I’d experienced firsthand what that profession can do to a man and his family. I wasn’t going to be a music major either, because even though I can carry a tune, unbeknownst to my sweet mother, I couldn’t read a lick of music. But man, oh, man, did I ever love that girl. I would have done anything for her.

“I was a left-handed pitcher. Selected first-team all-state in my senior year. I couldn’t break a pane of glass with my fastball, but baby, I could tease the corners like nobody’s business. It’s quite possible I didn’t throw a single strike through four years of high school, but it never stopped the opposition from swinging, because what I was flipping up there looked so hittable. 

“Curveballs, split fingers, sliders, slurves, spitballs, and screwballs. Had an eephus I could throw for an out pitch. If it was hard on your arm, I threw it. Anything except a fastball. Batters would sit on that thing and hit it a country mile. But I was good enough to get a baseball scholarship to Baylor. Mediocre left-handers for situational middle relief are always in demand.”

The biker got off the Harley, sat on the elevated sidewalk, and leaned against the Loading Zone sign. I stood from the bench, emerged from the shadows, and sat on the curb a comfortable distance away as he continued.

“Baseball’s an easy game as long as you can stay lighthearted about it. But once you start thinking about everything, you’re screwed. And that’s all the coaches—especially that narcissistic head coach—at Baylor wanted me to do. Think, think, think….”

He stretched his legs out and crossed his ankles. “The problem was not that my girlfriend and I got married—against my parents’ wishes, I confess—during Christmas break of my freshman year. The issue, as I quickly learned, was that my girlfriend’s interest in me was solely dependent on my potential as a future rich and dangerous Harley-riding major league baseball pitcher.

“My first—and only—appearance for the Bears was against the UT Longhorns. A preseason tournament at the Dell Diamond in Round Rock. Augie Garrido’s giant first baseman, some kid from California, hit a screamer up the middle. It was like Tiger Woods hitting a stinger at my melon using that famous two-iron. My reflexes kicked in. When I hit the deck to avoid getting brained, I wrecked my pitching arm. Can you believe that?” He spat into the street. “I tore up my damn arm dodging a hit ball, not throwing a pitch. God! I still can’t believe it.

“My arm and my lefty mystique were busted. My wife and I tried to live on love, but when that rotator cuff blew out, the scholarship money ran out, we both dropped out, and then my wife checked out. She got a job working full-time at the M&M Mars factory in Waco, and I got a job as a ghostwriter for a bunch of lazy ministers’ kids who didn’t want to write their own research papers.

“I was going to have surgery on the arm, rehab it, you know, try to get back my former life. But when I came home early one day and found my wife in our bed with a married Old Testament major from San Saba, some random dude who worked the same shift with her at the candy factory, I said fuck it. And that was that for baseball and my marriage. Now, instead of being a ghostwriter”—he made a typing motion—“I’m”—he mimed twisting on the throttle—“a ghost rider.”

A car interrupted our conversation. The radio inside the vehicle was loud, Eminem rapping about seizing everything you ever wanted. A subwoofer thumped a rattling agogic bass line in the trunk as the driver sped away from the light.

“After catching my wife in flagrante delicto, I walked out. Rode all that day. All through the night. Places you’ve probably never even heard of. Towns like Mount Calm, Ben Hur, Mosheim, Pancake, Aleman, Ireland, Purmela, Ames. I arrived back in Waco the next morning just in time for my eight o’clock Love in the Age of Shakespeare creative writing class.

“When I got home that afternoon, my wife was waiting for me. Said she’d been on her knees in Elliston Chapel, looking up at the stained-glass windows, praying for wisdom. God had spoken to her, she said. He’d forgiven her and told her to leave the adulterous relationship and stay married to me.

I told her that she and God were welcome to stay, but that He’d not bothered to speak a word to me about the deal. Therefore, I was leaving. I said since they all seemed to be in cahoots on the thing, He could help her figure out how to pay the rent.”

The biker paused, reached into his leather saddlebag, and pulled out a bag of venison jerky. He tore off a bite and extended the bag to me. “Tasty stuff. Got it at some place in Salado.”

I took a piece of jerky and tapped my palm with it. “How long ago did this happen, the split with your wife?”

A pause.

“Day before yesterday.”

The biker’s face took on a tormented cast as he peered into the dark. “Sticks and stones will break your bones, but baseball broke my arm, and that girl broke my heart. As it turns out, our vows were just empty words, and those rings were just shiny hollow round things. God almighty, if all that rhymed better, and it had a dog and a truck and a dusty road and some Old Grand-Dad whiskey, and a point, it would sound like a bad country tune, wouldn’t it?” The biker sounded forlorn when he laughed. His agonal sigh was like the air leaving his soul. “Man, oh man, how I loved that girl….”

He nodded at the intersection and motioned like genuflecting when he pointed at the roads leading in four directions away from the blinking red light. “I love these country roads at night…it’s darker…the smells are more alive.” His laugh was now a wounded lament. “And there’s a way better than average chance of hitting a deer…if you’re lucky.”

The biker abruptly stood, walked to the other side of the Harley, straddled it, and slipped the dark aviators back on. “Tommy Lasorda once said that no matter how good you are, you’re going to lose a third of your games, and no matter how bad you are, you’re going to win a third of your games. Everything in baseball, and life, one might infer, comes down to what you do with that last thirty-three point three percent. I just wish to hell I knew which third I’m working on right now.”

He rocked the Harley upright and released the kickstand. “You’re welcome to hop on and come along. I’ve not been to the West before. We could be traveling pals. See New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, California. Be dangerous, do stupid stuff, work on the ski lifts, be tour guides in the Grand Canyon, deal Blackjack in Vegas, be movie stuntmen, lumberjacks…starving artists in a commune.”

I told him that it sounded enticing, but it was too late for me to get a substitute for my classes. “Anyway, there’s graduation tonight. I’m the band director. Wouldn’t be ethical to leave them in a lurch.”

“Those ethics are a bitch.”

“You don’t even know.”

“And it sounds like you have a plan.”

“Well, I had a plan, sort of. Now…?”

The biker sat astride the Harley, looking south. Boots on the ground, arms crossed over his chest. “Plans can be fickle, my man. Now my plan was to be married to that girl forever. Have kids, coach their Little League teams, go to Disney World, Mount Rushmore. Wave at them when they went off to college. Be there when they got married and had kids of their own. Looking back on it, I probably loved her more than was healthy to do so. Kind of set myself up for failure, opening my heart and going all in on the naïve vulnerability shit. But after she picked that asshole candy man from M&M Mars over me, it was never going to be the same, now, was it? I didn’t want to end up sticking with my original plan, celebrating a joyless golden anniversary fifty years later, wishing I’d left before we had kids and grandkids and an RV in storage. Better to get all the goddamn despair out of the way now when there are only two people to hurt and get the fuck on with my life and a new plan.” He turned and looked at me. “Maybe you don’t want to end up fifty years from now, looking back at this moment, wishing you’d taken…tell me her name again?”

“Anna.”

“Taken Anna with you.” The biker nodded. “Anna. Nice biblical name. Means grace.”

“I did not know that.”

“You would if you were a preacher’s kid and had gone to Baylor.”

The biker laughed, punched the starter button with his thumb, and the big V-twin roared to life. The impatient throaty growl of the engine almost drowned out his voice. “This is real, right?”

“Real?”

“Real. As in actually happening, man. Not a dream. Real.”

 “Feels real to me.”

“It does, it does. Just making sure. I can’t always tell anymore. You know, I think we’re the most real versions of ourselves we’ll ever be, right now, when we’re also the most flawed we’ll ever be. Think about that. When we get older and wiser and more cultured and refined and careful and cautious and comb our hair and wear undershirts and deodorant, we’ll be less real, less original, less authentic, less…I don’t know….”

“Less?”

“Yeah, yeah, just less.”

He rapped the throttle once and waited for the echo of the exhaust to die before speaking again. “Man, that was some deep shit.” Another laugh. “I’m sure you’ll do the right thing about Anna.”

The biker extended his hand to me. His paw was rough, calloused, and strong. An athlete’s hand.

“Name’s Cain. Cain Randle, one L—before E.”

“Grant. Grant Major, no S—after R.”

“Good luck with your plan and Anna, Grant Major with no S after R. I hope my advice helps, but I’m no oracle, so grain of salt and all that jazz.”

Cain squeezed my hand for two long beats and released it. He pulled in the clutch and nudged the toe shifter into first gear. “You’ve given me a fascinating idea for my first novel, Grant Major. Maybe I’ll write the story of you and Anna.”

“Be sure to give us a happy ending, would you?”

“Maybe I will, and maybe I won’t”—he revved the engine—“because sad sells, brother. And I’ll not allow the truth to stand in the way of telling a riveting tale of forbidden love. What I don’t know for a fact, I’ll just pull out of my butt and make it up.”

Cain laughed like a madman as he roared away from the curb. Halfway through the intersection, he must have had a change of heart because he leaned his iron horse into a swooping counterclockwise 270-degree turn to chart a new course headed west.

He stood on the pegs, then sat down hard as he twisted on the throttle and pulled back on the handlebars. The front wheel lifted slightly off the ground, and the pipes reverberated off the downtown buildings and streets as he disappeared around the corner, howling like a wolf.

I tossed my untouched piece of jerky into the middle of the street as I walked to the intersection to watch Cain ride away. I could smell bacon frying and coffee brewing at the Repose Café, but the only thing I saw was a paper cup blowing across the road and a double yellow ribbon that disappeared into the void.

BIO: Randy Tierce was an educator, administrator and researcher for forty-seven years. He now walks, thinks, and writes near Houston.