Along the bike path

The man was riding his bicycle along a bike path in Southwest Ohio. He had ridden ten miles to the next town. There he had lunched at a picnic table on a peanut butter and jelly sandwich washed down with ice tea he had brought along in a plastic bottle. He had read a copy of the local paper with particular interest in the "Help Wanted" and "Apartments for Rent" sections. Then he rode his bike back again as far as this spot, which was still about a mile from the small house he had rented a few weeks before.

The scenery along the way from Serena to Hollowbrook is particularly appealing for its many variations. The trail threads its way through the one town, past a park with a duck pond, close to a two lane highway, then into the woods, past farms, then more woods, and past an old college, before finally coming into the center of the other town.

At this point on the return trip, the path was getting close to the road again and there was nothing in between, but an expanse of freshly mown grass. The lane of on-coming traffic, headed North, was closest to the path. Cars and trucks whizzed by, exceeding the speed limit of 55 mph.

The man was pedalling along at a pretty good pace of his own. His head was down with his helmet into the wind. The sun was high and there was no shade in this open area. Although he had been looking down, not ahead, and not in the direction of the road off to his right, he sensed a vehicle which was travelling faster than the others, swerving somewhat as it came around the gentle curve in the road. It must have been the sound of the loud engine that had warned him initially. He knew he shouldn't have, but could not resist looking up.

"Asshole!" a man shouted from the passenger seat of a truck as it passed him. It was a rusty, well-dented pickup, carrying a couple of young rednecks. The passenger had his head out the window, hooting and hollering as they continued on, roaring up the road.

The man quickly resumed his downward gaze. He thought, hell, I know what I am, but it makes me wonder what he is that he thinks he has to point it out to me. Well anyway, I didn't give him the satisfaction of reacting. I wonder if he feels better, now.

He started to think about himself, about his situation with the woman, something he had managed to avoid for almost twenty miles of solitary cycling. It's hard to argue with someone when they're not rational, someone who's not on the same intellectual wavelength, someone who is so damned insecure that she looks at your own sense of security and can think of nothing better to call it than selfishness. Her emotions had been taking them around in circles, her own arguments contradicting themselves, and she refusing to see it. For instance, when she said that giving his wife his share to the house and the rights to his pension and just packing up and leaving with nothing for himself was "so damn selfish." Go figure! All he'd wanted was to be alone.

Then she had tracked him down. And she was all contrite. She told him that she not only understood why he had done what he had done, but she thought it was the right thing for him to do and had actually congratulated him on finally taking back control of his life. Of course, she had been pressing him to divorce his wife for years, but never understood the legalities, what in New York they call "equitable distribution," an intricate legal concept that was further complicated by his wife's disability.

She told him she still wanted to be part of his life, wanted to move out to Ohio with him and start all over again. He'd warned her that she'd have to change. She'd said that she would do anything to be with him. He should have known better.

There were signs of trouble, even before she joined him. She called him every night. And every night, he made it clear that this is what he would be doing, with her, or without her. One time, when she asked him what he had done alone in his apartment all day, he tried to explain about the writing, rewriting, editing. Her response was, "You might as well, while you have this time to yourself, before the kids and I move out there." He tried to impress it upon her. "This is what I'm going to be doing for the rest of my life. Get it?" He'd thought she had gotten it. Now, whenever he reminded her about their understanding, it was as if she had never understood. She must have thought he had been pulling a power-play, and that, now, she had the power. But it wasn't about power. As far as he was concerned, no one had any power.

"What if something happens to me, if I get sick or something?" she had asked him last night. "Are you going to send my kids back to their father and just take off and leave me?" "I'd never do that," he told her. "Why not?" she said. "You did that to your wife." Suddenly, out of all the irrationality and anger, there emerged a rational thought with enough force to pull all the other crazy ideas together into a cogent argument. It was a projectile, fired straight and true. It slammed into him with a deadening thud.

"Asshole!"

The man had come to a place where a dirt road crossed the bike path. An old pickup truck was blocking the trail in front of him. The two occupants, large unshaven men in flannel shirts and dirty overalls, had gotten out and were standing next to the truck, leaning on baseball bats.

The man applied his brakes and brought the bike to a stop.

"Did you think you could just ignore us and keep pedalling on your merry way?" He thought it was the one who had shouted to him from the road.

The two men raised their bats and started toward him.

The man got off his bike. He removed his helmet and turned to face them. Then he told them the same thing he had said to the woman the night before. "Go right ahead, if you think it will make you feel better."