By Ed Staskus

   It was wetter than not wet the front end of summer and too muddy to ride the single tracks in the Rocky River valley. It rained nine days the first two weeks of July. Instead of the single tracks, I rode my Specialized on the all-purpose trail and left my Schwinn hanging in the garage. The Schwinn was outfitted for dirt, with front shocks and a low stem. The Specialized was outfitted with road tires, knobby on the outside and smooth rolling on the flat side, making for better going on asphalt.

   It made for even faster going down Hogsback Lane, which is the entryway off Riverside Dr. into the valley. It is laid down on a steep shale hill. It’s about a half mile to the bottom. When the shale slumps and slides, the two-lane surface crumbles, and it becomes vital to keep your eyes glued to the road. Hunched over the handlebars I could hit 40 MPH downhill, no problem, unless I feathered the brakes, which I usually did, lessening the chances of flying over the handlebars. That would have been a misadventure.

   I rode alone most of the time, especially that summer because my brother Rick, with whom I occasionally rode, was getting married. He said he didn’t have much time to get on his bike anymore. “I’ve got a lot going on,” he explained. He had been married once before, but it only lasted two months before his bride hit the road.

   “I don’t want him racing that crazy hill and crashing,” his fiancée Amy said. She didn’t want a train wreck walking down the aisle with her. She and Rick had met earlier in the year on a blind date. One whirlwind after another led to the one-way street they were on.

   “You be careful, too” my wife said, watching me hitching up in the backyard.

   The summer of 1995 was hot, in the high 80s when it wasn’t in the high 90s. I could have ridden the single tracks, since they had dried up going into August, but I stayed on the all-purpose trails. Towards the end of one week, after getting home from work, I rode twelve miles out, almost all the way to Berea. It was on the way back that I passed a man wearing a red helmet. Inside a few minutes the red helmet was behind me, drafting, but when I slowed down for a car at the crossroads to the entrance of Little Met, he slipped past me when the car paused to let us go by. The trail went up a long hill. I finally caught up at the top.

   He tucked in behind me and we rode to where the trail zigzagged through some curves  where he got sloppy. He tried to pass two women on roller blades, except on an inside-out curve, and when another bike came up on the other side, he had to slalom wide onto the grass. He had to loop back.

   “That was a good pace,” he said before I peeled away to go home, while he kept going his own way. Pedaling up Hogsback Lane is a long slog, which is what I did, shifting into lower gears. By the time I got close to the crest I was on the verge of stalling. When I made it to flat land I sucked air, returning to the land of the living.

   The next weekend Rick had an appointment for a haircut at Planet 10, on W. 9th St. and wanted to ride there. We rode through Ohio City to Church St. He pointed out an old church whose rectory had been converted into a recording studio. “That’s where we’re having our reception,” he said. Amy was a sometime actress and sometime singer. She had the looks and the voice. She made a living doing nails, since nailing roles in Cleveland wasn’t a paying proposition. Her showbiz earnings were her drinking money.

   Rick was Roman Catholic and of Lithuanian stock, like me, but they were getting married in an Episcopalian church instead of the ethnic church where we had grown up. Even though Amy was an atheist, her well-off grandmother wasn’t and wanted her to be married in a house of God. Amy didn’t like the old Lithuanian church in North Collinwood, so it was going to be someplace else.

   We went south on W. 25^th St., crossed the bridge to Jacobs Field, and rode to the Warehouse District. The bride-to-be was still all right with Rick riding city streets, but not any farther into the near east side, which I often did, to Cleveland Hts. through the ghetto along Cedar Rd. She quashed that by stamping her foot. “I don’t want him getting killed by any porch monkey,” she said.

   Rick pushed his bike into Planet 10’s lobby and I rode away. After zigzagging around downtown, on my way home, stopping at a narrow strip of grass near the Hope Memorial Bridge, squeezing a drink from my water bottle, I saw a black woman with shopping bags easing herself down to a patch of grass at the side of an RTA sign. She looked up at me and smiled. One of her teeth was chipped. She was probably going back to the ghetto where she would make plans to ambush Rick if he ever rode his bike past her house.

   I was standing outside my garage when Rick and Amy pulled up in her baby blue Ford Tempo. His bike was sticking out of the trunk. The trunk was bungee cord shut. “Jerry screwed up Rick’s appointment,” she complained. “He’s so unprofessional.” She jabbed the air with a finger. She was angry. She reminded me of Jayne Mansfield in the movie “The Wayward Bus.”

   Planet Ten was owned and operated by a gay man named Jerry who was a junkie. He lived near Gordon Square where he could score smack in the blink of an eye. He was up-and-down on any given day. He was good with clippers and shears, though, when he was on the up-and-up.

   It was mid-week before I rode back into the valley and got on the dirt trails that branch off from the horse stables at Puritas Rd. They were dry where they were level, but they weren’t level over much. I had to ford a stream where a tree had fallen. I jumped some baby stumps and went sideways once. When I got home I got the hose and sprayed cold water on myself. It was a hot day and I had gotten hot.

   My wife and I drove to Amy’s bridal shower that weekend, which was at her best friend’s house in Avon Lake. Wendy was a big-faced woman married to a ruddy-faced man who was a barge pilot on the Mississippi River. It was a very steamy that day, even though it was just barely August. I was sitting on a leather sofa in the air-conditioned family room when I noticed a small dog on the coffee table. I couldn’t tell if it was a dog dead asleep or a dead dog who had been stuffed. When I reached for whatever the thing was, it snapped at my fingers.

   “You better watch out,” Wendy said. “He’s blind, so he bites at everything.”

   I went for a spin after we got home. Twilight was turning to dusk by the time I got back. Snapper, our Maine Coon cat, came running out of the neighbor’s backyard. Just when I was ready to close the garage door, Rick pulled into the driveway. Snapper ran the other way. He didn’t trust my brother. I had gotten to not exactly trusting him anymore, either. He was always explaining something or other.

   “Can I borrow your lawn mower?” he asked.

   “All right, but bring it back.”

   He was notorious for never returning borrowed tools. He had Kate, Amy’s three-year-old daughter, with him. I picked her up, held her upside down, and spun her by her heels in circles. When we were done we talked about a nickname for her, finally settling on Skate.

   “It rhymes with Kate,” I said. She waved goodbye through the window of the car as Rick pulled out with the lawn mower. If the child hadn’t been with him I wouldn’t have lent him the mower. That was probably why he brought her along. He was shrewd that way.

   By mid-August cumulus clouds were dotting the sky and the weather was surprisingly cooler. I rode my Schwinn down Hogsback Lane and got off the all-purpose trail at Mastick Woods, veering onto the dirt track there. I rode the track and then double-backed on the horse trail. As I did, I noticed somebody was coming up. When he went by I saw he was wearing a baseball cap instead of a helmet and was on a Trek. He was riding fast, and even though I followed him as best I could, I couldn’t catch him until he suddenly slowed down. I saw why when he pulled up. Horses were coming around a bend. We waited as the nags cantered past.

   The baseball cap turned to the right and rode into the trees toward the river and the single tracks on the bank. I followed him, bumping over ruts and logs and through underbrush, but soon lost sight of him. He pushed up the hill running along Big Met, then down, and as he came into the clear jumped onto the trail. He had gone around and was riding faster than before. We sped through a thicket, then across a baseball field where he widened the gap by jumping a wood guardrail, something I couldn’t do, even if I tried as hard as I could. It would have ended badly. I went around. It went well enough.

   I thought I might catch the baseball cap on the Detroit Rd. climb out of the valley, except he climbed so fast I lost more ground. I finally caught up to him where he was waiting at a red light. “I wasn’t planning on doing much today, but it ended up being a fun ride,” he said. “I saw the Vytis decal on your fender.” There was a red decal of the Lithuanian coat of arms on my rear X-Blade fender. 

   “Not many people know what that is.”

   “I know my Baltic heroes,” he said, waving goodbye.

   JoJo was Amy’s friend who had arranged the blind date when Amy had been on the prowl after her latest divorce. She was promised she could be the maid of honor if the date led to anything. She was a travel agent. Amy gave her a cash down payment for a Cancun honeymoon. But then the travel agency called and said they were getting anxious about the down payment, since they hadn’t received it, yet. When Rick telephoned JoJo she said she hadn’t gotten any cash, but when Amy overheard that she rushed to the phone. There was a heated argument and JoJo somehow found the money. The honeymoon was back on. JoJo as bridesmaid was off.

   The next day Rick called. “Are you going riding?” he asked.

   “I’m just going out the door,” I said.

   “I’ll be there in ten minutes. I need some fresh air.”

    I was working out the kinks in my lower back when Rick rode up the driveway.

   “Amy’s sick,” he said.

   “What’s wrong with her?”

   “Cramps,” he said. “I think it’s nerves.”

   “Let’s go,” I said.

   The sky was overcast and gusts from the southwest pushed us around as we rode on the rim of the valley. We glided down and rode single tracks. The ruts were bad but we rode fast enough. My back wheel went in wrong directions a few times. Rick held back. He didn’t want to face plant.

   “A little out of control there,” he said when we crossed over to a horse path and relaxed.

   “Maybe a little,” I said.

   “I want to make it to the altar in one piece,” he said.

   “Getting married is risky business,” I said. “Take a look at you and Amy. You were married once and it only lasted two months. Amy’s been married twice. She’s got a kid by one of the husbands and another kid by a free agent. You might want to throw caution to the wind between now and the wedding day.”

   “I don’t think so,” he said, shooting me an aggrieved look. 

   “Then keep your eyes wide open before the wedding and half-shut afterwards.”

   Leaving the valley Rick suddenly braked ahead of me. I got tangled up in his back tire and went over the handlebars. I skinned my knee, but we were going too slow for much else to happen. “Crash test dummies,” a watching crow squawked. It took me longer to put my derailleur chain, which had fallen off, back on than it did to get over my injuries. The chain was trapped against the frame. I had to loosen the rear wheel. I cleaned my greasy hands on some of last year’s fallen leaves.

   The morning of the wedding, while my wife went shopping for a gift, I sped down into the valley. I felt good, but a strong crosswind was blowing and I got tired. The bike felt sloppy, too. Going home I pushed hard because I didn’t want to be late for the ceremony. When I finally got home I found out I had been riding on a nearly flat back tire.

   The wedding went off without a hitch, but during the reception, when my wife was congratulating him, Rick made the shape of a handgun with his hand, with his index finger pressed to his temple. The next day I drove to his house with the gift we had forgotten to bring to the reception. Amy was lounging in the living room in a thick white bathrobe, poring over Cancun brochures. Skate was in her pajama’s watching SpongeBob Squarepants.

   “How’s the new life?’

   “Couldn’t be better.”

   By the beginning of October the valley was starting to glow with maple red. One Sunday morning my wife and I had breakfast down the street at the Borderline Café and went for a walk together on the horse trails behind South Mastick. That night, while we were watching a movie on TV, Rick called.

   “I won’t be able to ride anymore.”

   “Amy?” 

   “No, it’s my shoulder.”

   I had noticed how he couldn’t lift his right arm above his head without trying hard. “After any ride,” he said, “any ride at all, potholes or no potholes, my shoulder is in a lot of pain. I’ve been taking Celebrex, but my doctor told me it’s rubbing bone on bone. There’s almost no cartilage left. He said sometime in the next couple of years, depending on how fast the rest of it goes, I’ll need a replacement shoulder.”

   “Oh, man!” I exclaimed.

   The last Saturday of the month was the last day of the year I rode in the valley. It was getting too wet and cold. I was adjusting the strap on my helmet when some neighborhood boys and girls came walking up with rakes, brooms, and a wagon. They asked if they could rake our yard for $5.00. They started pushing wet leaves into piles. The biggest of the girls walked up to me.

   “Mister, can I ask you something?” she said.

   “Sure,” I said.

   “That small boy,” she said pointing to a small boy. “He’s having an emergency.”

   I rang the doorbell for my wife. She came outside, saying she would take care of the boy, who was doing a potty dance, and supervise the raking. “Go before it gets dark,” she said. It was getting dark earlier and earlier. It would soon be dark the minute I got off work at 5 PM.

   I cut across a field where Hogsback Lane intersects with the Valley Parkway and rode onto a single track. It was littered with slapdash. A flock of Canadian geese went by overhead. They honked at me. I came around a quick bend and the branches of a fallen tree on the side of the track jabbed at my face. I swerved to the left and pulled on the brakes, jumping off the bike when the tree I was going to run into became the tree I ran into. I landed on my feet. The bike was good to go when I picked it up, thank God.

   On the way home I rode on the road, instead of the trail, hugging the shoulder’s white line. A man in a Ford F-150 pick-up leaned on his horn behind me, and when he went past, tried to shrug me off the road, giving me his middle finger for good measure. Some people are sons of bitches. There’s no getting around it. At home I hosed off the Schwinn and hung it up in the garage. I checked the tires. They looked good, although I knew hanging upside down in the garage all winter long the air would slowly seep out of them.

   When you ride with somebody you’ve got to wait until they’re as ready as you are. When you ride by yourself you can go whenever your bike is ready. Nobody wants to be alone, but sometimes you just need to be left alone. I did yoga at home that winter to give my lower back a helping hand. I went to classes sometimes even though I couldn’t abide the pie in the sky talk. I had an indoor bike and pedaled on it. I would have to pump up my road bike tires the coming April before going back into the valley. When I did, I would keep my eyes on the road ahead, not looking back, feeling for the smell of springtime after a long winter.

   I never did ride with Rick again, even though he and Amy didn’t work out. They got divorced and she drank herself to death. Another blind date got him married a third time to a stiff-necked school teacher whose husband had left her. She didn’t like my looks. She didn’t want me to be a part of their happy family. I didn’t mind. One of her grown-up sons was a gun nut and the other one was white bread. Leaving them alone to grind their teeth was for the best. I slapped on a shaggy dog smile whenever I saw them and left it at that.

Ed Staskus posts monthly on 147 Stanley Street  http://www.147stanleystreet.com, Made in Cleveland http://www.clevelandohiodaybook.com, Down East http://www.redroadpei.com, and Lithuanian Journal http://www.lithuanianjournal.com. To get the site’s monthly feature in your in-box click on “Follow.”

“Cross Walk” by Ed Staskus

Late summer, New York City, 1956. Big city streets full of menace. A high profile contract killing in the works. A private eye working out of Hell’s Kitchen scares up the shadows.

Available on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CRPSFPKP

A Crying of Lot 49 Publication