Dynamite Road

- ONE- It was one hundred and five degrees the day Jim Bishop roared into the north country. The sun burned merciless on the dead meridian. The mountains rose brown and barren on either side of the freeway. The heat pooled like water on the pavement up ahead. Bishop rolled the throttle of the Harley Road King. The big bike crested seventy-five, pulsing between his legs. It was a long-haul dresser, built for comfort, but Bishop was aching beneath his jeans. His gray T-shirt was black with sweat beneath his leather jacket. His hair was soaked beneath his helmet. His sunglasses were smearedhis windshield toowith what bikers call "protein spray"splattered bugs. He veered off the freeway at the end of the long valley. Exit: Driscoll, California, population sixty-seven thousand, the 0last great outpost before the mountains and the woods. The Harley grumbled as Bishop forced it down beneath its touring speed. He rolled at forty-five along a bland fourlane, hemmed in every which way by a steady stream of cars. Gas stations lined the road and sand-colored malls and more gas stations and motel after motel and then fast-food outposts, Taco Bell, Burger King, McDonald's, and more gas stations and more malls with their stores in sand-colored boxes and the big screaming letters to tell which store was which. The Harley went down one road, turned onto another and then turned onto another and the scenery stayed the same. Gas stations, hotels, restaurants and malls. From behind his aviator shades, Bishop's pale eyes searched for the city center. Then he realized: This was it, this was all there was. Driscoll was just a starburst scar of concrete and stucco at the base of the big mountains. A tourist stop on the way into the wilderness. He chugged over a white bridge, still hemmed in by traffic. Beneath him, the Sacramento River glinted painfully in the sun. On the far side of the water, around a bend, the cars began to fall away a little. Bishop opened the throttle some, split the lane and wove between a couple of cage-drivers. He wound round the corner onto Main Streetor what was called Main Street. Main Street was pretty much dead. The malls and their chain stores had sucked the life out of it. Now there was a gutted theater here and a desperate bar called the Clover Leaf and a hotel that might have been open or closed, he couldn't tell which. A one-armed man in an army cap was staggering drunk on the sidewalk. A fat man with a bushy beard was planted at the corner, brandishing a cardboard sign that said:Homeless Veteran. Give what you can. Bishop and his big motorcycle cruised on by. He headed into the neighborhoods. On branching roads, slanting houses of wood or aluminum huddled on scraps of lawn. Fat women in sleeveless blouses hosed down patches of desert garden. Their grubby children danced laughing through the water. The laughter fell away. The city fell away. A few last gasping shacks and then an empty field, burnt dry by the heat, ran shimmering into the foothills. Far away, as in a dreamland far away, the whitewashed walls of holiday mansions gleamed down at Driscoll from those hills on high. Bishop had reached the edge of town, the border of the northern forests. He rounded his bike onto a gritty little lane and rode the last half mile to the airfield. * * * There were two men in the hangar, both in overalls. One was an older statesman, bald, craggy. The other was a young fellow with a face lit by brainless contentment. They were chatting over the low wing of a Piper Tomahawk. Chatting, chuckling. It was the older man, wiping his hands on a rag, who first looked through the hangar door and saw Bishop heading in. Bishop had left his helmet hanging from the Harley's handlebars. Stripped off his leather jacket and slung it over his shoulder. He was stroKlavan, Andrew is the author of 'Dynamite Road', published 2004 under ISBN 9780765346940 and ISBN 076534694X.