Eisenhower the Horse

A young, lonely man travels a cold, modern American highway on his loyal bicycle, Eisenhower, who little to his knowledge longs to be human, in order to make love to it's master.

Coming to you live, from somewhere; I am a tropical blend of Keith Olbermann, David Frost, Walter Cronkite, and Nancy Grace.  I am a creature built like a delicious heterogeneous mixture of nuts, sun dried berries, and whatever else your heart desires- a beautiful music, per say, of warm familiar television faces and the strange barren land that is public access. 

 What you are about to read is true, what your are about to see is unfortunate.  Only the names and locations have been changed for the protection of the persons represented tonight, and for you, the viewer.  You’re a special little skipper.  Understand that these details where only changed to protect you, the viewer, from these awesome and unfathomable truths.  They may not be what you want to hear. 

 

Eisenhower the Horse

A novella by Sara L. Jackson

The year, 5762.  The year, 2001.

It was route 7, it was Connecticut, it was close to winter.  The highway was wet and the brown trees stuck up in their pointy nakedness like the fingers of those old people that everyone’s so sensitive about.
The road was so wet that reflections of orange, red, and white car and streetlights reflected off it; bright spots of color in the blue-grey late autumn dusk.  Fluorescent lights hummed over an old Carvel.  I former Chevy dealership was empty and for lease, weeds growing out of every crack in the parking lot.  Someone sprayed a large orange penis where the sign used to be.
It was a night someone would play Clair de Lune on saxophone to, if anyone had the balls to do so.

            Zoom.  Big old Jeeps and Hondas and Toyotas and Buicks and Whatchamacallits went by, slipping on the road and almost nailing a man on a white bicycle. The only man on the only bicycle probably on all of route 7.  He could have been the only man on a bicycle ever in the world, if he timed it right.  He slowly rode his white bicycle on the slippery road, carrying a plethora of different varieties and selections of crap he tied to the back. 
He swerved; both he and the bike remembering that just off of 84 a gasoline truck was cut off and had exploded.  There was a big cloud of black smoke that day almost 72 hours ago; it was the only cloud in that clear blue sky that day.  The man remembered that day he went to the post office, having no job.  Today is no different.
The bike swerved, wanting to piss itself with the fear it felt for these cars almost having killed its master.

“Watch your f*****g asses you f*****g cocksucker f**k!  Your mother is a f*****g Cadillac!”
The man shouted and hiccupped, swerving some more on the shoulder.
  The bike quickly saved him, this scrawny, trashy, leathery man it had come to love.  Though when hills and slight inclines came it could only do its best.  Suddenly while going up a hill by a distant lingerie store, framed by giant, furry evergreen trees, the man found himself struggling to pedal.  He had no choice but to talk the bike up this slippery slope of American progress. 

“God f*****g damn it Eisenhower this thing and its f*****g gears.  Holy God. . . f**k. . .”
The man was panting.  The bike, Eisenhower, loved the sound of when the man began to pant.  It prayed that he would lean his head just a little lower to pant on it, hopefully where it wanted; the very tips of its handle bars.  The most sensitive part of a bicycles body. Eisenhower’s rusty wheels squeaked at the thought.
 The man pulled it over just a moment to take a rest on the shoulder of the highway.  A drenched diaper was in their 20 foot radius, as was a dead turkey. 
The man took a swig of whatever was in his flask; a fuzzy My Little Pony sticker was stuck to it.  If only all men had the right to such a wonderful thing. 

“God f*****g damn it. . .”

I’m doing the best I can.    

The bike, Eisenhower, rested against the shoulder and took a moment to think about the man’s jaw.  The side of his face, with the prominent yet narrow jaw was decorated with black stubble. That jaw line was connected to the swoop on the side of his neck, the smoothest part of his frail body.  A faint blue of his veins were visible in his neck, along with a mole, and a gold chain necklace.  So pail, thought the bike, the most fragile and vulnerable part of this man.  The bike knew a man’s neck was where breath usually comes from; Eisenhower began to lose what consciousness it had at the thought of the man panting on or around it- Lord, how sinful.

Supposedly one of the Dangbury apartment complexes was adjacent to a brothel, and the burned down rubble of a former Indian trading post.  The wallpaper was tacky, decorated in all sorts of deep rainbow flowers.  Under warm yellow light there was a framed picture of a messy hotdog; “Sic Semper Tyranis” was inscribed straight under it in mechanical pencil. 

The man sat before a fold out table in a dark living room, filled with Chicago paraphernalia; Eisenhower leaned close beside him.  The Andy Griffith show glowed blue on the man and his bike, as the man hurriedly ate a small Salisbury steak and drank a tall, cold glass of milk.  The warmth of the man’s side was enough or Eisenhower.  It could hear the blood running through the man’s veins, like a long red dragon.   
Two strange women, an old bag and a teenage girl, peered from behind the kitchen doorway to observe the man in secret.

“How long do we have to keep feeding him?” said the girl, baring large glasses fit for the king of comb-overs.  The two women whispered to each other, the man not the least bit wary of them.  Andy Griffith was too much of a nostalgic hoot.     
“Until he gets all of the hair out of the bathtub, and fixes the station-wagon, and when Jonathan gets back to me.”  The woman wielded a cigarette holder, naked under her zebra print robe. 
“S**t lookit all that food. This is like, the nine-eleven of food.”
“Oh, oh my God, hey, no, too soon, buby.  Too soon.”
“Oh my God. . .”
“Yeh gotta watch what you say . . . about that, you know. . .”    
“Oh God Mom, no, I’m sorry.”
“It-it’s fine.”
“S**t, mom.  I’m a s**t person.”

The man was oblivious, lost in a sea of 60s television, drinking his glass of milk and laughing the raspy laugh of a long-time smoker.  Suddenly he raised an eyebrow to the inside of the glass, and grinned a little as he pulled out his flask and poured a generous amount into the glass.
Immediately his wonderful, pale throat gagged it back into the cup after the first swig.

“Oh my God was that a bad idea.  Ew, f**k.”   He stretched out on the couch and swirled the glass.  The bike could hardly make out the hairs that lead down to his groin, revealed to Eisenhower from a small gap between his shirt and his blue jeans.
“Ey, Sug-Sug com’ere! Wanna know what’s a bad idea?”  The man called, “This!  This is a bad idea!   Don’t put whisky in milk, you hear me?  Heheh.”   
The bicycle laughed inside itself, for it thought everything he did and said was very, very funny. 
Hah!  Say some more things. 

Sug suddenly stood before the end of the couch, putting a cigarette back in her holder while briefly watching the television, though her daughter still peeked from behind the kitchen doorway.  A portrait of James Dean hovered behind her head like a halo. 
Eisenhower thought of her big puffy Christmas sweater.  What a colorful and tacky thing to keep the master warm.  Eisenhower shook off the thought.  No.  It liked him in his olive greens, blacks, plaids, and his shoulders dusted with fresh snow. 

“Robin yah gotta get out of here in a half hour, kay?” Sug kept her eyes on the TV.

“Eh?”  Robin straightened himself up slightly.  “You’re a card, Sug.  Your station wagon is still broken and you love the s**t out of me.” He chuckled under his breath. 

Eisenhower hated the zebra robe Sug wore; so revealing.  It could seduce Robin.  Anything could.  He needed to look at the bike instead, bikes can have curves too.
The screech of an emergency alert system test began to sing, warning about many things, mostly the weather.  The voice on the alert was muffled, male, and automated.

“Goddamit no, Rob.”

“Well fine, but Dang still loves me.”  He called to the girl peering from the kitchen door, her glasses reflecting silver from the television, hiding her eyes.  “Don’t ya, Dang?”    

 “Jonathan’s coming over and you gotta sleep somewhere else tonight, Rob.  Sorry.” said Miss Sugar.

“Jon?”  Robin paused in surprise.  “My little brother Jon, you mean?  You’re still at it with him?”

“Yeah.”

“Hah holy s**t!  He’s a two-timen’ d********g, you know that, right? “

“Don’t do this to me, Rob.”

 “No, really, you know that.  Whens the last time he called yeh?”

Sug paused to take a long, self loathing drag from the cigarette holder.    I’m watching you. Eisenhower never took its bicycle eyes off her.

“Like a week and a half.  But he had a damn good reason; his building’s getting fumigated for Christ sake!”

 “For a week and a half?  He’s shitting you.”  Robin turned his gaze back to the television.

“Shut up, Rob!”

“No, no, Sug, he’s shitting you. “

Sug then pulled a TV Guide from the fold out table displayed before Robin, rolled it up, and wacked him in the chest.  “Get up.”

“Ah, hey!”

“Get up, get your damn bike and get the hell out of my condo!”  

Dang was alone in the kitchen during all this.  She sat alone at a round card table, covered in a red and white checkered plastic cloth.  She kept her head low to the table as she read a Jughead comic and ate a bowl of sticky rice.  Hide as you always do, Dang. 

Eisenhower’s wheels clicked restlessly whilst led out the door next to Robin.  It hoped maybe now Rob would hate her now, as Eisenhower did.  

            “Hey, if I go find my brother will you cut me some slack?  It’s really cold out here.”

Far off in the darkness of the apartment complex someone somewhere lit their reindeer decorations.  They now glowed and twinkled on top of the roof of a mother of three.
Robin stood on the last step, holding his bike at the handlebars, close to his pelvis.  The warmth of his groin was only inches away from Eisenhower, it could feel his fertility, and smell his male-ness.

“Stop offending me with that mouth of yours.  We love each other, Jon and me.  You’re jealous he’s not a creep like you and that he gets more sex.”

“Aw c’mon, Sugar.”  Eisenhower noticed Robin’s hands were growing cold and purple on its handlebars.  It could do nothing about it.   “If I were Jon I would really be in love with ya.  You and that zebra thing you wearin’.”

 “Robin, godammit!”

“I wouldn’t leave ya hanging for weeks neither!  In fact I’ll be back tomorrow, Sugar!” 

“Get off my property and go get your f****n’ brother, Rob!  Jesus Christ!”

  She slammed the door, and Robin watched as a light in the window fell black.  His breath came out of his nose in misty clouds, and he began to shiver slightly.  “F**k.” He whispered.

He mounted Eisenhower once again and began to ride to God knows where.  He drew in many heavy sighs, looking at the blackness of the night, the dim orange glow of lonesome streetlamps.  In their stream of light Eisenhower could see a few flurries gliding down to the asphalt.  It had gotten so bitterly cold this month. 
Eisenhower could feel a strange sadness in Robin as he rode quietly between condo buildings.  His breath was a shaky mess, Eisenhower felt so sorry for him.

“Welp, gotta find somewhere to sleep now, I guess.” Rob huffed under his breath. 

 The bike imagined itself standing upright, its wheels becoming arms, and enveloping Robin, like a big bicycle angel.  Make me warm so I can warm you, thought the bike.  

   Suddenly the two of them came across a young, lean man in a black pea coat.  He sat on some concrete steps that were dripping with rust stains, kissing a short and heavy girl with flat ironed blond hair. She bared a nose ring.  She couldn’t have been more than sixteen.  Robin sucked in his emotions, and rode in circles around the two of them like a vulture. 

“Hey Jay!  Ms. Sugar wants ya!”
The man looked up with a start, cradling the girls face in one hand.  Eisenhower knew his face, a carbon copy of Robin, only cleaner, younger, and taller.  He did in fact have more hair, and a lumberyard of long crooked teeth in his mouth. 

“Robin?”  He said.  Rob pulled his bike to a stop by the couple, smiling in a mocking manner. 

“Who the hells this?”  Rob glanced at the young girl, who was some kind of goth, no doubt.  She scowled, though a self proclaimed hoodlum she looked upon Robin like a piece of garbage, and had a fancy silver Nokia somewhere in her pocket. Eisenhower stared back.  The girl scanned him; his clothes, his dirtiness, his big gold tooth, everything she glimpsed and hated Eisenhower in turn loved. If the bike could charge and attack, cat-fight it out, it certainly would have.

Jonathan stared down his big brother. “Rob, I’m kinda busy.”

“Ooh, I see.  Jon you f****n’ sleaze.”

Jon briefly kissed the side of the girl’s face in apology, and then frowned at his big brother.  Eisenhower thought the Superman wrist bands he wore were very tacky. 

“What are you talking about, Rob?”

“Sugar wants you.  She kicked me out and you gotta go love her and s**t now.”

The girl gaped and glanced towards the guilty, wide eyed Jon.  She abruptly stood to look down at him with an accusing gaze.  “Who’s Sugar?”  Jon only paused a moment and began to stammer.  “Who the f**k is Sugar?”

“Ah, oi, Genie, it’s this whole big thing, um. . .” Jon struggled to tie the words together.  Genie in turn chocked on her words.  Rob found this all a bit amusing at the expense of his little brother.    

“No.  F**k you, who is Sugar?”

Robin still stood by Eisenhower, and as Genie’s anger began to escalate his big toothy smile diminished.  Teach him a lesson and get that Sug away from you, thought the bike.  You’re mine.

“Who’s Sug?”  Robin teased. “She’s Jon’s girlfriend and he hasn’t seen the poor woman for two whole goddam weeks.”

“You’re a dirty liar, I’m his girlfriend!” Jon could only pinch the bridge of his nose and hope for the conversation to end.

“No, you trippin’?  Sug is his girlfriend.  She hangs around naked in those campy robes of hers and smokes and waits for Jon, but Jon don’t come ever.  She’s got a teenage girl with her too, her name is Dang and she’s a weird one.  Sugar’s older than Mama. “

“You dirt bag!” Genie could do nothing but bash the top of Jon’s head with her purse.  Once was enough, she then stormed up the steps to disappear into the shadows of the condo buildings, crying very quietly all the way. 

“Genie!  Oh God Genie, no, I can explain!”

“F**k you!”  Genie’s voice was distant by this point.

“Come back, let’s talk about this!” Jon could only hover a moment, looking out into the night for a sign of Genie, turned away from his big brother.    After a moment he sank back down to the steps, slowly putting his face in his knees.  Robin watched in silence, the smile gone from his face.  Eisenhower heard so much in this strange silence, mostly the quiet wind far off, the late night traffic on route 7 seemingly miles away.  Eisenhower could hear the faint buzz from the light pollution in the distance, kissing the dark night sky with a bit of pink and orange.  The backwash of New York City.
Robin sighed, he knew he needed to make himself scarce, he could feel the cold sinking into his bones, and Eisenhower could feel it too.

“Serves ya right, Jay.”  Rob spoke very softly and earnestly to his kid brother.

“Robin, you are a retard.  Get lost.” Though Jon was visibly upset, Eisenhower knew that no tears came from his eyes.  The bike could feel it in the air.

“Aw c’mon.  She would’ve found out sooner or later you’re a dick.” Jon said nothing, so Robin continued.

“Now you don’t got nobody.  Don’t go sleepin’ and lyin’ to all these damn people, ya know better than that.  Go tell Sug.”

Suddenly Jon stood up from the concrete steps and made a few paces towards Robin, a fiery anger in his eyes.  Though Jon managed to keep his composure; this twenty year old in a black Calvin Klein pea coat was a reasonable guy, after all. 

“Ya know Rob, you’re one to talk!”

Robin scoffed.  “Don’t you talk ‘bout my s**t, lil dog.”

“Whatever.  Stay out of my business, alright?  G’night.”  Jon then turned around, and jogged in the direction that Genie had escaped; down a gentle slope and beside rows upon rows of blue and beige condos.  But Robin quickly hoped on Eisenhower, and the two of them followed Jon down the hill, going slowly so Rob could move beside him.

“Where you think you’re going?  It’s over, let the poor chick cry, don’t go torturin’ that kid.”

“Jesus.”  Jon muttered, now going into a rather brisk jog, calling after Genie once and then going silent to huff as he ran. 

“Give it up, go home.”

“I swear to God if you don’t get lost right now Robin.”

“Don’t get f****n’ smart with me, lil dog!”

Eisenhower could feel something in Jon’s intentions.  The bike swerved a bit, but Robin had more power, and he kept on riding beside his brother.  Eisenhower the bike could do nothing, as Jon continued to run and also say nothing.

            “Fine, I’ll have Sug then.  Imma not let you have all these women to yourself.  You’re being a dick.”  

Suddenly Jon plunged his fist into Robin’s face, sending Rob crashing onto the pavement.  Eisenhower toppled over as well, along with all the clothes and supplies it carried on the back.  They all scattered about the road, becoming damp and dirty.   Robin lay there for a while, covering his face as his nose and teeth bled.  His thoughts spun and didn’t become decipherable until his brother ran from him.

            “Don’t you f**k with my life because you’re jealous!  It’s your fault you can’t have sex or-or be loved by nobody anymore so don’t take it out on me!”

His footsteps crunched and echoed into the darkness until all the noise that remained was the faint howling of breeze between the buildings, and a car alarm seemingly miles away.  Eisenhower lay there, so disappointed in itself.   Eisenhower watched Robin in a haze of guilt as he slowly began to sit up, looking at the blood from his nose and mouth.  A deep, fresh red.  So that’s what flowed through Robin that made him so warm, that made him smell the way he did, thought the bike. 

Robin paused a moment to take a long, hard swig from his flask, then took his time to get up, and collect all the things that had been knocked off of Eisenhower.  He was slow to collect his belongings; gathering a large quilted blanket, now damp, was the hardest thing to organize with a bleeding nose.  He moved and jerked like he was fatally wounded. 

As Robin re-packed his things on Eisenhower, he noticed a scratch on the boy-bar of the white bike.  Holding Eisenhower upright, he stared at it for a long time and felt the scratch gently with his purple fingertips.  He stared right at that scratch for a long, long time.  His face was surprisingly neutral. Eisenhower noted the flurries as they began to accumulate on his jacket.  After a while a single tear streamed down his face as he gently leaned his forehead against the frame of the bike, who couldn’t have wished for anything more.

Eisenhower carried Robin smoothly, so his thoughts could wonder, and so his heart could hurt without interruption as they began to ride on the shoulder of route 7 once again.  Not many cars drove by that night, most notable a huge sixteen wheeler passed them in a line of beautiful, red and orange lights.  Up ahead the windows of the gritty suburbs, Home depots, Portuguese Christian Community centers, and low-income projects glittered in the hills. 
The snow began to fall in noticeable clusters, melting impact when touching Robin’s face.  He laughed to himself quietly, out of sadness as the blood dripped onto his nose and onto the road below.  Eisenhower wanted to feel it.  A tear fell onto its gears instead; it was warm, and tasted of sodium.
  If it was fall again I would take you of the highway and on to one of those hiking trails you and I used to ride on so much.  And take you through all those crazy colored leaves that go ‘crunch’ when I run over them.  I relaxed with you as you would sit by the lake and drink a beer, and yell profanities at teenagers. They stole a canoe once, you said some funny things.  I would get us lost, but not too lost that you and I couldn’t go back to where ever we could stay.  You would forget all about this whole thing.  I used to make you so happy.  
Robin looked down at the road he cried a little, and tried his hardest not to swerve on his bike.  He spoke softly under his breath.  Oh how Eisenhower liked to imagine that he was in fact whispering to it.   

“F*****g b*****s.  Who needs them.” 

     Far off a dead malls door was open to the elements and mall walkers and such.  The place had been dead and open so long that everyone forgot its name, the sign wore away from the weather, leaving the remains of a few plastic circus flags that decorated it so long ago. 
The joint was on a raised island of land, hovering above a man made swamp filled with branchless dead trees.  Robin rode around in the empty parking lot just for the hell of it; twirling around, swerving and doing stupid things on Eisenhower lifted his spirits a bit.  Until he stopped in front of the open door, propping himself up a moment and staring out into the darkness.  The parking lot seemed so vast that nothing else was visible on the horizon but a lonely airplane.  Its red light blinked on and off over and over again, droning over Rob’s head. After it disappeared into the rest of the world, there was nothing else to be seen.

They rode around inside the mall, which was presumably allowed since the place was deserted, especially of mall cops.  Rows and rows of gutted and gated stores ran as far as the eye could see. Len’s Crafters, Montgomery Ward, A&N- some still had their signs, but most were relics of early 90s capitalism. 
The smooth beige linoleum was strange and slippery to the bike’s wheels, but never the less Eisenhower kept its cool. A strange, sad Muzak played quietly throughout the whole mall; the lament of a saxophone and synthesizer piano oozed from the décor of grey blues and yellows, the pointy fake plants, the dark blue tiled fountain which stood dry in the center of what was the dining hall.  A single fluorescent sign glowed above what once was a hair salon.  Robin thought it tacky and bizarre that the sign was built in a comic sans font. 

Eisenhower got used to the smoothness of the floor quickly, admiring the empty gum machines and water stains on all the stores. The bike embraced its opportunity to show Robin the ghosts of the mall, all the girls he used to admire in their white tennis shoes and big frizzy hair, and the footsteps of old friends.

They came to the only store open in the whole joint, an Ames, not renovated since the Berlin wall fell.  Rob walked his bike into the white light of the store, glancing at all the big yellow and red signs around what was left of it, declaring a liquidation sale.  All that was left in the Ames were disorganized fixtures, and long lines of dust which accumulated under them.  Rob thought the dust must have been around since the damn Nixon administration.
The rest of the store, the very back, was in the shadows.  Though there was nothing to be afraid of, only emptiness and worn linoleum resided back there.   

At one of the registers, the only one in operation, was a rather short man with skin so dark it was almost like a blue-ish black. He looked like he was just about to close up, putting on his jacket and all, looking at a small picture frame containing the school photo of a little girl with the same nose as he had.  Some dry flowers were taped to the glass.  Robin thought her huge Urkel glasses were a riot.
The liquidation signs hovered over him like God.  He had a solemn face, and was the only sign of life in the entire place.

“Hey you.  My friend Josiah.”  Robin came up to the resister and leaned Eisenhower against his thigh.  Without even noticing it he began to stroke the bike.  Eisenhower once again felt the warmth from his groin nearby, and wondered if he was starting to feel the way it felt about him.

“Oh. Hey man.”  Josiah smiled, but still wafted a sad air about him. “Jeez, what happened to you?  You been cryin’ man?”

   Robin scoffed, his smile had returned.  “Pfft, not me.  F****n got a cold or some nasty s**t.”

Josiah paused a moment, studying Robin’s thin face.  He then leaned forward, as if to tell him a secret.  “Hey um, how’s your hiv doing?  Any better?”

“Ah-I’m not gonna get into that.”

“Okay.  I gotcha.”  Josiah paused a moment to poke some lint in the clunky beige monitor above his register.  “Looks like somebody K.O.ed you, there’s blood on yer face, heh.”  

“Oh, yeah.”  Robin felt the dried blood on his upper lip, his heart sinking a bit.  “Yeah that’s a whole big thing.  Hey listen, Sug kinda kicked me out on my a*s.”

Josiah sighed, gathering some belongings from below the monitor and register and putting them in his jacket pockets.  The eyes of the girl in the picture watched him, they were happy eyes yet they haunted him.

“Why’d she do that?” 

“Ah she’s just . . . havin’ company.  Don’t want an old seedy f**k like me scaring’ off the business.  Hey listen, I gotta ask you a favor-“

“Oh, I thought Sug and you had a kind of thing going on?”

“Nu-uh, nope.  Listen, I need somewhere to stay tonight.  I don’t have anywhere to go and Imma have to sleep outside if you’re not down.”

Josiah paused, unhappy that he would ask such a thing.  His shoulders sank and he looked intently at the girl in the picture frame.  “You know, she’s gonna be six next Sunday.” 

“Jos, please, it’s snowing outside.  Give a guy a hand, huh?”  

“Chief, are you seeing these goddam signs above my head?”  He went wide eyed and raised his arm, pointing toward the ceiling.  “There goes my job.  I can’t take care of anyone else but her.”

Robin for a moment looked out beyond all the stores to the entrance, a speck of black far off.  He looked out in horror, clenching one of Eisenhower’s handlebars. 
Don’t panic.  It can only get so cold, can’t it? Thought the bike.

“Hey no, I only need ya for one night, I swear.  You won’t even know I’m there, wherever you live, bud.”

“No.  I know how you are.  You’re gonna stay forever Rob and I can’t have you around my little girl.  I don’t want you botherin’ her, chief.”
Josiah began to lock up his station, taking the frame in his pocket, walking to the wall behind him to turn off all the lights.  Robin could only follow him as he began to unfold the gate to keep vandals out.  The gate squeaked out of its hiding place, and the keys in Josiah’s hand banged against the metal, popping out of the darkness of the Ames store.  

“Whadya mean?  Please, Jos, it’s so cold out.”

“I really, really can’t, I’m so sorry.”

Robin could only stand and shake his head in desperation, Eisenhower becoming more and more nervous with each passing second.  He looked back at his damp blankets and such, pondering his fate.  They had gotten so wet when they fell to the ground, and he hadn’t the nerve to ask for anything else.  He kept his head turned away from Josiah as he gazed at the back of the bicycle. 

“Robin.  There’s a lobby at the Super 8 on the border of Redfield.  It’s off of route 7 near the Irving station; you know where that is right?”

   “Yeah.”

“You can’t miss it.  It’s always open and I’m sure you can sleep on a couch or something.  If you’re nice, they might rent ya a room.  If that don’t work, you can call-what’s his name- Jon, right?”

Robin winced, and said nothing. 

“Gotta go, chief.  Get outta here before they lock this joint up.”

It took about a good hour to reach the Super 8, and by then not a car was left on the road.  Only snow and the sound of Eisenhower’s wheels gently clacking along were present.  The relentless uphill cycling had kept him warm.
The Super 8’s doors, wouldn’t you know, where closed.  The lobby was dark, and empty, devoid of beautiful flower patterned furniture and framed picture of laughing middle aged moms and their scrawny kids, and a sad lobby lady who had gotten the night shift.

So in the corner where the two lines of dull pink motel rooms met, on the concrete Robin and Eisenhower settled, lying under a few layers of damp blankets, found clothing, and quilts.  Robin kept the driest quilt the closest to his body and his bike, as he held it under to keep Eisenhower from freezing.  The ear flaps of his hat were down, though snow still fell on him, and he still shivered under the cover of winter darkness.  Not one streetlight was lit, yet he kept his eyes open to look out into the abyss until he could fall asleep.  His lips were close to the handlebars of the bike, as he imaged would be the back of Sugar’s head.  He never saw darkness quite so dark ever before.  The snow was building up, and he felt too tired to ride around any further. 
Getting sick he knew was a certainty in this awful unyielding coldness, and would further wither his antibodies; but after all Jon said it was his fault, wasn’t it?  Jon, the famous Casanova of Redfield and Dangbury; only one naïve kid that could make one feel that the whole world was behind him, and not you.

           Eisenhower, under the blanket and against the body of its master, never felt so much like a person before.  Rob’s manhood pressed against the seat, and his hand loosely held the boy bar, stroking it unconsciously.  Eisenhower thoughts went a mile a minute in wanting him, and feeling him, though Rob’s mind was obviously blank.  It wasn’t long until he fell asleep, shivering, steam escaping room his nose with every shaky breath.    
Breath that came out warm, breath that brushed the very tip of one of Eisenhower’s handlebars. It was the most wonderful thing the bicycle ever felt.  If it could quiver in desire, it would have.

 Over and over again Robin’s breath ran warn against the tips of Eisenhower’s handle bars, and the bike began to have strange thoughts and feelings. Eisenhower began to think of what it would be like if it had lips, and a mouth.  It wondered if Rob would put his lips against its own, and if he would kiss up and down the bike’s frame.  The bike imagined that it was be warn, soft, and a bit wet. 
Eisenhower’s thoughts then became stranger as it began to climb higher in this state of bliss, Rob’s warm breath caressing it without end.   

It wished for somewhere soft on its frame just for Robin to enter, and imaged Robin penetrating it.  The closest to its master Eisenhower would ever be.  It prayed for that day to come.

Oh, Robin!  Robin!

           After a while it felt the approach of a sort of orgasm. 
Though Rob didn’t know it, Eisenhower came, and Rob shifted his head so his breath came out elsewhere.  The bike’s thoughts silenced when it realized he was sound asleep, and the bliss that the bike had just felt for the first time began to dissipate.  All that was left was the noiselessness of the falling snow.  It waited, nothing happened.  It waited some more, still nothing felt right. 

You didn’t feel a thing, did you, thought the bike.  Despite the closeness they had under the layers of damp quilts and jackets, they would never be truly close.  Meanwhile the real people around the world slept.  

            Morning came eventually, slowly fading in between a pattern of waking up from a fever dream about pirate ships, and chicken’s feet.  Robin woke with an ache and a chill in his bones.  His throat hurt, his head was spinning, and his sinuses were stuffed with mucus.
Eisenhower was frozen to the ground.  Robin didn’t notice.
 Rainbow Christmas lights were lit on the gutters of the pink motel row; the sky was white, and so was the ground.  Rob struggled to sit up; knowing he most defiantly had a fever, and shouldn’t bike too far.  He looked up to see a heavy man in a heavy dress coat standing over him like a dead goose.  At his side was a weary back woodsy father of five.  The heavy man’s nose and cheeks were red, and he held an electric yellow clipboard of some sort; a man of the real-estate business, no doubt.  In the parking lot not far off a jacketless mother struggled to keep her five children from rocking the Station wagon they resided in.

            “You get bums here all the time, Frost?”

            “No, I dunno, sir.  We had a squatter in the broom closet back in ’95 but that’s it.” 

  Rob kept his head down, rubbing his temples and not minding the two men, but hating the presence of this feverish headache. 

            “Tell the bum to beat it.”

The father of five bent over, his gnarly hands resting on his knees.  Robin could barely make out the old “U.S Army” patch on his buckskin jacket.  Probably from Vietnam or something crazy, he guessed.

            “Hey, guy, I’m sorry but you gotta get outta here, this place ‘s for sale.”

            “Ughn- what’re you my mother?”  Rob could only mumble as he raised himself and Eisenhower, guilt in its heart.  The blankets would have to be left, the top layer froze in the night- no need to make himself colder than her already was.   Eisenhower watched Rob blow on his fingers to get some feeling back in them; they were so numb it stung.
How could I have enjoyed myself last night when he suffered so much, thought the bike.

All of a sudden a path in the middle of a long, snowy clearing across the street caught his eye; the only piece of mankind there being the power lines hovering above it.  Robin walked his bike over in a haze, with nowhere else to go, not looking back at the heavy man or his backwoods client, who only went about their business, whispering very quietly to each other about the homeless man who walked as if in a constant drunken stupor.  One of them called after him, telling him he forgot the frozen blankets and things that he didn’t want anyway.  They spotted a silver flask laying in the asphalt, a strange fuzzy My Little Pony sticker branded into it. 

For a long time the bike stood at a stop with Robin on the other side of the road.  He stared down the cleared path into the snowy clearing that seemed to never end.  The edges of the thick, naked forest were on either side.  A pair of Nike sneakers hung from one of the power lines by their shoelaces.
It could have been three damn hours that Eisenhower waited for Master to make a move, but never the less it would do anything to save him.  The bike could only watch and try to count how many times a cloud of steam would puff out of Rob’s mouth. 

Finally after this eternity of nothingness, Rob strangely began to laugh to himself.  It was a hoarse, quiet but squeaky laugh that was a hoot enough to cause him to bend over, and lean his forehead on the handlebars of Eisenhower.  He continued to laugh, but as he had finished the evidence was clear that he had in fact been crying in his spastic fit.  Without hesitation, after blowing his nose into a handkerchief he had, he mounted Eisenhower and began to ride down the open path without rhyme or reason.   
The warmth of his manhood on its seat reminded Eisenhower of last night, as everything was at the time.  Oh the dirtiness it felt. 

Eisenhower noticed the trees going by slower than usual, as each pedal for Rob seemed to take more effort than the last.  Yet it was mid afternoon by the time he took his first stop.  The sky had not changed, and neither had the scenery: they saw trees, a camper that was left to rot in the woods decades ago, and a metal sign nailed to a tree, whitewashed, declared that all trespassers will be prosecuted. 

Robin left Eisenhower on its kickstand to rest on the ground; he could only try to whether his worsening fever by resting just a moment.  The bike kept watch, but thank the Lord no threats were on the horizon. Except, it thought, a teenage boy in a large red Ushanka came riding down the other way, on some kind of 10-speed.  He ogled at Rob, coming to a stop and peering through his bangs.  He had a haircut only a Beatle would love. 

            “You all right, man?”    

Some kind of song by Madonna sounded from a cassette player out of his backpack.  Eisenhower looked upon the kid’s red bicycle, feeling like it needed to scratch and claw the hell out of it to protect the mate.

            “You sick or something? “  Robin could only groan at the boy, who also complimented the general whiteness of Eisenhower the bike.

            “I got a cell phone, I can call somebody.”

            “Nah.  Thanks.” Rob raised his head to rest it against the frame of his bike, closing his eyes.  The bike had never seen his face at this angle before, the long bridge of his curving nose was more prominent than it ever thought.

            “You sure, man?”

            “Yeah.”  Robin seemed to be dozing, and his shivering was now quiet yet very noticeable. 

The boy leaned on his bike and watched him; he then took a tobacco pipe from his backpack, and packed it as they were in each other’s presence, which all seemed pointless.   

            “Whats over that way?”  Rob sighed.

            “Huh?”  He said while lighting the pipe and puffing. 

            “What’s over that way, kid?”

The boy looked over his shoulder and stared back for a while, tobacco pipe hanging from his mouth.  “It’s like, some kind of old government place.  Half of it they don’t use anymore so me and Avery squat there.  Someone put some Frida Kahlo posters in there.”

Suddenly Eisenhower felt an abundance of snowflakes slowly building on its seat and handlebars.  It saw the brim of Rob’s hat beginning to freeze, and wanted to urge him to keep moving.  Get up, you.

            “It’s prolly a concentration camp or somethin’. “

            “No.  It’s really not, man.  It’s some kind of big old processing plant, or some offices or something.” 

With that Robin slowly began to rise again, and before mounting Eisenhower he was overcome with a sudden coughing spell.  The boy only watched and puffed on his pipe.  “Go and warm up man.” 

The snow was starting to come down at a heavy rate, and in the distance a siren, left behind from the Cold War began to sound.  Eisenhower listened; it was far, and it was the only noise that could be heard to reverberate throughout all off Redfield and Dangbury.   The snow, as it piled, began to muffle the sound of the siren. 

            “Ugh.  What’s that, godammit?”    

            “Volunteer Fire Department.”   The boy got ready to ride away.  “Better get there fast, something’s going down.  Probably has to do with the snow.” He began to ride off, his bike going over the path swiftly and speedily.
The snow began to hurdle down onto him and Eisenhower, and the distant siren began to worry him.   He began to pedal and charge his way into the snow.
He also began to sing Yesterday Once More very quietly as he tried to ride through the falling storm, as the wind gradually began to become a strong opposing force.   Eisenhower tried to fight it, trying to move its pedals on its own so the master could rest, but to no avail.

The place that the boy had described was hauntingly beautiful, neither abandoned nor occupied.  The snow and wind formed into a kind of blizzard, blocking the sound of the distant siren, and distorting the image of all the buildings.  The two of them could ride no more, so Robin shuffled through the snow with Eisenhower by his side as the snow built up on his back, but he hadn’t the strength to brush it off.

Beautiful low ceiling glass buildings were all about, their glass being a dark green. They were all built in long snaking line, weaving between various old brick structures, and beige buildings as well.  Some chairs were knocked over in the glass buildings, papers and files were strewn about, and hadn’t been touched in years. 
The blizzard slowly took away this vision, and all that was left of Robin’s sight were layers upon layers of snow and roaring wind hurdling towards him.  He stopped walking to admire it. 

What do you see?

Robin was smiling at nothing, like ghosts were talking to him. 

Robin, talk to me. . .

Robin could see something through his feverish miasma.  Karen Carpenter was wearing a dress made entirely of the blizzard, Kate Bush’s voice was the siren calling for the Volunteer fire department, and Betty Page was probably somewhere in there with her clothes off.   

With that, for the first time, Robin took his hands off of the handle bars of Eisenhower, and trudged alone into the storm.  Into a glass building, or into nature, only God knew.

Robin, where are you going?

Eisenhower waited for Master to come back, as the snow and the noise began to build around it.  It was only the bike, in a glob of whiteness and nothing else.  The storm roared like a monster as it swallowed the feverish man.  With the force of a herd of cantering horses, the wind had pushed the bike over.  Eisenhower felt itself being buried alive as the super storm laughed, and was in control of all.  

Robin!  Why did you do that?!  Come back!  Come back Robin, don’t leave me here all alone!

 

The storm was all over the news that week.  Power lines were knocked down and twisted all throughout Redfield; trees lied under snow and on top of roads and homes.  Eighty percent of Redfield and Dangbury were without electricity, at least for the first few days.  Though along with all the Connecticut Light and Power bucket-trucks about, the National Guard came in to aid them.  Many of the men of both parties were electrocuted.  So until about two weeks when all the power was restored, many would have to sleep in the cold and dark, in their mother’s bed, in a house without plumbing that smelled of old carpet and urine.
Either that or live in a shelter the Red Cross set up at the Redfield Rec. Center, where Sugar sat in the lobby one morning to watch the community television.  Not many people were awake at this hour, only a select few old people that purposely awoke this early to watch CNN.  Josiah, who slept on a long lobby sofa was also there, due to lack of cots in the sleeping areas.  He had given up the remaining cot space to his daughter.   Never the less he lay rather comfortably under a mass of quilts he brought from home and watched television under drooping eyelids.

            “Sug, where’s yer robe?”   

            “F**k you, heheh.” Sug laughed as she swirled her Dixie cup of black coffee, looking out the big window behind the television.  The dawn was a grey blue; a turkey vulture was circling in the sky above the playground equipment, which desperately needed to be replaced; that wouldn’t happen until someone’s kid gets killed.   

            “Hey, have you heard from Jonathan at all lately?”

Josiah wriggled in comfort in his makeshift bed.  “Mm, what?”

            “I said did you hear from Jon at all lately?” 

One of the old people, under a crochet blanket suddenly changed the channel.  The sleeping shelter was now filled with the faint sound of Full House re-runs. 

            “No Sug, I don’t really talk to Jon at all.” 

Sug sighed, and sank in her chair.  She stared solemnly into her cup of horrible, earthy coffee.  A hair was floating in it, and she took her time to pluck it out.  “Neither do I.  Not anymore.”

            “Sug, have you yourself heard from Rob at all?”

Sug flinched a bit at the question.  “I haven’t seen him around, it’s weird.  Last time I saw him was when I kicked him out for the night a few days ago.” 

            “A few days ago he asked to crash at my place and I had to turn the guy down, Sug.” 

            “Then, where did he go for the night?  He’s got a condition or something, doesn’t he?”

After a moment, the two looked at each other, without saying a word.  The possibilities in their minds were endless, and made them a little nauseous with worry.  Sugar could only lean over to rub her makeup less, wrinkled face.  With her coffee between her knees, she kept her face in her hands for a long time.   Josiah looked at the edge of the sofa, at the tips of his feet.   The picture frame of his daughter peeked up from under the clothes in his bags. 

            “So, what’s Dang up to?  Why ain’t she here too, cheif?” 

Sugar took a few breaths before she decided to respond; she leaned her forehead on one of her long nailed hands as she watched a sand colored army truck rumble by in the distance. 

            “She didn’t want to stay here; she’s staying with a friend who’s got power until this all blows over.”

Josiah nodded, and closed his eyes, preparing to go back into his long doze. 
            “That Dang is growing into such a fine young lady.”

Sugar sighed, and took a swig of her black coffee.  “Sort of.” 

Meanwhile Dang stood in a large red jacket rather far off from the shelter a few yards beside one of those abandoned glass buildings, knee deep in snow.  Two other bundled up boys, one of them a fellow ginger, inspected a white bicycle lying frozen in the snow. 
Dang waits as they look at it, lighting matches and flicking then out over and over again. 

“Uh-oh.”  The skinny boy had dug the bike out enough to lift it upright.  “Yeah, it has ‘Eisenhower’ scratched on the side.” 

“Oh no, oh God.”  Dang’s match flicking ceased.  Though the teenagers were also a bit disturbed by their surroundings.  The storm was not kind to the estate, a rather large tree had broke through several sections of the snaking glass buildings and had yet to be removed.    

The ginger speaks: “Does that mean you gotta go give it back to that homeless guy that’s living with you?” 

Dang tried to breathe away her anxiety.  “No I don’t know where he went and I’d rather not look for him.  I’ll just give it to Jon.  I can do that, right?”

“I thought Jon skipped out on your mom?”  Said the skinny boy.  “Does Jon still deal?” 

The ginger once again speaks: “Why’s yer mom f*****g friggin twenty year olds, anyway?” 

            “Ah I dunno!  Whatever, God. . .” Dang began to walk the bike into the woods as the ginger lead on, into a sort cut to uptown Dangbury.  The skinny boy announced he might have seen police cars far off in the estate.  No one cared.

            “I see Jon that dingus around all the time so, I’ll drop this little thingy-thing on him.”

            “You gonna tell him off for standing up your mom?”  The skinny boy began to light a cigarette. 

            “No, it’s nothing.  I don’t care.  Him and mom can do what they want.” 

Inside the compound was a small clearing, surrounded by a few beige sheds for storage or various secret things.  Various boxy and dated police cars parked in a circle, their tires building up snow.  An ambulance was there too, along with a string of uniformed men under the blue shade of a cloudy dawn.  Some Jimi Hendrix song played very quietly from one of the police car radios. 

Two men in police Ushankas, equipped with face masks and rubber gloves, took their time to gingerly dig a frozen man out of the snow.  The frozen man was Rob, who laid face down, dead, and stiff with frost all over his clothes.  Somewhere there was a smile stuck on his face. 
A paramedic swallowed a pill of some sort by his truck, nauseous by the scene, not fit for his job.    

The various men talked, the radios in their gun belts talking as well in muffled, authoritative voices.     

            “I think I’ve seen this guy around before.”  

            “Nah I’ve never seen him.”

            “Sure, he rode his bike everywhere and had AIDS or something.”

            “There are a lot of people like that around here, though.”

A man in a buckskin jacket and large Jeffery Dahmer glasses leaned down to take various pictures of Robin’s body, now completely dug out of the snow.  The camera man’s bell bottoms where unsightly.

            “Jeez.”

By the ambulance the paramedic who had swallowed his medicine stood with one of the officers who had dug Robin out of the snow.  The officer and the paramedic had their backs turned away from the scene, and the policeman stood crying, his comrade patting him on the back, a tattoo of an eagle on his hand.  The light of the camera flashed behind them like a lightning strike. 

Dang, later in the day after dawn had broke, found herself back at the apartment complex.  Half of all the buildings there were dark, and vacated.  The other half however had recently had their electricity restored, their grid being that of a chemical company and laboratory nearby.  Dang sometimes saw men with machine guns on top of the roof of that place. 

She stood under somebody’s porch, and knocked on an apartment door.  Eisenhower was leaning on her side.  The ginger and the skinny boy where nowhere to be found. 
After a few thumps from what could have been someone clomping down stairs, the door opened to reveal Jon in a ski hat, scarf, slipper socks and black pea coat.  The heat had yet to be restored in his building. 

            “Oh, Dang, what’s up?”  Jon paused.  “Hey listen, about your mom and me-“

            “Its fine, I don’t care.”  Dang wiped her nose on the sleeve of her red coat, and then hid that same arm behind her back out of embarrassment. 

Jon nodded and smiled very slightly.  “Okay.  Listen, you tell your mom that I’m sorry and I need to talk to her, okay?”

            “No, you do it.  I just wanna give you your brother’s dingus bike.”

Jon hadn’t even noticed Eisenhower standing there, having essence of anger about it.  He furrowed his brow.  “I should go apologize to him.  Is he at the shelter with you guys?”

            “No, I found it just kind of layin’ there at that old government place.”

Jon quietly drew in a surprised breath.  A sickening feeling welled up in his stomach.

            “You mean he’s not with you?  He’s missing?”

            “I dunno.  I haven’t seen him since before the storm.”

Jon said nothing, and could only stare at the bike in fear.  He gathered is thoughts, looking left and right.

            “Hey, Dang, come in here and talk to me a second, this isn’t good.”

But Dang already had her back turned after putting down the kickstand of the bike. 

            “No, thanks but I’m gonna go to Seven-Eleven and get some chocolate cigars and s**t.”

            “Oh God, no Dang, stay here.”

“Uh-uh.  Seven-Eleven.   Rob will turn up.”

Jon hovered in the doorway, watching Dang hop and then slowly walk away.  He then ogled at the bike, slowly shaking his head, as if unable to go anywhere.  Jon spent maybe a good ten minutes sitting on the doorstep staring Eisenhower in the face, whatever face a bicycle may have.  Eisenhower’s mind was blank for all but one thing.  Jon’s jaw was not the same, neither were the veins of his neck, or the heat of his groin.

A fire truck roared and speed down route 7, and could be heard far off, along with the rumbling of bucket trucks.

Jon’s eyes hadn’t blinked, and Eisenhower cared only a little bit.

You’re all I have left of him, now.

 

 

 

Author's Note

Wrote this when I was younger, (when I mean younger, I mean like, 17.) Enjoy if you wanna.

Reviews

[The Twin Arenas]

I can't believe you wrote this @ 17. That's great.

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