m review — creative non–fiction — tschilper
Just Some Toast Please
by Jeanne Mare Werle
"It'd be better if you let me pump my own gas," I said as I smiled coyly. He was about eighty, chew stuck in his dry Oklahoma cheek, blue eyes still bright points peering out of a long life. His straw hat fit like it was woven right on his head while he stood looking out over summer coming into his wheat fields. "What's a good lookin girl like you doing out here without her husban?" he wondered out loud as he walked over to answer a call for directions from a dusty white coupe so full of people, front and back, they blended into undulations of shoulders, tufts of hair and heads.
Pumping gas into a motorcycle tank requires two hands. You have to pull back and hold the black accordion rubber fume guard, it's rigid, and then hold the pump handle into the hole on the top of your tank. Plus keep your bike upright, off the kick stand. By the time I was sitting sweating in my leathers at the pump in this Oklahoma gas station I'd been performing this unnatural act for seven years.
Only a man who had watched wind spin barns into clouds could walk about in his eighty-year-old bones like life was something to poke. Today he walked toward me, a woman with a northeastern accent, a woman alone on a big shiny new motorcycle without a husband in sight, a woman who liked tough old guys who could trick you into thinking maybe they were a Spring meadow full of wildflowers.
"You got one, don't you? A husban. Don't tell me you ain't got one. Don't be getting my hopes up." He chuckled, grabbed the pump out of my hand and said, "This is Oklahoma, honey. We pump for our gals here, plenty of em tough as you, not as pretty though." I could take home all of his torn buttons by now and I knew that he knew how good he was doing.
His knuckles were bluish white, stretched taunt over bone, thick blue veins twisted like mountain ridges rising out of knarled fingers. I was staring at his hand, wondering where he started his dreams, who he'd touched, what he'd reached for, who was so deep in his life that their gaze traced the shape of his palm in their sleep, how it would be for him when the blood finally stopped flowing into those hands. "It comes up on you a little everyday, especially midday, when the wind is down" he said so quietly I was never really sure he'd said it.
Kawasaki Motors Corp had hired me and three guys to work on a cross country motorcycle program. Bikes were becoming part of a growing problem with insurance companies in America. When you go to buy a motorcycle from a dealership in most cities and towns you can't take the bike out on a test drive. New motorcycles are expensive. All motorcycles are about feel. Not knowing how you and the bike fit together on the road is like buying shoes without knowing your size.
Mt. Tamapalias, north of San Francisco, has a road wrapped around it, lain across its open grassy plains like a shock of hair curling down a woman's cheek. You're not sure if it's the skin or the hair you want to caress. Car commercials and motorcycle productions are filmed on the road year round. I was working as a freelance script supervisor on a Kawasaki motorcycle shoot in the late Spring of 1984. Script Supervisors are the eagle of the production. Every missed word is noted, every screwed up visual blight is tallied. The editor will take the script supervisors notes into the editing room with them as a blueprint for which "takes" are usable, and which "takes" are messed up somehow.
"Did you get that Dale was wearing a white helmet in the second shot?" someone said from behind the cameraman. "Yea, and there's a motorcycle parked off of turn three that wasn't there in the first shot," I mumbled back while still writing. "Where's the girl who rides motorcycles," asked a Japanese man none of us present knew.
"I am the girl who rides motorcycles," I said, still writing, still not looking at anyone, eyes and ears on the shot.
"We want girl in the Ninja shot," he commanded, rather than asked. "Tell Mr. Dale we want girl in the Ninja shot."
Dale was my boyfriend and he'd been working in the motorcycle industry as a writer for eighteen years when I met him. The Japanese who worked for Kawasaki loved him. The executives passed down their warmth for Mr. Dale onto me. As his girlfriend, I got to feel the fire still kindling.
When the Japanese executives saw me ride the Ninja they decided if a 5'5" average sized American woman could ride a 750 cc Ninja like a Red Tail Hawk rides an afternoon breeze it was because the designers back home in Osaka, Japan had perfectly engineered the machine. Had nothing to do with my seven years of daily riding, taught by my wild younger brother Keith who raced dirt bikes.
"It's one gear down, neutral, four gears up. Clutch on the left handle, brake on the right handle and right foot. Just take it around the block, I'll wait here," Keith said squinting into a late May evening sun. Shadows from the eastern Elm trees were beginning to form on the warm pavement, the scent of purple lilacs lifted the air as if actual molecular weight was removed from it.
"What if it stalls," I asked hoping to buy a little more instruction time. We'd both been taught to row boats by being set adrift, so the odds were not in my favor.
"Well I guess you'll have to kick start it, now won't you?" Keith, master of the smirk said. Seems to be in our genes; smirking.
"OK Keith, but don't leave. I'll be right back," I said knowing he'd do whatever he felt like doing. I guess I would too, because I didn't come back for close to an hour. He'd gone and got a friend to go looking for me, since I had his transportation. I couldn't stop, nothing I'd ever experienced felt so good on so many levels. As I leaned into each corner, my blood swayed side to side mingling with the scents of spring, the last bits of daylight felt urgent and seductive.
"Where the hell have you been? Did you crash my bike?" he demanded as he swept around inspecting the clutch and brake handles, taillights and fenders. I was in love, and love is locked out of time.
"Wow, why haven't you taught me to ride before." I was still a bit unaware of the worry I had caused. No signs of a crash gave Keith a lighter mood and he stopped to look at me. The glow surrounding me was not the setting sun.
"Oh my gawd." he drawled out, shaking his head, smirking. "Well, let's get out the paper, there's lots of used bikes."
Dale set up a few more short scenes with me riding an assortment of different styles and sized bikes. What the Japanese executives didn't put together was that as Dale's girlfriend I had the opportunity to ride most of his collection of over twenty bikes. They saw what they needed to see, they knew the market for woman riders was blooming and offered me an amazing job working on the road nine months of the year demonstrating motorcycles around the country.
I didn't have to think about my answer. "Yes," I said. Looking out over the brown grassy plain, it was my lock of hair, my face that I saw smiling back up at the mid day sun, not the road, not the Japanese men, not even Dale. My life had been caressed and I'd said Yes. So now, I found myself on an old road in Oklahoma.
"I got a boyfriend, almost a husband." I told Ben, finally seeing the name embroidered on his blue and white engineer coveralls, the fabric gone soft and fragile as the wing of a moth. "Well, then, see, there's always hope, as long as you're breathing," he said as he winked and turned, and he walked a little taller with his back to me. It was the effort in the rise of his body that was the real compliment of our meeting.
Between motorcycle events, Kawasaki allowed employees to take any motorcycle from the round up of bikes instead of riding in the company van. It was an excellent chance to get some private time, living on the road gets cramped. I usually took a bike between events, visited friends and family en-route. I had just left Houston, Texas where I'd spent time with my older brother Kevin. He was different from Keith and I, more academic, less crazy, more linear. He was a Geologist, married with one child, and loved his work. We were as different as any two kids in the same family could be, but our love of the natural world was the same and we knew how to laugh together. Doubled over, knee slapping, gasping for breath laughter. It was our gift to each other and the veil that protected us from our differences.
The bike I was on is called a Voyager, one of those gigantic motorcycles with hard luggage built in, a radio-tape player and beverage holder. Most of the time you see couples riding this style, with stuffed animals strapped on the back, their names airbrushed in silver or gold on the tank and lights flashing and zipping all over the bike, like a string of Christmas lights. I had to ride these bikes at rallies and talk about Kawasaki's Voyager, so this was also research. I don't even drink soda, but I got a coke and a straw someplace, just because I could. I bet the people driving behind me could hear my radio better than I did. With the wind driving by your helmet at 70 miles an hour, full volume just barely does it. I had the radio on all the time, it was ridiculous. I am a sport bike rider. I drive hard and fast into corners and brake like an ox just stepped out in front of me in the apex of the corner, then I full throttle out. It requires total concentration, which is why I love it.
This wasn't my first trip to Oklahoma, but I was deep in the Southeastern back roads and everything was starting to look strange. The quality of the morning air had gone from warm to cold, the light from amber to gray, comforting to oppressive. I was starving, but kept driving by coffee shops because something would give me the creeps about them, or I would think I was getting a divine message from the neon sign that blinked "AT" instead of "EAT." "At such and such an hour you will meet your death." 'At' sounds a lot like axe. "At the counter sits a man who will poison your coffee. At the next town you will be safe." Road fatigue is not to be snuffed at.
It was with this mindset that I finally stopped at a small diner, driven by a well-developed caffeine addiction. I pulled my bike into a spot where it appeared I could watch it from inside. The screen door sprang and slapped me in the back as I walked in to what immediately felt like swamp, like blackberry brambles, like a thunder and lightening storm. OK, Jeanne Mare get a freaking grip on yourself. Damn it was hot in there. The waitress could have been ninety or fifty, for gusts could blow inside her deeply etched skin. She was wearing white nurse's shoes that her ankles burst out of, shiny polyester slacks that rubbed at the thighs making a sound too loud for the room, and had a bust line pushing eternally out at the bright yellow daises on her blouse. The perfume she was wearing led me to a spot at the other end of the counter. Greasy dust propelled by overhead fans pushed the smell of bacon and burnt coffee around the room and it stuck like a spider's web over the booths, the fake plants, the metal creamers and sugar jars. I put my helmet and tank bag on the lopsided stool next to me, in part to keep anyone from sitting there.
"Just some toast, please," I said meaning, "Can I go now."
"What kind of toast you want, and where's your husban? He coming up the road on his own motorbike? You're not foolish enough to be riding that thing by yourself young lady, now are ya?"
Yup, I thought, I'm a real foolish woman. "No, I'm not riding by myself. I said lying to her. "Rye, I want rye toast, do you have rye?" My mind was searching back for the divine message, wondering what I was supposed to be on the look out for. "At the next coffee shop an older woman will bring you toast with butter that has gone rancid, you will be sick for many days, but your life will be spared." Not to bad. "I'll have some more coffee." I said feeling the words snatched out of the bacon swamp air by the five burly guys that had been staring at me from the two booths they occupied. Me, the waitress, the invisible cook and those ten hungry eyes were alone in this thicket.
Sometimes men you don't know look at your body and it feels OK, you're moving by, it's temporary. This time was not one of those times. I had to use the bathroom, which involved walking by their table. I was sweating. I'd pretty much lost my sense of humor by now and was in pure survival mode. Get to the bathroom, pee, wash your hands and face, eat toast, get out alive. Walking by their booths, with about a foot between us, their eyes grabbed me like teeth and I had to pull away to get past. The bathroom was dirty white and smelled of Lysol. As I went to get out of the stall, the door wouldn't open and I knew instantly that one of the burly men was in there with me. I screamed, "Get out of here!" Panicked, I slammed my body against the door. Once unstuck, I saw that I was perfectly alone in the bathroom.
If walking past them going in was enough to leave teeth marks all over my breasts, how in the hell was I suppose to get by now. They probably could have heard the sound of me peeing, and for sure heard my near escape from nothing.
Remembering Ben and his beautiful long back as he said goodbye to me at the gas station that morning, I stood tall. I swam by the bank of bacon chomping crocodiles and set a wave in motion that cleared a wide channel to my stool.
"Are you sure your husban is alright miss? Shouldn't he a been here by now" said the waitress accusingly, as if somehow I was a bad wife.
"Oh, he gets distracted pretty easily."
I began to imagine my fictitious mate in greater detail. "He sometimes gets behind me for a whole day, a whole week, a whole year, a whole lifetime." I said as I strode past that morning toward the afternoon stillness, when the wind would be down.
Jeanne Mare Werle of Oregon
Jeanne Mare Werle is working toward a degree in Environmental Science, somewhere between junior and senior. She lives on 10 acres with four dogs and listens to the wildlife, Rock Creek River and trees. She hopes to facilitate writing workshops in which the participants howl at the moon and write their poems in the sand.
