The Incident, Part I
It was a day that started like most other days in the small home of one stern not-quite miller, one ghostly knitter, and one young bicycle pedaler. There was flavorless stew from the night before and, on this particular morning, there were even a couple of eggs. The mother boiled water for the last bit of dry coffee grounds in the small tin above the ice box. The coffee was not good. It was yet another of the flavorless, water-based dishes in the mother's repertoire, but it was coffee and there was at least some magic in that.
The father scowled at a story he was reading in the morning paper and grumbled something distasteful about politicians and the state of the economy. In truth, the father could only actually read about half of the words on the page having received an education only through the 3rd grade and, of that half, only comprehended an even smaller percentage. The young pedaler saw that the paper was something his father put on, like a costume. He had already noticed this trend in people that got older, as most people do. His deft brain had opened this custom up and examined its inner workings. The older girls at school had already started experimenting with makeup and clothes as a way to signify to the world that they were now more important somehow than last year. He saw the older boys beginning to take the same tact as well but with sports or money. His father attempted to read the paper to convey something about how he was wiser and more important now than when he was younger and did not yet read the paper.
It was a great show. A great, massive show that the whole human race took part in. Some people wore their mock authority like a golden crown, like Ms. Bumheur, the crossing guard at H.M.P.S. She blew her whistle and waved her flag with absolute authority and she always kept both children and drivers waiting longer than necessary because she could. Some people put on jobs or money as indicators that they were making progress. Some people put on their very own children as some sort of sick outer garment. (Years later, when he was older and was the driver, the pedaler would remember this thought as he began seeing bumper stickers touting "My son is an honor student at blah-dee-blah") Putting on their children. Wearing them like a nice suit so they can get into the party they weren't invited to before. Some people would put on alcohol, whatever that was. The pedaler had already heard the older kids at school talking about it. More importantly, he saw how they talked about it. They got that same gleam in their eyes as his father with the paper or Ms. Bumheur with her flag and whistle. He had also heard his father talk about people that had gotten fired from the mill for drinking alcohol. The pedaler thought he had made it this far without this alcohol stuff and he had decided he never wanted to touch it. From what he gathered of the stuff, it made stupid people even stupider and he couldn't see why anyone would think that was what the world needed more of.
Yes, people put on their things, draped so heavy and pulled so tight they forgot who they were under them anymore. Tommy Minker put on absolute cruelty. At least that was how the pedaler saw it. He hated Tommy but his own nature made it impossible to not try to pick apart Tommy's mind and reassemble it from the inside, like a junked bicycle. The large, mean boy had made the pedaler's life a living hell for what seemed like decades. He hated Tommy alright and he wanted to hurt him but, even more, he wanted to fix him. He saw more than just a school bully. He was already forming strong ideas of his own about how age and time solidifies the bad things in people the way the custard his mother attempted from time to time remained on the boil for too long, and he had seen how Tommy became more ruthless with every week his malicious actions went unchecked. He saw, instead, the greatest puzzle of his young life. This malevolent boy was a motor with a misfiring cylinder. A junked bicycle that only lacked some minor adjustments and possibly some grease.
The pedaler knew, on the most basic level, that human beings were more complex than car motors or bicycle parts but he did not see them as a separate category the way other people seemed to. They had an on switch at the beginning of their lives and, from the many fiction and nonfiction books he had devoured, it was apparent that they had countless off switches. People were always dying in books. From disease, war, old age, getting kicked by a horse, going underwater, or falling off their (probably poorly-tuned) bicycles. The pedaler had to ride his bike over 3 sets of railroad tracks from bad south side of town where his family lived, through the very bad southwest part of town, right past the abandoned and dilapidated old battery warehouse, and then to the outskirts of the downtown area to get to the library. The real library. Not the school library where all the books were picture books and were fiction easy enough for a 3rd-grader. No, this was the real library. The pedaler had gotten his very own library card. He'd had to forge his mother's signature to get it but he didn't see why he'd needed his mother's signature to get a library card in the first place. Because of the trouble the pedaler went through to pedal all this way, and because he knew roughly what time Tommy and his gang would be at the old battery warehouse throwing rocks at the already mostly smashed-in windows, he stayed at the library as long as he possibly could. Sometimes he read histories which mostly proved to be pretty dull. Sometimes he read fiction which was entertaining and a nice way to imagine himself living other lives. But most of the time he read the how-to's of the library. One of his personal favorites was the Popular Mechanics magazine. The library had every issue of the informative engineering magazine. Some of the articles were fluff and not very enlightening but there was one issue in particular that he had read and reread cover to cover. It had a picture on the front of a dad and his son playing with a "sidewalk car" the dad had presumably built from scratch for the son. The pedaler realized from the beginning that this father-son duo bore no resemblance to him and his father. If anything, the pedaler might have been the one who had built the car and unveiled it to his stunned and confused father and not vice versa. He had read the article about how to build the homemade go-cart several dozen times. He had even copied the sketches and material lists down with a pencil into his school notebook. He didn't have access to most of the parts or tools he would actually need to put together the car but he had assembled it thousands of times in his mind. Then he would take it back apart and make a tweak or two and reassemble it. It was infinitely fascinating to him.
Cars were infinitely fascinating to him. The "why" of it was obvious: people were forever coming up with faster ways to get from one place to the other as if they could somehow lengthen their own lives by spending more of their time at destinations rather than on journeys. The "how" was incredible. When you looked at the inner workings of a combustion engine it really looked like it ought to be a bomb or some sort of flamethrower device. In reality it was both of those things. Engineers had somehow figured out how to take this flamethrower-bomb and make it into an incredibly efficient and expedient means of travel. The pedaler would put aside the magazine every time he read the section about Karl Benz and the invention of the modern automobile with the internal combustion engine and imagine himself as the inventor, taking apart bits and pieces of chemistry, physics, and engineering and reimagining them as a whole new thing. Creating a new thing by pulling apart some old things and reassembling them using his imagination.
The morning passed slowly at school as it usually did for the pedaler, his teachers droning on and on about things he understood better than they did. There was the softspoken Mr. Lutz who was his favorite. Mr. Lutz taught history and science and, while it was particularly evident to the pedaler that the plump man had not a scientific bone in his body, his flare for history intrigued the boy. Mr. Lutz would struggle through the school-appointed textbook on science, often mispronouncing key terms. He did not even seem to need a book for the history lessons. He was transformed by it. He played the parts wonderfully and often added his own postulations with a chuckle.
"Well that's how they dress it up in the textbooks," he would say with a wink, "but Paul Revere was as popular with the ladies as he was unpopular with the British." Then would follow a dramatic reenactment of the midnight ride, with all artistic liberties taken.
Today was a history day and Gerald Lutz was in rare form.
The father scowled at a story he was reading in the morning paper and grumbled something distasteful about politicians and the state of the economy. In truth, the father could only actually read about half of the words on the page having received an education only through the 3rd grade and, of that half, only comprehended an even smaller percentage. The young pedaler saw that the paper was something his father put on, like a costume. He had already noticed this trend in people that got older, as most people do. His deft brain had opened this custom up and examined its inner workings. The older girls at school had already started experimenting with makeup and clothes as a way to signify to the world that they were now more important somehow than last year. He saw the older boys beginning to take the same tact as well but with sports or money. His father attempted to read the paper to convey something about how he was wiser and more important now than when he was younger and did not yet read the paper.
It was a great show. A great, massive show that the whole human race took part in. Some people wore their mock authority like a golden crown, like Ms. Bumheur, the crossing guard at H.M.P.S. She blew her whistle and waved her flag with absolute authority and she always kept both children and drivers waiting longer than necessary because she could. Some people put on jobs or money as indicators that they were making progress. Some people put on their very own children as some sort of sick outer garment. (Years later, when he was older and was the driver, the pedaler would remember this thought as he began seeing bumper stickers touting "My son is an honor student at blah-dee-blah") Putting on their children. Wearing them like a nice suit so they can get into the party they weren't invited to before. Some people would put on alcohol, whatever that was. The pedaler had already heard the older kids at school talking about it. More importantly, he saw how they talked about it. They got that same gleam in their eyes as his father with the paper or Ms. Bumheur with her flag and whistle. He had also heard his father talk about people that had gotten fired from the mill for drinking alcohol. The pedaler thought he had made it this far without this alcohol stuff and he had decided he never wanted to touch it. From what he gathered of the stuff, it made stupid people even stupider and he couldn't see why anyone would think that was what the world needed more of.
Yes, people put on their things, draped so heavy and pulled so tight they forgot who they were under them anymore. Tommy Minker put on absolute cruelty. At least that was how the pedaler saw it. He hated Tommy but his own nature made it impossible to not try to pick apart Tommy's mind and reassemble it from the inside, like a junked bicycle. The large, mean boy had made the pedaler's life a living hell for what seemed like decades. He hated Tommy alright and he wanted to hurt him but, even more, he wanted to fix him. He saw more than just a school bully. He was already forming strong ideas of his own about how age and time solidifies the bad things in people the way the custard his mother attempted from time to time remained on the boil for too long, and he had seen how Tommy became more ruthless with every week his malicious actions went unchecked. He saw, instead, the greatest puzzle of his young life. This malevolent boy was a motor with a misfiring cylinder. A junked bicycle that only lacked some minor adjustments and possibly some grease.
The pedaler knew, on the most basic level, that human beings were more complex than car motors or bicycle parts but he did not see them as a separate category the way other people seemed to. They had an on switch at the beginning of their lives and, from the many fiction and nonfiction books he had devoured, it was apparent that they had countless off switches. People were always dying in books. From disease, war, old age, getting kicked by a horse, going underwater, or falling off their (probably poorly-tuned) bicycles. The pedaler had to ride his bike over 3 sets of railroad tracks from bad south side of town where his family lived, through the very bad southwest part of town, right past the abandoned and dilapidated old battery warehouse, and then to the outskirts of the downtown area to get to the library. The real library. Not the school library where all the books were picture books and were fiction easy enough for a 3rd-grader. No, this was the real library. The pedaler had gotten his very own library card. He'd had to forge his mother's signature to get it but he didn't see why he'd needed his mother's signature to get a library card in the first place. Because of the trouble the pedaler went through to pedal all this way, and because he knew roughly what time Tommy and his gang would be at the old battery warehouse throwing rocks at the already mostly smashed-in windows, he stayed at the library as long as he possibly could. Sometimes he read histories which mostly proved to be pretty dull. Sometimes he read fiction which was entertaining and a nice way to imagine himself living other lives. But most of the time he read the how-to's of the library. One of his personal favorites was the Popular Mechanics magazine. The library had every issue of the informative engineering magazine. Some of the articles were fluff and not very enlightening but there was one issue in particular that he had read and reread cover to cover. It had a picture on the front of a dad and his son playing with a "sidewalk car" the dad had presumably built from scratch for the son. The pedaler realized from the beginning that this father-son duo bore no resemblance to him and his father. If anything, the pedaler might have been the one who had built the car and unveiled it to his stunned and confused father and not vice versa. He had read the article about how to build the homemade go-cart several dozen times. He had even copied the sketches and material lists down with a pencil into his school notebook. He didn't have access to most of the parts or tools he would actually need to put together the car but he had assembled it thousands of times in his mind. Then he would take it back apart and make a tweak or two and reassemble it. It was infinitely fascinating to him.
Cars were infinitely fascinating to him. The "why" of it was obvious: people were forever coming up with faster ways to get from one place to the other as if they could somehow lengthen their own lives by spending more of their time at destinations rather than on journeys. The "how" was incredible. When you looked at the inner workings of a combustion engine it really looked like it ought to be a bomb or some sort of flamethrower device. In reality it was both of those things. Engineers had somehow figured out how to take this flamethrower-bomb and make it into an incredibly efficient and expedient means of travel. The pedaler would put aside the magazine every time he read the section about Karl Benz and the invention of the modern automobile with the internal combustion engine and imagine himself as the inventor, taking apart bits and pieces of chemistry, physics, and engineering and reimagining them as a whole new thing. Creating a new thing by pulling apart some old things and reassembling them using his imagination.
The morning passed slowly at school as it usually did for the pedaler, his teachers droning on and on about things he understood better than they did. There was the softspoken Mr. Lutz who was his favorite. Mr. Lutz taught history and science and, while it was particularly evident to the pedaler that the plump man had not a scientific bone in his body, his flare for history intrigued the boy. Mr. Lutz would struggle through the school-appointed textbook on science, often mispronouncing key terms. He did not even seem to need a book for the history lessons. He was transformed by it. He played the parts wonderfully and often added his own postulations with a chuckle.
"Well that's how they dress it up in the textbooks," he would say with a wink, "but Paul Revere was as popular with the ladies as he was unpopular with the British." Then would follow a dramatic reenactment of the midnight ride, with all artistic liberties taken.
Today was a history day and Gerald Lutz was in rare form.
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