If Rock and Roll Were a Machine

by Terry Davis

  Bert knows only one thing that feels as neat as riding a Harley-Davidson motorcycle.

  For the zillionth time tonight Bert mounts the bike. The leather seat is hard against his butt, smooth through the worn flannel of his pajama bottom. The steel gas tank is smooth and cold and inflexible against the insides of his knees. This is not a dream. And yet, as in a dream, there’s a quality here that says this is some other kind of reality.

  Bert grips the bars with both hands, tips the bike up off the side stand, and holds it straight and steady with the strength of his legs. He tenses his body against the shock of acceleration and takes off, vibrating his lips in a motor sound. But the sound of vibrating lips is so unlike the roar of a Harley-Davidson V-twin, and Bert makes such an unlikely biker in his jammies and bare feet here in the garage in the narrow space between the wall and his parents’ cars, that even though no ears hear him but his own and no other eyes see, he is embarrassed.

  Bert leans the bike back down on its stand and dismounts. He can’t stop looking at it. It will take some getting used to, like Shepard said. But Bert will have patience and he will get used to the Sportster. He looks down at his face reflected in the round chrome air-cleaner. That is his face shining there with the words “Harley-Davidson Motor Co.” embossed upon it. The image is distorted, but that is Bert Bowden’s face.

  Chapter 10

  Bowdenland

  Bert is so tired. He told himself he’d earned a good sleep. He’d turned in his essay and he bought the bike. He couldn’t buy a jacket because Scotty doesn’t sell them; he’ll order one from L.L. Bean. He’d passed the written test for his learner’s permit. He can ride during the day in the company of a licensed rider. When he passes the riding exam, he’ll receive his operator’s license and be on his own.

  Bert is beat and he deserves a rest. But here he lies with his eyes cranked open. There’s a lot to see in the darkness bristling above his bed, and he sees it even more clearly when he closes his eyes.

  He sees himself eight hours earlier riding the Sportster alongside Scott Shepard. They ride through a roaring tunnel. Bert feels the wind, the tiny particles of sand that swirl against his cheeks and around his glasses into his eyes. He feels these things and he sees the soft-blue fall sky, the foothills to the east, blue-black where the pine trees grow, yellow where the farmers have cut and baled the year’s last hay, and brown where they’ve already turned the ground.

  Bert didn’t do a bad job on his first ride. He got the Sportster started on the third kick, he shifted smoothly up and down through the gears. He stalled when he tried to get going again at a stop sign, but he fired it back up and ran the speedo needle almost to fifty as he sped to catch Shepard.

  Bert sees the red tip of the speedo needle move up and down the circle of numbers as he lies in bed with his eyes closed. He feels the throttle in his hand. His hand makes the needle move. His hand turns the growl of the engine into a roar and the roar into a tunnel of sound that shuts out the world. In this direction lies Bowdenland, where for a few seconds Bert makes a world of his own.

  Outside the transparent walls of the tunnel Bert sees the people who have come to watch him on his journey tonight. Tonight they stand along the road Bert rides on his new old motorcycle. On other nights the way to Bowdenland leads through the football field, and the people stand on the sidelines watching; or down the main hall at school where they sit on the benches and watch as Bert walks by; or in the mall where they line the rail on the second floor and look down at Bert looking into the windows of the Benetton store where the clothes hang perfectly on the mannequins and where the models in the floor-to-ceiling murals don’t care that they’re geeks; or in the mountains where they stand in the meadow like deer and watch Bert sitting by a stream, a handline held between his thumb and index finger.

  Always watched and always watching. But it’s the only way to get to Bowdenland.

  When Bert dips into his thoughts for a girl or woman to accompany him, every single thing in that sixteen-year-old bag of his brain comes tumbling out with her. Good things and bad things and things that don’t even seem to belong to Bert spill out. And the whole mess lines up along the road to Bowdenland and watches. Bert can shut it out, but he can’t make it go away. Except in those few seconds when he gets there and he’s the one who makes the world.

  Tonight Bert shuts it out with the sustained exhaust note of a Harley-Davidson Sportster.

  His grandfather is there. He’s the man he used to be. He smiles. His lips move. Bert knows the words: Berty Boy.

  His parents stand at the side of the road. They look in his direction, but their faces are expressionless, as though there’s nothing to see. At dinner they didn’t say a word about where Bert slept last night. In the middle of WKRP, Bert’s dad told him he’d have to pay his own liability insurance. Then he fell asleep on the couch. Bert watches his parents’ faces as they turn and walk in different directions.

  Tanneran is there, looking out over his lectern. Scott Shepard is there. He’s leaning up against the chain-link fence that surrounds the practice field. The scary biker stands beside him.

  Mr. Lawler, Bert’s fifth- and sixth-grade teacher, is there. He stands in front of the class instructing the kids to point at Bert when he speaks without being called on. No talking, Lawler tells the class, no disruption, just thirty pointed fingers to remind young Mr. Bowden to raise his hand and wait to be called on. The kids turn and point their fingers.

  Bert sees himself at the age of eleven looking back at the elevated arms and pointed fingers of his classmates. I’d forget, Bert thinks. I’d get excited because I knew the answer, and I’d just forget.

  Five years go by in a single beat of Bert’s heart. The metalheads are there, lounging on the hill at the edge of the school parking lot. Rick Curtis, Captain Metalhead, commands their attention along with Rick’s girl Sheena. Rick plays his guitar, and Sheena plays Rick’s thigh. Sheena is so alluring in her lanky, dusky, long-grackley-haired way that Bert forgives her stupid name. She is a stunning, crippling, leather-bound, smoke-sodden accident that Bert wishes would happen to him. She is every gaping light socket into which Bert ever desired to place his tongue. She is the long, black bundle of microwaves that will roast Bert in his water bed without melting the plastic.

  Bert cranks the throttle and the roar of his engine nears its peak. He’s revving right up to the red line. And Sheena hears it. And she turns. And she looks. And she unwinds like tentacles her long arms and legs from Rick. And she gets up and walks through the side of the tunnel into the roar.

  Bert eases back on the throttle. He slows for Sheena. He will take her on a trip for which he needs no permit, no license, no indulgence of any sort except the indulgence of his own will. It is in the exercise of this will that Bert creates Bowdenland.

  But the girl who climbs on isn’t Sheena. It’s the girl from the journalism room.

  Bert doesn’t know her name. He has only seen her one time. But he likes her looks. Her face is kind, intelligent. The potential for mischief shines in her eyes. This girl is nothing like Sheena, Sheena, the Metal Queena. And Bert likes her looks.

  Together they ride to the top of the hill. Bert does not slow by a single rpm as they crest the summit and keep on going, airborne, into the roaring heart of Bowdenland.

  Then they fall slowly, gently. Yes, they fall sweetly. It is not a far fall any night, and tonight it is particularly short, although no less sweet. As always, Bert hits the ground alone. Alone and unobserving he crosses the border into unobserved sleep.

  Chapter 11

  Young Mr. Bowden

  Bert Bowden

  Junior English

  September 6, 1989

  THE WORST THING THAT EVER HAPPENED TO ME

  Most of the fourth-grade boys faked anxiety when Ms. Pinkus, our principal, informed us on the last day of school that a man would be teaching fifth grade in the fall. He would be our first male teacher.

  Ms. Pinkus did not imply
that this man would be more strict than the women, but some of the boys reacted as though this would be so. I myself tumbled onto the floor and convulsed in an imitation of cattle-prod torture. That’s the kind of kid I was.

  On our way home my friends and I were giddy with visions of our summer vacation and also with the prospect of a dramatic turn in our lives: a man teacher. We would have to toe the line. But it would be good for us. We pretended to dread that first day of school in the fall when we would find out who got the man. I think we were all hoping to get him though. I was hoping to.

  But it was already a done thing. Ms. Pinkus and Ms. Waters, my teacher, had talked it over with my folks, and they agreed that a male figure might have a settling influence on me in the classroom. So I got what I was hoping for. I got the man.

  His name was Gary Lawler. He was a first-year teacher in his early twenties, a good-looking guy with the dark, chiseled face people think of as classically handsome. He was a little guy, maybe five six. I was big for my age, and I didn’t have to look up much to meet him eye to eye. He was wiry and a fast runner, but surprisingly uncoordinated and slow to react. I wasn’t as fast, but I was quick and well coordinated. I could always nail him in dodgeball, but he had to run me down before he could hit me. He’d hold the ball out and just touch me with it, or bounce it off my forehead as I stood there like a captured felon.

  When recess was over he would throw his arms around the shoulders of a couple of kids and start singing. It would be a song from an old TV show like The Beverly Hillbillies or Mister Ed. Other kids would link arms, then more kids would join up until there would be this long line of singing, skipping kids headed back into the building.

  He knew the words to all these TV theme songs, and pretty soon we did too. Not everybody joined in at first, but it didn’t take a week before all of us—except Jim Zimster, who wouldn’t do anything with anybody—were linked up. The first day of school Lawler tried pushing Zimster’s wheelchair, but Zimster clamped on the brakes and wouldn’t let go, and Lawler never tried it again.

  Lawler put the same energy into the classroom that he put into recess. He’d divide us into teams and send one kid from each team to the board. We’d cheer if our teammate spelled the word right or worked the problem correctly fastest or named the right state capital, and we’d boo if the other team beat us to it. Lawler cheered the right answers and booed the wrong ones along with us in a good-natured way.

  We weren’t supposed to make too much noise or we’d disturb the other classes. But I was having so much fun I couldn’t control myself. I’d get too loud, jump out of my chair, shout the answer when it wasn’t my turn. All the questions were so easy. I’d groan when our kid didn’t get it. I wasn’t really mad, and I didn’t want to hurt feelings, although I’m sure I hurt some.

  Lawler would banish me to a back corner of the room for speaking out of turn. It was a small price to pay for having fun, plus, I thrived on the attention. I’d carry my desk-chair back into the sunny corner where the plants were, then I’d go get the big dictionary from his desk and start copying it, which was a punishment I enjoyed and am thankful for to this day.

  I worked hard for Mr. Lawler’s recognition. I tried to do what he told me. I tried to remember to raise my hand and wait to be called on, not to interrupt, not to run in the building, to remember that I didn’t need to be first in line for everything.

  We weren’t even halfway through our six-game football season before Lawler, Ms. Pinkus, and my mom met to discuss my behavior.

  A week after their meeting I had a meeting of my own with a therapist. His name was Dr. Crutcher. He asked me questions about myself and about school. Near the end of the hour he asked how I got the bruises around my eye and the cut on my ear. I told him I’d been running a quarterback option when somebody tripped me and I bashed my head into the ground. He smiled. I suppose he wondered if I was being abused.

  Crutcher said he thought I was smart and funny, and that I could count on these qualities getting me into more trouble in the future, particularly in school. The older I got, he said, the easier it would be for me to control my behavior. He suggested that in the meantime, if I didn’t want to get buried in the hole I was digging for myself at school, I’d better do what they told me.

  I became a model of behavior. Things weren’t as fun, but I wasn’t in trouble all the time. I thought I understood how a staked dog might feel. Lawler’s questions would cruise by like fat newspaper kids on cheap bicycles, and my mind would scramble off after them like a crazed Doberman. I’d get right to the edge of the grass, my sharp little fifth-grader’s intellectual fangs all shiny and dripping, poised to rip jeans and sneakers, and then I’d come to the end of the rope. I’d feel it constrict around my throat, and I couldn’t shout or speak in a normal tone or even whisper. I just stayed right there at the edge of the sidewalk with my paw in the air ready to be called on. But I never got called on.

  I was also never one of the kids Lawler linked arms with when the bell ended recess. I am ashamed to admit this, but I wanted to be there with him at the center of that line of people singing and having fun.

  I see now that this was when sports began to mean too much to me. I couldn’t get the attention I needed in class, so I started going for it all in sports. In PE class and in football after school I began playing with a vengeance. It wasn’t hard for me to excel because I was bigger and more coordinated than most of the other kids. But I also had this fire. If I’d been a team player it would have been a great quality. But I wasn’t. I hogged the ball, yelled at kids when they dropped passes or missed tackles, and worse—like I did in class—I just ignored the kids who didn’t want to play as bad as I did.

  Our football team was undefeated and I was the star. I kept my stats in a ring binder with a photo of former Seahawks quarterback Jim Zorn on the cover. I was so full of myself.

  One morning late in October, not many days after 220 or so American Marines were killed in Lebanon when some Shiite Muslim drove a truck full of explosives into their compound and set it off, one of the kids in class asked Lawler what the fighting was about. The bombing was all over TV and the newspapers and on the covers of magazines. It was a good question, although one probably not too many people could have answered.

  Lawler said they were fighting about religion. The Jews and the Mohammedans, he said, were in league against the Christians. He said it was only one small part of an international conspiracy by the communists and other non-Christians to take over the world. Then he wrote “conspiracy” on the board and asked if any of us knew what it meant.

  I knew what “conspiracy” meant, but I didn’t raise my hand because I was confused by what he’d told us. It rang false after what I’d learned on the news.

  I loved the news. I read my folks’ Newsweek cover to cover before one of them would stomp down to my room and snatch it back, and I watched Nightline every night in bed. A lot of times something in the news would send me to my World Book encyclopedias, and I’d read about it and sometimes even read on into the related articles, which is how I learned about Islam.

  What I’d learned from watching and listening and reading was that this stuff in Lebanon, like so much of the turmoil in the Third World, was a result of a colonial power—France, in this case—leaving a former colony without a sound government. The problem was that the Muslims didn’t have fair representation.

  Lawler was right about it being a religious war: The president of the country, who was a Christian, had been assassinated before he could take office, and then in retaliation Christian soldiers killed several hundred Palestinian civilians in a refugee camp. I knew the Jews had something to do with it because Israeli soldiers had let the Christians into the camp and watched them kill the unarmed Palestinians. I didn’t know what the communists had to do with it, but everybody knew they were always up to no good.

  Maybe if I hadn’t had such a good football season and been so full of myself I never would have said anything, or ma
ybe if I hadn’t gotten so frustrated holding my paw in the air waiting for Lawler to toss me a question. For whatever reason, I couldn’t keep my mouth shut. I knew all this stuff that I didn’t think anyone else in the room or maybe the whole school knew, and I just couldn’t keep it in.

  “In the first place,” I said, “they’re not called Mohammedans. They’re called Muslims, and their religion is Isla—”

  That’s as far as I got in my discourse. Lawler was at my seat before I could close my mouth on “Islam.” In mid-stride he leaned down, grabbed each side of the writing surface of my desk-chair, and pushed it—and me—out of the row, down the aisle, and toward the back of the room.

  Ours was an old school with wooden floors, and some of the boards had warped at the edges and were no longer level with the others. I felt the metal legs of the desk-chair catch on these raised boards and rip through them. The room was silent except for the squeal of the metal legs of my desk sliding over the floor and the intermittent splintering of the board edges.

  My head whiplashed when the back legs of the desk cracked into the corner of the room. Lawler jerked the front of the desk around so I was flush with the side wall and facing forward. He walked to his desk then, picked up the big dictionary, walked back and dropped it onto the writing surface from a moderate height, causing it to make a moderate and almost whimsical splat. He was smiling, and he’d been smiling down into my face all through our trip across the floor.

  “Mr. Bowden,” Lawler said, “this corner is your home until you learn you are not the most important person in the room. I’ve got something to say to the class, and I want you to listen.” With his middle finger he flipped open the dictionary about a quarter way. “When I finish,” he said, “you are to start copying. You’re familiar with the procedure.”