She Rode a Harley

by Mary Jane Black

  I smile at him. “Same here.” Then I shove the checkbook into the glove box.

  Dwayne throws the cigarette out the window. “Let’s make a deal. Any money we have is ours. You buy what you want. I buy what I want.”

  I nod in agreement. “No asking. No permission. Partners.”

  We shake hands on the deal. Dwayne says, “You don’t need me to let you do anything.”

  “I’ve never been married like that.”

  “Me either, baby.”

  Over the next two weeks, we spend the days trying to find a house for our new family. The down payment for it will be provided by my share of the house Tom and I owned together.

  As we drive through the streets and roads of the neighboring towns of Bryan and College Station, I become familiar with the people and the landscape.

  Twisted trees thrust up through the concrete-like caliche soil. The edge of the land extends for miles out to the distant horizon under the cathedral arch of the pale blue sky. Massive trucks known as duallies with muddy double back tires belch smoke from their diesel engines.

  The men in starched Wrangler jeans and cowboy boots wear their summer straw cowboy hats. All of them, like Dwayne, tuck their pearl-snap shirts or T-shirts into their jeans with a thick leather belt adorned with a substantial buckle.

  The women stroll through the hot days with their hair sprayed stiff, so it remains unmoved by the humidity or gusts of wind. Thin, light summer dresses in a garden of floral prints sway as they walk. They wear elaborately decorated cowboy boots with the dresses when they go dancing. Their faces remain perfectly made-up with arched penciled eyebrows and bright lipstick.

  In an hour, my makeup melts off my face. In the steamy heat my hair frizzes. But my closet fills with the cool flowing dresses. My warm Missouri clothes remain packed. Dwayne buys me my first pair of cowboy boots.

  Each night I sleep content, tucked between the wood-paneled walls and the warmth of Dwayne’s solid body.

  Every day I call Stephanie. Sometimes two or three times a day. I hear the nervousness in her voice. I try to cheer her up with stories about Bryan and the people. Dwayne usually talks to her near the end of the call. He tells her he loves her as he says goodbye.

  I also try to call my son, Steven. I leave messages asking him to talk to me and to come visit me. He never calls me back. Tom has kept his promise to turn at least one of my children against me.

  I can’t wait for Stephanie to get here and away from him.

  Finally, the day comes for me to drive to Austin to pick her up at the airport. Dwayne has delayed going on the road for his job, but he has to be at the REC building today. He’s leaving soon on his first work trip to Baltimore for a hospital lab project.

  Standing in the middle of the crowd at the airport gate, I search the faces of the people coming through the door. Finally, Stephanie shoves her way past a cluster of people. Her eyes are red from crying. I pull her stiff body against mine. “Are you okay?”

  “No. I miss home already.”

  I step back. “You are home now.”

  She jerks away from me and turns her back on me as she moves down the escalator to baggage claim.

  We walk without speaking to get her suitcase, and we begin our drive to Bryan. I chatter about how I’ve fixed up her room in the trailer. We’ve made one room for her bedroom and another for a separate room with a couch and a television. I add, “Your own little apartment.”

  “With no friends to visit.” She turns away from me and fixes her eyes on the Texas fields and ranch gates out the window.

  “You will make friends,” I promise.

  She shakes her head but doesn’t say anything.

  I continue, “You can go to Springfield to visit your old friends when you want.”

  “I hope they remember me.”

  Thirty minutes later, she breaks the tense silence. “I went to visit Dad.”

  I grip the steering wheel. “Did you? Do you want to tell me what happened?”

  She turns away from the window and leans her head against the back of her seat. “I thought maybe I’d live with him until I graduated this year.”

  I swallow hard against the words rising in me. “I didn’t know you were thinking about that.”

  “Yeah, I actually believed he could be a real dad.”

  I don’t say anything, just reach over and take her hand. I grasp it in mine as I listen to her.

  “He said he’d be glad to have me live with him.” She rubs tears from her eyes and continues in a wavering voice. “Then he spent the night sitting by my bed crying and begging me to make you come home.”

  “Oh, Stephanie, I’m sorry.”

  “He said you’re going to hell for divorcing him and marrying Dwayne.”

  I mutter a curse. “I promise you I never would’ve married Dwayne if I didn’t think he’d be a good father for you.”

  “I know, Mom. But he’s still a stranger to me.” We drive the rest of the way in quiet agreement to stop talking about her father or Dwayne.

  When we get to Bryan, we sit in the driveway. I observe her view the shabby trailer for the first time. She doesn’t say anything; she just steps out of the car with an audible sigh.

  Dwayne comes out of the garage to meet us. “Welcome home, Steph!”

  She moves away from him when he tries to hug her. He grabs her suitcase from the car, following us into the house.

  I point down the hall to the right, and she trudges down it with Dwayne and me behind her. He drops her suitcase on the floor by the bed. He glances at me, and I nod my head to tell him it’s okay. He walks out of the room and leaves the two of us standing in the middle of the small room.

  She turns in a circle and takes in her posters and other items I’ve unpacked and put up. I’ve hung her curtains and put the same comforter from her Missouri bedroom on her bed in her new room. She walks into the next room, where we’ve wedged in a loveseat and a large bookshelf. Her stereo and a television sit on it, and she can fill the shelves with her CDs and books.

  Finally, she smiles at me. “Thanks, Mom.”

  “Are you hungry? I made your favorite dinner. My fried chicken.”

  She thanks me but tells me she’s not hungry and wants to call her friends now. I join Dwayne in the living room. We hear the door to her room shut and the murmur of her voice on the phone.

  Two weeks later Dwayne leaves on his work trip. As I hug him goodbye, he hands me an envelope full of cash and tells me to put it in the bank. “Buy my girls clothes and stuff for school.” He grins at me. “You’ll probably buy a stack of books.”

  We talk every night on the phone. Stephanie and I explore our new hometown. With Jessica we shop the back-to-school sales. We sometimes drive aimlessly through the town and surrounding countryside, trying to make it feel less foreign.

  Finally, Dwayne comes home. I spend most of my time sitting in a lawn chair in the garage, watching him work on his latest project: an electrical motorcycle. He’s drawn his design on poster paper and hung it over the workbench. I help him pull parts off an old Honda motorcycle to use in his creation.

  The radio plays classic country in the corner. “If the radio in the garage is playing, then you know I’m coming back to work here soon,” he said when I asked why it’s never turned off. In the stifling heat of the garage, sweat saturates his T-shirt, and his oil-stained hands deftly weld and shape the metal pieces into a motorcycle. Occasionally, he waves his hands in the air and describes for me how the rear tire will rotate and produce energy. I don’t understand any of it, but I’m satisfied sitting there on the stained concrete floor, handing him tools.

  One morning Dwayne takes Stephanie to the Department of Public Safety, so she can transfer her driver’s license to Texas. I’m staying home to complete my applications for teaching positions. School will be starting soon, and I still don’t have a job.

  Less than an hour later, I hear the truck doors slam. Stephanie bangs through the front door. Without
looking at me at the kitchen table, she marches down the hall. Her door slams behind her.

  Dwayne steps through the open door and closes it. I pour him a cup of coffee, and we lean across the table to talk, keeping our voices low.

  He smooths his mustache with one finger. “They wouldn’t give Steph her license.” He takes a sip of coffee. “Said she had her license suspended in Missouri for not paying a speeding ticket.”

  I remember that ticket and start to answer him.

  “I paid it!” We hadn’t heard Stephanie join us.

  I look up at her. “I gave you a check for it. You did go to the courthouse to pay it?”

  She grabs the back of a chair, her fingers gripping it. “Mom.” She stops.

  Dwayne lays his hand over hers. “Stephanie told me she paid the ticket. She wouldn’t lie to us.” He turns to me. “One of my friends at the DPS called the Missouri Highway Patrol. The suspension order came from a Trooper Dave Johnson. You know him?”

  The highway patrolman who once told me to go home to my husband. “Yeah, I know him,” I say. “He’s a friend of Tom’s.”

  Stephanie drops into a chair. “Dad did this.”

  We sit in silence, and I wonder if I should tell her that her dad wouldn’t do this to her. I can’t.

  Dwayne pulls out his cigarettes and grabs his phone. “You girls sit tight. I’ll take care of it.”

  Stephanie and I drink one cup of coffee after another, listening to Dwayne talking on the phone. Through the window we watch him as he paces the deck with his cigarette in one hand. We hear the murmur of his voice with each new call.

  Finally, he comes through the front door. He puts the phone back on its base. “Get your purse, Steph. Your Texas license is waiting for you at the DPS.”

  We stand up. I ask him, “How did you do it?”

  He pulls his truck keys out of his pocket. “You just gotta know who to call.”

  Stephanie goes to get her purse. I smile at him. “I love you.”

  “Love you too. Told you I’d take care of you and Steph.”

  He walks out the door, and I stop Stephanie when she follows him. I stroke her cheek. “Are you okay?”

  She hugs me for the first time in months. “You’re right. Dwayne’s a good dad.”

  A HARLEY MECHANIC AGAIN

  I “see, Mrs. Black, that you graduated from a college outside Texas.” The principal looks over his glasses at me. “Are you aware of the teaching standards here in Texas?”

  I know I will not be able to convince him I do. I try anyway. “I believe a good teacher can be one wherever she teaches.” I point out that I was a recognized master teacher in Missouri and was teacher of the year in my district there. I add that I have now married a man who was born in Dallas and grew up here in Bryan.

  He pushes his wire-rimmed glasses up onto his bristly gray hair, cut into a stiff crew cut. He leans forward and rests his elbows, in his crisp blue denim shirt, on the wooden table. With a glance at the rest of the interview committee around the table, he begins to flip through my application as he quietly reads it. The teachers and parents sitting around the table facing me also look down at the papers in front of them. A few take notes, and no one makes eye contact with me.

  I shift on the hard wooden chair. I tug down my skirt under the table and feel the suit jacket bind across my shoulders. I take a deep breath, knowing I won’t get the teaching job. This is my fifth interview for different school districts in Texas after my move here after our wedding three months ago. They always end with me explaining how an out-of-state teacher can be as good as a Texan.

  Finally, the principal clears his throat with a rasp. “Thank you for coming in today. I’ll call you in the next few days to let you know our decision.” He pushes his chair back with a screech and moves around the table.

  I stand and meet him at the door. He shakes my hand and opens the door. I walk out and hear one of the teachers on the panel speak as the door closes. “Too bad she isn’t from here.”

  As soon as I get home, I kick off my heels and fling them into the back of the closet. I strip off the restricting suit and leave it on the bedroom floor. In my underwear, I stretch out on the bed and call Dwayne. He’s working in a laboratory on Long Island.

  I hear the humming of the fans in the lab in the background when he answers the phone. He asks me to wait while he steps outside. I hear the click of his lighter in a few minutes. I know he’s smoking and talking on the phone, as always.

  “How’d it go, baby?” His voice finally asks over the phone.

  I close my eyes in frustration. “I’m sure I won’t get the job. I still wasn’t born a Texan.”

  He reminds me how good I am as a teacher. I hear him blow out smoke. “I wish I was there to tell you that in person. I miss you, Mary Jane Black.” Hearing my new name always calms me.

  I relax against the pillows. “I wish you were here too.” I grip the phone in my hand. “I don’t know what I’ll do if I’m not teaching. Maybe you wouldn’t have to be on the road so much if I had a paycheck.”

  “I gotta work, baby. You know I have to bring in money.” We both remember the last time he lost a job and broke up with me as a result.

  “Yeah, I know. I just miss you when you’re gone.”

  “I’ll be home tomorrow night.”

  I pick him up at the airport the next day, and he drives us home. I sit close beside him with his hand on my thigh, my skin under my cotton skirt warmed by his fingers.

  He tells me about his work at the hospital in New York. With his words I can picture the cramped research laboratory. The clang of the cubicle doors. The doctors in their rumpled white coats. The smell of the bleach drying on the floor. He laughs when he describes how he recommended wine and Johnny Mathis music to a worried doctor for the rats who wouldn’t mate.

  I miss working with him on the road but know I need to be here with Stephanie, helping her adjust to the move in her senior year of high school.

  Now I rest my head on his shoulder and laugh at his stories. The stress of job hunting and the strain of life in a strange new hometown melt away.

  Soon we’re pulling into the driveway of our new house. The house, sheltered by the spreading limbs of a gigantic live oak tree, has become a home for us and our daughters after I got money from selling the house Tom and I owned together. Dwayne and I traveled back to Springfield to sign the papers. The nervous realtor told us Tom refused to be in the same room as us. She walked back and forth between the rooms with papers for us to sign. Before she escorted Tom out the back door, she lowered her voice and told us how angry he had been to learn that Dwayne had to sign the papers as my husband. Now the money has given us a home for our newly created family.

  Stephanie is sitting at the kitchen table when we come in the back door. She jumps up and hugs Dwayne. He tells her he’s glad to be home with his girls. They sit down at the table, and she shows him her homework for her physics class. They chat about force and motion.

  I cook dinner, listening to their conversation with a smile. He didn’t finish high school and got his GED in his twenties. However, he knows how any machine works. Now he draws a hydraulic system for a piece of zoo equipment for Stephanie. She talks about the formulas and facts from math and science that go with each movement of the machine.

  I carry the bowls and plates of food to the table. We eat and laugh in the brightly lit room with the dark Texas night outside the window.

  The next morning I sit on a rolling mechanic’s stool in the carport while Dwayne sits cross-legged on the oil-smeared concrete floor by a Cushman motor scooter he’s rebuilding for a friend. I push myself forward into the sunshine, so I can read the small newspaper print of the classified ads. I read through the Help Wanted column while behind me Dwayne ratchets off the lug nuts of the Cushman wheels.

  Suddenly a motorcycle swerves into our driveway with a scatter of gravel. The rider’s long gray beard ruffles in the wind. I know by the beard that he is Dwayne
’s friend Pete, whom he’s known since kindergarten. I ease myself off the stool. Dwayne stands by me, with a shop towel in his hand.

  Pete snaps out his kickstand. As he steps off the bike, we see the woman behind him for the first time. She swings her right leg over the seat and jumps off the motorcycle. Her dark hair hangs in a long braid down her back. She pushes up her sunglasses, and we can see her bright blue eyes contrasted against her dark skin.

  Pete introduces her as Doris and tells us he met her at the paint shop where he works. After hand shaking and introductions, Dwayne and Pete examine his new motorcycle: a Kawasaki. Doris and I smile at each other as they talk about engines and torque.

  We chat while the men examine the motorcycle motor. She’s getting a degree in social work, and I talk about my teaching and my frustration about not finding a job here.

  When the three of them form a smoking circle, I lean against our car and listen. Pete tells us he found out while motorcycle shopping that a Harley dealership has opened in Bryan. He adds that an old friend of Dwayne’s bought it, Bruce Webber.

  Dwayne says, “Bruce and me rode together when we were a lot younger. We took a lot of road trips. Sturgis and Daytona.” He throws his cigarette on the ground and grinds it into the gravel. “Hell, I built Bruce’s first Harley.”

  Dwayne laughs as he talks about how they stripped off the factory parts and threw them out. Now those parts are worth thousands of dollars.

  They talk about all of the guys who rode Harleys with them years ago, about the time they met Paul Newman in a gas station on the way to Daytona Bike Week. The stories fly between them, each of them adding details and memories.

  I listen to their shared motorcycle tales and realize again how much he has missed riding Harleys for the last fourteen years.

  Eventually, Pete gets back on the motorcycle. Doris steps up on the passenger peg and maneuvers herself behind him. Dwayne and I watch them roll down the driveway and swing left onto the street with a roar. We both stand in silence and watch them disappear.

  As the sun sets behind the tree in our front yard at the end of the day, we sit in our porch swing. Dwayne’s arm drapes over my shoulders, and we rhythmically rock back and forth.