by Bill Harley
Darius had been speechless ever since he had seen the house. But now he found his voice.
“I’ve been trying to find you! My rim is bent and I can’t fix it!”
“Oho! Bent rim. That’s right. It’s the worst. I bet you tried to fix it and botched the job completely. I bet the spokes look like Medusa’s hair! Nothing but a head full of snakes, you know! How’d you like to comb it?”
“A head full of snakes?” asked Darius.
“Right! That was after Venus got through with her. Venus, the goddess of beauty, was jealous of her, so she turned Medusa into an ugly monster. How ugly, you ask? She was so ugly that one look at her would turn you to stone.”
“That’s ugly,” said Darius, nodding.
“Of course it is,” said Daedalus. “The Greeks didn’t mess around when it came to extremes.” He stopped suddenly and pointed to the book under Darius’s arm. “Greek myths! Excellent. That nice little volume is a good start, but …” He leaned forward and put his face close to Darius’s and whispered mysteriously, “There is more. Much, much more! More horrible. More wonderful. I can tell you. I know.” His eyebrows wiggled up and down as if they had lives of their own.
Daedalus straightened himself and paused a moment as if lost in thought, then he looked back at Darius, eyes bright and twinkling. “Now, listen, my young warrior—do your parents know where you are?”
“No,” said Darius. “I don’t have any parents. All I have now is Aunt Inga.”
“Hmm, I remember. Like Hera—Zeus’s wife.”
“She doesn’t have a husband. And she’s kind of strict.”
Daedalus scrunched up his face. “Well, all right. For the time being, you may come in, although I, too, am quite strict, at least about who works with me. Children shouldn’t wander around without their parents’ permission.”
“I told you, I don’t have any parents.”
“Right. Right. Sorry to hear that. But for today—let’s see. Twenty-six by one and a half, that’s my guess. Come with me.” He turned and walked up the steps, across the back porch, and into the house.
Darius took a deep breath and followed the strange and wonderful man inside.
10
Inside Daedalus’s House
Inside the back door, Darius looked around. To his left he could see a kitchen, very simple and sparse, with dishes stacked in the sink. On the right was a small study. The shelves lining the walls were filled with books. Hundreds of other volumes stood piled on the floor and overflowed out into the small hallway.
Directly in front of him Darius saw Daedalus standing by a narrow doorway. The old man flipped on a light switch and started down a flight of stairs into the basement. Darius followed him, marveling at all the drawings and photographs taped and thumbtacked along the staircase walls. Every picture, whether it was a snapshot or a drawing made by children’s hands, showed boys and girls smiling proudly beside their bicycles. He recognized Daedalus in many of the pictures.
Darius stepped down into the basement and looked around in surprise. It was the exact opposite of what he had seen on the outside. The basement was an immaculate and perfectly organized bicycle workshop. The magical space held every kind of bike part imaginable, placed in the most orderly fashion. Front forks had been hung with care from a rack on one wall, along with seats and sprockets and frames. Deflated inner tubes of different sizes had been neatly draped over a series of nails in the ceiling. Along another wall, clipped to a pegboard, was the most wonderful array of horns, lights, and bells Darius had ever seen. Above a long workbench against the far wall was another enormous pegboard covered with tools of every size and description. A bike stood on the workbench, half put together. Darius felt his body shake with excitement. He was sure he was dreaming.
“Wow,” he said to himself, “this is bike heaven!”
“The discardings of a careless world, my good man,” Daedalus said in a grand voice, “left for rag and bone pickers like me to save from the horrors of some gigantic landfill. Wasteful, wasteful! But then, it gives me something to do. I don’t make much money. But I need little. The less I have, the less I have to worry about.” Daedalus moved to the far corner of the workbench and turned on a radio. A man’s voice boomed out, hitting an exceptionally high note. “There!” shouted Daedalus. “My adjustments to the antenna were successful! Listen—it’s Puccini!”
“I’ve heard of him,” said Darius. “My dad played opera for me all the time.”
“Did he?” Daedalus asked enthusiastically. “What an excellent fellow!”
“Yes,” said Darius, and for a moment, he could see his father in his imagination and hear the ching ching ching of the coins in his father’s pocket. Something about being in this basement made his father seem close.
Daedalus turned off the radio. “Let’s see.” He reached up to a long rack of rims and sorted through them.
“Twenty-six by one and a half, twenty-six by one and a half,” he mumbled to himself. Then he pulled off four or five rims and took down the one behind them.
“Twenty-six by one and a half,” said Daedalus, handing it to Darius. “It’s a bit worn, but perfectly round.”
“Thanks,” Darius murmured. “But I’m afraid I don’t have any money.”
“Oh, fine,” laughed Daedalus, “another customer with no money!” He didn’t seem to be at all bothered that Darius couldn’t pay. “You hold on to that rim, my good man, while I finish a little job I was working on. In the meantime, feel free to look around.”
Darius hardly knew where to look first. In this wonderful workshop all the bike parts seemed to be almost alive—each wheel and hub and frame carrying a promise of something that might be. He turned slowly, trying to take everything in. His eyes fell upon a picture hanging over the workbench. It was obviously old—the paper was yellowed and curled up at the corners. Darius stood on tiptoe and stared. It was a colored pencil drawing of a boy on a red bike. The bike was suspended in the air, supported by large balloons attached to each fender. Birds were flying around the boy on the bike, and the boy was waving his hand, wearing a very large smile.
“Who’s that?” asked Darius. “Is it real?”
“What’s real and what’s true?” asked Daedalus. “They say that when Orpheus played on his harp, the trees walked nearer so they might hear him. Do you believe that?”
“I don’t think so,” he answered honestly.
“Then you miss the point entirely. It’s not whether the trees could walk—it’s how beautifully Orpheus played.” Daedalus paused and looked up at the picture. “That’s a boy’s dream,” he said. “That’s what that is.”
“What boy?”
“The boy in the picture, of course. Now, listen, you have your rim. Can you put it on yourself? I expect you can. And it’s getting close to ten o’clock. Aren’t you afraid of your Aunt Inga eating you alive?”
The mention of Aunt Inga brought Darius back to earth, away from the boy on the bike. “Omigosh, you’re right. I have to go.”
Darius headed for the steps, where he stopped again. There underneath the basement stairs, he saw the bike—the bizarre piece of machinery that Darius had seen Daedalus riding through the air over the housetops. He turned back to Daedalus.
“It was you, wasn’t it? There’s the bike you were riding! You know how to fly on a bike.”
“Impossible,” said Daedalus. “Inconceivable.”
“But your bike was flying! That’s a miracle! How do you do it?”
“I don’t,” answered Daedalus. “You saw nothing of the sort. Must be loony.”
“But—” Darius began.
“No, not now. Some other time. You’re about to be eaten—you’d better run.”
“Okay, but can I come back?”
Daedalus looked intently at Darius, as if he were sizing him up.
“Please,” begged Darius, “I could help you. I could pay you by working on bikes. You could teach me, and we could fix bikes together. And maybe I
could work on my bike more. It’s really still a big mess.” Darius felt his cheeks grow hot. Had he said too much?
But Daedalus smiled. “Why not? Bring that old clunker of yours and we’ll fix it up like new.”
“I’ll be your assistant,” said Darius.
“Splendid!” said Daedalus. “My assistant. But you must come only in the morning. I work on bikes in the early morning. In the afternoon I read and think.”
“What do you think about?”
Daedalus raised his eyebrows. “The universe,” he answered.
“The whole universe?”
“As much of it as my brain will hold,” Daedalus said. “There are dimensions most people have never dreamed of. I try to see them.”
“Dimensions?”
“Dimensions. Aspects. Elements. Parts. I think if I could only see a couple more of them, then I could solve the problem of—” Daedalus stopped and looked at Darius. “Oh, enough of that. At any rate, while I’m trying to think about it, I can’t be disturbed.”
“Okay,” said Darius. “It’s better if I come early in the morning anyway, before Aunt Inga is up. That way she doesn’t ask so many questions.”
“Now, off with you, my young hero. Venture forth on the wine-dark sea! And next time, before you come, let your aunt know where you’re going.”
“Do I have to? I’m afraid she won’t let me.”
“You must tell her, if you want to come back.”
“Yes, sir,” said Darius. “Good-bye, Daedalus.” He ran up the stairs, through the kitchen, and out into the yard filled with hundreds of bikes. Darius darted around the piles of bicycle parts, dashed outside the fence, and tore down the street, holding the rim in both hands.
He ran as though there were balloons tied to each arm, and wheels where his feet should have been.
He was that happy.
Meeting Daedalus was the best thing that had happened to Darius for a long, long time. Every morning Darius would sneak out of his house at six o’clock, stop at the bakery just as it opened, and pick up two cinnamon buns still warm from the oven, paying with the pocket money Daedalus had given him. Every morning Daedalus would be waiting for him at his kitchen table with a big pitcher of freshly squeezed orange juice. As they ate their breakfast, the old man told stories about the ancient Greeks. Darius loved listening to them.
“Were you named after the Daedalus in the book?” Darius asked.
“Hmmm. Could be,” answered Daedalus, his eyes twinkling.
“How do you know all these stories?” asked Darius. “Were you there?”
Daedalus laughed out loud. “No, no, no, no…. but I have lived with them for so long they are part of me. I learned these stories as a boy, and I still love them as a man.”
Daedalus told Darius about the hero Perseus, flying over the ocean on winged shoes. He told about Phaëthon, the son of the god Apollo, driving the chariot holding the sun across the sky. He told about Hermes, zooming here and there, delivering messages for his father, Zeus, king of all the gods.
After the stories were told and the breakfast table was cleared, they would both go down into the basement to work.
Daedalus encouraged Darius to rebuild his bike from scratch.
“Can’t we just fix the parts that really need fixing?” Darius asked. “I really want to ride my bike. I have big plans.”
“All the more reason to rebuild it. Fix a flat and ride today. Rebuild a bike, and ride a lifetime.”
Daedalus was laughing as he spoke, but Darius knew the old man was right. Darius didn’t really mind taking the bike apart and putting it back together. Although he was desperate to escape from Aunt Inga’s clutches, he loved his time with Daedalus. And Darius knew that if he was really going to ride all the way back to find Miss Hastings, the bike would have to be sturdy and strong.
Together they took the bike completely apart—the wheels, the handlebar, the chain, the sprocket, the ball bearings, the spokes—everything. Darius looked at all the parts spread across the floor in small, neat piles.
“I’ll never get it back together,” wailed Darius.
“Don’t be a ninny,” said Daedalus. “Of course you will. And once you learn to put this one together, you can take apart and reassemble just about any bike in my shop.”
And soon Darius was able to help Daedalus with simple jobs on the bicycles that children had left at the shop for repair. Darius was happy for a way to repay Daedalus for the parts he needed and for all he was learning.
As he worked, Darius often looked at the strange flying bike under the stairs, wondering why Daedalus wouldn’t answer his questions about it. And then one morning, Darius discovered another mystery. He was repairing a bike and needed a set of handlebars. None of the sets hanging on the walls seemed to fit. Daedalus was busy working on a wheel at his workbench, whistling to himself.
Thinking that he might find the right size handlebars, Darius began searching among the old bikes stored in the part of the basement behind the stairs. He went past the strange flying bicycle, into a dark corner where more old bike parts were stacked. Up against a wall near the furnace, he spotted a bike with a promising set of handlebars. Bicycle parts clattered and clanged as he pushed his way through.
“What are you doing back there?” Daedalus called.
“Looking for handlebars,” Darius answered.
“There’s nothing back there,” said Daedalus.
“Yes, there is,” said Darius. “I see an old bike up against the wall.”
“Leave that one alone!” Daedalus snapped.
But it was too late. Darius had already started to pull it out into the dim light. The bike was red, faded by time and rust. There were several odd-looking attachments on the fenders. The front wheel was horribly bent and twisted, and the entire bike was very dusty, but otherwise it was in good shape.
“Hey,” he said, “this looks like the red bicycle in the picture. It’s just my size.” Darius was trembling with excitement. “It wasn’t a dream! It’s real!”
Daedalus was standing a few feet away, looking at Darius.
“It would be perfect for me! Why don’t we fix it? Then I can ride it.”
“No,” sighed Daedalus.
“Why not?”
“Because you might fall and hurt yourself,” Daedalus said.
“But that’s not a good reason! My dad told me that when you do something new you always risk falling a few times.”
“It’s a better reason than you know,” said Daedalus. “Now leave the bicycle there and don’t ask again.”
“Why won’t you fix it?”
“I will not talk about it, and you have no right to ask. Please come out of there now, and don’t ask again.” Daedalus spoke sternly, in a voice Darius had never heard him use before. Darius could tell that was the end of the conversation. But he knew it was not the end of the story.
In the days that followed, he tried to bring up the flying bicycle in the drawing again and again, but Daedalus always refused to talk about it. Darius looked at the picture over Daedalus’s workbench of the boy on the bicycle. He wished it were he—flying to find Miss Hastings. And then off to Newfoundland, to look for his father.
But Darius had to content himself with working on the old bike from Aunt Inga’s basement and helping Daedalus fix the bikes children brought in almost every morning.
“How do all those kids find you?” Darius asked. “How do they know you’ll help them? Do you put up signs?”
“Of course not,” said Daedalus. “Too much trouble. Do I look that ambitious? I’ve found that word of mouth counts for everything—if someone needs me they’ll find me. Plus, I don’t charge much.”
He didn’t. If children offered nickels or dimes or quarters, he accepted them. He also took candy bars, colorful rocks, and lucky pieces of string as payments.
“How do you live?” asked Darius, “Don’t you need more money?”
“I made money in another life,” Daedalus answere
d. “Then I found this one more interesting.”
You may have noticed that Daedalus often spoke cryptically. When I say this, I mean that he spoke in short, mysterious phrases so that Darius had to guess at their meaning. Daedalus, like many adults, kept much of his life hidden. Darius had detected—beneath the joking and joyful good spirits—a sad undercurrent that seemed to run through Daedalus’s life like a long, sorrowful song. He wondered if it had to do with the red bike with the twisted wheel in the basement.
For his part, Daedalus never asked Darius about his family or pried into what had happened to Darius before they met. Like Ms. Bickerstaff in the library, Daedalus seemed content just to be with Darius and help him, which is a rare thing indeed in the world of grown-ups.
Once he understood how a bike worked, Darius was able to tackle more challenging jobs. Now and then, Daedalus paid him a little extra for difficult repairs, and Darius hid the money away in case he needed it during his escape from Aunt Inga.
But it wasn’t making money that interested Darius. He quickly learned that there is nothing like lending a hand to someone else to help you forget your own troubles. Many of the problems that children had with their bikes—flat tires, chains that had fallen off their sprockets, loose handlebars—were easily repaired. It gave him a wonderful feeling to give a kid back a bike that was running as good as new.
“You’re a genius,” a little girl said to him one morning after he had oiled her squeaky chain.
“Not really,” said Darius. “Almost anybody can fix a bike.”
“Not like you,” she said.
“Oh, Daedalus is much better than I am,” he said.
“Are you Daedalus’s grandson?”
“No,” said Darius. “I wish I was, but I’m not.”
“You’re so lucky to work with him!” said the girl. “Do you live here?”
“No, I just help.”
“You’re still lucky,” she said. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome,” Darius said with a big smile.
11
Crash Landing
Darius did not do the one thing that Daedalus had asked of him: he did not tell Aunt Inga about his trips to Daedalus’s workshop every morning. He wanted to, because the old man had insisted. But the subject never came up again, and Darius didn’t see any point in volunteering the information to his aunt. You and I both know that kids should do what their elders say. We know that adults are usually wiser than kids. But I don’t think you can really blame Darius for not telling the whole truth this time. Not to Aunt Inga.