Now They Call Me Gunner

by Thom Whalen

  * * *

  The bike freaked my parents out.

  That was the best thing about having it.

  Dad asked where I got it.

  I told him that Randal lent it to me. That it was his bike. I wasn’t sure if that was true but it was close enough for parents.

  Mom said that I was going to kill myself on that deathtrap.

  Dad said that I didn’t know how to ride a motorcycle.

  I told him that Randal had taught me.

  Mom said that Randal was going to get me killed.

  She might be right, but I didn’t tell her that riding on a motorcycle by myself was safer than riding in a truck when Randal was driving. Especially if it was nighttime and he started thinking about ‘Nam.

  Dad said that I couldn’t ride without a helmet.

  I said that I had shades to keep the bugs out of my eyes.

  Dad said a helmet was the law. I get a helmet or I don’t ride.

  Mom asked if I was on drugs.

  Overall, it was an exceptionally satisfying conversation.

  I was still terrified of the bike but, on my break, I rode it over to Sears and ordered a helmet. The Sears in Wemsley is just a desk with a few shelves in the back and an old lady wearing glasses like the bottoms of Coke bottles. She has to order almost everything in from the warehouse in Buffalo.

  Ordering the helmet cost me a third of last week’s paycheck but it was worth it to ride the bike.

  When I got back after my break, Katie saw me riding and her eyes grew wide. It made my heart pound anew.

  Seeing her look at me like that was even better than arguing with my folks about the bike.

  She reminded me that I had said that I would take her out again.

  She reminded me. And there was nothing vague about her tone. How great was that?

  Our next date had to be on Tuesday, my next day off. I was committed to spending Wednesdays with Randal and I worked on the weekends. I couldn’t ask her to go out before my day off. She wouldn’t want to hang around after my shift, even on Saturday. If there was little enough to do at night in Wemsley before ten, there was absolutely nothing after that. Elsa’s was the last business to close. Even the A&W closed at nine.

  When I said, “Six on Tuesday,” she said, “On your bike?”

  Her face looked so eager, I had to say, “Sure,” but I knew that the bike would be a problem. A motorcycle doesn’t have a back seat like a car and there was only so much that we could do on the grass under the stars.

  I couldn’t show up at her house with a sleeping bag strapped to the bike. Her dad might get suspicious.

  The movie playing at the Paramount was called Harold and Maud. I had no idea what it was about. Before work, I spent an hour at the public library but couldn’t find anybody who had bothered reviewing it. That was not a good sign.

  I examined the movie poster in front of the theater, but it didn’t tell me much, It was just a picture of a boy about my age and his grandmother. That wasn’t a good sign, either.

  On Tuesday afternoon, I picked up my helmet from Sears. I’d ordered black to match the bike but they delivered metal-flake red. My head would look like a giant candy apple.

  I didn’t know if it was the old lady in the Coke bottle glasses or someone in the warehouse who’d got it wrong, but I had my suspicions. It might have been her bad hearing; it might have been a touch of mental confusion; or she might have decided that black was too morbid and preferred to see a young man wearing a brighter color.

  I didn’t know, but I had to have a helmet and didn’t want to wait another week so I decided that the color didn’t matter and accepted it anyway.

  A lot of people in Wemsley took delivery of a lot of things that weren’t quite what they wanted for exactly the same reason. We were all used to it.

  Tuesday evening, Katie was wearing blue jeans and a Mexican peasant blouse. She was waiting in front of her house and hopped onto the bike as soon as I pulled up. I didn’t have to go inside and talk to her father this time. I suspected that she intercepted me on the front walk because she didn’t want her parents to know that she was going on a date on the back of a motorcycle.

  Having a pretty girl clinging to my back was yet another reason why riding a bike was worth enduring that twist of fear in my gut every time I turned the engine over.

  I gave her the helmet. She frowned but tucked her hair up and slid it past her lovely ears. Now she was the one who looked like the giant candy apple. She looked delicious.

  Her arms about my chest and her breasts pressed into my back were distracting. I didn’t want to stall the bike so I gave it too much throttle and released the clutch too fast. The rear tire squealed as we shot away from the curb.

  Katie squealed in counterpoint and squeezed me tight.

  I pretended that I meant to take off like that.

  After having ridden the bike every chance I got for the last few days, I was almost a pro. I could even get it up to the highest gear on the highway.

  Riding a motorcycle is great. Wind in your face. Road unwinding in front of you. No looking back.

  But riding a motorcycle with a candy-apple woman clinging to you, her breasts pressed against your back, her thighs pressed against your hips, is ten times better. Maybe a hundred times better.

  I only stalled it once on the way to the A&W – at the stop sign where Main intersects with the highway – but I didn’t hit anything and nothing hit me so it was a successful trip.

  A motorcycle doesn’t have any place for a carhop to hang a tray so we had to get off and eat at one of the tables under the awning.

  Katie asked me about the bike. I said that I got it from Randal. I made it sound like I’d bought it. Then I told her a bunch of technical stuff about it. I made most of that up but she didn’t know or care. I told her that Randal and I were going to ride up into the Adirondacks tomorrow. That impressed her.

  She asked what we would do if it rained.

  I hadn’t thought about that. “Do you think it’s going to rain?” I asked, looking at the cloudless sky. “Did you hear a weather report?”

  “I don’t know. I was just wondering.”

  “We gotta go, rain or shine,” I said. “We got business.”

  She nodded, her eyes bright, but she didn’t ask about it. She liked the mystery.

  I was shocked by how good the movie was. It was nothing like any movie that I’d ever seen before. Or since, for that matter. Every scene, from the first to the last was a surprise. Nothing happened the way that you’d expect. It was funny in a sly way; romantic in a weird way; and uplifting in a morbid way.

  I asked Katie what she thought about it.

  “Maude was kind of old for Harold, don’t you think?” she said. “I think he should have gone out with Sunshine instead. She was pretty and she didn’t get weirded out by him.”

  “I think that Harold probably started going out with lots of pretty girls after Maude,” I said.

  She squeezed my hand. “You’re probably right.” She sounded relieved to hear that.

  “Do you want to ride out to…” I almost said Makeout Hill but caught myself. “…Smoke Pond?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “It’s pretty cold to go that far on a motorcycle.” She was wearing only the peasant blouse and hugged herself.

  I wished that I had a jacket to drape over her shoulders – really wished it because the lack was keeping me from getting her to Makeout Hill again – but I was wearing only a cotton dress shirt myself. I couldn’t afford a leather jacket like a real biker but I would to order a denim one from the Sears lady on my next break.

  Then I got a brilliant idea. “Why don’t we ride over to my place? It’s only a few blocks. I’ll borrow the car for the rest of the evening and then you won’t be cold.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  The bonus was that I could put my remaining beer in the trunk.

  Out on Makeout Hill, I drank another beer and she drank two.


  It was our second date so she let me take her blouse and bra off when we necked in the back seat.

  I was in heaven.