The Ghost Bicycle

It’s too late for the buses to be running in this section of town. Need to get home now. Shouldn’t have stayed so late – can hardly think straight. Wet, dark, cold.

Car won’t start. Look under hood—too dark to see much, too tired to make any difference if I could see. Broke down in the middle of this rotten neighborhood, I remember that my grandma wouldn’t let us drive through here with the doors unlocked when I was little. Now do I sleep in the car, or head for high ground?

Could look for a pay phone… but no one to call this late that I’d want coming out here after dark. No need to share the pain. I’ll catch hell if I’m not home in the morning, car or not.

Close to 1:30 AM, getting colder. Bars empty out soon – unhappy people will be looking for dark doorways. Down the side-streets: shabby houses and overgrown shrubs tangled into chain-link fences. Deserted sidewalks. Park has bare earth under tall old trees with a few dead twigs for lower limbs. Desolate, wet, grimy. What you can see of the street has an oily shine from the advertisers’ eternal lights.

I cross the street away from a particularly dark doorway, and start heading east for home. It’s only three miles, I reckon – I can make it before it gets light, and still catch a little sleep tonight. Funny how the mind perks up at the idea of sleeping in my own warm bed.

Walking down the wet street, I see the white bicycle chained to the post. The little sign hanging from it reads, “a cyclist died here.” Someone has painted the bicycle with a thin coat of white spray-paint, and chained it here as a memorial. Waste of a bike in a neighborhood like this – old Cadillacs rusting on blocks, you’d think someone would have stolen it by now.

Was it the dead cyclists’ own bike? Or did they scrounge it from a garage sale? Does someone collect old bicycles and paint them white, line them up like blank tombstones, ready when needed? This one still has both tires, unlike other ghost cycles around town. It must be fairly recent.

As I walk past it, getting soggier by the minute, something clanks. I spook away from it, then look back. The chain sags in its plastic sleeve, gummy with wet rust. The wind picks up. As I watch, the bike sways against the chain and falls over.

You wouldn’t think it could do that.

The chain seems to have rusted through.

Behind me, another noise. Figures spilling out of the bar two blocks down. Angry voices, thumps… ghost bike or not, I’m not staying here any longer than I have to.
I pull the rusted chain off, set it upright, and shove off down a side street.

My skin crawls a bit on the handlebars. I’m remembering stories about sailors being cursed for using a dead man’s knife… will the bike betray me, for dishonoring its owner’s memory?

But it seems happy enough to be moving again. Swooping along under the wet trees, spokes whickering in the wind. I can hear the chain rattling, but it rides smooth as anything.

I cross Martin Luther King, JR. boulevard, the huge street never deserted even at this hour. My hands get colder, and stiffer, pedaling into the wind. I stick to the neighborhood streets, hoping everyone will be asleep.

It’s been ages since I rode a bike. This late, I have the street to myself. The bike skids a little on the clumps of fallen leaves, and we start making s-curves in the empty streets. It’s like the bike was a lost puppy, chained up waiting for someone who never came back. Disfigured, abandoned… longing to play again.

Slight downhill feels like flying, effortless. But then the uphill comes… I didn’t remember these streets being this hilly, but it all feels different on a bike. More vivid, more real, and at the same time vaster and darker and full of nameless lives.

I get a little mixed up, trying to find a flatter route… I lose track of the street numbers, and can’t tell anything from the house numbers either. I have a long way to go, though, and east seems the right direction. The bike is going faster now, my legs must be warming up… and thank God, I seem to be over the top of that stubborn hill.

My hands are still freezing. I’m tempted to put them in my pockets but how would I steer? Can I trust the bicycle? I try riding without hands for a moment – bike has perfect balance, it’s a treat. Raise my arms like a bird, just for fun. I touch the handlebars again to steady, then put my hands in my pockets. They start to thaw. The bike stays upright, sometimes swooping in long curves across the wet road. We pedal onward.

The bike takes a sharp turn without warning, south toward Alberta Street. I start to wrestle my hands out of my pockets, but catch my balance before I reach the handlebars. Alberta street has more bars, light industry, new-age boutiques… the jousting grounds of the "tall bikes" and activists. That crowd will lynch me if they catch me riding a ghost bike. The south-east crowd would at least give me a trial first.

I take over the steering, and head north, looking for emptier roads to take me east toward home. We cross Killingsworth, Lombard, the railroad tracks … swamps without houses … Cornfoot, isn’t that near the airport? I turn right on the causeway, trying to find the main roads again before I hit the Columbia slough.

My legs are starting to burn, but I have to keep pedaling. Where exactly am I? A crossroads near a golf course, industrial suppliers across the street, a flashing yellow light guarding the intersection with the main road. Am I getting any closer to home?

As I shove off, the steering sticks. The bike starts doing that swoopy thing again, only this time, I can’t control it. All I can do is lean for the side of the road. “Isn’t this fun?” the bike seems to be saying, “Here’s an even bigger road to play on!”

But this road belongs to the semi-trucks, and three in the morning is when they wake up. Engines rumbling in the shipping yards, backhoes and cherry-pickers rising out of the darkness behind flimsy chain-link fence.

“Playful,” my ass, this thing is going to get me killed squirreling around like this on a busy road. I stop pedaling, wrestle with the handlebars, and it grudgingly gives up control with a jerk. I hit the gravel shoulder and bounce sharply off a panel of chain-link, the bicycle somehow stays under me, and we end up facing backwards up the street. Truck headlamps glare, airhorn blasts, and a voice yells, “You trying to get yourself killed?” I can’t even tell if it’s only in my head.

Stepping over the bike, I lean against the fence to calm down. Then I start walking the bike toward the next light, looking for a road sign. It waggles uncertainly. I torque on the bike’s handlebars, and it turns freely. Wants a second chance.

I warily, slowly, wearily, climb back on. I push lightly on the pedals, just enough to start to coast, keeping one foot near the ground. We glide along the shoulder toward the distant lights. It’s not a bad bike, seems to like me OK – but it's too rambunctious to be trusted. Could explain a lot.

The lights ahead should be a major street. On any major street, I can catch a bus in two or three hours. Tempted to heave the bike over the first pole I can find, pin it down, and walk the rest of the way. But for now, I need the ride….

By Erica Ritter
Comments welcome -- brand-new piece.