The Bike Thief

We were riding our bikes. Tomorrow we would have to go back to school, but today we were riding our bikes down Park Heights, around the field and woods near Towanda Rec Center, back up Reisterstown Road, and in and out of all the little side streets around our houses where the big fans outside the Chinese places blew out fried food smell and the trash was heaped up high and sometimes you could see two people hiding out doing stuff with each other that they probably should be doing inside.

It was two in the afternoon. The sun was super-hot. In Baltimore at least, September is just as bad as August and we all knew we were going to sweat our butts off at school the same amount we sweated them off standing around at the Rec, or walking down the alley behind Torro’s house – the one where, a couple of days after the Fourth of July, we saw a guy who looked like he was dead and we ran away – or sitting in Zion’s backyard drinking Capri Suns. When it’s hot, Capri Suns just make you need something else to drink.

“I’m so thirsty,” Torro said to nobody in particular. Then he looked at William and said, “Miss Terry got any soda?”

“Maybe,” William said.

We rode down St. Charles Avenue to William’s house, which was one of those little two-story brick rowhouses that are all over Park Heights. Some of them look okay, some of them are falling down on themselves, or have no steps, or the roof is gone and you can see sky through the front windows, which are also usually gone. William’s house was one of the okay ones and was also one of the few houses on the block that had a tree in front of it – a big old pine tree or something that was even taller than the house.

We dropped our bikes and banged up the steps and into the house so loud that even before we got past the door, I heard Miss Terry’s voice say, “I know I didn’t raise no elephant. Comin in here like that, gotta be an emergency.” She wasn’t in the living room. Her voice carried down the staircase. She was probably taking one of her “siestas” as she called them.

“Sorry, Miss Terry,” William called immediately. “Just gettin some soda.”

“Well, get it quick and get it quiet,” Miss Terry said. “Lord Jesus, it’s too hot to be runnin around like that.”

We guzzled plastic cups of Sprite and poked around in some chips that Miss Terry had on the counter, then crept out of the house.

As we came down the steps, William said, “Where’s my bike?”

We all looked. He was right. When we went in his house, he had put it next to the pine tree. Now it was gone. There was mine, Torro’s, Zion’s – all right where we had left them – but William’s wasn’t there.

William looked stressed. “Where’s my bike?” he moaned. “Miss Terry’s gonna kill me!”

Zion got on his bike and circled around a little. “Ooo, you in trouuuu-ble.”

“Shut up!” William yelled.

“OK, OK,” Torro said. He was the one of us always who wanted to calm people down. He did yoga at school. “We were only in the house a couple minutes. Whoever took it gotta be close. Get on Isaiah’s bike and we’ll go look for it.”

William held my shoulder and stood up on my pegs. I didn’t mind; my bike was bigger than theirs and could easily take two.

We rode up Belvedere toward Sinai. When we passed the chop shop on Queensberry, we saw Mack out front wiping his hands.

“Ask Mack, Will!” Zion said. “He always knows where to find stuff.”

We turned around and pulled over to the shop.

“Sup, boys?” Mack said. He was wiping his face now. He had sweat and black grease on his cheeks.

“Mack, did you see anybody riding around on a bike looked like this one?” William said. He pointed to Torro’s bike because their bikes looked near the same.

Mack pointed across the street at the fence around the racetrack. There was a white sign strapped to one of the fencepoles that said PIMLICO RACE COURSE – PRIVATE PROPERTY – NO TRESPASSING. “There’s a young basehead works in a stable over there likes to steal stuff. He might know where your bike is.”

“But how do we get in?” I said.

“Go knock on the door!” Mack’s face split wide in a laugh. “I’m just playin with you, young. Here, wait a minute.” Mack walked back into his shop. He tossed his rag on a mess of car parts in the corner, leaned down, picked something up, and walked back to us. In his hands was a crowbar that had seen better days.

“You can push up the bottom of the fence with this and hold it for each other. I’ll watch your bikes.” Zion looked wary. “Jesus, boy, what I’m gonna do with three kids’ bikes?” Mack waved his hands. “You do what you want.”

“Thanks, Mack,” William said, taking the crowbar.

“That’s all right. Listen, that junkie give you any mouth, you wave that crowbar at him and run off, you hear?”

Torro used the crowbar to push up the bottom links of the fence and William went under, then Zion, then me. Then Torro handed the crowbar to Zion and Zion held up the fence so Torro could go under. This was hard because Torro is big.

“Man, if this guy is crazy, I’m out,” Zion said. “He probably sold it already.”

“Shut up,” William said. “We don’t even know.”

“If he doesn’t have it—” I said, and then I stopped. “What if he doesn’t have it?”

“I don’t know,” William said. He sounded like he was talking behind a wall.

We walked through grass and lots of broken bottles to a wood building. It was long and low and we could hear horses.

“You think this is it?” whispered William.

“Only one way to tell,” Torro said. “Come on.”

We went around front of the building, which was open. Inside, it was dark and smelled like poop and grass and dust. A man stood with his back to us, smoking. His clothes were dusty and looked worn out, and he had little bits of stuff like lint in his hair. In front of him, there were two brown, shiny horses. They saw us and neighed. The man turned around and saw us. Off to the side, leaning on a long table covered with brushes and combs and leather and metal things, was a bike.

“What’s good?” the man said in a whispery voice. His eyes were red and wet, like he had been up all night blowing his nose.

“You took my bike,” William said. His voice was all trembly, but I thought I might sound the same way if I was him. “I want it back.”

The man looked over at the bike. “This my bike.”

“Bullshit.” This came from Zion, who was holding the crowbar tighter now. He looked really mad, and when Zion looks mad, you have to watch out.

“That’s our boy’s bike, man,” said Torro.

The man was holding the cigarette near his mouth. It just sat there between his fingers, smoking. He stood looking at Zion, then at the rest of us. His mouth twitched. “Well, take it then.”

Keeping his back to the horses, Zion went around the man one way and Torro went the other way. The man watched them with his wide, red eyes as they came together by the bike, then kept on watching them as Torro wheeled it to the front of the stable.

“Better be more careful with your bike,” the man said softly. The cigarette had almost burned down to his fingers.

“Don’t take nothing don’t belong to you,” Zion said as he backed away.

As soon as we had all backed out of the stable, we ran as fast as we could to the fence. It took about two seconds to get there. Zion held the fence up while we shoved the bike under. We scrambled underneath, too, and then Zion scrambled up the fence and threw himself over on the other side. We all sat on the sidewalk, breathing hard, sweating, scratched up.

Mack came out of the shop and a big, proud smile broke across his face. “Goddamn, you got it!”

William was holding the bike and patted it, looking like he had built it himself. “Yeah,” he said. Then he looked closer at the seat. He leaned in real close.

“What is it?” I asked.

William put his finger on the seat. There was a rip there and some of the stuffing was bulging out.

Zion said, “Aw, man – he tore the seat.”

“No…” William looked at the frame. The thin green stripe that should have been by the pedals was a fat gold one.

“What—?” Torro began.

Nervously, William said, “This isn’t my bike.”

* * *

It was almost four o’clock. We rode down Belvedere. William looked uncomfortable on the bike that wasn’t his. He looked around as he pedaled as if maybe he thought that somebody would knock him down and take this bike, too. The sun seemed like it was even hotter now than in the middle of the afternoon and it glinted off cars and store windows and all the little pieces of glass all over and embedded in the street.

“I’m hungry,” Torro said. “Think Miss Terry would mind if we ate some more of her chips?”

William didn’t say anything.

“He can’t ask Miss Terry for nothin now,” Zion muttered.

A cop car raced out of Cuthbert and tore down toward Reisterstown, its siren and lights going.

Torro made us stop at M’s Super Mart so he could get a bag of Takis and we sat in the grass in the vacant lot next to the store and watched the cars race by and smelled the sour spice of the Takis and the weird bitter pepper smell of the weeds we were sitting on and the smell of the gas additives from the guys with their dirt bikes up on kickstands clinking and clanking them with tools. The sun blasted down on us and we sat still, basking in it, feeling sweat creep down into the small of our backs and through bands of our underwear. We sat and waited and sat.

Back on St. Charles, we pedaled slowly. When we passed by the alley just before William’s block, I peered down and saw something shining that made me yell, “Look!”

We all stopped and looked down the alley. William jumped off the bike that wasn’t his bike and let it drop to the ground with springy boink. He ran down the alley and grabbed the silvery thing and picked it up. He stood there for a few minutes. When he turned around, he was wheeling a bike on its back wheel toward us. The front wheel was bent almost in half.

“Oh snap,” said Zion, “is that your bike?”

William wheeled his bike around the corner and onto the sidewalk. He passed us and kept going toward his house.

“What about this one, Will?” called Torro. “You want it?”

William paused at the bottom of the steps. “No,” he said, “it ain’t mine.”

He wheeled his bike up the steps onto the porch, opened the door, and went into the house.