"Well, let's stop for tonight. It's almost too dark to see."
"Once more. Haven't I read that if your horse throws you, you should get right back on?"
Joe strolled by, munching blueberries from a motorcycle helmet. He had found a number of wild blueberry bushes behind the dealership and had been picking them while Nadine had her first lesson.
"I guess so," Larry said, defeated. "But will you please watch where you're going?"
"Yes, sir. Right, sir." She saluted and then smiled at him. She had a beautiful slow smile that lit up her whole face. Larry smiled back; there was nothing else to do. When Nadine smiled, even Joe smiled back.
This time she putted around the lot twice and then turned out into the road, swinging over too sharply, bringing Larry's heart into his mouth again. But she brought her foot down smartly as he had shown her, and went up the hill and out of sight. He saw her switch carefully up to second gear, and heard her switch to third as she dropped behind the first rise. Then the bike's engine faded to a drone that melted away to nothing. He stood anxiously in the twilight, absently slapping at an occasional mosquito.
Joe strolled by again, his mouth blue. "Weck-come," he said, and grinned. Larry managed a strained smile in return. If she didn't come back soon, he would go after her. Visions of finding her lying in a ditch with a broken neck danced blackly in his head.
He was just walking over to the other cycle, debating whether or not to take Joe with him, when the droning hum came to his ears again and swelled to the sound of the Honda's engine, clocking smoothly along in fourth. He relaxed... a little. Dismally he realized he would never be able to relax completely while she was riding that thing.
She came back into sight, the cycle's headlamp now on, and pulled up beside him.
"Pretty good, huh?" She switched off.
"I was getting ready to come after you. I thought you'd had an accident."
"I sort of did." She saw the way he stiffened and added, "I went too slow turning around and forgot to push the clutch in. I stalled."
"Oh. Enough for tonight, huh?"
"Yes," she said. "My tailbone hurts."
He lay in his blankets that night wondering if she might come to him when Joe was asleep, or if he should go to her. He wanted her and thought, from the way she had looked at the absurd little pantomime with the rubber hose earlier, that she wanted him. At last he fell asleep.
He dreamed he was in a field of corn, lost there. But there was music, guitar music. Joe playing the guitar. If he found Joe he would be all right. So he followed the sound, breaking through one row of corn to the next when he had to, at last coming out in a ragged clearing. There was a small house there, more of a shack really, the porch held up with rusty old jacklifters. It wasn't Joe playing the guitar, how could it have been? Joe was holding his left hand and Nadine his right. They were with him. An old woman was playing the guitar, a jazzy sort of spiritual that had Joe smiling. The old woman was black, and she was sitting on the porch, and Larry guessed she was just about the oldest woman he had ever seen in his life. But there was something about her that made him feel good... good in the way his mother had once made him feel good when he was very little and she would suddenly hug him and say, Here's the best boy, here's Alice Underwood's all-time best boy.
The old woman stopped playing and looked up at them.
Well say, I got me comp'ny. Step on out where I can see you, my peepers ain't what they once was.
So they came closer, the three of them hand in hand, and Joe reached out and set a bald old tire swing to slow pendulum movement as they passed it. The tire's doughnut-shaped shadow slipped back and forth on the weedy ground. They were in a small clearing, an island in a sea of corn. To the north, a dirt road stretched away to a point.
You like to have a swing on this old box o mine? she asked Joe, and Joe came forward eagerly and took the old guitar from her gnarled hands. He began to play the tune they had followed through the corn, but better and faster than the old woman.
Bless im, he plays good. Me, I'm too old. Cain't make my fingers go that fast now. It's the rheumatiz. But in 1902 I played at the County Hall. I was the first Negro to ever play there, the very first.
Nadine asked who she was. They were in a kind of forever place where the sun seemed to stand still one hour from darkness and the shadow of the swing Joe had set in motion would always travel back and forth across the weedy yard. Larry wished he could stay here forever, he and his family. This was a good place. The man with no face could never get him here, or Joe, or Nadine.