Dave Eggers - Heroes of the Frontier

“See you in an hour or so,” Jim said, and turned himself toward her children, whose silhouettes she could make out, through the window, hunched over the air-hockey table, pushing some hovering disc at each other with great urgency. They were fine. And so she pushed off, and immediately ran into the side of the bicycle shed.

“You got it?” Jim yelled from some invisible place in the woods.

“I’m good,” she said, and decided she needed to prove she was good, so rode across the parking lot, adjusting her sense of direction and equilibrium to the handlebars, which were tilted down, too.

She looked up at the path, wanting to move forward, believing she could move forward, but the machine under her was mangled and had other plans. It defied logic that she could make this work after a potent mojito, but after a hundred yards she was riding more or less straight. Then again, she passed an older woman who stared at her, aghast, as she passed. To see oneself in another’s eyes is no gift. It’s always a shock, always a disappointment to see their own shock and disappointment. You look so old. You look so tired. What are you doing to your children? Why are you riding a crooked bike drunkenly on this lovely path? How is this the right use of your time, your humanity? Have we wasted precious space dust on you?

But soon the riding was comfortable enough and the landscape was drifting by, and because the sun was setting, setting so late, it occurred to her all at once that she’d never been more connected to the land, and nothing around her had ever seemed more alive and glowing and beautiful. The purple wildflowers, the grey dirt, the smell of the pine needles cooling. The tall tree halved by lightning. The waning sun on the hills in the distance, bright blue and white. Whose bike was she riding, anyway? A log-hewn fence. The wail of a faraway truck slowing. The monotony of an unburned forest on the sun-drenched hillside. Why did she have to be tipsy before she could notice anything? A rabbit! A rabbit was just down the slope from the path, small, tawny, and staying longer than expected, looking at her with absolute recognition of her humanity, of her equal right to this land so long as she remained humble. After it evaporated loudly into the thicket, there was the metallic hum of crickets. The butterlight of some cabin in the nearby woods. The heat of the pavement below her, the faint smell of tar where someone had sutured its tendril cracks. The click of her gears, the awed hush of the highway beyond the trees, the pointless drama of all of its rushing travelers. “You know what time it is?” asked a voice.

Josie looked around, the landscape spinning in green and ocher, and saw a man on a parallel road. He was on a bike, too, standing, straddling his, outfitted in an explosion of colorful gear. After he asked the question, he took a sip of water from a tidy black water bottle. All of this, he believed, made him both virile and monumental: the bike, the gear, the straddling of the bike, the sipping of water right after asking a stupid question.

“Eight thirty,” Josie said, because she knew it was probably true.

“Thanks,” the man said, but in a way that implied he was a paying guest and she was some kind of bike-path clock keeper — that she worked on the path and was in charge of time. She thought of the bicycle man in her town, the one responsible for the maiming, the furious and florid sense of themselves these men felt. I am wearing these clothes and have gone fast. Move from my path. Fix my teeth. Tell me the time.

“Fuck you, you motherfucking asshole,” she said, not loud enough for him to hear, loathing all of humanity, and then continued on, in seconds happy again, again connected to the land, feeling everything gorgeous around her, hoping the lightning tree would fall on that man and improve the world by the subtraction of one.

She turned around a bend in the path and saw a stream, and then a pond, an empty bench facing the water, and she thought of old people, and dead people, and dirty pigeons, and then dirty landscapers, dirty housepainters. A fox! Was it a fox there, ahead of her, near the pond, staring at her? It could be a coyote. Christ, she thought, it was beautiful, with its rich coat, its luxurious grey coat, its eyes like Paul’s, Paul’s eyes always looking old, as if seeing her from a different wiser, sadder epoch.

Like the rabbit, the fox lingered far longer than she thought plausible before jogging away, into the high grass. This was dusk, when all the animals appeared. Dusk was all that mattered. Midday was nothing, nothing. Midday was for humans, for the drones of mankind, who bustle about in the heat of day like imbeciles, while the animals always waited till the cooling of the earth, waited till the light was low and the air cooling, till they appeared to do their business.

The sun wouldn’t set for another half-hour and now, as she passed between two hills, one in violet shadow and the other dirty blond with sunset light, she realized this was the time when she and everyone should be out, should see these things, share the world with the foxes and voles and moles and rabbits. The light as it passed through the cotton of the willows! The light as it haloed the trees and grass and weeds! But she was usually not out at this time. Usually she was feeding her children, putting them to bed, all of these prosaic activities that kept her from the beauty of the world. Our children keep us from beauty, she thought, then corrected herself. Our children are beautiful, too, but we must find a way to combine these things, so we’re not missing one for the other. Could it be so hard?

Ahead she saw a gentle decline from the path to the riverside and decided she would sit there and put her feet in the water. She found a large stone that resembled a pillow and she set her head on it, extending her feet to the river and found that her toes touched the cold water. She closed her eyes to the sun and yawned a happy yawn and woke up when? The light was the same. She’d only dozed. She looked around her, expecting cobwebs to tell her she’d slept a hundred years, her children were now grandparents, all was different, but instead she saw a small snake appear from between the rocks at the water’s edge, a water snake of some kind, and without taking any notice of her, come out and inspect a snail making its wet way across the slick rock. With a snap of its head the snake swallowed it, and then retreated back into the dark water.

Josie stood and felt the uncertain earth beneath her feet. She steadied the land and thought again about staying, at least until she sobered. No, she thought, it will be good this way, to bike home this way — she had the powerful thought that this was the way it was meant to be, that it was all so beautiful she could hardly bear it. She took a long last look at the river, moving like a thousand silver knives. The rocks on the far shore, cooling in the shadows. She turned and climbed up to the bridge.

Getting on the bike was a kind of seven-dimensional chess. Was she drunker now than before? The river and the sun had inebriated her. The bike seemed a foot taller now than when she’d ridden it hours ago. She hoisted herself onto the seat, pushed off, and immediately careened into the shrubbery to her left. Okay, she thought. Okay. She squinted into the sun and mounted the bike again and this time shoved herself forward with enough velocity that she was propelled more or less straight.

The air was cooler now, and she hoped it would sober her. Her eyes watered as she rode, sideways, her mouth open. But she regained her balance, and said these words to herself: Great night. Good evening. The greatest night. The beauty of this nowhere world. I love this. Where are my children? Can I love this without them? I can and I do. This is my best life. Among this beauty, on my way to them.