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Will’s father took the back-assed way from Manasquan to Cream Ridge. Seated beside him, the boy watched the road. The narrow lane could turn any traffic into a game of chicken, a game his father played. Just last week, the boy’s father had packed his bag and started out the door; he said he was going to make himself available to good luck. Will’s mother met him in the drive, relieved him of his panama, and escorted him back inside. Will had tried to listen with ear pressed against their bedroom door, but all he could hear were crickets, so he went into the yard and stomped them in the grass. His mother reappeared an hour later and declared order had been restored. “Your father’s taking a siesta,” she said, sitting next to the boy in their defunct out-shower. She frowned at the desiccated swimsuit hanging from the spigot. “You know, you look like him when he’s asleep.”
Now, father and son were fishtailing to Nickel Hand’s farm to look at a motorcycle. The ad in the Star read: “74 cubic inch Shovelhead V-twin—an American bike.” Will’s father claimed he knew Nickel from when the man worked graveyard shift at Edison Tire and Rubber, from when they’d surf cast for stripers at quitting time, said he could shoot the shit with Nickel but never trusted him or the ads he ran in the paper. “Antique lure, my ass,” his father grinned, unfolding a scrap of newsprint from his madras shirt. He spread the ad for the bike on the truck’s cracked vinyl dash. “A rusty spoon!” In short, Harry wanted to inspect Nickel’s motorcycle.
“We’ll want a fast bike,” he said, craning in the cab. He didn’t look at his son, but late summer glinted in his hazel eyes. He squinted against the light and the blue smoke from his cigarette before smashing the butt in the ashtray at his knee. Harry reached into the glove compartment and put on his sunglasses. Will looked small in the mirrors of his eyes.
“I don’t know,” the boy said.
“This is the kind of thing you should have an opinion about, son. Do we want a fast bike?”
Will was also uncertain about his father’s use of the plural. The king was dead. “Yes,” he offered, folding his hands in his lap, as if in church. Long live the king!
“That’s better.”
Will spied a farmer bucketing toward them on a big John Deere. Dust boiled from the tractor, rose to the pale sky. Seeing his father’s large, sunburned hands flush on the wheel, the boy gripped the dash. Harry stepped on the gas as the farmer cocked his elbows, bright shirt billowing behind like a plume. Will locked his door. The man on the tractor probably didn’t realize how much danger his father’s desire to seem resolute presented, even if he enjoyed such duels himself. Will clutched the dash and stared just below the man’s eyes, which in turn took a bead on their grill.
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