Read Online If Rock and Roll Were a Machine by Terry Davis - Free Book Online Page A

“Easiest thing in the world. Especially for an inexperienced—and I might add an unlicensed—young shitball such as yourself.”
    â€œI know,” Bert said. “I know.” He was smiling at the way Shepard had called him a shitball.
    Shepard pointed at Bert’s Reeboks. “You know?” he said. “You don’t know much or you wouldn’t be riding in basketball shoes. Guy needs a decent pair of boots if he’s gonna ride a motorcycle.
    â€œThere’ll come a time when one of those laces catches around your shifter or your brake pedal,” Shepard said. “If you need to stop fast, you’ll be in trouble because the only brake you’ll be able to get to is the front, and on these old bastards the front brake ain’t enough. Say you do get stopped and you go to put your foot down to steady the bike. Your foot’s not gonna reach the groundbecause your shoelace is caught. You’re already leaning the bike and you’ve got no leverage to stop it, so you and the bike go over. Besides looking a fool, which nobody ever died from, you break a bunch of shit on the bike and maybe on yourself, or maybe somebody just drives over you.”
    Bert looked down as he pushed the bike. The loops of his shoelaces were four inches long. Maybe longer.
    â€œAnd let’s say this,” Shepard went on. “Let’s say you’re whipping along through traffic on Division here, and those laces are flapping around and one of ’em gets caught in the chain. Ever see a section of highway where a deer or a big dog got hit? How there’s that one big splatter and then smaller and smaller spots down the road?”
    Bert saw bright blood shining. He nodded his head.
    â€œThey’d collect your pieces in a plastic bag,” Shepard said. “Your folks would get a call, they’d go, and that’s the last they’d see of their boy.”
    Shepard stopped. He bent and set the flowers on the asphalt, then pulled up one leg of his jeans. Bert looked at the boot. It had a strap where laces would be. He saw Shepard’s pale, hairy leg. Then he saw his grandfather’s leg. Then he saw the blood again.
    â€œPeople call these motorcycle boots,” Shepard said. “But they’re engineer boots. Their function is not to stomp heads, but to protect feet. As you can see, they have no laces to catch on something and end your days.” He snugged the leg of his jeans over the boot, picked uphis flowers, and headed down the alley again.
    â€œIs that what happened to your legs?” Bert asked.
    â€œNo,” Shepard replied. “One knee went in football, and the other in an accident in my job.”
    Up ahead Bert saw Shepard’s partner spraying off an old bike. He was wearing sunglasses and looked so much like Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top that Bert wouldn’t have been surprised to see him pull a V-shaped guitar from behind the trash barrel and whip into “Legs” or “Sleeping Bag.”
    Shepard held the dried flowers above his head as he walked through the mist thrown up by the pressure sprayer.
    Bert slowed to have a look at the old bike. Dave didn’t look up from the rear wheel where he was directing the nozzle.
    The sprocket, hub, and wheel rim were so thick with grease that no metal showed through. Dirty white feathers clung to the grease, and Bert wondered if a chicken had tried to cross the road at the wrong moment back when this poor old wreck had been a running motorcycle.
    The hiss died and Dave turned and extended his big, wet hand. “I see both you and the old Sportster are still in one piece,” he said.
    â€œBarely,” Bert replied.
    â€œStay off your head, youngster,” Dave said, and he turned back to his work.
    Bert pushed the Sportster out of the mist and parked it to one side of the open overhead door Shepard hadentered. He took off his mist-covered glasses and wiped them on his