Bicycle Jones

Bicycle Jones

By Parker Wilson

Bicycle Jones rolled down Woodward with his big wheels. All around him, cars driving double the speed limit turned the avenue into a wind tunnel, but he couldn’t keep up. The rubber Jones used to cover the fatty tissue that made up his tires was thread-bare and no longer held up to high speeds. In a few places, it had worn away completely, and he could see the calloused skin beneath, marking the revolutions as his wheel turned around. 

Rolling down the street without the tires felt like running on gravel barefoot.

On the front wheel, one of the spokes was broken from when a Cadillac bumped him into a curb. The bone had snapped and Bicycle Jones had laid on the littered road verge all night, hoping that by morning the spoke – the bone – would heal itself. When that hope vanished, he had taped it together to keep it from catching on his fork. 

Righting himself after falling, or taking a rest, required an incredible effort. On Sundays, sometimes the only thing to do was lie down by the Cathedral of the Most Blessed Sacrament on a pad of cardboard. Since his feet and pedals were one, he had to push off the ground with both hands until he balanced on his wheels again, sometimes falling over in the opposite direction first. Balance got better with age, but he was getting too old to heave himself like that. The better option in his sixties was to drag himself to a fence and hoist himself up. 

He stopped going into gas stations and liquor stores thirty years ago. Explaining that he couldn’t leave his bicycle outside became an exhausting chore that often ended in shouting and him backing out the door he had just rolled through.

As a child, he never experienced the careless tone toddlers have about their own bodies, the shamelessness that comes with learning how to walk. Jones never learned how to walk. He learned how to roll and, as soon as the doctors separated his hands from the handlebars, he covered his bicycle body with scarves, strips of nylon, and rags. 

The doctors couldn’t separate his ass from his seat or his feet from the pedals because arteries ran through all three points. Under gnarled flesh, bones twisted into the mechanical swivels and ball-bearing revolutions of a Schwinn. Passing cars would never guess the bicycle’s tubes were all bone, and the pedals cranked around a ball and socket, like the hip joint, kept tight by ligaments.

Last year, he started to squeak. Getting old ain't for the faint-hearted he repeated like a mantra as he rolled in the far right lane down Woodward, which didn’t have bicycle lanes until Nine Mile Road. When he was younger, Bicycle Jones would roll all the way to Thirty-Seven Mile. Now he kept close to downtown and preferred rolling toward the river, a buttery downhill. As his bones tallied more spins upon their millions, what joints were once well lubricated now moaned under their own weight. 

The Detroit River shined flat flashes of silver. The view to Canada was obstructed by neither fog nor boat, and the air opened up over the wide, shimmering river. Jones could see Belle Isle to his east, and the not-yet-connected Gordie Howe Bridge to his west. In late winter, when it only warmed enough for a walk by late afternoon, other people were hard to find on the Riverwalk. That was Jones’ favorite time to see the water and rest his old spokes.

“I like your bike,” a little girl holding her father’s hand said to Bicycle Jones as he rolled by. They were the only others on this stretch of the river. A little blue hood covered the girl’s head, masking her appearance until a strand of brown hair broke out from under and danced in the wind. The Renaissance building leaned over them, cutting the cold blue sky. 

Jones turned his head and said, “Thank you very much, young lady.”

A little wind picked up along a stretch of the riverwalk. Jones removed his winter hat and let the breeze press against his matted horseshoe of hair and clean his face. A lip in the sidewalk caught his front wheel and spun it toward the river, momentum carrying him off the edge of the sidewalk and over a downslope of clunky rocks that led to the water. His bones, wheels, chain, and sprockets rattled and creaked as the river came closer, the waves more defined in their chops. A bolt of adrenaline electrified Jones. His skin pricked as the threat of hypothermia and soaked rags sent his fingers into action, and they pulled the brakes. 

Stopping too quickly, he toppled over himself, splashing into the river headfirst, dragging his bicycle's bottom half with him into the crispy cool waters of the Detroit River. A piece of styrofoam bobbed on the surface as he slid on slimy, algae-covered rocks into deeper water, blurred waves of light turning to blackness. Bicycle Jones clawed at the surface, tried to grab it and pull himself up, but instead sunk lower. The pain is finally gone, he thought. They’ll pull me up out of here in the next rubbage sweep.

Bicycle Jones woke up in a shop, lying on his side on the floor. As he blinked, a face stared into his from inches away. It was the face of that little girl on the riverwalk. Jones recognized her even though she’d lowered her hood and her hair sprung out in tight curls. “Where am I?” Jones asked. 

The little girl explained that her dad owned a bicycle shop and when they heard a splash on the river, they ran to help and brought him here. Her dad stood behind her and nodded toward Jones’s back end. “We gave you a little upgrade. It was Penny’s idea.”

Jones looked down at his rear wheel to see the man had installed training wheels. “Let me help you up,” he said. 

The man grabbed Jone’s hand and pulled him to stand on both wheels. Jones felt himself steady on the training wheels. They kept him from falling to either side. He rocked from one side to the other then let out a sigh as if he’d finally unloaded a fifty pound sandbag from his shoulders. 

“It was tough to get you out of the water,” Penny said. “But we rolled you here pretty easy.”

A flicker of light glinting off his front wheel caught Jones’ eye. He looked at the wheel and saw his broken bone spoke had been replaced by a stainless steel one. 

“Goddamn,” Jones said. “Look at me. I’m a robot now.”

“Yay,” Penny said. “Robot! Robot!”