Stoned

Eight years of my life barely had passed when I rode my bike down the road to the gas station so I could top off my tires with air. That always seemed to be a problem, a deficiency of air in our bicycle tires and no pump with which to breathe life back into them. Gas stations didn't have coin-operated air pumps then, so we didn't need to scrape up any change, but the pumps' unreliability introduced a measure of uncertainty.
Flats constituted disaster, like an appendage lost, and our amateurish surgical procedures risked further damage. We would remove the tires from the rims with flat-head screwdrivers and in so doing often introduced additional punctures into the tube. If we managed to extricate the tube without inflicting further damage, we then contended with a patch kit. The kit, packaged in a rectangular aluminum box, contained glue, which eventually would dry out and crack and resemble a used-up tube of toothpaste that had baked in the August sun; the patches themselves, which we cut to fit; and the top of the aluminum container, which resembled a cheese grater in miniature with its rough surface intended to scratch up the area around the puncture before applying the patch. After applying the patch, we sometimes, in an effort to further entomb the offending hole, would set afire the glue that seeped from under the edges. The chain, too, could prove equally problematic. A malfunction often left us streaked black with grease and frustrated by immobility.
My bike also facilitated self-injury. I once trailed blood 200 yards from around the corner to my house after a no-hands ride carried me face first into the door of a parked car and left my lips in threads. Wheelies the length of football fields often ended with the back of my head or my tailbone meeting asphalt. Someone stole my Sears Free Spirit with the American-flag motif that my grandfather bought for me, delivering an affront to me and patriotism in one blow. I lusted after the rims on the fancier BMX bikes, which made mine look pedestrian.
And so it was that my bike carried me on that fateful day to the gas station. Construction crews had partially completed the interstate near my house, and the pale green metal supports bore the weight of the highway as it crossed over the road on which I traveled. Once underneath those supports, my tires zipped on the asphalt and echoed in the chamber. I looked at the as-yet unspoiled white concrete embankments that angled up to the base of the bridge as I passed.
I emerged from the shelter of the bridge, exposed on the other side, and a group of teenagers standing on the as-yet-unopened highway spotted me, like birds of prey sighting their quarry. They unleashed a fusillade of rocks from their perch above me. Time slowed, and the recognition that a group of kids were stoning me sunk in deliberately. The rocks rained down and tore flesh, and I pedaled furiously as tears formed in my eyes and blood rivulets turned peach fuzz crimson. I looked back at them and saw someone I thought I recognized, the stringy hair and the cocked arm.
I pedaled until I reached the gas station, another half-mile, and I puzzled over how I would return home. The kids had left by the time I had summoned the courage to venture home. Safe passage. At home, I showed my brothers my wounds, and we all immediately piled into the car, hell-bent on vengeance. Solidarity. Once up on the highway, we encountered a man my oldest brother knew, and he, too, sought the rock throwers for hitting his car. To no avail.
Most mornings, I drive my car under that overpass, and sometimes the sting of unbridled cruelty resonates more than 30 years later and again leaves a hole somewhere deep inside of me.