A Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Willie story
“Shame about the bike,” I said to the strained young black man at the bus stop. His head was down and he was staring hard at the ground.
He grunted, a sound that conveyed two ideas: “I heard you” and “I’m not listening.”
“Just as well, I guess. A bike like that…”
He looked up for a moment, piercing me with hard black eyes. “What about it?”
“Oh, you know. Wouldn’t last too long, now would it?”
He scoffed, and that was that. Or so he thought…
What happened was this: I saw a bike going in to Toys ‘R’ Us, about a week before Christmas, and that’s the kind of thing I just have to follow up on.
It was a girl’s bike — a girly bike. Sixteen inch white wheels. A white frame speckled with iridescent pink and purple flakes. An iridescent pink and purple flaked saddle. And matching pink and purple flaked streamers cascading out of the white handle-bar grips. It was the kind of bike Toys ‘R’ Us loves to sell: Thirty-five dollars worth of bike with three dollars worth of plastic ornaments is priced at sixty bucks. Ten dollars extra for professional assembly.
The bike had been dragged into the store by my companion at the bus stop — tall, thin, with an expression of anger etched into his face. Maybe twenty years old; certainly not twenty-five. He was wearing a Michael Jordan warm-up suit and Michael Jordan basketball shoes. That sounds very casual, but we’re talking three hundred dollars, maybe more. At first I thought he might be bringing the bike in for a minor repair, but something about the way he was dragging it — sideways by the saddle — made me think again.
I didn’t go into the store, but I stuck around to see what would happen. Sure enough, he came out bikeless and stalked over to wait for the bus. Three hundred dollars worth of Michael Jordan haberdashery but no car.
I said, “A little girl has a bike like that, she’s just bait on the hook. Doesn’t have a father around to stand up for her, Read more
