I Am the Cheese (3 page)

I leap on the bike. I head for the road.

“Thanks,” I yell, looking back at him. “Thanks for the map and the air in the tires.”

He stands there, looking sad, hands hanging at his sides.

“Be careful now,” he calls, his voice cracked by the wind.

I wave and turn away, pedaling hard.

I have a destination to reach, and the old man is already in the past.

I am away. I am with the wind and the sun. I am the bike and the bike is me.

END TAPE OZK002

The road is long and level and straight, and there are no dogs in sight and the sun is shining. I sing as I pedal along:

The cars speed past me because Route 119 is a state highway with a faded yellow line in the middle of it like an old ribbon left out in the rain too long. I sometimes steer the bike onto the sand of the soft shoulder, afraid that a car might hit me if I stray too far into the road itself. The wheels slide on the sand and I almost lose my balance. I keep singing:

I try to sing the song the way my father always sings it, comically, making his voice go up and down, then loud and soft. He has a terrible singing voice—“You have a tin ear,” my mother always says—but he always gets a kick out of singing that particular song. “It’s our song,” he says. I can remember how he’d pick me up when I was just a kid and swing me almost to the ceiling, singing:

And then he’d gently place me in my mother’s lap where she’d be sitting, knitting or reading, and I would curl into her body, feeling warm and safe and protected from all the bad things in the world. I was only five or six at the time, I guess. And my father sang raucously and joyously:

“Dave, Dave,” my mother would say. “You’re a nut, a real nut.” There were laughter and tenderness in her voice, and the lilac of her perfume surrounded me.

“Hey, what other family has a theme song tailor-made for them?” my father would say, acting the clown now, prancing around the room.

“They didn’t make up the song for us,” my mother would say, falling in with the old game that always delighted me. This was in the days before she became sad, of course.

“Who says they didn’t make up the song for us?” my father would ask. Looking down at me, he’d say, “What’s your name, boy?” Pretending to be very serious now.

“Adam,” I’d answer. “Adam Farmer.” Glad to be a part of the game, a part of them.

“Right,” my father would say. “Suppose our name was Smith? Did you ever hear anybody singing ‘Mr. Smith in the dell, Mr. Smith …’ ”

“Oh, David,” my mother would say. And I’d laugh with delight and my father would begin singing again the way I sing now on Route 119:

The day is suddenly glorious, the October trees burning in the sun, colors rioting, hectic reds and browns. Sometimes the wind rises, startling a flock of birds into flight, sending leaves tumbling through the air and onto the highway. I pass a long meadow where cows lounge lazily, chewing their cuds.

I am glad that I didn’t take the pills and I sing:

I try to keep singing like my father but I have lost the touch. The wind catches at my throat and I realize I have to conserve my breath. My lungs burn and I figure I’d better stop singing for a while. My shoulders throb with pain and my fingers ache where they grip the handlebars.

A hill confronts me, sloping upward endlessly.

I look behind me: nothing.

I get off the bike and stare at the hill.

I start pushing the bike and walk along beside it. I don’t like to walk that way because I feel vulnerable. And I have to go to the john now. I should have gone at that gas station back in Aswell. I could go into the woods but I hesitate to stray from the road. Who knows what lurks in the woods? I am not only afraid of dogs but all animals, plus snakes and spiders. They are not rational. So I need to stay on the road and keep moving, keep moving, even if I am tired. I reach the top of the hill and a beautiful vista is spread below me. A mile or so away, a cluster of buildings and a white church steeple stabbing the sky. And I leap onto my bike again and start down the hill, down, down, seeking again my old friend momentum, and the bike gathers speed and I am sailing now, sailing sweetly, and I am dashing toward that church steeple, heading toward it so swiftly that it seems I could become impaled on it if I lose control of the bike. I am slanting down the hill and the wind eats at
my cheeks, biting chunks out of my flesh, and I begin to sing again, trying to sound like my father and failing, but singing just the same:

The wind takes my voice and scatters it in the air and it disappears like smoke.

I hit the straightaway.

I am hurtling now, really zooming, and the trees and the telephones flash by.

My voice breaks loud and clear against the wind, and I breeze on, feeling at last that I am really and truly on the way to Rutterburg, Vermont.

He had stepped outside himself, departed, gone from this place and was outside looking in, watching himself and the doctor, if he was a doctor. He could be a doctor, he had a kindly face although sometimes his eyes were strange. The eyes stared at him occasionally as if the doctor—if that’s what he was—were looking down the barrel of a gun, taking aim at him. He felt like a target. That’s why he was glad that he
could stand aside like this, step out of himself and look back and see the two of them there in the room. He was curious about himself, of course, but he really didn’t want to look at himself and so he kept his eyes directed at his questioner, obliterating himself from the view. He hadn’t realized he could be so clever, so cunning. And he thought, If I can step outside myself like this, maybe I can go to other places. The possibility delighted him, made him forget. Forget what? He wasn’t sure—something—something just hovering at the edge of his mind, scurrying away when he tried to capture it …

END TAPE OZK003

The dog is ferocious and I am terrified.

He is waiting for me at the end of a long flat stretch at the bottom of the hill. I had seen him waiting for a long distance when he was only a small, silent lump at the side of the road. Then, as I drew nearer, he revealed himself as a German shepherd, sleek and black, a silent sentinel guarding the driveway of a big white house. The house is set back from the road. I sense that the house is deserted, that I am alone out here with the dog. I pump furiously, wanting to sail by the dog as fast as possible, so fast that I will dazzle him with my speed and leave him stunned by my passing.