The Orphan
Authors: Christopher Ransom
Christopher Ransom is the author of internationally bestselling novels including
The Birthing House
and
The People Next Door
. He studied literature at Colorado State University and worked at Entertainment Weekly magazine in New York, and now lives near his hometown of Boulder, Colorado.
Visit
www.christopherransom.com
to learn more.
The Birthing House
The Haunting of James Hastings
The People Next Door
The Fading
Published by Sphere
978-1-4055-2340-0
All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Copyright © Christopher Ransom 2013
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.
S
PHERE
Little, Brown Book Group
100 Victoria Embankment
London, EC4Y 0DY
For Cowboy
Sweet stray who took us in,
best dog, best friend
The past is hidden somewhere outside the realm, beyond the reach
of intellect, in some material object (in the sensation which that
material object will give us) which we do not suspect. And as for that
object, it depends on chance whether we come upon it or not before
we ourselves must die.
M
ARCEL
P
ROUST
,
In Search of Lost Time
The stranger showed up around noon and ruined what was left of a beautiful day.
Darren had only himself to blame. The bicycle auction was Beth’s idea, to support Fresh Starts, the non-profit she worked part-time for, but he had agreed, experiencing an initial blast of selflessness and good will that carried them through the planning stages, past the point of no return. Once Beth arranged for the local newspaper,
The Daily Camera
, to cover the event and the appointed date drew near, he found himself dreading the attention. He was not looking forward to stirring up old acquaintances in his home town, but there was nothing to be done. The auction was happening, and it had somehow fallen on his shoulders to carry the day.
Of course, without his collection, there never would have been an auction, and he might never have encountered the man in the park.
It was a Saturday in middle April, Colorado’s bright sun pushing the temps into the mid-seventies. The tent was up, a cheerful red and white striped affair large enough to host a wedding, presently sheltering each of the twenty-four bikes he had selected. The bikes were standing atop the rented banquet tables, each with a placard denoting the manufacturer and model, original release date, breakdown of components, a bit of lore if the bike could claim any, as well as the bidding charts and pens Beth had set out.
Raya was working a smaller card table, bedecked with a signboard she had painted herself, selling lemonade and batches of cookies she’d baked with her mother, giving background on the cause. Darren couldn’t help noticing that his daughter was more interested in the decorations and treats than in the bikes themselves, but he was not surprised. Raya had grown as tired of hearing about the bikes as her mother had.
Darren made a continuous circuit of his ponies on display, adjusting brake cables, dusting rims with a shop rag, dabbing a touch of green Phil Wood grease from a newly plumbed stem bolt, nervous as a dog owner gunning for best in show. This, he supposed, was a male thing, the aspect of the event only a son or another bicycle geek tended to appreciate. Chrome was sexy. To men.
His anxiety increased as he realized for the tenth time today that, if the event succeeded, he would be letting go of some of his best bicycles. Oh, he knew he had plenty, but he had spent hundreds of hours assembling and restoring this lot of vintage BMX bikes, and in one manner or another, each was dear to him.
Not wanting to intimidate the bidders, but also wanting to ensure the event raised a meaningful amount of money, he had selected a variety of stock and custom rides ranging in value from $350 to $4,000. He had others at home worth twice as much on the collector’s market, and much more than that to him. Who would have ever thought these relics of his youth – bikes that were, back in the late Seventies and early Eighties, a suburban staple as common as today’s video game consoles – would be worth three times what he had paid for his first car?
Not Darren. Not twenty or even ten years ago. He hadn’t been collecting for the investment value. He simply loved BMX bikes, ever since he hopped on his first Schwinn Sting back in 1977, and he had never outgrown that love.
The event was being billed as ‘RAD Kids: Raising Awareness for Disadvantaged Kids’, Beth’s clever touch. Fresh Starts was a way station and counseling center for troubled youth, teen runaways, pre-teen kids living in abusive homes, drug and early-pregnancy prevention, as well as a resource for referrals to other state-funded health services. A noble cause.
Yet at first he had found himself asking, ‘The bikes aren’t actually going to the kids, right? Please tell me some stoner punk’s not going to be thrashing one of my two-thousand-dollar vintage rides around town before he hocks it to fund a bag of weed and the last panels of his full-sleeve tattoos.’
‘No, honey, and stop being so awful,’ Beth had said. ‘There are a lot of bike freaks in Boulder, even some collector snobs like you. But most of them will probably go to people who love to brag about their philanthropical contributions and need something to show for their donations on the tax forms. We don’t care where the money comes from. The center needs a bunch of repairs, clothes for the kids, maybe a couple extra counselor interns to man the phones over the summer. No one is going to hurt your precious little dirt bikes.’
‘Sorry. You’re right,’ he admitted. ‘I need to thin the herd a bit.’
This made her happy, hearing him say it. Because honestly, how many BMX bikes does one grown man need? Good question, to which he had always responded, How many flowers does a constant gardener need? How many books does a lifelong reader need? How many photos of her children does a mother need?
By the time the reporter from the
Camera
showed up, Darren had resigned himself to the event, but his heart was not in it. He was vaguely aware of Beth and Raya hovering off to his right, giggling over his moment in the spotlight. He felt like a heel and wanted to shoo them away.
‘Kristen Meade, lifestyle and entertainment beat reporter,’ she said, and began to walk him through her boilerplate questions to complete her profile of him. The first was clarifying for her what BMX stood for, bicycle motocross, and he soon found himself launching into an abbreviated history of the sport before she cut him off with an ‘I got it now, thanks.’
The intrepid Ms Meade seemed more like an aspiring
National Geographic
writer–explorer than a small-city reporter, slumming in community events until Nairobi called. Her button nose and broad cheeks were wind-chapped, her brown hair short and unfussy. She wore a weekend rock climber’s sleek hiking boots and tight-fitting thermal shorts. Her nod to the traditional adventure journalist’s safari vest was a Patagonia fleece filled with camera batteries, GPS, light meter, phone, and energy gummies. She used her blocky digital camera to take lots of photos of the bikes and Darren as she talked, and he was never sure if she was really listening to his answers. She must have had a microphone attached to a digital recorder somewhere in her back-country layers, or a very good memory, for he didn’t see her take a single note.
‘So, Darren Lynwood. Entrepreneur turned BMX bike guru.’
‘I guess that’s about right.’
‘You’re a Boulder native?’
‘I am. Or was. For the past twenty-two years I lived in the Midwest – Milwaukee and Chicago. We just moved back about nine months ago.’
‘Who’s we?’
‘My wife Beth and our daughter Raya.’
‘How old’s Raya?’
‘Fifteen.’
Kristen saw Raya waving and snapped a few shots of her. ‘She ride BMX too?’
‘I tried to get her into the sport when she was about ten, but it didn’t take.’
‘And you’ve been collecting bikes for how long?’
‘Ever since I was a kid, ten or twelve. Of course, I didn’t think of it as collecting back then. I just wanted more bikes, could never make up my mind which one. I always had to have the newest, coolest bike, the most innovative components. Drove my parents crazy, but they taught me to work for new parts and how to save for things, so I guess you could say it became a life lesson of… some kind.’