Long Bridge Runner

Chapter 113-The Red Scooter

Copyright 1995
By David Rojay

THE LONG BRIDGE RUNNER
Book One/THE MIDWEST

Tommy sought to dominate Daniel and did so by appropriating Daniel's bicycle and treating it as his own.
When Daniel protested, Tommy hit him square in the face and said, "My brother bought the bike for you so it's just as much mine as it is yours."

But Glenn hadn't paid for the bike and this gave Daniel the nerve to raise himself from the ground, form a fist and hit Tommy back. The cocky, country boy was stunned-not so much from the blow but from his realization that Daniel was taller and stronger than he was.

"Fuck your bike," he said from his position on the ground, "I'm going to buy a motor scooter anyway."

All anger vanished as Daniel exclaimed, "Motor scooter, where you going to get the money to buy a motor scooter?"

"I'm going to get a job first and then I'm going to get the money from Glenn because I'm going to get a job that needs a motor scooter."

And this he did, coming home the next afternoon to announce that he was going to deliver telegrams for Western Union.

"But you don't know Evansville," Daniel protested.

"That's why I'll take you along," said a grinning Tommy.

Now, Daniel didn't want to do this but Glenn nodded in agreement, satisfied that his brother would have a good influence on Daniel.

"He'll teach him how to work," Glenn said to Dorothy that evening, "and that's what that boy needs."

Days later, Tommy was flying down the streets of Evansville with Daniel huddled in the flimsy side car. He cornered at breakneck speed with the sidecar rising off the pavement in direct proportion to Daniel's screams.
But Daniel soon realized that everything he wanted would come to him if he played the "helping Tommy" game and survived the summer. And this was true. Glenn was so encouraged to see Tommy's influence upon Daniel that he began, slowly at first-----proffering gifts of every kind.

"I know you're tied up with Tommy and don't have any money coming in so I thought you could use these," Glenn would say as new shoes, a catcher's mitt, a new radio and numerous other items, including a new trumpet case, came Daniel's way.

"Now you're learning what it means to work. While you've been sitting around practicing your musical instruments and reading your books, Tommy has always been working."

Well, not exactly working-in between telegrams, the boys cruised the streets of Evansville and talked about girls. Tommy allowed during one of these discussions as to what a fine ass Julie Campbell had. Julie was the farm girl that Dorothy had recently recruited from the countryside. She helped out around the house and slept in the corner bedroom. Careless with her modesty, she had been seen in the middle of the night leaving the bathroom in her all-together and Tommy had plans for her.

"I'm gonna cut her good," Tommy said.

"Do what?" asked Daniel.

"I'm gonna cut her good," Tommy repeated again while making the forefinger of his right hand surge in and out of a circle made by the thumb and forefinger of his left hand.

"I've never heard it called that before," Daniel said.

"That's because when I'm done with them, they're bleeding."

"But what if something happens?" Daniel asked.

"Like what?" said Tommy.

"Life if you get her pregnant; you know, like if you knock her up."

"What do you know about knocking anyone up, you little sissy," Tommy retorted. "Listen, my motto is the three F's-Find em', fuck em' and forget em."

Tommy's attitude invariably led to the evening when he picked up two sisters in his Ford sedan. Their parents were out of town and within the hour Daniel was sitting in their living room listening to moans and screams in the bedroom. His refusal to join in drew contemptuous remarks from Tommy.
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One of Tommy's favorite tricks on the scooter was to pull up behind cars stopped at intersections and give them a bump with his tiny red fender. Drivers were mystified because the hatchbacks of the day denied them a view of the scooter and its occupants.

Tommy found this hilarious and could not restrain himself when one bright day he pulled up behind an ancient Model A pickup. When he rammed the vehicle, the driver hit its horn which went "ooga". He rammed the vehicle again and once again the horn went "ooga, ooga". Amid gales of laughter, he rammed the pickup again, this time harder than before. The scooter's fender rode up over the pickup's rear bumper and snagged itself there, raising the front wheel of the scooter an inch or two off of the ground. As the pickup pulled forward, it took the scooter with it. No amount of shaking or wiggling, no amount of yelling and screaming made any difference. The pickup's driver kept going down Riverside Drive then out onto the highway to Kentucky and the town of Henderson.

As they approached the Ohio River Bridge, the desperation of Tommy and Daniel grew ever greater; they thought of jumping off and out of the scooter but the pickup was going about thirty miles an hour.

This spectacle caused the drivers of the following cars to honk their horns. This cacophony alerted a Kentucky State Trooper at the end of the bridge. He flagged the pickup driver down, got off of his motorcycle and walked around to the scooter. "You guys are a pretty sight," he said.

It was clear that the pickup truck's ancient driver was nearly deaf and had not heard their shouts nor seen them in his rearview mirror.

And so, it came to pass that Glenn drove to Henderson where he was made to pay a one hundred dollar fine before the loaded the scooter onto the bed of his pickup and made room for Tommy and Daniel beside the driver's seat. The ride back to Evansville was in silence, a deep silence, a silence so heavy that it could crush your soul.

Dud to technical problems, this week's chapter will change on Friday.
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Be sure to watch David Rojay on The Dan and Dad Show each Saturday night at 9:30 on Channel 17. Read A RED STATE HERO and THE LONG BRIDGE RUNNER by David Rojay on capecodtoday.com. Read David Rojay's blog MEETING JANOS-A Fourth of July Story on "Sea Street" capecodtoday.com and finally check out David Rojay on YOUTUBE. For more information, Google "David Rojay".