Going Somewhere: A Bicycle Journey Across America by Brian Benson Read Free Book Online Page B

he’d dutifully stopped and looked both ways. Turned out he was a middle-school teacher and was headed for the library to return some books. We were going there too, I mentioned, but seeing him had made me wonder if there wasn’t a bike shop in town. He sort of shrugged and nodded at the same time, and pointed to a corner store a couple of blocks up. It was more of a secondhand shop, he said, but the guy who owned it always had bikes for sale and probably knew how to fix them.
    We walked to the store. Through the windows, I could see dusty chairs, stuffed animals, board games, and, yes, bikes. Some items sat on shelves, but most were piled on the floor, on each other. The place looked like it hadn’t been open for some time. We were just about to turn for the library when we heard a boy’s voice behind us.
    “Can I help you?” The kid looked to be thirteen or fourteen, brown haired and scrawny. He was carrying some DVDs from the tiny rental spot across the street.
    Nope, I thought. But it was sweet that he’d asked. I quickly explained our plight.
    “That’s my dad’s store,” he said.
    “Really?” I was suddenly interested in this conversation. “Will he be open tomorrow?”
    The kid sat with this for a second, then replied, “I can call him right now. He’s at home.” He pulled a phone from his pocket and dialed. There was something oddly severe about him. I didn’t think he’d blinked since we started talking, and he definitely hadn’t smiled. Now he spoke quickly, mentioning only that someone needed help. I wanted to snatch the device from his hands, or at least coach him on how to sell this situation, but in a few seconds he was folding the phone and putting it back in his pocket.
    “He’ll be here in a half hour.”
     • • • 
    T wenty minutes later, an old blue Chevy coughed to a stop in front of us. The driver’s door swung open, creaking loudly, and out slid one booted foot, followed by another, followed by a man. A big man. When he pulled his frame from the cab, the entire truck relaxed off its shocks. The big man walked slowly around the front of the truck, his hand sliding across the hood. At six foot one, I’d always felt fairly tall, but this guy made me look like one of the toys inside his store. He had to be pushing seven feet and four hundred pounds.
    “I understand you two are in a bit of a bind,” he said, a smile spreading across his face. I don’t know what I’d been expecting, but his voice was kind, as was his face, wrinkled in the right places. He put out his hand and I did the same, noting how delicate my fingers felt as they disappeared into his. I watched as he turned to Rachel, taking hold of her even tinier hand.
    “I’m Jeff,” he said, looking back and forth between us. “How can I be of service?”
    I explained the problem. Better said, I tried to. My bike vocabulary was for shit. So Jeff just asked where the bike was, and before we knew it he was driving us back to Hines Park. On the way, we covered our essentials: coming from the Eagle River area, headed to Oregon; yes, we were dating; no, we’d never done anything like this; no, we didn’t have a clue about how to fix our bikes. At the park I tossed my wheel and spare spokes into his truck, and by the time I hopped back in the cab Rachel had turned the questions on Jeff. He wasn’t from Park Falls, but he’d been there for a decade or so and had opened his shop a few years back. Aside from running the store and doing some odd jobs, Jeff spent a lot of time working with the church.
    “The church,” he said, “gave me a second chance.” I tried to figure out a vague question to get him to say more, but before I’d found the words, we pulled up to the store.
    Jeff led us through the back entrance and went in search of his “truing stand.” This was apparently a thing you used to straighten wheels, but I’d never heard of it. As he waded through a maze of boxes, toward what appeared to be an