The Sound a Person Makes
He trudges into the woods with a reluctance I recognize in myself. He holds a bicycle, being strong for a man of his size. I have never learned to ride. The bicycle rests over his right shoulder. The path is hopelessly obstructed by brush, hence one reason for my not riding the bicycle. He is left-handed and yet this arm is unused, its hand concealed in a coat pocket. It is night and so it is cold in these woods and so he wears a coat, my father does, for the man trudging into the woods with a reluctance I recognize in myself is my father, who is nothing like me.
The bicycle is to be buried. It is mine. I have asked for it to be buried and so it shall be buried. It was not, exactly, a demand. My father is to bury the bicycle. Even as it rests beneath the earth, it shall remain my bicycle. I am certain. My sister learned to ride a bicycle when six years of age, and though I am older than my sister, still I have never learned to ride one myself. It was many years ago that she first learned to ride a bicycle. Her riding of bicycles is not a recent development. I have intended to dispose of my bicycle ever since my sister learned, at the age of six, when I was the age of eleven. My sister learned to ride a bicycle on her own, but not with her own bicycle. Much to her chagrin.
We are identical in every way, my sister and I, save for this fact. It is the dependent variable. She can ride and I cannot. I was instructed as to how one might ride a bicycle by my father. It has been said that my father is familiar with the process of riding a bicycle, but I have witnessed no such demonstration. Seen no proof. As I fell to the pavement over and over, falling and falling to the pavement, falling and falling to the pavement, perhaps another thirty or so permutations of falling and falling and falling to the pavement, in my anger, at perhaps the age of seven though perhaps the age of eight or even perhaps the age of nine, I demanded that my father ride my bicycle in order to instill me with confidence that he was sufficiently versed in the riding of bicycles to qualify as an instructor to his young son. He declined. He insisted on language.
My bicycle is intended to impersonate a dirt bike. While it is true that there is plenty of dirt on it already, to say nothing of the amount of dirt that will cover the bicycle once it is buried in the woods, beneath the earth, it is not, in fact, a dirt bike. If it is mistaken for a dirt bike on account of the sounds it makes as my sister rides it around the driveway in mockery of my greatest deficiency, my greatest failure, it is in all likelihood due to my sister pressing a series of plastic buttons located by the handlebars which respond to friction by imitating the sounds of a dirt bike. The revving of the engine is one such sound my bicycle makes. Despite admirable mimicry, it is not a very loud sound, however. It will no longer be mistaken for a dirt bike once it is buried. The earth silences such things.
A plastic hull cleverly encloses the skeleton, this disfigurement contributing to the notion that it is no ordinary bicycle. Just as my skin cleverly encloses my skeleton, this mask disguising that I am no ordinary boy. The stickers celebrating American enterprise which adorn every square inch of my bicycle make clear that I have tremendous marketing potential, with the 18-34 male demographic especially. But it is a ruse! If all other sensory data fails in this regard, one might finally realize that my bicycle is merely an imitation of the real thing if one is aware that it is my bicycle and that I cannot even ride a regular two-wheeler. Everyone in the entire forest knows I cannot even ride a regular two-wheeler. My sister has told them. My sister has told everyone in the entire forest all about my falling and falling to the pavement, all about the sounds a person makes.
It must be said that the possibility remains, however, that other attributes of mine have aroused interest from Fannie Mae and UnitedHealth Group and Microsoft. That I have once again proven to be a master of seduction despite my lacks. Or, precisely because my unfamiliarity with the process of riding is of little consequence. Perhaps I have the body type of a professional BMX competitor. I maintain my fitness. I am the same height and weight as my father and almost as strong. We are dissimilar in every way, save for this fact. I perform 100 push-ups upon waking and 100 sit-ups immediately before bed. Shirtless, I look in the mirror and flex. Shirtless, I seduce JP Morgan and Boeing and GoDaddy.com.
I look like a fellow who knows how to ride a bike, after all. I once played sports. I once kissed girls. Girls love boys who love to live life on the edge, and my willingness to entrust my life to gyroscopic motion should do the trick just as soon as I am able to convince my sister to convince everyone in the entire forest that she was mistaken. That she was referring to some other brother who cannot tolerate public knowledge of his greatest shame.
Perhaps my sister has made contact with these sponsors. She has been poisoning my father, slowly, in the soups he inhales late into the night while watching Letterman. It logically follows that my sister has been poisoning these sponsors against me using her bedroom’s private line. She knows my bedroom lacks a private line! She knows these sponsors are a ticket to a better life, a ticket to stadium arenas filled with customers scanning tickets at security checkpoints so that they might watch me race a real dirt bike over hills of real dirt in a particular sequence for a certain number of laps this SUNDAY, SUNDAY, SUNDAY!
And yet, Pep Boys and Palantir and Pepto-Bismol seem to have faith that I will eventually develop sufficient skill in the riding so as to deserve the financial considerations surely already received in exchange for the logos which have long adorned my bicycle! I know not how else to process this information. It seems likely that my vibrant personality and garrulous manner instill assurance in the investment. They must know all about the skeleton within my bicycle, the skeletons in my closet, the skeletons buried beneath the very patch of earth to which my father is trudging at this very moment.
I know where all the bodies are buried, and yet I continue to flourish even despite conscience! I am quite resilient, after all. One must be quite resilient if one wishes to be taught how to ride a bicycle by my father. My sister lacked this resilience, which is why she succeeded where I failed. It is yellow, my bicycle is, despite the gray one might mistake for its color were one to stand beside where I currently stand (on the front porch), staring after my father as he trudges into these woods. The sponsors will surely threaten lawsuits upon learning that I am bringing a premature end to our relationship. I have established such a pattern and am accustomed to disappointing, in any case.
We started, of course, with training wheels. What is the intended use of such wheels if not for training I asked my father when he suggested we begin without training wheels. I do not recall his reply. We started, of course, at a neighborhood elementary school. We had spent much time at this elementary school, despite it not being my elementary school. At this elementary school we often played soccer.
Friends would often join us. A few friends of mine and a few friends of my father’s. My father’s friends were better at soccer than my friends, but usually my friends would win when the two sides scrimmaged. The friend of mine I most preferred was quite good at soccer, and I wasn’t so bad myself. But the friend of my father’s he most preferred was the best of all of us, and my father wasn’t so bad himself. There were two modest goals on the field, sometimes equipped with nets but usually bereft. Now there is only one modest goal on the field, and I do not believe I have seen it sporting a net in quite some time. My elementary school was near my house, but still, it was not quite so near my house as the elementary school at which we began to collaborate, my father and I, in my crucial-if-fleeting bicycle-riding education.
Once, a friend of mine mentioned how similarly my father and I kicked a soccer ball. He explained how this legacy was a matter of technique and mechanics. Readily evident. It goes without saying that this was only on account of my father having taught me how to kick a soccer ball, and not out of any innate similarity in how we would go about kicking a soccer ball were we strangers to each other. That learned behavior alone was responsible for the superficial similarities we might be mistakenly accused of sharing. That everything was understandable when seen in this light. Is understandable when seen in this light! But I took the meaning communicated in those inscrutable eyes: that I was but an imitation of the real thing, no better than my inauthentic dirt bike. And so I gradually began to withhold my presence from these gatherings as well.
We would most often play soccer after church on Sunday afternoons, then. Patterns of behavior were established and the rituals adhered to strictly. Now, I spend most of my time at university, and presumably so do my friends. Most of the friends of my father are either trudging to or from the woods. These friends all have sons, of course, and so it is only a matter of time.
He speaks but one language, and I am bilingual. I speak English and my father does not. My father has yet to ask me to translate an unknown word or phrase overheard in only the most casual manner. He would preside over English vocabulary tests after my days of school. He would preside over English vocabulary tests throughout these years, and so it is astounding that nothing was absorbed during these daily exercises. My father is an international businessman, so the Vice President of Global Silverware is surely looking for a new generation of international businessmen intimately acquainted with the nature of the work and––crucially––strategically prepared to pivot to cornering the spork market while abandoning the increasingly competitive bouillon spoon market. Perhaps someone who has purloined and made duplicates of the relevant documents from their father’s unsecured briefcase over various years to catch himself up to speed for precisely this moment. Someone with the same height and weight and approximate strength as the current generation of international businessmen, but with a bold new vision for the possibilities of vertical integration in an increasingly self-regulated industry.
As his figure retreats into the woods, my mother is inside the home lighting candles. The power has gone out on account of a particularly bad storm. It was during this storm, a few nights earlier, that I made the decision to bury my bicycle. I announced this intention to my parents and to my sister over a candlelit dinner in a casual manner, as the ritual ordained. But as my father rightly pointed out, he had yet to teach me the fine points of the burial process. He insisted that without his tutelage I would not succeed, not like my sister who had succeeded on her own in the development of bicycle-riding skills. I would fail where she'd succeeded because she would only become a woman in the distant future, while I was already on the precipice of becoming a man. This was, it goes without saying, absolutely chilling.
My mother agreed with this reasoning. They have no idea what they are talking about, of course, for I have buried many things in the woods over the years. How else would I be so resilient? How else would I be so strong? How else would I have caught the attention of the sponsors whose stickers adorn the bicycle my father is to bury, as per my instructions? Oh I’ve buried all right. I’ve buried so many things so deep not even I remember where they might be. A grotto within a mountain’s valley within a chasm at the bottom-most depths of the sea’s crust from which nary a sound emerges. Or, at least in an especially inconspicuous patch of nondescript brush within the conventionally malevolent forest those youngest among us visit to attempt disappearance in those few temperate months during which one will not die of dehydration or exposure, those temperate months during which the bears roam free.
It has been said that my father is familiar with the burial process, but I have witnessed no such demonstration. I have seen no proof. There are mentions of a long-dead hamster disposed of in this fashion, but I do not recall ever having a pet hamster. If my sister once had a pet hamster, well, I am certain my father would not have handled the matter himself, instead deflecting responsibility under the pretenses of an educational experience, no doubt, not so differently from his refusing to ride my bicycle.
Eventually, my father grew impatient at the speed with which I was usurping him, and discarded my training wheels so that I might remember my place. I do not recall a discussion of the matter, but then again, we do not speak much in general. Sometimes he yells for me. I am often not in the vicinity to hear. Often I am in another city, attending university to become an international businessman with a speciality in mergers and acquisitions. Forks and spoons and otherwise. I only yell for him when we are in the same city, and I am not heard only because my father is lost in thought. In this and every other way, we are polar opposites, though I do occasionally recognize a shared melancholy, as I now do, as he now trudges.
So, I pick up a shovel and begin to walk after him. The ground is still moist from a particularly bad storm the other night, and so the impressions of feet are preserved. My sister calls out to me but I pay her no attention. She is making all sorts of sounds, those monstrous and not. She also speaks English, but so poorly as to remain beneath contempt. My mother is no doubt measuring the volume of melted wax so as to calculate the time elapsing between my father leaving and returning. The clocks have stopped on account of a particularly bad storm the other night, or else she might find herself designated for another task.
I think to call out to my sister that this will be a long night. That it will take my father all night to bury my bicycle, and perhaps even longer should he allow me a few turns. Should I assert my inheritance. I dare not mention that my resilience has become tempered by a perverse form of pity. Dare not suggest that––in spite of myself––perhaps I might follow his example yet, in learning how to bury a thing in the woods as he does, discarding my own techniques.
No.
I learn from grave errors and do not wish for my sister to mistake my words for imitations of the real thing, misapprehending the stakes, trudging after her brother as her brother trudges after her father in search of explanation. She will have her turn. My sister was not taught to ride a bicycle by my father and so she ought to be spared from an act of such intimacy.
If only I had once witnessed my father riding my bicycle, things might have turned out differently. I think to call out to my father. Instead, I creep ever so slowly. I fear those eyes of my friend obsessed with the mechanics of my ball-kicking were right, in their blinking intensity, in the way they dispassionately registered my presence.
So my size-ten feet will follow in the steps my father’s size-ten feet have made, careful to obscure our tracks with the shovel held over my right shoulder as I mentally prepare myself for the watching of my father from beneath one of the many cedar trees which comprise these woods. I will discover what he has left to teach me. I will incorporate a sentimental grunt or forcible ejection of saliva from the mouth out of deference, but make no further promises.