Vanishing

Photo by Vijayarajan Kalaiarasan

The rain had come on suddenly, soaking them partway to the skin, this on top of the spattering of mud all three wore on their shins and calves as well as the pronounced stripe of spray from the rear wheel up the backs of their shirts. They were almost in town, were patiently waiting their turn to pass through a bottleneck at the stop sign near the university, when it happened: Basil, at almost a full stop, and unable to remove his shoes from the cleats, fell over, fully attached to his bike. There were cars behind them, a long line, also waiting to pass through the intersection. Nothing could have felt more ridiculous. After extracting himself from the bike, Basil sprang up and bowed to the car waiting immediately behind, trying to make light. Meanwhile, his riding companions, Vic and Dieter, pulled off to the side of the road and waited for him, their legs splayed to either side of their bikes, themselves comfortably vertical and undisgraced. Vic, Basil noticed, was not wearing his helmet. In the months to follow, Basil would often recall this moment, remembering Vic with his helmet strapped over his forearm, his eyes masked unreadably behind wraparound sunglasses.

Once Basil had moved himself onto the shoulder, the car immediately behind pulled up alongside, and the driver, a young woman with a bob haircut, leaned over, rolled down the passenger-side window and asked well-meaningly if he was all right.

“Yes,” he said, still smiling, “I’m fine. Nothing hurt.” And he held up his hands as if this somehow proved it, and the driver, in her little car, smiled weakly, then moved forward to fill in the gap that had formed in the line.

Vic and Dieter remounted their bikes with slow indifference, as if to say, “We’re done with this, right?” and before long the three were through the intersection, continuing down the east side of the river.

Getting wet at the end of the ride had felt unscripted. Until then, the three had watched the dark clouds roaming round, dogging them, trailing rain here and there, but always before or after they’d passed through a section of road. At times the sun had seemed to chase them as they rode through the hills and past the open fields, though no one said anything about it.

They’d started in town three hours earlier, had headed east along Division, then north into the dirt side roads behind Lakefield. At one point they’d stopped at an abandoned building surrounded by a huge dirt lot and fringed by goldenrod grown so tall it was bending under its own weight. The faded sign on the building read, “Ferguson’s Meats,” and they’d sat on a defunct loading dock, basking in the warming September heat, sharing sesame snaps, saying little and absently rubbing their legs.

Under way once more, they navigated several muddy stretches, at one point hitting a pothole. Dieter nearly went down, skidding halfway into a ditch. They slowed the pace after that, came into Lakefield with less than the usual push and agreed they’d wait to have coffee until they got back to Peterborough.

It was here, winding down the river, that the rain had caught them.

“That’s it for me,” said Dieter, the youngest of the three, also the tallest by four inches or so. “No more dirt roads.”

They sat under the awning of the Silver Bean, shivering a little, drinking coffee and watching the rain, which was now coming down in sheets all round them. The woman behind the counter, eyeing the state of them, had asked where they’d been, a half-amused, half-brooding look on her face, and Dieter had gestured with his free hand, the hand not holding his coffee. “East,” he’d said, “then up.”

“Oh,” the woman said, raising her eyebrows, clearly expecting him to have more to say about it.

And here he was, Dieter, leaning on the table, hands cupped around his mug, saying some days...