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Lance Is Finished...

(Second of four parts of the 'Life On Roseton' Series..)

It came to me as a Christmas Present. Stingray style, banana seat and a tall sissy bar with a fat slick tire on the back. I could not have been more pleased with anything in the world. As proud as I was of it, it wasn’t a Schwinn Stingray, It was a Royce Union Stingray. I would find myself defending it repeatedly to my peers at the school bike lockers as Royce Union was the knock off brand, and Schwinn was the recognized hot bike. Close, but not close enough for the ‘in crowd’.

I didn’t care what it did for my social status, it just beat the hell out of walking. I could now avoid most of the after school entanglements with the blessed application of leg powered acceleration. In one move, my parents had expanded my universe by another 10 miles in every direction. An hour on foot was equal to about 5 miles. On a bike, it was 15. I could now in theory, make it to the Long Beach Airport on my own. I could in theory almost make it to the beach. My head swelled at the opportunities the bike presented. I daydreamed of riding all the way to San Simeon to visit my grandparents, yet it was a full 150 miles and two entire mountain ranges away. The logic of it didn’t matter, I had discovered the value of personal mobility in maintaining a persons sense of freedom.

I went everywhere and did everything on my bike. Any excuse to mount the bike and go somewhere and I was off in a second. If someone needed a loaf of bread or a gallon of milk, it was my task to go get it. The original paint didn’t last long because of the wear and tear I managed to inflict and I took great pride in the metal flake candy apple green spray paint that I replaced it with after the first year. I would ride through the neighborhood streets; do wheelies and “broadies” and jump ramps for hours on end.

The bike for all its joys it gave nearly killed me on two occasions; once I had taken the turn into our driveway a bit too fast, hit the curb and flipped. There were no helmets in those days and I was convinced that without the tall sissy bar, I would have been dead that very day. Instead I got up dazed, got right back on the bike and rode away.

The second time it nearly killed me, started at Hoov’s Liquors. Hoov’s was in the L-shaped strip mall at the corner of Centralia and Pioneer. It was at the far edge of the walking universe, and was also the closest store to my house, so even though it was technically a liquor store, it as more like a convenience store that also sold hard alcohol to shady characters. Milk, Bread, Cheese, Eggs – all the basics of life could be found in the deli case at Hoov’s. Add to that the fact that they were open 24 hours a day 7 days a week 365 days a year and you could always count on Hoov’s to solve the little accidental problems of daily life.

On one mission to Hoov’s to get a half-gallon of milk, I parked my bike outside and walked in. Hoov’s had a smell to it that is the same no matter what liquor store you walk into. It was a smell that partially comes from years of bad cigars, spilled liquor and the owners flop sweat that you don’t really know what it is when you are a kid, but you recognize it when you get older, it’s the smell of failure, shame and broken dreams. It’s a smell that you cannot get out of your clothes and you can never wash off your soul no matter how big the cake of lava soap is that you use. It’s the smell of shame with just a bit of the bitter piquant flavor of defeat. It’s the smell that makes you exhale when you sense it in a room, it’s the smell that would emanate from most episodes of “Cops” if there was such a thing as “smell-o-vision”. It’s a smell that doesn’t just come from the essence of spilled grain alcohol, it comes from the funk of the underarms of the broken souls of thousands of men who walked through the doors of the store, who gambled their mortgage away on a stupid horse race or fathered children only to abandon and neglected them. Liquor stores are the places where the hollow people self medicate their self-inflicted wounds. Unlike physical wounds, pouring alcohol into these wounds helps ensure that they stay infected, sometimes for generations.

I pulled the milk from the deli shelf and I paid the man behind the counter. He stood there behind the counter glassy eyed and preoccupied with other matters far away in time and space, took my quarters and went back to his own retail version of the soldiers thousand yard stare. I must’ve shopped at that store every day for nearly 4 years, he was always there, day in day out. I never once called him by his name or acknowledged him as a person, nor he I. He was not the mysterious “Hoov” and he was not the owner of the store. He was a ”minion”, it was his duty to serve. He was man who seemed trapped at Hoov’s, forced by pitiful circumstance to serve the damned in their desire to fill an unquenchable salvation. Somewhere in the past, a disaster occurred in a man’s life, and the result of the debris of that collision with reality was the ass end of a life spent in purgatory behind the counter at Hoov’s Liquor.

Somewhere in the past, a disappointed mother said to another with a heavy sigh: “ My son? Oh, he works behind the counter at Hoov’s Liquor store in Lakewood…”. The chain of shame that man wore around his neck will have added another link even if he wasn’t close enough to hear the comment between two mothers as the psychic link between all mothers and their sons is permanent and clear no matter the distance in time or space. I am sure it was not the life either of them wanted, but it was the life they got.

The door opened, the bell rang and the sight outside caused my heart fall out of my chest. It was gone. My bike was gone. The space that was filled with my bike was now empty as if I had somehow not taken it to the store at all. It was as if it had never been there. I stood there spinning in all directions looking for any sign of my bike. It wasn’t just my bike that was missing; it was my freedom that they had taken from me.

I walked home looking in the alleys and driveways, hoping against hope to catch a glimpse of the bike. It was not to be. When I arrived, I expected the worst from my parents, but thankfully didn’t get it. I spent the evening with my dad, driving around the neighborhood in what to him must’ve seemed surely to be a fruitless search for the now missing bike. He knew what the bike meant to me, and knew that now was not the time to lecture me on how to lock my bike. He also knew he could not get me another bike for some time to come. I knew it too, but neither of us said as much, it didn’t need to be said.

I walked to school the next day and I hated every step. I walked past the bike lockers and waited, hoping I would see the bike and yet, I did not. When they heard the news, my fellow stingray bikers felt my pain. Some speculated that now maybe I could get the Schwinn at last, but retracted the thought when they understood the true nature of my predicament. I was lucky to get the Royce Union, now having lost it, my chances of getting something better were next to nil. Truth be told, I didn’t want the Schwinn, I didn’t want another Royce Union, I wanted that bike. I wanted the Candy Apple Green bike that I knew every part of and had painted myself. I wanted the bike that was a part of me, not some other bike that I had to break in all over again.

By lunch, rumors had begun to surface. The bike had been seen. I discounted it at first, finally accepting my loss. My cousin Patrick, finally confirmed that he had a good source who swore he saw the bike. Patrick was my best friend and my "wingman". I think the loss of my bike affected him as much as it did me.

“Lance Has It”, he whispered to me across his shoulder as I sat behind his desk while Mr. Dutwiler, the social studies teacher looked the other way.

I stared back at him with the gravity of what that meant. Lance… That’s Just Great I thought and said under my breath. It’s not just that my bike has been stolen, but its been stolen by the biggest pain-in-the-ass in Artesia and Lakewood. Red hair, freckle faced, green eyes and teeth, same clothes every day, never wore socks or underwear. A kid, who even older kids avoided as he was just-freakin-trouble. There was no good news wherever Lance was and there was usually nothing but debris where he had been. He stole, He swore, He swindled, abused, wrote graffiti, smoked cigarettes and popped the tires on the teachers cars all before the 5th grade. For Lance, his sniffing glue seemed like only an improvement to his general situation. He was, in a word “Evil”. Everyone avoided him at all costs, including and especially adults. Lance didn’t just pop out of the ground one day, he was created, and the people who created him were far worse than Lance. Lance was the up and coming evil, there was a whole horde of “older Lances”, some in Prison, some out of Prison, but all bad.

The thing about people like Lance isn’t just that there are people like Lance, but the cloud of ‘hangers on’ that tend to bask in their reflected glory. It was the mob that stood behind Lance that always worried me, not Lance by himself. Lance was just one guy, but his mob was big and his influence through his brothers was nothing short of mafia like in its reach. You didn’t just take on Lance, you took on the whole mob, Lance knew it and exploited it whenever he could.

“Maybe you should just let it go...” Pat said as he shuffled his feet in the cold open hallway as we went between classes. I stared at him, gritted my teeth as my face went redder by the moment and asked him “Could you?” "How about I ride your bike home and you walk for awhile”. Pat knew what I meant and he knew what I was going to do, he was just trying to keep me from doing it. Pat knew something I didn’t know, by my deciding to get my bike back at any cost, it meant that Pat was automatically involved. It was my Bike, but I was his cousin. There are some things more important to protect than the things we own.

After school, I started off towards Lances “compound” down the street from the front gates of Willow School. Most of us lived in homes and houses, but families like Lances lived in “compounds”. Lakewood had once been a farm town of mostly dairies before it became the newest set of homes added to the greater LA suburban sprawl. In the older section of our part of town the older farmhouses still existed side by side with the newer L-shaped suburban homes. Lance and his family lived in one of the largest and most dilapidated of the older homes. It had not seen a coat of new paint since Lindbergh crossed the Atlantic Ocean. It had cars on blocks and refrigerators and other debris all about the property and no lawn that could be determined. A broken fence line of barbed wire topped with “Keep out – Private Property” signs could be found at each corner. Streetlights within line of sight of the compound were always shot out, and celebratory gunfire regularly came from that place.

As I started out of the school towards Lances “compound”, my cousin directed the now gathering crowd behind me. It was lost to me in my self-determined tunnel vision, but apparently many people knew that Lance had my bike and had guessed before even I knew what my reaction would be. As I walked the block and a half, stingrays of every type began to report to me as they drove by “ He’s there, He’s got it, we saw it…Whatcha gonna do? Are you going to go get it?’ My rage fueled further by the thought of that skanky bastard sitting on my bicycle seat.

I stood across the street of the compound and looked inside between the oleander bushes and willow trees that obscured the front of the house. There on the old style covered porch, was an old washing machine, a derelict and chewed up sofa, cases of empty beer bottles, Lance, his assorted minions armed with rocks and slingshots, and my bike.

All that stood between me getting my bike back was a pack of Lances armed baboons, a barb-wire fence with a chain link gate and some dogs.

Lance and I didn’t notice at first, but a crowd was gathering. One of Lances minions pointed to the gathering, Lance then turned around and saw me standing there at the gate. He might have had my bike, but I was his target all along. The bike was just a way to get my attention. Now that I had arrived, the rest of his plan could take place.

He walked off the porch steps and onto the dirt at the front his house, stretched his arms out and with a big green toothed grin shouted for all to hear:

“Hey THERE Smartasssssss!!!, You like my new bike!!!?” His mob laughed out loud as he bucked over in laughter at my predicament.

He wasn’t saying it for me, it was for all the other kids, the ones on the porch and the ones gathered on the street. The message was clear, what’s mine is mine, and what’s yours is mine, and I’m going to prove it to you, (just watch and learn…).

I stared at him, I drilled a hole right through is freckled forehead. Now that the adrenaline had kicked in, if there was a time to back away and get an adult to solve it that was gone now. It was gone the minute I saw my bike on his porch.

“Give it back Lance”, I said to him. It was the dumbest thing I ever said. As if this green toothed greasy headed spawn of Satan would just hand me back my bike on command. What was I thinking?

I was completely unaware of anything else going on around me. Had I been paying attention, I would have noticed that each of his minions had begun gathering projectiles to be thrown, grinning at the easy target just standing there in front of them. Lance was also focused, for had he been paying attention, he would have noticed Patrick busily distracting Lances dogs, quietly lowering Lances first line of defense by locking them in a dog run at the side of Lances compound. Patrick knew what was going to happen before I did, even the crowd knew before Lance and I did, even though Lance and I were right in the middle it was as if we were the last ones invited to the dance. Lance might have also noticed that he forgot to lock the gate, something that did not escape my focus.

"Why don’t you just come in here and take it from me then, eh smartasssss?” He hissed and giggled and mocked. I hated being mocked, Lance just knew that no one ever went inside the compound. Lance had dogs, guns, big criminal brothers and absolutely no moral compunction from holding back the use of any of them, Lance had used terror and threats to control his little part of the world for a long time. Lance was used to people backing down when threatened. Parents backed down from Lance, Teachers and Principals backed away from Lance.

I didn’t back down. A smarter kid might have, but I didn’t. I took two steps forward, opened the chain link gate and just walked in like I knew what I was doing. It was stupid, it was a total frontal attack. It was also the last thing anyone, including and especially Lance ever expected anyone to do. He stood there in utter shock as I entered the compound. Once I crossed the threshold, it was open combat. Bottles, rocks, sticks and screams of “GET HIM!!!” came from all corners of the compound, yet Lance stood there with a look of shock, I had called his bluff, I had simply entered his compound, no one had ever done that before. He was confused and rattled right away at my surprising first step inside; Why was I coming for him? Where were his dogs? Why were the rocks and bottles not stopping me? Didn’t I see his mob? I was oblivious to all targets, except Lance. He ran backwards towards the porch to tried to take cover behind the derelict sofa. I chased him barely touching the steps of the porch as I flew up after him. I wasn’t after my bike anymore, I was after Lance. When I pulled him from behind the sofa and threw him over the porch onto the dirt of the front of his house, he knew it. His mob began to get into the act, the occasional rock and bottle landing on my head and back as my fists and feet were landing with rapid descent on Lance. Patrick, now returned from his task of distracting the dogs now came to my aid. “GET THEM OFF ME, PAT!!!” I shouted at him as the thrown projectiles landed on me. He bounded over the fence with several friends and just the sight of it caused the mob to break their lines. They fled in close pursuit by my cousin and several others looking for their own form of retribution.

I never stopped beating the hell out of Lance, it was just a blur of action. I enjoyed every minute of it. All the years of terror, the hiding, the sneaking around to avoid him. The humiliation we all faced at his hands was over with every smack my fists made to his bleeding face. He whimpered out to the crowd for help and sympathy that never came and never would come, they were his victims, all of us had suffered at his hands, and on that day the bill came due for Lance. The crowd seeing their former menace now covered in blood and urine would never again look at him as the icon to be feared as much as the creature to be pitied. I stopped to catch my breath as he tried to crawl away across the dog turd covered dirt that marked the threshold between street and the porch of Lances compound. I stood up and walked to the porch, picked up my bike by the center brace and walked back to the now supine Lance, as he lay defeated on his own home ground.

I leaned over, and within an inch of his spit and blood covered face came three words out of my bloodied mouth as I pointed at my bike:

“ My Bike Lance..” . It was my bike, but it was really my freedom. I stood, wanting to kick him with rage, but finally seeing him for the sad creature he was, just walked away instead. I opened the gate, walked out of the compound, never to return. He howled loudly as I walked away, almost as if calling me back to finish him off, but it was a just a call for a mother who would never come to salve his wounds.

Lance and his crew having flattened the tire of my bike caused me to lose the ability to ride away in victory, so I just walked with my bike beside me as the adrenaline wore off and the bruises sprang up. My eye began to swell shut and my cuts bled from the rocks, bottles and sticks thrown by the mob. It didn’t matter to me, I had my bike, I had recovered my freedom. The dirt of the yard and my sweat mixed on my lips as they swelled and I began to check to see if I lost any teeth. I didn’t care if I did, I had my bike and in the end that was all that mattered.

“Come on man, let’s get you cleaned up” Pat said breathlessly as he came up from behind me, finally catching up with me after all that had been done. I didn’t realize how bad I had been injured until he said that. We went to Pats house, which was just down the street from my house and he helped me clean the wounds. As we sat at the kitchen of my cousin’s house, Pat filled me in on the rest of the action that had happened. Even though I had been in the middle of it, I was just a small part of a bigger battle. It would grow even bigger by reputation over the next few days as time and distance from the actual events would grow the event into a scene something akin to the Normandy invasion.

“Jeez, what happened to you”? My older cousin Richard said as he came around the corner, seeing his younger bother and his cousin looking like we had fallen out of the back of a dump truck. Richard, Pats older brother in high school, the hipster beach boy surfer dude was only too familiar with Lance and his family as during his time he too had come to blows many times with Lances older brothers, who were now away spending time in some prison somewhere.

“Lance is finished” Pat said with a smile to no one in particular but for everyone to hear. “ He screwed up and stole Franks bike, and he paid a big price for it”. Richard looked on at our wounds and whistled in surprise, and instantly understood the wider implications of our actions. “I better call Uncle Bruce, Lances dad is likely to want to take it out on someone”. Richard would explain the history of Lances family to my Dad and prepare him for my arrival.

As he reached for the phone to call my dad, he looked back at us and said:

“You did good kid!” He gave me the thumbs up sign.
“ Thanks. Tell my dad I’ll be home in a while“, I said back to him with a wave, my eye finally closing from the bruises.

Pat and I shook hands and smiled. Just getting recognition from Richard was a major coup, but getting kudos, well that was unbelievable. I walked home alone that night, my wounded bike at my side and was afraid of nothing along the way. As I crossed the lawn of our house, my Dad met me at the door and said. “ Well, I see you got your bike back!”. He said it dryly, yet with a booming pride to all that could hear. “You’re damn right I did”. I shot back. It was the first time I cussed in front of my Dad. He just laughed and slapped me on the back with a big embrace.

“You did good kid…”. He said quietly as he hugged me.

“You did good kid…”. I heard it twice, in one day no less.

Posted @ December 20, 2004 07:08 PM | Project 2

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