The Man and His Son, Rural Montana

I hopped out of my most recent ride at a gas station in rural Montana. Rural Montana. That was probably an oxymoron.

The air was thick with mist and seemed content to just rest on the tops of the Mountains like a blanket. The sun was going down, and it was getting colder. I was starting to pace around, hands in my pockets, trying to think of my next move, when a man and his son ride up on a motorcycle. The man hopped off wearing a bizarre outfit of dirty, wrinkled army fatigues, a beard, and a tattered black beret. The smaller version of him stumbled off the cycle looking unbalanced.

“Chris! You see this! Look, this nut is loose. I could hear it five miles ago.” The boy, Chris—apparently—did not look up. He started kicking rocks by the side of the road with an upset look on his face.

Seeing no response from his original audience, the man looked up at me. “No one cares to know about how motorcycles work now. Everyone just drops them off at a mechanic, with disinterest, as if it’s not their problem.”

He turned to me. “Tell me—do you think the world is improving?”

I was a bit startled, but I responded, “Well, I guess so. Technology helps. See, if you had a self-driving car, you wouldn’t be having this problem. Or just a normal car. Or even a newer bike, I guess.”

He looked at me simultaneously with disgust but also interest, like a predator that’s just spotted intellectual prey. “What would that do? What would that help? Would that help me in some kind of never-ending hurry to god-knows-what? What’s the hurry even to—endless shallowness, that leaves you feeling—“

I cut him off to tell him, “Um, sir, I think your son, he keeps heading out into the road.” A car flashed by the boy now just inches from the road, whipping air into his face. The boy had a glassy-eyed stare. The man ignored me and kept going.

“No, you’ve got it all wrong. Working on this bike…I’m working something else out. I become part of a system of intricate, working pieces, and the pure, beautiful rationality of it, that makes it worth it. You have to start small. Working on this bike, I’m working on myself, piece by piece, bit by bit. There’s a synergy. I think that’s what quality is, it’s when—“

I stop listening to run over to the side of the road, where the boy has fallen over from the force of wind of eighteen-wheeler rushing by. I kneel over to him on the ground. He’s crying. The man does not look up, and continues muttering to himself as he lifts the cover off of his bike.