***
This is a sort of split chapter in terms of locales, since a lot is going on in more than one place.
Amelia still struggles a little to try to plan something for when Craig gets home - while Craig himself tries to urge his mechanical steed faster, hopefully without him needing to die for it.
Later on in the afternoon, I'll reveal another pair of characters altogether. I wanted to take the reader out of Cascade for a little while as well.
0_o
*************
Craig woke in the morning and wasted no time, other than over one cup of coffee – and he shaved while drinking it - spitting occasionally when he didn't look beforehand and got half a mouthful of frothy shaving cream from the mug left there from his previous sip, before almost scrambling to get done and over with on Iron Mountain.
He tried not to run up the 105 steps and he closed up the tower, grabbed the logbooks and locked up before heading back down.
As he rushed carefully so as not to forget anything, he found himself hoping again.
Hoping that Amelia had missed him a little and hoping that he might be able to tell her how he felt at last and hoping ...
Praying that Tad was alright and had made his way back home at last.
Craig only had very slight expectations about Amelia, but he knew that his trip would go better with a hope – if not a song – in his heart.
He filed his fantasies of Tad away again, where they'd stay safe until he was in his room again that night. He wondered if they would even recognise each other after so much time.
Finally, he'd loaded up his old Indian warhorse as best he could and turning on the headlight momentarily, he saw that the bulb came on yellow after a week of being idle up here. Craig wasn't fazed. He was more concerned over making it into Fairfield with it running – since it was already just on the top end of being on reserve.
He manoeuvered the machine to the top of the trail down and looking back one last time to think of anything forgotten, he said goodbye to his annual prison for the last time.
He rocked forward and back a little, enough to put the machine into high gear and then turning the ignition on – but leaving the headlight off – he held the clutch in and pushed off down the hill with only one foot. That hadn't been easy to do, none of it.
Inside of forty feet, he let out the clutch and the motor was turning over from the mechanical advantage of the weight and inertia and the beast fired twice, coughed once and it was running.
Craig was grinning as he began his long ride home. He only gave in to doing the 'yahoo' thing once.
He had to force himself to stay slow and gentle after almost missing a turn – which would have meant a long, cushy soft ride through the air as he plummeted to the extremely hard landing of his death in one case, and whacking into a tree in another.
But after a rather spectacular (if he did say so himself) speedway-style sliding turn at full throttle and dragging his inside foot, because there was no way to brake without throwing him and his dependable Indian into a solid granite wall at in excess of 'Holy Shit' velocity, he did finally manage to slow to a more civilized and less life-threatening pace.
He did still have the odd and occasional moments of pulse quickening:
Once when he saw a black bear sort of sitting very near to the edge of the trail and once when he realized that the wooden bridge which spanned the last creek in his trip ended with a chain strung across it to keep innocent people from being killed by frenzied fire lookouts on their way back home.
He cheated death in the first instance by grabbing the clutch and rolling off the throttle so that by the time that the bruin realized that something was coming and spun to look uphill, Craig had already coasted well past it and was back on the throttle.
Though as he breezed by, Craig was finally able to come to a definitive answer about whether bears shit in the woods or not.
They do apparently, though at least a few are somewhat partial to using trails for that biological function.
And he'd ridden right through the steaming heap, too.
He guessed that the bottom of the frame, the front of the engine crankcase, both crash bars and his boots and pant legs had been adorned, and as he rode on and the mess soaked into things ... He decided that he'd been right.
The second was more a test of Craig's steely nerves as he realized his error while almost already on the bridge.
The morning dew was still there on the planking and even with both brakes locked and the rider (which would be Craig) doing an admirable job in making some death-defying, leaned-over gyrations to hopefully keep the beast a little upright, he slid along to just about the point where he'd have to decide to lay it down and pray that he slid underneath the chain cleanly.
That didn't happen.
Craig mis-timed his lay-down moment and the whole show came to a stop with the bike sideways on the bridge and the chain not six inches from his leg.
Craig was proud of himself for NOT having an asthmatic episode over it, but the whole deal reminded him of what he'd forgotten to do in his hurry to leave and ...
Well he shut the bike off and walked into the woods a few paces and crapped there instead.
Back in business or so he thought, several minutes later, Craig started the bike and it died inside of two hundred feet, just as he was about to make the road into Fairfield. He re-started, but it died on him again. Looking into the tank, he got his little jiffy can out and poured in all that was there, which came to maybe a large cupful.
With it running again at last, Craig did his best to guess the most economical rate of travel and he actually laughed as he turned into the gas station and had to grab the clutch in a hurry as he ran out of the last of his cupful just in time.
