Bicycles
Byron parked his bicycle next to another in front of the junior high gym. He’d heard they were teaching a Karate course and wanted to watch. Upstairs in the weight room, he found his friend Ralph poised in a striking position receiving instruction from the black belt Karate teacher. He watched for a time nodding hello to the teacher whom he knew from taking his class at another location.
Returning outside he noticed—they were gone. The bicycles were nowhere to be seen. This was the second time his was stolen. A year ago a similar situation in front of a mall, he stepped inside for a few minutes and it was taken. His mother helped him track it down. A few nights later a police officer showed up at his door with one of the bike thieves and the father who’d turned his son in. He eventually got the bike back, but with a few scratches and some different parts on it.
Byron looked around and thought where would I go if I were a bicycle thief? The sun was setting, darkness coming quick over the landscape. He went inside, carefully sidled up to Ralph, so as not to disturb the class, and whispered, “Our bikes have been stolen.” His friend eyes went wide. “I’m going out to look for them, they may not be far. I’ll check back soon.”
Where to begin looking? For some reason he was drawn toward the track down the hill. It was past the soccer field located in a long gully which led to a deep ravine in the woods. Slowly he crept down a dirt hillside. Though the sun was down, there was still a trace of light. He saw what looked to be a reflection from something metallic on the other side. Then came the sound of boys talking. He shielded his eye glasses with his hand so they wouldn’t reflect light as well and peered through his fingers. Rocks started landing nearby. Whoever those voices belonged to had spotted something moving on the hillside. They where trying to drive the intruder away. Byron crept back up the hill, went to the gym, told his friend he may have spotted the thieves and he was going to call his dad.
He used the pay phone at the school’s entrance.
“Dad, someone swiped my bike and a friends at the school gym. I think I may have spotted the thieves. Would you bring the car to help look?”
“Okay. Just a minute.”
He could hear his father talking to his mother then he came back on the line.
“Give me 10 minutes to get dressed,” his father said.
He waited by the pay phone. It was dark. Along came three boys walking from the direction of the soccer field. Byron sensed these where the same ones who were down at the track throwing rocks at him. He contemplated running, but decided it would be better to act relaxed and pretend he hadn’t encountered them before. As they got closer one looked familiar, a local tough who’d been to reform school. He was a muscular kid of about 14 wearing a faded jean jacket leading the other two. They seemed agitated.
“Have you seen any other kids around here?” the leader asked Byron as he sat against a parked car, cradling a football.
“No, except for some paperboys meeting at the newspaper shack,” he said.
This was complete bull. There’d been no meeting tonight, but he thought it was better to give a few details out like he wasn’t afraid to talk to them.
The leader listened to his answer as he rested his chin on the ball. “You’re sure?”
“Yes,” Byron said.
The leader exchanged glances with the other two. “Okay,” he said and to the others “Let’s go.”
Off they went.
Byron thought this through. If these were the same guys who took the bikes, they didn’t have them now. So they must have ditched them, unless they put them back? He walked around the side of the school and looked in the direction of the gym. No, they hadn’t been returned. His dad arrived in the car. Byron directed his father where to drive and filled him in on the conversation with suspected thieves. The neighborhood they entered was behind the gully, above on a plateau. There was an elementary school there and a pathway connecting to the junior high school’s track through the woods. Down the main road of the neighborhood they dead ended at the other school. Byron got a flashlight from the glove compartment and exited the car. He started shining it around the school yard while his dad waited. Then heading out the school’s back exit leading to the pathway, he scanned the woods by the trail and walked all the way down to the track, shined the light around, but the bicycles were nowhere to be seen. He returned to the car.
“No luck.” he said.
“Maybe they threw them in the ravine,” his father said.
“I could look tomorrow, in the day, maybe spot them. That ravine’s pretty deep.”
“There’s a stream at the bottom, isn’t there?”
They began driving back to the main road when the headlights flashed for an instant in a ditch at the side opposite the school. There they were—the reflectors on the fenders glowed red, yellow, and white—the bikes had been ditched in a ditch. Byron, so excited seeing this, almost opened the car door and jumped out.
“There they are! Look dad! Down there,” he pointed to the ditch as he grabbed the door handle.
“Wait a minute ‘til I pull over! his dad yelled, “You’re so impulsive!
They lifted the bikes out of the ditch and loaded them into the trunk, then drove back to the gym.
Byron took Ralph’s bike inside to put it near him in the class. Receiving a grateful look of appreciation, Byron smiled and nodded. For all his friend knew he could have made the whole thing up, since he never came out to look for himself.
In the car, his dad said, “Sorry about yelling like that, but you seem to do things without thinking sometimes.”
They drove home and put the bike away. That night Byron lay in bed reviewing the evening’s adventure. He should really get a bike lock. The days were passed when you could leave one of your possessions unattended in public. There may be someone who’d come along ready to profit by your loss. Someone like those guys he’d spoken with earlier, the leader and his two cohorts. He wondered what they were thinking tonight. Thinking perhaps they gotten away with it. They had gotten away with it, but Byron knew who one of them was. Still, he couldn’t prove anything. Just have to chalk it up to experience. It was a pretty exciting experience though: the robbery, the search, the intriguing encounter with the thieves and solving the crime: finding the missing bicycles. Soon he drifted off to sleep. Tomorrow was another day.
(image: bike_bandits_ink_on_paper, created by the author Allen Forrest)
