Theo of Golden: A Novel by Allen Levi - 39

Ellen, you might recall, had told Theo she would take him for a bicycle ride on the Riverwalk someday. He assured her that he knew how to ride a bike, had grown up riding one, and would be happy to be her guest whenever she was ready. He was not convinced she actually intended to make good on the promise, but after several mentions of it, she finally gave him a day and an hour.

“Tomorrow at seven. I know that’s early, but if we wait till later, it’ll be too hot. Jason is going to have a bike ready for you at his shop. We’ll walk it down to the river and then ride. I don’t want you to run over somebody on the sidewalk before we get down there. You know what Jason told me? He said he’s got a special bicycle for old people like you. The tires are kind of fat, there’s no gears, and the seat is plus size. That’s what they call it. Plus size. Isn’t that a hoot?”

She cackled with laughter.

Theo accepted the invitation. The summer days of late had been predictably hot and dry, but early mornings were tolerable and sometimes even pleasant.

Her instructions to Theo were minimal but clear. “Don’t bring anything with you. I want you to be able to keep both hands on the handlebars and your eyes on the trail. The last thing I need is a casualty. I’ll bring some water for us in my basket.”

Theo was confident his old legs were up to a bike ride, and he looked forward to the prospect of seeing new stretches of the river, especially in the company of his eccentric acquaintance .

After accepting Ellen’s invitation, he went straight to the RiverRides Bike Shop, introduced himself to Jason, the owner, and familiarized himself with the bicycle he would be riding the next day. Jason gave a quick orientation, helped him on and off it, let him ride in an open lot behind the shop, and assured Theo that all would be well.

“Ellen told me all about you, Mr. Theo. I’ve known her for a couple of years. She brings her bike to me when it needs work and I check her tires and put air in them every week. That thing is like a child to her. I’ve never seen her ride with another person before, so you should take it as a compliment that she invited you. She doesn’t trust many people.”

“You are very kind to help her, Mr. Jason. I appreciate what you do for her.”

The next morning, Theo put on his most casual pair of pants, his lightest and most comfortable shirt, his favorite walking shoes, and his flat cap (which he would turn backwards once their ride began). At six fifty-five, he crossed the Promenade and walked north to the bike shop. Ellen and the Noble Invention were waiting for him at the bench in front of the shop. She was wearing a blue T-shirt, untucked, a pair of pistachio-green pants, a red bandanna, a baseball cap, white socks, and white tennis shoes.

Already, the air was muggy, but the sun was low in the sky, and the temperature was comfortable.

“Good morning, Ellen,” Theo said. “I could hardly sleep last night thinking about our ride.”

“Well, don’t be afraid! There’s nothing to worry about.”

“Oh, I’m not afraid. I’m excited about the adventure. You picked a perfect morning for a ride.”

“Your bicycle is inside,” Ellen said. “Here’s a water bottle for you. Jason gave it to me. It has his company name on it, and he says it’s good advertising, so if you’re ever with people and you’re drinking out of it, make sure you hold it so they can see his name, like this.”

Ellen demonstrated, placing her fingers carefully around the bottle so as not to obscure the logo and printed text. To prove that he had been listening and was capable of product placement, Theo held his bottle with proper form and took a sip.

“Now, rule number one for the day. We need to hydrate. Jason taught me that. Especially on days like today. Drink a lot of water. You know what else he taught me? ‘Motion is lotion.’ Old people need to move around, so they don’t get stiff. That’s why this will be good for you. Motion is lotion for your joints. It’s a good thing you walk a lot.”

She removed something from the basket on her bicycle but held it out of Theo’s view. “Now, Mr. Theo,” she said, lowering her voice, “I need to say something to you, and I don’t want you to be embarrassed or upset. I think it might be a good idea to use this today. I asked Jason to put this on your bike. I’m just trying to be careful, so we don’t get sued.”

Ellen unfolded a small cardboard placard, homemade and hand lettered (all caps, black text on yellow background). It read, “STUDENT DRIVER.”

Theo chuckled, a long chuckle that morphed into a full laugh.

Ellen had no idea why this was so funny to Theo, but she could not help but smile.

“Well, you are a student, aren’t you?”

”I’m always a student, dear girl. And I suppose that makes you my professor. Professor Ellen, instructor in human propulsion.”

Jason arrived with Theo’s bike. They exchanged greetings, and Jason attached Ellen’s sign to the seat post of the bicycle. She inspected his work.

“Jason, do you think we should put on some emergency flashers too?” she asked. “Those ones that flash on and off?” She opened and closed her hand like a sock puppet to illustrate her point. “You know, so people will notice the sign?”

“I think this’ll do fine, Ellen. If it were night time, that would be a good idea, but I think you’re safe without them this morning. ”

Theo and Ellen walked their bikes to the waterfront. When they arrived, only a single jogger was visible in the distance.

Before Ellen could give Theo final instructions about what to do, he straddled the bike, let out a laugh, then pushed off and began to pedal. “Here I go!”

He was wobbly at the launch, but with several slow, strenuous pumps, the drive chain bit into the sprockets, the tires became steady and upright, and Theo was on his way.

Ellen watched nervously until she was satisfied he knew what he was doing. She climbed on the Noble Invention and stood on the pedals until she caught up with him. They rode side by side just long enough for her to tell him their destination.

“We’re just going to ride till we get somewhere.”

She pulled ahead of Theo and stayed a comfortable distance in front of him, twenty-five yards, more or less, so that he would not have to worry about a collision with her. She was able to watch him through a small mirror mounted on her handlebar.

In short order, Theo was a man at ease, enlivened by the wind in his face. If Ellen had been able to see the picture in his mind at that moment, she would have beheld a little boy on a simple child’s bike, painted red with a basket on the front, pedaling vigorously through Pinhão, en route to the local baker for bread and cheese. The scent of crushed grapes is rich in his nostrils; his feet, ankles, and calves are stained slightly purple; and his elbows are spread wide, like bent wings, as he speeds by tile-fronted shops and houses under the Portuguese sky. At intersections, he glances downhill to the Douro, where boats are loading and unloading.

More than once, he waves in greeting to some familiar face.

But all Ellen could see was an old man, a very happy old man, whose face was radiant with sunlight and youthfulness. He was moving forward in space and backward in time. His lungs filled, and his heart beat with a vigor that belied his eighty-six years.

He entertained the idea of taking his hands off the handlebars and holding them above his head, as he had done when he was a boy, but he decided against it, fearing the lecture he would have to endure if Ellen caught him in the act.

When he picked up speed on a slight downhill slope, his silver hair blew from the sides of his cap like windblown pennants.

He laughed out loud. Ellen did too.

The Noble Invention was most important to Ellen because of its sheer usefulness. It transported her from one place to another efficiently and safely. Sometimes she rode in pursuit of a sense of peace (“motion is lotion” for the soul too), but she rarely rode for sheer pleasure in the way children do.

At that moment, however, that rare moment, she did. Seeing Theo behind her, entirely absorbed in his ride, inspired her to pedal harder, to lean forward, head almost even with her elbows, and to pursue speed for its own sake. The humid, warming air stung her eyes, pushed her hair back from her forehead, and hissed in her ears.

Theo’s old soul and Ellen’s weary soul were wide awake to the promise of the August morning.

They settled into an easy pace that allowed Theo to enjoy the river and its environs. Late-summer patches of goldenrod, aster, and ragweed were starting to bloom. Sourwoods were already turning scarlet, and other hardwoods showed signs of heat stress — withered branches, leaf loss, and seasonal fatigue.

At one stretch of the Riverwalk, Theo and Ellen rode under archways of branches and over a pavement made gold with early fallen poplar leaves.

At one bend, they surprised and put to flight a doe and fawn that had been grazing in the shade of an oak grove.

Ellen looked over her shoulder at Theo. “Hydration break!”

She stopped at a designated rest area on a low bluff that gave them a long view up and down the river. She and Theo parked their bikes, sat at a picnic table on the river side of the trail, and drank water in big gulps .

“Ellen, thank you for letting me join you. This was a splendid idea!”

“Did I go too fast?”

Theo waved off the very thought. “Not at all. My legs might be sore tomorrow, but for now, I feel fine.”

He rubbed his thighs and calves and drank more water. He refilled his bottle from a nearby fountain and walked to the edge of the bluff. He feared that if he sat for too long, his legs might stiffen. Ellen joined him. They surveyed the long span of river.

“Ellen, do you ride here a lot?”

“Not so much now. I used to ‘cause this is where I lived when I first came here. The Mission was too crowded. And I didn’t know anybody under the bridge, and those people can be crazy anyway. So I came down here and lived by myself in a little tent I made.”

Theo wanted to ask questions: What did you eat? Where did you sleep when it rained? What did you do all day? Obvious questions. Instead he listened, sensing that Ellen would reveal what she felt comfortable with.

“I came to Golden because I met another homeless person in Athens who told me about it. He told me about the coffee shop and the bookshop, and he told me people were nice down here, even at the Mission. So I hitchhiked and walked all the way from Athens to Golden. And I like the name Golden. There’s a Golden in Colorado, but that’s too far to go, and it’s real cold in the wintertime.

“When I got here, I liked it, so I stayed. You never know. William and I thought the people in Charleston would be nice, but look how that turned out. Did you read Saroyan yet?”

Theo assured Ellen he had indeed read selected writings of William Saroyan. Especially the bicycle stories.

She congratulated him and then posed an odd question. “Do you know where night comes from?”

Theo knew the textbook explanation, but instead of answering, he turned the question on Ellen. “You tell me. Where does night come from?”

“Tom came up with it. He says there are five billion trees in the world. Don’t ask me who counted them. I don’t know but probably somebody at National Geographic . Anyway, Tom says that under every single tree, there is some shade, like those trees over there.”

Ellen pointed across the river. “Look at all that shade. And at the end of every day, the shade crawls out from under the five billion trees and gets above the trees, and that’s what makes nighttime.”

She chuckled. “I know that’s not very scientific, but I like the way that little boy thinks. Tom.”

“Ellen, remind me who Tom is.”

“He’s Douglas’s brother. In Dandelion Wine . They ride all over Green Town on their bikes. And they think Leo Huffman invented the bicycle, so they ask him to invent a Happiness Machine too.”

Theo nodded and grunted in acknowledgement. Ellen frowned at him.

“You have read Ray Bradbury, haven’t you? If you haven’t, you need to talk to Tony.”

Theo made a mental note. Read Dandelion Wine .

“Mr. Theo, Tony told me you like to watch birds. Is that true?”

“It is true. Ever since I was a boy, I’ve enjoyed birds. I even keep a list of them. I have seen some beautiful varieties here in Golden. And you?”

“I don’t keep a list, but I like them a lot. Even though they can be pretty cruel sometimes. And when Atticus says it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird because all they do is sing, well, tell that to the bluebird mama who can’t feed her babies because Miz Mockingbird the Hun keeps dive-bombing her. They act worse than people sometimes.”

Theo was impressed once again by Ellen’s literacy and power of observation .

Dive-bombing.

He had never thought of bird flight in that way before, but he had to admit the term was a precise description of what mockingbirds did. He would add that to his own thesaurus of bird flight: martins dance (“they fly in cursive”), meadowlarks explode (“they rise like geysers”), and starlings sprint (as do those with a guilty conscience, “though no one pursues”).

“Mr. Theo, we are now going to begin our tour.”

Theo’s eyes widened at Ellen’s announcement. He was unaware that a tour was on the schedule.

“I wanted to do something nice for you since you gave me a portrait, but I can’t afford to buy you a present, so I have planned a special bird excursion.”

Theo thanked Ellen. He had no idea what such an excursion might entail.

“You’re welcome. Now, follow me. We’ve got to get closer to the river. I’ll lead the way. It’s not too hard to get there.”

They walked to the lip of the bluff and stepped carefully, just a short drop, over the edge. Their bicycles remained in view as they navigated their way through vines and underbrush — smilax, wild muscadine, blackberry, sensitive briar — in search of a destination known only to one of them.

“There it is.”

Ellen pointed to a piece of pink ribbon on a waist-high stem of lespedeza. It was just below a vertical bank of sandy clay, a bank covered with low grasses and running vines. Theo had heard that poisonous snakes thrived in such places and wondered if he might be in the neighborhood of one. Ellen was clearly unconcerned.

She stopped, knelt down, motioned Theo over, pulled a small flashlight out of her pocket, and pointed it at a barely-noticeable depression in the riverbank. “Look.”

Theo did as he was told, hands on knees, just as an angry kingfisher landed on a nearby branch and began to scold them noisily.

“Don’t worry about him, Mr. Theo. Look, right there.”

Theo peered into a three-foot-long burrow that had been dug into the dirt bank. He counted six small birds, a mixture of pink skin, new feathers, and long blackish bills.

“I have never seen a nest like this one before, Ellen. I’ve seen adult birds but never a nest. How did you find it?”

The adult bird continued its noisy protest.

“They nest around here every year. When I lived on the river, I would watch ‘em and try to find their nests. The closer you get, the more the mama and daddy get all agitated, and that’s when you know you’re close. Sometimes the tunnel is so long you can’t see the babies, but you can hear them peepin’.”

“Well, I will have to add this to my list. I had never seen the nest of the Megaceryle alcyon before now. Did you know that this bird used to be on the Canadian five-dollar bill? Not any longer though. The poor creature was replaced by an astronaut. A pity.”

They returned to their bikes and took generous gulps of water. It was only nine a.m., but the temperature was rising steadily.

“Mr. Theo, there are several more stops on the tour, but they’re all close by. And they’re all on the way back to town. I planned on doing the hard one first. I don’t want you to get sunstroke on me ‘cause if you do you’re pretty much on your own. I’d have to drag you behind the Noble Invention. Not a pretty sight. Are you OK?”

“I’m fine, Ellen. And I have just seen the nest of a belted kingfisher. What a wonderful gift you have given me.”

“I’m glad you like it. I found it just for you. Most people don’t have any interest in things like that. I’m happy to have at least one eccentric friend.”

She chuckled. Irony.

They mounted their bikes and retraced their earlier ride. Theo felt a bit of tightness in his legs but said nothing of it. It was a refreshing pain.

The tour continued. It included nests of a Carolina wren (in an abandoned paint can under a wax myrtle bush), blue grosbeak (in a patch of blackberry vines on the far side of the bike path), and a brown-headed nuthatch (in a hollow fencepost at the corner of an abandoned lot).

Theo had already, long before then, logged each of these in his birding list. Still, he was enthralled to observe the delicate nests up close.

The last nest they observed belonged to red-winged blackbirds. It was built in reeds at the edge of the river. Three chicks and one unhatched gray-speckled egg lay in a cup of dried leaves, mud, and straw.

The adult male showed up in a tantrum as Theo and Ellen leaned close to admire the fragile new arrivals, necks stretched and mouths open in expectation of food.

“I found this one yesterday,” Ellen said. “And I named the babies. One is Theo, one is Rio — that means river in Spanish, and it rhymes with your name — and this little one is named Ibis. Have you ever read ‘The Scarlet Ibis’? Don’t. It’s a short story, but it will ‘buh-rake’ your heart.”

“Ellen, the red-winged blackbird is very special to me.”

His mind returned briefly to the long-ago moment of passing splendor, when the murmuration of starlings and redwings over the River Marne — like fifty thousand feathered treble hooks — ascended, pivoted, and pirouetted until his soul had been pierced with the beauty of their intricate dance.

Someday he might share that memory with Ellen, but, presently, the mother bird had returned and joined the tirade against the unwelcome visitors. Theo and Ellen moved away slowly, got on the bikes, and returned to their starting point.

They dismounted, drank water, shared a peach that Ellen had brought, and walked to the street. Once there, they got back on their bikes and rode to Jason’s shop.

Tony saw them from the Verbivore as they pedaled along Broadway. He hollered something in their direction. Theo waved proudly, and the Penny Loafers applauded.

At the bike shop, Ellen gave Jason an enthused report about their morning excursion.

“I took him all the way to the bluff, and he didn’t even have to stop a single time.”

When Theo tried to pay for the rental, Jason waved it off. “Y’all are good advertising.”

“I showed him how to hold his bottle, and he’s already a pro,” Ellen reported.

They exited the building and were saying their goodbyes on the sidewalk when Ellen reached into her bicycle basket. She pulled out an object with a strip of pink ribbon around it.

It was a piece of wood, the size and shape of a soup can. Both ends were flat and smooth. On one end, small holes — two or three dozen of them — had been drilled or punched into the wood. The bark of the tree, light gray, was still intact. Theo guessed it was maple or beech.

Ellen held it in both hands as if it were a trophy, one hand underneath and one encircling it, as she offered it to Theo. She clearly intended that Theo accept it as a gift.

“For me? Well, thank you, Ellen. It’s very kind of you.”

“Do you even know what it is? You might want to know what it is before you thank me.”

Theo looked at it studiously. Ellen spoke before he could make an incorrect guess.

“It’s called featherwood. I invented it. Here’s how you use it.”

Ellen reached into her basket once again and pulled out another item tied in ribbon. She held it up. “These are feathers I’ve found. I didn’t hurt any birds to get them. They were on the ground, and I just collected ‘em.”

She untied the ribbon. As Theo held the wood, she began to place individual feathers into each small hole. She did so with the carefulness of a florist arranging a bridal bouquet. The result was exquisite. Swatches of gray, brown, rose, red, blue, speckles, and white looked like a forest in miniature, a stand of conifers, broad at the bottoms, narrow at the tops, some tall and slender, others short and stubby.

No words were exchanged as Ellen focused on her task. More than once she rearranged the feathers to give what, in her mind, was better balance to the composition.

“Now, Mr. Theo, half of the holes are still empty. But if you start paying attention, you can find more feathers on the Promenade and in the Boughery, and you can put them here with the others. If you can’t figure out how to do it, I can do it for you.”

“What a beautiful invention, Ellen.” He meant it. “How did you make it?”

“It wasn’t easy, I promise you that, since I don’t have any tools. First, I find the piece of wood, about the right size, and then I have to sand it down. I rub it on the sidewalk till the ends are both smooth. And then I make the holes with an ice pick I borrow from the Mission. If I had a saw and a drill, I could do better.”

“You have done an excellent job as it is. It is lovely, my dear.”

Theo held it up for closer examination, studying the individual feathers. “This is an interesting one.”

Theo pointed to a six inch feather, deep blue with five short black bands on the narrow side of the shaft and an inch of white at the tip.

“That, Mr. Theo, is a rare blue jay feather. It’s a tail feather. I found it in the Boughery near Mr. Asher’s. I have never seen a blue jay in Golden. Not one. And I look for them. Somebody told me there used to be lots of them around here. Well, not now. But here’s what I know: if there’s a blue jay feather, there’s got to be a blue jay somewhere. That’s just simple logic. If P, then Q.

“You know what they say about blue jays? They say blue jays go to hell on Friday. Even Mr. Nobel Prize William Faulkner said it in one of his books. Maybe all the blue jays got trapped down there one Friday, except the one that lost this feather. Maybe the old devil grabbed at his tail when he was escaping and pulled this feather loose, and when the bird got to the Boughery, it finally fell out. That’s where I found it, down in the Boughery. Mr. Theo, that feather might belong to the last blue jay on Earth. You never know.”

Theo applauded Ellen’s colorful mind and fertile imagination. Such an enigma.

“It’s a beautiful feather, Ellen. What about this one? I’ve never seen one like this before. Do you know what kind of bird it comes from?”

The feather in question was emerald green, as if straight from swimming in a pool of crème de menthe.

Ellen’s eyes widened, and she chuckled guiltily. “Yes, it comes from a, from a, ummm … a hatbird. Don’t ask. I needed some color.”

A hatbird? Theo had never heard of that particular variety before. After a moment, however, his eyes also widened, and he grinned, with the realization that the hatbird probably lived on a hat rack in the hat section of the clothes pantry at the Mission.

The hatbirds of Golden were an endangered species as long as Ellen was in pursuit of exotic plumage.

Featherwood.

Theo made a mental note: Ellen is an artist .

They said their goodbyes and Theo made the short walk, gift in hand, back to Ponder House. He felt some tightness in his legs as he walked up the three flights of stairs, but he made the ascent with minimal groans.

The sun was mercilessly hot by then.

A meal, a book, and a nap seemed the perfect trifecta for the afternoon.

And so it was.