The Bike My Neighbor Backed Over

“Some,” he said. “It’s some better. Thanks to you I didn’t have to look at that yard.” He cleared his throat. “Son, I’ve got something to say and I’d like to get all the way through it.”

“Okay.”

“I ran over your bicycle. It was on your grass, against your tree, right where it belonged, and I came up over the curb because I wasn’t looking. That truck has a camera in the dash that shows me everything behind it, and I wasn’t even looking at that.” He kept his eyes on Ryan. It was costing him. “I knew it was my fault the second I heard it. And I said what I said because your father was standing there, and you were standing there, and I could not stand to be the one in the wrong in front of the two of you. So I put it on you. A ten year old boy.”

Ryan did not say anything. He was listening the way he listened to everybody.

“You said you didn’t know what the lesson was,” Don said. “Jim told me that. Well, there wasn’t one. I made it up. I’ve been making that sort of thing up for a long time.”

He let go of the rail and stood on his own.

“I’ve had people in this town think poorly of me for forty years, and it never cost me a night’s sleep. I could always tell myself why they were wrong.” His voice went rough. “I can’t do that with a boy who’s out there on his knees trimming my walk. I couldn’t find one thing to tell myself. I sat in that chair two Saturdays and I couldn’t find one.”

“It’s okay, Mr. Petrie,” Ryan said.

“It isn’t. But I thank you for saying it.” He turned his head toward the curb. “Mike, I can’t lift. Would you get what’s in the bed of that truck?”

I walked down to the street. I had to step up on the bumper to see over the tailgate.

It was the green Schwinn. Earl’s tag was still hanging off the handlebar on its string, and across the front of it, in Earl’s square handwriting, somebody had written Paid in full, D. Petrie, and under that, in smaller letters, About time.

I lifted it down and rolled it up the walk. I did not trust myself to say a word.

Ryan had come out to the top step. He looked at the bike, and then at Don, and then he did the thing I should have known he would do. He went back in the house, and I heard his feet on the stairs, and he came back down carrying the red coffee can in both hands.

“I’ve got a hundred and twenty seven,” he said. “I can give you that now and the rest by October.”

Don Petrie looked at that can. His chin shook once and he got hold of it.

“No sir,” he said. “You keep that. You earned that walking a mower up this street.” He pressed his lips together. “You want to do something for me, there’s one thing.”

“Yes sir?”

“When folks ask you where you got that new bike. And they will.” He nodded at it. “You tell them the truth about that, too. Same as you did the first time.”

Ryan thought it over.

“I would’ve anyway,” he said.

“I know you would have,” Don said. “That’s the whole thing, isn’t it.”

He put his hand out. Ryan shook it. Then Don put his hand out to me, and I looked at it for longer than I should have, and I took it.