Chapter 10 - The Last Ride of Thomas Vance
It is Sunday morning now. The rain from last night has cleared away, leaving the autumn air sharp, cool, and clean, smelling of fallen oak leaves and wet pavement.
I am sitting at my small wooden kitchen table, wearing my leather vest over a clean flannel shirt. On the table sits a hot mug of black coffee, my simple flip phone, and a small, square piece of white paper.
On the paper, I have written a short note in my thick, blocky handwriting:
To whoever finds this house when I don't wake up:
The Harley belongs to the local retired firefighters' fund. Sell it and put the money toward buying gear for the young rookies on Engine 4.
The Purple Heart in the drawer goes to my grandson, Leo, if he ever wants to know where his grandfather came from.
Tell Sarah and Michael that their daddy loved them every single day of his life, from their first breath to my last. I paid all my debts. The road is clear.
— Thomas Vance
I fold the note carefully, slide it into a plain white envelope, and place it under the base of the coffee mug where it cannot blow away.
I don't write this note because I am planning on dying today. I write it because at sixty-seven, with a spine held together by memory and knees that hum like old machinery, a man ought to keep his house in order. A man ought to leave his final instructions where they can be seen, so nobody has to guess what he meant when he was alive.
I pick up the flip phone from the table.
I open the screen. I look at the contact list. Two names sit at the top of the short list: Sarah and Michael.
I hesitate for a brief, quiet second. My thumb hovers over the call button.
I don't check the volume knob. I don't press the side button to hear the high-pitched beep-beep-beep. I know the volume works. I know the speaker is fine. The phone is perfectly capable of ringing; it simply has nothing to say.
I set the phone down gently on the wooden table, right beside the white envelope. I leave it there. I don't slip it into my pocket. For the first time in ten years, I am not going to carry that heavy little plastic box with me on the road. I am not going to spend another afternoon waiting for a ring that only comes when someone needs three thousand dollars.
I stand up from the table, my boots striking the floorboards with a heavy, solid sound. I walk down the short hallway, step out into the sunlight, and enter the garage.
I lift the garage door. The cool, crisp autumn air rushes inside, filling the space with the bright scent of morning frost and pine.
I walk over to the 1988 Electra Glide. I pull off the soft cloth cover I use to keep the dust off the seat. The chrome gas tank gleams under the bright morning light—a mirror of polished silver reflecting the blue sky outside.
I climb onto the heavy leather saddle. My boots rest firm and flat against the floorboards. My hands—rough, calloused, scarred, and forever marked by grease—wrap around the rubber handlebar grips. They fit perfectly. They don't look dangerous here. They don't look like a mistake. They look like the hands of a man who knows exactly how to hold onto something real.
I turn the ignition key. I reach down with my thumb and press the starter button.
The starter motor turns over twice—Chug... chug...—and then forty-five cubic inches of American steel burst into violent, glorious, thunderous life.
BOOM-CLACK-THUM-THUM-THUM-THUM.
The heavy V-twin engine shakes the handlebars, vibrates through the leather seat, and resonates deep inside my chest, right where the old cold pain used to sit. The exhaust notes echo off the wooden rafters of the garage, loud enough to shake the dust off the old tools, loud enough to be heard three blocks away, loud enough to tear through every quiet, polite, suburban silence in this whole damn county.
I don't wear a helmet today. I tie a simple black bandana around my gray hair to keep it out of my eyes.
I kick the heavy foot shifter down into first gear. CLACK.
I roll the motorcycle out of the garage, down the short concrete driveway, and out into the center of Elm Street.
I don't look back at the house. I don't look at the empty windows or the quiet, silent porch.
I twist the rubber throttle. The engine roars, a deep, rising howl of power and freedom, and the bike surges forward onto the open asphalt.
The wind hits my face—sharp, cold, and clean. It tears past my ears, blowing my long gray beard back over my shoulders, pressing my leather vest tight against my chest.
As I accelerate down the avenue, passing the closed elementary school, passing the high school stadium, passing the turnoffs that lead to the manicured subdivisions where I am not allowed to touch my grandchildren, I feel the weight shedding off my shoulders, piece by piece, mile by mile.
They think the vest is the problem. They think the motorcycle is a rebellion.
They don't understand that out here, on two wheels, with forty miles of open highway stretching out toward the blue mountain ridge on the horizon, I am not a rumor. I am not an embarrassment. I am not a stain on a graduation photograph.
I am Thomas Vance.
I am a father who bled for his children. I am a firefighter who stood in the flames when everyone else ran. I am a man who paid every single bill the world ever put in front of him, and I owe nothing to anyone.
I twist the throttle wider. The engine responds instantly, screaming down the open pavement.
May you like
The sun breaks through the autumn clouds, hitting the polished chrome of the handlebars, lighting up the road ahead in a blinding, beautiful streak of gold.
And for the first time in twenty years, I throw my head back into the cold, rushing wind and laugh out loud.
