The Superbike by Patrick Sean Lee (best books for 8th graders .txt) 📕

into the roadway, and I believe that helped him, too. I had no idea whether Mickey was still perched on the axel nuts, but twosome or threesome, we were in no time rocketing south once more, whooping it up, up the long incline toward Alameda Avenue, the top of the world in our neighborhood. Mick had to hop off midway up the hill to give our bike a little help, but other than a whole lot of groaning, the bike was doing pretty good.
Arriving at the intersection, Jimmy disregarded the stop sign and made a right-hand turn, seconds ahead of a pack of cars and trucks barreling west. I glanced over my shoulder to see how long we had before the lead car in the herd overcame and flattened us. Mickey was back on, hanging on for dear life, his eyes closed tight. Jimmy’s hair was blowing like the skull and crossbones flag on top of the main mast of a pirate ship, and he was laughing.

We reached Meade Street somehow, and Jimmy made another sharp right turn, which headed us north once more, down the steep hill. The bike accelerated, the chain rattling so badly that I could hear it over the din of the stressed-out lawnmower engine. Three houses down the street on our right stood the residence of the infamous Inky Minkle, and on the covered porch, there they were. Inky and and his younger brother, Butch. Their names spoke volumes about them. Inky’s disposition had been dunked into something foul and black. He was maybe three years older than I was, and he was the founder of “The Skulls”, a bunch of fuck-ups and thugs who ruled the territory south of our homes with genuine juvenile cruelty. Butch might have been my age. I never dared to ask him. He was as mean as Inky, and rumor had it he carried a switchblade that he had no fear of using in a fight. Butch was short and stocky, and ugly as a basket of assholes, but Inky—he was very tall, athletically built, and good-looking. He must have spent hours each morning in front of the bathroom mirror with a can of grease and a comb getting every strand of hair in that jet-black pompadour just perfect. I admired him for that, but trembled at the thought of stumbling into his path without Jimmy, Mickey, and every other kid I knew beside me. The hairdo alone would have made me sink to my knees and pray for mercy.

I noticed the two of them standing there in their blue jeans and white tee shirts, scowling at us as we raced by. What I didn’t notice was that Mickey, in a burst of insanity, somehow got his jeans dropped and told them what he thought of them with his bare ass.

When we got about a hundred yards farther down the street, a black and white with its red light spinning full bore skirted ahead of us, and I saw the arm of the cop extended out the driver’s side window indicating he wanted us to pull over to the curb.

“I can outrun the sonofabitch,” Jimmy yelled.

“You’re nuts! Get this thing stopped!” I said. I’d watched “Highway Patrol” many a time on our Muntz black and white TV and knew we had about as much chance as a snowball in hell of outrunning the cop. When Jimmy got the bike stopped, which wasn’t hard at all—he simply bounced it into the eight-inch tall curb—I picked myself up off the sidewalk and started galloping for home.

The cop’s voice over his loudspeaker stopped me cold. “Hold it right there, kid.”

I turned back to the bike. Jimmy was standing beside it, kind of like Marlon Brando in that picture on the billboard adveritisng The Wild Ones, his latest movie. Very cocky, very self-assured. Mickey, on the other hand, was busy hauling his pants back up, unsure I think, of who would dish out the most punishment—the cop, or Inky and Butch. They stood roaring contemptuously at the top of their lungs on the sidewalk in front of their house. I put two and two together immediately and walked to the squad car, hands outstretched, praying he’d cuff me and take me away.

The cop stepped out of the car and walked slowly around it to get a good look at us and the Superbike. “Just what the hell do you call that?” he asked with a menacing edge to his voice.

“It’s the best damn bike in all of Barnum, that's what we call it—an’ we don’t need a license to drive it, neither,” Jimmy replied. And replied wrongly.

The cop walked over to him, the way he must have spent months practicing at cop school, and then he leered at Jimmy for what seemed an eternity. At last he answered Jimmy’s ill-advised remark.

“Wrong, kid. Not only do you need a license to drive it—and you ain’t old enough to have one—you also need to have it licensed.” He let that sink in. “Now, I ain’t gonna run you in for driving an unlicensed vehicle and not having an operator’s license, but I am gonna impound this butt-ugly, noisy thing you made. You did make it, didn’t you?”

 

“Yessiree,” Jimmy answered proudly.

“Well then. Get your rear-ends home, but leave that thing right where it is. And don’t let me ever catch you on somethin like it around here again. You got that?”

 

“Yeah, I guess…but I want the frame back,” Jimmy replied.

“Pick it up at the station,” the cop said.

“Ah-h-h…alright.”

“Yes sir!”

“Okeedokee, officer.”

We headed off down the street in the direction of Jimmy’s house. Mickey was overjoyed we hadn’t gotten ourselves locked up for his indecent exposure. Jimmy was beside himself wondering out loud how he’d explain to his mother just why she should cart him downtown to ransom the bike, especially in view of the fact that she no longer owned a lawnmower with an engine. I, on the other hand, couldn’t help but conjure up the terrifying vision of Inky and The Skulls coming to pay us a visit very soon.

Imprint

Text: (c) Patrick Sean Lee, 2011 Thanks to Timo Beil at Wikimedia Commons for the cover photo.
Publication Date: 05-10-2011

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