length of the alley. He took account of the variables at play. He measured the wind. He noted the pot holes in the crumbling asphalt and mapped his slalom course. He looked left and saw that he was aligned with the barn window. One of its four panes of glass was chinked at the corner where he’d thrown a rock through it. Alignment meant he was the perfect distance from the delta of dirt at the opposite end of the alley. The rhythmic thrust of his thin legs would bring him to top speed just before he reached it. No miss-pedaling. No drag. No energy wasted.
 

   The boy stood his whole weight downward against the pedal. The crankset strained against the chain. The back tire, already nearly bald, burped on the cinders. His legs were pale twigs extending from his shorts. He wore cowboy boots and with each downward stroke the unglued heel of his left boot clacked woodenly. He picked up speed, passing along his own back yard. The chain-link fence in his periphery whirred passed like a river of quicksilver. The swimming pool within the fence waited calmly to accept him, to wash his sweat as was tradition at the end of these record-breaking days. As he cleared the corner of the old man’s carport he glanced toward the porch to make sure he was watching, and he was.

​

   The old man was a fixture in the neighborhood. He’d sit for days on his back porch in an old lawn chair. The webbing in the chair had rotted and pulled from the aluminum rivets so that his rear-end sank low through the failing basketry. This made rising from the chair difficult, so he did so only out of necessity—to fetch another Red, White, and Blue from the fridge, or to piss. His skin was dark and mummified looking. His fingernails were the color of yellowed paper clasped around the sweating can or clawing the armrests with a rage so old and long suppressed he forgot what gave rise to it, forgotten its name. He nursed the warming beer and watched the boy.

​

   The boy steered for the area where the dirt was deepest, grittiest. He timed it perfectly, slamming backward on the crank just as his back tire reached the dirt. The tire locked and began to drag serpentine. The boy shifted his weight, trying to reign in the bike to keep it straight and upright. He skidded through the dirt and passed the stop sign. He was into the intersection before coming to rest—a hopeful sign. He circled his horse, eyeing the newest skid engraved over his previous attempts.

​

   “Nice skid, Tex,” The old man called out. He removed a Pall-Mall from the pack in his shirt pocket and lit it. 

​

   The boy acknowledged the fact, but knew he could do better.
 
   “Yer a regular Bronc Peeler. A dead ringer fer ol’ Hopalong,” the old man called after him again, but he doubted if the boy had heard of them—his own childhood heroes. The boy was already out of sight and the old man’s declaration reached him incomplete and broken. The fragmented wisps of a drunken slur trailing off into silence, or near silence—only the hiss and crunch of the boy’s tires kissing the asphalt.