Riders in No Man’s Land
Annie Webb
Although she is alone, she can do everything;
Herself unchanging, she renews the world…
She is indeed more splendid than the sun
She outshines all the constellations
Compared to the light she must take first place
For light must yield to night
But against Wisdom evil cannot prevail[1]
It was only yesterday when she couldn’t turn her steering wheel to the left or right that Marta discovered she had a puncture. Today it had been repaired. Climbing the slip road to the raised stretch of motorway like a plane for take-off, the sky darkened with the threat of heavy rain. Once as a motorcycle rider licked by the freedom of wind and air, this anticipated downpour would have mattered. Now, sealed and protected from it within the boxlike confines of her metal car, it was exhilarating.
Yet as she speeded up she had to slow down. The tyre that had been used to replace the perforated one was old and hard and cracked and because today was Sunday she couldn’t buy a new one. Frightened of getting another puncture and without a spare, she drove at 60 mph in the slow lane instead of her usual 80.
Although she was going to visit Crystal Marta was thinking of Martin, Crystal’s brother, ‘As you haven’t asked me to be your pillion passenger again I will not be, and the puncture is fixed in our togetherness that shall not be repaired, nor the healing that would have meant to the whole of the wheel’, she deconstructed for him as was her constructive way.
In days before email all three been despatch riders. Crystal had been manager of the bikers’ operation who’d taught Marta some tricks of zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance. Of two stroke seizure and loop scavenging. Of incoming charges that flowed into the cylinder. Of exhaust that flowed out. Of carburettors, clutches, circlips and sprockets. Of brake pads and axles and crankshafts and shims. Of parts mostly to do with getting out of the wheel by getting in.
They’d also taken it in turns to visit the company’s riders who’d fallen or been knocked off their bikes in accidents, lying supine and sometimes comatose in their hospital beds, so that everyday one of them was there, till they’d recovered. The one that broke his neck and didn’t had a sobering effect on them all. A little more cautiously they carried on. Royal messengers for companies conveying packets to sleazy streets where recipients felt themselves to be lords and ladies, they’d been knights of the road, gliding easy and free in the open, or tearing like Hermes busy with precious gifts of communication from the gods: Marta and Martin always towards each other, separating and re-conjoining, not once over the years but twice. Gliding together then drifting apart. It was easy to glide until the need for slow and the need to grow got separated into two halves of a balloon that burst.
Lucky they’d not been on the motorway, a lonely place, where you only had a one way ticket and couldn’t turn to left or right anyway, where here on the edge a single mistake could finish you off in seconds.
Back at home it was different. Their cat waited, her white chest soft to the touch, the fur on her back patchy with flesh, the black triangle teasing up over the white of her neck flowing prettily over her ears and round her eyes like mascara. At home their black and white cat’s white chest rumbled with her purr and with her nine lives she’d be wandering at will without danger through the house.
Not so on the brink where moments were extreme and didn’t share the balance that diluted work and play. For work Marta and Martin had used the company’s Hondas 125. Sometimes they rode alongside each other. For play on the way home Marta had ridden pillion jammed happily between Martin’s back and a bright yellow box behind for leaning on. Sometimes they would stop at the Bikers’ Heaven cafe where their bodies and minds purposeful with repose could float free from the tension of highway vigilance like unregulated thought over a cup of tea or the cat’s wandering at will.
Now from the charcoal sky over the wildnerness-motorway the rain that had begun as a trickle got heavy and loud, and flinging down opaque blankets of spray-drift clouded Marta’s vision. She was sealed in again, this time with a new layer superfluous to the already encasing one of metal and glass. She switched on her lights. They barely penetrated the mist. Then the windscreen wipers. They palpitated unreasonably, a frantic three-times-the-speed-of-a-heartbeat flap. So she turned them down and allowed the deluge to follow its own momentum, pouring rather than slipping down the windscreen, driven by the speed of the rushing car against the wind. And turned the radio up.
It was Sunday it reminded her again. A theological broadcast all but drowned out held forth bravely on the pain or privilege of living at these times of cultural crisis. No assurance could be given of the significance of human existence. Of goals to be pursued or values cherished. In these times of political, cultural and religious bewilderment we were lost, badly lost in the fog, it hissed out against the cloudy rain.
Pity she couldn’t have got a new tyre today Marta thought.
The car in front was almost invisible but four small sharp lights suddenly showed up in her wing mirror. Vehicles overtaking showered her with spume from puddles of un-drained rain from the tarmac, breaking in splashes that rose as high as the crest of a breaking wave. Yes she felt at sea and the wind seeming bent on her destruction shoved suddenly from the right. It was hard to keep steady in line, but keep steady she must.
Not least because the four lights persisting behind her at an unshakeable speed gave comfort amidst mayhem. Through breaks in the spray she could see they were two auxillary lights on two motorbikes going always the same speed as her. If she deviated from 60 mph going faster, they accelerated, if she decelerated they dropped back, keeping the distance between as if the funnel created by her small red car on the slow lane protected them from motorway hell.
The road inside time was moving them from past to future with an intensity outside time as absorbing as pleasure or pain. The ordinary peaked. Concentration was total. Highway junkie that she was at this moment, Marta resumed her pointless and unrequited conversation with Martin, ‘If I sent you away it was to bring you back, to grow. Blossom. Burgeon. Bigger. In mountains, hills, sky and sea and the sun’s rise and set, eternal, external sunbeam’. But it’d proved to be a flickering transient thing as weightless as light that couldn’t wait.
Light in motion. Highways like rivers. Vehicles cascading through water. As a fish in water Marta’s vehicle kept her contained and safe, leading the biker-strangers, dignified, through the wild and windy wet, her wake a tunnel within which, mile after mile, car and bikes held in elastic tension knew hope between people as an unspoken narrative that could ride wildernesses shot heavy with grey and rain. Yes the motorway was a lonely place but now they were under each other’s skin. Thirty miles turned to forty and still they were solid in their mutual 60 mph.
She’d like to have been able to tell them how once when the sweet warm smell of Martin’s body had mingled with the fresh warm air of the meandering lanes they were chartering on the bike, they’d stopped off at a café called Bikers’ Heaven. At the end of a long winding road it had nestled at the base of a deep chasm where three gushing rivers met and the pinnacled outcrop of two large rocks guarded the entrance to the gorge. They’d have liked this place too. Riders could relax their stiff limbs overlooking the waters. A little way down at a restaurant beside a creek you could see a walkway that hadn’t been maintained. Metal driven into the rocks clung to the rockface. Wooden slats dangled. Dare-devil walkers had come to sticky ends. They, who’d seen too many accidents, would have nothing to do with it. Instead they’d sat and sipped freshly squeezed orange juice beneath the restaurant’s roof, trellised with bunches of rosey grapes and shocking-pink bougainvillea. Fig and fir clambered upon the steep hill opposite. Green lemons hung beside purple hibiscus along the creek and bamboo covered the banks of its deep chasm whose waters tore into the lusher ones of the gorge.
She’d like to be able to tell them also of the puncture she’d had yesterday and all the other punctures endured by people she knew that hadn’t pierced the silence between them. That she didn’t usually travel so slow but the wheel that had replaced the punctured one was old and cracked and tomorrow she’d get a new one. That she no longer rode pillion passenger. And that though Martin had given up driving anything, bike or car, and she’d given up her bike to have her and Martin’s child, she’d not forgotten the rumble of the akrapovic. Heeding Crystal’s advice she’d still know how to listen to the stress in its engine. Perhaps the riders were talking to each other with earphones under their helmets, but never a sound would pass between them and her a miserable Mercury now frustrated by messages she couldn’t convey.
But soon she’d be with Crystal. Not just one black and white cat but several, three or four, would be wandering at will through her house, Crystal mouthing the old buzz phrases, ‘Let go. Move on’. Maybe Crystal herself should let these go. Maybe she Marta should ‘jump off the wheel’. But not today. The wheel that kept turning might turn lost to found.
Before the exit slip road she flicked her indicator to go left. Tick, tick.... tick, tick. As she slowed the voice on the radio got louder. The theological programme had been replaced by the Sunday service which was ending with a reading from the Book of Wisdom about how light must yield to night.
As she slowed down the bikers - bastions of survival etched into her mind - rode on steady beside her. No longer side by side they lagged one behind the other. The first passed by on his cool Honda Goldwing looking straight ahead.
But the second turned and between scarf and visor looked straight in through her window where she sat perched upright in front of the wheel, not messenger but guide, piercing the formlessness of a rain sodden wilderness with a gaze. She raised her hand in farewell. They were inside time now. Like a spectre roused momentarily in greeting from the Valley of Death, he raised his head in a nod throwing light as wide as that good deed in a wicked world before passing on with elegant mastery into the gloom forever.
[1] The Book of Wisdom from The Wisdom Books. Chp 7 lines 27-32
Herself unchanging, she renews the world…
She is indeed more splendid than the sun
She outshines all the constellations
Compared to the light she must take first place
For light must yield to night
But against Wisdom evil cannot prevail[1]
It was only yesterday when she couldn’t turn her steering wheel to the left or right that Marta discovered she had a puncture. Today it had been repaired. Climbing the slip road to the raised stretch of motorway like a plane for take-off, the sky darkened with the threat of heavy rain. Once as a motorcycle rider licked by the freedom of wind and air, this anticipated downpour would have mattered. Now, sealed and protected from it within the boxlike confines of her metal car, it was exhilarating.
Yet as she speeded up she had to slow down. The tyre that had been used to replace the perforated one was old and hard and cracked and because today was Sunday she couldn’t buy a new one. Frightened of getting another puncture and without a spare, she drove at 60 mph in the slow lane instead of her usual 80.
Although she was going to visit Crystal Marta was thinking of Martin, Crystal’s brother, ‘As you haven’t asked me to be your pillion passenger again I will not be, and the puncture is fixed in our togetherness that shall not be repaired, nor the healing that would have meant to the whole of the wheel’, she deconstructed for him as was her constructive way.
In days before email all three been despatch riders. Crystal had been manager of the bikers’ operation who’d taught Marta some tricks of zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance. Of two stroke seizure and loop scavenging. Of incoming charges that flowed into the cylinder. Of exhaust that flowed out. Of carburettors, clutches, circlips and sprockets. Of brake pads and axles and crankshafts and shims. Of parts mostly to do with getting out of the wheel by getting in.
They’d also taken it in turns to visit the company’s riders who’d fallen or been knocked off their bikes in accidents, lying supine and sometimes comatose in their hospital beds, so that everyday one of them was there, till they’d recovered. The one that broke his neck and didn’t had a sobering effect on them all. A little more cautiously they carried on. Royal messengers for companies conveying packets to sleazy streets where recipients felt themselves to be lords and ladies, they’d been knights of the road, gliding easy and free in the open, or tearing like Hermes busy with precious gifts of communication from the gods: Marta and Martin always towards each other, separating and re-conjoining, not once over the years but twice. Gliding together then drifting apart. It was easy to glide until the need for slow and the need to grow got separated into two halves of a balloon that burst.
Lucky they’d not been on the motorway, a lonely place, where you only had a one way ticket and couldn’t turn to left or right anyway, where here on the edge a single mistake could finish you off in seconds.
Back at home it was different. Their cat waited, her white chest soft to the touch, the fur on her back patchy with flesh, the black triangle teasing up over the white of her neck flowing prettily over her ears and round her eyes like mascara. At home their black and white cat’s white chest rumbled with her purr and with her nine lives she’d be wandering at will without danger through the house.
Not so on the brink where moments were extreme and didn’t share the balance that diluted work and play. For work Marta and Martin had used the company’s Hondas 125. Sometimes they rode alongside each other. For play on the way home Marta had ridden pillion jammed happily between Martin’s back and a bright yellow box behind for leaning on. Sometimes they would stop at the Bikers’ Heaven cafe where their bodies and minds purposeful with repose could float free from the tension of highway vigilance like unregulated thought over a cup of tea or the cat’s wandering at will.
Now from the charcoal sky over the wildnerness-motorway the rain that had begun as a trickle got heavy and loud, and flinging down opaque blankets of spray-drift clouded Marta’s vision. She was sealed in again, this time with a new layer superfluous to the already encasing one of metal and glass. She switched on her lights. They barely penetrated the mist. Then the windscreen wipers. They palpitated unreasonably, a frantic three-times-the-speed-of-a-heartbeat flap. So she turned them down and allowed the deluge to follow its own momentum, pouring rather than slipping down the windscreen, driven by the speed of the rushing car against the wind. And turned the radio up.
It was Sunday it reminded her again. A theological broadcast all but drowned out held forth bravely on the pain or privilege of living at these times of cultural crisis. No assurance could be given of the significance of human existence. Of goals to be pursued or values cherished. In these times of political, cultural and religious bewilderment we were lost, badly lost in the fog, it hissed out against the cloudy rain.
Pity she couldn’t have got a new tyre today Marta thought.
The car in front was almost invisible but four small sharp lights suddenly showed up in her wing mirror. Vehicles overtaking showered her with spume from puddles of un-drained rain from the tarmac, breaking in splashes that rose as high as the crest of a breaking wave. Yes she felt at sea and the wind seeming bent on her destruction shoved suddenly from the right. It was hard to keep steady in line, but keep steady she must.
Not least because the four lights persisting behind her at an unshakeable speed gave comfort amidst mayhem. Through breaks in the spray she could see they were two auxillary lights on two motorbikes going always the same speed as her. If she deviated from 60 mph going faster, they accelerated, if she decelerated they dropped back, keeping the distance between as if the funnel created by her small red car on the slow lane protected them from motorway hell.
The road inside time was moving them from past to future with an intensity outside time as absorbing as pleasure or pain. The ordinary peaked. Concentration was total. Highway junkie that she was at this moment, Marta resumed her pointless and unrequited conversation with Martin, ‘If I sent you away it was to bring you back, to grow. Blossom. Burgeon. Bigger. In mountains, hills, sky and sea and the sun’s rise and set, eternal, external sunbeam’. But it’d proved to be a flickering transient thing as weightless as light that couldn’t wait.
Light in motion. Highways like rivers. Vehicles cascading through water. As a fish in water Marta’s vehicle kept her contained and safe, leading the biker-strangers, dignified, through the wild and windy wet, her wake a tunnel within which, mile after mile, car and bikes held in elastic tension knew hope between people as an unspoken narrative that could ride wildernesses shot heavy with grey and rain. Yes the motorway was a lonely place but now they were under each other’s skin. Thirty miles turned to forty and still they were solid in their mutual 60 mph.
She’d like to have been able to tell them how once when the sweet warm smell of Martin’s body had mingled with the fresh warm air of the meandering lanes they were chartering on the bike, they’d stopped off at a café called Bikers’ Heaven. At the end of a long winding road it had nestled at the base of a deep chasm where three gushing rivers met and the pinnacled outcrop of two large rocks guarded the entrance to the gorge. They’d have liked this place too. Riders could relax their stiff limbs overlooking the waters. A little way down at a restaurant beside a creek you could see a walkway that hadn’t been maintained. Metal driven into the rocks clung to the rockface. Wooden slats dangled. Dare-devil walkers had come to sticky ends. They, who’d seen too many accidents, would have nothing to do with it. Instead they’d sat and sipped freshly squeezed orange juice beneath the restaurant’s roof, trellised with bunches of rosey grapes and shocking-pink bougainvillea. Fig and fir clambered upon the steep hill opposite. Green lemons hung beside purple hibiscus along the creek and bamboo covered the banks of its deep chasm whose waters tore into the lusher ones of the gorge.
She’d like to be able to tell them also of the puncture she’d had yesterday and all the other punctures endured by people she knew that hadn’t pierced the silence between them. That she didn’t usually travel so slow but the wheel that had replaced the punctured one was old and cracked and tomorrow she’d get a new one. That she no longer rode pillion passenger. And that though Martin had given up driving anything, bike or car, and she’d given up her bike to have her and Martin’s child, she’d not forgotten the rumble of the akrapovic. Heeding Crystal’s advice she’d still know how to listen to the stress in its engine. Perhaps the riders were talking to each other with earphones under their helmets, but never a sound would pass between them and her a miserable Mercury now frustrated by messages she couldn’t convey.
But soon she’d be with Crystal. Not just one black and white cat but several, three or four, would be wandering at will through her house, Crystal mouthing the old buzz phrases, ‘Let go. Move on’. Maybe Crystal herself should let these go. Maybe she Marta should ‘jump off the wheel’. But not today. The wheel that kept turning might turn lost to found.
Before the exit slip road she flicked her indicator to go left. Tick, tick.... tick, tick. As she slowed the voice on the radio got louder. The theological programme had been replaced by the Sunday service which was ending with a reading from the Book of Wisdom about how light must yield to night.
As she slowed down the bikers - bastions of survival etched into her mind - rode on steady beside her. No longer side by side they lagged one behind the other. The first passed by on his cool Honda Goldwing looking straight ahead.
But the second turned and between scarf and visor looked straight in through her window where she sat perched upright in front of the wheel, not messenger but guide, piercing the formlessness of a rain sodden wilderness with a gaze. She raised her hand in farewell. They were inside time now. Like a spectre roused momentarily in greeting from the Valley of Death, he raised his head in a nod throwing light as wide as that good deed in a wicked world before passing on with elegant mastery into the gloom forever.
[1] The Book of Wisdom from The Wisdom Books. Chp 7 lines 27-32