Motorbike Fear

by Meg Freer

A bad influence on us, our mother thought—hard-drinking, cigar-smoking, motorcycle-riding Uncle Francis, with that wild look in his eyes—and she was adamant he could not take us girls for a ride on his bike. Oh, how we were terrified at the thought of whizzing up and down the hilly streets of The Dalles and along the Columbia Gorge where we might tumble off into the raging river like the suitcases sliced off the roof of the car one summer by the serrated muscle of wind that blows down the gorge—the rocky shore flowered with our mother’s silky underwear and the river strewn with shirts and socks—and if our mother cried about broken suitcases, how much more she would grieve for our broken bodies if we fell off that bike.