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  WILLIAM WELLS

  THE PERMANENT PRESS

  Sag Harbor, NY 11963

  Copyright © 2014 by William Wells

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication, or parts thereof, may be reproduced in any form, except for the inclusion of brief quotes in a review, without the written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, unless explicitly noted, is entirely coincidental.

  For information, address:

  The Permanent Press

  4170 Noyac Road

  Sag Harbor, NY 11963

  www.thepermanentpress.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Wells, William—

  Ride away home / William Wells.

  pages cm

  ISBN 978-1-57962-359-3

  1. Fathers and daughters—Fiction. 2. Children—Death—Psychological aspects—Fiction. 3. Children of the rich—Fiction. 4. Bereavement—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3623.E4795R53 2014

  813'.6—dc23

  2014014218

  Printed in the United States of America

  For our grandson Jack Ambrose Wells, brand-new to our world.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Martin and Judith Shepard, co-owners of The Permanent Press of Sag Harbor, New York, took my submitted manuscript on a vacation to Morocco. When they returned, they called me, both on the line, told me how much they liked Ride Away Home, and that they wanted to publish it. If there is a nicer phone call for a writer to get, I don’t know what it might be. The Permanent Press is a safe harbor for writers in the stormy seas of today’s book publishing world, and I am both honored and grateful to be on their list.

  Judith improved the book with her editorial suggestions, as did copy editor Barbara Anderson, who saved me from committing errors of spelling, grammar and logic. Lon Kirschner, who is a motorcycle man himself, did an excellent cover design.

  I am indebted to friends who were first readers of this novel and who offered both encouragement and helpful suggestions for improvements.

  Finally, and most importantly, even though I’d started and stopped several novels over the years without finishing them, my wife Mary continued to offer support and encouragement for my writing, even when there was no apparent reason for her to do so. Every writer should be so lucky.

  “In the middle of the journey of our life

  I came to myself within a dark wood where the straight way was lost.”

  —DANTE ALIGHIERI, “The Inferno”

  1

  I’ve driven this stretch of I-94, which runs east and west across the broad belly of Wisconsin’s black-loamed farmland, countless times over the years. But never before on a motorcycle. And not just any motorcycle, but a brand-new Harley-Davidson Road King Classic with a “hard candy lucky green flake” custom paint job, as the manufacturer calls the color.

  It’s a real beast of a machine that I’m riding for the first time, except for a training session in the dealer’s parking lot in Minneapolis that lasted less than an hour, not nearly enough time to build any level of confidence in my two-wheel ability.

  When I started and revved the Harley’s engine in my garage early this morning, I flinched at the loud, percussive explosion of valves and pistons coming suddenly to life as the noise reverberated off the garage walls: VROOOM! VROOOM! VROOOM! Until then, I’d only heard the engine run outside—the difference between a jungle cat’s roar in your living room and in the wild. Two kids from the Harley dealership trucked my new motorcycle to my house three days ago and pushed it into the garage. I’ve had a lot to do preparing for this trip, including going to the DMV to get my motorcycle license learner’s permit, so the cycle remained there, idle until this morning.

  I powered the cycle out of the garage, feeding it too much gas at first, in danger of being bucked off, then panic-stopped, and closed the overhead door with a remote, which I stowed in the glove compartment. Yes, the Harley has a glove compartment, as well as antilock brakes, cruise control, GPS, and a Bose stereo system with Bluetooth headphones: the full tilt boogie, cycle-wise. There is some other stuff too, which I’ll learn about when I take the time to read the owner’s manual. For now, it’s in my saddlebags, still in its shrink wrap.

  As I eased down my driveway and into the street at seven A.M., I felt as if I’d had a brief ground school session and was now taxiing along a runway for my first solo airplane flight. My neighbor, Stan Delahaye, collecting his newspaper on his front porch, gave me a curious look and a wave. Stan is an orthopedic surgeon at the Hennepin County Medical Center, so maybe he was thinking: see you in my OR, Jack. I was too nervous to take a hand off the grip to return Stan’s wave, so I just nodded my head at him.

  As the Harley and I made our way slowly through my neighborhood, turning heads and causing dogs to bark, I wouldn’t have minded if my new motorcycle came with training wheels like my first bicycle, at least until I got more comfortable with the whole affair, whenever that would be. But training wheels are one of the few options the Harley-Davidson Motor Company does not offer. So I’ll either improve en route, or not.

  But this is a trip I have to make, or at least attempt to make, even though it’s a very chilly March 1, and I’ve come this far, two hours from home now on the beginning of a very long ride. Fortunately, the Alberta Clippers that brought snow and subzero temperatures to the Upper Midwest for much of the winter have subsided, at least for a while, and I have a window of relative warmth, 30s and 40s, and dry roads, as I head south to a warmer climate.

  I’VE BEEN gradually adding speed as cars and trucks whoosh past me, at first just trying to stay above the minimum legal speed of forty-five mph, and finally pushing the Harley up to seventy. At that point, I would have pushed a button to jettison the training wheels, like fuel tanks falling away from a space vehicle. Now that I’m booking it, I find that the Harley is behaving like a thoroughbred finally given its head, meant to run flat out, the only open question being: am I?

  I am Jack Tanner, a fifty-two-year-old tax attorney with the largest law firm in Minneapolis. I am a devoted husband to my wife, Jenna; an adoring father to our daughter, Hope; a former Eagle Scout; a solid, civic-minded citizen who serves on committees and charitable boards; a good neighbor (at least I try to be); a recycler of refuse (although I have reasonable doubt about the value to the earth of doing this, having read in the New York Times that the amount of energy consumed in the recycling process outweighs the value of natural resources saved, but Jenna and Hope still want us to do it); a generous tipper if well-served, and sometimes even if not (a waitperson has to make a living); a payer of taxes (although I do take full advantage of loopholes in the tax codes); a voter who values character and qualifications over party affiliation; a registered organ donor; a contributor to charities Jenna and I consider worthy and to my undergraduate university and law school; a buyer of whatever a neighborhood kid comes to my door selling (especially if the product is Girl Scout cookies, Thin Mints being my weakness); a respectable fourteen handicap. If “salt of the earth” were not such a cliché, I might reasonably add that characteristic to my résumé, too.

  I am, prima facie, the last kind of guy you’d expect to find—that I’d expect to find—leather-clad, booted, and bubble-helmeted, streaking toward the horizon astride a big-ass motorcycle at the beginning of a twenty-three hundred mile journey.

  So far, it’s going reasonably well, meaning that I haven
’t dumped the cycle, or chickened out and gone back home. Especially troublesome are the big semitrailer trucks, which create sucking vacuums as they pass that feel as if they could pull me under their wheels. Mercedes and BMW sedans have been my vehicles of choice, as soon as I could afford them, which is when I made partner at Hartfield, Miller, Simon & Swensen. Before then, it was Volvos and Saabs, chosen for their safety, quality, and affordability on an associate’s salary, except for a red Pontiac GTO convertible with a 325-horsepower V8 and four-barrel carburetor, an indulgence Jenna kindly allowed me before our daughter was born.

  As some men age, they feel the need to compensate for shrinking muscle mass and plummeting testosterone levels by wrapping themselves in valves and pistons and fuel-injected carburetion. They buy Porsche Turbos, or opt for the sport package on their family sedans, or drive big SUVs with all the off-road options: raised bodies, oversized tires, full-time four-wheel drive, and front brush guards, all ready for the Australian bush country, which they are unlikely to encounter on their way to work or to the dry cleaners. One of my friends has a tricked-out (magenta!) pickup truck; the only load I’ve ever seen in the rear bed is his golf clubs. A fortunate few ride the really big iron: private jets, or motor yachts the size of navy destroyers—a mine’s-bigger-than-yours kind of thing.

  But, for me, taking this long road trip on a fire-breathing, highway-eating, hard candy lucky green flake Harley-Davidson Road King Classic motorcycle isn’t a male midlife crisis kind of thing. My crisis just happened to come at midlife and has nothing at all to do with shrinking muscle mass and declining testosterone levels.

  2

  I flip up my helmet’s dark-tinted plastic face shield, wanting to feel the wind on my face, even if it means risking frostbite. Glancing skyward, I see a red-tailed hawk languidly riding the air currents rising off the rolling undulations of the Wisconsin farm fields on this perfect March morning. The rich black soil is still frozen; spring planting won’t begin for at least another month when the farmers will sow the seeds for a nature’s bounty of corn, soybeans, and alfalfa. Heartland America.

  The hawk banks right, its gaze painting the landscape like a laser beam from a warplane’s weapons system as it hunts breakfast: a rabbit, or mole, or snake. Absent that, road kill would do: flattened pancakes of fur, meat, blood, bone, and gristle, just like the carcass of some small animal I barely managed to avoid a few miles back.

  Coming up on my right is a white two-story farmhouse behind a windbreak stand of jack pine. Near the house is the ramshackle skeleton of a red barn with a peeling, faded Mail Pouch Tobacco sign—“Chew Mail Pouch Tobacco/Treat Yourself To The Best”—painted on its side. Next to the barn is a newer outbuilding constructed of corrugated metal. Maybe a son has inherited this spread and, unlike most rural sons, has decided to remain on the land, declaring his commitment with the new structure. Or maybe that’s a vision of farm life as outdated as the Mail Pouch sign, this spread now owned by an agribusiness corporation, its fields worked by tenant farmers, with an MBA overseer analyzing production quotas and commodity prices on his computer from an office in a city.

  Powering up a long uphill grade, I come upon an eighteen-wheeler with a “How Am I Driving?” sign on the back, and an 800 number to call if anyone cares to answer the question or to apply for a driver’s job. The big truck can only do fifty up the grade, so I gun the Harley—getting bolder now—and lean left into the passing lane.

  The Road King’s engine emits a rumbling, percussive, percolating sound: “potato-potato-potato” it seems to be saying, this exhaust note so distinctive, I once read in a law review article, that the Harley-Davidson Company of Milwaukee tried unsuccessfully to trademark it.

  When I’ve run up beside the semi, I notice that it bears the name and logo of the Green Giant Company. It’s a refrigerated truck, called a reefer, hauling frozen vegetables—peas, brussels sprouts, corn, green beans, lima beans—from the company’s processing plant in Le Sueur, a small Minnesota town sixty miles south of Minneapolis. I know this because, over the years, I’ve posted hundreds of billable hours to my law firm’s Green Giant account.

  The trucker gives me a thumbs-up salute. I answer with a nod, still not confident enough to drive one-handed. This exchange pleases me. It is, at least in my mind, an initiation into the brotherhood of the open road. Or maybe he just likes the motorcycle.

  A pale sun is just beginning to warm the land. I’m prepared for any weather. Along with the Harley, I purchased a complete riding ensemble: helmet, black leather jacket with zippered pockets, black leather chaps to wear over my jeans, black leather boots, and black leather gloves. A yellow rain suit is rolled into the saddlebags. Under my leathers, I’m wearing thermal underwear plus a flannel shirt and jeans; I’m comfortable enough, although sitting in my easy chair back home with a mug of hot coffee and the fireplace blazing would be better. Checking myself out in my full-length bedroom mirror this morning before heading out to the garage, I thought I looked more like the biker character in the Village People than an authentic Harley guy.

  FOUR DAYS ago, I bought my motorcycle at Hog Heaven, which is what the locals call the Harley-Davidson dealership on Broadway in Minneapolis. I call it Toyland.

  “Hi there!” a woman called out as I entered the showroom. She walked over and offered her hand. “I’m Brenda and I’ll be your server today.” Like she was a waitress.

  “Jack Tanner,” I said.

  “Feel free to look around, Jack, and let me know if you have any questions,” she answered.

  Brenda was pretty enough until she got close and I noticed the lines in her face, and that her shock of short blonde hair didn’t likely come from her DNA. She was probably in her mid-to-late forties, and had a good body, an asset that could trump her flaws, in my opinion, especially if the bar was dark and you’d had a few beers. Well, she wasn’t selling cosmetics in Neiman Marcus. Especially with the barbed wire tattoo around one of her biceps. Of course, this was a typical male, sexist analysis of the lady, and I’m no George Clooney myself, so who knows what she was thinking of the likes of me, walking into her dealership.

  I told Brenda I was just browsing, which maybe I was, still undecided about my mode of transportation for my upcoming road trip. At that point, not knowing enough about the inventory to have any questions, I wandered around the big neon-illuminated showroom, admiring the rich, lustrous paint jobs and glistening chrome of the motorcycles. Just sitting there, leaning on their kickstands, they positively radiated kinetic energy. Just turn the key and I’m ready to rumble, they seemed to be thinking.

  A full quarter of the floor space was devoted to Harley-Davidson merchandise, with racks and stacks of leathers and denims and sports clothes; helmets and boots and saddlebags; and every manner of Harley logo items: coffee and beer mugs, baby clothes, metal-studded belts, dog collars and leashes (think pit bull), jewelry, coffee table books displaying sexy glamour shots of the bikes … Welcome to Harley World, I thought, it’s not just a ride, it’s a cult. Scientology on wheels. Did I really want to drink that Kool-Aid? Maybe it was too over-the-top for a guy like me—except for the overriding fact that I didn’t want to be a guy like me anymore.

  Brenda found me checking out a sleek black low-slung model displayed on a raised platform. I thought it looked like a panther, ready to hop down and run. A sign said it was a “V-Rod Night Rod Special,” and could be mine for just shy of seventeen thousand bucks.

  “So, Jack, any of these got your name on it?” Brenda asked. I hadn’t realized she was standing behind me.

  “Maybe.”

  Still not committed. Especially not to a custom job like the V-Rod. Maybe flying to Key West wasn’t such a bad idea after all. Maybe staying home was an even better idea.

  “Ever had a bike before?” Brenda wanted to know, although she must have known the answer. Had she ever had a customer wearing Topsiders?

  “Not since my Schwinn.”

  I left out the part about the trainin
g wheels.

  “Okay. We got Softails, Dyna Glides, Road Kings, Electra Glides, Sportsters, and these V-Rods. A ride for every occasion.”

  “I’m not sure what kind I want,” I admitted.

  “Not a problem,” Brenda said. “How ya going to use it? Maybe take the wife to Dairy Queen on weekends?”

  A logical conclusion.

  “I’m planning a ride down to Florida.”

  Brenda looked impressed.

  “Hey now. We got ourselves a player here.” She began walking down the aisle. “Let’s look over here.”

  She led me over to one of the rows where the biggest cycles were displayed.

  “You’ll want one of these heavy-duty touring models for a long haul, a Road King or Electra Glide. That way you’ll arrive with your kidneys intact.”

  I walked over to one of the bikes. It was green, my favorite color, with sparkly flakes in the paint. The paint job seemed as good a way as any to choose, given that I was clueless about the actual machinery.

  “That’d be my choice too,” she said. “The Road King Classic, in hard candy lucky green flake. Sweet as they come. Big enough to eat up the interstates, but less bulky than the Electra Glides, which the cops favor.” She patted the leather saddle. “Mount up, cowboy. Let’s see how she fits.”

  It fit just fine.

  I was startled a few minutes later, after I’d signed the sales contract and handed over my credit card, earning lots of airline miles, when a man behind the parts counter began ringing a brass ship’s bell bolted on the wall: BONG! BONG! BONG!

  When the ringing stopped, all available dealership staff shouted out, “Another Harley owner! Welcome to the family!” This reminded me of those T.G.I. Friday’s kind of restaurants where the wait staff surrounds your table to sing “Happy Birthday.” Surveying the showroom crew and the other customers who were roaming around, none of whom looked like a tax attorney, I felt that it was maybe like joining the Manson family.