Plait Their Hair Into Submission

Christine sat for a long time thinking of how well she understood Sean. Amazing, she thought. Simply amazing.

She uncrossed her legs and shifted in her seat. Leaning forward, she gently fussed with Sean’s oxygen tube. Then she glanced at the fluid levels in the IV drip and finally let her gaze settle on the heart monitor. It beeped only every so often, with increasing irregularity.

Her ex-husband, Sean, had been in a motorcycle accident just two days prior. Fifty-two years old and a seasoned rider – he’d been on bikes for three decades now and had never once crashed. No one knew exactly how the accident happened, and Sean certainly wasn’t going to tell anyone. He had been in a medically-induced coma ever since he was transported to the hospital. Apparently, he had been semi-conscious when the first responders arrived at the scene, but had lapsed into unconsciousness shortly after their arrival. Now he was in Intensive Care – hooked up to machines and barely breathing. A punctured lung, perforated intestines, several broken ribs. Christine knew there were other injuries but she was too bleary and exhausted now to remember them all.

I guess it doesn’t matter, she thought. The nature of the injuries doesn’t matter. All I need to know is that Sean’s dying. He is going to die. How did the surgeon put it? Something along the lines of “we did the best we could, but there was simply too much trauma.” Christine reached for Sean’s hand. She studied the callouses on his palm, then turned his wrist and traced her fingertip along a large blue vein that thread across the back of his hand. She pressed his fingers to her lips and sighed deeply. She wanted so badly to cry and yet, at the same time, she wanted nothing more than to scream and rage and pull this hospital room apart. Tear it all down, piece by piece. But she swallowed the impulse. She closed her eyes for a moment, exhaling deeply. Then her eyes sprung open in response to a sudden thought.

I can retrace his footsteps, she thought. I can experience that day right alongside of him. I know Sean so well, all I have to do is study his face, hold his hand. He’ll tell me without using words. He’ll let me simply imagine it. And so, still holding his hand to her lips, she took in his face, watched as his closed eyelids involuntarily twitched. And she began to imagine, with perfect clarity, the precise events that led to the father of her two girls dying, moment by moment, in this hospital room.

***

Sean had taken a ride north up Route 33 toward the towns of Taft and Maricopa. A ride he knew well – a two lane highway that took long, sinuous curves through the mountain range that ran through Los Padres National Forest in California.  Sometimes the highway perched right at the edge of steep canyon walls and as you took the turn you could see the land simply falling away, nothing but an open chasm just ten feet from the edge of the asphalt. Further north, the topography leveled out and the road chiseled straight through a valley floor. Cattle ranches lined the side of the highway, their gates left wide-open to a drive that lead to a dusty homestead and a cavernous barn. The feed lots were strangely empty of cattle and this fact always struck Sean as odd. Trailers hitched to new, glistening trucks were often parked by the barn, as if ready to receive the ghost cattle that were simply never there.

Most rides, Sean had a destination in mind. On this particular day, he was heading to Camp Scheideck – a roadside bar that was a destination for many riders. Scheideck was rustic, low-lit and tattered. Bras, dollar bills and Mardi Gras beads hung from the ceiling. Budweiser posters that alternated between images of Clydesdale horses and bikini-clad women peeled from the walls where they had been thumbtacked years, if not decades, before. A set of deer antlers hung above the mirrored bar, a pair of lacy red underpants slung from one antler point to another like a summertime hammock. Someone had tucked a Papa Smurf figurine into the cotton crotch; its perpetual plastic smile leered down at the barflies below like a Peeping Tom.

Gnarled men sat at the barstools, their lady friends beside them. They shouted out their orders to the fry cook, tossed back third and fourth shots of whiskey, licked the salt and ketchup from their mustaches. Occasionally, they lead their ladies to the dance floor and embraced in a slow shuffle dance, the old floorboards creaking beneath their weight.

Sean had spent the better part of that fateful afternoon at Scheideck. But he’d been well behaved. Two beers and one shot of Jameson stretched across a full meal and a handful of hours. No chance that he was drunk, or even tipsy. He had danced with a single lady who had been sitting at the bar, her hair plaited into a long, blonde braid that hung to her waist. That was the custom among the motorcycle ladies - to wear their hair in braids so that it wouldn’t tangle in the wind. To Sean, the braids looked like dog leads or horse bridles, as if the women were harnessed.

Kathy was her name. She rode a bike, too. Had her own Harley and wore black leather chaps with fringe along the outer seam. She laughed easily - sometimes longer than necessary, Sean thought. But she was fun and eager and they were both there by themselves. Why not enjoy some company? Why not feel the thrill of a lady’s attention, the wiggle of her hips out there on the dance floor? It was nice to have someone to hold on to even if just for an afternoon. Even if he already knew that he wouldn’t see her again.  Wouldn’t see her again even if he wanted to.

Sean’s life didn’t permit him to see ladies a second time. In fact, Sean’s life didn’t permit him to do much of anything fun a second time. His schedule was nearly impossible for nurturing a relationship, let alone a marriage. He was divorced and father to twin girls - four years old now - whom he housed and reared 50% of the time. His ex-wife still lived in their old house in Oxnard, but he had since moved to Carpinteria so that he could be closer to the offshore oil rig where he had been working for the last ten years, the rig called Platform Holly. He worked on Platform Holly every two out of four weeks, 12- hour shifts, day or night depending on the schedule, for fourteen consecutive days. Then he would return to shore for his two-week break, only it would be his turn with the girls. Two weeks sweating the electric system on a rig, followed by two weeks sweating life as a single dad.

Platform Holly was an unholy place. It was a minute-to-minute grind. For the first year he was employed there, the novelty of travelling back and forth from the platform via helicopter was a rush. He had also felt a deep appreciation for bonding so intensely with the other workers. Life on an oil rig forced a brotherhood – similar, he imagined, to the bond felt between firefighters, soldiers or even inmates. But the brotherhood had since lost its luster, if not its loyalty. And though he still had a kinship with the workers, they were all of them bone tired. Too exhausted even to drum up much conversation over a game of cards, or in the gym while they spotted each other weight-lifting. They were quiet now, living aside each other in relative silence, conversing just enough to get the job done.

So, a day off at Scheideck presented Sean with the perfect reprieve. His neighbor had agreed to watch his girls and he had an eight-hour window in which to do exactly as he pleased. Well, a ride up the 33 was exactly as he pleased. And so was all the freedom that came with it – the wind, the glare of the sun, the thrum of the motor, the grip of the handlebars. Even the single ladies at the bar. He started talking to Kathy not twenty minutes after arriving, and within two hours he had his hands up her shirt out on the dance floor. Her nipples were soft and ripe, her breasts supple and comforting. He felt a swelling beneath the zipper of his jeans as she swiveled her hips in time with the music. I like her just enough, he thought. Just enough to take her outside.

Sean wasn’t insensitive and neither was Kathy. But they were both of them hard up, and lonelier for the wear. Like Sean, Kathy was also divorced, also a single parent. She worked as a postal carrier for the UPS up toward Taft. Drove a mail truck along the rural routes five days out of seven and then came home to fix dinner, assist with homework, fix whatever needed fixing however she saw fit. During the holiday season she wore a necklace of tiny Christmas lights that flickered on and off.  Come Easter, she and her kids hung large, plastic eggs from the spindly tree that grew in her front yard. She liked to drink canned beer and, on the weekends that her kids went to their dad’s, she rode her Harley. Daffodil, she called it, even though the bike was matte black.

“That’s fuckin’ weird,” Sean said. “A Harley called Daffodil?!” He scoffed, but then added, “Kinda sexy, I guess.” Kathy laughed, once again longer than Sean thought was warranted. But she was kind, she was pretty enough, she was fun enough. Her breath was sweet and a little spicy – kind of like cinnamon or nutmeg. Like pumpkin cookies.

Sean gestured with his head toward the front door.

“I thought you’d never ask,” she said, laughing.

“I usually get ‘round to it eventually,” he said. “No need to rush such things.” He glanced at his watch. “S’pose my clock is ticking now, though.”

“Well, let’s get a move on then,” Kathy said. Sean nodded, then led her by the hand out onto the front porch, past a dog tied to a post, and toward the bathrooms that were in a stand-alone building across the dirt road.  He tried the men’s bathroom first, but it was locked.

“Occupied!” shouted a man’s voice. Sean looked at Kathy and shrugged his shoulders. He had felt non-committal all along, so perhaps the locked door was a narrow escape.

“Ah man, don’t give up so easy,” Kathy said. “Let’s try the ladies room.”

“Alright then,” Sean replied. He followed her to the other side of the building where the door to the ladies room had been left propped open. Kathy pulled Sean inside, bolted the door and fell on him like a starved animal.

“Jeez,” he said. “Hungry, aren’t you?”

“No time,” she said. “One bathroom, lots of ladies.” With one swift motion she pulled down both her chaps and her jeans. Then she turned to Sean, unzipped his pants and pulled out his penis. She pumped it with four or five strokes until he was just hard enough and then turned her back to him, clinging to the rim of the porcelain sink.

Sean grabbed hold of her braid with one hand, and with the other he grasped her waist. He had the fleeting thought that he would never permit his own girls to wear braids like Kathy’s, ‘cuz look where that led. But that thought was a ruinous one and he wanted this moment – suddenly wanted it with as much hunger as Kathy did. So, he shook off the thought of his daughters, pulled Kathy’s braid with a jerk and plunged into her as deeply as he could. He grunted in relief, in an ecstatic kind of loneliness, just as she began to moan.

Sure enough, someone knocked on the door within two minutes, maybe three. But Sean and Kathy were already cleaning themselves up. He was at the paper towel dispenser and she was at the mirror straightening her braid.

It was fine, it was good enough, Sean thought to himself. A welcome release, to be sure. But he could think of nothing to say to Kathy – all his flirtation, even interest, was spent and she seemed a stranger now. He tried to smile at her but had trouble keeping eye contact. She didn’t seem to notice, though - just laughed dismissively when the knock came at the door a second time.

“Hold your horses!” she shouted. “Jeez!”

Sean unbolted the door and held it open for Kathy. She swept past the girls waiting outside, one of whom snickered, and then headed unapologetically back toward the lodge. Sean followed, head down. One of the girls who had been waiting mumbled something about it being a public bathroom and not a by-the-hour hotel. Sean thought of a smartass retort, but decided to bite his tongue. He felt humbled, and humbled people should not play the smartass.

Back at the bar, Kathy asked the bartender for a pen and wrote her name and number on a cocktail napkin. She handed it to Sean and laughed. “Case you ever want a repeat,” she said.

“Thanks,” he replied. “I just might.” He folded the napkin and put it in his back pocket, knowing already that he would never follow-up. What was the use? He liked her – but not well enough – and his schedule was too damn complicated. Always on the rig or always with the girls. He was too tired to find space for a consistent lady friend, even when he did find one that he liked more than just ‘nuf.’

But because it meant something to him to be a gentleman, he walked Kathy out to her Harley. Sure enough, her bike was matte black, but with a customized paint job across the fuel tank where the name “Daffodil” had been stenciled in mustard-yellow cursive.

“Nice artwork,” he commented. “Now I’ll be able to pick you out in a line-up.”

“Thanks,” she said. “Now I know how you think of me.” Sean winced, but Kathy just laughed – too long, once again. She put on her helmet, winked at Sean from behind the visor, and let the engine idle for a minute. She glanced at him as if she expected something, but he didn’t know what so he stayed quiet. Kathy clucked her tongue, looked a little sad and shrugged her shoulders. Then she revved her engine, waved and rode off. Sean stepped back and watched the cloud of dust from her back tire until she had turned the bend and was out of sight. Then he turned with a sigh toward his own motorcycle.

***

The ride home was only sixty-two miles or so, but it was a demanding one and sometimes took as long as an hour and a half or more. The endless turns through Los Padres slowed down progress quite a bit, especially if you got stuck behind an RV. But the scenery was beautiful. Dry river beds, mesas, canyons, pine trees, massive white rocks deposited by glaciers in fields now overgrown with chaparral. And incredibly, interspersed in all this arid landscape, were the cattle ranches. Sean never understood what the cattle ate. Sage brush? Tumbleweed? Prickly Pear? He supposed it didn’t matter since he never saw cattle anywhere, ever. Ghost cattle, he thought to himself. Remember?

As he put some distance behind him, the wind sluicing beneath his helmet and whistling in his ears, Sean began to notice a nagging irritation. An irascibility. Usually a long ride would calm him down, center him. Especially after a full meal, some liquor and the release of sex. But not today. Today he felt oddly impatient, angry even.

What the hell is this, he wondered? A perfect day, a veritable holiday from the normal grind, and I’m pissy!? I’m on my bike, I had a meal, a lady, some solitude. So, what set me off? He cast his thoughts about, hoping to hook one that might reel in the answer.

Looking down the road, he saw that there were no cars in either direction. Just wide-open asphalt. He revved the engine and felt the bike lurch forward. Is it the anticipation of returning to the rig that’s bothering me? The long days out to sea on a massive concrete platform, suspended forever under the burning sun? The acrid smell of oil baked into the creases of my skin - a smell that saturates my pillows and blankets and that lays down with me – like a bitch in heat - when I sleep? 

Sean shook his head and tightened his grip on the handlebars. He hunched his shoulders and pressed into the wind. Pressed into the speed.

Maybe it’s the twins, he thought. God, I love them. But, holy shit, are they ever a pain in the ass. Waking me up several times a night, wetting their beds, losing their belongings, arguing over toys. He recalled all the mornings he spent at the laundromat washing the pee-soaked mattress covers. Jesus, he thought, when am I gonna get my shit together and buy plastic mattress covers? For all the coins I’ve spent running laundry, I could have ten of them by now.

But at night after the twins had finally fallen asleep, he remembered how they slept with their heads inclined and their hands balled into little fists. The sight of them always cleaved his heart in two. “My little hells angels,” he called them. He would do anything for his girls. His heart ached from the very fullness of loving them so.

The road took a sharp turn to the right. Sean leaned into the turn and then, once the road straightened, accelerated again. He watched the dial on the speedometer move steadily from 45 mph to 60 and then 65 mph.

But Christ Almighty, he thought. How they scream when I try to brush out the tangles in their hair. They could shatter glass. He remembered Kathy then, and how her hair was braided so that it wouldn’t tangle. He could do the same with his girls – plait their hair into submission. But the thought sent a bolt of searing shame that pierced him to the quick. He had grabbed Kathy’s braid like a set of reins. Jerked her head backward in the same instant that he plunged into her. Even though she hadn’t protested, he still felt that he had violated her. Violated her in a dingy bathroom full of scrawled obscenities and leaky plumbing.

But she wanted it, he thought. Kathy wanted me to take her like that. We both wanted it. She laughed and moaned the whole fucking time. I haven’t done anything wrong.

But the thought of a man violating his daughters in a similar way – even if he were to fast-forward in time and they were twenty-five years old and the act was purely consensual – made him want to vomit. Made him feel an acute and violent need to protect them.

No one wants a bridle, he thought. No one wants to be harnessed. But if that was the case, then why did Kathy moan? Was it a moan of pleasure? Or a moan of surrender?

Sean adjusted his weight on the motorcycle saddle and the bike yielded beneath his bulk.

All of us are fucking harnessed, he thought. Harnessed to our jobs, to our familial responsibilities, to our schedules. All of us, he thought, men and women alike – we’re all wearing long braids down our backs that some higher power uses as a choke chain, to jerk us around. To overpower us. I’m no freer than a beast of burden. None of us are. Kathy isn’t it. Christine isn’t. I sure as hell ain’t. My girls likely won’t be either.

Sean saw a turn coming and decided to take it without slowing down. He would just cut the curve by keeping to the middle of the road. Find the straight line, exactly as a cop had explained to him once about how police were trained to maintain speed in a car chase. It was no more complex than geometry. In his mind’s eye, he could see the dotted line cutting through the sinuous turns, and he steered his motorcycle straight into it.

Sean leaned into his handlebars. Goddamned beast of burden, he thought. He tucked his chin. Hunched his shoulders. Just a hamster on a wheel, racing home to indentured servitude. Sean shifted the right handlebar. Accelerated to 75 and then 80 mph. The sound of the engine drowned out his thoughts. All of his thoughts, except for one last thought that rang louder than the roar of his taxed engine.

These fucking freedom rides are a complete fucking joke.

As he came around the bend of the turn, he saw in a sudden blur what looked like a waterfall of shaggy brown. A bulk of animal mass standing on four hooved feet dead center in the middle of the road. It was one of his nicknamed “ghost cattle,” whose horns pointed due east and west. It held its snout upturned in sudden alarm, locked in a forever pose just like the Poppa Smurf figurine that leered down from the antler chandelier at Camp Scheideck.

And then he hit. Dead center. Heard a terrible, muffled tumult. Felt his body catapult off the Harley. Sensed something grazing his fingers that was warm and pliant. And then he smashed into something hard and unyielding.   

***

That was it, Christine thought. Simple as two and two. No more complex than simple mathematics. Her prior feelings of rage had evaporated, and now all she felt was a tremendous sense of loss. She didn’t want to rip the hospital room apart anymore. All she wanted to do was cry.

I always told him he lived his life too hard, she thought. He was too blunt. Too gripped. Too cynical. His kind of living was just too raw and jaded.

She kissed Sean’s fingertips one by one. Blew into his hands as if that meagre attempt might infuse some life back into his broken, mangled body. But the heart monitor didn’t register a change. The irregular bleeps had all but ceased. She scooted her chair forward and lay her head on his chest. That same chest where she had laid her head when they were first blissfully in love, then hastily married due to pregnancy, and then again when they were the beleaguered parents to newborn twins. By that point, her bliss had turned to a mounting resentment, but still she had rested her head on his chest – even up to that painfully sad night when they had finally decided to divorce. And here she was again. Single and in love now with someone new, but with her head on Sean’s chest just the same.

She paused as a tide of tenderness overwhelmed her – tenderness and gratitude for their shared history, for their beautiful girls, for the fact that God had graced her with the chance to lay her head on Sean’s chest and accompany him at such a critical juncture. A stillness came over Christine – a loving, quiet acceptance. She watched with eyes wide open as his belly rose one last time, kept her eyes open as she heard the last bleep on the heart monitor lapse into a long, steady flatline. A flatline like the humming of a mosquito, like the sustained, deep tones of an engine working at full throttle.

Christine blinked when she heard a sound at the door and then closed her eyes when she felt someone enter the room and stand there, bearing silent witness. After a few moments, she heard the nurse sigh.

“Oh, honey,” the nurse said, her voice thick with compassion. “Honey, he’s gone now. He’s passed on.” Christine let out a sharp cry and pressed her face into Sean’s chest. The nurse stepped nearer and paused a moment more. Then Christine felt warm, kind hands grip her by the shoulders and gently pull her to a sitting position.

“Sweetheart,” the nurse said. “I’m so sorry.” She looked at Christine with a softness that threatened to pull her apart at the seams. “But your girls,” the nurse continued, “they’ve been alone in the waiting room for a long while now. They’re scared and asking for you. I think you need to go to them. Maybe not right this second, but pretty soon now.”

Christine nodded, wiped away her tears and blew her nose into the tissue that the nurse handed her. Then she took a deep breath and, on wobbly legs, stepped into the hallway. Never wanting to be apart, the two girls sat pressed against each other in a single chair. One was talking quietly to her stuffed animal while the other cast a forlorn glance at the floor, her legs and feet dangling from the chair. When they heard their mother call their names, they looked up at her expectantly.

“Come here, sweet peas,” Christine said. “Let me give you both a hug and then I’ll tell you about what’s happened to Daddy.”