Photo by Keyur Jadav on Unsplash
by Michael Czyzniejewski
Outside Sturgis, I picture him dispatching me with the nonchalance of a wild stallion shooing a fly, a wag of its tail, me left bleeding in a roadside ditch, the constant buzz of engines masking my waning pleas for help. Our boys, abandoned, would get by busing tables at Wall Drug, living in dorms with the Chinese workers on summer visas. Pia, however. Pia would be the prize. Pia would kick and scream because she’s Pia, but it wouldn’t matter, no match for the thick, tan arms of her captor, slung on the back of his hog, fighting her best fight until he took off, then gripping his concrete abs for all her life, tearing down the open highway, lost among so many other women on so many other bikes, perhaps taken like her, perhaps volunteers, from what she gauges in Deadwood, all so content, so in love with their riders, making Pia relax just a little, thoughts of me lingering in the back of her head, yet starving for that brisket they find near the Badlands, washing it down with her first pre-noon beer since college, feeling like she finally belongs when Pipewrench—that’s his name, I’m certain—outfits her with her own leather chaps, a matching fringed vest, and a flaming skull bandana, keeping her hair out of her eyes, those deep, blue eyes that Pipewrench says remind him of the ocean, making Pia blush as she waits on their bed in the Super 8, Pipewrench showering, Pia considering the door, the room phone, the keys to the bike on the nightstand, nothing keeping her from escaping, nothing keeping her from rescuing me, nothing except Pipewrench’s wide shoulders and sun-bleached hair and scruffy beard that feels like tiny caterpillars on her face, his chest two marble cutting boards, a smile like he’s gotten away with everything throughout his entire life and always will, Pia’s heart skipping when the water stops and Jaxson—his given name, I’d bet—emerges, cracking a beer for each of them then dropping his towel, Pia gasping as if it’s the first day of her new, more fulfilling life. Where you from in Illinois? the Pipewrench figure asks at the rest stop, eyeing our Buick’s plates, nodding when I say Peoria, wishing us a safe trip, the boys still in the bathroom, Pia noting, with nonchalance, that he seemed like a really nice guy.
Michael Czyzniejewski is the author of four collections of stories, most recently The Amnesiac in the Maze (Braddock Avenue Books, 2023). He serves as Editor-in-Chief of Moon City Press and Moon City Review, as well as Interviews Editor of SmokeLong Quarterly. He has received a fellowship from the National Endowment of the Arts and two Pushcart Prizes.
