Wheeler
Wheeler
FRANK MC CLELLAND
CLARENCE DOBY and I had been next door neighbors for years, and of all my suburban acquaintances and friends, he was definitely the most engaging. He was very poorly named—Clarence joked about his father's predominantly unpleasant disposition and often attributed his name to it. Clarence was a burly, dark-haired fellow of medium height and rather rustic in his mannerisms. His well-trimmed goatee and the scarcity of his smiles gave him an almost fierce countenance-hardly the type one would expect to be named Clarence.
Perhaps his most conspicuous characteristic was his interest in motorcycles. Clarence owned a big English-built machine, which received a greater share of attention than did his pretty young wife. (This I’d learned from many an emotion charged conversation with the woman.) He referred to the machine as his “bike“-not what I’d call that growling two-wheeled missile—and kept it running like a fine watch, and in showroom condition. According to Clarence, the machine had a mind of its own, and he could talk for hours about it and the experiences he’d had while riding.
Clarence also was a member in good standing of a large, well-known (to the point of nearly being notorious) motorcycle club. Like many in the club, he had acquired a nickname. During the election of club officers he successfully ran for the office of “viceprez.” His “campaigning” had consisted of constant pestering, questioning, and even threatening fellow club members to support him. These tactics were termed “wheeling and dealing” by one of the more profound members of the group, and from this Clarence gained the tag “Wheeler.” Clarence liked his new name, and frowned rather gruesomely at anyone, thereafter, who called him by his true name.
It wasn’t long before the Wheeler and I became good friends, because I was the only one in the neighborhood who would listen to his talk of motorcycles. I do admit to enjoying the tales he could tell of his riding buddies and their wild times, but there was always a trace of sly humor (sometimes bordering on the macabre) that would leave me wondering which one of us was deceiving the other more—I, in pretending to believe, or he, in the exaggerated tellings of his stories. Despite, or maybe because of this “who’s putting on whom?” atmosphere, we were good friends. It was because of this friendship that I first heard of plans for what the police and the National Guard would consider a menace to the community.
It all started one warm summer evening while I was sitting out in the backyard, enjoying the bliss of doing nothing. Then suddenly I heard the distant rumble of Wheeler and his machine on their approach run to the garage. The noise increased, exploded between the houses and ended abruptly in Wheeler’s garage with the flash of a headlight and the slam of a wooden door.
“You’re home early tonight, aren’t you?” I asked the approaching silhouette.
“Yeah...hell!” was the reply, as Wheeler dropped into a lawn chair.
“Something wrong?”
“I’m in love.”
“What?” I lurched forward, dropping my cigarette. “With who?” I asked, half pondering the grief facing his young wife.
“Remember Squirrel, the guy that came over last week?” he asked sullenly.
“Yeah.” Squirrel was a seedy little character who’d visited the secret domains of Wheeler’s garage.
“Well, Squirrel got a new bike yesterday-a Sportster—and I’m in love.”
“With Squirrel?” I stammered.
“No, no, hell no! With his bike,” and he spent the next two hours telling me about how beautiful Squirrel’s new machine looked and sounded, how it was as fast, if not faster, than any of the other club members’ cycles. He concluded with, “I have to have a Harley now,” before moving off into the darkness.
About a week later, I heard a roar followed by a slow chug-chugging rumble outside my window. I glanced out and discovered Wheeler in my driveway astride a big purple motorcycle. He saw me and waved. I ran out and greeted him with, “What’s that?”
“It’s my new hog and I’m going to make it a chopper,” he replied.
“A hog?”
“A Harley-Davidson, jerk,” he exclaimed, “and I’m going to build a chopper out of it and ...” he went on for 45 minutes about the customization and modification he’d planned. Then, after taking me for a terrifyingly fast ride, he rolled it into his garage and I saw little of him or the machine for a month.
Then, on a Saturday afternoon, he came bounding out of his house dressed in black leather from head to foot and with a bright blue helmet tucked under his arm.
“Want to go for a ride on muh chopper?”
“Huh? Your chopper?” I dropped the newspaper I’d been reading, leaped up from the chair and strode after him into the old wooden garage. There, amid scattered tools and a hodge-podge of spare parts, stood his “chopper.” It was trimmed in the prettiest candy-blue paint and an abundance of highly polished chrome. It bore little resemblance to the big purple Harley he’d had a month ago, but he assured me it was the same machine— only lower, lighter, and with almost one-third more horsepower.
Wheeler stood back like a new father and beamed in admiration of his work. “Like it?”
“Yeah, it’s a tough looking little honker,” I replied, hoping my use of slang had covered the situation.
Following this “unveiling,” Wheeler was out almost every night, either doubled-up with his wife aboard, or with the guys in his club. Things went fine for about a week. Then, one night he came roaring in early.
“Something up?” I asked, as he approached his usual chair and slumped into it.
“Gotta paint my bike,” he replied iri a grunt.
“Paint it? Why?” I asked, imagining horrible scratches from a crash or maybe even chain marks from some other cyclists on unfriendly terms with Wheeler and his buddies.
“Aw, some little kid on a popcorn popper has candy-blue paint and he says it came stock,” he groaned, with what I thought was mock sadness.
“You’re gonna put out more loot for paint just because some dumb kid’s got the same stuff?”
“Yeah, the kid said a lot bikes will be coming out of the factories in candy colors now, and I CAN’t have my chopper in the same paint class as a popcorn popper!” he said with growing seriousness.
About two weeks later, he pulled me into the garage to see the new paint.
“Cost me a hundred and fifty greenies.”
“Looks boss, man,” I observed, and then, trying not to sound completely ignorant, I asked, “What is it?”
“Metalflake gold,” was the reply. Metalflake, he went on to explain, was a series of paint layers covering tiny metal particles which give the surface a glitter and depth effect. Under the right light it produces a myriad of beautifully eye-catching reflections and sparkle. Even under the single light in the dark garage the paint seemed alive with the sparkle of a fine gem.
Again Wheeler was happy, but, alas, it did not last. A few weeks later, he came back to sit and to stare off into the darkness.
“Gotta paint my chopper,” he remarked, after a few minutes of silence.
“Again? What’s wrong this time?”
“All the guys are having their bikes flaked like mine,” he said slowly.
“So?”
“So? I can’t have my chopper looking like everybody else’s, can I?” he replied in near desperation.
“I guess you’re right,” I agreed, trying to avoid an argument. “What else can you do to it?”
“That’s just it, I can’t think of anything wild enough,” he sighed.
During the following weeks, Wheeler acquired phantom-like characteristics. He was rarely around in the daytime. Occasionally I saw him emerge from his garage with oddshaped, rag-covered bundles under his arms, climb into his car and drive away. He returned empty handed, only to drive away a few days later, and return with a similar bundle. On one occasion, I caught him returning from one of these apparent smuggling runs and asked him how things were going.
“Things are happening in there,” he said with a grimy faced grin. But he didn’t invite me into the garage, and I long ago had decided against invading the sanctuary of that paintless old garage while he was involved in this project.
Finally one afternoon in late August, Wheeler knocked at my door.
“It’s done. Come on an’ see!” he cried. He dragged me toward the old garage. Just before jostling me through the narrow side door to the dark, windowless garage, Wheeler turned to me and drew a pair of sunglasses from his shirt pocket.
“Put ’em on,” he said, drawing out another pair and putting them on himself.
“What the hell for? We’re only going into the garage, aren’t we?” I exclaimed.
“Don’t ask questions... just put them on and follow me,” he growled. He knocked open the door with an unfriendly shoulder.
“Shut the door behind you,” he said as he groped for the light switch and flicked on the overhead bulb. There, in the middle of the garage, covered with a thick cloth, was the unmistakable hulk of the chopper.
(Continued on page 99)
“Keep your glasses on.” He flicked the switch on a floor lamp and put out the overhead light. The floor lamp had a color wheel that once had illuminated an aluminum Christmas tree. The wheel was trained on the two-wheeled beast lurking under the dusty cloth cover. It spun much faster than one would expect for such a fixture. Then, with a bearded grin of boyish delight that was shockingly incongruous to him, Wheeler strode to the bike, grabbed the cloth and, there in the changing colored light, giggled like a bloody madman!
“Are you ready for the ultimate, man?” he half-giggled, half-screamed. “Yeah,” I shouted, not knowing what I’d gotten myself into this time. I secretly pondered Wheeler’s sanity, and the possibilities of leaving that dirty, little garage alive. Without a word, he tugged at the cloth cover and stumbled backward with his sunglass-covered eyes fixed on the bike. The machine suddenly burst into what seemed to be a fire with thousands of colors and light flashes. The coruscating brilliance exploded as if all the atoms of the machine’s substance had been triggered into nuclear fission. The bike sat motionless with the color wheel spinning, and piercing rays of multi-colored luminescence dancing, shooting from the machine, undulating about the garage, giving it the atmosphere of a cave with a supernatural fire pulsating at its center. And Wheeler! He stood stone still, staring at the machine, with the cloth cover still clutched in his hands, clasped to his chest.
“That’s enough,” he finally mumbled and moved at the bike like a man about to throw a net over a wild, yet unsuspecting beast. In a second the garage dimmed, and I could see Wheeler crouched over the bike as if the lights would thrust him off and resume cavorting about the garage.
“Get the big light,” he stammered, as he descended on the color wheel and extinguished it. I groped in the dark for a brief moment and flipped the light switch.
“Outside...outside,” he gasped as he struggled to the door. I followed him out and slumped down next to him in the grassy shade of the garage.
After a few minutes of strained breathing I managed, “How’d you do it?”
“Metalflake chrome,” was the solemn reply.
“Metalflake chrome?!” My chin plopped into my lap as he explained that, as far as he knew, metalflake chrome was something that had never even been tried by anyone else. Considering the involved process in chrome plating, the very thought of adhering tiny metal particles to chrome struck me as impossible-and the unbelievable effect Wheeler had obtained!
“How?” I managed to ask after a heavy silence.
At this he broke into an insane cackle, fell and rolled on the grass. Finally, he calmed himself enough to explain how he’d had his entire bike (save for the rubber fittings, seat and tires) triple chrome plated—piece by piece, which explained his “smuggling runs” to a local shop. Then he told me how he’d concocted a special clear, colorless lacquer, mixed in metalflaking particles and applied the mixture layer by layer, working up to an even dozen. He went on to explain how he’d mixed fine particles of specially formed glass in with the metal particles and the clear lacquer to obtain the effect of numerous tiny prisms. The result was a surface which reflected and shattered light beams like a million tiny jewels.
I sat in quiet disbelief.
“Have you ridden it yet?” I asked in a tone which unintentionally agitated him enough to make him sit up and stroke his beard in contemplation.
“No...,” he said quietly. Then he jumped up and ran toward the house with an overthe-shoulder, “Don’t go away!”
In a few short minutes, he came trotting back, decked in his riding leathers and a big fiendish grin.
“You’re not ...no, you’re crazy!” I shouted, as he shouldered his way through the door.
“How’re you gonna see?”
“Sunglasses and a tinted face shield..stay out there and open the door when I yell,” he said as he closed the door in my bloodless face. I stumbled around to the front of the garage and heard the click-clank of his starting lever followed by the ear shattering roar of over 70 bhp coming to life beneath Wheeler. I was beginning to feel like an accomplice to some grave crime against the community. Inside the bike roared a couple of times. Wheeler shouted something between “Help” and “Now.” Swallowing slowly, I made sure my sunglasses were still safely in place as I pulled open the door. Without a second look, I ran for cover like a soldier fleeing the whistle of a falling bomb.
Lying prone in the grass, I looked up in time to see a wildly glittering machine roar out into the sunshine and explode into a smokeless ball of fire as it moved down the drive. Then, I heard a woman’s scream, the screech of sliding tires and a loud metallic crash. Running to the street, expecting the worst, I drew up abruptly and saw a woman clutching two small, terrified children to her skirt and staring up the street in what looked very much like shock. Across the street a car had plowed through a group of garbage cans and into a fire hydrant. Water sprayed from the hydrant to a 10-ft. fount as the car’s driver stumbled about in a daze pointing frantically in the direction of the woman’s stare and screaming, “Did you see it? Did you see it?” I looked up the street in time to see the ball of many-colored fires moving away in a roar.
Wheeler didn’t come back that night. I did my best to comfort his poor wife, but I had doubts myself as to his safety-or sanity. The radio and television were constantly interrupted with news bulletins of an “unidentifiable roaring fireball” moving through the city streets, causing numerous accidents, and injury among its residents. The police and National Guard were trying to track down and contain the menace, but reports of sightings had ceased at dark. But I knew. Somewhere, somewhere out there in a dark, dirty garage, Clarence “Wheeler” Doby was surrounded by his leather clad buddies and cackling like a madman as he listened to the radio reports. Somewhere out there..hiding..laughing at everybody..
Theee End, Man.
