Rolling Thunder 2013
No one in Ansel Head’s household rode motorcycles. Whenever the subject came up, Head’s mother would point to her adopted cousin, Delma, who was walking around on a wooden leg, his real one having been lost in a motorcycle accident in his teenage years. Far from the brightest child, Head failed to relate to Delma’s predicament based only upon his mother’s admonitions. Adding a motor to his hard to pedal bicycle seemed like a good thing.
But then one day at the movies, he saw Captain Ahab riding Moby Dick’s back with his wooden leg tangled in harpoon lines. The great white whale, which had on a previous voyage eaten Ahab’s real leg, now finished him off. Continue reading
Watching his friend Ansel Larry die was a hard lesson. But even for the uninterested Head, an education in death was a required course for his education. In a short span, he had been forced to study at close hand his brother’s death, his mother’s deteriorating health, his own knee replacement, and then his friend’s departure. Things were getting too near to Head for him to disregard the subject any longer.
