The Push & the Pull by Darryl Whetter Page A

shaking of the trees. Asses inched back on seats. The balls of the feet were re-discovered. Knees swung out to cut finer corners, and yet no race was officially announced. If someone pulled onto the main artery beneath the power lines, when he turned into your already burning climb, you could no more declare, “To the willow tree” than you could ask for a handicap. And yet everyone knew exactly what each turn or run meant. Fingerless gauntlets were everywhere thrown. When he had described these unannounced but unmistakable forest races to Betty, she asked, “Are you riding bikes or rulers? Me, Big Dick. Ride money bike fast.”
    Yes, Betty, yes, yes, yes. And yet here he is gunning for the yellow jersey in the distance, all considerations save for the pass wiped away. The thrill of pushing past and the fear of being swallowed are hardwired, undiscussed but unforgettable.
    The yellow rider hits the bottom of the climb out of this valley. The road is a tailor’s tape measuring rise and fall. Still on the flat, Andrew has a specious gain on Yellow, crunching the space between them but not the time. The bottom of the hill will bounce him back, flip time Yellow’s way. Ascent is mapped with the burn in heart and lungs. A climb actually taxes slightly different muscles in the legs. Ground is won or lost on the butcher’s wire of a hill, two strung hearts scraped on the inclined blade. Five-time Tour de France winner Miguel Indurain, Spain’s Big Mig, lived his climbing years with a standing heart rate of twenty-eight beats per minute. Back at UNS, nearly forsaking his bike for a library carrel, Andrew had felt his heart rate climbing back up to the average sixty-eight.
    Now he’s close enough to the other rider to see a glistening calf (androgynously shaved, impressively chiselled). In the pass of an actual race,
attacking
as it is accurately called, the attacker would surely fuel off the smell of his opponent, must push for that mossy aluminum whiff just when it’s most needed. Entering the climb, Andrew realizes that this could also flip, that this very air would also be traded. The passing fuel you take from me will soon give me yours.

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    â€œPrison saved us from batch,” Andrew told Betty one night over dinner. “When you’re young, you can live with a phrase, especially a phrase of your parents, for years without catching all its angles.
Batch lots
, Dad used to say of the two of us. It was years before I got
bachelor
. After Mom left, when I stayed with Dad, he’d say we were
batching it
. He’d already been teaching in prison for a few years.”
    â€œBachelors by day, bachelors by night,” Betty concluded. “What was it, wieners ’n’ beans on Monday nights? Fish sticks on Tuesdays?”
    â€œPretty much. But more than just our diet changed. Something about prison, all that control, all those rules — he got more managerial, sure, but that could have been just the disease. It was a long climb down, but not a steady one. Ability would plateau for years and then drop. He still drove until I was seventeen.”
    â€œHe drove until he could stop.”
    â€œNo, really, he was okay. Just errands in town. Got himself to work and back. But prison, it made him more scheming.”
    â€œDon’t tell me he tried to join a heist crew.”
    â€œMore like a painting crew. One night, eating dinner right here, he just looked up and said, ‘Yellow.’ He suddenly wanted the dining room painted yellow. We didn’t always admit what he couldn’t do any more. Repainting? That meant admitting you now had to pay someone to repaint the walls your old hands, your hands and your wife’s hands, had painted a few years ago. Let it grey another year. Get a bigger TV and let the scuffs hang.”
    â€œMaybe he just read some advice in a magazine. My mom probably
wrote
articles about divorced dads and