He drove to be free!

He got in his car and drove. He drove fast, as fast as the car would go. He watched the speed build, 10-15-20 miles per hour. He roared on. He looked over to the right and saw the old woman who always let her dog poop in his yard. “Dog!” he screamed, not knowing whether he was screaming at the old woman or the dog more. He didn’t care. He was an outlaw, a 1%er. He’d seen a movie about the Hell’s Angels and though he was in a Fiat, he imagined he was on a chopped Harley, muffler sputtering and roaring, alerting everyone around he was coming. That he was coming at an awful rate of speed.

He built still more speed. He was up to 25 miles per hour and the houses and trees, the road signs, sped past him, backwards, though, when he paused to consider it, he knew the signs were not going backwards, in fact, they were standing still. He was sure of that. He was sure the signs had not moved since they were planted deep in concrete, or cement, he never really could remember the difference, there by the side of the road.

He slowed to make sure. The signs slowed, the trees sped by less and less fast. Then he came to a stop in the middle of the street, and looked around. Nothing moved except the cars coming toward him. The houses had stopped moving, and the trees moved not at all, though, if he was honest he had to admit they were swaying in the breeze as trees often do when the wind blows. But they had stopped moving past him. No, it was not the trees and the houses and the road signs moving past him, still, there in the road, it was he, moving past them at terrific speeds. Or that had been the case when he was moving.

Not any longer. He was stopped dead still in the middle of the street and when he looked in the rear view mirror he could see the string of cars stretching out behind him. Five, perhaps as many as eight, cars stretched off into the honking distance. He knew they would be impatient, as all of modern society is, and so he stomped on the accelerator and the Fiat shot forward, 5-10-15 miles per hour and the scenery again jumped, hyper-space lines in the darkness of his visual eye-squinting range, past him.

His window was rolled down and he felt the stern wind blowing in his face. With his mouth he mimicked the noise of the enraged Harley he was riding in his brain. He screamed out the window as if his mouth was a 2000 cc motorcycle engine. He wondered if anyone heard him coming, heard the fearful chug of the Harley as he approached at twenty five miles per hour.

He watched the Fiat speedometer jumping out of the corner of his eye as he howled his Harley screams out the window. He was flying and didn’t care who knew it. The police be damned, he was on his hog and he’d probably been drinking beer, and maybe taking some illegal drugs. He was violating as many laws as he could. “DOO DOO” he screamed out the window in the middle of his Harley screed. Ha ha ha ha ha!!! Add public obscenity to his many crimes. He looked more carefully at the speedometer as it rose and rose, slowly, inexorably, to thirty miles an hour and beyond. The roads could barely contain him!

The old woman and her dog were there beside him again. He watched as the dog squatted beside the telephone pole. The old woman was praising her for doing her business. He’d heard her before as the dog stood in his yard doing it’s business where it had no right to do business. “Dog!” He screamed again, then changed that mid scream to “Bitch!” But he was past them and he knew they could never have heard him. He’d have to remember “Bitch” the next time around. The bitch. The damnable bitch.

He leveled off at 32 miles an hour and took the corner swinging wide into the other lane, in the face of oncoming traffic. Horns blared, but he smiled grimly. He knew that the life of the 1%er was often short. 99% of all motorcycle riders were good, upstanding honest, honorable people. 1% made all the rest look bad. He smiled. He wasn’t one of the honorable ones, and he was happy to make them look bad. They deserved to look bad, put-putting along wearing sans-a-belt slacks on their Vespa scooters at 20 miles an hour. He was back up to 30 and the speedometer hand shook slightly as it decided the speed.

He stomped on the accelerator and was soon up to 34 miles an hour and again swinging wide around another corner, then down the short street and around the last corner taking it too fast and too wide. The poles, the houses, the light itself he left behind as he gained speed and roared into the blackness that was the bitch’s street. Up ahead he saw her. She was still standing there beside the road watching her dog urinate.

The road was slightly downhill and he was standing on the gas and he was running 35 miles an hour as he approached the bitch and her dog, the DANG bitch and her dog! He stopped screaming out the driver’s window and leaned over toward the passenger door, holding the steering wheel of his Fiat-faux Harley with one hand. He gave a few more deep throated Harley roars then yelled, “1%ers rule the world! Biiiiiiiitch!”

He saw the woman jump as he tore past her. Then from well down the road he looked first at the speedometer – 37 miles an hour – and then back to see her looking at him, a puzzled and angry look on her face, her fist shaking in his mirror. He laughed. He laughed at her. He laughed at the world. He laughed at the society which tried to hold him back. Ha ha ha ha ha!!!

Then he felt the bump and looked through the windshield in time to see the hydrangeas disappear under his car as he plowed through them. They were soft and the bright green grass under his tires was soft and it sprayed behind him, as he tore off across the lawns through more and more green grass and, finally, onto the asphalt and down the road. Down the road at 38 miles an hour!

Free! Dang it, he was free!