Bikes

10:30 pm on a Tuesday night. Miserable re-runs on the tele. A half eaten burger and long-gone-cold fries. Making a living.  Living?

The camp grew quiet quite some time ago.  Summer season is in full swing and all the bloody Lord of the Rings fans are making their mass exodus to Matamata.  Most funnel through this camp on the way.  There are not that many route alternatives in North Island to get anywhere, even to most popular of attractions.

Oliver has always had mixed feelings about summer (Kiwi summer that is, which is winter for all you Northern Hemisphere folks).  On the one hand, summer brings tourists, and tourists mean money.  On the other hand, summer brings tourists, and tourist mean young people.

Oliver isn’t old. But he’s not young either. So, he’s not anything. He’s not sure when he stopped being young. When does ‘old’ being?  The past two decades have felt like hardly anything at all. He has settled into a familiar numbness in the camouflage of routine that is inherent to all who run their own business in the tourism industry.  

“Tourism industry” over glamorizes it a bit I suppose.  Oliver runs a ‘holiday park’ on the North Island, a bit west of the famed ‘Hobbiton.’  When he was young, the shine and sheen of running your own business was the dream.  It was an exciting and lucrative prospect at the start.  Ever day was an adventure: new and interesting people from all over the world came through, trekking and camping from Auckland down to Wellington and on off to South Island. People his age. People with a bright sense of future, people on a high of uncertain tomorrows. His people.

Now caught somewhere between young and old, he didn’t feel like much a tribesmen anymore.  People came and went through his motor park, same as always, same as before, but, in a light too bright to avoid looking at, he could not help but see himself as an alien among the adventurous.

Earlier on that Tuesday night, Oliver is preparing the month’s deposit for the bank in the security office that doubles as a registration point for campers and triples as his own quarters.  The interior is splattered with postcards sent by campers who had stayed a night but continued on to Fiji, Australia, Thailand and beyond.  He has a small bookshelf filled with travel guides of various exotic locations, tabbed with neon post-it notes with notations for the trips he’s planned for the future.  He has a small pile of camping gear in the corner: forgotten possessions of those who ventured onward without double-checking their packs prior to departure.  Right behind the desk, Oliver has put a map up with pins of all the places he plans to go soon.  Soon.

A solo-traveling and pristinely-suntanned Californian wanders in to give his payslip for the night. He has all the golden glow of “fresh out of Uni” and the swagger of “I’m traveling alone and make new friends with ease.”  The Californian makes pleasant small talk, as Californians do, while Oliver processes his paperwork.

The Californian’s eyes glisten as he takes in the collection postcards and examines the titles of the travel books. And, all in a breath, he rattles out in excitement,  “Dude! Look at all these books!  Lonely Planet is the best, don’t you think? So! What is the wildest place you’ve trekked in? ”

“Um, well...I’ve done some hikes a few hours south of here that were rather memorable...and not without a decent challenge,” he says reflexively.

The Californian looks a little deflated. Glancing down at the pile of camping gear and back at Oliver expectantly.

“Yeah, but the better hikes are in South Island, right?”  

Oliver sputters, “Um, well yes...so I hear.  I, uh, haven’t made it there myself yet.”

An awkward silence filled the room. The Californian looks both surprised and sad, “You mean you’ve never been to South Island?  How long have you lived here man?”

“Well…always, actually,” Oliver replies painfully.

He begins to feel hot and with a sweaty palm he hands the Californian his change.  “Enjoy your stay at “Camp Just-off-the-Motorway,” he says with a tone of finality to end the conversation.

The Californian leaves, slumped in the disappointment of not making a friend with ease in this case.  Oliver stews in the thickening silence of his office.  He can’t get the Californian’s questions out of his head.  It was harmless, but it has shed a blinding light on his life.  He had never gone anywhere.

He spins around on his swivel chair and looks at all the postcards.  Pretty pictures of pretty places seen by others.  He looks at the worn bindings of the travel books, full of dog-eared pages of his thoughtful intentions for a “soon” that never came. The map’s pins have a noticeable layer of dust and long strands of spider’s webs - signs that the “want to see” locations have not been updated for quite sometime and that none of the pins have been removed for “having seen” either.  And - the pile of camping gear. As he pilfers through it he realizes he doesn’t know what half of the stuff is or what it would be used for.

He is undeniably no longer a tribesmen.

He never was one of the tribe.

Suddenly, it is too much.  Oliver, not normally a volatile man, stands up from his chair and rips all the postcards from the wall.  But, taking them down is not enough, he rips each into tiny pieces, destroying the glossy, non-representative image of each.  The books are next.  He flips through the pages, removing each post-it note, flinging them in the air like confetti, and the books land with periodic thuds on the floor.  The camping gear is gathered in a heap and tossed into a trash bag.  Finally that idiotic map.  He uproots it from the wall in one motion, tearing it in half, pins scattering across the room, a few pricking him spitefully as they went.

In the stillness following this massacre of dreams,  his office is transformed into a hollow, haunted grave.  All blank walls and swirling dust.  He can’t stomach it.  He grabs his keys and flees the scene of the crime for BurgerFuel.

10:30 pm on a Tuesday night. Miserable re-runs on the tele. A half eaten burger and long-gone-cold fries.

A small compact car pulls down the drive.  It idles near Oliver’s office, which has its door closed tight: he doesn’t want to talk to anymore guests to night.  The car continues on, stopping at the communal bathroom.  

Four silhouettes emerge, outlined by the bathrooms fluorescent glow and go inside.  Their cheerful sounds have a sickening, positive echo. They are high off of the travel trill.

They know nothing.

Oliver is up in a second, flashlight in hand, knocking his uneaten fries to floor to join the rest of the mess there.  He half runs out of his office towards the bathrooms.

He spots one of them.

“This ain’t for free mate,” he said furiously. (Waiting costs too much.)

It’s a girl.  Librarian glasses and hair piled up in a mess under a ball cap. A rat could be sleeping in such disarray.

“Get on your bikes and leave!” he almost screamed. (Please! Take me with you.)

The girl looks confused, they came in a car and don’t have any bikes.   

“What are you doing here?!” he demands, acidly at the girl. (Why have I stayed here?)

She is so taken aback by his anger that she stutters out the first thing that comes to mind, “we were...we were just using the bathroom, but…”

Before she could explain more, Oliver cuts her off.

“But, nothing.  Go on - get!” (Make me leave this place too.)

A boy emerges from the shadows to stand beside her, hand out in a gesture of supplication with the intent to calm.  He begins a polite apology, but Oliver is in no mood for polite. He is lost in a fever.

Oliver brings out his iPhone to snap a picture of their license. (All I ever do is look at images of a life I want).

He glares at the two as they call out to their travel mates and begin moving towards the car doors to leave.  

The girl looks back at him. Her eyes are wounds that he inflicted.  But there is pity there too.  Like she sympathizes with him or something. They become a challenge, a calling, a conviction that his anger is his own doing.

She doesn’t say anything, she just starts the car when the other three companions are in and drives slowly off into the night.

Oliver stood there listening to the sound of tire on gravel until there was no sound of anything at all.

He looks down at his phone with the image of the license plate and deletes it.

***

The next morning Oliver isn’t in his office. No note. No notice.  The floor is still a mess of shredded postcards, discarded books, and aggressive thumbtacks.

But the black trash bag with the camping gear is notably missing.  And one of the travel books too.