I’m sixty-eight, I ride, and somebody two doors down decided a phone call to the police was the right response to me easing my blind granddaughter around our street on the bike.
Her name’s Lily. Nine years old. A tumor took her eyesight when she was four, and since that day, the one thing that pulls a real belly laugh out of her, the kind other kids give away for free, is the rumble of my Harley.
Sundays are ours. I buckle that little pink helmet under her chin, pull her in tight against my chest, and we creep around the block at maybe eight miles an hour. She grips the tank and calls out every scent that hits her. Fresh-cut lawn. Someone firing up a grill. The Hendersons’ shepherd.
We hadn’t even made the far corner when the cruiser rolled up behind us with the bar lit.
I killed the throttle. Lily locked up against my chest. She can’t see the flashers, but that little chirp of siren got through, and she knows exactly what it means. Her fingers were trembling where they gripped the tank.
The cop was on the young side, maybe thirty. He came up on us slow, palm resting near his sidearm. He told me a caller had reported a man “endangering a disabled child on a motorcycle.”
I glanced across the road. There was Dale, planted on his porch, arms folded across his chest. Dale, who has been my neighbor for eleven years. Dale, who sat at our table for Lily’s birthday last spring.
I explained she was my granddaughter. Told him we did this every Sunday. Told him she was probably the safest child in the county, seeing as I never even pushed the bike into third.
He wasn’t hearing any of it.
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