J. Walker

Marco said he was a writer. The bitter snow cutting against his exposed skin told him he was not. Diamond ice whipped sideways, pelting his jacket as he rode down the winding trail. His shoulders were covered in whitecap mountains as he pedaled onwards. Doggedly moving down the track, pump after pump. The thin tires of the bicycle cut rivulets of water in half making rooster tails behind him. On either side of the trail leaned great mounds of white, unbothered by the hot water lines running beneath the city’s central nervous system of bike trails which made steam rise back to heaven amidst the flurry of snow. Each flake that fell on the black asphalt disappeared as quickly as it arrived, the heat making quick work of the storm.

Marcos' feet were soaked, but he didn’t mind. These hazards took up very little of his headspace as he careened through the white out. Marco wrote prose in his mind while the tires spun. Prose about nothing. He peered into the snow ahead and told himself to think of something grand so he could quit his job and live off of stories flowing from his mind like the snow from the sky.

“I don’t want to be a bike messenger anymore, I don’t want to cart court orders and meaningless letters across this city. I want to give people truth. I want to hide it in my words,” is what he would have thought if he wasn’t instead thinking;

“Dear God, I’m about to crash.” His tires both locked on command with quick squeezes of the brakes as his gloved fingers wrapped around the triggers. The flurry of snow ahead had belched out of it two cyclists straddling both lanes as one tried to pass the other on the same uphill Marco was soaring down.

His bike skid sideways as he tried to maneuver it out of the coming disaster. The figures mere feet away who just moments before, had simply not existed. His front tire hit the snowbank that bordered the trail, followed quickly by Marco’s arms, face and the rest of his body. He spluttered as he scrambled out of the human sized indent in the snow wall.

“What the hell were you thinking!?” But the other bikers had already disappeared back into the whiteout. Other bikers rode past, going up and down, all unrecognizable, swaddled in puffy pants and jackets with goggles strapped around their faces. Teeth gritted against the wind. The city was waking up now, and soon the trails would be filled with bikers, just as they always were, regardless of the weather. The city couldn’t stop just because of a little storm. They’d learned that long ago.

Marco's grandmother would sit in an armchair and talk about what used to happen. How the storms would roll through and the whole city would freeze in its tracks. Watching as the streets filled with rain or snow. Watching as the trees fell in the wind, cracked in half by the force. Watching as the cars refused to start, batteries knocked dead by the brutal cold. The only things that still moved out there in the early days were the bike messengers. Wrapped in layers and layers of clothing in feeble attempts to ward off the ice laced air. Fat tires crunching down on the wind swept snowbanks. The police patrolled the streets on horseback. The storms had been strange and foreign. New wide, angry swaths of clouds like they had never seen before.

Marco picked up his bike and dusted off the seat. Reaching into the soft box mounted on his back fender he pulled out its only contents, a single letter addressed to the Intercity Rail Depot. The train it was marked for would be leaving in half an hour and he was barely out of the city center. The letter seemed undamaged, but for its state to matter at all, he’d have to bike hard. He swung his legs back over the metal frame and set off once more into the stream of bikes. The flow of the city. He tried to think of beautiful words filled with meaning as he rode, but found none. What story had he to tell? Only the long grey trail stretched out in his mind. Blank and empty like his pages at home. The snow storm was wide and angry and seemed eternal until suddenly he crested a hill and was whipped out of the angry void and thrust beneath the blue sky. The clouds had parted. The storm was subsiding. Sharp golden light bounced down off the tall windowed sky scrapers to his left and right, making kaleidoscope worlds in their reflections. The wind died and Marco pulled his goggles off to see the city's true colour. Black asphalt trails were cursive writing cutting through the perfect white landscape. Hundreds of bicycles, thousands of tires, all whizzing down the avenues and lanes. Trees and bushes bordered each trail, a soft blockade of green dusted in snow, making miniature forests which cut through the otherwise cold and angular city.

It used to be only roads in straight lines, Marco’s grandmother would say, sitting in her chair, sipping tea, an unread magazine hanging lifelessly from the arm. Roads filled with cars, bumper to bumper. The noise she said. Noise like you can’t describe. Marco believed her. He had tried to describe it, but couldn’t. He’d never heard the sound of a thousand engines, grumbling steel, railing against one another, bouncing off the cold steel walls of the city. A cacophony of smoke streaming from exhaust pipes smearing the sky until it was blurred and grey.

Now it was always clear. Marco tried to write about what it had been like. It fascinated him. But no words came. He looked at the empty page and could not imagine it covered in soot.

It was the storms that did it. When people could no longer look away they started looking for a way through. It took some time, but they found it. Slowly the streets were narrowed, the trees were planted, and finally the last cars spluttered out of the city. Now the only thing Marco could imagine was what he saw with his own eyes everyday.

The silent city. Marked only by the clicks and whirs of gears locking into place. Kids would tack cards to their frame and make them slap against the spokes, a wasp buzz screaming down the street with laughter. But in the morning, when the snow settled over the world, when the sun was quietly shining and the clouds had all dispersed, it was quiet. It was beautiful. It was a city alive, breathing in beauty, exhaling hope.

In the spring time the birds would come back, and their chirps would fill the trees and bushes with life. But now in the winter it was silent and peaceful. Marco waited patiently for the birds to return. It wouldn’t be long. Ninety years ago the storms would last for days and leave drifts as high as city buses, grandma would say.

It still stormed, but each winter was better than the last. Each day the sky seemed clearer and the stars came closer. The stars, those tiny muffled pin pricks in the black veil of night, had morphed back into bright shocks of light over only a few generations.

Marco wondered what a city of cars might have looked like, but each time he went to write it down it came out muddled. Screeching tires and angry horns. Noise and fury on a page, lacking any sense. He reached an intersection and watched the bikers stream past, moving perpendicular across the city. The light switched and he put his feet back on the pedals. The train station wasn’t far now. Nowhere was ever far. The bike lanes webbed out across the city and he knew them well.

Pulling into the bike depository he slid his wheels into the slot where it clicked after he entered a quick code. He checked the time, only five minutes left before the train was supposed to take off. He took a deep breath and began running through the station to the operator’s desk. Following fingers pointing this way and that, he weaved his way through the bureaucratic maze of buildings and offices required to organize the fleet of trains moving everyday across the country swiftly from city to city. Finally he reached the head of one such train, due west, already whirring and humming, ready to go. He knocked on the cockpit door and the conductor stepped out. She had blonde hair tied into a bun which sat just below her hard brimmed box cap. The insignia of the rail line was proudly embossed in silver on its front panel.

“Letter for you ma’am.” She reached out, eyebrow arched and accepted the letter. Normally Marco would already be on his way back out of the station, but he paused first to catch his breath. Hands braced against his legs, bent over, panting. He looked up and saw her rip the letter open. Her eyes darted across the page as she scanned it. Words making sentences, sentences making stories, stories telling truth. She lit up. She laughed. She clutched the letter to her chest then looked at Marco, beet red.

“Sorry. It's just.. I just..” She paused again and looked up at the clear blue sky above them.

“Thank you. For delivering this letter. Thank you.” And with that she stepped back into the train.

Marco returned to his bike and went sailing once more down the long and winding trails of the green and white city. He watched the eyes of those who rode past. He smiled as they nodded in response. A river of wheels silently passing through the city, tiny lives connected by trails that Marco knew by heart. He couldn’t help but pedal home as fast as he could. Marco knew what he had to write about.