Chapter 17

Kevin straddled his Hog and made a run. He'd enjoyed the trip out to Tijeras, never mind the fact that he'd been going to meet Karin's parents. The scenery was different than he got in Albuquerque, and the road seemed made for a bike. So he headed for Tramway and Central, and then headed off into the hills.

It was a good day for riding. It was January, yes, and chilly, but really they were having a nice winter. It was colder than he was used to, but everyone said it was a mild winter for Albuquerque. They'd hardly gotten any snow, and even on the Crest – the Sandia Mountains don't have a series of peaks, due to the way they formed – there was barely enough snow for the ski slopes to function. In his leather jacket he was warm enough, and he was learning another reason to like his beard – it kept his face warm. He could feel the difference between the bare skin above his cheekbones, and the heavily bearded lower portion of his face.

Eventually he approached the intersection where Arrowhead Trail took off north from old 66 – what the signs along the road had told him was now State Highway 333. That was where they'd turned a week ago, nearly a week ago, to visit Karin's parents. He turned instead into the library parking lot, and parked his bike near the road. He got off and looked around. He'd never been in a small town until the visit up here, and it was different. It was a lot quieter than Albuquerque, even here next to the highway, and everything was smaller.

Everything, that is, except the mountains. He was facing south, looking at the Manzano Mountains, and behind him were the Sandias. They called it Tijeras Canyon, but it was really a pass, a sort of narrow valley between mountain ranges. There was a watercourse through it, that down in Albuquerque was Tijeras Arroyo, but it wasn't a canyon like ... like the Grand Canyon, that being the only canyon he could think of. Bein' uneducated ain't ... isn't ... all that great.

He chuckled at himself. Karin's influence was having an effect. He might still automatically use the grammar he'd employed all his life, but now he was catching himself, even when she wasn't around. And he realized something else too. I'm seein' God in more things than I used to. It had been the case that he'd recognized God in church, and in the Bible. But He's right here, all around, ain't He? He remembered a verse he'd heard somewhere along the line: "The heavens are telling of the glory of God;/And their expanse is declaring the work of His hands." In the peaks of the mountains, in the bare branches of the deciduous trees and the needles that clothed the pines, in the blue of the sky and even in the raucous calls of the ravens, God was present and active. A phrase came to him: living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword. I gotta look that one up in the concordance, he thought. And, Next to the Bible, that book's the best gift anybody ever give ... gave ... me.

He'd made use of the concordance already. Now when events, or someone else's comments, or his own circulating thoughts, reminded him of something in the Bible, he could look it up and see what it actually said, and what it said before and after. He remembered what one of the preachers he'd heard in recent months – he didn't even remember in which town – had said: A text without its context is just a pretext. He didn't know exactly what all the words meant – what was a pretext, anyway? – but he knew the basics of it. You can't understand what God's sayin' if you just take a word here an' a word there an' don't look at what connects 'em up.

So, he knew, he'd look up that phrase that had come to mind, if he still remembered when he got back to his apartment, and then he'd read several verses before and several verses after it to see what was going on. Otherwise it's like seein' just five minutes o' the game, an' tryin' to tell from that whether the Raiders or the Packers is gonna win the Super Bowl. Kevin wasn't a big TV watcher, but when he did look at it he was as likely to pick a football game as anything else.

I guess I ain't got much civilization at all. Hardly any TV, less readin'... 'bout the only thing I ever put much attention into was bikes an' music. He'd sold drugs and done drugs, he'd partied and brawled, but that was just what you did if you were a biker. What he really cared about wasn't all that, but working on and riding motorcycles, and listening to music.

He noticed there was a feed store across the highway. Dunno what a feed store is, he thought, but maybe they'll have somethin' to drink. He walked across the highway and went in. They did indeed have something to drink. It looked like the feed they were selling was for animals. At least he didn't see anything around that seemed like something people would want to eat. He got a bottle of Mountain Dew and paid for it, feeling out of place. The people were all dressed in jeans and cowboy shirts, or overalls, and they talked of cattle and horses and goats and sheep, and no one said a single word about Hogs. He felt, he figured, the way one of them would in Sturgis when everyone showed up.

Back outside, he looked north at the Sandia Mountains. From Albuquerque they were a wall that rose abruptly at the east edge of town, all castellated rock. Here they sloped more gently, not rising straight up out of the ground. And on this eastern side of the mountains it must be wetter, for there were pine trees everywhere. Least I guess they're pine trees. I don't know one tree from another, hardly. That was something else he figured Karin could teach him. I got a lot to learn. An' I bet she can teach me all of it. He reflected for a moment. Well, maybe not all of it. But surely a lot.

But what was Karin to him? His girlfriend, certainly – though it made him feel sort of silly, like an overgrown kid, to actually call her that. It wasn't entirely unpleasant, though. I guess I missed a lot doin' things the way I did. He'd never had a girlfriend. He'd had "old ladies," women who'd been with him for a time, but really his interest in them had been purely physical – food, drink, clean clothes now and then, and bed whenever he got the urge. I ain't been with a woman that way since ... since I was a Christian! he realized. He hadn't thought about it at all – it was just something that hadn't happened in several months now. I'm still a man, I guess. Shoot, I know I'm a man when I'm with Karin. But I'm thinkin' more o' what they want, what she wants ... an' what God wants. That's it, ain't it? Isn't it? I'm even actin' sort o' like a Christian these days.

With Karin, the interest was intellectual, and spiritual. It ain't that she ain't pretty. I know she's pretty! I see it every time we're together. An' she's ... she's got a nice ... I don't know how to say it without bein' nasty. But it ain't that, is it? He was now carrying on a conversation with himself ... or maybe with God. It's that she's so good, an' so smart, an' ... an' such a good Christian. I don't just like her face or her body. I like ... I like her heart. An' her brain too. This was a new thing for him. He'd never even considered whether women had minds, desires, wills, hearts of their own. Women had been objects, there to use and discard. Wonder why they're like that – them biker chicks. Why do they let them guys treat 'em that way?. He didn't know. He suspected he never would understand it. But somethin's really f ... messed up if women let men treat 'em that way. What happened to them women that they let it happen? And then he mentally kicked himself. It ain't bad enough that I still sometimes almost cuss, but that word...

He shook his head and finished the Mountain Dew, then tossed the empty bottle in a barrel that stood beside the building for that purpose. I'm getting' better at this stuff, he decided. But I got a long way to go yet. He crossed the highway again, and stood by his bike. But Karin, now ... whatever it is with me an' her, I think maybe we're past bein' just friends. Maybe... But he refused to finish that thought. Even if he weren't afraid of himself – and though he tried to deny it, he was – he wasn't sure he had a right to think what he kept wanting to think. And that was another shock to his system, for thinking of women in that way was new to him. I used to think I had a right to whatever I wanted. An' now I don't even know if I got a right to think about 'er that way. But I guess it's better this way. If I treated Karin like I treated my old ladies, she'd ... I don't know what she'd do, but for sure she'd get rid 'o me, an' I couldn't stand that. An' besides, it wouldn't be right.

He got on the bike, kicked it into life, and headed back toward Albuquerque. This Christianity business, an' this man-an'-woman business, it ain't so simple.

And then it was Sunday. Karin dressed with greater care than usual. She settled on a pale yellow dress with short sleeves – indeed, they were barely sleeves at all. It reached to her knees, and on her feet she put a pair of black shoes with straps around her heels. They weren't the narrow, painful heels she'd tried once, and hated, but they did give her an inch or two of extra height. Over her dress went a white jacket. She tried buttoning it different ways, and settled on just the middle button. She wasn't showing enough yet to worry about, though she could tell that her stomach was rounder than it had been. The jacket covered the slight bulge, helping her feel like it was smaller than it seemed without the jacket. Actually the dress helped too, smoothing her belly out. In the bathtub the night before she'd definitely looked pregnant. Maybe it had been the way the tub scrunched her up – bathtubs don't really fit average sized people, much less women who are taller than most men – but she'd definitely seen a bulge. And maybe she saw more than others would – but eventually everyone would see. I've got to tell the church, don't I? Perhaps if Kevin...