The for Always Pony

Randy heard moaning. The sound echoed in his head, but his bedroom was quiet except for the scratching of a branch swishing across his window like a broom sweeping a porch. His throat felt raw, as if a blunt knife had scrapped his larynx. His joints ached. Randy was sure he had cried out loud. Yet, no one else in the house stirred, and he thought his mother would have wakened if she had heard him yell. She was a light sleeper; always alert to sounds from his little brother who often had trouble breathing. He shifted on the bed and his leg throbbed. He stretched to massage the cramp, his fingers skimming over the bark-like scar tissue at his right knee. Randy remembered his nightmare and the reason for his cry. Again he had dreamed of racing his two-stroke 250 motorcycle; speeding through the motocross course like a jet in flight. Did rock stars on Ecstasy feel this good? He heard the deafening roaring, drowning the arena in sound from half a dozen engines firing without the restriction of a muffler. His eardrums protested, but he exhilarated in the sound. Exhaust fumes choked his throat; he swallowed, savoring the taste. He bumped over quads, pushing the throttle of his 250. He flew over the whoops, gaining air, wishing his bike never had to touch the ground. Randy sat balanced perfectly mimicking the best rider of an Olympic jumping horse. The adrenalin made him tingle like every Christmas morning, every Fourth of July, every birthday had combined into one tidal wave rush of positive emotion. The dream shifted into nightmare. He heard the other rider roaring up behind him. He knew he should never look back, he had trained himself to never to look back because he had to focus on the track ahead, but he felt the competitor’s bike approaching as amplified noise vibrated in his helmet. He had to look. He saw the other bike gaining fast, only a few feet behind him, and he did not notice the 180 degree turn with the high berm on his right. In the nightmare it morphed out of the ground, like a brick wall suddenly sprouting from an open pasture. Randy leaned into the berm, dragging his handlebars into the ground, trying to avoid the other rider. Fast. Fast. He slid dangerously up against the dirt wall, now made of concrete. He couldn’t keep traction, and the bike leaned against him, a dead weight pressing him into the solid surface with the machine over him, crushing him, burying him. He had no time to think, nor did the rider behind him who raced up beside him against the wall, pressing Randy’s bike upward, flinging boy and machine into an impossible heap. Immobile and twisted under his bike, Randy realized he was not riding his own two-stroke 250, but a much larger 450. He felt the other rider hurtle by his bike; past him, crunching bones as he passed. In the dream world that rider mounted a miniature tank, not a motorcycle. Randy wanted to scream but he had no air for his lungs, and his body had become a collection of twigs snapping under the weight of thundering machines. The boy woke up. Had he screamed as he relived and reimagined his accident? He thought so. Randy rubbed his right knee, hard, until it hurt and he felt tears had squeezed from the corners of his eyes. He jerked open the drawer of his nightstand and pulled out the crumpled figure of a brown plush pony. He hugged the toy; then pushed it under his cotton sheet until the soft material massaged his aching knee. His room felt suffocating. He had spent too many months cloistered in misery with only a few electronics, and some half-used school books for company. The room smelled of sour sweat, and too little showering. Randy felt a wave of disgust for the way he had let himself exist. He finally fell asleep again promising himself, “Tomorrow I’ll finally go and see Boomer.” The thought was a warm blanket on a cold winter night, and Randy drifted into unremembered dreams, the plush toy at his side, clenched in his hand against his right thigh above the mutilated knee.