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HeavensGate-Chapter04

Website: http://www.yellowtailshark.com/Literature/HeavensGate

Chapter 4

Engines whirring. Eyes dry by dust, wet by fear. The air flaps the jacket, and only my wrists know how warm it is. The smell of burnt exhaust pierces my naive nose unfamiliar with its scent. The glint of sunrise is but a dull star through the helmet shield. Heart is thumping. A short distance in front of me, Linh's hair weaves along with the wind. Today is our fifth run on the time trials. I can only concentrate on Linh during the windy roads, but on straightways I catch my breath, appeasing the nagging thought in the back of my mind which plays over like a contractual obligation:

The motorbike leaps into the air and lands with a bit of a punch. I'm able to regain control and concentrate on tailing Linh.

The competition of choice was a motorbike race, in all manners is illegal, with a rival motorbike group. The custom is that the winner takes the loser's motorbike in a one-on-one race. Of course I never raced before, so our unconditional participation can be owed to that girl…

Linh locks out her left arm in an L formation, signaling to me that the course is going to require my full attention. She engages her acceleration on a descending wide right-turn bank and leans far to the right. I always feel uneasy on this first turn because of having to lean so far on a downward slope. But after several runs within the past few days, I've gotten over the fear of the first turn. But that's all the fear I'm willing to admit I've overcome.

Chasing her through the S-shaped chicanes is usually where I fail to catch up with her because I always take the wrong trajectory, or I end up braking too long or accelerating too late. I get embarrassed when her brake lights shine coming out of a turn; she's slowing down to wait for me to come at her heels.

We make our way around a blind turn where the mountain hugs one side of the road with hundred-mét walls. Its towering majesty only serves to slow me as my fear of oncoming traffic overtakes me during this 8-minute wide blind turn. It's a silly fear because traffic is almost nonexistent along these roads. During our runs we've come across a total of a truck, a sedan, and two vespas. The Minhxìcơ Club call this stretch of road the Mountain's Bosom, and this particular turn, as expected of a motorbike gang's sense of humor, the Double-D turn. The eight minutes, while under a constant stress, feels like a year taken off my life.

After the Mountain's Bosom area we enter the coniferous forests where the sunbeams streak through the myriad of crevices amid the snaking turns. You have to squint and open your eyes rapidly because your vision is flashing as you pass through bright sun and dry shadows. At this point your breath begins to shallow with each turn ascending the spine of the mountain.

We then hit the end of the forests, where the elevation is too high to support a forest. Instead you see vast rocky fields sparsely populated by trees trying to survive, and within this valley, there are still higher mountains flanking either side. The rails, I've learned, avoid going through this pass, preferring to go around the major peaks by deviating fifty kilôméts from the rose line—the straight path it would have taken if the mountains weren't there—which is why the tracks are located so far from the village. The road was constructed as a route to the city of Yếnkhanh, but has all but been abandoned in favor of the rapid rail system.

It is on this flat stretch of road that time seems to be finally catching up with us. You don't realize you're whipping through the road at fatal speeds. I look at my speedometer to gauge our velocity. It looked wrong. I tapped the glass. No, this is probably how fast we're really going. A bit slow? I release the throttle a bit and let the motorbike coast. What is Linh doing? I pull up to her left and turn my head in her direction. She glances back, though I can't really see what sort of facial expression she has behind the shield. She bends her left arm with fingers pointing down, and we slow and come to a complete stop by a lone large boulder protruding from the ground. I can never figure out why there would be only one large boulder in the middle of a vast field of…

And that's when I realized why we slowed down. For the past few days while practicing our runs, I've been so worked up with anxiety, I never noticed the fields were flowered with an array of lavenders, golds, bright greens and crimson reds. Since it was a cloudless midday, the colors were vibrant to the eye.

We shut off our engines and took off our helmets and gloves. Linh's shoulder-length hair looked ruffled, and her right eye are still a bright pink, though certainly improving. She takes a deep breath and slowly exhales the warm air.

"So…" I wasn't sure if I was deaf, but there wasn't a sound between us for awhile, and I just had to break the silence with a poorly conceived utterance.

"Last one to the top of the rock is a stinky sầuriêng!" she exclaims, and then dashes towards the boulder. I quickly dropped my helmet and chased her while she gained a substantial lead. I huffed and puffed, unaccustomed to the altitude, and when I finally reached the top, Linh was standing akimbo surveying the valley.

"Eww, you smell!" She shoved me, and I nearly toppled over. Ignoring her childish antics, I turned a full 360-degree and captured the sights of the dark mountains lit up by the floor of the colorful valley. Linh took a seat at the edge of the boulder's face and summoned me to take a seat adjacent to her. I peered over the edge and decided that a potential broken leg isn't worth it. Linh persisted in badgering me, and I persisted in being stubbornly resistant.

"You know Linh, you're asking a lot from someone who broke more personal records in the past few days than in the prior 20-some years of his life!" While I expected a smart-alecky response, she continued to gaze out onto the fields. After a brief hiatus, I gave in and plopped myself on the ground next to her. My heart was thumping hard, suffocating my nerves. I looked at her face out of the corner of my right eye. The undamaged left side of her face seemed calm, although almost melancholy in a way.

Again, I had to break the silence. "Hey, where'd you learn to ride a motorbike like that?"

She glanced over, "Practice!" Ah, there's the smart-alecky response. "When you learn to run from the bad guys, perfect practice makes perfect."

"Bad guys?" I tried to press further, but her glum face suggested I shouldn't. "Well when I get the hang of this high-speed insanity, I'll make sure bad guys don't chase us."

Linh smirked, "That's a promise yeah? Better not break it! Or," she switched to a sultry facial expression, "I'm going to have to kill you."

And so we spent the better part of the hour in silence. I thought about Mom, and my home. I thought about the current predicament we were in. I thought about the devil's pact we made with Big Lai, leader of the Minhxìcơ Club. Actually, Linh made that agreement. She wanted to do the race, and we didn't have too many options. We have until the full moon to practice, which is probably another 24 days or so.

"Linh, we have two motorbikes and enough fuel to get us to the city right now. Why don't we just take off?"

Linh slapped me on the cheek. I was stunned. Linh's face became serious, "We made a promise to Anh Lai, okay? You can't break a promise!" She stared into my eyes, draining any and all sense of security.

"Okay, okay. I'm sorry." I didn't understand why it was important to her. There's so much she never says. I hate having to guess what a woman is thinking.