If Rock and Roll Were a Machine Read Free Page B

thumbs the red button next to the throttle and the engine dies. “That’s how you shut ’er down,” he says.
    â€œI’ll be here tomorrow to give you the money,” Bert says. “If I had any money now, I’d give you some to hold it.”
    â€œNo need,” Sherpard replies. “Your word’s enough.”
    â€œI give you my word, then,” Bert says, and he reaches to shake Shepard’s hand.

Chapter 4
Too Chickenshit to Live
    Bert pulls up in front of his house, climbs out of the Bug, sets his school folder on the hood, and pulls his new Harley T-shirt over his head. Everybody who buys a bike gets a shirt, Shepard said. Bert bends down and looks at himself in the side mirror. He smooths the collar of his white Lacoste shirt over the black T-shirt. He doesn’t feel like himself in tough-guy clothes. He just bought a tough-guy motorcycle, though, so some changes in his image might be due. “This could be a look for me,” Bert says, thinking of Michael Keaton at the end of Beetlejuice when his head is shrunk.
    Bert walks through the garage to the back door. He can’t keep from looking down at his chest where an eagle glares out of yellow eyes and screams with its beak wide, HARLEY-DAVIDSON, TOO TOUGH TO DIE!
    His dad’s Acura is sitting next to his mom’s Mazda. Bert was hoping his dad would be at a dinner meeting. There won’t be any playing them off against each other. But the time for that is over, Bert tells himself. Time to stand up and face them both.
    *  *  *
    I’ll have some shirts printed up, Bert is thinking as he lies on his bed. They’ll be pink with a picture of me ina diaper, a thoughtful expression on my baby face, and above the picture they’ll say ALBERT BOWDEN , and below, TOO CHICKENSHIT TO LIVE!
    Bert didn’t tell his parents during supper. Now Nightline is over and he’s lying on his bed not paying attention to a Hill Street Blues rerun.
    For a while during the evening Bert’s mind was filled with images of riding the Sportster. He rode along the Spokane River through a cool green tunnel of fir trees. He rode into the school parking lot, the Sportster’s exhaust note deep and mellow like a musical motif that accompanies the hero in a movie.
    But Bert wants a real image of himself he can admire for a change instead of a fantasy, and it is in pursuit of this that he arises from his bed, walks upstairs, and knocks on his parents’ bedroom door.
    â€œBert?” his mother says.
    â€œYeah,” Bert says. “I need to talk to you guys.”
    â€œWell, come in,” she says.
    Bert sits at the foot of his mother’s bed. Her reading lamp is on, but it only illuminates a circle the size of a basketball on her pillow. Bert’s father is just a dark shape turning and sitting up against the headboard of his bed a few feet away. “Jesus, Bert,” comes the voice from the dark shape. “We’ve got to work tomorrow.”
    â€œI bought that Harley-Davidson motorcycle I told you guys about,” Bert says.
    The dark shape sits straighter. His mother doesn’t move.“What can we do, Donald?” she finally says.
    â€œYou can’t do anything,” Bert says. “You don’t need to do anything.”
    â€œOf course we can do something,” Donald Bowden says. “You’re sixteen years old. You can’t enter into a contract without our permission.”
    â€œJesus, Dad,” Bert says. “That’s not the point.” Bert shakes his head. He can see the mixture of disapproval and scorn on his mom’s face, but his dad is just a voice and a shape in the dark.
    â€œIt doesn’t matter how much it cost, Bert,” his mother says. “That money is for college.”
    â€œCollege is two years away, Mom. If I can get in at all. I don’t need money for college right now. I need this motorcycle.”
    â€œHuman