Fault Lines - John Knoop

Colorado, June 30
We alternate the driving, switching every hour or so. There are only a few positions you
can sit in with two on a cycle, although when I’m the passenger I’m working out a way to stretch
by leaning back against the load and raising one knee and then the other to cup it between my
hands. The cycle is running beautifully, even with the load and windage of the three duffel bags.
Coming down quiet two-lane highways at high speed, we are a forbidding sight, especially
with Naren at the helm. He wears a surplus aircraft-carrier flagman’s cap, which resembles an
executioner’s hood. His fierce beard merges with huge, bug-like goggles. Dogs rise from peaceful
repose in clipped yards to howl in amazement and flee tail tight under porches. Children playing
happy games look up smiling to see us approaching and are transfixed by stark terror.
We ride until we’re cold. About forty miles past St Louis we run the cycle off the road,
through a little creek and up a hill in the moonlight overlooking highway 40. I fell asleep talking
to the big dipper. We dozed a couple of hours past sunrise.
Taking a break next to a stream somewhere in the Rockies. Naren’s gone for a walk and
the R-69’s engine is cooling so it’ll be ready for the next climb on this 90 degree afternoon. I
have no idea what form this journal should take. I doubt I’ll have much control over it. It will
probably become an amorphous mass of incoherent outbursts, a sort of interior mumblelogue.
Better that than a travelogue. I’ll send these notes to Judy for safekeeping as I finish each steno
book. Wonder if Judy’s mom will ever accept me.
I called Judy in Cincinnati yesterday morning, asked her mom if Judy was there and heard her
grim response that she wasn’t. Reminded me of our graduation ceremony, when I traded places
with my friend Marvin Freidenn so that the ruse I cooked up to date Judy could continue. Her
family are orthodox Jews and she is forbidden to go out with gentiles, so I dated her all winter and
spring as Marv. She’s a classic beauty, with long black hair and a figure that takes everyone’s
breath away. Judy’s father, who died when she was nine, ran a plumbing and heating business
from a small shop in the impoverished West End district of Cincinnati. He was a prankster, who
liked to gamble and loved taking Judy with him to poker games. They lived in a mostly gentile
neighborhood and once when she was not invited to her best friend’s birthday party because she
was Jewish, Judy gathered some grasshoppers and wrapped them in a little box with a ribbon,
delivered them to the girl’s mom, then ran home to hide in the back yard. The mother was
outraged and stormed down the street where she found Judy’s father sitting on their porch. When
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