T.R. Healy was born and raised in the Pacific Northwest, and his stories have appeared in such publications as Efiction, Freight Train, Rusty Truck, and Stymie.

Ordinary Monsters (February 20, 2011. Issue 25.)

Another two days, Kvalheim thought, glancing at the calendar on his desk. He didn't bother to look at the mirror beside it, because he didn't need to see the alarm with his eyes. He already sensed it in his heart.

Friday would be here in another two days.

*

Again, the huge myrtle wood sign, "Kvalheim's Cyclery," sloped a little to the left, and as he did nearly every morning as soon as he got to the shop, he straightened it. The sign was carved by his Uncle Lennie, who owned the bicycle repair shop for twenty-three years until he sold it to him four and a half years ago. At the time of the sale he promised his uncle he would keep the crude sign in the front window, even though it took up a lot of space which he could have used to display some of the vintage bikes he had restored and were available for purchase. He didn't regret his decision, though, because his uncle meant so much to him. He taught him everything he knew about repairing bicycles, taught him too how to build frames for road racing bikes. He was deeply grateful and wanted the sign to remain there because his uncle made it.

"You started working on that Lemond?" Lohan, one of the mechanics who worked for him, asked Kvalheim when he entered the shop a minute before nine o'clock.

He shook his head, carefully clamping a brake lever to the handlebar of a Schwinn three-speed. "I thought you were going to do that?"

"I am. I just wanted to make sure. You get here so damn early I never know what you're working on."

"The earlier I come the more peaceful it is."

"Nobody's out there now."

"Not yet, anyway."

Lohan glanced out the window. Still, there was not a soul in sight, only a mangy dog sniffing at a crumpled paper bag.

"There's hardly been anyone out there the past couple of weeks."

"That'll change on Friday."

"Why's that?" Lohan asked, slipping off his thin canvas jacket and draping it over the back of a chair.

"It'll be six months this Friday."

"Already?"

He nodded, slowly pumping air into the back tire of the battered Schwinn.

"I can't believe it."

"I can."

*

Half a year ago this Friday, driving back from the beach after attending a cousin's wedding, Kvalheim was only a few blocks from home when his world turned around forever, seemingly. He lived near the top of a dormant volcano and was cruising along the familiar two-lane road, still a little groggy from all the champagne he drank at the reception. He had driven the road so often he was confident he could do it with his eyes closed. And very briefly, as he approached a slight curve, he shut his eyes and when he opened them he saw the headlights of another car racing toward him. At once, he swerved to the right, cranking the steering wheel as hard as he could, and just managed to avoid clipping the other vehicle, which roared past him, also swerving sharply, and slammed into a dark lamppost. Panicking, he continued on to his house where he remained for a few minutes in his car, scolding himself for not checking on the condition of the other driver. Then, after he got out, he notified the police of the crash.

He was certain he didn't cause the accident, the other car was the one that crossed the dividing line, and the police concurred and didn't find him culpable in anyway. The other driver, who was crushed to death under the weight of his overturned Cutlass, was a blues musician by the name of Elijah Miller. Kvalheim was not familiar with him but many people in town were and they were very upset and blamed him for his death even though he was exonerated by the police. They were angry at him because he didn't stop to help the injured musician. Someone who did stop said to a reporter that Elijah was still breathing when he found him and believed if someone else was there they could have pulled him out from under the car.

After hearing that on the radio, Kvalheim was more upset with himself than ever for not stopping so he was not really that bothered when a couple dozen people appeared outside his shop the next morning with signs condemning his negligence. He knew they were right, and he reckoned if he had been a friend of the musician's, he would have joined in their protest. He assumed the demonstration would last only that day but, to his amazement, it continued. Day after day, protesters marched past his shop, often chanting, "No Music No Justice." It was obvious then they wanted to force him out of business. The number of protesters diminished after a couple of weeks, but still many came, not every day anymore but two or three times a week and always on Saturday, which was his busiest day. In time, the protest evolved into a kind of street party, with some of the protesters painting their faces and donning garish robes and shirts and scarves. The scent of cannabis often permeated the air outside the shop, as noticeable as the tambourines that some in the crowd rattled.

The longer the protest went on the more suspicious Kvalheim became of the protesters. He began to wonder if some of them were even familiar with the music of Elijah Miller, suspected they showed up outside his shop because it was somewhere to go, a place where they were welcomed and could feel useful.

*

The first week of the protest, after Kvalheim returned from a test ride on a bike he was working on, someone in the crowd recognized him and cried out, furiously, "You belong in jail, you murderer!" Immediately others joined in, also enraged. Pebbles and paper cups were thrown at him, even an empty CD case with Elijah Miller's picture pasted on the cover.

The bastards, he thought, trying to ignore them as he walked the bike into the shop. The goddamn bastards.

He seldom took any test rides after that, let Lohan and others who worked for him do that because he was so rattled by the attack. Those early days of protest he became a prisoner in the shop, arriving early in the morning and not leaving until late at night when he was sure all the protesters had gone home.

*

Friday, just as Kvalheim expected, there were more protesters outside the shop than there had been in weeks. Thirty-five to forty, he figured now, probably fifty by this afternoon when the weather got a little warmer. He could hear their sporadic chants above Miller's music constantly playing on a boombox, but it was difficult to see them through the cluttered front window. Until the protests began, he always wished the sign his uncle carved wasn't so large but now he was grateful for its size because it blocked out most of the protesters. Indeed, if he wanted to see them, he had to get down on his knees and squint through the spokes of an old Pashley roadster.

"You were absolutely right," Lohan conceded as soon as he arrived at the shop. "They are out there in force this morning."

Kvalheim, struggling to straighten a bent rim, did not reply.

"I bet it's their last stand, though," Lohan predicted. "I bet they are all gone in another week."

"That's what you said after the first couple of weeks but it never happened."

"It will this time, though, I'm sure of it."

He sighed, leaning back from the work bench. "I hope you're right but I doubt it very much."

"Why do you say that?"

"Because they are not going to stop until they put me out on the street," he grumbled. "I made a mistake, a very bad mistake, but I don't feel I should be ruined for it. They do, though. I've tried to reason with them but they won't listen to me or to you or to any of our customers. All they want is their pound of flesh."

"Maybe you should consider moving the shop to the other side of the river?"

"They'd just follow me there. Some of them, I'm sure, knew Elijah Miller but not most of them. For them I'm just a bad person who must be squashed like a bug."

"So are you just going to wait them out then?"

"I'm going to wait but I don't know for how long," he said, squinting again through the dusty spokes of the English roadster.