But that sort of thinking was a curse on a young man. He was pretty sure he had caught that girl's eye, and, understanding something about girls’ eyes, he knew he had to move now, not in May. So he scrounged around the barns and dumps, and he came up with enough parts to piece together a bicycle. Except for a back tire. He didn't have one of those. But he was a young man of cunning and invention, and he was able to make a tire out of a piece of rubber hose wrapped around the wheel rim and secured with a couple of turns of baling wire.

So on the big night he rode his new bicycle over to the girl's farm and picked her up. He put her on the seat of the bicycle, and, like a good gentleman, he stood in front of her on the pedals and did all the pedaling and steering. He supposed that it might not be the finest view she had ever witnessed, but he also understood that the sight of a boy's backside was not the least likely sight a girl could encounter.

“Now this was in the Texas Hill Country,” the Old Man said. “And it's called that for the reason that it's full of hills. And I was huffing and puffing my way up one of those long hills, thinking that maybe I wasn't going to make it, and wishing I had found me a smaller gal. And all of a sudden we hit the crest of that hill and started down the other side. I stopped pedaling then, pulled my knees up, and kneeled on the handlebars while we went down that hill, which was long and steep. And free of the responsibility of pedaling, I began to whoop and holler as we went down that hill, just picking up speed so you could hear the whirring of the pedals as they spun all on their own. And she commenced to whoop and holler, too, and I was sure I was showing her the best time she had ever had, and all on my own homebuilt bicycle.”

“But that wasn't the whole story of it, was it?” Sisson had asked, knowing how the Old Man's stories went.

“No, sir. It wasn't. Because this ain't that kind of story. It is, in fact, a story of great sadness. One of the worst things I ever encountered in my whole life.” He looked over to where John was sitting, slack-jawed, and Tom was fighting off a smile.