By: Don Tassone

     One Saturday morning, I was working in my garage when I felt funny and had to sit down.  As I looked around, my son’s dusty bike in the corner caught my eye.  Then somehow it was no longer his bike, but mine when I was a kid.  And I was standing next to it, and my father was standing next to me.

     The last time I’d seen my father, he was in his casket.  But now he was not only alive but young.  I had no memory of him looking so youthful.  And I was a boy of seven or eight.

     We used to work on my bike a lot.  When we did, my father was always in charge.  “Watch,” he used to say.  It was his way of letting me know he was going to show me how to do something and do it right.

     Of course, even as a boy, I knew what he meant.  I wasn’t capable.  He never came right out and said that, but I got it.  Growing up, whenever I was around my father, I felt inferior, especially when it came to anything mechanical. 

     Around tools, he definitely knew what he was doing.  He could just look at a bolt and know the exact wrench for it.  Using wire cutters, he would strip off the coating without ever clipping the wires.  When he sawed a board, his mark was exact, and his cut was flawless.

     Saying we worked together on anything was really a misnomer.  He worked, and I watched.  He seldom let me do anything.  He was the master, and I was his apprentice, and it was best for me to simply observe.

     Now, standing next to my old bike, the task before us was to attach a new headlight and electric horn to my handlebars.  They’d come in a white cardboard box, which I vaguely remembered was a birthday gift.

     My father opened the box and pulled out the bulky silver headlight.  A long, plastic-coated wire dangled from it.  At the end of the wire was a silver clasp sporting a black button, for the horn.

     My father pointed out where everything would go.  Then, holding the light where my handlebars met the steering column of my bike, he did something he’d never done before.  Instead of getting to work, he just stood there and said, “Go ahead.”

     It took me a moment to figure out what to do.  I wasn’t used to thinking on my own.  I looked at the headlight and saw it had two metal clasps beneath it.  Each had two screws with small, square nuts.  I realized the screws would need to be removed and the clasps attached to my handlebars, so I grabbed a screwdriver and a wrench. 

     While my father held the light, I inserted the blade of the screwdriver into one of the screw heads and tried to loosen the nut with the wrench, but it was too big.  I expected my father to tell me which wrench was right or grab it himself.  But he just stood there, holding the light, saying nothing.

     Feeling anxious, I stepped over to his workbench and picked out a smaller wrench.  This one worked.  Slowly, I removed the nuts.  Then, with my father’s help, I attached the light to my handlebars and tightened the clamps.

     “Good job,” he said.

     I couldn’t believe it!  He’d never paid me a compliment.

     I then went about attaching the clasp for the horn.  Again, at first, I picked the wrong wrench.  But then I found the right one and secured the clasp.  My father watched in silence.

     Now the light and button for my horn were in place, but the wire that connected them hung loose, drooping over my front tire.  I looked at it, unsure what to do, and thought for a moment.

     “Should we tape it?” I said.

     “Good idea.”

     I realized that the wire was so long that it would need to be wrapped around my handlebar.  For that, I would need to loosen the clasp for the horn and wrap it along with the wire around my handlebar.

     That was a two-man job, so my father and I worked together.  He held the wire down as I wrapped a roll of black electrical tape around and around, covering my right handlebar.

     The whole time, my father said nothing.  As I turned my new light on and off and beeped the horn, he stood back and watched, with a small smile on his face.

     My father was stoic.  He said little and was stingy with praise.  But transported back to that moment, reliving an experience I had long forgotten, I sensed my father was proud of me.

     I looked up at him and said something I don’t recall ever saying to him until he lay dying.

     “I love you.”

     His eyebrows arched, and his mouth fell open.  He looked startled.  Had I gone too far?

     But then he said, “And I love you.”

     My eyes moist, I blinked, and I was back in my garage.  I looked around, hoping I might catch one more glimpse of my father, but he was gone.

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Don Tassone is the author of two novels and nine short story collections.  He lives in Loveland, Ohio.