Writing: NaNoWriMo 2022
Sumter Special
American Kingdom: Day 1.2
Previous scene:
We opened on time. Every one of our twenty-four bikes had been up on the stand, brakes and gears inspected and tested, everything tight where it should be tight, loose where it should be loose, clean, polished, fully equipped.
Every bike had a fresh waterbottle and a snack-pack in the pannier.
We opened the doors, checked in our twenty-four guests, and sized them up.
When I say that, I mean it literally. We matched up the riders to the bikes. After a full day on a too-small or — worse — too-big bike, anyone is going to feel over-tired, over-stressed, unhappy. We aim to finish the day with everybody smiling, everybody happy, everybody safe, and everybody keen to write a five-star review and share their experience on social media.
You would have seen us riding around Charleston. Things got tight during the pandemic. Bikes and spares were hard to find, tourists were thin on the ground, sometimes there were hassles over masks.
But if someone booked a tour, we ran it and gave full value.
Sometimes there were long stretches without customers. We boned up on our history, we took photographs as if we were running tours every day, and we boned. We aimed for smiles all round at the end of every day, even if it was just the two of us. Especially then.
But right now the snowbirds were back, the sun was shining, the days were looking good. And the money was rolling in.
Today we were one short. A right pain in the butt, that. How long do we wait for stragglers? Too long and the rest of the party are fidgeting and getting bored and not getting what they paid for. Too short and the lost sheep might turn up after we’ve left on the tour, meaning one of us has to go back and get them, take the payment, fit them to a bike, and then catch up. Sometimes one of us can stay behind for a quarter-hour or so.
However we handle it, it’s a pain.
Today, she’d texted to say she had missed her flight and would be on the next one, a couple of hours from now. She’d call when she got in and could she get a discount for a half-day trip? Of course she could, I sent back. Just give us a call.
Charleston’s not that big. We can cross town in five minutes, riding fast.
We begin our regular tour by cycling down Broad Street — a lot of things to see along the way, though Washington Square is really the only convenient place to stop — and down to the waterfront near the Pineapple Fountain. From there we can anchor Charleston into history and geography.
The slavers, the traders, the blockade-runners. Fort Sumter a low shape in Charleston Harbor.
Invariably some wise guy will point it out, as if we haven’t seen it about a million times already. Like, every dawn.
“Thank you for your service, Sir,” Ted will say, and everybody laughs.
Or there’s Patriot Point across the Cooper, where someone might identify the USS Yorktown for us. She’s been out of action since the Vietnam War, fifty years back, so the same joke works, especially if it’s a smartass teenager pointing her out.
Today it was an older guy, so he could maybe have served aboard. The beauty of the line is that it still works.
“And thank you for saying so, Ma’am” he responded, a twinkle in his eye. “I flew choppers off her, back in the day.”
He looked at me, eyes latched onto my tiny red arrowhead lapel badge. “I see you have service yourself. Thank you.”
“Nothing much, Sir. Mostly having tea with Afghan ladies and children. Piece of cake, really.”
The guys couldn’t get close to the women there. Super high cultural barrier. We were made up into Cultural Support Teams, and we could chat, or search, or help the Afghani women in ways that the men couldn’t.
Not as easy as I let on. The country was full of people who would like nothing more than to fill body bags with American soldiers, male or female, so the Special Ops training came in useful occasionally when we were working away from the support that line troops took for granted.
Every now and then, for example, some teenage girl would have a suicide vest on under her burka. Disarming someone like that without getting close can be tricky.
But that was all in the past. South Carolina might have its moments but it wasn’t a warzone. Not yet.
He stuck out his hand. “Brian. I was a half-colonel by the time they pushed me out the door. Way too many years ago.”
“Molly,” I said, “Warrant Officer. Didn’t feel like re-upping after they elected Obama. Glad to meet you. First time in Charleston?”
“No,” he said, “but never long enough to take a good look around. Beautiful city.”
“Yessir, sure is. You know, the thing that saved us is that for most of the Twentieth Century, nobody had any money to knock down the old stuff and put up concrete office towers. And by the time they did, we had heritage laws in place. Can’t bulldoze anything earlier than 1931.”
“I hear ya. The Sixties were not kind to my hometown.”
I considered his accent. “Houston?”
“Dallas. Ever been there?”
“Ah, just passing through the airport, mostly.”
“If you get back,” he said, “you ought to take some time to look at Fort Worth. Some beautiful old buildings there. The Stockyard District, Bass Hall. Just glorious.”
“Thank you, Sir, I’ll be sure to do that. I do love old buildings.”
“You’re in the right place for it here,” he said. “That magnificent old church on the Four Corners. A fine place for God’s Law.”
I smiled. The intersection of Meeting and Broad streets had a federal courthouse on one corner, county courthouse on another, City Hall on the third, and the Almighty had His seat of judgement in St Michael’s. They called it the Four Corners of Law, because it covered everybody from all angles.
The whole book (NaNoWriMo work in progress):
