Mar 28 '06 - 917 W, 3 I - Vote Good + 10 :: Bad - 10 Malcolm BMX: Being Neighborly
Published March 28, 2006 by C.I.C.L.E.
Monthly Feature :: Contributed by Brady Russell
If you missed them, read the first one and the second one.
Malcolm BMX sat on an oil can in the garage of the Sheriff. It was 2 PM in the afternoon. He had been watching the sheriff for weeks, and he consistently did not get home from church until about 5 PM on Sundays. His family always did something together after. Malcolm BMX wanted to blow up the Sheriff's Ford Explorers. He had two in his garage. His own and the county's, which he drove for work.
The sheriff was home, though. That was the problem. BMX had just broken into his garage, had shut the door behind him and he heard four vans drive up.
BMX thought it would be a good idea to blow up the SUVs in the early afternoon, because then lots of people would be home and see it happen. Now here he was, all five foot six of him, with his long dreadlocks and his pronounced jaw about to twist off his face as he listened to somewhere between 6 and a dozen men laugh and talk outside as if they had beers everywhere.
These men all very likely had guns. They were all very likely sheriff's deputies. How to get out of here? It was not that BMX wouldn't die to get cars off the road, but he just didn't see this as being a legitimate martyrdom opportunity. He'd probably just go down as some sort of nutcase in the sheriff's garage.
So he sat there on the oil can, trying to make himself feel better by thinking that if they shot him now it would probably blow up all his explosives which would probably take them out to.
He didn't feel better?
What to do? What to do?
He didn't know enough about explosives to use them to blast his way out. He could as easily blow himself up. He probably would.
He looked behind him. There was a refrigerator in there. He opened it up. It was full of Miller Beer. If all the beer was in here, then why wasn't anyone coming inside?
Did they know he was here? Was that it? Had someone called him in and they came here to toy with the interloper? "Sheriff, some short white guy with dreadlocks just broke into your garage?" Could be. Malcolm BMX liked to think he knew how not to get seen.
What? To? Do?
Eventually, he decided just to run for it. He had his bike with him. He could just open the door and gun it as hard as he could. It was the suburbs, so it would be harder to elude them here than it would be in the city. He felt like he could do it. He could screw with SUVs pretty easily.
At least he wouldn't get shot. Unless they had the guns trained on the door already.
He pulled the cord to release overhead door opener, which would let him toss the door up manually. That would be a lot faster. Then he walked over to it and hooked one leg up over his Bianchi and got ready to blast. He reached down, grabbed a hold of the door and threw it up, ready to get faced down with a bunch of guns. If he could just make it past them, he'd decided, they wouldn't start shooting because then the bullets might hit the houses of neighbors, go through and kill children.
So he heaved!
And what did he find outside?
A bunch of his friends with two big, ugly vans backed up to the door.
"Hey, Malcolm!"
"What the hell are you guys doing here?" he asked.
"Came to help."
"Thought we'd screw with you a little bit. Ha!" A guy said. There were only four of them. They were all dressed much more upscale than they normally did, but they were all bicycle rebels just like him. They explained that they'd stolen a couple barely ever used vans and decided to pull them up here and make it look like they were somehow involved in the explosion. They figured that would send the cops on a wild goose chase for a while and allow the air to clear.
So the five guys rode off on their five high end bicycles at high speed while the state owned and family owned Fords exploded and burned in the background.
(c) Brady Russell, 2005. All rights reserved.
Brady Russell works in politics. He has been a national
organizer, a local organizer, a campus organizer and is currently the
Pennsylvania Lobbyist for ACORN. He started writing in elementary
school and never stopped. In fact, he remembers his second grade
teacher scolding his class for not trying any of the writing exercises
she had put out for them, which she finished by saying, "except for
Brady and he's done all of them."
Sometime in high school he decided he would not pursue studies in writing and just try to do it himself. Brady had a few opinion pieces published in some small magazines around the country, but so far he's largely been writing in a closet and keeping his work there.
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