h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

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Chapter 1


“It’s the gaps in my life that sometimes worry me,” she said, in her unrelenting German accent. “I know the war was more than sixty years ago, but those days seem incomplete to me, as if pieces of a puzzle have gone missing.”
Her statement stopped me in my tracks. I turned from the cupboard—coffee cup still tipped on edge, caught in limbo between my hand and the safety of the shelf. My mother had always been the epitome of organized living, remembering every special occasion, able to speak of all the important details about every member of the family.
“What do you mean ‘gaps’, Mom?”
“Oh, don’t you fret! It’s not like I’ve got that one disease…Old-Timer’s, or something…”
“Alzheimer’s?”
“Yes, that’s the one,” she affirmed, then pressed on. “No, not me. What I mean is there are things I should know about those times, but was never told. Your Oma and Opa just never spoke of those things. To them, it was taboo.”
Only partly relieved, I pushed the freshly washed cup into its particular spot on the shelf amongst its mates. With quiet deliberation, I closed the overhead door. This little revelation into my mother’s personal history bothered me because it threatened to change my image of our family.
“Taboo? As in ‘forbidden’?” I asked.
“In a way…‘forbidden’. But more as if there was shame and embarrassment, something they would rather forget and wished no one else would mention.” She drew a breath that was more akin to a sigh of resignation. Her eyes dropped to look into the depths of her ever-full cup of coffee—black; no sugar, no cream—as she paused to consider how to go on. It seemed odd to find her so introspective; she usually had so many things to talk about whenever I’d visit.
The silence stretched on as she sat with her head down, chin almost resting against her breast. Her hair was completely white now, not the natural chestnut brown I remembered from my youth, nor the dappled grey I’d noticed spreading into the brown, during my years away in the military. Her skin had always been deeply tanned by the Gulf Coast sun, aided by iodine in the baby oil that she used as a lotion. Now it held a lighter cast and was mottled in places, and I couldn’t help but note the wrinkled landscape of her arms and hands. She’d somehow gotten smaller over the last few years and her small frame was showing signs of wear. When she looked up at me, as I took my seat at the other side of the kitchen table, her eyes were still as bright and attentive as ever. Yet, there was a hint of sadness, of longing, of searching for…something intangible.
“Mom, what’s wrong?”
“I don’t know, Thomas.” She said it with a long “o” and an “ah” sound, my name, the way she’s spoken it since the day I was born. “There are things that happened during the war, and afterwards, which even my sisters have never spoken of. It’s as if they choose to forget, don’t want to look back, want to leave it far behind. I remember some things that happened…good things, bad things…things I can not—how do you say?—corroborate? Your Opa would never say—”
“You know, Mom,” I interjected, “I don’t really know that much about him. Heck, I used to think his name didn’t have an ‘h’ in it, because of the way you pronounced it—Ar-toor—until Dad worked up a short genealogy of your family. When I think of him, I can only picture Opa in the context of his workshop. You’ve told me many times he used to take me out there when he was working on motorcycles. In my mind’s eye, I can almost see him standing next to the workbench as he let me play with some of his tools and spare parts he had lying around. But it’s so vague; no details. What was he like?” The question hung there, unanswered for several long seconds. Then she began…



Arthur had his hands wrapped around the header of the Motorrad, his latest project. He was struggling—he called it ‘convincing’—the engine to let loose the gasket between the parts. It was an older motorcycle, set in its ways, and didn’t seem to want to relinquish its hold on the cover.
“Verdammter…!” He grimaced, his brow knotted in concentration, beginning to sweat with the effort. “Let go, you unruly schei—”
“Herr Schaffran…?”
Arthur flinched at the sound of the soft voice behind him. He turned to look over his shoulder and saw a wiry little boy standing in the street outside the makeshift tin shack he used as his maintenance shop. The boy was supporting a bicycle. It was obvious it had seen several iterations of “hand-me-down” and was sporting a flat front tire. The young lad was dressed in rough-cut clothing: dark woolen pants, a coarse blue shirt, and stubby brown shoes. His eyes were large and expressive and one eyebrow was raised in surprise. Arthur stood and brushed dirt from the knees and the lap of his coveralls. He grabbed a rag draped over the padded seat and began cleaning his hands.
“My Mutti would never let me talk that way.”
Arthur stopped wringing his hands in the cloth, his face flushed, and he looked down at the dirt floor.
“Entschuldige, Junge. This Motorrad is giving me a devil of a time. I did not know you were there.” He regained his composure and stepped forward, then knelt in front of the boy and the bicycle. “You’re little Stephan, aren’t you? Do you own this bike now?”
“Ja, Herr Schaffran, but I still share it with my older brother, Karl.”
“I thought I’d seen this one at my shop before. Are you here because of this?” Arthur put his left hand on the deflated tire and pushed it down until his palm pressed against the rust-flecked metal rim.
“Yes. I was riding by Herr Merkel’s field, on the tractor path, and ran over a sharp rock. You see what it did to my tire. I should have been more careful. My brother will be so mad!”
“Now, now, put your mind at ease. You’ve come to the right person to help you fix the situation. Besides, if your brother starts to get mad, you just ask him how many times I had to repair the flats he brought to me.”
He patted Stephan’s shoulder and the boy’s eyes lit up with understanding. They both smiled. Arthur grabbed the front rim of the bicycle and the frame, stood, and carried it under the shelter of the tin awning. With a practiced hand, he deftly flipped the bike onto its back. He reached beneath the workbench and pulled forth a contraption made of small wooden beams. He lifted the rear wheel of the bike and placed it in the slot formed by two upright posts. The handlebar and the assembly neatly supported the bicycle frame.
“I never work alone,” said Arthur and gestured at the device. He noted the way the boy’s face slid from anticipation to disappointment and added, “…so would you be kind enough to give me the screwdriver there on the bench…and use that stool in the corner to climb up and get a second one for yourself.”
“Do you mean it?”
“Natürlich! But we will be careful the whole time we work together, do you promise me?”
“Jawohl, mein capitan!” the boy reported, with a salute.
“Ach, I’m no officer; I’m not even in the military. Nevertheless, vielen Dank for the courtesy. Now go position the stool near the end of the bench so you can reach the tools. Bring down that other flat-tipped screwdriver. You know what that is, Junge?”
“Yes, Herr Schaffran. It has a straight, flat end; not the kind with the plus or cross on the end, correct?”
“Gut! Du hast es! Mind that stool; it wiggles a bit on this uneven floor.”
Stephan pushed the four-legged stool to the narrow side of the workbench and, using one of the cross-braces, stepped up onto the seat. With great care, he reached out and touched the flat-bladed screwdriver hanging in a wall rack amongst other small hand tools. He looked to Arthur to confirm the choice, got a satisfactory nod, removed it from its holder, and clambered back down.
“I see you are now ready to be a mechanic. Or are you?” Arthur waited patiently while the boy considered the question. One could almost see the gears turning in his mind.
“Am I forgetting something, Herr Schaffran?”
“Good. You stopped to ask questions. That is the first, most important thing. Questions such as: Do I know what problem I am trying to fix? Do I know what steps, and in what sequence, I must take? Do I have all the tools I need for the job? Will I need someone else’s assistance for any part of the job? What results do I expect along the way and at the end?” He bent at the waist with his palms on his knees, which brought him to eye level with the youth. He cocked his head slightly and put on his best quizzical expression. “Shall we start from the beginning, young Meister, to ensure our success in this endeavor?”
“Well,” began Stephan, getting right into the swing of things and playing along, “the problem is the flat tire on my bicycle.”
“True enough. Have you determined the extent of the damage?”
“I know it was the rock I ran over. It punctured my tire.”
“The inner tube, surely, or it would not be flat; but did you notice if the puncture was simply a spike hole or is the tread of the tire or sidewall torn, leaving a gap?”
The boy stepped forward and craned to look at the up-ended bike. Arthur held onto the frame and slowly rotated the spoked wheel forward. They both peered intently at the tread as it moved smoothly past the man’s hand.
“There it is!” cried Stephan, pointing at a small aberration in the rubber.
“So it is,” said Arthur. He closed his hand upon the rotating rim and leaned closer to examine the tire. He dug a fingernail into what seemed to be a V-shaped slice and pulled back a chunk of the tread. “Oh, you and that rock have done a fine job of it. We will have to replace the outside tire and the inner tube, from the looks of it.”
“But can’t we reuse the tire, Herr Schaffran?” implored the youngster. “I don’t have money to pay for both—”
“Langsam, Junge! Three things. And I believe you already know two of them, or else you would not have come to me. One, I collect parts and pieces from other Motorrads and old abandoned bicycles. Two, because it costs me nothing to gather these things, I pass on no cost to my ‘customers’.” The man smiled warmly. “So, you need not even worry if the rim is damaged from your accident. If I have a spare that fits properly, it can be yours. Now the third thing: you should never use a tire that has what I call ‘an open wound’ in the tread. It is unsafe. And it becomes more likely another object will lodge in the loose flap, only to puncture a good inner tube again.”
Stephan looked sheepishly at the man. Arthur noticed and patted his shoulder again.
“Come now, Stephan, I did not mean to chide. This is all learning. Even I did not come into this world with such great knowledge! I had to watch and listen, as well, as I grew. That is why now—at the age of twenty-five—I have skills I consider worthwhile to pass on to someone such as you…and your brother. I am sure he paid attention when we worked together. Had you not been afraid, he could have helped you repair the tire…if you had the parts and tools.”
“But we don’t,” said the boy dejectedly. “My family doesn’t have…”
“Nor does mine, Stephan,” confided Arthur. “Since the Great War, and in these lean times of not enough jobs, not many of us have anything to spare. That is why I depend so much on thrown away items. I am patient and my friends usually bring things to me, or let me know where I can find them. So, as I said, you have come to the right place for help. Now…where were we in our assessment of the work at hand?”
“Um…what tools do we need, and what steps do we take to fix the problem?”
“Let us take the second one first, shall we? We should talk through this whole process before we are into it up to our elbows, so to speak.” Arthur swept his hand around the circumference of the tire. “This is the extent of our work, correct?”
“Ja. But is there something else you want me to consider?” asked Stephan.
“Several somethings, in fact. We examined the tire and know there is an irreparable hole in the tread, though a patch may suffice for the inner tube. This we must see when we remove the tire from the rim. The rim. This is another part we must check, as well as the spokes. Do you know why, junger Meister?”
“Well, I suppose it would have to do with the large rock I ran over. It could have damaged the rim, and maybe bent some spokes. I remember one time when Karl had ridden too fast down a hill and run into a culvert. He brought the bike home and the front wheel was smashed almost flat on one side. I saw him pushing it up the street and the wheel would go around and ‘thump’ onto the ground. It looked so funny…roll, thump, roll, thump, roll, thump…”
“It was not so funny when Karl brought it to me,” he said, but could not help from chuckling. “He…he looked so distraught, your brother. His bandaged knees and elbows made him look the more pitiable. Oh, that was a piece of work! We even had to pull the forks forward again to align them properly; otherwise, this bicycle would have driven differently. Hmmm. Yes, remember that we must be certain the rim and spokes are still in good order.” He pointed to the bolts holding the rim to the front forks and asked, “What shall we use to take this apart?”
“A wrench of some sort…?”
“Correct again, junger Meister! You earn the ‘Silver Crescent Wrench’ award. Look behind you on top of the workbench…that’s the one. You hold onto that until it’s time to use it. We still need to go through some more steps and see if we need other tools, as well.”


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