Three Views of Skatedude
ONE
A drumbeat of wheels announced him. The
click-clack of his K2 skates slapping over the sidewalk cuts
rolled behind like tiny thunder. In a burst of commotion
he appeared, a springy blonde nymph of a boy in all his
hurry and glory. His lean frame and spidery arms gave
him an other-worldly look. This alien insect had a blue
bullet pack bulging over his back and wrap around silver
frames that replaced human eyes. They gave a complete
quality to his bugness. He was wired with a numbing
thump-thump in his headphones, beamed from the home
planet far away.

His K2 skates showed signs of hard campaigns on the
streets, rails and curbs of the city. Dangling from a short
leash was a black whistle. It clung to his shimmeryyellow vest that may have been a thought to safety, but it
seemed to be more fashion. Leaning into his grace and
groove, he cut impulsively between a Honda and a
parking meter. He exploded off the curb, pulled his K2
skates up in a tuck, then planted his landing at a break in
traffic. Gone in seconds, skatedude cranked out of view.
* * *
TWO
During a pre-coffee muddle to the corner cafe, a
trench coated pedestrian slowly turns to the steady
chirping of skatedude’s whistle. As the man stops on the
sidewalk, skatedude lets loose a whistle shriek and a
squeal of brakes. Skatedude’s in a crouch, his arms
spread like some over-sized street surfer. He’s got one
leg forward grinding his heel brake into the pavement.
The blonde locks sway forward as he slips into a little
side hop. Skatedude was fully stopped.

Here he begins wagging his finger in a barrage of
obscenities that are barely intelligible. Finally, he spits “Pull your head out your ass! ” Then pirouettes and churns away, the man turns his puzzled face into the slightly gray morning.
* * *
THREE
In the fading light of an October afternoon
skatedude was barely a blur. He was a monument to velocity. In a backwards blaze, he was all out, ripping down Susie Lane hill. His vest zipped tight and headset wires flailing about him, he took long fast slalom slices out of the hill. Behind the bug-eye wraps, his head was turned looking over his right shoulder. He didn’t see it
or hear it.

An ambulette, one with a large yellow smiley face on the
side, slipped out of the left hand alley. The driver must have frozen, he stopped clean in the street’s center when he saw skatedude. The body of the bug hit near the headlight and
rolled up across the windshield, tumbling with a short sick
whump of bone meeting steel. Skatedude bounced, more like a
doll than a man, to an unnatural rest along the curb some feet away. The driver lept out and ran to assist. A long ruby smear showed where the bug had come to a stop. The darkening pool surrounded the back of his head. Skatedude didn’t move.

--Rizzo