In the first summer after the Great Insurrection was thought to have ended successfully, a city man found himself bicycling northward on what had once been Highway 12 from Ada to Sasakwa, Oklahoma.
On his first venture outside New York City, Leo had never heard so much silence! Listen as he might, the only sounds in the air were his own. His grunts. His own labored breath. The straining chain on the bicycle that he was forcing forward with heavy plunging motions. The backpack chafing his shoulders. The wet ringing of sweat in his ears. The bicycle and the man wrestled against all resistance.
And his eyes had never seen such brightness! Leo Torres had lived his life in dismal sections of a dismal city. Smoke and moist pollution darkened his every visual memory. Now, Oklahoma sun tortured his eyes. It lorded over all from above him and added reflected pain from the cracked concrete below his agonizingly slow bicycle wheels.
If the sights and sounds of Oklahoma at its torrid worst oppressed Leo Torres, its smells assaulted him even more. He was certain that there were different odors, but they seemed to have combined together into one nauseating and aggressive redolence. Burning things, he assumed. Dead bugs. The sticky fluid on those gigantic-stemmed yellow flowers that formed walls on both sides of the roadway and seemed to salute the sun, chief of the inquisition.
The countryside was menacing, depressing, and smelly. Nature, grievously wronged, was reclaiming the world and revenging itself against humanity's brief interruption of its ageless processes.
Unforgiving nature mocked humanity with the evidence of our defeat. Utility poles that once stood straight were askew or down altogether. The power and telephone wires they once held up to the sky were tangled around the poles and in the exuberant undergrowth. Leo had seen the remnants of highway billboards that promised products they could no longer deliver and services that were no longer used. Here a sign for gasoline and the price from the last time they sold it; there a sign for beauty products. If Leo had been in a mood to appreciate humor, instead of sweat-soaked and blistering, he might have smiled a little as he labored past a faded billboard offering air conditioners.
Yellow traffic signs seemed to have held up comparatively well. "Slow," or "Dip" cautions were still attempting to advise automobile drivers who no longer existed. The speed limit, Leo noticed, was still 60; though he estimated
that, without automobiles, no one could travel more than 10. Nor were they likely to. No one in America had the pleasure of fast movement, except those few on what railroads were allowed to run.
With more than two hours of agonizing pedaling, Leo assumed that he had made some progress since he left the train stop at the tiny berg with the tiny name of Ada. He barely remembered where he was going and had completely forgotten why. He was supposed to cross a long bridge across a river, then turn right and go another two miles. Then, he assumed, he could rest. "And even if I can't," he thought, "I will."
Through Leo Torres' burning eyes, he thought he could make out a bridge ahead. At least it had cement railings along its sides and the oppressive plant life seemed to fall below it. The long bridge across the South Canadian River was, at least, clear of undergrowth and less fragrant than the rest of the ride. Its simple length of low flatness, Leo assumed, was also probably the easiest bicycling terrain. A tired metal sign informed him that he was leaving the Chickasaw Nation and entering that of the Seminole. Leo had no idea what either of them was, and did not care, unless Seminole pavement turned out to be smoother or cooler than Chickasaw.
After the long, flat, open bridge, Leo found the combination of broken pavement, foliage, and steep gravity too much for his bicycling strength. He dismounted and pushed to the top of the hill, where at last he found his turnoff to Highway 56. The new stretch of pavement was even more narrow, more overgrown, and even more tortured than what he left behind.
Another half hour of pedaling passed before Leo, nearly breathless, spotted a big metallic marker standing to the left of the road. At that point, he would have stopped for anything, and the metal sign, unmindful of its living green conquerors, seemed to stand rather smugly for something of past human glories.
Leo read the raised type, "Sasakwa, Original Site. Home of Gov. John E. Brown for 34 years. principal Chief, Seminole Nation, succeeding his father-
in-law, Chief John Jumper, Col. 1st Regt. Seminole Mtd. Vols., Confederate Army in Civil War. Young Brown was Lieut., 1st Regt. Creek Mtd. Vols. C.S.A. Each in turn was pastor of Spring Church, near here, founded 1850 by Baptists." In smaller type at the end, it read, "Oklahoma Historical Society and State Hi Way Commission, 1949."
Except for ever-intruding nature's greenery and insects, there was nothing else. Wearily, Leo set his bicycle back on the pavement and went on. Through his sweaty glare, he could see to the next hilltop, where a tiny glowing dot on the roadway seemed to move.
With his agonizingly slow approach, the dot enlarged and elongated. Leo’s tired legs tried to pedal faster. The growing white dot before him became his first hope of civilization. It had a rhythm of animation. As he at last drew close enough to see, Leo Torres saw that the dot was human. In fact, it was better than human. It was clean and pure, it walked with a rhythmical charm and came purposefully toward him. It had a face split with a warm, welcoming smile.
It was a woman!