If Rock and Roll Were a Machine Read Online Free PDF

bike? What?” he said.
    Donald was looking at the tattooed letters on Shepard’s forearm. RIDE FAST, LIVE FOREVER , they said. He’s a moron, all right, Donald thought. His philosophy of life is not only self-contradictory, it’s brief enough to wear on his arm.
    â€œHe wants the bike,” Donald replied. “He wants it bad enough to have moved out of the house when his mother and I told him he wasn’t buying it. We don’t even know where he slept last night.”
    â€œMaybe he’s embarrassed,” Shepard said. “I won’t give him a hard time. I’ve got a teenage boy of my own.”
    â€œWe’ve decided to let him buy the motorcycle,” Donald said. “He’s never acted like this before, so he must need to have it worse than we need him not to.” Donald looked steadily into Shepard’s face. “It was a shitty thing to take advantage of a kid like Bert,” he said.
    Kid like Bert? Shepard thought. He thought a second or two more. “Maybe I did take advantage of his enthusiasm,” he replied. “I tried to get him to consider the downside of owning a classic bike, but maybe I didn’t try hard enough. I’m sorry I had a part in bringing trouble into your home,” he said.
    Donald felt better. He’d said his piece, taken care of business, and now he was ready to get out of this place.
    Shepard followed him to the door. “When Bert shows up I’ll tell him he’s out of the doghouse.”
    Donald Bowden climbed into his car and drove off without a reply.
    *  *  *
    Shepard got the coffee going and turned on All Things Considered . His partner would come rolling in soon. They would drink coffee, do some light work, and yell at the radio until the news was over.
    National Public Radio was interviewing members of Congress about President Bush’s battle plan for his war on drugs. Another morning this would have held Shepard’s attention. Nine years ago Shepard was pensioned out of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, and news of this kind involved men and women who were still his friends. But this morning his thoughts were on two boys—his own and Donald Bowden’s.
    Shepard stepped to his tool chest and lifted the top. Taped to the inside were photos of Camille from age two, when his mother took him to live in Paris, to eight, which was the last time he came to the States for a visit. Shepard had flown to Paris for Camille’s thirteenth birthday, and then they hadn’t seen each other until three months ago when Camille came to spend his senior year of high school.
    None of the photos looked much like the boy who had ridden off on his motorcycle a few minutes before. He’dshed his baby fat, grown six inches in four years, and his hair had darkened. It was no point of pride with Shepard, but now Camille looked more like a Shepard than a Laval.
    More important than how the kid looked was how he felt, and as far as Shepard could see he was a happy boy. He kept looking for cracks in his son’s character that would signal the fault he was afraid had to be there somewhere as a result of this transcontinental family life. But he hadn’t spotted any yet. It could be, he supposed, that the son had not been critically flawed by the father. If this were so, it was a stroke of good luck Shepard knew he didn’t deserve. Camille deserved it, of course. All kids deserved good luck.
    Scott Shepard didn’t believe in a loving God, nor did he believe in a just universe. He did not believe that in life or afterward people got what they deserved. If people sometimes seemed to get what was coming to them, Shepard figured it was a fortunate accident. He did, however, try to live his life as though justice would be dealt out to him sometime, somehow. He wished life were this way, he thought it should be this way, so this was how he tried to live it.
    Shepard turned away from the