Motorcycle Mama

"Motorcycle Mama
Won't you lay your big spike down
Motorcycle Mama
Won't you lay your big spike down..."

The on-board stereo was turned up to full blast. Not that anyone would notice: The large black chopper with its foreign license plate was lazily eating up the miles on an utterly deserted country road. The man sitting on the bike in his black leather outfit looked too grim for his music, and the lowered, dark visor certainly did nothing to distract from the aura of menace his entire body projected. On its own, the luggage strapped to the back of the bike may have been a golf bag; but when carried along by this man, anyone would surely treat it with the caution usually afforded a gangster's violin case in old Mafia films.

"Ich hab' Hunger," a tiny voice cried out over the music and the head wind.

The dark man's mouth twitched downward. Murder seemed imminent. The man gave a sharp nod and turned towards a small village at the next intersection, shutting off the radio. There was an open pub on the main road and he parked his bike in front of it.

The locals turned suspicious eyes upon the stranger. At least until he got off the bike in a somewhat unusual fashion, lifting his right leg and swinging it over the bike's front rather than the back - revealing the child sitting behind him. The boy appeared to be around six years old, healthy if a bit on the thin side, and obviously fairly happy with their stop. He eagerly tugged off his helmet revealing a mass of ruffled blond hair. "Mittagessen?" he asked hopefully.

The dark man nodded, exchanged his own helmet for a baseball cap and lifted the boy off the bike.

They entered the pub side by side, both immediately heading for the corner table that the locals usually avoided because of the bad light: it had walls on two sides and no direct sunlight from any of the windows, and while old Matthew made the best shepherd's pie, no-one had ever accused him of excessive investments in illumination.

Said man now approached the strangers with two menus and a polite smile. "What can I getcha, fellas?"

"Pie and a glass of water," the man with the menacing aura growled.

"Schnitzel und Pommes!" the child crowed happily.

"Englisch, Julian!" his ...parent? admonished sternly.

"'Tschuldigung," the boy mumbled. "Ähm... a schnitzel and chips, please. And apple juice!"

Matthew beamed at the boy, who had done passably well albeit with a strong German accent, while his guardian merely gave a curt nod. Leaving the odd little family behind to get the drinks and fix the ordered dishes, he missed their further conversation, which at once returned to German.

"Why do I have to learn English?" the little boy complained in the woe-is-me tone of voice all children master at some point in their lives.

"Do not whine!" the man snapped. The boy turned down his eyes at once and huddled in on himself.

The man sighed and forced his own tense shoulders to relax. Stiffly, he said: "I'm sorry, kid. I will not hurt you. I promised, remember?"

Julian looked up with a little hopeful smile. "So I don't have to learn English, then, sir?"

The man slowly extended his right hand and ruffled the boy's hair in a friendly, careful manner. "You still do, you little punk. You need to know your way around some languages if you want to stick with me. And don't call me 'Sir', that's just ridiculous. I swear by now you're forgetting on purp-" Seeing the mischievous glint in the boy's eyes, he trailed off. "Aw, you little fiend!"

The dastardly challenge to the man's authority was met with a precisely executed, highly effective punitive manoeuvre: Two hands extended with deadly speed and accuracy, fingers digging into skinny ribs to mercilessly tickle the enemy into submission.

When Matthew returned with their drinks, the child was breathlessly flopping on his back on the corner bench, the man playfully threatening to braid his hair like a little girl's unless he begged for mercy, while the boy giggled something that might have been "Never" in German, though to Matthew it simply parsed as a bunch of incoherent sounds of delight.

A/N: Another short chapter. Just the one today, sorry. Quoted lyrics are by Neil Young.