The Flamethrowers

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Valera had fallen back from his squadron and was cutting the wires of another rider’s lamp. The rider, Copertini, was dead. Valera felt no sadness, strangely, even though Copertini had been a comrade in arms, someone Valera had sped along with under the Via del Corso’s white neon, long before they both volunteered for the cycle battalion in 1917.

* * *

It was Copertini who had laughed at Valera when he’d crashed on the Via del Corso’s streetcar tracks, which could be so slippery on a foggy night.

Copertini considered himself a better rider, but it was Copertini who had been going too fast in the dense woods and slammed headfirst into a tree. His bike frame was mangled, but his headlight bulb had an unfractured filament, which now weakly illuminated a patch of dirt and stiff grasses. Copertini’s motorcycle was a different model than Valera’s, but they used the same lamp bulb. Valera wanted a spare. A spare would be handy.

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