A Cryptic Message from a Stranger on a Bike
Riding on a greenway in West Knoxville led me to an abandoned place I once loved and an eerie message written in chalk.
Two Saturdays ago, the men of my church gathered to eat a gut-bursting smorgasbord of many fine grilled and smoked meats (you know what that means). Colloquially, in our small community of Presbyterians, we refer to this yearly event as the M.E.A.T.W.A.V.E. (Men Eating Animals Together Without Any Vegetables Ever). And I am glad I’m no longer Catholic because I’m pretty sure there’s something in their Bible—or written by one of their long-dead popes—about gluttony ranking in the Top 7 of worst commitable sins. Though, to be fair, whoever wrote that list did so before the advent of TV and the internet.
Seeing as my body has grown increasingly larger and softer since I tricked Haley into promising she’d stay with me even if I grew to the proportions of a Giant Panda, I figured it wise to take my new-used bicycle for a spin before ingesting 15 pounds of pork butt, brisket, and deer heart. The location of the feast was Club Glenn’s—a home/party venue belonging to one of the men of the church. Glenn’s is located conveniently within a neighborhood that rubs right up against West Hills Park. From a lot just across the street from his house, you can connect directly to the Jean Teague Greenway.
Even though I was familiar with it, I hadn’t explored this greenway before. For a season, Haley and I walked the Third Creek Greenway together from Sutherland Avenue to the old Earthfare building in Bearden, usually in search of froyo. When Alba was born, we parked at a lot on Dry Gap Pike in Powell and pushed the stroller past Sterchi Hills to Tommy Shumpert Park and back. Now, on days that aren’t stifling, we’ll hit the Halls Greenway beside the library to wear down the children before bathtime.
I knew that the West Hills Park greenway would take me at least as far as the West Side Y, less than a mile away to the west, a journey I could easily repeat enough times before the party started to justify guiltlessly stuffing my face.
As I pulled my bike off the rack I’d recently purchased on Facebook Marketplace and that took three days and many visits to Tractor Supply, ACE, Harbor Freight, and U-Haul to install correctly on the hitch Perla came with when I bought her in April, I noticed a familiar-looking old dude with no helmet and a prominent bald spot at the crown of his head that he tried, unsuccessfully, to cover with a few strands from the top. He wore a black August Burns Red t-shirt—not exactly the band you’d expect a septuagenarian to be rocking on a Saturday morning cruise—and pedaled like a madman on a black single-speed bike maybe thirty yards ahead of me. For a second, I thought about also chucking my helmet; I hate how it flattens my hair, exaggerating my receding hairline. But instead, I strapped up and hustled to catch the old timer and ask if the trail went further past the Y than I thought.
Besides a rented beach cruiser on trips to Hilton Head with Haley in 2019 and the Turdistanis this past May, I haven’t regularly ridden a bike since 2015. When I first moved to Knoxville in 2011, my ex-wife and I shared a GMC Jimmy. After I got tired of taking the bus to work downtown on days our schedules didn’t align, I bought a $100 Huffy mountain bike from the South Knoxville Walmart and rode that once or twice a week through the fall and winter of 2011 into the summer of 2012 when I leased my Honda Civic. Then, in 2013, Victor loaned me one of his old road bikes, and I used it to get to and from UT, where I had started grad school. Even though I rode that thing with the special underwear required so that the seat wouldn’t embed itself in my crotch, I could never quite figure out the gear situation or how to feel comfortable pedaling in car traffic.
The refurbished Trek Verve 1 that I purchased from Two Bikes earlier this month has 21 gear options, way too many for me to memorize how to use correctly. But it rides so smoothly. After 10 minutes on the greenway, the old timer was still some ways ahead, but I passed the Y following signs for the Ten Mile Creek Greenway. As long as I stayed behind someone, I wouldn’t get too lost.
A little under 2 miles in, the Teague Greenway intersects with Gallaher View Road, opening up a perfect view of the Sam’s Club, before winding through Walker Springs and Ten Mile Creek parks. Scenically, it wasn’t much different than other urban greenways. The noxious fumes from the toxic creek water and the tractor-trailers on the nearby highway were never that far off. At one point, I passed the morning walkers and hit a nice stretch of greenery for long enough to kind of get lost, staring ahead at the hanging leaves and foliage; then I suddenly had to swerve to avoid a shopping cart. A minute later, while passing through a tunnel, I hung a tight left to avoid smashing into a discarded car seat. Besides that, there were tattered clothing, empty Mountain Dew bottles, and Swisher Sweet wrappers all along the route. It was a good reminder that nothing can escape the human capacity for destruction.
I pumped along, working up a sweat. Just before passing under Interstate 40, close to Cedar Bluff, I saw my greenway companion drifting with his hands off the handles. I’d closed the gap to about 20 feet without realizing it. He looked back for a moment, and in his furrowed brow and sagging cheeks, I noticed something even more familiar than before.
The geezer smiled slyly before smashing down on the pedals. “Wait, hey, hey!” I shouted before catching the scent of a fresh human turd in the creek to my right. I recoiled but kept pedaling until the greenway spit me out at the site of the former AMC Classic 16 Movie theater (before that, the Carmike Wynnsong 16), off North Peters Road. Whoa, that’s cool, I thought. I couldn’t see any continuation of the path, just a few cars to my right, the empty parking lot ahead, and, in front of that, the old guy standing beside his black bike in front of the now-abandoned theater. He was writing something into the brick with a piece of children’s chalk. He looked back, wiped the sweat on his forehead with the bottom of his tee shirt, and waved me over.
As I started to pedal, I shifted the gear on my right handle in the wrong direction, sending the chain flying. I fiddled with the shifters while trying to remain upright. But just as I got my balance, an ugly white lap dog started barking at me from the Subaru of a lady parked at the greenway exit/entrance. In the maybe 10 or 15 seconds that I turned away, the dude I’d been riding behind was gone. He’d gotten back on his bike and started pumping his way up toward…the Guitar Center, maybe? Who knows. I hustled over to where he was writing on the brick. As I weaved through the parking lot onto the sidewalk, I marveled at how badly this movie theater had deteriorated from the last time I was there with Haley on a date night in 2021.
Since we started dating in 2017, this was our second most-visited theater after my beloved Regal Downtown West. And it had two major benefits my beloved does not: a refillable soda station with approximately 7,400 flavors of Powerade and Coke and a Dollar Tree a minute away from which we bought candies at a fraction of the price of the concession stand and snuck in like we were teenage rebels. I can’t tell you what we saw there on that date night three years ago, but I do remember a full parking lot and the glass poster cases out front not being smashed to bits. I love movie theater posters (one for The French Dispatch, which the woman at Halls Cinema 7, also now dead, gave me for free when I asked, is hanging in my office). I still take pictures of the poster for whatever film I’m seeing after each screening and keep them on my phone to remember what I watched when my memory turns to mush in the hours after my children wake me up screaming the following morning.
I tried all the doors but couldn’t get into the theater. I did peer through the glass, though. Inside, boxes were half-filled, and equipment was tossed around as if the last employees had been rushing to get out before the doors locked forever.
Abandoned places always look like the site of a zombie film. Before they knocked down the old Baptist Hospital in South Knoxville and turned it into Regal’s corporate headquarters and condos for yuppies, I used to ride my Huffy over the Gay Street Bridge on lunch breaks and peek inside. It had closed in 2008, three years before I arrived in Knoxville, and the glass doors were also locked. Through them, I saw old computers and carts scattered in the hallway. Waiting rooms were set up as if patients might still show up to be treated. It was eerie, as eerie as staring at the AMC Classic and imagining all the first dates, family movie nights, children’s birthday parties, and other things that would never be now that it’s gone. I rode around the entire building checking doors, and instead of those images I saw broken lighters, spoons, and empty aerosol cans.
At the front, where the guy I had been following had stopped, a message in white chalk read, “Everything dies. Everything beautiful dies.”
I thought about riding to the Guitar Center to see if his bike was parked out front so I could ask him what he meant by that. To see if he was waiting for me with another secret message. Or if he was even real. But if it’s who I think it was, I have a feeling I’ll see him again before too long.
I’ve been thinking about that message in white chalk ever since hopping on my bike, riding the greenway backward to Glenn’s, and eating so much animal meat that I fell into a sort of coma once I got home and passed out on the bed. Haley woke me up around 5 p.m. so we could head downtown on an impromptu date night to Cruze Farm ice cream. Her sister, Splash, had offered to watch the kids. We haven’t been connecting, in part, because I’m not well mentally (not just now; I never am). And if there’s one thing normal people like my wife are good at, it’s figuring out when you just need to go on a walk, listen to a mentally ill person’s ramblings, and eat a double-scoop waffle cone.
At a table in the shop, as we waited for the girls in checkered red-and-white to get our orders ready, I scrolled through the photos on my phone to show Haley the one with the message. But I couldn’t find it amid all the others. And I swore to her I hadn’t imagined it. I was there on the greenway, at M.E.A.T.W.A.V.E., telling people this story I’m writing you right now. She said she believed me. And we hung our heads, feeling sad about that movie theater where we shared suicide sodas, held hands, and pulled Twix bars and sour gummies from her bag to save money. And about so many other things that are gone, from friendships to the dreams we had as children. Time never stops. And in that hypersonic passing, the balding man is right: so much that we love dies.
For now, it’s time to hop back on the bicycle and wait. Like I said, I’m sure I’ll be seeing my friend again soon.
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Very curious if/when this stranger will appear again.
Ive been waiting for this one! :)