freedom unbound

This was after I returned from college with a degree but no job or want of any.  I found my old bicycle in the shed in the back yard of the house I had grown up in and pulled it free from the junk my father had stuffed there over the years in the vicissitudes of daily living which had grown into a mass of hammers and saws and mowers that smelled of gasoline with a soiled floor some drops of blood from a girls foot who stepped on a nail some time in my distant past.  She had lived in a gray white brick house down the road in our neighborhood  which was replete with cheaply built one story houses by an unseen man named Shields whom my father had fought on some issue at city hall with another man whose son I was friends with.  Those houses now sat silent on a spring day and I opened the chain link fence with the bike I remember going to Memphis to buy when I dreamed of being a BMX rider on the open circuit.  It was shiny chromoly and had the sticker of some wings on it.  The handlebars were held in place by a square metal piece held in place by four chrome bolts.  It was a simply made bike and somewhat small for me but I stood as I rode from the driveway towards the highway some half a mile away.  My aunt had just left after a short visit and I remember her standing silent then asking me how I was doing and I felt ashamed because I wasn't working and now was living at home for free with no prospects for the future, her having worked in a factory some thirty years with children in the military.  I had also written her a letter once saying something juvenile about money.
I passed the gray white house and I looked up but no one was there.  The neighbors were not out at that time.  I passed all the houses and stopped when I got to the highway which led north in to the Missouri state line or south into the town where there was a church and a large bend in the road which led further to the town's school.  Sometimes I would ride to the school grounds during summer when school was out and look at the buildings where I had once gone to class and bought snacks at a little building near the track.  But now I was headed north, towards the state line.  There were some irrigation canals there that ran under the road under bridges where my father and I used to go to shoot pigeons.  I rode along the side of the highway, there being no margin to ride on, avoiding cars.  There weren't many cars along the road though and after some riding I turned and went along a gravel road beside one of the canals. 
I had a small tape player with fresh batteries and a tape of Benny Goodman.  I felt this anachronistic music was quaint I thought and I planned on listening to it far down the road.  I rode on over the gravel, having some trouble navigating the loose rocks.  When I got about two miles down the road I stopped and walked my bike into the edge of the field.  There were some broken bottles here where someone had apparently drank some beer and left the refuse.  I walked around and laid the bike down on its side.  I took the tape player from my backpack and sat down in the dirt.  I began to play it.  I played it for a minute then turned it off.  I felt the silence was better.  I tried to imagine who had drank the beer.  I thought it was some guys probably late at night when the game warden wouldn't be around.  I sat there a while then started wondering what I was doing there.  It seemed I was always alone.  That was the defining feature of my life.  Being alone.  I shrugged the feeling away then started back home. 
On the highway I passed a house with an above ground swimming pool in the yard.  There were some teen agers in the pool and one of the girls came up and her top came off.  I saw her breasts.  They were amazing to me.  It caused me to become excited but I turned and continued on.  The boy in the pool yelled something after me but I couldn't make out what he said.  I turned back onto our neighborhood road towards home.