Dead Body Language by Penny Warner Page A

on my all-terrain bike and no doubt looking like the demoniac Margaret Hamilton in
The Wizard Of Oz
, when a bright red Miata pulled out right in front of me.
    I grabbed the handlebars—I was riding with no hands, a skill I’d learned early so I could sign to my riding partners while biking—then jerked the bars sideways to avoid a collision, nearly swerving into a roadside ditch. It was the small pothole I didn’t see that caused me to kiss the pavement.
    I took the handlebars in the chest, knocking the wind out as I landed on the graveled red pavement, a pretzel of body and bike. For several seconds I lay on the ground, gasping for breath like a fish out of water. As soon as I could speak, I said only one word, unfit for print in my family newspaper.
    What I thought was pavement turned out to be red clay mixed with bits of rock. I stood up stiffly, brushing the crimson patina from my once-beige sweater and brown jeans, and surveyed the damage.
    At first glance it looked like I could ride the two-wheeler home, providing I didn’t need to sit on the crooked seat and I didn’t mind steering with reversed handlebars. I straddled the front wheel, twisted the bars into forward position an inch at a time, then checked the rims and wheels for further damage. Two popped tires clinched it. I wouldn’t be riding my bike home.
    Until this point I’d felt no real pain except for a tightness in my chest from getting the wind knocked out, and a little stinging on my legs. But my knees were starting to throb, so I took a moment to check them. Peeking through my newly shredded jeans were a pair of scarlet kneecaps glistening in the sunlight. The twin circles were bright red except for the small dark circles that dotted the circles. I bent over; a closer look revealed the horror I had feared. Tiny pebbles were embedded in my bloody knees.
    “Fuck!” was only one of the words I used while reviling the jerk who caused all the damage. That was followed by more creative language I had picked up at deaf camp as a kid.
    The car, nothing but dust on the horizon, had pulled out of the nearby parking lot of the Mark Twain Slept Here bed and breakfast inn, one of the most popular overnight lodges in the Mother Lode. I badly needed some clean water and a couple of hefty Band-Aids or I’d never make it home. Feeling a little dizzy and short of breath, I propped the bike against a nearby tree, and hobbled up the short flight of steps to the inn’s front door, trying not to imagine how bad I was going to feel when the numbness dissipated.
    The ten-room, trigabled Victorian mansion, which now took in honeymooners, traveling salesmen, and city-weary executives, had once been the boyhood home of Reuben Penzance. Built by his great-grandfather, Septimus, it had been passed on to his grandfather and later his father. According to a local guidebook, the home had finally been sold when Reuben was in elementary school, as the Penzance family prospered.
    The wrought-iron fence surrounding the grounds sported a bronze plaque that defined the architecture andgave the original date as 1853. Considering gold was discovered in 1848, it hadn’t taken old man Penzance long to build his first dream house.
    Now, standing among the lodgepole pines, the home had been renamed the Mark Twain Slept Here Inn, after the Mother Lode’s favorite historical character, who did in fact spend a night as a guest of the Penzance family. The mansion was now coated with what must have been a dozen layers of paint—this time a distracting shade of pink with lavender and blue gingerbread trim. The word “cute” didn’t do it justice. Cinderella could have worn a version of the monstrosity to the ball.
    I considered knocking on one of the two front doors. They both featured a pair of tole-painted old miners that had been added since I’d last been to the Mark Twain. I opted for the knob instead, after encouragement from both the “Welcome Forty-Niners” sign overhead and