WE CRUISED DOWN THE OLD HIGHWAY, sun at our backs, wind in our hair, and the Eagles on the radio. I grinned over at my friend Burt in the driver’s seat. We were on vacation and having the time of our lives. Then we heard the clunk-clunk-clunk every motorist dreads. I leaned out and craned my neck so I could see the back right tire. “We’ve got a flat, Burt,” I said.
Burt, always a man of few words, merely grunted. He pulled the convertible over and got out to inspect the offending tire. Having satisfied himself that my diagnosis was correct, he popped open the trunk and dug out a jack, a socket wrench, and the spare “donut” wheel. I swung my door open and joined him.
Desert stretched out as far as the eye could see, occasionally interrupted by a cactus. The cloud of dust that had gone up in our wake settled around Burt and me as we inspected the flat tire. I could practically feel the skin on the back of my neck peeling from the sun. “It’s a routine job,” Burt said. “Shouldn’t take more than a few minutes.”
We went through the standard procedure of jacking up the car and unscrewing the five lug nuts that held the rim in place. Burt took hold of the wheel and pulled. It wouldn’t budge. He jiggled it up and down, side to side. He twisted it, shoved it, kicked it, swore at it. No dice.
“Guess we’ll have to call for a tow,” Burt said. He slid a cell phone out of his hip pocket. He punched in a number and raised the phone to his ear. His expression changed from bored to confused. He shook the phone and looked at the screen. “No service.” He pronounced the words as a judge pronounces a verdict. “Back to work.”
Then my ear caught a faint buzz. A rattlesnake? No, an engine. I caught Burt’s eye. He had heard it too. We stood and, shading our eyes, peered along the horizon.
Burt was the first to spot it. He pointed to a cloud of dust swirling along the road. We watched as it morphed into a motorcycle.
Now the rider came into focus, a leather-clad cowboy of the 21st century. He zoomed toward us in a billowing plume of red dust. As he neared us, he slowed down. Burt waved frantically.
The biker drew abreast of our convertible. I gazed into a pair of aviator sunglasses, shrouded by a black Harley-Davidson bandana. He raised two fingers to his forehead in salute as he sped past.
Burt took two steps after him. Then he stopped and stared down the road. We choked on a combination of dust and gasoline fumes as we watched our salvation disappear over the horizon.
“Back to work.”
We resumed our futile wrestling match with the tire. Burt grumbled. “The least he could have done is stopped. But that’s too much to expect from a biker. No bikers are helpful.”
A glimmer of hope shone into my mind with his last sentence. “Burt,” I said, “would you repeat that?”
“I said, ‘No bikers are helpful.’”
“Burt, my friend,” I said, “you have just declared what we call in logic a universal negative proposition.” Burt gave me a quizzical look and returned to the tire. I stood up, folded my hands behind my back, and began to pace. A line of reasoning was forming in my brain. “Burt,” I said, “Suppose you were cruising along old Route 66.”
“I was. Until this happened.”
“Play along with me, Burt. Suppose you’re cruising along Route 66, enjoying the feel of the wind in your hair, when you see two strangers standing beside a car pulled over on the side of the road. What would you do?”
Burt paused in his toil to consider my question and wipe a trickle of sweat off his brow. “I guess I’d stop and see what the problem was and if I could do anything to help.”
“You would stop here, in the middle of nowhere, to try and help two strangers? For all you know, they could be armed. They could beat you up, bind you hand and foot, shove a gag in your mouth, and steal your car and all your money.”
Burt had wedged the wrench between the tire and the fender. The veins on the back of his neck bulged out as he tried to pry the wheel off. “Good point. I guess I wouldn’t stop.” His effort proving fruitless, he stood up and walked around the front of the car to the driver’s door. He opened it, removed a bottle of water from inside, and took a swig.
I followed him, continuing my argument. “Now, Burt, your original intentions show that you are, despite your trepidations, a Good Samaritan. You want to help these two strangers, but you also want to stay safe. How could you accomplish this?” I placed both palms on the hood and stared directly into Burt’s eyes to emphasize my point.
Burt didn’t respond. Instead, he took another drink. No doubt this question was trickier. I decided to give him a hint. “First, could you not make some positive, affirmative gesture to these two hypothetical fellows? A thumbs-up, a wave, a salute?”
Burt screwed the cap on the water bottle and walked back to the tire. “I guess that would be a good idea.”
“So you drive by, slowing down—but not too much—as you pass, and give them a wave. If they are not planning to do you harm, they will interpret this as a sign that you are going to help. Correct?”
“Sounds good.” Burt used the wrench like a sledgehammer, trying to jar the wheel loose.
“Watch what you’re doing or you’ll put a dent in our fender.” At this, Burt snorted. My warning was evidently not without reason, however. He lost his grip on a backswing and the wrench flew into the desert. A cloud of dust rose over its resting place. Burt went to retrieve it. I trekked after him, sidestepping cacti.
“All right, Burt, now that you’ve gotten the message across to these two hapless travellers, how do you assist them?”
Burt gave the question some thought as he picked up the wrench and walked back to the car. “I guess I’d find the nearest gas station and tell the folks there that two guys had some trouble out on the highway. Then I guess they’d send out a tow truck. Then I guess I’d get some lunch.” Burt’s eyes glazed over. “Maybe a nice juicy eight-ounce hamburger with onion rings and a chocolate shake in an air-conditioned diner.”
I realized we hadn’t eaten since last night and I suddenly felt faint. “Water,” I gasped. I sat down in the dust at the edge of the road and leaned against a rock. A vulture circled overhead. Burt passed me the bottle. I drained it and shut my eyes to the brilliant sun. Logical thinking takes a lot out of you.
After a few minutes, I recovered sufficiently to open my eyes. Burt had peeled off his shirt and was now balancing on the wheel with his feet wedged between the tire and the fender. He bounced up and down, trying to jiggle it loose. His back and shoulders were turning an ugly reddish-pink. I continued my exposition from my seat against the rock. “So, Burt, we left you at a diner, where you were contemplating your good deed over some nourishment.”
Burt stopped bouncing and glanced over his shoulder at me. He stepped off the tire. “Yeah.” He used his discarded shirt to mop the sweat off his face. “A nice cold drink and a big juicy—”
“Yes, yes, yes. Now, would you not agree that what you did was quite helpful to those poor strangers?”
“I should say so.” Burt laid his shirt on the road beside the car. He lay down on it and braced his feet against the fender. Grasping the wheel, he put all his brute force into one almighty pull. The wheel budged almost imperceptibly. Nonetheless, it had moved. Burt gathered his strength again. This time the wheel gave half an inch. One more tug. Burt sprawled flat on his back. The wheel sailed through the air. It alighted on the vast expanse of desert and began to roll like a tumbleweed away from us. Burt scrambled to his feet and set out in hot pursuit. Not wishing to lose the thread of my argument so close to its conclusion, I followed.
After about a hundred feet, my stamina gave out. I put my hands on my knees and panted for breath. When I looked up, Burt was gingerly dislodging the wheel from the clutches of a cactus. He rolled it back toward the car in triumph. I met him halfway.
“Burt,” I said between gasps of air, “you have conceded that what you did in our hypothetical scenario was helpful. Now suppose that, instead of this lovely convertible, you had been driving a motorcycle.” We reached the car. Burt knelt to pick up the spare. I planted my foot on the axle and tried to look solemn. “Would you still consider your act helpful?”
Burt gazed at me, evidently trying to digest the chain of reasoning I had presented. “Yes, I guess I would.”
I stepped off the axle and swept my arm in a gesture meant to encompass the entire state of Texas. “Furthermore, although you yourself are not a biker, you must agree that somewhere in this great land there is a biker who thinks like you, who would act in the way you yourself described, who would be a Good Samaritan toward the two of us stranded strangers?”
Burt was tightening the final lug nut. “Yes, I guess there is.”
“Burt, you are entertaining contradictory beliefs! Do you not realize that what you have just admitted is that some bikers are helpful? That is a particular affirmative proposition, and if it is true, your original statement, ‘No bikers are helpful,’ must be false.”
“I guess you’re right,” Burt said. He picked up his shirt and pulled it on. “I’m a mess.”
I patted his shoulder. “Don’t worry, pal, that’s why I’m here.”
Burt dumped the tools in the trunk. “You got that water bottle anywhere?”
I removed the desired object from my pocket and inverted it to illustrate its emptiness. He grunted and we climbed into the car.
As Burt settled into the driver’s seat, he seemed to grasp the implications of my argument. He exhaled. “So there was no point in changing that tire.”
Poor Burt—not much of a thinker, but there’s no one better for getting a job done. I could read the disappointment in his eyes. “Well, possibly not. Our helpful biker might be on the way now with a tow truck and a whole gang of his friends, bearing hamburgers.” Burt winced. I tried to console him. “But now that it’s done, we might as well take off. No sense in all your hard work going to waste.”
“I sure hope you’re right,” Burt said.
“Why?”
He turned the key in the ignition. The motor coughed and died. “Because we’re out of gas.”