"It's the best we can do."
On the bike road the wagon-car-truck ruts had tall grass between them; the surface was smooth; his handlebars looked down on her squatty ones as they peddled. He thought her dress amusingly sedate, hardly a dress for cycling, but then she hadn't planned to ride.
"When did you ride a bike last?"
"I dunno ... years ago, I guess."
As they rode she felt more and more at ease: it was fun knocking at weeds and grass with the pedals: all of a sudden France became USA, became Wisconsin, not foreignness, not isolation. The rooster on a fence, the dog barking at someone's gate, crows flying: weren't they home?
"This way, darling. Our path ends at a farm."
"Coming."
The sun was out now.
Someone's windmill squawked rustily as their route narrowed and ended at a barbed wire fence: the windmill vanished behind trees, behind time.
Orville got off his bike alongside a stile and laid the bike on the road; Jeannette leaned her handlebars against the wire of the fence. Beyond them, a field of grass stretched to another fence line, a smooth, green field, anchored in space by a red mowing machine deserted for the season.