WHEN WE got back to the trailer, Patty said baby Sarah needed some milk and eggs and could we go to the store? I offered to take my car, but Kenny said naw, we'd go on the motorcycle. He handed me a Bell crash helmet with a wraparound visor and we went out behind the trailer. "I came within a gnat's ass of bein' a road racer a while back," said Kenny. "But you begin to look at things a little different when you got a wife and kid to support."

"It's a real good bike," he said. Black, polished, stripped, Kenny's 500cc bike didn't look very special, though. "I had it set up by a guy from Cincinnati down for the big races here in March. You just take all the cylinders and parts and balance them to the thousandth of an inch, and she'll go."

Two kicks and Kenny turned it over, he backed it off the grass and onto the dirt road that led up to his house, and I hopped on gingerly, looking for footholds and handgrips. We chugged through a few deep potholes that had bounced me against the ceiling of my VW coming in, then banked off the edges of the road going around them in a quickening rocking rhythm. These were Kenny's home roads.

Then Kenny ducked into a full racer's crouch and the hurricane struck me again. With some difficulty, much like swimming a few inches back to a levee against a flood, I managed to bury the bottom of my visor against Kenny's bowed back. Barns, fences, houses, cows, trailers, bridges, gardens, signs, dogs and clotheslines flew back. A calm center within me, which had long ago abandoned the idea of bailing out, began to consider two things. One, how far would we roll if a crash occurred. And two, how fast we were going, which would explain the number one. I counted telephone poles. We passed two poles in two seconds. Poles about fifty yards apart. A hundred yards in two seconds. Let's see, eighteen times a hundred yards is a mile. A mile in thirty-six or so seconds. That's that's over a hundred miles an hour! Mississippi one, Misssssippi two. Two telephone poles! How far apart? Over the distance from home to second in a major-league park. I got calm scared. I tried to put my center of gravity in tune with Kenny's every move. When Kenny banked into a corner, I banked, but not too much.

When we stopped we were by a vast dairy farm, and when the buzzing in my ears faded out, the scream of thirty-thousand chicken lined up in cages gradually replaced it.

"How fast were we going, Kenny?" "Maybe a hundred. Little over. That's as fast as she'll go with a passenger and no faring."

"It seems like the only speed you're comfortable with. Course on the way back, we'll have to go a little slower. For the eggs."

"Sure, Tim." Kenny bought an open cardboard tray of two dozen large eggs, and we got another tray to put on top of them. The man, who was watching pro wrestling from Orlando, offered to tie the eggs up with string, but Kenny said naw, he had an elastic rope he used for books on the back seat. When we hooked it up, it stretched taut in the center, but the eggs on the sides had to be held down.

ABOUT a hundred yards down the road, I knew Kenny only drove his motorcycle one speed. Since I had to hold on to the handgrip with one hand, that left only one hand to hold on to the eggs. There was not enough room to put the eggs completely behind Kenny, so one side stuck out into the breeze. When we reached fourth gear, the egg trays were fluttering so hard they began to make a loud roaring sound, almost like a siren. By fifth gear, I could tell the only thing making us go slower was the wind resistance of the egg trays. When I tried to shift the eggs from one hand to another, I felt my hand go wet with goo. Again, in the calm state of shock at top speed, I began to observe what was happening. The eggs were bounding out both left and right. First the vibrations would crack the shell, then the wind would suck the omelet out. As we zinged past the telephone poles and around curves, I twisted my neck around to see what they were doing. It took each egg about a second to hit the ground, so there was a string of yolk and goo streaming out fifty yards behind our cycle. Leaving several very stringy omelets baking on the hot September asphalt.

I tried to point out to Kenny what was happening, but it was no use with the noise. After a couple of miles, he pulled off the road and cruised past a sign that said Spruce Creek Farms. This was the road to the old airport where there were both sanctioned, that is Don Garlits and the Green Monster popping parachutes at the end of a 240 mph run, and midnight drags, which were accompanied by the popping of several kegs. After cutting through several roadblocks, we reached the old runway, which was clogged with grass busting through the cracks in the concrete. This time Kenny ran through a running quarter hitting the familiar top speed before the line and then started to shift down. Having no parachute to stop us, again I fell forward and mashed the eggs some more against Kenny as he braked down near the Mobile shed at the end of the runway. The shed was the headquarters for a projected development. Before I had time to show Kenny the eggs, we both concentrated on a white pickup truck that was bearing down the runway toward us.

"That's Will Perdy," said Kenny. "He owns this land here. Gonna turn it into a development where you can taxi your private airplane right up to your house."

A large rawbone man with a swarthy face got out of the pickup truck. He had on black plastic sunglasses and a very crew cut. A boy about fourteen got out of the truck with Will.

"How ya doin Sam," said Kenny.

"Fair. You still drivin crazy, I see."

"Just thought I'd take her out for a little ride and clear the pipes," said Kenny.