The Flamethrowers

In 1976, a woman nicknamed Reno takes a break from her sweltering motorcycle drive through Nevada. She spots a bird and thinks of Pat Nixon, who presents the model of a relatable woman as current First Lady. Reno reflects that it’s easier to love people who are hard to love. As she pays for gas for her motorcycle, she observes the truck drivers on their break, swearing and singing along with music and unable to sit still. She remembers her uncle Bobby, a truck driver before he died. While he lay in the hospital dying, he would still move his leg as if a clutch needed him. Bobby was her uncle but also a father figure to her because she and her mother lived with him and his sons Scott and Andy. Bobby was a difficult man, the kind who would cook a steak for himself and feed the children only instant noodles. She thinks about how she “comes from reckless, unsentimental people” (32-33).

Her former love Sandro used this fact of her upbringing to accuse her of her own cruelty throughout their relationship. Both artists who work in a discipline called Land Art, Sandro would often try to pawn off Reno to art dealers interested in his work—or attracted to him—which led to resentment between the two. Reno was about to embark on a solo trip back out West when she and Sandro met Helen Hellenberger, a gallery owner and agent for artists who, Reno knew, slept with most of the men she represented. Although Sandro acted sad that Reno was leaving him alone, she knew he would be fine without her, happy with the attentions his fame and wealth afford him.

Reno contemplates the ironies of her solo journey back West. Being from the West herself, she moved to New York City to make some connections and a name for herself before returning home to the landscapes that fuel her art. Reno was attracted to drawing as a child when she learned the beauty and satisfaction of skiing neatly and speedily down a mountainside. Reno identities these two elements as her air: drawing and speed. Picking herself up out of her reveries, Reno pays for the gas and remounts her Moto Valera, which she uses to speed past the mandatory weigh stations and the looming mountains. As she approaches a Greyhound bus, she remembers the image of her mother traveling on buses when she was single, before she met Reno’s father who left the family when Reno was three years old. She passes the Greyhound, sees that it’s carrying prisoners for “Nevada Corrections,” and contemplates freedom.

Reno continues to push the speed on her motorcycle, a new Moto Valera. She learned to ride on the back of her cousins’ dirt bikes and owned her first Moto Valera in college. When she sold it to move to New York City, she didn’t realize that she would be meeting Sandro, the heir of the company that owns and makes Moto Valera, which reinvigorated her love for motorcycles. At Reno’s next stop for gas, she witnesses a peculiar argument between a man and a woman. The man splashes the woman’s legs with gasoline then flicks lit matches in her direction. Despite the violent nature of this scene, the man and woman seem genuinely affectionate with one another.

Reno reaches her destination for the night, a casino town on the Utah border. She stops at a motel for a room, but the motel is fully booked. The young man who partly owns and operates the motel propositions Reno for her bed. The maintenance man, Stretch, approaches Reno after to offer his room for the night. He has to work through the night and won’t bother her, and his charity is an extension of his disgust for his boss. The next morning, when Stretch comes in to take his shower, he and Reno talk about the speed trials, which Reno was a part of. Stretch asks Reno if she’ll ever pass through his town again; she says no and hugs him goodbye. Later, Reno wonders about Stretch, the kind man who gave her his bed for nothing. She pictures an alternate life with Stretch, imagining what their Western country life would be like.

On her way to the race, Reno recalls Flip Farmer, once the fastest salt speeder. She read extensively about his brushes with death and his perseverance in developing new vehicles to push his speed limits; she even met him as a child when he stopped in Reno to sign autographs. Flip had just retired after his defeat by an Italian driver sponsored by Sandro’s company.

Reno registers her motorcycle and observes the other vehicles preparing for the race. Most of the racers are families, with a matriarch guarding the cooler of drinks and a patriarch preparing the mechanics of the race. She watches as other vehicles race and crash, disappearing into the horizon. Reno waits for her turn to race, less concerned with winning and more interested in the art of it. After a failed attempt to interview Flip Farmer for her college project, she came up with the idea to capture a landscape after a race, so she wants to photograph the tracks her motorcycle makes in the salt. When it’s finally Reno’s turn to race, someone warns her about the wind gusts. True to the warning, the wind gust topples Reno over, and she slams into the salt. Her sliding motorcycle nearly collides into her spinning body, then her world goes dark.

The narration takes a look back at Valera’s childhood and the whole journey of his life before he killed the German soldier with the headlamp. Valera grows up in Alexandria as a well-educated and slightly naughty little boy. He sneaks in lewd literature from France to entertain his friends—literature that helps him better imagine his desire for Marie, a French girl who lives in the convent next door. They hold hands and kiss, but she refuses to go further with him. Transfixed by sex, Valera pays a sex worker to take his virginity, an experience that surprises him with its sadness and convinces him to wait for Marie before he has sex again. But one day, he walks home to find a strange contraption near his home: an early model of a motorcycle. He watches Marie sneak out of the convent, kiss the man on the cycle, and ride off with him. Valera’s jealousy and shock turn into an exhilarating realization that there is so much for Valera to learn and experience. This thought gives him an erection, so he disrobes and enters the ocean as the sun sets. He writes a poem but forgets it later with no pen and paper to record it. He reflects that if Marie has a secret life in which she sneaks out and disappears with men, he has a chance with her. He resolves on getting a bicycle with an engine.  

Six years later, in 1906, Valera’s family moves to Milan. Valera has a difficult time adjusting to city life after years spent in the landscape of Africa. Though motorcycles are now common, Valera loses some of his desire to ride one, now that he is without an open sunset to ride off into.

Another six years later, in 1912, Valera is studying at a university in Rome. He is an observer but not a participant in the radical, intellectual discussions of the time. There, he witnesses a group of renegades race their motorcycles around the streets. The experience is thrilling, and Valera immediately feels an aesthetic beauty in their motorcycles. A cyclist sees Valera watching closely, and he invites him to try the motorcycle out. He gives Valera some basic instructions, then Valera follows the other motorcyclists around their city path. Exhilarated, Valera doesn’t want to stop, and he wonders why he waited so long to experience such strength and joy.