not even a week later he had found himself unable to brake soon enough and had shot through the intersection of witcham and jackson at perhaps thirty-five miles an hour , a little kid on a dusty gray mastodon of a bike ( silver was silver only by the most energetic reach of a willing imagination ) , playing cards machine-gunning the spokes of the front and back wheels in a steady roar , and if a car had been coming he would have been dead meat .