“A couple of your brothers, I think, but I don’t know ‘em,” Jill said.
She poured two more gin and tonics and put them on the bar in front of Chick and Igor.
Bear, a bulky man with a hairy face, came through the door first and Beaner Bob, a smallish Hispanic looking dude followed him. Beaner stepped lightly and took in the whole scene with one long glance. Bear didn’t seem to see anything. His head was bowed and his shoulders slumped.
“What’s up, Bear?” Chick asked. “You look kind of sheepish.”
“El Jefe’s mad at him,” Bob answered for him. “Caught him in the clubhouse with a nineteen year old chick.”
“So?” Chick responded.
“So, she’s the sheriff’s daughter,” Beaner answered with a chuckle.
Igor grunted. It was a quirk he had: involuntary grunts. When something was funny or caught his attention, Igor would grunt. Sometimes if you told him a joke or a funny story, he’d grab you by the shoulders with both hands, look you in the face, and grunted. He was a big guy and if he got carried away, he could knock you around some during a grunting fit.
This time he just grunted and said, “Watch out for that chick. She’s willing, but Mongo don’t want any of us around her. That includes brothers from other chapters; especially you nomads.”
“Dig ‘em, Chick,” Bear said, “When Mongo gets here he’s gonna be pissed at you ‘cause you’re a nomad too.”
Chick looked at Beaner Bob. Bob looked back and said, “Not me, hermano. El Jefe, me gusta.”
“He went out the back window when Mongo came in the front door,” Bear explained. “Mongo didn’t know he was there. His bike was out back, of course. He rolled down the hill and didn’t pop the clutch till he was out of earshot.”
Beaner Bob was as dependable a brother as any biker could hope for. It’s just that if there is a problem he can’t help with, he doesn’t stick around to get caught up in it. As Beaner explains it, he’s from Columbia and if he gets in too much trouble in the U.S. the feds will send him back to Columbia. He says he’s got good reasons for not wanting to go back there for a while.
Bear sat down at the bar next to Igor and Bob sat down next to Bear.
“Give us a couple of beers,” Bear said to Jill.
“Cooler’s broke, bro,” Igor said. “Beer’s hot, but Jill got a couple of bags of ice from the gas station so we’re having cocktails.”
“Then give me what they’re having,” Bear said to Jill. “Igor’ll pay.”
Igor grunted so Bear said, “It’s your town, your bar, I’m a guest so you buy. Besides, you know if the cooler worked, I’d have a beer and be happy with it.”
Igor nodded to Jill and Jill looked to Beaner Bob who said he’d have a beer. “I don’t care if it’s hot.”
Jill was busy with the bar’s other regulars for a while so the bikers nursed their drinks and told each other heroic lies.
After a while, everyone heard the noise of a pack of Harleys. Most of them had straight pipes. Chick stood up and walked to where he could see the road.
“Here come the bros. Looks like most of ‘em are packing old ladies. I wondered where they were. The meeting ended an hour ‘an a half ago,” Chick said as he sat down at the bar again.
Mongo was the first one through the door and as he headed for a table in the middle of the room, he pointed at Chick and said, “I’m pissed at you, Chick.”
Igor grunted once and Chick looked at his drink. When Mongo sat down, Beaner Bob walked over and set an iced coke on the table. Jill looked over from a table in the corner. Her expression was full of anger, but the anger drained quickly. She couldn’t let these guys get away with serving themselves or the night would end up a wipe-out for the bar. As she took her place behind the bar again, Jill stopped in front of Beaner Bob and said, “Stay on your side of the bar or you’re 86’ed out of here for the weekend.”
Bob looked across the bar earnestly and said, “Lo siento, La Bonita.”
Jill looked hard at Beaner to see if he was putting her on, and she decided he wasn’t. She moved down the bar to Igor and asked what Bob had said.
“I don’t speak Columbian,” Igor said as he slid his glass across the counter.
With her eyes she pointed at Chick’s glass and Igor grunted so she filled both glasses and took the ten dollar bill Igor put on the bar. But before she took the bill, Chick said, “I’m sorry, beautiful one.”
Jill just stared at him so Chick added, “Beaner Bob said, ‘I’m sorry, beautiful one.’”
Jill looked at Beaner Bob who wasn’t paying any attention to Jill or Chick, and said, “He’s from Columbia, right? So why do you call him, Beaner. I thought Beaners were Mexicans.”
Chick shrugged and said, “Most of the brothers probably think Columbia’s in Mexico. He talks like a Mexican so we call him Beaner Bob. What do you call a Columbian biker anyway? His real name is Roberto.”
Jill looked at Igor and said, “Bartemptress, La Bonita, why don’t you bring these Nomads around more often? They seem to have a lot of class.”
Just then, Mongo stepped up to the bar between Igor and Bear and said to Jill, “They got class all right. They can party too and fight. These three guys can clear out a cowboy bar in Rawlings, Wyoming, but then they’re gone down the road leaving the shit for someone else to deal with. And see that shot glass Jill? What these three guys spend here tonight won’t fill that glass.
“I was on the road with Bear one time. I know he had a hundred bucks in his pocket. We stopped at a little casino in Nevada where you get an all you can eat breakfast for three bucks. I ordered up. Bear wanted water. I went through the line and came back to the table to eat. The waitress looked hard at Bear, but he didn’t even smell my food. The waitress went back to work. When the family at the table next to us left, Bear reached over, took sausages off one plate, hash browns off another, dumped ‘em on a pancake from a third plate, covered the whole mess with a half eaten waffle and ate the weird sandwich before the waitress came by again.
And speaking of glitches, what’s up with the jukebox? There’s no power to it, or something.”
Jill said, “It’s broke too, Mongo. Cooler’s broke, the jukebox is broken, and you tell me these good looking’ guys are tightwads who cause trouble wherever they go. Seems like everything sucks right now, but the jukebox does work, sort of. Come on, I’ll show ya.”
Jill put Igor’s money in the cash register and filled glasses for a couple of regulars who were shooting pool. Then she took Mongo over to the jukebox and showed him that he cold queue up ten songs at a time, but she warned him that if anyone put coins in the machine, it would jam up.
“The repair man will be here tomorrow, but I’ll put you in charge of the juke box tonight so you guys can have some tunes,” Jill said before she went back to the bar where she was pretty busy until Kate came in at 9:00. After that, things ran pretty well for a while. The bikers mixed with the locals because this was a shared saloon. Sometimes one of the local guys tried to get chesty with a non-biker, but one of the bros told him to be cool. Everyone was drinking except Mongo, who had quit two years ago, but no one was drinking very fast because mixed drinks were $4.50 each. There was one real straight looking guy sitting at the end of the bar near the door. He was drinking slowly, working on some papers, and ignoring everyone, so they ignored him.
At about 10:30, Clean Steve came in with a bug buff looking guy. They walked over to Mongo’s table and Mongo said, “What’s up, Clean?”
Clean Steve said. “This is Larry, Mongo. He’s state arm wrestling champion. He’s gonna be in a tournament on TV next weekend.”
Larry looked at Mongo, who is a real bug guy, and said, “Wanna arm wrestle?” Mongo could see that Steve and Larry had been drinking somewhere else.
Mongo laughed. “No, man. I don’t want to arm wrestle, but make yourself at home. Don’t mess with the jukebox, though. If you want to hear something, tell me and I’ll put it on for ya.”
With that, Larry walked over to the jukebox, looked over the selection, pulled some coins out of his pocket and started to put them into the coin slot. Igor saw what was going on, elbowed Chick, and grunted. Mongo swung around to see what Igor was looking at. When he saw that Larry was about to screw the jukebox up, he knocked his chair over getting out of it. In a couple of big steps Mongo had his hand on Larry’s shoulder.
“What are you doing? I just told you not to put any change in the jukebox.” Mongo said in a cool voice that carried the message that he wasn’t used to being ignored.
Even though Mongo didn’t raise his voice, most of the people in the bar had turned an eye on Mongo and Larry. The noise of the chair being knocked over caught the attention of some, but that wasn’t much of an interruption in a noisy bar. It was the sensitivity of the bikers that alerted them to the problem. These guys can be drunk enough to fall off a bar stool and still be sensitive to almost any sign of trouble. Not everyone noticed the potential trouble though. Jill was talking to the guy at the end of the bar that was working on his papers and neither of them noticed anything.
Larry turned to face Mongo. He didn’t look impressed. Larry was a big guy. Not as big as Mongo, but Mongo carried some of his weight as fat while Larry looked to be mostly muscle.
When Mongo let go of his shoulder, Larry turned around to put his change into the jukebox. Mongo grabbed Larry by the shoulder again, swung him around, and hit him so hard that Larry’s feet came off the floor and back he went over the table behind him. As he came down, he caught the back edge of the table so that the table went with him as he crashed to the floor. That made enough noise to grab everyones’ attention. Jill looked up and the straight looking guy she was talking turned around on his stool.
Mongo looked down at Larry and said, “I told ya not to mess with the jukebox.”
Igor put his hand on Chick’s shoulder and grunted three times.
Clean Steve, who was just racking up the balls for a game of pool with Beaner Bob, walked over to the end of the bar and hit the guy who was sitting there square in the face.
Bear looked down the bar and said, “What’d ya do that for, Clean?”
Clean Steve answered, “He looked like a friend of Mongo’s.”
Igor grunted three more times, grabbed Chick by the shoulders, looked him straight in the face, and said, “He looked like Mongo’s friend.”
After that, Igor grunted and laughed until he lost his balance and pulled Chick with him as he fell to the floor. Lying on the floor, still holding Chick by the shoulders, and looking straight in his face, Igor said again, “He looked like Mongo’s friend.”
With that, Chick broke into fits of laughter himself.
With the commotion, some of the others in the bar saw the chance to settle scores. Ronnie elbowed one of the citizen bikers who was standing behind him, and broke his nose. As the guy put his hand over a broken nose, Ronnie turned and said, “Watch out! You bug me, man, you always bug me.”
One of the old ladies went to a checkout girl from the Thriftway, slapped her in the face, and said, “Stay away from my old man.”
Steamer saw the whole thing, but when his old lady turned around, he made sure he was looking somewhere else.
Knuckles sucker punched Flats, but he swung high and hit him in the cheek instead of the jaw. Flats turned and hit Knuckles hard in the chest, so hard that Knuckles sat down hugging himself and said, “Well, shame on me this time, Bro.”
“Yeah, shame on you,” Flats said.
Those guys have had a beef with each other so long that they forget what it’s about. They can’t really settle it because the club imposes a $250 fine for fighting with a brother. Besides that, neither of them wants to take it so far that they won’t get over it.
With the bar scene threatening to turn into a riot, no one but Bear noticed that the guy Clean hit was getting up off the floor; or that he had a gun. Bear reached across the bar and took an empty pitcher by the handle. He’d noticed before that they were glass pitchers and not plastic. It’s by noticing things like that, that nomads manage to keep on keeping on in bars and at parties all over the country.
With barely a move, Bear sent the pitcher sailing down the bar and into the side of the head of the guy with the gun. At almost the same instant, Beaner Bob swung a pool cue around and up so that he caught the same guy just behind the wrist. There was a loud snap, but it wasn’t the pool cue breaking. It was the guy’s forearm.
Just then, the sheriff and a deputy came through the front door and another deputy came through the side door. Everyone stopped moving. There was nowhere to go. The sheriff knew all the club men except the nomads.
Igor sat up and stopped laughing. The sheriff looked to Mongo and said, “You guys know the drill. Hands on your heads and up against that wall.” He pointed to the wall away from the bar, the doors, and the windows.
“Go get some zip ties, Jim,” he told one of the deputies. “You all right?” he asked the guy who was sitting on the floor holding his broken arm.
“They broke my arm. I guess I’ll be alright, though.”
As the deputies finished cuffing everyone, they began ferrying them to the jail, three at a time in the back of the squad cars.
“There’s gonna be some trouble for this, Mongo,” the sheriff said as he watched the last of the bikers go.
The sheriff nodded toward the guy with the broken arm. Two paramedics were attending to him. “That guy is Treasury Department. He came down to talk to us about some counterfeit twenties being passed around. I told him we’d pick him up here when we got done with some things. I didn’t even think you guys might be in here tonight. That was my fault, the rest is yours.”
Mongo said, “That’s great news, sheriff, really great news.”
Mongo started out the door and as he passed Jill, she whispered, “The nomads didn’t start this one.”
Mongo looked at her and said, “Yeah, I guess not. Did they spend any money?”
Jill nodded toward a shot glass next to the cash register. There were two quarters and four ones stuffed in it.
As the last of the bikers were put in the back of the squad cars, Beaner Bob watched from out on the lake. He’d ducked out behind the deputy who came in the side door just as the deputy came though the doorway. At the end of the dock behind the bar, he’d found a rowboat with oars in it. He felt bad about ducking out, but what good would it do to stay and get arrested?
A little while after the squad car left, the wreckers arrived to haul the bikes off. Beaner was glad he’d taken the time to push his scooter behind the dumpster.
Beaner tried to figure a way to get comfortable in the small boat. He moved a couple of fishing poles and a tackle box. Then he noticed a small cooler. In it he found an apple, a sandwich, and two cans. It was too dark to tell if they were cans of pop or beer. He opened one. It was orange soda, but the second can was beer. The sandwich was tuna fish; the apple was spongy so he threw it in the lake. The beer was good and cold, the first cold beer of the long night.
A half hour after the last taillights left the bar’s parking lot, Beaner rowed back to the dock, tied the boat up where he’d found it, walked up the steps at the end of the dock and found Jill sitting on an empty keg in the shadows.
“Hi, Roberto,” she said. “Where you headin’?”
“Memphis, I guess. I know some people there I haven’t seen in a while,” Beaner answered.
“Think I could go with? They’ll want me to testify if there are any trials after tonight and I don’t want to do that. Besides a good bartender can get work anywhere.”
Beaner gave Jill a long look and said, “I bet she can. Especially if she’s a real go ahead bartemptress like you. Got any stuff to bring?”
Jill tugged at the bag hanging on her should. “Just this. I know how to travel light. I’ve got money too.”
Beaner rolled his bike out, started it, and said, “Hop on, La Bonita.”
As soon as Jill settled on the seat, Beaner said, “Vaminos!” and let out the clutch. Three lights later, all green, they were on the highway headed out of Lake Town.
Jill leaned forward and said into Beaner’s ear, “We’re goin’ west. Memphis is south.”
Beaner cocked his head around a little and said, “How ‘bout Salt Lake City? I didn’t know why you were askin’ where I’m goin’ so I said, Memphis. Salt Lake’s cool, though. That all right with you? Be there in a couple of days if we jam, a little longer if we take our time.”
Jill wrapped her arms around Beaner, squeezed, and said, “Let’s take our time, then.”
