This tale or tail started after the big poker game in Big Bear, California. I was flying down the backside of the mountain. The high desert, beautiful in the fall, laid out before me as the mountain twistiness turned to bleak open sand.
I rode past a female hitch hiker, and she looked to have been there awhile. Dried perspiration stains on her Black Sabbath t-shirt and her Daisy Duke shorts, included perspiring all the way down to her logger boots. She rocked out with her earbuds. Later she told me Black Sabbath kept her distracted.
I pulled-up my old Shovelhead suspicious of the slippery sand. Would she accept a ride from an old biker? I slid my bike to a stop. I was listening to War Pigs by Black Sabbath in my earbuds just under my Bikernet bandanna. She came running up and introductions took place. I told her my friends called me Gearhead. She told me her name was Scarlett.
“What are you listening to?” I asked. She told me Fairies Wear Boots by Black Sabbath. I jarred her attention as she stared at the big Bowie knife on my left hip.
“Do you need a ride?” I asked.
“Of course, Can you take me to the Bella Rosa Bar at the edge of town,” she said still staring at my knife. It was a long monster reaching to my knee.
I asked her if it’s hard to get a ride out here?
“Straights don’t pick up hitch hikers in these parts,” she muttered. “Especially with tattoos all over.” She had some ink work on her neck and on the lower left side of her jawline. Perplexing, the dichotomy of ink against nature on a lone desert highway.
“I always stop for a lady in distress,” I said. “It’s the code of the West, so Bandit says.” She hopped on the back, and we peeled out spitting sand. I love riding my old Gypsy Belle Shovelhead.
We road for a ways, while she leaned in and hung on like she had done this a time or two. We pulled up to the bar just before reaching Lancaster. I planned to drop the lady off and peel out.
“You oughta come in and wash the dust out of your mouth,” she whispered.
Her eyes sparkled innocence, her tats spelled otherwise. “Okay,” I said.
Scarlett hopped off, and I kicked out my side-stand. I threw my bike chain around the wooden rail, once meant for horses. The sun dried, clapboard, Bella Rosa Bar held an old west feel. I noticed a small carved wooden sign above the tattered entrance, “The last place to drink for miles.”
“Here’s double shot of Jim Beam straight up,” Scarlett said.
I suddenly felt like I was in a Twilight Zone story.
Scarlett reeked of that Black Magic Woman vibe. Maybe Carlos Santana wrote the song after a lady just like this little broad. I sat there sipping the double shot of Beam.
“I am going to freshen up,” Scarlett said. “Don’t go anywhere.”
I sipped and scanned the rustic bar.
What happened next blurred my brain. Scarlet came out wearing a silver necklace with a Harley upswept wings pendant. It sparkled with her child-like features. She told me her biker old man gave them to her. Suddenly, I felt out of place or in a trick-bag. I reached down to make sure that Bowie knife was still in the leather sheath. You can’t miss that small machete.
I had lost my custom Arkansas Toothpick to the infamous Bandit in a poker game in Deadwood.
“Don’t worry Doll,” she assured me. “We broke up a long time ago.” She ran her hand down the long leather sheath and muttered, ?“I like knives.”
Suddenly she yanked a dagger out of the middle of her back and threw the flashy dart across the darkened room. It hit the dartboard bullseye dead center at the end of the bar.
That little gal looked hot, smelled hot, dressed sizzling and quivered like a snake. She had on a black bikini top bordered with crystal sequins and a black pair of French bikini bottoms.
“Doesn’t the owner get pissed at your antics?” I asked.
“I am the owner,” She said and licked my left earlobe. “I can run this joint anyway I want.”
I finished my third double and a fourth was on the way. Like I said, things got fuzzy. We talked about her tattoos. During the fifth double in that hot-as-hell bar with only a creaking ceiling fan moving the dense air I nodded out. Awe hell, I passed out.
I woke up a couple of hours later, near midnight, on the couch in her office. Her phone number was tattooed on my forearm. WTF?
I sat bolt upright, where’s my Harley? Scarlett came into her office. “Your bike is secure in my garage behind the bar,” she said smiling. “Here are your keys.”
“Why would you care about an old biker?” I asked.
“I understand your kind and what a man like you is capable of. This is biker country. A lot of outlaws roam these desert communities.”
Texas Red, the bartender, shoved open the office door, “Shit might hit the fan.”
“Can you help?” Scarlett asked, poking her pretty head out the door. Three outlaws saddled up to the bar.
“With a line of southern crude,” I said, stood and stretched. Still in a fog, in a strange bar in the middle of nowhere I wondered. WTF?
She told Texas Red to grab her personal stash of meth and lay out a line. Red looked solid enough. What the hell did I know?
What I didn’t tell her is that whiskey and meth turn me into a rattlesnake of meanness. I did the line and another shot of Jim Beam.
I pointed at another office door. “Is that the way to the garage.”
I jammed outside and Scarlett followed with the keys. She opened the side door, and inside I stopped and looked at my old Shovelhead. It could be my ticket to escape whatever madness lay ahead. I reached for my .38 snub-nose and grabbed a handful of shells from my leather saddlebag stuffing them into my vest pocket. “Where do we go from here?”
Scarlett led me back into her office. Red returned to the bar. I told Scarlett to stay behind me. Her 5-foot 10-inch, 240 pounds of Mexican bouncer stood at the saloon entrance, but I didn’t know what side he was on.
“Don’t come out unless we need that throwing hand of yours,” I said to Scarlett. I pushed my way into the bar.
Red had a carriage, sawed-off shotgun under the bar. Both of his held it, he cocked both hammers. He knew it would be easy to swing out and shoot from the hip.
Three club members bellied up to the bar. They didn’t seem to be messing with anyone. I scanned the bar looking for trouble until I found it, in the form of young man stuffed into the darkest corner. He wore all black and carried a satchel. A shooter who followed the club guys into the bar. Texas Red was wise to recognize trouble.
I pulled out my long Bowie knife and I asked the three rowdy club guys if there was something we could do for them. They spun to face me and my knife.
“What business is it of yours Pops?” A tattooed club guy said and puffed out his chest.
I glanced to the corner as all hell broke loose. The shooter stood abruptly, dropped his bag and cocked his semi-auto AR-15. The fire in the small bar rocked the windows as the massive mirror behind assorted liquor bottles shattered. Patrons dove for the deck.
Texas Red’s shotgun came out from under the bar and blew a hole in the roof as the rapid fire, assault weapon kicked the rifle from his grasp and he dove for the padded deck.
Fire blew out windows and a short Hispanic club member reached for his pistol inside his vest. The bouncer at the door stepped outside quickly and pulled his 9mm from a secure position behind the porch.
I turned toward the shooter and reached for my revolver, when I heard a swish in the air like something surreal, the hiss of a snake. Scarlet’s dagger found it’s mark in the shooters shoulder, before he could react, I was at his throat with my bowie knife.
“What happened to your girlfriend, pal?” I asked.
“She left me for a member,” the shooter said and cringed as Scarlett retrieved her knife from his torn flesh.
I hollered to the members. “You guys better peel out, before the man arrives.” They hit the door, jumped on their bikes and cut a dusty trail into the dark desert.
“Thanks,” Scarlett said. Everything she had was poured into that bar.
I took all the arms and ammo from the shooter. “You’ve got three choices kid,” I said while Scarlett patched his arm and he whimpered. “I turn you over to the cops and you roll the dice with the system. I give you to the club and you have the worst night of your life and end up in a shallow desert grave with tarantulas, or you cut a dusty trail out of this state and start over.”
“But my shit,” the kid squealed as Scarlett yanked at the final coarse stitch in his shoulder, made with used dental floss. It’s all she had.
I cut the line free, yanked him to his feet and led him to the rickety front porch, spun and kicked him in the ass. He tumbled off the porch and landed in the sandy dust. “If you turn around, your dead.”
He screamed in pain scramble to his feet and into his rusty Ford Ranger pickup peeling out of the parking lot.
Nearly 2:00 in the morning, the “open” neon flickering in the dusty window went out.
”You stick around tonight,” Scarlett said.
“I will make it worth your time.”
“Won’t Texas Red be jealous?” I searched for answers.
“He’s my bartender and on my payroll, that’s all,” she said. She grabbed my hand opposite of my knife hand and pulled me into her office, locked the door and yelled to Texas Red, “Close up for me will ya?”
David Allen Coe blasted from the jukebox. I think the song was Divers do it deeper. Scarlett pushed me down on the couch. “You won’t need your knife anymore tonight.”
I raised an eyebrow and slit the seam of her delicate top. She had a beautiful body and beautiful tattoos all over it.
“Shuck those jeans and let’s get down to business,” she said.
She told me later that she liked the way older men think. They don’t deal with any crap anyone shovels at them. They just handle the situation at hand, and they don’t back down.
