Tony the Tool sat in the gutter in front of his California bungalow. A couple weeks before, a community improvement group had painted the run-down rental, but it didn’t improve the condition of the junk rolling stock surrounding it. It was past 10 p.m. in the rundown neighborhood, but no one was going to call the cops on the two bikers welding a broken trailer turned upside down in the street.
“Hold it still,” Tony said to his brother, Switchblade Sam.
“I’ve got to get this tacked before I quit tonight.” He fired the torch and a bright explosion of light sparked the dreary neighborhood.
“I still don’t get it, Ton,” Sam hissed through an upper lip badly cut in a bar brawl. “How you gonna get to go to Sturgis? Don’t you have to work? I know you ain’t got no vacation time.”
“Hell, I’m not sure just yet,” Tony said. He leaned forward with a twisted coat hanger he was using as a welding rod. In the other calloused hand he held a worn, brass-bodied acetylene torch with a mangled tip that shot the flame out at an odd angle. The rusty surface sputtered and popped, showering the two with sparks. Tony’s dad had taught him the hard way of welding: Don’t flinch until you’re on fire. It was a lesson that had left him with numerous scars.
Just then, the screen door burst open on the rickety porch to reveal a flaming redhead, naked under a flimsy house dress. “Tony, goddamn it, get your tool in here. You’re never getting that trailer done in time to go to Kern River. Might as well face it.” His girlfriend, Red, was in the bag again.
“Kern River?” Sam asked.
“What the fuck are you doing here, Sammy? You best hit the road,” Red shouted.
She wasn’t bad looking for a 5-foot, 10-inch monster, but the booze had taken its toll on her desire to stay fit. She dressed sloppy, but her body still caught an eye or two. She had a temper as hot as her looks, and when she wanted her man inside, he had better come or the whole damn neighborhood was going to find out about it. Her booming voice carried like the somber blast of a fog horn over the harbor.
“You better hit it, Sam,” Tony said. He finished his weld and turned off the torch to a final pop. “I’ll be in, in a minute, baby.”The rampaging woman slammed the screen door and two more hinge screws jumped out and rattled across the porch. The door slapped its frame at an even odder angle than before.
Sam fired up his rat Sportster, which had just spent six months in the local junk shop having life pumped back into it from his last accident. A loose mixture of rust and peeling black paint, the scoot with only one working turn signal fired to life and rolled down the street. Between the erratic pops, the question filtered down the street, “Kern River? What the hell does that have to do with going to Sturgis?”
Tony left the high-sided, one-bike trailer with the plywood floor in the street. It had failed its last owner and the consequences were a series of broken welds and bent rails that Tony was replacing with bed-frame angle iron. He strolled into the one-butt kitchen and yanked open the tiny refrigerator, which made more noise than his ’58 Triumph TR-6.
“What’s up, baby?” Tony asked as he kicked back in his thread-bare lounge chair lit by the glow of the 26-inch TV.
“You’ve got to get your ass up early and get to work. Ya need to change the alternator in the van, too.” Red had a tendency to bark everything, including her love for sex. Perhaps she was hard of hearing, because she made every barking expression the neighbors’ business.
Tony learned the hard way to let her be. He was an iron worker and a member of one of the strongest west coast unions to still exist. Everyday he made his way to the docks of the Los Angeles Harbor, where he worked in a ship building facility. Barely taller than his woman, he was some 180 pounds with long brown hair and a handlebar mustache. His face was angular and his 45 years showed in the sunburnt wrinkles. If he were a cartoon character, he owned the face of a timid rat.
Tony had planned this trip to the Badlands for months, but there were two major obstacles to its completion: Red and his job. The job was predictable, Red wasn’t. After work that afternoon, Tony made his way to the supervisor’s office at the head of the dry dock. He filled out a required form and submitted it to the purser. The balding bean-counter behind the screened counter looked at the request then at Tony.
“You quit?”
“That’s right,” Tony said, looking around as if he might catch shit from someone else. “Can you cut me my check?”
“I suppose,” the bean counter said. “You’ll have to wait, though. Have a seat.” The little bespectacled man rattled the keys on his keyboard for Tony’s file. It popped onto the screen and by law he had to pay Tony for the current week, plus the week on credit from when he started on the job some two years earlier. Tony cashed the check, bought a six pack and the alternator and returned to his curb-side shop. By 2 a.m. the trailer was welded, patched and hooked to the van.
By flashlight, he replaced the alternator and checked the charge to the battery. If the cells weren’t shot from lack of zots, he was good to go. By 3:00 the van was packed with enough gear and tools to build another Triumph 650 along the way. Only twice did Red bark, “You really need that?” to which Tony just nodded as he put the wheel truing stand in the back of the van.
He slept for three hours and was up by 6 a.m., sipping tar-thick coffee straight from the pot. He loaded his bike, a mostly stock Triumph, onto the trailer with a make-shift ramp and strapped it down. Then he woke Red, who had spent most of the night trying to decide what to wear — the Choppers Inc. long sleeve black T or the Crime Inc. red and white tank top. Otherwise it was a constant diet of Levis, black boots and t-back panties. Every time Tony saw her hesitate he encouraged her, “Pack it, baby, we’ve got plenty of room.”
“But we’re only going for the weekend. I don’t need all this shit,” she replied.
“Doesn’t matter,” Tony said, “take it anyway.”
Red noticed that Tony packed heavy for the weekend. “Looks like you’re going for a month,” she said. He usually packed three pairs of skivvies, three pairs of white cotton socks and three T-shirts — all black — for any event. That and his ditty bag, some Chap-stick, two pairs of riding glasses, two bungee cords and his faithful riding gloves, and he was good to go.
“Might go swimming in the river,” he said and packed four more pairs of socks.
“Suit yourself, ” Red said as she eyed him suspiciously.
By 7:30 a.m. they were on the road heading north on Interstate 5 toward Bakersfield and the turnoff for Kern River. “How many times we been to the Kern?” Tony asked as they sipped steaming coffee and munched Krispy Kreams.
“I don’t know,” Red shouted back, shaking the windows in the van. “I suppose it’s been three or four.”
“Ever been to Sturgis?” Tony asked.
“Nope,” Red said and glanced sideways at him.
“We should go sometime,” Tony said, watching her every loud gesture.
“Can’t,” Red said, “no one to feed the dog.”Tony had already fixed that, but couldn’t admit to it. He bit his tongue. “I’ve always dreamed of going to Sturgis — just once.”
“Well, you’re not going with me. I can’t, and you’ve got to be back at work Monday morning.” As the sun hammered a temp-rising beat against the windshield, Tony grabbed a small cooler from behind his seat and pulled out a chilled bottle of Baileys.
“What’s that?” Red snapped. She almost caused Tony to spill the bottle and run off the road simultaneously.
“Just a little celebration drink for our little adventure,”
Tony said and poured a healthy dose of the creamy liquid into her coffee. She devoured it. He weighed 40 pounds more than she did, but couldn’t outdrink the woman whose verbal volume increased with every ounce of booze. By the third drink she was bouncing off the walls of the van, chain smoking and discussing every sexual escapade they had experienced in graphic detail. The conversation began to lean in the direction of fantasies as the van rolled across the blistering valley toward the mountains surrounding the Kern River. “We could make it where Wild Bill roamed if we could go to Sturgis,” Tony said.
“Imagine screwing our way across the entire west.”
“Yeah, but it’s too bad we can’t go this year,” Red boomed and grabbed Tony’s thigh.
“Yeah, you’re right, you know,” Tony replied. “Being that it’s the 60th anniversary and the year 2000 and all.””Is it the 60th?” Red asked, squeezing and sipping the sweet candy drink.
“Yep,” Tony said. By noon they were rolling into a camping area along side the frothy waters of the Kern. It was the hottest season and the most crowded. He made his way to the designated spot and pulled up between two campers overrun with climbing freaks, toddlers and a vast array of hiking gear. “We can’t get any privacy here,” Red said as she stumbled out of the van. The surrounding inhabitants stopped mid-conversation to listen to the swaggering redhead boasting her attitude at the forest. “This has got to be the most crowded, uncomfortable campsite I’ve ever seen. I can’t get naked. Can’t even swim in that raging torrent out there. I’ve always hated this dusty cramped pit! Let’s get the fuck out of here!”Without a word, Tony quickly loaded the gear, turned the van around and headed for the exit. By the time he passed the biker/ranger at the front gate, Red was passed out against her tilted seat. Tony honked lightly and the brother leaned out of the log check-in booth. Both men turned their thumbs up at each other as Tony steered onto the canyon road.
By nightfall, Tony and his snoring sweetheart were a handful of miles from the Utah border, leaving Nevada and on the road toward the Badlands.
