Some would say “the cock crows at dawn,” but for Zeek the Splooty, the cock had risen and had been rampantall night long. It was 5:00AM. The desert wind blew hot and dry into thedarkened interior of Boron’s Booty Bar. Zeke had blown in two nights ago. Dryas a nun’s twat, the desert air sucked the life out of everything except thehot as a holy habanera passion of the three chiquitas whose prurient pussiesidled at the bar like a trio of furry, fleshy custom cunt choppers. Theysquealed like horny piglets when Zeke roared through the fly-screen beadshanging in the open door way and flashed them his twat taunting grin.”Buenos dias, senor-eaters,” he laughed his demented cackle andwiggled his eyebrows.

Like a latter-day Errol Flynn, Zeke was aswashbuckling bastard astride his throbbing steel steed. Prone to waxingeloquent at the most propitious times, Zeke intoned a lustful ditty.”Blazen on the Poot Bah, the Nucleic diddle on the Zots. I be yoked toyour twang matter and a prisoner of the Choaf.” Zeke could charm theskivvies off a nun. The chiquitas were snorting like horny heifers, allgoosey-bumped and tingly. At the first crook of his gnarled and chewed onfinger, the trio of en fuego nasty nymphets were all over him with a madfrenzy of thigh rubbing, neck licking, arm pit snurffleing, choad scarfing,and hip humping. It was a delightful debauch in hellishly hot, barren, boringBoron.

Boron is one of those tired out desertspots in the road, (not enough population to be called a town) that clung toexistence by selling expensive muddy gas, Korean-made day-glo Navajo kachinatchotchke, out-of-date California road maps, ragged sheets of mystery meatjerky, tart-garish postcards of Disneyesque desert vistas in a spinning wirerack, a variety ersatz Cowboy and Indian paraphernalia perpetuating aHollywood myth of musk scented manly perseverance, high-kitsch heathen bloodlust and politically correct bootstrap independence, andScully/Muldar/Roswell inspired, tweaked and tarnished space alien trinkets.

Zeke didn’t give a shit for culture,trinkets or otherwise. The Booty Bar was an oasis from a hot ride. He neededto get lost. The Mojave desert was the kind of place you could get lost in.It’s not just the size of it or the seeming emptiness; there is atantalizing, mystical strangeness to it. Reality was an illusive lilt thatcould seduce the minds eye like the flash of scarlet underside of a hawk’swing against a turquoise sky.

“Hallucination is just a state ofmind,” laughed the wrinkled as a saguaro cactus old Indian in the cornerof the Boron Booty Bar. “It’s the heat,” he giggled obscurely, moreto himself than Zeke. “There’s a chrome-titted banshee on thePunjab.” The old man’s black beady eyes twinkled with glee. “She’llbe throwin’ a lip lock on the mushy parts of yer’ medulla oblongata when yer’yeast rises. You’ll see, you’ll see,” he turned his sun-wrinkled bullscrotum face to Zeke. “Rainbows, ribbons, sultry sequins, roarin’ andrumblin’, firebreathin’ hedonists?They gonna’ get ya!” The old man threwback his head as he giggled hysterically. He stumbled out the door and intothe desert, his high-pitched hysterical laughter turning to the yippingcackle of a serenading coyote.

Zeke and the three girls shivered inunison as if a winters wind had blown in the door, when the last of the oldman’s yipping died away. Zeke was not usually one to succumb to thepanty-waist fears of things-that- go-bump-in-the-night. He had done a lot ofnight bumpin’ himself. But here he was, on the run, in this weird-assed bar,in this weird-assed town, in the middle of this weird as William Burrough’srectum desert. He was dancing on the keen edge of life’s razor blade.

He had ridden, with great aplomb somewould say, like the madman he is from the lusty luau of Los Angeles with theLAPD (Nazi division), hot on his tail like a cherry-red poker probing hisHershey highway. Those humorless, fascist-thug-assholes seemed to takeoffense at his middle-digit turn signal as he peeled a doughnut U-turn worthyof a Winter Olympics 9.9 at the intersection of Cahuenga and Doheny indowntown Hollywood. Sure it was like teasing a couple of rabid pit bulls, butwhat the fuck are you gonna’ do on a hot Saturday night? The Splooty man wasblessed with the kind of perverse sense of humor that gave rise to a yeastfulcornucopia of yuks. The neon glitter of trendy, tacky, tainted East Hollywoodwas coldly echoed off the robot-like Ray-Ban sunglasses of the cops. Turningtheir chiseled jaws like “Jurassic Park” raptors, the cops smelledfresh meat.

The game was afoot. Zeek spun the throttleback to full bore and maxed out the revs. Zeek kicked in the nitrous oxidebottle. Flames shot out the Bartel’s exhaust like dragon breath ignitingcigarette butts and pieces of paper in the road. He clung on to thehandlebars for dear life, the G-forces pulling against his body withun-challengeable gravity-defying cosmic power. As he turned a corner, thehairy arm of centrifugal force grabbed his body and tried to fling him inanother direction.

By the time the robo-cops had wheeledaround their black and white bucket of bolts, Zeek was out of sight. But thehigh-pitched scream of his bike was unmistakable, so they followed the sound.Excited by the exotic-ness of the chase, the boys in blue were absolutelysalivating with glee at the thought of a chase with some adventure. Theyradioed for tactical intervention, tack strips, helicopter surveillance,armored vehicles, mace, manacles and M-16’s. They were running amok andrunning behind.

By the time Zeek was comfortably far awayfrom Hollywood he was turning onto the Antelope Valley cut-off. By now he hadto keep his feet on the front pegs, the exhaust was so hot that the pipesglowed cherry red. Even though he had eluded “L.A.’s (sic) Finest”,he decided to take off for the desolate expanse of the desert and cool it inthe heat. That’s how he ended up at the Boron Booty Bar.

The Booty Bar reeked from stale beer,staler piss, rotting Slim-Jims, putrid pickled eggs, 30 wt motor oil, and thecombined Sploot spunk and cunt cider from 48 hours of marathon happy harlothumping and crazed cunt lapping. The Zeekster could never get enough of thatcute cooze cookie. The girls were hot as Hades sex troopers too.

Taking a momentary break from thehedonistic high jinks, Zeke leaned against his infamous, hellish Harley,absently stroking the snot slick surface of the fat gas tank. The stylishlygothic presence of his Milwaukee-made monster belied the tough as nails, fastas a rocket chopped scooter he rode. Under the black as death, powder coatedframe and eerily animated enamel/lacquer crinkle-coat paint that looked likethe living flesh of a Manta Ray, Zeek had altered, trained, teased, tuned,and tormented out the screaming-ist two-cylinder machine on Earth. Thesoft-tailed frame had Ride-Lo shock extenders that made the bike so low,wadded up cigarette packs would get hung-up under the frame. In addition tothe Patrick Racing engine with shaved heads and shaped the ports, Zeke hadadded a single-fire ignition, a titanium crank, and dual carbs with asuper-charger. There were a few other top-secret personal touches theZekester added to tweak every last ounce of ‘bad to the bone’ streetnastiness out of motorcycle engineering possible. Zeek stared at the scenebefore him with red-rimmed, sex-sated eyes. In the middle of the bar roomfloor, the three women rolled around like a wad of rabid ferrets; punching,screaming, clawing, gouging, panting, scratching, biting, heaving, cussingand generally slapping the shit out of each other. As one of the ravenhaired, firm bodied, ample bosomed, plum nippled, tauntress’ of the desertwas about to land a tooth smiting, jaw shattering right cross, the fly beadcurtain at the front door clattered like rattling bones. Stumbling into thefray, Loopo McTood, shambled into the midst of the melee of the catfight.

“Top of the morning to ya’,” hegrinned at the knotted trio of sweating and squirming young taquito tarts. Itwasn’t the titillating tatas heaving with exhaustion that captured hisattention, but rather the cool, foamy nectar dripping from the spigot of thebeer tap just at Zeeks elbow. A conspiratorial glee danced upon his whiskeredGabby Hayes lips as he spotted Zeek and sidled over to him.

“‘Sa hot day, ain’t it,” the oldcoot slathered on the smarmy spread of unctuous oleo. The twinkle in his eyeinsinuating like a buzzing bee working at the pollen dripping sexualequipment of a hot California Poppy. He gazed lustfully at the foamy brewZeek had just dolloped into a frosty mug. Shoving the icy mug upon the oldman, Zeek poured one for himself. “Saints preserve us and a blessing onyour house,” the old man mumbled as he raised his mug in toast.”Here in the Mojave, we have a different taste for life. Care to try asliver of mescal pickled, sun dried habenero?” The old man handed Zeke ajar of pungent peppers. Pulling one out to examine its shinning, slick redchili shape.

“Looks like pickled Chihuahua peckerto me,” Zeke laughed as he popped it into his mouth. After a moment,”Yeow,” Zeke smiled as his eyes teared up, his face flushed and hedesperately grabbed for his beer.

“Try to enjoy it,” the old mangrabbed Zeke’s arm. “Give it a chance.”

Zeke looked desperate. His eyes dartedabout frantically. Sweat trickled down his brow. Just as he thought the topof his head might blow off, a calm confusion surrounded him. It was as ifsomeone had managed to bust a magnum of champagne across his cerebral brow,launching his cranial canoe upon the great, green, greasy Limpopo River,doing the backstroke as he waved at the riverbank gathering throng.

Loopo tenderly patted Zeke’s shoulder,”Glad to see you’ve joined us, Zeke.” Zeke, not a stranger to theseductive charm of all things chemically stupefying, grinned his goofy-est.

“Nice to see you too. Boozstrup on ametallic masthead made the captain cry real tears,” Zeek parried andmade the first conversational thrust. “A tweedle become electric, set inan elegant etui, I toast your twaddle,” Zeek hoisted his own flagon indistracted homage to the old coot. He was feeling like he no longer neededMrs. Bascombe, the crossing guard, to help him across the street. He poppedanother pepper.

“Ooooh, we beez’ trans-Atlantic.Slammin’ on the jim-jam, flippin’ on the frim fram.” Zeke was getting tolike those chili pepper induced charades. As the frosty brew bussed the mawof the old geezer, Zeek noticed the coot’s outfit. Loopo looked like he wasstraight out of central casting for a 1940’s B western. Short, stout,button-nosed, sun burnt and wrinkled, his presence was every bit the olddesert rat. Except for his hair, or rather everything that was going onaround his head.

Loopo’s rosy glow emanated from more thanthe effect of the desert sun and more than a few frosty brews. There was anaura about him. It was like the joy of Christmas, a tab of chemical Ecstasy,the aftermath of sexual satiation, and a slab of peach pie all rolled intoone. It was a kind of infectious, knowing, joyousness. His grin made yougrin.

When you got real close, I mean realclose, as Zeek did, one noticed a myriad of tiny flying insects circling hishead. These flying things didn’t nervously or evasively bob and weave likegnats or flies. Rather they maintained a constant orbit around his head. Andwhat was even more curious was that each of these bugs glowed, ever soslightly. Their combined emanation created much of the rosy-ness in the oldman’s cheeks. And Loopo never seemed to find the bugs distracting. When hetilted his head back to finish off his beer the bugs gave way to the glassand returned when he dropped his mug.

By now the three lusty ladies had joinedZeek in checking out the old dude. “Ay, que guapo esa viejito,” oneof the ladies made a giggling latina homage to the old man’s cuddly-cutedemeanor and his unusual hair do. There were iridescent streamers woven intohis long gray but radiant dread-locks. His torso was covered by an Indianblanket pancho that had every color of the rainbow woven into it, as a matterof fact there was a rainbow woven in part of it. As his arms extended tograsp the beer mug, Zeke noticed the unique tattoos on Loopo’s upper arms.The colors were different and the imagery was all psychedelic paisley swirlsand Maori war patterns. The back of McTood’s hands and forearms were tattooedwith black and magenta beads, fading to nothing on the underside of his arms.His plastic pantaloons were festooned with the flotsam and jetsam of thehighway, bicycle reflectors, cosmetic knee protectors, foul ball deflectors,neon rabbinical genuflectors, bad attitude affecters and a goodly amount ofChristmas tinsel.

Loopo smiled at the Latin lasses, gentlycaressing their firm, round posteriors as if casually selecting a ripe,succulent fruit. They fairly hummed with casual contentment at his touch.Their eyes got all dreamy and half-masted. Zeek could tell he was in thepresence of a master sensualist. A man to be reckoned with, Zeek mused.

“So, what’s the obscure word, oldman?” Zeke said with feigned, casual comment, belying his fascinationwith the old mans aura.

“Oooo,” the old man’s lipspursed like the puckered anus of a failed vestal virgin. “Oooo, me lad,there is much to tell, but a great thirst is upon the land.” He puckeredhis weathered lips and a magenta tongue snaked out to wet his dried lips. Theold man’s eyes twinkled in appreciation as Zeke slid another frosty brewtoward the old man. He quaffed the quiff of tepid Budweiser as if it wereBiblical ambrosia.

Zeke was fascinated and impatient as theold man finished off the second beer.

After a pregnant pause, the old man spoke.

“There is a turgid musk in theair,” the old man’s eyes twinkled with a conspiratorial glee that SantaClaus would be proud of. “Some would do such splendiferousglitter-bedecked costume salutations as to make those Rio Mardi Gras revelersweep.”

“They ride chariots of heavingtestosterone all glittered up with magical mystery. It’s a sight tobehold,” he ended cryptically.

“Sounds like a fun party,” Zekemoved nose to nose with the old man, so close that the circling mini-fireflies began to circle Zeke’s head. “When, where, how?” Zeke hadgrown impatient with these desert bards and their waxing cryptic.

“More than a party, my youngbucko,” the old man cautioned. “There are some who are there everyyear, some who are there once in a life time. The revel becomes who youare.” He paused, then added. “There will be bikes and riders ofmythic proportion. A medieval romp of chrome, leather and steel. Thepustulant pagan is in full rut.”

To Zeke, this was an invitation that mustbe addressed. He gave the old man a hungry look.

“Out there,” the old manmotioned to the bead strung doorway behind him, jerking his thumb toward thedesert. “There is a rumbling crescendo a’ buildin’ as we speak.”

Zeke walked to the bar’s front door. Hejust then heard a faint rumble like the frequent earthquakes that regularlyshake Southern California desert communities. He returned his gaze to thebar, the old man who was no longer at there. The only trace was two lingeringmini-fire flies that buzzed in a lost, erratic path. They immediately dartedto Zeke. He flinched as they zipped to an inch from his face. Soon they werea part of his visage as they were for the old man.

The desert dusk began to drape thelandscape like a velvet shroud. A neon-orange purple glow under-lit the lacyedges of the wispy pale clouds. Scurrying across the dirt apron in front ofthe doorway, a satanic-smiling, sardonic, black and magenta beaded Gilamonster shuffled like an animated ladies clutch purse. Zeke spotted, off inthe distance, a pair of desert antelope vaulting patches of pastel sagebrushin unison like feral ballerinas. A shooting star shot across the horizondirecting his view to the West. On the western edge of the highway, just asit rose over a sandy mesa to drop back in a continental slope to the PacificOcean, a gigantic funnel-shaped, black cloud descended from the sky. Thiswiggling phallus finger of cloud and wind tickled the landscape. As quicklyas it appeared, the cloud vanished leaving a glowing emanation on theman-made cut in the line of the ridge.

By the time the girls had joined him,cramming their honey-hued cherubic faces under his arms and between his legs,the glow had become a shimmering halo above the ebony pavement and glowingdouble-yellow median stripe. Zeke stood there as awe-struck and gape-jawed asJohn Mills’ merry retard in “Ryan’s Daughter.”

As the halonic glow grew nearer, Zekebegan to discriminate the familiar rumble of custom choppers roaring down thehighway. He was grinning ear to ear as the first bike came to rest on thedirt apron in front of the bar. Others soon joined the throbbing, idlingrhythm of the first bike.

The rider of the lead bike was aspectacular vision. Astride his candy flame-red Dytech stretch rigid framewith a 4-degree raked/extended Euro-fork front-end, streamlined 5 gal.fat-bob dual tanks, chrome-skull accentuated Performance Machine foot pegs,16 inch apes, all rumbling to a stroked Evo 98. On top of all that wereaccessories of a mystical kind; shimmering streamers, twinkling lights,ruffling wind-blown banners and sequins festooning and scattered aboutfenders, tank and seat.

The rider dismounted with a flourishworthy of an 18th century cavalier. He was a spectacular vision, from head totoe. From his plumed, red leather brimmed hat, to waxed and curled moustachewith tiny, silver Tibetan prayer bells hung on the ends, to his Technicolorriding leathers, rings on every finger, and riding boots with tiny silverprayer bells hanging all over them.

He was a sparkling, tinkling, jinglingvisual cornucopia.

“Hey, brother,” the bikingcavalier intoned, “What’s shakin’?”

“Nothin’ til you showed up,”Zeke casually extended a hand. “I’m called Zeke the Splooty.Welcome.”

“And I?,” he was interrupted bya goggle-eyed, hairy Yoda dwarf who stuck his over-sized head around thecavaliers waist. “I am…,” he was interrupted again by the dwarf.”He’s Rudy the Red Ribbed Tickler,” the dwarf chimed in,”?Rudy,” he finished.

“And these are my compadres,”Zeke followed the sweep of his arm which described a vivid collection ofeccentric partial-cars, commercial catering trucks, crazed custom choppers,wobble-tired three-wheelers, two matched Morris Minor 1000’s that looked likemom’s house slippers, apocalyptic survivalist four-wheel ATV’s , turned-onelectric bicycles, a cherried-out Vincent Black Shadow, VW vans stuffed tothe gunwales looking every bit like the Okie Joads, flat-bed semi’s withcargo boxes and porta-potties, and other vehicles which defied definitivedescription. Every vehicle, driver and passengers were decked out as if theywere crazed escapees from some Brazilian Mardi Gras parade. Sequins,body-glitter, tattoos, ribbons, pierced body parts, bells, balls, rings andodd jiggling things all a-dangling, jangling, twinkling and tinkling like apsychedelic Xmas tree. There were bejeweled bimbos, straw hatted harmonizers,warm hearted womanizers, Brazilian waxed anorexics, tattooed andnipple-pierced insurance salesmen from Des Moines, squinty-eyed dog trainers,thumb-nippled hussies, liver-lipped busters, slap-happy hustlers, flamingfaggots in feathered finery, one-eyed paperhangers, power chord flangers,frigid fresh water anglers and a covey of hard-hearted hermaphrodites. Theyall chimed in unison, “Play that funky music, white boy,” beckoningZeke and the three girls to join them.

The three stunned chiquitas who had beenhiding behind Zeke, squealed with delight as they ran to join the rag-tagbe-spangled group. Jumping up and down with glee, their melons a-bobbing withinsouciant charm, the girls were engulfed by the welcoming crowd of revelers.

Rudy put a fraternal arm around Zeke,”My friend, you are about to have an adventure of mystic proportions, aDanse ka Boom, out there,” he pointed vaguely to the north east, “there is a party goin’ on, an Ooo-Pah-Pa-Doo, Les Fais Deaux-Deaux.”

Rudy’s mantra of hedonist celebration washypnotizing. Zeke’s head began to bob in confirming chorus to Rudy’s poeticmeter like the amen-ing confirmations at a back-country Black Baptisttabernacle.

Zeke’s eyes glazed over in a tranced-danceas the women behind him breathed in his ear a humming, soul-thumping drone.”Ooo, ahhh. Ooo, ahhh. Ooo, ahhh. Ngha, oofa. Ooo, ahhh. Ooo, ahhh. Ooo,ahhh. Nuh ha, oofa.”

Gazing closely at Zeke, Rudy noticed themini-fire flies dancing about Zeke’s face to the rhythm.

“Oh, ho. I see you’ve had thepleasure of Senor Loopo’s magical company.” Zeke just nodded his head inmute confirmation.

“Chick ah, chick ah chickahhhhhh,” the basso profundo rhythm from the lusty ladies increased.

“Well, the buzzing bugs settleit,” Rudy grinned, “you must join us now.”

Zeke moved unquestioningly to his gothicblack chopper, he jumped aboard the steel stallion and brought it to life.Rudy motioned for Zeke to join him at the front of the pack. Rudy’s hairy,dwarf side-kick scooted his three-wheel chopper over to make room for Zeke.The dwarf jumped off his bike then leaned his head close to Zeke’s throbbingcylinders listening to the chopped cam’s lope. The dwarf smiled and looked upto Zeke, mimicking it’s deep-throated attenuated cam rhythm with a 2/4 beat.

“Chuff, chuff, hmmm. Chuff, chuff,hmmm.” He continued to ape the sound, trucking back to his side-car likean R. Crumb street bopping boogy-er, bobbing his head to the beat. He leaptto the nose of the side-car then vaulted onto his saddle. A half-naked Nubiantemptress undulated in the dwarf’s sidecar seat, her shimmering breasts movedin counter-point to her body boogie; she joined the rising crescendo of theintoxicatingly rocking, aortic rhythm, becaming a chorus of shared sensualityas everyone began bopping. They spontaneously broke into Dr. John the NightTripper’s “Mama Roux.”

The strains of the Night Tripper’sGris-Gris, Creole, coco Robicheaux, African, Poo-Pah-Pah-Doo, FaisDeaux-Deaux, jump sturdy, Fat Tuesday, Chieu va Bruler, psychedelic, voodoo,Santerist, up-tempo funerary dirge, glistened with a crystalline poeticclarity.

“?sez a ooo, why,” the sequinand glitter-clad women in various stages of sensual dishevel humped and shookto the beat, ” can’t ya’ spy boy, prepare yo sef’ ta’ die boy, medicineman he got heep stong powa’, you know better than ta’ mess with me,” theZulu parade of decked out vehicles began to move out into the desert, “lackedad a eye ball, a la la la la froo froo,” the body glitter andsequined mixed desert dust kicked up by the vanishing revelers shimmered likea New York ticker tape parade as the last of the happy hedonists left theenvirons of the Boron Booty Bar, “if ya see a spy boy, sittin’ in abush, nascem on na’ head, then give him a push,” far off by now, theroar of the choppers was delicately mixed with the barely perceptible strainsof the song mixing with a night birds trill, “get out the dishes, getout the pan,” a coyote serenaded the moon, “move he fast for themedicine man?” Then the desert hush returned to the land like MotherNature’s sagebrush and sand quilted comforter.

All was silent in the Boron Booty Barexcept for the tick and whirr of the ceiling fan stirring up the glitter onthe bar room floor into sparkling mini-dust devils. At the threshold of thebars’ doorway, the black and magenta beaded reptilian shuffle of a large GilaMonster made its way awkwardly across the bar floor.

Just under the breeze-blown swinging flybeads, a desert swallow flitted softly past the opening, then circling theroom finally landing on the edge of the bar. Twitching nervously, turning itshead side to side so that its black pearl eyes could scan the length of thebar, the bird hopped along the bar coming to rest on the black and magentabeaded hand of Loopo Mc Tood. Loopo blew a soft melodic zephyr through hispursed lips, gently fluttering the birds’ feathers. The bird cocked its headso its’ beady, black eye could focus on the distended cheeks of the old man.

A glowing pink-orange-magentasunrise-bloom filled the bar many hours before the actual sunrise. The oldman was the origin of this soft, warm glow. His eyes twinkled as the birdreturned his serenade. He reached across the bar to the beer taps. Pouringhimself a heady brew, the old man drank heartily. Looking out into the ebondark desert night, Loopo turned to the bird, who had hopped onto hisshoulder.

“They’ll be rollin’ into the oasispretty soon now. The journey begins.” The journey to the middle of theMojave, for Zeke, was a magical blur. The air was filled with the highpitched screaming banshee rpm’s of the various bikes- stockers, choppers,dressers, customs and odd-ball conglomerations of chrome and steel. Thesparkling parade of riders was a color-streaked acid flash, a Fourth of Julyof sartorial splendor. In spite of the compromising noise, speed and exhaustsmell, the pack of merrymakers seemed to blend into the landscape.

Zeke, at the head of the pack, was thefirst to spot the orange flapping nylon tents.

“Wooo, hah,” he enthusiasticallyproclaimed and energetically pointed in the direction of the undulatingimage.

As soon as he pointed to the shimmeringapparition, he realized its visual ghost dance just above the horizon was amirage. He turned in confusion to validate his experience with the others. Hewas startled by the silent emptiness behind him. He was alone. Nothing movedbut the desert breeze. He was no longer riding his bike. He was standing nextto it. He put his hand on the bike’s cylinder head- it was cold. He washungry.

He turned, one foot pivoting in the sand,to scan 360 degrees. Nothing. As he looked to his side, there was no bike.Nothing stood out in the landscape except a familiar smell. It was a cookingchicken aroma memory, a smell of his mother’s kitchen. She’d cook in such away as to make the whole kitchen part of the meal.

The litany of smells from his memorywashed over Zeke like the sudden sweetness of fresh baked bread. There wasthe sound of crackling grease in the fry pan, and a bubbling, pot-lid clatteras she worked her womanly magic on some pale as a parson parsnips (herfavorite), or emerald green jungle spinach, or randy ruby rutabagas. Theflying motes of flour dust pirouetting above her proud hands as she workedand kneaded a pastry pie crust into a soft, irregular pancake blanket toembrace thinly sliced green apples with a dusting of sugar and cinnamon. Hecould just hear her humming some lost lilt of a tune, on his lips but out of hismind. Now he was really hungry. Zeke stood there helpless, as a young girlappeared touching his outstretched hand mutely. Following obediently, hedidn’t question her appearance. She moved in a slow-motion undulation, likeocean waves at sea. Her beaded and fringed leather top and skirt gave herlittle protection from the sun’s rays.

Her lithe body moved in hypnotic rhythm.

“Are you lost yet?” The younggirl gave him a seductive side-long glance as she continued up a small risein desert floor.

“I’m wandering,” he smiled backat her.

“We’ve missed you,” she repliedcryptically.

Just as he was about to ask her: whereshe’d come from, where they were going, where were the rest of the group,when could he eat, they crested a small hill. Down in a large desert arroyo,a spectacle unfolded. It was as if the Ali Baba and his Forty Thieves had setup camp. In the middle of the festivities, Rudy leaned against Zeke’s bikeand beckoned him forward. At Zeke’s side, the young girl began to shimmerwith colors. An arching rainbow arose from the top of her head. The rainbowarched over the encampment to an oasis of turquoise palms.

As Zeke bent his head back to appreciatethe rainbow, he focused on the stars in the night sky. Each star glowed andshimmered. Zeke rode by each star, waving and grinning a silly grin as hepasted them. When he looked down at his speedo’, the needle was pegged andbent over the peg. Blue flames shot out the Bartels exhaust for twenty feetbehind him. Yet he had no sense of movement. When he looked down on the sceneof partying bikers below, they looked like multicolored bugs, jiggling andscurrying about. The whole scene took on a magenta and black beaded-ness,undulating like some primordial reptilian dance.

The air felt cool and refreshing as itcaressed his face. His eyes beheld the diamond-like blanket of the Milky Way.Following the Milky Way’s arch to the horizon, his eyes made out the familiarform of saguaro and sagebrush. His reverie was interrupted by the scurryingsound of something moving in the sand beside his head.

He was startled, but did not move, to seethe humorless grin of a giant Gila monster shuffling up to his face. Themagenta and black beaded lizard turned its head to sound of the soft flutterof wings as a small bird with black beady eyes landed on Zeke’s arm.

Zeke seemed paralyzed except for themovement of his head. He could feel the tiny pin-pricks of the birds talonsas it hopped from Zeke’s wrist to his forearm and on up his arm until itstood beak to nose with Zeke. The bird turned its head to the side so as tofocus one black pearl of an eye on him. “I suppose this means that I’mdead,” Zeke spoke barely above a whisper. He could hear a voice in hishead answer him.

“You, my young friend? No, but morethan alive.” A hearty laugh reached his ears. The Gila monster shookits’ head from side to side.

“Then why can’t I move?”

“You can do anything you want, mybucko” The Gila monster began shuffling away.

Turning his head to the rumbling soundnearby, Zeke spotted his hellish Harley idling away next to him. As hecautiously rose to his feet and brushed the sand off. The bird flitted to thebikes’ handlebars. He was on the gravel apron in front of the Boron BootyBar. It was early morning, clear and cool. He walked to the edge of thehighway. The double yellow ran straight and true, east and west.

“Well, bird,” he spoke to thebird resting on his handlebars as he mounted the bikes saddle, “it wasan adventure. But I’m not sure what really happened.” The bird danced onthe chrome bar and twisted his head from side to side as Zeke spoke.”Them chili peppers were spicy in more ways than one.

Okay, bird, I think it’s time we ‘motate’.There are ill-tempered cops to the west, mysteries in the east, and too muchcraziness here in the middle of nowhere. I imagine one could easily get lostfor a long time out here. Maybe nothing happened and I’ve been stoned andlaid out in the sand for a few hours. Maybe the bugs have been crawling overme all day. Maybe I’ve got to lay off that skunky beer, it gives me theheeby-jeebies. It probably was just a skunk induced funk. A frap on thepiddle.”

Zeke shuddered and shrugged. He reachedfor his riding bandana in his back pocket. As he yanked the bandana out ofhis pocket, a shower of glitter, sequins and feathers fell all around him.

“Wha’?” Zeke stood there gapejawed as the sparkling cloud swirled around him.

“Okay, okay, I guess something weirddid happened, somewhere out there, a kind of Chet Baker “Let’s Get Lost”sorta thing. Rudy and his crew, a magical desert oasis, and a nubile,neo-hippie nymphette with a sexual appetite that challenged his own. But Iain’t hanging around here to get the details.” The bird took flight ashe shook the bike back and forth. “And I’ve got nearly a full tank ofgas. I don’t know where I be goin’ but where ever it is, it beez’ scootin’ onthe Splooty. It’s a hell of a yazoo to two by four the poodle.”

Zeke eased his bike to the edge of theasphalt. To the left was L.A.- chaos, mayhem, rabid cops, and more than a fewpissed-off ex-girl friends and wives. To the right, the mysterious adventuresto the east- full-hipped Mid-western farmers wives, raw-boned truck stopwaitresses, sloe-eyed lustful southern belles, and tight-assed Manhattanthin-lipped socialites who love getting dirty in more ways than one.”There’s a harvest of hot honeys,” Zeke said out loud, to himself,”waitin’ out there for my hot, heathen, monkey love. Gotta’ fly.”

With that Zeke roared the bike to life,sent gravel aflyin’ and skidded on to the pavement, screaming to the east.The shards of sand and gravel pelted the bar’s porch. Two old geezers who saton wooden rockers on the porch were unphased by the staccato peppering ofrocks. Loopo McTood looked over to the old Indian.

“It’s going to be hot today,”McTood declared. “Hotter than a two-peckered billy-goat.”

“Hmmm,” the old Indian agreed.”And our visitor, Senor Zeke, will have a hot ride.”

“Hmmm,” McTood confirmed,”Hot indeed.”

They sun sent dancing ripples of heat upoff the pavement. A family of quail scurried to the cover of sagebrush. Ared-tailed hawk circled high above, fluttering his wings and dipping inanticipation of prey. A dust devil twisted and wiggled its erratic courseacross the desert plane. A black bug squirmed helplessly on the pointed endof a small birds beak. The desert settled down to its primordial routine.

Zeke was roaring on his way to anotherrompin’, stompin’, bike blastin’, cunt cosmic, hedonistic hell raisin’adventure??. the Zoot be on the Splooty, insert tab A into slot B, closecover before striking, ride with the wind.

“Wha?” Hacksaw said into the phone, dazed and half-awake.

“Wind ’em up,” the voice on the other end barked so loud Hacksaw had
tohold the phone at arms length. “We’re splitting from the cantina at
noon. You’ve got three hours to be on time. This is your last
chance Hacksaw. Don’t fuck up or you’re out of the club!” The phone
suddenly clicked off.
Hacksaw got his nickname from his being the only guy in the club to
chain his motorcycle to a tree during a run, only to find he had left the
key at home–twice. He’d had to hitch a ride to town to buy a hacksaw
blade to set his scooter free.

He scrambled out of bed. He had another problem. Luck and
time were not his friend, ‘causin’ him to lose the loyality of his
brothers. He glanced at the clock. Suddenly it appeared to tick
faster. He grabbed a sock, but couldn’t find the other. As he
reached under the bed for the hiding sock, and grabbed a fresh pile
of warm cat shit.

“God damn it, Ojo,” Hacksaw said tripping over his one-eyed
alley-cat. Ojo lost his eye in a fight with a pissed
off Chiuahua.
Hacksaw had a new extended steel tank from Independent Gas
Tanks painted for his chopper that had to be mounted. All he had to
do was flush it out, install a petcock, install the cross-over line,
bolt the tank on, hook up the gas line and fill the puppy with fuel,
and he’d be good to go. If all went as planned.

It was 9:00 a.m. by the time he pulled on his Levis, and a
sweatshirt and headed for the garage.

Hacksaw’s girlfriend, Cindy, dropped by for a little breakfast
grab-ass. He heard her calling his name from inside his house. “Out
here, in the garage,” he hollered to her over his shoulder as he
searched for the right tools to do the job. Suddenly he was nervous.
He needed every minute to install the tank and get across town to the
Quervo Cantina to meet his brothers.

Cindy was a tiny lil’ thing with a bodacious rack and a bubbly
personality.
He eyed her deep cleveage and almost dropped the tank as he scrambled
to lay out a soft cover on a backyard table so he could work on the
tank upside down. He held a blanket in one hand and the polished
slippery tank in the other and fumbled while eyeing the fresh daisy
bouncing around him. He couldn’t get destracted. “Make some coffee,
and get ready, we’ve got to be on time.

Cindy stood there pouting, She was a symphony of tantalizing
poontang.

“Gotta’ move Baby,” he said almost dropping the fresh paint job
on the unforgiving surface of the rough wooden picnic table.

He clean the 1/8 inch pipe threads of paint, primer and Bondo
residue. In his hurried attempt to remove the residue some slipped
into the interior of the tank. He sloshed gas around the tank with
some of the holes plugged to prevent being drenched in the toxic
fluid, but as he attempted to remove the harsh fuel without damage to
the new flame job, it ran down his leg. He wrapped the
petcock with Teflon tape which bunched up when he installed it. The
Pingle petcock had a perfectly smooth, round surface with no way to tighten it
except a 7/16 box wrench over the spigot. As he tighten the petcock
firmly to prevent leaks from his crappy Teflon job, the spigot popped out of the
body of the petcock. He removed it and rewrapped it with the sealing
tape. He looked at the broken part then to the clock–almost 10:00
a.m. Sweat started to pour down the sides of his face. He wrapped the petcock with
rubber and torqued it down with channel-locks which peeled up the chrome. The
petcock tightened slightly, hopefully enough.

He installed two 90 degree 1/8 pipe nipples to either side of the
tank with Teflon tape, but couldn’t get them to line up properly. The
clock seemed to shift gears, running faster. He turned the tank over
and set it on the Daytech stretched frame. He bolted the tank to the
frame. The holes lined up. The bolts didn’t cross thread–a minor
miracle.

He was getting close. Cindy went for gas. He had to release
the nipple from the Mikuni carburetor, reposition it and install the
new line and clamps. If he turned it to the optimum position for the
petcock, he couldn’t adjust the mid-range air mixture screw. If he
moved it beyond the air mixture screw, the line to the petcock would need to be
two-inches longer. He looked at the clock. It was now in high gear.
Nothing went right. The gas line he had was too short.
Cindy returned with a frown. She locked the keys in the car
with the gallon can of gas. Hacksaw found another chunk of gas line,
cut it, and installed fresh clamps. He hadn’t ridden the bike since
Sturgis. A couple of months. Would it run?
He grabbed for a hanger and a pair of needle nose and headed
to the street. Instructing Cindy to find a gas cap. She pouted and
dug into several boxes of parts. After burnin’ through 20 minutes he
returned to the garage with the gas. She beamed with pride as she
handed him the stock cap. It didn’t fit. She dug. Another cap didn’t
fit. It wasn’t a left handed bung. He sanded the plastic threads. No
go. He cleaned the threads on the bung–no dice.
He spilled more gas on his jeans trying to slouch enough gas
into the tank to get them to a station. Another half hour passed.
Cindy kept digging for more caps. She found a custom job that
wouldn’t work on his last tank. For some unknown reason it fit.
He jammed into the house to change, the hairs on his thighs
were beginning to itch from the caustic fluid. In a cold sweat he
pushed his scoot into the street and fired it to life. Cindy went
back into the house to do what women do, locked up the house and
returned to the street.
Hacksaw locked up the garage. Cindy returned to the house for
Hacksaw’s helmet and gloves. Hacksaw unlocked the garage again to get
his bike lock. The made it a block, before they both noticed they had
forgot his cell phone, back again.
One more delay, for refueling. Amazingly the tank didn’t
leak, the Mikuni nipple didn’t escape covering him with petrol, and
the bike ran as sweet as butter mints.
He pulled into the Quervo Cantina at 12:05 parking lot. He
kicked out his sidestand, turned off the petcock and locked the
chain around the front wheel. Running into the Cantina he looked up
at the clock on the wall- 11:05 a.m.

“We figured you’d forget to turn your clock back,” Frank, the leader
of the club came up to Hacksaw laughing and patting him on the back.
The president then turned stern, “Wind ’em up, we’re leaving.”

The brothers mounted up and cranked over their engines. All
except Hacksaw, who dug desperately through his pockets looking for
the key to his lock.

Chet May stood at the door of the gas station casually sucking on aroot beer Slurpee as he watched the scene in the gas pump bay. There was nothingremarkable about it. All the players moved about in a practiced manner.Two black and white Riverside patrol cars were parked akimbo, doors flungopen, lights fluttering and reflecting off every surface, blocking thetwo bikers who had been filling up at the pumps. The bikers calmly satback on their sissy bars. Their muscular, tattooed arms were foldedacross their chests, their faces under scraggly beards revealed no emotion. Both riders were decked out in club colors, their sleeveless Levi jackets sporting large embroidered emblems on the back. The bikes they rode were full-dressed street chops — ape hangers, extended forks, lots of chrome and spectacular style.

The two young cops stood with awkward bravado, a fidgeting unease intheir stance. The taller one stood to the side and behind hispartner, his hand never leaving the diamond textured grip of hisGlock 9mm. The other cop was at the front of the bikes, squinting into thesetting sun as he spoke. The tension diminished as the bikersreplied in a measured tone. The tall cop moved to the back of the bikes, prompting an instinctual twitch of the rear biker’s head in that direction.

“Eyes forward, dirt bag,” the tall cop snapped back as his hand slidinto position on the gun’s hilt. This comment made the rear biker stiffen hisback. Tension returned to this not uncommon drama. In a less publicmeeting, the circumstances would be different.

“You guys just passing through?” The smaller cop tried to makerelaxed conversation as his partner scanned the bikes and their riderssuspiciously.

“We’re on our way to a brother’s funeral in Escondido,” one of thebikers volunteered. “We don’t want any trouble. We just pulled off the freewayfor gas. We’ll be out of here as soon as we get it.”

“Ease off Marty, these guys are OK,” one of the cops said. Their good- cop, bad-cop routine did nothing to relax the bikers. From Chet’s view at the gas station door, it seemed a stalemate.

After an interrogation that lasted 15 minutes, the cops moved theircars to the side of the station and turned off their flashing lights.The commotion had shown the passing citizens that their tax dollars were atwork and the cops were ridding Riverside of a “bad element.” Thedepartment policy was to “show the colors” as often as possible. Gang violence had increased and was getting the public’s attention. Political pressure hadbeen brought to bear on policing procedures. The cops had seen this as asign that they could roust any “undesirables” with impunity.

Riverside no longer had the sleepy agricultural character of the past.Today it is one of the fastest growing bedroom communities in SouthernCalifornia, with $300,000-plus stucco and tiled, quasi-Mediterranean yuppiecondo communities springing up among the chaparral. Long ago, these semi-desert, sparsely populated communities offered anonymity to eccentrics, outlaws, religious cults and other characters. They could ply their trade orhowl at the moon just out of reach of the oppressive socialmachine of the L.A. Basin, as the crime-ridden, politically corrupt, smog-shrouded conglomeration of over 7 million people is collectively called.

This whole scene outside the gas station contradicted everything Chet stood for or believed. Yet many painful lessons throughout his 35 years had taught him to express himself with great frugality. In his view, the world was a dangerousplace. There was no honor, no integrity, no faith. All was a measure of wealthand power. Early on, he had challenged power that called itself authority. Helearned that words mean nothing, that everything is in the service of power.Eventually he realized that power maintains because it is an institution,not an individual. He could often defeat an individual, but he waseventually brought down by institutions — parents, teachers, employers,drill sergeants, wives, cops, the list of insults to his personal integrity was long.

So as he watched the drama play out in front of him, he wascareful not to draw attention to himself or his bike stashed at the sideof the station. Twice when Chet noisily slurped the dregs of his drink, thetall cop glared at him from behind his reflector Ray-Bans. ButChet’s practiced social camouflage served him well. The copassessed Chet, but his retro-sunglasses, hiking boots, short hair, clean-shaven face and goofy smile revealed no particular agenda. As the tall cop turned back to the sullen bikers, Chet’s smile vanished as quickly as he had thrown it up.Chet knew this was a potentially dangerous situation. His militaryexperience had given him a toughened respect for the volatility of suchencounters. The initial engagement is potentially “hot”, then a kind ofsubtle truce ensues, but continued engagement often provokes renewedtension.

In ‘Nam, the result was almost always deadly. Today, as a thin river ofsweat trickled down Chet’s spine to the crack of his ass, he felt thescene could go either way. He didn’t want to be a part of any of it. Hedidn’t want to make a move lest it bring attention to himself. But he wasready to spring aside if bullets started to fly. The bikers didn’t get their gas, instead they took off with the two cops eyeing their every move as they went. The Sikh gas station manager poked his turbaned head around the doorway and hollered out “Thank you” to the departing cops. They waved.”They are such nice men, don’t you think?” The manager had returned to hiscounter filled with Slim-Jims, Lotto tickets and candy. Chet absently nodded and made an agreeable noise, “hmmm, uh.”

Chet thanked the manager for the root beer and left just as the cops slowly cruised through the intersection. When he was sure they were out of sight, he moved to the side of the station to recover his bike. Next to his bike, a tall, skinny teenager sat on a cinder block wall dividing thestation from the mini-mall next door. The kid’s demeanor expressed that commoncombination of awkwardness and too-familiar hipness that was bothirritating and endearing.

“That your bike?” the kid asked. His head bobbed to some music in his head. His greasy flat-top, pimple-pocked cheeks and nose-wrinkling squint gave the kid an expression of almost comical stereotype. Chet tried not tosmile too broadly.

“Yup,” Chet said curtly.

“I’m gonna’ have one of them,” the kid continued. “As soon as I’m 16 I’m gittin’ a license.”

“That so?” Chet busied himself with mounting the bike, rolling it awayfrom the side of the garage and turning on the gas.

“Yeah, my stepdad has a Harley but he won’t let me ride it. Says I’m notbig enough. I ride dirt bikes though. I’m good.”

Chet turned and regarded the kid more closely. He turned off the gas andput the kick stand back down. He turned, putting both feet down on the pavement,and leaned sideways against the seat. The kid kept up his mantra of hopes anddreams. Chet smiled supportively.

“You don’t look like a biker,” the kid said, regarding Chet more closely.

“Well, kid, what you look like is not always what you are,” Chet pausedenigmatically as he waited for the kid’s reaction.

The kid was silent as he looked down at the asphalt, kickinghis heels against the cinder block. Then he quickly looked up at Chet withthat same awkward squint. “So what’s that mean?”

“I’m not sure what your experience will permit you to understand.” Chetpaused again. He was wasting daylight talking to this kid. But then hethought it would be good to give himself a little distance from the copswho had just left. “Nothing is as it seems. What people tell you is notalways the truth. What you believe is often what you’ve been told to believe.Bikers who wear badges want to be noticed. An outlaw is someone who getsnoticed. The baddest dudes,” he lapsed into biker jargon for the kids’entertainment, “are the ones that no one notices. Brothers who ridetogether get noticed. OK?”

“I think I see.” The kid stopped kicking the cinder block. “So are you a biker or not?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“So what matters?” The kid was worse than a cop. He was working a screwdriver around and under any flaw in Chet’s words, trying topry apart the fallacies normally found in any adult statement.

“What matters to you?” Chet bounced the question back to the kid.

“Not much,” the kid shrugged and looked down.

“Yeah, that’s the way it is for a lot of people some time in their lives,” Chet said. The kid nodded vaguely. “The hardest thing in lifeseems to be finding something you believe in; something that someone elsedidn’t create for you, something that you discovered on your own. Maybethat’s too abstract. How’s this? At one time, I trusted people, Mom and Dad. They got a divorce. Teachers, who I found out later didn’t always tell the truth. Buddies, who wouldn’t back me up when I was in trouble. The Army, which just wanted you for gun fodder. A wife who made promises but ran off withanother guy. It goes on and on. What it all means is that we are all alone, frombeginning to end. To maintain, you’ve got to come to terms with that, inyour own way. There is no one to show you the way. You must find ityourself.”

The halogen lights had come on in the service station bays, casting aneerie artificial glow on the two figures. They sat quietly regarding the settingsun and its spectacular effect on the clouds.

Chet broke the silence. “That’s something you can believe in,” he saidpointing to the sky. “Things like that, that you experience, are as real asit gets.”

“But will I ever have a bike like yours?” The kid looked at Chetpleadingly.

“Sure, and you’ll probably break your neck,” Chet mounted the bike againand turned on the gas, “and that will be real. And it will be your experience.But how it will matter is up to you. You’ve got it all, kid. It’s waitingfor you out there. All you have to do is be open to it. Don’t take anyoneelse’s word for it. Don’t depend on others to validate who you are. Youmatter.”

Chet smiled his biggest smile of the day at the kid as he crankedthe engine over. Conversation was pointless now that the chopper throbbedto life. A deafening rap from the pipes punctuated the hot night air. Thekid’s eyes sparkled as the ground shook, he could feel the power rumble upthrough the cinder blocks on up into his rangy frame. He gave Chet athumbs-up sign and bobbed his head to the rhythmic lope of the engine.

Chet turned back to the kid and hollered, “You’ll matter to you.” Withthat, he roared out of the gas station and onto the pavement. He soon blendedinto the mass of traffic and became invisible to the kid. Above the din of traffic, the kid could hear the unmistakable rap of Chet’s chopper as he rolled the accelerator forward, coaxing more horsepower out of the Panhead.

The kid scooted off the block wall and walked to the edge of the sidewalk,looking out at the parade of taillights. Just then, a fully dressed-outchopper passed within a couple feet of him, roaring into the right turn lane.It was a spectacular combination of chrome, leather and steel. The rider wasA fat old guy who was dressed out as spectacularly as his bike. It was aFeast for the eyes, a veritable Mardi Gras in metal.

The kid smiled, waved and turned. Talking to himself as he walked away, he said, “Pretty, but it ain’t me.” The kid kicked at an empty can as he crossedthe parking lot of the mini-mall. “But I don’t know me.” He stopped, looked upin the sky, then shrugged his shoulders. His walk returned to thatdistracted, rhythmic, loping gait that some lost kids have as they stumblethrough life, looking for something to direct their passions. Somethingmore than just the setting sun in hot, harassed, heartless Riverside.

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.

Bandit, nearlyseven feet of high-grade treachery, feared by men since the first day heclawed his way out of a wart hogs womb, sodomized it, killed it and thenate the only female who would ever truly love him. Perhaps the most legendaryoutlaw biker of all time, a greater menace to social stability than theblack plague, the kind of arch villain who gives fear a superior positionin the universe. A man who often eats his knife with dinner. I once sawBandit snatch a fleeing migrant worker out of the ditch as he thunderedpast on his 90 foot long chopper, reach up the screaming cabbage picker?sass, snatch out his guts and wear his hide for a hat until it at last rottedoff his enormous head several years later.

Mad Myron of Arizona, owner of the notoriousBillet Bar in Scottsdale. At least that?s what he calls it. It?s reallya front for his Thai hooker ring, which he operates out of the westernUnited States. He ships in the Asian pay pussy under the Jolly Roger flagon pirate ships that land in Encinata Harbor in the Baja, Mexico and afterthe tarts have pulled their load, as they say in the draft horse business,he chops them into pieces with a dull garden hoe and sells their frazzledand drug hardened organs on the open market in Cambodia. There the organsare ground into fine powders and mixed with superstition and various baturines and traded for tigers nuts in the Hong Kong underground as sexualelixirs. And man do they work. But that?s another story.

King Dale of the North, 500 pounds of unfriendlymuscle and bone.

King Dale of The North is half buffaloon his father?s side and retained the horn gene. A pair of gruesome ebonyhorns spiral out of his blonde head, forming a heavy battering ram, whichhe has used against his enemies in bar fights around the world. His mother,a Nordic lass said to have been nearly eight feet in height fell in lovewith his father, a North American Bison, after encountering the massivebeast on a religious trek into the Icelandic regions of Canada. They fellin love and King Dale was born in a blizzard which lasted 11 days and reachedtemperature lows of 100 below zero. It is said a local sheriff once ropedKing Dale of the North off a horse in an effort to tear him away from alocal whorehouse which he was terrorizing.  King Dale allegedly beatthe sheriff to death with the horse and burned the whorehouse to the ground,killing all inside, including the mayor.

The New Zealand Reaper, a behemoth so lethal,so violent, so aggressive that he would often fight himself in open territory,unable to find a suitable opponent among the mortal masses. It is saidthese brawls would sometimes last for days, as he loosed his left sideto do battle with his right, either half being far the superior to bothsides of a normal man. Then he would fight himself nonstop, day and night,until at last, the local town people, in fear for the structural integrityof their humble abodes which were crumbling under the jolts and shock wavesthe epic engagements sent through the earth, would light the great prairiesand forests on fire and drive the Reaper from their region with thousandsof acres of burning timber and swamp grass. The New Zealand Reaper hadbeen thus driven all the way from his native lands to America, where, atlast, he engaged himself in the great western desert, a region with nothingto burn and there he fought for nearly 100 years, digging a pit some 10,000square miles in size during his row, crushing all life forms under hisflying mass. This barren hell hole is now aptly titled Death Valley.

It was to be a night of Vikings, or “Weekings”as the Nordic ancients used to call world?s most legendary warriors. Andnow their great great grandsons had amassed to feast, to celebrate theunconquered boatmen of old, Bandit, Mad Myron, and King Dale of the NorthCountry, the New Zealand Reaper.

The waitress, a salty dog of a woman, manytimes deflowered, curt, unwashed, slightly foul, reeking of misery andlubricating molasses demanded to know what strong drink the Vikings wanted. “We have lambskins of wine and whiskey and pig skulls of beer!” she saiddefiantly. “Of which will thou partake, white raiders upon whom giant horsesride?”

“Bring us whiskey!” Bandit ordered, grabbingher by the ass and pressing his mouth to hers.  The waitress screamedand struggled, desperately trying to get away. “Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh!” Banditroared after freeing the strumpet. “She tastes of the loin!”

The Vikings thundered their approval andhammered the table with fists weighing 50 pounds each, the oaken planksshuddering under the blows. “A truly good woman than she is!” Mad Myronof Arizona commented, slamming his eating knife into the wood.

“But of which loin doth she taste?” snarledKing Dale of the North Country, leaning in closer, the thick bench creakingunder his shifting weight. “For there art in this fair world not one, buttwo types of loin to be had!”

“Deed! King Dale of the North Country speaksthe truth!” the New Zealand Reaper agreed, tearing his cow coat open andscratching his woolly chest loudly with a meat skewer.

Bandit snatched the waitress up by thewaist, holding her in one hand, he again crushed his thick mustache intoher shrieking face.

“She tastes of the loin of the lady!” Banditsmiled, licking his beard with a scared tongue.

“Then perhaps this fair maiden should bringus to eat her secret lover,” I proposed, slicing a huge sliver of muscleoff of King Dale of the North Country?s shoulder with a handmade knife.”And for an appetizer, we shall have this fillet of our brother, King Daleof the North Country!”

I slapped the long shard of meat down onthe table. My Viking brothers barked and bellowed with appreciation.

“Bring us then salt!” Mad Myron commandedof our waitress. “For all who know the stout taste of buffalo know thatit is bested with salt!”

Our waitress scooped a huge shovel fullof salt onto our table from a wheelbarrow manned by a dwarf clad in tatteredrat hides.

We spread the salt in a thick layer acrossthe fresh meat from King Dale of the North Country1s shoulder.

“A blessing!” King Dale of the North Countryoffered.

“An ear!” Bandit seconded.

“May we be victorious in our battles, maywe slay our enemies with

furious wrath and terrifying vengeance!May we fight with bravery and great ferocity! And when our days have cometo an end and our time is nigh, may we die with the honor and dignity ofthe warrior!” King Dale of the North Country roared, slamming his huntingaxe into his own flesh which lie prone on the table, cleaving it twain.

“A more noble blessing before has neverbeen uttered!” The New

Zealand Reaper proclaimed with the throatof the great winds.

“A fine, stinging taste of buffalo thisis, too!” I shouted,

grabbing an end and tearing off a chunkwith my teeth. “A finer musk, a more rancid taste has never in my gut founda home!”

“Like the hymen of the stolen woman,” Banditsaid, shearing off a

large piece with his sword and eating theflesh and the tip of his sword with it.

“And more desirable than the dank ass ofthe fetid island whores,”

Mad Myron of Arizona concurred.

King Dale of the North Country?s meat waseaten quickly, until there was nothing left on the oak table but a wet,bloody stain where I had first

slapped the chunk of shoulder meat down.

“Whiskey!” our waitress announced, as sheheaved a lambskin of the

vaporous spirit onto the table with a deepthud. “Twice aged beyond that of the innocent, mellowed in the bones ofblack mules, filtered through the hair of French virgins.”

Mad Myron of Arizona reached out and clutchedthe waitress by her

own hair and dragged her the length ofthe ten-foot oak table to himself.

“And what of he who wants not whiskey alone,but also desires the

milk of the teat?” Mad Myron growled, hisface bloodshot with lust.

“He must know but upon which flower tofeed,” the enchanted vixen

responded, loosing her massive tits withthe ripping of her soiled gunny blouse.

Mad Myron of Arizona beheld the enormousbreasts, which hung in his

face, nipples the size of startled elephanteyes, twice the height of the African anthill and the color of a successfullie.

“Look how he flows at the mouth, a riverof adoration sent forth!” I

chortled, pointing with my dagger at thegreat stalactites of drool which hung from the busted and chipped teethof Mad Myron of Arizona.

“Deed, best we to the ship and man theoars, lest we find ourselves

out to sea without our boat!” cried outBandit, roaring with vast jocularity.

The Vikings shook the Inn with laughteras Mad Myron of Arizona

flung spit and salvia upon the thick furcoats of all present, sucking with power and determination at the swooningwaitress?s flushed teats.

“But enough of this folly!” I roared. “Underwhat silver lid doth our main course hide?” I demanded, handling the waitressby her ass and dragging her from the sincere lips of Mad Myron of Arizona.”We ordered your lover and your lover we now crave!”

I waved a battle-axe high over my head,spinning it on its leather thong in increasingly more broad revolutionsbefore releasing it and sending it into the ceiling high above the tableto stand inverted.

Scurrying through the dwarves and otherdiners, the waitress shot

through the doors of the kitchen, wherethe squeals of death could be heard from slain pigs and chickens, cattleand the demented.

“King Dale of the North Country, your bloodis rich and red, like

the heart of the Viking!” The New ZealandReaper commented as he held his cup under the gushing wound left from theremoval of shoulder muscle. “And a great valley the Zebra has left youwith in the removal of our appetizer.”

“Not to worry,” Bandit said. “For KingDale of the North Country has a great mass and this small morsel on whichwe just dined shall his whole diminish naught.”

And it was true, despite the removal ofover 90 pounds of shoulder

meat from King Dale of the North Country,still he did to the sun give shade.

“HAR! Our waitress lingerith too long andmy stomach does make the

song of the bear!” I sang, growing impatient.”If I must retrieve my axe, it shall be to do her a dire misdeed.”

At this the doors to the kitchen partedand a heavy wooden wagon was

Rolled forth. Much steam and scent roiledup from this cart, which was drawn by two mules, painted gold with berryjuice and topped with a singing canary each.

Our waitress led the mules to our table,thereby drawing the burning

cart near.

“What1s this?” Bandit demanded, sniffingat the steam with great

interest.

“The water smoke, she smells of tartarand morality!”

“Nay, of fecund dirt and the feet of theKing1s messenger!” Mad

Myron from Arizona decried.

“My nose speaks of memories of a burningwhorehouse and a sheriff no

more!”

King Dale of the North Country concluded.

“I do scent the ass of the wild boar orperhaps the dank hair of the

Clydesdale uterus!” I trumpeted.

“But all are mistaken, ?tis none of theseolfactory delights, but the

burp of the whale, engorged on kelp anddeep freedom!” argued The New Zealand Reaper.

“Of all your large noses, none speaks thetruth,” chided the bare

breasted waitress. “I shall thee give butone clue,” she said, leaping up on the table and ripping from herself hergown, leaving her vase uncovered. “Ask of myself what scent do ye reapand then under the silver dish ye shall know what ye eat!”

With great confidence and lascivious gait,she proceeded to position

her glory before each Viking1s snout forthe time it takes a tortoise to sneeze. Each man had a royal scenting anda bit of a taste was also, it seems, enjoyed by the lot. When she arrivedat The New Zealand Reaper, he grasped in each hand a side of buttock andmade a thorough and detailed inspection of her gift. So much so that thewaitress at the knee buckled and cooed, apparently enamored with the attentionand enthusiasm shown by our unparalleled brother.

Then our naked lady, her wooden shoes clappingthe dirt floor when

she lit, dropped herself from the oak andto the earth.

“Now, do ye better know the dish?” thewaitress asked, kneading her

breasts in boiling anticipation.

“If it be half as fair as ye, then I shalleat fully,” Mad Myron

from Arizona declared. “I should predictthe raising of the silver dome will reveal pig!”

“My whiskers are glad to be alive tonightas well,” Bandit announced. “And if the smell and taste of this fair lady?ssouthern lands be our guide, I guess on the ass of mutton shall we thiseve dine!”

“Hold on, good brothers, for this is notthe only source of this

intoxicant,” King Dale of the North Countrycautioned. “For once, when I fought myself through the great land theycall Europe, I paths crossed with several women, with hair as black asthe soul of a coward and eyes like those of the forgotten night. Thesewomen themselves called Arabs and they did in their joining of the legsthis taste leave me with as well. Our clever waitress wishes to repay usfor our jostlings and humor. On the brains of the

demented we dine tonight.”

“Wrong, my sizeable and delicious brother,wrong,” The New Zealand

Reaper said. “I did spend considerabletime and trouble deciphering the crucial intersection of this maiden andI can tell you with great sureness, tonight our tongues beat fish.”

“There is but one way to be sure what lingersunder the brilliant

cover of the coin on this dinner cart,”I said, standing from the table and removing my lower bullskin.

I scooped up the naked waitress, her smugsmile too and bent her

over the table roughly, giving her a finepenetrating and a merry prodding in both her upper and her lower eye.

“I shall investigate this insatiable strumpetproperly!” I said,

grunting and farting as I sent forth theHerculean battering ram into her defending guts repeatedly.

The waitress shrieked and clawed at thebark on the table with her

fingernails, first objecting, then givingwhat could be described using some artistic license as direction.

“I am hungry!” Bandit objected, leaninghis gigantic skull on one

elbow. “And I yearn to know what lies beneaththe steel!”

“I too feel the horses stampeding in mygullet,” agreed Mad Myron of

Arizona, “and still I say, tonight we eatswine.”

“Try not to take too long in your pilgrimagefor truth,” King Dale

of the North Country pleaded. “For my hungeris that of Bandits plus a thousand men and I think that soon might be requiredto on our servants break my spell.”

Immediately the dwarves fled the area,fearful they might be plucked

up and treated as a snack by the ravenousgiant.

“Fear not my fine brothers, I shall makeof this harlot a short

work,” I said, sweating and pumping herrobust ass over the table. “Perhaps if the good brother Bandit could movehis shield and axe, allowing me to further trap this wiggly lass, I couldthen more quickly give to thee the answer to the dinner riddle.”

Bandit swept his sword and shield off thetable with a horrendous

crash, rolling his eyes in protest.

“We shall never eat until the sun has risenand fallen to the moon

in at least three desperate battles,” Banditsaid forlornly. “I have seen Zebra make such a quest for wisdom beforeand never is there fewer than four moons and as many suns before wisdomis reached.”

The waitress crowed noon, though it waswell near midnight, as I

switched holes and began sounding for depth.

“Four moons and four suns, the carcassof a rock fed peasant upon

which I should rather dine than to agemineself through such a period between meals!” Mad Myron of Arizona said,eyeing the charging tits of the waitress hungrily as I continued to makemy sweaty quest for enlightenment.

“Could we not just have a peek under thesilver dome?” asked King

Dale of the North Country? “For my fleshhas long since left both my shoulder and my stomach and I yearn to havethat which we will of tonight partake. I have ridden a lengthy distanceon my great motorcycle and I cannot wait for another fortnight to eat.”

“It shall be but a moment more,” I said,as I dropped from the high

pigeon?s nest to the lower again, gainingin momentum and wisdom with each stroke. “I sense an epiphany approaching,”I added as the waitress spoke in the tongue of the moon sick wolf.

“Always it is the same,” complained TheNew Zealand Reaper. “Always it is Zebra who sets out upon the path of enlightenmentand always we are left behind to ponder that science upon which revelationshave already been showered. My belly protests.” The New Zealand Reaperparked his massive jaw on two upturned paws and sighed loudly his greatacreage of brow plowing itself into high terraces of displeasure.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!” I roared asthe waitress?s ass bloomed and gave to me the key to the question. “I cantell you patient brothers what lingers under the chromed hood that is ourdinner,” I said, withdrawing from the spent waitress, who continued tolie on the table gasping for air and speaking in tongues. “This fair waitresshas, to my delight, brought us our first and somewhat mirthful request.”

The Viking?s eyes widened.

“No,” Bandit said disbelieving.

“My fine brother Bandit, haven?t I justtraveled the road to

wisdom?” I said, re-applying my bullskin.

Bandit nodded in anticipation.

“Then why does thou doubt my knowledgeof such things?” I asked.

“You there! Tiny man!” I roared at a nearbydwarf. “Our waitress is spent! Make of thineself a useful tool and unmaskour dinner, that my brothers might see their patience has been well repaid.For as they shall soon see, our waitress, generous whore that she is, hasdelivered unto us the very charlatan upon which she nightly dines for oursupper!”

The dwarf struggled to lift the enormoussilver cover from under

which wheezed great jets of steam and estrogen.

“I can stand no more!” Bandit thundered,standing his full height

and manning his broadsword. He swung withthe might of a thousand warriors and the ringing of his sword off of thesterling silver cover can still be heard today in the valley of Palos Verdes.

The lid flew across the Inn and smashedinto the far wall, killing

many. The Vikings gasped.

“?Tis true!” exclaimed Mad Myron of Arizona.

“Indeed!” called The New Zealand Reaper.

“Tonight we feast!” bellowed King Daleof the North Country,

knocking the chimney from atop the Innwith his great voice.

“Ahhhhhhhh,” cried Bandit as he jammedhis sword into the earth near

his feet. “No greater meat is there tobe had by man or Viking alike than that of the fair lady who has been raisedon the meat of another fair lady.”

And as the smoke and steam cleared, therebefore us sat a perfect

virgin, her hands bound behind her backwith long bullwhips. Her legs tied to either handle on the broad plate,which was her seat. A ripe apple in either end of her fortunous body.

“And a sense of humor too!” cried Mad Myronof Arizona. “Look at

how our waitress has adorned her offeringwith the fruit of the apple tree!”

“And not one fruit, but two!” laughed Bandit.

“Perhaps now the question is, who shalleat fruit and who meat?”

asked a suddenly jocular New Zealand Reaper.

“Another question to be answered?” I askedrising, giving the sweaty

waitress a sharp swat on her rubbery ass.”Shall I journey down the road to

enlightenment?”

“No!” cried Bandit. “I am hungry!”

“Fie and fiddlesticks!” thundered KingDale of the North Country.

“Enough of your cursed wisdom! Now is thetime for Vikings to eat!”

“Another journey shall see me weak!” snarledMad Myron of Arizona.

“Another journey shall see me in a fight!”threatened The New

Zealand Reaper.

“But a ruse, dear brothers,” I said, re-applyingthe bullskin. “But

a ruse. I should not think of deprivingyou a moment longer from suffering this unfrocked wench.”

“But is there enough?” worried King Daleof the North Country. “For

our numbers are few, but our feats in allthings legendary.”

“Rest assured,” came the sultry reply fromour freshly fertilized

waitress. “You shall ride your great horsessatisfied tonight. For the bindings on the legs, which, in separating,present to you the bottom apple and the heavy leather bullwhips which yousee as restraints against resistance on the wrists, coupled with the highestapple, already half eaten, are instead to afford you wee lads a fightingchance against what is perhaps the most ravenous woman in all of land orsea, time or reason. This hearty wench which you identified as so manydifferent beasts, is the Venus, goddess of beauty and queen of sexuality.Fret no more that you will be unfulfilled, dear Vikings. But instead giveheed to keep your shields handy and that which your bullskin hides, readyto defend.”

The Vikings gave a hearty shout of enthusiasm.

“Loose the leggings!” commanded Bandit.

Four dwarves in full battle armor ran forwardand sliced through the

Heavy ropes which held apart our dinner?sankles. Immediately the lower apple and one dwarf vanished into the caveof the woolen beast.

“Hark!” cried Mad Myron from Arizona. “Suchpower!”

“And now the wrists!” Bandit ordered.

A dwarf, tied by a rope to a team of otherstrong dwarves intent on

Retrieving him at the first sign of danger,slashed the bullwhips with a golden fighting axe.

Instantly the upper apple exploded as thenubile waif bit entirely

through it. Suddenly our dinner was uponus, a ravaging naked beast, hymen made of a material more durable thanthe skin of the moose, estrogen splashing from her ass in great buckets.

“See how she strives to devour the devourers!”wailed Bandit as he

fought shield and broadsword against theravenous slut.

“Methinks we might soon be ourselves afeast!” trumpeted The New

Zealand Reaper as he fended off the slutwith his staff and club.

Tarnished peals of bad laughter comingfrom the unsealed waitress

rang off the walls of the Inn.

“You did order our strongest drink,” ourwaitress howled, shrieking

with delight. “And our strongest is she!Knaves! To think that I would offer myself unto this hungry wench! Ha!I would be gobbled fast, as you shall be! The lass with which I scent myselfis not one-third this monster! Were she, with sincerity I can say, I wouldnot your waitress be before you on this day! Vikings! Tonight, after somany centuries of unspotted reign, you shall meet your match!”

“Prepare to make a brother of death!” thunderedBandit as he flung

aside his bullskin and ran the slut throughwith his unveiled warrior.

But it was a cry of delight, not deathwhich shot from the slut and

Instantly she was on top of Bandit, a femalefury greater than that of the funneling winds which rip the Midwest inthe springtime and into their great twisting holes suck entire barns fullof chickens, horses and cowering men.

“See how she mocks Bandit?s efforts toreduce her!” bemoaned King

Dale of the North Country as he coweredbehind his shield, a sheet of painted pot iron nine dwarves high and twiceas wide.

“Fear not noble brothers, I have reliedupon my own mast many times

in such situations and never has it failedme!” said Mad Myron of Arizona.

With that he flung his bullskin aside andcharged the attacking

wench his lungs filled with a savage battlecry.

“She seems not to notice the rear assaultwhich Mad Myron of Arizona

so nobly launches on her!” cried The NewZealand Reaper in disbelief.

“And hear how Bandit shrieks in pain andagony, calling for death to

rescue him from his superior foe!” I saidin terror.

“Retreat!” cried King Dale of the NorthCountry.

“To the steeds!” I yelled, charging theback door.

We ran for our lives and leapt upon ourgreat motorcycles, charging

off into the night. Later as we sat andpondered on the hilltop near the Bikernet castle, all agreed that it hadbeen a battle filled with valor and courage.

“Proud we should stand,” Bandit said, rubbingburning lineament

under his bullskin to reduce the pain ofhis war wounds. “For well we fought and never braver.”

“Never have I seen an entrance so fortified,so impenetrable,” added

Mad Myron of Arizona as he borrowed a gobof burning lineament from the pouch hanging on Bandit?s motorcycle andrubbed it under his bullskin.

“A more mighty foe I have never seen,”said The New Zealand Reaper,

sewing up what was left of his tatteredbullskin with thread and needle. “Our enemy brought with her stamina, ferocityand an appetite for doom and displeasure larger than the great waters ofthe north.”

“The tales, so often they grow beyond truth,”said Mad Myron of

Arizona. “But this epic foe, regardlessof how incredible the story becomes over the centuries of morrow, shallalways live up to the fable. A true woman indeed.”

“A greater piece of ass I have never seen!”I heralded.

“Here, here!” cried the Vikings.

And the valleys did shake and the mountainswere broken from their

moorings by their cry.

Special Agent Zebra

On the road with the Vikings

(If you’re reading this, you’re either hallucinating on Tabasco tinted, mescaline tainted magic-mushrooms or, that mother fucker, Bandit, has shown that he has the literary balls to put this steamy saga on his web site. The slimy synopsis is as follows: Zeke the Splooty, our horny hero gets into mad mayhem and romping sex. He tools down to Juanita’s and finds his arch-nemesis, Crazy Zelda and a bunch of pissed off dikes holding Opal, one of his sexual delights, hostage. Senor la Splooty aka Zeke, chomps chilies and kicks dike-beaner butt as fast as shit through a goose. A map to Spanish Conquistador gold is involved but not really necessary ’cause the Zekester loves nothing more than riding hard, knocking heads and downing more than a few foamy brews. The mayhem naturally ensues. Okay, that’s the shaky plot. What’s the fucking point? On the top of yer head, ya’ split-lipped muthafucka. Hang around too long and Zeke’ll kick your ass too! So, have you got the fuckin’ guts to read on?)

Zeek the Splooty, sucked up the nectar of Motor Muck Mead. For Zeke it was all an algebraic formula of Beer, Broads and Bikes. Such a volatile combination always meant trouble. Zeke didn’t look for trouble but he had to admit that he had a Pavlovian drool-reaction to conflict. There is nothing more delightful than using his boot to disengage teeth from his jive mother fucking adversaries. He had a heart for devilish things: the keen edge of a high tensile steel blade, the pulse-throbbing lope of a custom Harley and the clean mechanical precision of a round entering the chamber of his H&K .45, but for anyone who might question his philosophic beatitudes of choppers, cunts and bloody chaos, Zeke gave no quarter. "Fuck ’em up-to the max," was his credo.

A monstre sacre’ to those who shared his view of existenze, including a plethora of dipshits, morons, pinheads, bobos, numbnuts, dopes, stupidos, putanos, white trash, gerbils, tweakers, wannabees, goobers, puppydogs, foo-foos, nankers, gadflys, goofballs, a-holes, chuckleheads, burnouts, eggheads, weenies, wankers, zombies, hunkies, jerkoffs, barneys, ape-hangers, bird brains, vivisectionists, odor-eaters, knockwursts, weasels, nincompoops, doughbrains, muthas, deeks, geeks, ignoramouses, ragheads, shriners, shrimpers, tea-baggers, twerps, twits, momos, dickweeds, meatheads, pootbutts, visgoths, moon calfs, luddy duddys, greasers, geezers, jabbernowels, bubble-headed gerkins, dogboys, posers, simpletons, yutzes, gits, and teenage loose and lost women. He was a charming fellow, as they say, like shit to flies. Just a lovable curmudgeon who went where the wind blew and was happy to nuzzle any available cooze on the corner. At the moment, it was his luscious, lustful, horny-honey Ruby.

Ruby Pudenda, Zeke’s current main squeeze, sauntered into Zeke’s garage with swiveling hips and tits akimbo. Squishing her pendulous melons into Zeke’s back, Ruby snaked a lizard-flicking tongue into his ear. She knew how to get his attention.

"Oooh baby, I’ve got cold beer and hot cooze for you," she burbled her lusty love song into his gnarled, torn and ring-pierced ear.

Zeke eased his hand under Ruby’s pantiless mini skirt. You could never rub Ruby the wrong way. Her eyes gleamed with delight and lust as he ran his fingers up and around her sloppy cooze. She unleashed his throbbing choad from the zippered crotch of his leather pants as he stood.

Wraping her lips around his vein studded member, she slurped the engorged length of it down her throat. Pumping her lips along Zeke’s cudgel, she hummed a Z Z Top anthem.

"Let us pray," Zeke howled as he shot his gargoyle load down her throat. "The frim fram a buzzin’ on the jim jam. A cartilage canoe ride over the edge of the phallic falls of my libidinous languor. Holy hot fuck, you sure do vacuum the nasty nectar from my burgeoning balls, Ruby."

"I aim to please, you Splooty knocked knave," wiping a snaking cum trail from the corner of her mouth with the back of her hand; a wry, lascivious smirk danced across her lips.

Zeke returned to his task as Ruby popped a brew for him. Just then a Dos Equixs beer bottle sailed through his shop window tinklingly, bouncing off Zeke’s lizard knobby skull. The shattered bottle revealed a ransom note written in the alizarin snot that personified the cryptic, barely legible, signature purple-prose of his arch enemy, Crazy Zelda the Dike. She, of the fat-lipped, greasy-haired, hammer-handed, massive ass; a bellicose bull-dike, who as Zeke fondly recounted, was a love experience like biting into a running chainsaw. Zelda had an historic revenge ethic against our Master Splooty.

The ransom note revealed Zelda’s longstanding acidic animosity toward Zeke. It read, "Dear bullshit motherfucker, stinking skinny dick bug fucking, choad chomping asshole. I’ve got your grade A, sweet, sap dripping, cooze cutie Opal; strapped down, spread eagle and ready for my special brand of tongue lashing, slit sloshing for which I’m known far and wide. She’ll never again want that wart encrusted, varicose veined, pus dripping, testosterone jazzed puny pecker of yours to touch the delectable fleshy, labia-laced, pulsing pudenda of hers, ya’ scuz bag, shit lickin’, dick wipe. Love and kisses, Zelda."

In the past, she’d always communicated her distain for every aspect of Zeke’s essence, from his monster bike, his taste in women, and the size of his love root. To top it off, Zelda had nabbed and was holding in lustful hostage, Zeke’s second main squeeze, Ruby’s incestuous sister-in-lust, Opal. This was sure to raise his warrior dander; it also gave him a blood pressure dropping woody, so hard a cat couldn’t scratch it. The thought of violent encounter gave him a lustful rush like the thrill of having someone shove an ice cube up your ass just as you shoot your load.

"Hot Damn! I’ve got booty to bag, ass to kick and Opal to save from the evil clutches of Zelda."

"Ooooh, you get me hot, baby," Ruby mumbled as her fingers thrashed about in her sticky triangle tangle of flaming red pubic hair. "Nuugh, nuugh," she grunted her rutting suggestion of another romp on the concrete floor.

"I’d love to but I’ve got to get this plutonium-fired, titanium-twisted zig sled humping down the highway with a bit more scoot." Zeke wrestled the twice-piped exhaust system loose from the exhaust port. "Gotta put some zip in the zooty," Zeke mumbled to himself. Ruby had vacated the grimy inter sanctum of Zeke’s garage/temple of heaving hedonism and chrome chaos. It was best to leave genius its space.

"Gleet, the biddle after the Zot." Zeke gave his Splootiness free reign. The runic rhythms of his babbling gave vent to the impending hubbub. "Glurp the Zoot," he continued. "Gwang yer’ nagging toodle, lashed to oversized mittens, weighted by the poor man’s wife, dipping his oar into yer’ coozey like warm taffy in the summer," he intoned with gravitas. "Her head lolls about her shoulders, like a childs toy. Her arms dangle at her sides, feet splayed, ready to spring. The Welsh Rarebit nightmare lies festering in the moonlight as Luna starred through a glass eye, the bubble of glue caught and whisked away. The normally gapping maw was now closed like hollow dog teeth. The dull sweetened wax lips give Halloween children an effeminacy not intended for public intimacy. Go ask your mother, is the command of the debacle. Yer’ sckerz been hasting ta’ mackrel. Emiting an odor best described as emulating footballs, formaldehyde, salt water, cracked leather wingtips and torn muscles," he concluded.

Zeke frequently mumbled to himself, especially when the pressure was on. The incantations were part and parcel of his tendency to hallucinate arboreal dells flowing with beer and his mother’s paisley shawl.

Today Zeke had to prepare himself and his chrome and black powder-coated steel stallion for battle. Heads would roll down Mexico way later that night and he wanted to be ready to do just damage to all who fucked with his buzz, Also including an old score to settle with Crazy Zelda.

Meanwhile, down south, Crazy Zelda and her band of bad-assed bike dikes were holed up at Juanita’s Jiggy Joint just outside Chula Vista near the Mexican border. Zelda was the kind of woman who couldn’t turn down a lap at a juicy cooter or a kick-ass brawl. She loved to lap cunt so much she wore a permanent moustache of slit slime that looked like she’d been eating glazed doughnuts all day.

"Baaarape!" Zelda belched out a command to one of the two dikes who were making moon-eyes, fondling each other and drooling at the bar. Wiping her flabby lips with the sleeve of her funky, chrome-studded leather jacket and the back of her battle-scarred knuckles and be-ringed fingers. Zelda regarded the nubile, semi-clad form of the captive Opal with her wrists and ankles duct tapped to a chair. "Strip her bare. Let’s see what that skuz-bag, cocksucker Zeke has been enjoying."

Opal strained against the tape. Pushing forward, Opal’s mountainous melons swelled against the fabric of her T-shirt, her nipples aroused and hardened like thumbs, pushing their pubescent presence to the limits of the cotton material.

As Zelda’s aide-de-camp ripped the straining T-shirt from the heaving chest of the nasty nymphet, Opal’s firm and full breasts bounced with the taut tone of a fresh insouciant maiden. Zelda thrust her head forward at the sight of Opal’s bobbling, bodacious tits.

Zuk, zuk," Zelda grunted, hardly able to contain her rutting lust. "Nuugh, nuugh, nuugh," Zelda’s slathering tongue darted across her slobbering fat lips. "More," Zelda scooted her chair so close that Opal was forced to yieldingly spread her legs in obscene fashion. This movement further excited Zelda so that the vein at her temple throbbed in the dark purple primitive rhythm of a jungle animal observing its prey just before it leaps in for the kill.

Opal could feel the heaving, hot, garlic wretched, musk scented breath of the horny old dike, on her bare breasts as Zelda scoured every scintilla of Opal’s quivering form. Zelda’s lizard like tongue darted out between her fat, liver tinged lips. Zelda traced a path with the stainless steel first finger nail of her filthy fist up Opal’s thigh. Sweat dripped from Opal’s brow onto her leg as she craned her neck to watch the direction of Zelda’s fingernail as it snaked its way up to the fluffy haired nectar of her nascent nether regions and the eggshell fragile dewy nest of her happy-time lil’ fisherman clitoris.

A gasp escaped Opal’s lips as the finger nail skipped past her cunt and on up her torso to her heaving breasts. As Zelda’s finger traced the soft edges of Opal’s right breast, Opal threw her head back with a moan. Her nipples became rock-hard as Zelda’s sharpened nail dug into the knobby areola.

Opal could contain her agony no longer. A scream escaped her throat as she gave into the hopelessness of her plight. She was doomed to suffer the martyrdom of her soul at the hands of the mad woman/torturer having her way with her.

As Zelda grabbed the shaking shoulders of the pliant and defeated Opal, the heavy wooden door of the cantina was split asunder.

"Unhand my wench, you sweat swilling gas bag dike!" Zeke the Splooty sat atop his throbbing Harley with the flourish of a chopper riding Zoro. The dikes at the bar didn’t wait for the eloquence of his next snippet of prurient prose. A shower of beer bottles flew at his head. Ducking the glass missiles and dismounting his black and chrome, steel steed, Zeke flung a Rigid 16 inch crescent wrench at the head of the closest dike, hitting her square in the skull, knocking her cold.

Three beefy Mexican dikes pounced on Zeke at the same time. Exploding from their grimy grip, Zeke exclaimed, "Holy horse cock, you broads stink like maggot-filled cadavers. Deodorant please, girls" Zeke’s sweeping side-swipe of his ringed fingered fist connected with the temple of one dike so firmly that you could hear the crunching of skull bone across the bar. She was out of action. Another beefy, beaner-bitch, bull-dike aimed a punters kick to his groin. The kick struck his knee cap with a sickening thud, spinning Zeke like a top. Luckily for Zeke, he was wearing motorcross shin guards which disapated most of the energy of the kick.

As Zeke pirouetted like a pansy ballet star, his leg struck paydirt in the kidneys of the other dike. She folded up like an origami doll, screaming in pain. "You’ll be pissin’ blood for a month, if your lucky," Zeke crooned to the downed dike.

The third dike hit him with a full-body block checking him like a hockey enforcer. Zeke rolled with the tackle, righted himself, swung with his engineer boot to greet the upturned, growling face of the third dike as she rose from the floor. Teeth flew across the barroom floor when his boot connected. The dikes head snapped back then cracked as she fell to the floor.

Just then Zeke turned to face Zelda who had regained her composure, still dripping from the hot and heavy interrogation of Opal. Through clenched teeth and pared back lips, Zelda spat out her invectives, "You choad slurping, ass grabbing, homo bastard, I can’t let you have all the fun. Come to mama."

Her brass knuckles sparkled in the barroom light as she swung at Zeke’s head.

"Saints preserve us," Zeke cackled as her blow found the edge of his jaw, "Let us pray." Zeke’s right cross managed to snap Zelda’s head back, ‘Here’s the benediction for the day."

"When I make dog meat out of you, I’ll have my way with your little strumpet over there," she shook off the blow and snorted through her nose like a wounded bull.

"In your dikey dreams, you skanky slut," Zeke smacked her again up side the head. Zelda was bobbing and weaving like a trained heavy weight fighter. She was a formidable foe and Zeke loved the competition. Most of the blows Zeke landed she side slipped so they glanced off her head. She hardly blinked when he hit her.

Zelda’s blows shook Zeke like being hit by a freight train. Zeke realized right away that he had to get serious or she might take him. A square blow, a straight right cross caught her flat on the nose, mashing it across her face. Her hemorrhaging nasal vessels spewed forth a frothing gusher of blood. They both love the scent of blood, it stirred their animal passions even more.

As Zelda reared back, prepared to send Zeke to the canvas with arcing upper-cut, she stepped back, falling backwards over the carcass of one of her comatose compatriots. As she fell her expression went from surprise to angered disbelief to bug-eyed shock as the back of her head met the edge of the bar. Her huge body slumped to the floor with a final thud.

Zeke danced around the chaos of busted furniture, broken bottles and bloated, comatose dike bodies, sparing with his own shadow. "Shit. I’m just getting my stride. Let’s dance some more," he chortled to a mute audience.

"Drinks on me," he announced to the laid out cunt lappers. He went around to the beer tap and poured a frosty one. As he tipped the sudsy brew, chugging half of it, he spied Opal. Opal glared at him with a sarcastic sneer.

"Well, are you going to set me free or just stand there slurping beer?" Her petulant, barely pubescent pout snapped him to attention. Putting his drink down, he rushed to her side, looking down at her bound loveliness, her firm thighs and taut breasts, he drooled abit. "Not now, you horny motherfucker," she swore at him," Undo me. Then we can have fun."

After he cut the tape holding Opal, he bent over Zelda’s body. He noticed a piece of paper hanging out of her leather jacket pocket. Pulling it out and unfolding it, he saw that it was a map. Written in Spanish, the map was very old and described the location of a stash of Spanish gold. There were many of these maps floating around the SouthWest.

Using the map to wipe Zelda drool off of Opal’s naked body, he crumpled it up and through it in Zelda’s sleeping face.

"I got all the gold I need," Zeke laughed as he placed a hand on Opal’s giggling butt cheek. He grabbed a couple of Dos Equixs for the road and led Opal on to the seat of his chopper.

"No, wait," Opal said with a nasty glint in her eye. She motioned for Zeke to mount his bike and kick it over. She leaned over his crotch, unzipping his fly and releasing the length of his hose-like cudgel to the grinning pleasure of Zeke. Sucking it up to randy attention, she mounted his lap, facing him, then sitting slowly on the purple head, inserted his throbbing cock into her dripping cooze.

"This ought to make an otherwise tedious ride home more pleasureable," she laughed as the shuddering vibrations of the monster chopper throbbed through their bodies.

Zeke peeled a doughnut on the barroom floor then exited, driving over the bodies of the awakening, wounded and moaning dikes.

"Hasta la taco, ya’ skuzzy assed cunts, let me know when you want to play again."

Opal leaned back against the gas tank as Zeke turned north. They both cackled in lustful unison as the rpms of the nasty old chopper split the cool evening air.

Things quieted down in Old Mexico after that. It would be quite a while before Zelda would recover enough from her wounds to do battle again with Zeke the Splooty. Besides that dumb fuck left her the map so she had Spanish doubloons to dig up.

The nerves started the moment Mark Singer rolled his Bonneville into a slot beside a rusted-out Chevrolet Impala and a ramshackle Ford truck, and shut off the engine. He could hear the band pounding away through the dirty, stucco walls of the Tijuana night club. The song sounded something like “Born To Be Wild,” but played at the wrong speed. It was too fast and the vocals were grating and out of tune.

There were half a dozen other bikes parked up close to the entrance door, but they didn’t look like Singer’s vintage Triumph, or Jimmy Flynn’s ’98 Heritage, spit-polished with four hundred miles on the clock. The others were dusty and road worn, stripped and functional. The bikes looked mean.

To Singer, a fashion photographer from L.A., the vibes of the place felt all wrong.

“I’m not going in,” he said.

Flynn turned the key in his disc lock, ground his last Marlboro into the dirt with the tip of his ostrich skin, Tony Lama boot, and looked over his shoulder.

Asking, “You got your camera?”

Singer answered, “Yes.”

Flynn smiled. He was a theatrical agent. His smile was his weapon, his deal closer.

“You gonna miss a chance to get some real-life biker bar shots?”

Singer hesitated.

Flynn stepped closer. At six-one he was three inches taller than Singer, and buffed from the gym, he was dominant.

“Come on,” he coaxed. “We’ll go inside, have a couple cervezas, catch the scene. You get a few pictures and we’re gone.” Paraphrasing his $200 an hour shrink, by adding. “If it don’t scare you a little, it ain’t worth doing.”

Singer considered his friend’s infinite wisdom and allowed himself to be guided, by the shoulder, toward the door.

Into the heat of two hundred bodies packed into a room built for half that number, through the smoke and the stink of sweat mixed with spilled beer.

Deeper, toward the music.

Until they were on the edge of the dance floor.

Flynn shouted above the distortion of the blown Marshalls and screaming guitars. “Hang on amigo. I’ll get the suds.”

It was Jimmy Flynn’s fringed jacket that first caught Gina Dallas’ eye. It looked expensive and out of place. Then she clocked his curly black hair and neat, almost pretty features; he looked like a college kid, fresh and young.

He looked like salvation.

She walked a few steps closer to the bar, positioning herself about six feet from him, to his right, so, as he turned, with the two bottles of Dos Equis in his hands, he couldn’t miss her.

She stared at him.

Catching his eye.

She was thin and sexy in her tight black dress and looked ten years younger than any of the other women in the place.

She was looking at him.

He smiled, one of his best.

Gina lowered her eyes. It was the method she always used with younger guys. They were usually out to prove their manhood and liked to think of themselves as the aggressors, so once she established contact, she played it coy. But even as she looked at the floor and moved her hips to the beat of the music, she knew he was walking toward her.

“Are you on your own?” His voice was soft and polite.

She raised her head as if she were surprised. Up close, he was older than she’d thought and he smelled like money?designer jeans, new boots, the fringed jacket. She took it all in, making no effort to answer his question.

Thinking that, maybe, she didn’t understand him, Flynn tried in Spanish.

“Estas sola?”

There was another thing that attracted Gina. He looked like her idea of a Californian, smooth and tanned, like somebody off a TV series. He looked clean, and clean was what Gina Dallas needed.

“Estoy sola,” Gina replied, moving a little closer.

“Como se llama Usted?” He asked her name.

“Gina, y Usted?”

“Jimmy,” he answered. ‘Oh man, she’s beautiful, fucking beautiful,’ he thought.

“Jeemy,” Gina laid on her best accent. A lot of the times, straight guys liked fantasy, and Gina was an expert at the Spanish Rose.

Singer had been watching from where he stood; he’d seen the dark haired girl before Flynn had. Attracted to her gypsy looks and by the way the cheap dress clung to her full breasts. But there was something wrong. Something in the way she had surveyed the room, cold and calculating. Until she had seen Flynn. The girl was a hustler. And Flynn, hustler of hustlers, was buying her act. Singer opened his jacket, slipped the cap off the Nikon, and adjusted the lens. He wanted to record Flynn’s fall from glory.

“Tiene novia?” Gina asked.

Flynn dug deep into his well of college español and remembered that ‘tiene’ meant ‘to have’. ‘Novia’ was a blank.

He stepped closer to her, feeling the fullness of her breasts against his fringed chest.

“No comprendo,” he replied.

“Do yo have a girlfreend?” Gina was having fun, laying it on.

“No,” he replied, hoping that Singer was getting a few shots for posterity.

Gina reached up, placed both hands on Flynn’s shoulders and swayed gently in front of him.

“Quieres bailar?”

Flynn correctly assumed she meant “dance.”

He put both arms around her. “Si.”

She seemed to settle into him, finding the beat as she rubbed up against his groin, asking him a few questions in broken English. Standard, getting to know you stuff.

Flynn answered, closed his eyes, and barely moved his feet. He could feel the heat from between her thighs.

Singer noticed that, as they danced, the girl was making eye contact with someone at the back of the room. He turned. Through the herd of bodies he saw a man with dark, hollow eyes and a lion’s mane of hair. He was staring directly at Flynn’s dancing partner.

“Un momento, por favor,” Gina said, breaking away from Flynn.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

“Un momento,” Gina repeated and walked toward the door.

Flynn began to trail after her, but Singer elbowed his way through a throng of Indian women and intercepted him.

Insisting, “I think we’d better leave.”

“Why?”

Singer motioned toward the door and answered. “Her boyfriend’s jealous.”

Flynn looked. He caught a glimpse of the girl, talking to someone, but his view was blocked by the milling crowd.

“Bullshit,” he answered.

Singer insisted. “I’m telling you. This is very uncool.”

Flynn looked again. This time he saw him. Standing there, talking to the girl. The man shifted his head and, for an instant, their eyes locked, sending a dull warning to Flynn.

“OK, OK,” he said, turning back to Singer, covering for his sudden loss of courage. “Don’t look stressed out. Let’s have one more drink. Take it easy for a minute.” Hoping, by then, that the door would be clear.

The long-haired man gripped Gina by the arm and walked her outside the club. There, he pushed her up against the wall, resting his hand against her throat.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” he demanded.

“Making some money, isn’t that what I’m supposed to be doing?” Her words were defiant, but there was fear in her voice.

He pressed in against her windpipe with his fingers.

“Did you take care of Galiano?”

Mad Dog Galiano was the president of the Renegades M.C., a club affiliated with the long haired man’s club, the Sons Of Fire.

Gina lowered her eyes.

“Yes,” he answered.

They were in TJ on business and Gina was part of that business, like a party favor.

He continued. “I hope you treated him good.” Gripping tighter.

She could feel his nails, sharpened to points and hardened with lacquer, about to puncture her skin. She was covered in tiny scars from those fingernails.

“I did.. Please, Ray.” Using his real name. Beginning to plead. Looking down at his hand.

“Keep your eyes on me when I’m talking to you.”

Gina raised her eyes.

She was beautiful, but Ray ‘Wolf’ Armitage noticed that she had begun to fray around the edges. ‘Only a few good years left,’ he reckoned.

He pressured. “That asshole you’re dancing with, what’s his story?”

She tried to sound convincing. “He’s a city boy. He’s loaded.”

“Where’s he stayin’?”

Nervous. She racked her memory. ‘What had the guy said while they’d been dancing?’ Finally it came to her. She replied. “Hotel California.”

Wolf knew the hotel, and the owner, an old speed freak from San Diego.

“The place is a rat hole,” he answered.

Gina persisted. “I swear. The guy’s got money.”

“An’ you like him, don’t you?” There was the shade of possession in his voice.

Wolf had known Gina Dallas since she was a child. Since her father had run out on him, leaving him for dead on the floor of a Brownsville motel room, in the wake of a drug deal that had gone bad. Then testified against the club in federal court. He’d been a brother once. Now, he was an enemy. Wolf had feelings for Gina Dallas, but those feelings were poisoned. “Liking” was something that she was not permitted.

“No,” she lied.

“Then, why did ya hit on him?”

She repeated. “Cause he looks like money.”

Wolf studied her face. Noting the resemblance to her father. Not the skin coloring?that was olive, like her Mexican mother?but her features and her expression. Her eyes. She had the same denim, blue eyes. One day he’d find the bastard. Until then, he had a hostage.

Finally, he smiled, saying, “Well, you go and have your fun.” He released his grip and stepped away.

Gina pulled herself together and walked back toward the door of the club. About to open it when Wolf shouted.

“Hey, bitch!”

She turned.

“Get paid.”

The words hit her like bullets, shredding the remains of her fantasy. She was a whore, and Jimmy, from California, was business.

Mark Singer and Jimmy Flynn were both at the bar when Gina returned.

She was shaken, but, over the years, she’d learned to hide her feelings.

“Que tal?” she asked.

Flynn looked up.

“Quieres bailar?” Gina continued.

Singer met Flynn’s eyes. His message was simple. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

Gina tried again. “Un baile, por favor?” Pressing her crotch into Flynn’s.

He looked around, toward the door. The long haired man had turned away from them, and appeared deep in conversation with two other men.

“El hombre?” Flynn questioned.

Gina laughed. Answering. “Mi padre.”

“Your father?” Flynn repeated.

“Si. Si.”

“I don’t buy this,” Singer said.

Gina looked at him, her eyes hard. Then, she turned back to Flynn and softened.

“Mi padre say bueno. OK. You look like a very nice man. OK if I dance with you. Muy bien.” She offered her hand, “Un baile?”

Flynn accepted her hand.

Singer snarled. “I can’t believe you’re buying this shit.”

“Just one dance,” Flynn said.

Singer watched them long enough to see Flynn slide his hands down, over Gina’s ass.

Anger overcame caution. Singer lifted his camera. As if it were a gun, firing it at Flynn, as he disappeared with the girl, into the moving crowd.

As if a photograph would serve as his indictment.

In the far corner of the room, Wolf handed Mad Dog Caliano a big, sand colored rock of crystal meth, sealed in a baggie. It was a sample from the club’s lab in Corpus Christie, and he was looking for distribution in Renegade territory.

Galiano held it a moment between his thumb and index finger, as if gauging its weight, before dropping the package into the top pocket of his cut-off jacket.

It was then that Wolf saw the reflection of light from the lens of Singer’s Nikon.

“Somebody’s taking pictures,” he said to Sam Johnson, his sergeant at arms, who was standing beside them. “Over there.”

Wolf pointed to Mark Singer.

“No problem,” Sam replied.

“You! Where the fuck you goin’?”

The voice was hard and cold, and Singer knew it was aimed at him. He was about to load the Nikon into the saddlebag of the Triumph. Instead, he froze.

“I’m talkin’ to you, asshole. Step away from the bike.”

Singer looked around, praying he’d see someone else in the parking lot, someone to help him. It was deserted. He looked toward the door of the night club. Closed. He could hear the band playing. It was an old Rolling Stones’ number, “Symphony For The Devil.”

Sam Johnson walked forward.

“You got something that belongs to me.”

Singer answered. “You must be mistaken.” His voice was trembling and his knees felt weak. He was aware of his heart, thudding against his chest.

“I don’t make mistakes,” Johnson stated, stepping closer. He wore his red hair shaved to a shadow, and his nose had been broken so many times when he’d boxed as a pro, that he’d stopped having it reset, leaving it to veer sideways along his right cheekbone. But it was his eyes that grabbed Singer. They were set close together, dark and unforgiving.

“Give me the fucking camera.”

Singer was terrified. He had a brown belt in karate, but now he felt powerless. This was real life, a million miles from a safe dojo, with padded floors and pulled punches.

“I won’t ask you again,” Johnson said, lining him up for a straight right hand.

Slowly, Singer handed over his Nikon. It had been a gift from his late father, ten years ago. He felt like he was surrendering his soul.

“Now, get the fuck out of here,” Johnson ordered.

Singer asked. “Can’t you just take the film and let me have my camera back?”

Johnson hated RUBS, and he could hear something in Singer’s voice, clear as a bell. Fear. That was the catalyst for his fury. He threw his right hand, with no chambering, no wind-up.

Singer never saw it coming.

Johnson put his shoulder behind it, grunting with the out breath and driving his fist through.

When Singer woke up his jaw was numb, the stars were out, the air smelled like dust and gasoline and he heard music, but he didn’t know where he was. In fact, he didn’t know who he was. That scared him the most. Being lost inside.

“Pleased to meet you

Hope you guessed my name”

“Symphony For The Devil.” He’d heard the song before. Now it seemed to fill the hollow inside his head. He sat up and saw the night club, the sign that read ‘LIVE MUSIC, DANCING.’ The place looked small and dingy, like the set of a B-movie.

A car door slammed and Singer heard voices. He couldn’t understand their words but he knew they were speaking Spanish. He got to his feet and looked around. Trying not to panic. The Triumph sat beside the cream and teal Harley, Jimmy Flynn’s Harley. Jimmy Flynn. His memory inspired anger. Then, it all came back, piece by ugly piece.

Singer brushed himself off and walked toward his Triumph. Looking one last time at the Harley, he said, “Fuck you, Jimmy Flynn.”

“Tu padre? Que!…? ” Flynn asked as Gina turned the key in the lock of the door, in the upstairs of the club. He wanted to know what her father would say about what they were doing, but he couldn’t put the Spanish together.

She turned toward him and smiled.

“Mi padre se fue a San Diego. No vuelve hasta manana,” she lied.

Flynn understood enough to know that Gina was telling him that her father was gone till morning. It made sense; he couldn’t remember seeing the long haired man when they’d left the club. Still, he was scared, moving into deep waters.

“Coca?” she asked.

“Coca?” he repeated, unsure of what she’d meant.

Gina reached into the top of her dress and removed the small baggie from between her breasts.

“Coca,” she said, extending her hand.

Flynn eyed the rock. There was a challenge here. A test of his manhood.

“Yeah, sure,” he replied. Telling himself that he could handle it.

Gina walked past him and sat down on the bed. Her handbag was sitting on the night table; she lifted and opened it, taking out a small mirror and a cardboard wrapped razor blade. She dumped the rock on to the mirror, unsheathed the razor and sliced a quarter from it, then she went to work, chopping it into powder.

‘Yes,’ Flynn thought. He was man enough. He had to be. Had to prove it to himself. Besides, if there was anything sexier than doing a line in a hotel room, it was doing a line in a hotel room with a strange woman.

“Un billete?” she asked, looking up, and raising her fingers to her nose while inhaling.

He slid a wad of bills from his pocket and slipped a five hundred peso note from the top. Noticing that his palms were sweating as he rolled it into a straw, then sat down beside Gina on the bed.

She offered him the mirror. There were four thick lines on the glass. Flynn leaned forward and inhaled the first in one swooping gesture. He felt the rush within seconds. The stuff was serious. His nerves heightened, but the edge was beginning to feel good. Like he was getting away with it. He just wasn’t certain what “it” was. He offered Gina the rolled bill.

“No, no. Un otra,” she urged.

Flynn vacuumed up the second line. The cocaine was hardly cut, and in seconds his teeth and gums were numb. Once, in L.A., he’d had some Peruvian flake. That had been pure, too. So pure that he couldn’t get a hard-on. He’d been with Maria Sanchez, a dancer from the Strip who’d wanted to get into TV commercials, and his dick had shrunk to the size of a bean sprout. His embarrassment had been excruciating. He worried that it might happen again.

Gina placed the mirror and razor blade on the night table and stood up in front of him. The band was playing another blues number, a bump and grind. She moved her hips in time to the pulse from the base and drums, slipping the straps from her dress off her shoulders.

Her tits were beautiful, full and round, with nipples the size of small acorns. Her left one had been pierced with a gold ring and “Property of S.O.F.M.C.” had been tattooed above it.

Flynn stared, feeling movement between is legs. Relieved to know that, in that department, everything was going to be a-OK.

Gina pushed the dress down, over her hips and kicked it away from her, keeping her high heels on. She wore no panties and her pubic hair was jet black and full, almost circular in pattern. Most of Flynn’s L.A. babes shaved, some completely, but this girl was absolutely raw, natural, untouched.

She took a step closer and he noticed that the hair grew thicker and darker around the lips of her vagina, but he could still see them, pink and glistening. He could smell the musky scent of her. This was real, realer than anything that had happened to him in a very long time.

Her ass. He had to see her ass. Flynn was obsessed with asses.

“Turn around,” he croaked, then motioned with his hands so that she’d understand him.

She knew perfectly what he wanted, and spun slowly in front of him.

“Perfecto,” he whispered. Standing to unbuckle his belt and unbutton his jeans. Dropping them to his knees, leaving his fringed jacket in place. The pouch of his Armani’s stood out like a tripod.

Gina turned back toward him, reached forward and stroked him through the expensive cotton, then squatted in front of him, pulling his underwear down to his knees.

Jimmy Flynn was a connoisseur of good head and Gina’s was of vintage quality. She licked, she kissed, she sucked and moaned, all the time tickling his balls with the fingertips of her free hand, while her other hand was positioned on his ass, middle finger inserted. This was the real thing. A biker babe in a biker bar. A self-validating experience. One that his shrink, Earl Fishbine, would definitely approve. Then he remembered his handcuffs. Purchased from a sex shop in West Hollywood, they were an “on-the-road” necessity.

“Un momento,” he groaned, reaching down and digging them from the back pocket of his black, Aviatic jeans.

Gina used the time to stand up and slip a foil wrapped condom from her purse.

A Peruvian minute later and she was cuffed to the bed frame, legs open and Jimmy Flynn was encased in a pre-lubricated French tickler, performing like Hamlet in cowboy boots.

It took him three complete songs to come, and when he did, he was sure that Gina had screamed her applause in Spanish. The word she used, however, sounded a lot like “finally.”

He studied her face as he freed her from his cuffs. Something had changed.

“That was really nice,” she said, with no discernible accent. Meaning that it had been better than Mad Dog Galiano, who had been rough, sloppy, and had refused to wear the bag.

Singer stood dumbstruck.

Finally, asking. “What did you say?”

“I said that was nice,” she repeated.

Had the intensity of his love making caused her to become bilingual? He actually considered the phenomenon. Then, he quickly pulled up his underpants and jeans, before hitching his belt for security.

Gina made no effort at putting her clothes back on.

“I thought you were Mexican,” Flynn said, picking his fringed, Dennis Hopper look-alike jacket up from the bed. Wrapping himself in it. He suddenly felt very vulnerable.

“I am. Well, half-Mexican.”

“Why all the bullshit with speaking Spanish? “

Something about the way Flynn said “bullshit” annoyed her. There was arrogance in his voice. She studied him for several seconds. Who the fuck did he think he was? He wasn’t really even good looking. Not like a real man, anyway. More like a spoiled kid with a lined face. She eyed his weak jaw and mushy lips.

“That’ll cost you two hundred bucks, Señor,” she said, laying a lot of accent on “señor.”

He looked at her as if he’d been shot. “What?”

“You need me to break it down for you?”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

Gina answered. “A hundred bucks for the ‘c,’ and a hundred bucks for me. Si, si, Señor?”

“Forget it.”

Gina stood up. He was beginning to anger her.

“I’ve never paid for it in my life and I’m sure as hell not starting with you,” Flynn stated. He was indignant.

Gina walked to the door and stood in front of it.

“My father likes me to get paid for my work.” There was a veiled threat in the word “father.”

“Yeah, and your father’s out of town, so when he gets back, give him my apologies.”

Gina crossed her arms in front of her. Her body didn’t look so perfect to Flynn anymore. He’d seen plenty better in L.A., waiting tables in restaurants.

“I’d like to leave now,” he said, walking toward her.

Gina shook her head and asked. “Do you really think I wanted to suck your pencil dick?”

The change in her voice scared Flynn. He stopped.

“Come on, be reasonable,” he said.

Gina was losing patience.

“Two hundred and fifty bucks, how’s that for reasonable?”

“Get real,” Flynn retorted.

Get real? This phony biker was telling her to get real. The idea infuriated her. She reacted by reaching forward and clawing downward against his face, so fast that he was unsure as to what she had done. Until he lifted his hands and felt the blood.

She spit the words. “Is that real enough for you?”

Stunned, Flynn reached into the pocket of his jeans. He touched the bills with his fingers. Everything inside him, every fear, self doubt, every inadequacy, was straining against the shell of his ego. If he handed over his money he would be invalidated. His bike, his leather jacket, his power job at the agency. He would dissolve, be nothing. He thought of his shrink. What would Fishbine say?

“Give me the fucking money,” Gina demanded, hating herself for being what she was. Why couldn’t she keep just one fantasy alive? A straight guy, a straight fuck. Why did Wolf control everything she did? Why did she have to do this?

Flynn lifted the bills from his pocket.

Gina stared him in the eyes, hating him for being scared, almost wishing he’d refused, and shook her head.

She said. “Asshole.”

The single word was like a trigger. Flynn clutched the wad in his fist and punched the fist forward. He had never hit anyone before in his life and he was surprised that the impact felt so soft, so giving.

A current of electricity surged through Gina’s legs, as her knees went slack and her nose broke beneath his knuckles. She dropped at Flynn’s feet.

He stared down. His first feeling was one of power. He’d struck a righteous blow. He was a man who packed a wallop. Assertive. Decisive. Then, as his senses cleared, a new reality gripped him. He was a Hollywood agent, and he’d just punched a prostitute in a Mexican brothel. A prostitute with dangerous connections. He was in big trouble.

“Are you all right? All right?” he asked, bending down over her, touching her arm.

Blood streamed from Gina’s nose and made a puddle on the floor.

He panicked then.

“Hey! Wake up. Wake up!” he demanded. “You want money, I got money. Here, take my money.”

He dropped the five hundred peso note onto her shoulder. It was still rolled in the shape of a straw. She was very still and the note fell from her flesh to the floor. He stared at her chest. Was she breathing? There didn’t seem to be any movement. ‘Oh no. Jesus Christ, no.’ Standing up, he backed away. “Please God, don’t let her be dead.”

Gina remained motionless.

Flynn stared at the door of the room. He would have to step across her to get out, maybe even move her body. ‘Fingerprints? Mexican jails?’ A host of desperate thoughts flooded his mind. The men downstairs, the bikers, the friends of her fathers. What if someone had seen him leave the bar with the girl? They’d kill him. He was going to die. He felt a sharp gnawing in his gut before it turned sour, and his mouth tasted like chalk. He was having an anxiety attack. Prozac. If only he’d stayed on the Prozac that Fishbine had prescribed, this would never have happened. Now he had to make a run for it.

He turned, ran to the open window of the bedroom and looked down.

It was a twelve foot drop to the parking lot. Oh, man, where the fuck was Singer? The bastard had deserted him.

Flynn climbed out of the window, one leg then the other, turning so that his body hung free as he held on to the ledge, first with his hands, then his fingers. He could hear his heart banging against his rib cage. His mouth had gone dry.

He screamed as he let go.

He hit the ground hard, his knees felt like they’d gone through his hips and up into his rib cage. He stayed down, trying to assess the damage, breathing in gasps, his adrenaline masking most of the pain. Then he heard it. A harsh, throaty laugh, coming from above him. He looked in the direction of the sound.

Gina was hanging out the window, tits and all.

“You even punch like a pussy,” she said. Then her voice went low, almost a growl. “You got no idea of what you just did. What you just got into.” After that, she was gone.

Flynn pushed himself to his feet and hobbled to his bike. His hands were shaking and he could barely fit the key into the lock. He was scared to the point of rigidity. If the bike would just start. If he could just get out of the parking lot. Away from the music. Away from the whore, away from what he’d just done.

The Heritage turned over on the second try. So far, so good. He was going to make it. Go get Singer. Get his stuff. Get out of town. Something to tell the boys about back in the office. A little real life. A slice. Hustled by a whore. Him. Jimmy “The Pitch Man” Flynn. King of the packaged film deal. Liar of liars. Oh man, he’d put a fuck on her. What was her name? Gina. Hell, would anybody believe him?

Then the door from of the club opened. Loud voices, drunken laughter, and he froze, almost shutting the bike off so as not to attract attention.

“No, don’t do that,” he told himself. “Just keep going, like nothing happened.” He started to move, relieved to see the man and woman who had just exited the club head toward a Dodge truck, never even glancing in his direction. Then he was clear of the lot, off the dirt and gravel, and onto the highway. Almost free. Almost home.

He rode fast. Seventy miles and hour on a lousy road. It was fast for Jimmy Flynn. The fringe on his jacket made a cracking sound as it smacked against the leather. He was Jesse James. He’d robbed the bank and made a get-away. Jimmy Flynn. The main man.

There was a twinkle of light in his mirrors. He stared. There were two of them, skipping like stones across water. Vibrating with the glass. They were coming toward him. Bike lights? He accelerated. Looking again. The lights were gone. ‘It was nothing,’ he told himself. ‘A car. A truck.’

He was traveling so fast that he shot past the hotel. It was easy to miss. The neon No Vacancy sign was broken and the light above the entrance gate was dim. ‘Welcome to the Hotel California. Such a lovely place.’ Suddenly, the words to the Eagles’ song began to play in his mind.

He slowed down, executed a tight turn with the soles of his boots dragging against the gravel by the side of the road and headed back up the highway. Turning left into the driveway and through the entrance gates, not stopping till he was behind the main building, out of sight from passing traffic. He hadn’t even looked to see if Singer’s bike was there. He didn’t care. He just wanted to get his belongings and leave, back, across the border.

He got off the bike and didn’t waste time locking it. Then ran into the rear entrance of the hotel, down the old tiled corridor.

‘Such a lovely place.. You can check out any time you want, but you can never leave.’ Good song. Great song.. His boots sounded loud, echoing. The place felt empty.

He dug the key from his jacket. It was big. Made of brass and tied by a string to a piece of wood that had been etched with, ‘Hotel California. Rm. 33.’ He examined it quickly. Comparing it to the number on the door. Yes, he was home and dry. ‘We are all prisoners of our own device.’ Now that the song had started, he couldn’t get it to stop. He was moving to the silent beat.

Entering the dark room, he closed the door behind him and fumbled for the light switch. Turning it on.

His eyes adjusted and the song died.

He couldn’t believe it. Not at first.

They were there. One sitting in the beat-up wood and leather chair beneath the window, the other sprawled casually on his bed.

Flynn had seen both of them before, at the club.

‘Oh Christ. Jesus Christ.’ This was a dream. A very bad dream.

Sam Johnson stood from the chair and walked quickly to the door, barring Flynn’s exit, while Wolf smiled. His teeth were stained a nicotine yellow, and his face was scarred, but his eyes were as alive as rattlesnakes.

He spoke, low and insinuating. “How’s it hangin’, big boy?”

Flynn tried to swallow, without success. Finally, he dredged up some words.

“Sorry, I must have the wrong room.” His voice broke like an adolescent’s.

Wolf smiled again. At least his mouth moved and his lips turned up, but it was more the gesture of a rabid animal. His eyes focused on Flynn, and his voice was dead flat.

“Ain’t that the fuckin’ truth.”

Time, for Jimmy Flynn, shifted down a gear, into slow motion, as he watched Wolf get up from the bed, his body lean and muscular beneath a black T-shirt, looking so relaxed, so fluid as he walked toward him. Slipping the buck knife from his belt. The long blade sparkled in the light from the bare bulb.

“Was it worth it?” he asked.

I was beginning to think my mind had gone and left me.

…with a bare frame and with the help from all the members, I was able to build my own custom Harley!

Dear Great Grandpaw,

      I write this just to clear up some questions I know you have a this time.

      You are my great grandfather. You are Vincent Taylor, Sr. your son, my grandfather was Vincent Taylor, Jr. My father was Vincent Taylor, III and I’m Vincent Taylor, IV!

      Family history is that you, my great grandpaw ended up living his life as an outlaw because the citizens could not understand your need to be different, to live life differently from them.

      Well, that legend had been handed down to me! And by the way, that old Indian was right! I needed you then and I, or should I say, your great-great grandson needs you now! You see, Angie, the hot lil’ redhead down at the “Bottoms Up” bar is pregnant with my son! She’s only three months along! And it would be nice if you’d bring him up right. Teach him well. Teach him to be his own man and don’t take shit from anyone!

      Well, that’s about it. Sorry I couldn’t tell you this when we met. But, I love you, Gramps. I hope I made you proud. One thing’s for sure though … I bet you never thought that you would see the day that you would be asked to raise your great-great grandson!

      Well, Gramps, I’m up here in Harley Heaven watching out for ya’ll. One more thing … it looks like you’ve come “full Circle.” Enjoy….

Love always,

Your Great-Grandson
Vincent Taylor, IV

      “Do you haf to ride to zees job?” The German Feminine asked.
I noticed something in her eyes which was altogether rare in the world of Germans- emotion.
      “Why?” I asked.
      “I sink you should haf a stronger helmet. Perhaps a Deutsche(German) helmet.”
      “Shiiiit,” I laughed as I headed to the garage to get El Diablo, the big twin ass sled.
      “Perhaps you should take the Stinkin’ Lincoln den,” she said, her voice trailing after me, referring to the 1970 Lincoln Continental.

  &nbsp   “What?! Jesus, woman! What are you talking about?! Ride in a car? Like the Car People! Vile serpent, I cast thee out tarnished spirit in the name of 80 spoke rims and apehangers!”

      Reaching into my jacket I pulled out the pit bull scrotum which hung around my neck on a leather thong. I dipped my gloved fingers in and flicked holy water at the infected wench, water that had been blessed by the Chinaman. It was a unique ceremony, thousands of years old, according to the Chinaman, which involved his actually drinking the water and then filtering it for evil Car People spirits with his blessed kidneys. Later this rarified nectar was retrieved by casting it into the oil pan of a ‘ 59 Pan in total darkness with nothing but trained bats to direct the spray.

   I keyed the padlock on the bull neck of El Diablo, spun the lock around my finger twice and holstered it on a belt loop, snapping it shut in one smooth motion. Two throttle cranks, ignition lights, choke, clutch, starter button, and El Diablo spoke.

   “Abandon all hope, he who sits behind my chromed horns, for wide in the road and paved is the highway which leads unto hell and loose women. I shall deliver you to the Mother Asphalt where ye shall be judged according to your speed,” the custom pipes thundered as I performed my ritualistic throttle rolls in the underground cave where I stored the Beast.

&nbsp&nbsp&nbspThe throttle rolls weren’t really required to fulfill any specific task, but they sure got those lazy neighbors out of bed.

   I stomped the Beast into gear, killed the choke, rolled the right grip, let fly the billet clutch handle and rode out of the garage on the fat backed Dunlop, leaning into the bouncing rocket as I smoked up skyline with melting rubber.

   The first wheelie of the day is like breakfast. Skip it and you’ll feel like shit all afternoon. I felt the black and yellow tanks slam into my chest as I kept the freight train of rolling aluminum and chrome running harder and faster with each funny car rear wheel rotation, streaking down Via Campesina Avenue to the 4-way near the fountain. Marine Corps Lou snapped off a crisp salute as I flew past, the front end slamming into the pavement, the front tire squeaking as it was brought abruptly up to speed, much like the tires on landing jets at LAX.

   The Beast split the quiet morning air, sending the retired Senators and surgically tightened movie producers of Palos Verdes Estates scurrying for cover, fists waving, false teeth clattering and spitting unprintable profanities lodged against my genealogy, my family tree and of course, my gas drinking, fire breathing bro, El Diablo, the Beast. Birds fell dead from the sky from the sheer volume of the engine and clattered to the ground, leaves turned black and fluttered from the limbs by the thousands as we passed. Small dogs died of heart attacks and women clawed at themselves, in lusty vengeance.

  &nbspThe security of big money is a tough one to give up for the tramps and hussies and the old whitemeat billionaires who cluttered up my mountain roads in PV with their slow Rolls Royces and oversized Bentlys could offer this in spades. But they couldn’t offer an all night dance with the pelvic spreader or a goosed up wind tunnel ride down the 405 at one minute after the witch’s hour on a red piped outlaw bike with no tags, no registration, no numbers and no apologies. I’d had many a dusty vase offered to me by the local tamales, no doubt in hopes I’d knock the cobwebs off their brittle bone catchers, iron out a few spoiled wrinkles, pound out the creases worn deep from lack of use and too few hours spent inverted and barking, but I’d always declined. I prefer strong drink and even stronger women, Latins primarily, because they fuck back and I’ve yet to blow one up running her too hard for too long. The German Feminine was an exception to this rule, just like the occasional knucklehead that cranks out 300 horse and never throws a pushrod in a dozen trips across Bonneville. But other than the tall blonde, it was dark meat and aged porto from Portugal for me.

   The old cats had the candy, but I had the horsepower. I was the black knight who shook them out of bed at 4 a.m. and blew the corks out of the bottles of their high dollar French whiskey. I’ve never seen the underside of a Bentley and that tells me they can’t even do a wheelie, or someone would have done it by now.

   The old gals were silken hags who wreaked of $100 a drop perfume and ground monkey skull face powder with withered cunts that had pruned and shriveled years ago and to restore one to its proper working condition and then gear it up to really run right would be too much work when there were so many fine daughters of Spain sporting big stroker pussies with powdercoat lips and rigid frames all over L.A. and Miami.

   I slid El Diablo sideways to the 4-way stop at Palos Verdes Drive and Chicco and eyed PV’s very finest. She was a local Spanish cop with a flog-me set of asses that kept her gunbelt tipped impossibly far forward, lips that pleaded like a schoolgirl for a kiss and coal black eyes which had to be handled with heat resistant tongs and asbestos gloves. She wore seven-inch heels cut from bucking-bull horns tipped with golden .45bullets, with sterling silver zippers that clenched their precious metal teeth all the way to her intersection in a desperate effort to restrain her five foot legs. A finer set of fat bob tanks never had a badge pinned to them. Her stance challenged any and all to try to overrun her walls and plunder her treasure. Sultry, defiant, dirty, lascivious, fecund and fertile, she mocked everything about her uniform which was supposed to stand for blunt authority and conformity, to stifling rules and idiotic regulations. Straining at the buttons and fasteners, her sweating body transformed her blue law enforcement nylon into a perverse stretch suit that trumpeted resistance to order, a dirty finger diddling of rules, the tonguing of regulations, the flat tracker, hard on sodomy of traffic laws and a salty, stinking, all night orgy that leaves the DMV sheets stained and torn.

   Hanging off those hips, a sidearm took on a whole new meaning. Her handcuffs should have been covered in black reindeer antler fuzz and her nightstick doused in boiling caster oil. I would have paid money to have her use that canned hot sauce on my eyes while I rode her on the dyno in my bull spurs with a rodeo glove shoved up her rubbery brown ass.

   I watched as she slowly, seductively beckoned the large lines of traffic to move forward, then stop, then charge ahead again, then stop. She teased the steel snake, titillated it, toyed with it, a sick rush hour foreplay and she was the temptress in full control, a highway domanatrix who was in desperate need of Relief. And the nerve she had, wearing white for the color of her gloves.

   We’d had an encounter in the wee hours several months ago. I was pulled over on El Diablo, heading back from Bandit’s casa, thebikernet.com intergalactic headquarters, in San Pedro, about ten miles south on the coast. A massive grasshopper had found his final resting place on my red lensed Bolles. When you’re traveling a road like Portuguese Bend, which dangles along the cusp of the Palos Verdes Mountains, 800 feet above the rocks of the pounding Pacific, it’s best to have both eyes operational and a clear line of sight.

   As I rubbed the grasshopper legs and wings off my glasses and onto my shirt tail, one of the PVPD SUV’s had rolled up alongside me.

   “Do you need help?” came the breathy offer.

   I had eyed the fiery Spaniard. Oh, I needed help all right. And she might at last be the person who could give it to me.

   “I was just sitting here, cleaning this suicidal hopper off my glasses,” I said.

   Her burgundy lips threw the moon’s cool blue light back in its face.

   “So everything’s all right? You don’t need any- help?” she asked.

   “Not tonight,” I said. I wanted to eat my gas caps. The German Feminine was expecting me and I was already a half an hour late. If I showed up soaked in the hot pepper scent of Latin estrogen and uterus lube, there’d be hell to pay indeed. Few peoples can throw a fit like full blooded Germans. She might well crank up the gas and fire an ATF “non-flammable” pyrotechnic round like the kind they used at Waco through the window from a hilltop and watch the whole thing disintegrate into flames, glass and concrete particles.

   The Spaniard turned to me and slowly waved me toward her. I clicked El Diablo in gear and rolled toward the ravishing vixen. Oh how she needed relief. But a good farmer knows that just because a cherry is red, does not mean it’s ripe and the patient grower waits, waits, waits until the outer flesh on the cherry becomes ripe and thin with pressure, until the mere suggestion of a hummingbird’s beak would cause it to burst. No, now was not the time. One must wait until the cherry has grown to double its size in the warm sunshine, until the navel where the stem is attached weeps with sucrose and fructose, sweet tears of anxious sexuality, a liquid petition for relief. Patience is the first sign of a true artist.

   As I rolled by I could sense her heat. Had I but merely reached out and touched her, she would have instantly been heavy with child, fallen to her back and pushed a raging Viking infant through the damp fabric of her cop cloth.

   Another day, I thought, as I glanced at her in the rearview mirror and saw her continue to search the flowing traffic for relief.

   On Pacific Coast Highway I cranked the Beast up into third, rattling the straights and spooking the gray faced accountants who were hurrying to their doom with humorous determination. The German Feminine’s voice echoed in my ear again, “…you should take the Stinkin’ Lincoln,” as I waded into the hated Car People.

   These were the enemy and they were especially menacing today. CarPeople were savages who surrounded themselves in rolling coats of armor which they used to smash, crush and demolish goodly bikers. The Car People were a diseased race, entirely unpredictable, cursed by the winged demon of the bottomless pit, frozen in burning ice, forever flapping his wings and sending forth a flame that burned souls and shades alike. Created by forcing city buses and locomotives to inbreed at the point of a poisoned trident, the master of eternal woe made the malformed Car People with their extra wheels and overgrown bumpers and loosed them as a steel pox on the holy world of bikers.

   Blown tires, high speed front end wobbles, hail, there is nothing a biker hates worse than Car People. They are the only natural enemy of the biker. So whenever the opportunity presents itself, I make any and all gestures which can render their day a certified disaster. Dented doors, missing mirrors, busted glass, shaved paint jobs, all part of the love I show Car People on a regular basis.

   Winding the handcrank hard, a pale, shivering, wisp of a man wearing a brown suit, brown tie, brown shoes, brown slacks and no doubt, brown underwear, tried desperately to roll up his window as I passed. I reached in, snatching off his brown toupee as I hurtled past. It was a “Ralph Lournette, Brown, Size 11, Extra Natural Hairpiece” according to the tag. Swerving madly, swatting at his bald skull, the accountant veered off the road and slammed into a parking lot pay box. I stuffed the hide into my vest. A man never knows when he might run into the next swap meet and a freshly skinned Nutria Rat pelt might go for a pretty penny to biker with the taste and upbringing to recognize a high quality river rat skirt.

   The Car People are especially menacing today, I thought, as I braked hard and cut around a city bus that pulled into traffic without so much as a blinker. I could smell violence in the air and I was surrounded by the bastards on all sides. Everywhere I looked a Car Person snarled and grimaced at me. They were hungry and I represented relief to them. It had been a long time since they’d run down a biker and been allowed the orgasmic pleasure of skidding through his heart and guts. The Car People were restless, slightly mad, demented and on the hunt. They swarmed me in packs, trying to separate me from the mass of rolling steel so they could crowd me into a bridge rail or cement embankment and then do burnouts on my intestines.

   But I was on to their game and easily out rode the cowardly circus geeks and left them gagging on the lovely smell of fogged Dunlop and tacky asphalt.

   I was riding north on Pacific Coast Highway, or PCH as it’s known to the locals. It winds along the very edge of the coast from Washington state to L.A., at which point it becomes a captured eagle, running through the beach cities, reduced to speed limit zones, red lights and six lanes of very heavy traffic.

   Three north and three south, no waiting, I thought, as I split lanes and cut between the Car People who were sitting at a red light. It’s legal to split lanes in California, an obscure ordinance which was originally passed with the idea that air cooled motorcycles would burn up sitting in the very regular Los Angeles traffic jams.

   But it had opened up a whole new world of danger for the biker. It’s a short ride from life to the other side when you blow the gap known as No Man’s Land. One aggressive move on the part of the CarPeople and you suddenly find yourself being pinched, crushed between the rolling river of flying metal, sailing sports cars, big semis and illiterate illegal aliens driving vehicles that were scrapped by licensed drivers years ago. And as every biker knows, it requires a mere bump, a tap that would amount to nothing more than an exchange of foul words and insurance information among the Car People, to send a biker cartwheeling to the pavement to be run over ten, twenty, sixty times before the flow of Detroit, Jap and Euro iron could be skidded to a halt. By that time, all that’s left of the biker are a few good stories and a series of scattered limbs and organs, all blended into burned tire rubber and blacktop, gleaming red and black streaks under the California sun, with the occasional shred of bloody leather or denim wrapped tightly around a dripping drive shaft.

   All it takes is one dumb ass talking on his cell phone, putting on eyeliner and trying to read how his stocks did in the morning paper, to change lanes without looking. When you see one coming it’s from the side, a sudden emergence of Buick tail light and back bumper, moving to intersect you as you pass or perhaps a lateral hit, the left side of an SUV made by the people who brought you Pearl Harbor, headed your way, while a110 pound dingbat in a suit and yuppie noose lays on the horn, trying to pass the guy in front of him, somehow entirely oblivious of the thundering biker beside him.

   Whenever they come, they come fast and with the blind intent of killing the man on two wheels. I had cracked many a Car Person in the chops at the next traffic light, who had pinched me so hard that I had to physically reach over and whack their car to put them on notice that they were about to commit vehicular manslaughter. Of course this was often followed by many foul slanders from the Car Person who was entirely offended that the rolling Viking next to him had dared to thump his wonderful status symbol and save him 20 years in the hole. But they never seem to be so saucy, once the light turns red and a hundred cars pin the min on all sides and bring them to a halt. Then the kickstand comes down and the hammer drops with it. It seems everyone is a brawler when they’re flying down the highway and I’ve had to reach through many a rolled up glass to educate a Car Person who thought it fair to holler and spit fire and lightening after running me into the shoulder or the car next to me, who then panicked and realized that the Zebra was coming to call and daddy wasn’t there to save them.

   It’s always the same, they have that terrified look of adrenaline mixed with running offal on their face and they rear back in their seatbelt in horror as the first few punches land. Then they shriek and holler as you walk back to your idling bike, calling for help or perhaps just hanging there silently in their shoulder belt, dripping on their Calvin Whatever britches. And it’s interesting how careful all the other Car People in the immediate area are about not crowding you as you blast off that light. Car People are essentially cowardly like their cousin, the hyena, which is why they almost always hunt in packs. One sees a lone Car Person try to take out a biker now and then, but they must be very hungry and often such a lone attack is a result of a bot fly eating into the brain and driving the Car Person utterly insane.

   I rolled along past a flower shop in Redondo Beach. A tall Hawaiian woman wearing a short dress and barefoot, was bent over, arranging an array of brilliant sunflowers in an aluminum water bucket outside her shop. Her loose breasts hung wonderfully in the brilliantly colored material and made me think of a cantaloupe tree or perhaps a vineyard with honeydew melons hanging from the vines. I would have to buy some flowers for the German Feminine, I thought as I rumbled past on El Diablo. Perhaps many flowers.

   The day was a balmy, breezy Tuesday and I was in no hurry, so I rolled along slightly faster than the enemy. I called my own shots and made my own hours and there was no boss or corporate geek above me who had authoritarian rule over my time. I got to work when I felt like it and stayed as long or as short as I liked. And on the good mornings, when the bike felt tight and smooth, the asphalt was fresh and well laid and the white lines flicked by like good conversation, I didn’t rush the ride.

   The traffic pulled up a long hill as we rolled over the city of Redondo Beach, a funky beach town sandwiched between all the other beach towns of L.A. I saw the light turn green and the rightmost lane was open and free. I swung over and handed a business card to a bro on a Ducati as I rolled past. He took it, read the address, bikernet.com, and nodded tome as he stuffed it into his vest pocket.

   Steaming up the big incline, I clicked into third and passed the 35 mile an hour mark, letting the two hundred pound flywheels turn El Diablo at a steady 40.

Los Angeles International Airport
Los Angeles, California

I laid my H&K USP .45 on the counter at the check-in booth for TWA airlines. The attendant eyed me with wary disdain as he examined the gun to make sure it was unloaded. It’s completely legal to carry firearms underneath any commercial airliner and there was nothing he could say about it, but I could tell he was against such things. With a nod from the attendant I slammed the slide home and locked the gun back into the case. I could smell the aroma of the 91-Seeds in the suitcase and I knew the airline attendant surely could, too. But he was letting it slide, for whatever reason, and I quickly put the gun case in the suitcase, zipped it up and handed it to him to check under the plane.

I’d need the firepower where I was going. I knew every inch of those great prairies which were cleaved twain by the ruts of the old Santa Fe Trail, ribbons in the sod marking in miles the number of tears shed by those early settlers who’d tried, most in vain, to transverse the oceans of unsympathetic prairies. Even old uncle Billy Burroughs carried his six shooter when he went out for a Naked Lunch in Lawrence, Kansas and all his enemies were either dead of old age or so barbecued by China White that they posed a threat to nobody save the poor lass who dumped their bedpans, which were generally full of blood and bile and small, inconsequential organs that are never supposed to leave the human body during life.

I was bound for Kansas, home to Dodge City, Wyatt Earp, Batt Masterson and more recently, Special Agent Orange. I knew to come armed. Special Agent Orange was an old travel partner from my pro rodeo days. A great bullrider. He used to say, “the higher they fly, the cooler the breeze.” He had a predisposition towards adrenaline and when that ran dry, white lable tequila would do just fine.

Not that I was expecting trouble. I was going on vacation.

As we circled the airfield over Kansas, I looked down over those miles of endless grass and felt a little charge. I was home. Home on the range. As we circled lower and lower, I noticed that the native grass turning that familiar shade of bluish purple, signifying the end of another Kansas summer. Then the plane hit an air pocket, dropped 3,000 feet and I was reminded that I was meeting Special Agent Orange later that night.

ROCK CREEK RANCH
THE KANSAS FLINT HILLS REGION

It was late evening when Special Agent Orange rode his ’59 Panhead chopper into the ranch. The seat on his scoot was a real bronc saddle with the stirrups cut off. A horse tail hung from the back fender. Prairie-grass-polished spurs hung from his boot heels.

“What’s this you’re jabberin’ about some damned mornin’ glory seeds?” he swore, as he climbed from his barely legal machine and stuck out his scarred hand. “Hell fire, I don’t know why a man would do anything with mornin’ glory seeds but burn the sonsabitches. Damned weed drive a row-crop man clear outta business.”

I shook Special Agent Orange’s hand and noticed his sun-faded .44 revolver still hung from his left hip.

“I’ve found through my extensive FDA research that morning glory seeds are perhaps the most overlooked cure-all in medicinal history.”

“You’re eatin’ them sonsabitches?”

“A hybrid really,” I replied.

“Aye gawd. I thought you learned after that damned nutmeg fi-asco down in South Beach ta knock off eatin’ weeds. Gawd damned nearly got me kilt. Shit fire, even an old cow knows more’n ta eat a damned weed.”

“It’s what led me to discover the Muzzle Flash Theory,” I told him.

“The Muzzle Flash Theory?” Special Agent Orange snorted.

“I’ll tell you about it on the road,” I said, nodding towards the tiny bag lying near the front step of the stone ranch hourse. “Let’s get going.”

I knew better than to go into detail over the crazed experiments I’d been performing before we’d passed the point of no return.

I fired up my Kansas chopper, El Toro and we rumbled up the seven mile gravel lane that led to the only highway in the region.

OLD HIGHWAY 56
THE FLINT HILLS, KANSAS
2:00 AM

“I thought you was on vacation,” Special Agent Orange hollered, as we rode over the rolling prairies through the black night.

“I am. But I need to test this theory on pure subjects. I can’t trust my results from anyone in New Orleans or L.A. Those fuckers are so fouled by dope and red Voodoo I can’t get an honest reading.”

“Yur gonna git us shot,” Special Agent Orange ensured me, as he reached into his saddle bags, abondoning the bike to turn freely on its own. His scoot swerved violently and headed straight for a high cliff that dangled over the ditch far below.

“Jeeeeeeesus!” I cried as I leaned across and grabbed his left handgrip and righted his bike, nearly throwing Special Agent Orange off.

“Gaaaawd dammit! What in’the hell ya tryin’ ta do? Kill me!?” Special Agent Orange demanded as he handed me a Blackberry beer.

“What the hell was that?” I hollered, cracking the beer and slurping the purple foam on the rim as it blew all over me.

“What?!” Specal Agent Orange demanded.

“Turning around and reaching into your bags with both hands!” I roared.

“I was getting’ myself a frosty!”

“‘Ya ’bout got us both planted, ya dumb bastard!” I yelled.

“Man tries ta get a frosty and he’s nice enough to get the other dumb sonofabitch one and what thanks does he git? Damned neart bucked off onta the damned road, that’s what,” Special Agent Orange snapped.

We simultaneously drank our beers in one long drag. Special Agent Orange started to turn for another, but I leaned over and grabbed his arm.

“I’ll get it,” I yelled in disgust. “You see about keepin’ this rollin’ felony on the road. What flavor you havin’?”

“Believe I’ll have me a Blackberry,” Special Agent Orange said triumphantly, very happy to suddenly have room service on his flying stallion of doom.

“Good. That’s all the flavors you got,” I said as I glided El Toro in and snatched a beer from his saddlebags.

“I know.”

“Now, here’s the plan. When we get to Council Grove, we’re gonna go to that little bar they got.”

“What’s it called?” Orange said, tossing his empty can in my lap.

“Lucy’s! What the hell difference does it make what it’s called? It’s the only bar in the damned town.”

“That’s what I thought. I can’t go inta Lucy’s. Had a little incident at the July 4th rodeo in ’88, in case you don’t recall,” Special Agent yelled as we sailed along Highway 56, the old two lane blacktopper that runs along the Santa Fe Trail all the way to Dodge City, 411 miles west.

I suddenly remembered the home-made bomb which Special Agent Orange had rolled across the dance floor in Lucy’s.

He was on a stolen horse when he did it. Thought it would aid in his getaway. Probably would have if the bomb hadn’t rolled under the pool table and caused it to flip over, sending pool balls all over the floor. In the ensuing melee, the horse reared up, stepped down on one of the fated glass spheres and took a wonderful backwards flip over the bar, landing upside down and nearly killing Special Agent Orange who made one of the prettiest flying dismounts I’d ever seen in fifteen years of pro rodeo.

“Hell, nobody knows who you were,” I said, remembering the scene of furious, choking cowhands as they poured out onto the street, pistols over their heads, looking for a culprit to murder.

I cranked down my straw cowboy hat, which was buzzing in the 100 mile an hour winds.

“There was quite a slug ah smoke,” Special Agent Orange said with a smirk.

I handed Special Agent Orange another Blackberry beer.

“What the hell made you strap that gas jug to that blastin’ cap anyway?” I asked as we roared past an old Indian burial ground.

Special Agent Orange raised a brow and looked up at the stars that filled the Kansas night sky. “Hell…I can’t remember, been so long ago and all,” he shouted back thoughtfully.

Special Agent Orange had no idea just how much the product petroleum was about to affect his life in that same cowtown bar, once again.

LUCY’S BAR
COUNCIL GROVE, KANSAS
2:30 AM

Special Agent Orange tied a pair of reins which led from the front forks of his Panhead chopper to the horse-hitching post in front of Lucy’s. I parked El Toro alongside.

We walked through the double shutters of the small cowtown bar and Special Agent Orange ordered two Blackberry beers. Above the small bar was a sign which read, “Absolutely NO shootin’ inside! It makes the damned roof leak!”

“Say, Zebra, look at that,” Agent Orange whispered to me as he handed me a Blackberry.

“What?”

“On the back side of the bar, there in the oak.”

“Ohh, hog’s leg,” I said, noticing a sawed-off shotgun.

“Not the scatter gun. In the wood.”

I looked more closely. “I’ll be damned,” I said.

An inch deep in the wood was half the print of a horse shoe. It had been made by the flailing front foot of the ill-fated pony that Agent Orange had ridden up over the bar in the explosion years ago.

The place had a jukebox, a flashy new pool table not more than a decade old, a checkered dance floor, a few very old, wooden chairs held together with bailing wire and luck and tables made by flipping wooden, utility line spools onto one end.

Council Grove had been the last stop along the old Santa Fe Trail before New Mexico. National landmarks abound. There’s the famous Post Oak with its natural hole where the pony-express cowboys threw the mail, the old jail, the boot store. The original owner of the boot store did an admirable trade until one day when an Indian chief rode into town and commissioned the boot smith to build him a set of the boots he’d seen the few cowboys wearing. The boot smith did so and a few days later the chief came back and killed him with a stone tomahawk for failing to mention that the new cowboy boots would afford less toe mobility than his moccasins.

A band of rowdy hands was milling about the bar. In the back a herd of beasts that looked like crude crosses between women and bison laughed at decibels that could mangle good steel and quaffed astonishing amounts of Blackberry beer.

“Aye gawd,” Agent Orange said, looking over my shoulder to the bar.

“What?” I said, fishing into my jeans pocket to make sure the morning glory seeds were still there.

“They got himbee beans.”

“Himbee beans?”

“Rattler nuts.”

A large, glass Mason jar filled to the top with a faint, yellowish water stood behind the bar. Inside were about fifty softshelled snake eggs. A sign on the jar read, “Himbee beans, $ .50.”

“Bartender! Give me and my companero a coupla them damned Himbee beans,” Agent Orange barked.

The bartender reached in with a dirty hand and grabbed a wad of rattle snake eggs. Tossing a napkin in front of each of us, he dropped half the eggs on one and half on the other. Agent Orange slapped down a dollar bill.

The stench of vinegar filled the air.

“I don’t believe I’ll be eatin’ any of those ,” I said, as Agent Orange looked at me expectantly.

“The hell you won’t, I just paid good money fer them sonsabitches and yer gonna eat ’em.”

“Bullshit,” I corrected.

“Eat them damned snake nuts. They’re good for ya.”

“When the hell did people start eatin’ rattler abortions around here?” I asked.

“Things ain’t go no simpler here since rode out of town, Pecos,” Special Agent Orange assured me.

I forced the rancid smelling leather balls down.

“Those are awful!”

“Sure are, I jest thought I’d see if you liked ’em, since nobody else I knew did. ‘Cludin’ myself,” Special Agent Orange roared as he brushed his into the bar gutter.

I turned and hollered to the cowhands.

“Everyone listen up!”

The hard gazes of sun and wind hammered faces landed on me.

“There’s a new elixir that has yet to be released by the FDA. They’re toutin’ it as a miracle drug. Cures everything from hoof-rot to stupidity. Now I got a few of these little beauties on me and for a price, everyone here can try a couple. Don’t get any big ideas, though. This ain’t somethin’ you can just run out and pick in a field. These are specially developed herb seeds that are a result of years of botanical research at a special lab in Fort Defiance, California. You may have heard of Fort Defiance. It’s known for its botanical research.” I could tell by the blank stares that nobody had heard of California.

Then a Bison Woman piped up.

“I traveled overseas once. Been to California. Hot.”

“Okay, listen,” I continued. “I’m gonna lay these out. Everyone should take two or three according to body weight. You ladies in the back, you can have all you want. Just leave five bucks on the bar to help me pay for the refrigeration costs and we’ll call it even.”

“What thee hell’s a f-da?” a bushy mustache asked from under a sweat-stained Stetson.

“That’s an acronym. Stands for Food and Drug Administration. They’re the ones always tellin’ you ya can’t poke your cattle full of those drugs that make ’em gain so damned well,” I answered. “This drug is their way of makin’ it up to ya. They sent me with a message that anyone who eats these can inject all the growth hormones they want into their cattle for one full year.”

“Sweet Jesus, gonna be some big steers agoin’ on the trucks next year!” a grizzled cowpoke whooped as he strode forward.

“I also recommend you shoot some of those hormones into each other. Just give yourselves the dosage you’d give an eleven-hundred pound steer. Help you see farther. That’s especially good for you row-crop boys. Keep your fields straighter. Increase your yields. Help you cowhands spot strays better, too. That medical advice and these here elixir seeds are on the house, courtesy of Special Agent Zebra.”

For a moment nobody moved. The only sound was the wind blowing down mainstreet.

“Aye gawd, that’s mighty neighborly of ya,” a cowpoke piped as he strode up, scooped up a handful of morning glory seeds and laid a five on the bar.

The seeds were gone in seconds. Special Agent Orange and I decided to put the money back into the local economy and told the bartender to keep the Blackberry beers on the house until the cash ran out.

I was sipping on a Blackberry and taking notes of the initial effects on the locals while Agent Orange shot a game of pool with one of the Bison Women who had taken a particular liking to the lad, commenting that scars were a big turn on for her.

As he strolled casually past, he leaned in and spoke. “Aye gawd, Zebra, might need you to act as the barrel clown for me.”

Just as Special Agent Orange made his reference to a rodeo bullfighter, a cry split the dry air. Everyone whirled as the deafening roar of an old Smith .44 burst a pitcher of Blackberry beer.

“Som’bitch gots a poison lizard in it!” the terrified cowpoke screeched as he proceeded to put the remaining five rounds into the table and chairs of the diving occupants.

“Sweet Jeeeeeeeeeeesus, I see it too!” another cowpoke cried as he wrenched his dual six-shooters free and began to spit thunder and lightening everywhere.

“Gawd dammit, Zebra!” Special Agent Orange bellowed as the two of us dove behind the bar for cover. “What in hell’d you give these sonsabitches?!”

“Nothing!” I lied. “They’re only morning glory seeds! All they do is make people a little looser! You know, more creative!”

A bullet whizzed off the ceiling and into the dishwater next to Special Agent Orange’s head with a whining plunk.

“Ya fed ’em more of them weeds, didn’t ya?” Orange said with frank disgust.

“I’m telling you, all they do is make people more creative,” I yelled defensively.

A shotgun blast smashed the sign reading, “Absolutely NO shooting inside,” sprinkling us with a flash of debris.

“They git much more creative, we’re all gonna wind up deader’n hell!” Special Agent Orange roared, as he pulled his pistol. “We’ll be aneedin ta git to the motorcikles pretty soon, I reckon! Looks like we’re about ta git banned from Lucy’s again!”

“Git that sonofabitch offa me!” a voice shrieked.

“They’re everywhere!”

A bottle of whiskey burst above our heads, sending glass at supersonic speeds in all directions. The cool hum of a bullet died off in the distance.

“They’re in the whiskey! Them damned lizards is in the whiskey!” someone screamed.

Special Agent Orange’s eyes flew wide. “Git down Zebra! The crazy sonsabitches think they’s snakes in they whiskey!”

The liquor shelf above us sung with flying lead as The Fear took a solid hold. Bullets, glass and oak chips flew like snowflakes in a high Kansas blizzard.

The bartender, the only person besides Special Agent Orange who hadn’t eaten any of the bad morning glory seeds, reached up and grabbed the phone.

Special Agent Orange held his .44 over the bar and began firing randomly.

“What in hell are you doin’?!” I yelled over the gunfire and screams. “You’re gonna kill someone!”

“I’m softenin’ the room!” Special Agent Orange roared back. “We’re gonna have to make a run fer the scooters before one of them sonsabitches sees us as a damned legged snake!”

“We’ll burn ’em out!” someone screeched from the other side of the bar. I heard a heavy whump sound from the west side of the room followed closely by an orange flash.

“You can’t kill ’em! How will I record the effects of petroleum enriched morning glory seeds?!”

“What in hell do you mean, ‘petroleum enriched’?!” Special Agent Orange snorted as he began to jam new shells into his stinging hot .44.

“These seeds are chemically enhanced. The initial dosage was a little strong. I’ll make note of it in my research and curb the mixture accordingly. All research involves a certain amount of trial and error!”

A bullet lodged into the beer keg behind me and sent purple foam high into the air.

“You soaked them fuckers in gasoline?!” Special Agent Orange shrieked, staring at me in disbelief.

“It was 92 octane. It’s not like I used the cheap stuff.”

“Good gawd a-mighty, ya fed em motorcikle juice! Them sonsabitches’ll kill us fer sure!” Special Agent Orange yelled, waving his .44 over his head and rapid-firing over the bar.

“This is what I was telling you about,” I yelled as I pulled my H&K and began firing over the bar. “The same thing happened in The Gator Shack in Boutte, Louisiana! This is the Muzzle Flash Theory!”

“Yes, officer, Lucy’s bar! We’re taking heavy opposing fire! Come a’runnin’! The-“

A sound thump over the back of the head with my .45 didn’t knock the bartender out like in the movies, but it did make him let go of the phone and cower in the corner.

“That’s the first damned thing you’ve done right all day!” Special Agent Orange bellowed. “Hell if we don’t git kilt, we’re gonna be in Leavenworth!”

“I’ve got a plan! I’ll take you hostage! Get us to the bikes!” I hollered.

“You’ll what?!”

“I’ll take you hostage!”

“Shit cha already have!” Special Agent Orange snarled.

“Don’t worry! I’ve done this before!”

“Well you better be quick! I’m runnin’ outta rounds!” Agent Orange roared as he fired over the bar, his tremendous .44 bouncing and throwing flames with each trigger pull.

“All right, on the count of three, stand up!” I screamed.

“WHAT?!” Agent Orange retorted. “You been eatin weeds, too?!”

“Well of course I ate some of them! What possible difference could that make?”

“Aye gawd you kin stand all you want, but I sure in the hell ain’t a gonna-“

I wrenched Agent Orange to his feet and planted my H&K to his temple. A deafening silence erupted. The room was destroyed and the fire in the back was spreading, forcing the gas-crazed cowhands into one corner.

“Everyone freeeeze!” I commanded. “Anyone moves, the wrangler gets it!”

All guns were trained on us. I knew I didn’t have much time. I had little research to go on with the petroleum enriched morning glory seeds and no way of telling when The Muzzle Flash phenonmenon might erupt again.

“Aye gawd sure as hell, just like I figured I’m gonna git shot,” Agent Orange hissed.

“Shut up, you fool!” I whispered. “I know exactly what I’m doing.” This of course was a lie.

“Now I’m Head Lizard see, and I’m takin’ this miserable sombitch with me!”

Nobody moved and I began to ease Special Agent Orange out from behind the bar. His smoking .44 still hung in his hand.

“He cain’t take all of us,” a grizzled cowhand said from behind the flipped up pool table. “Let’s kill him.”

I froze. This was the loose cannon I’d feared.

“Zebra, I’m gonna shoot ya, and hang ya, and kill ya, and burn ya,-”

I tightened my grip on Agent Orange’s throat to shut him up.

“Oh yeah, you dirty sonofabitch? Then you just go right ahead and shoot!” I roared. Special Agent Orange’s eyes flew wide. I completely choked him off. “I guess you didn’t see my deputy standing over there! He’s got the drop on ya, and we’re goin’ outta here, one way or the other!”

The cowhands’ bloodshot eyes swiveled left and froze as they saw the lone pitcher of Blackberry beer standing on the table, behind them.

“That’s right you sonsabitches,” I said. “One move outta you and that lizard tears yer nuts off!”

I slowly backed Special Agent Orange out the swinging, double shutters and we bolted for the bikes.

“Gawd damned, miserable, mother lovin’, no good, dirty sonofabitch,” Special Agent Orange swore as he pulled on the reins so hard he made a knot.

I threw him my knife.

“Cut em!” I hollered, “my research indicates they could still be aggressive for the next 30 days!”

Special Agent Orange sawed on the reins with my dull pocket knife. Panicked, he whipped out his pistol and blew the knot off.

“Kill that sonofabitch!” someone yelled from inside the bar. A barrage of gunfire erupted and no doubt, my Blackberry deputy went to that big beer prairie in the sky. I crossed myself in his honor.

“Ride!” Special Agent Orange hollered as he pulled a massive wheelie down Main Street.

I promptly flooded El Toro.

“Go, go, go!” I yelled as I took cover behind El Toro. The hallucinating gunfighters came pouring into Main Street. I opened up with the H&K and sent cowboys diving for cover.

Special Agent Orange spun his chopper around and thundered back, laying down a surpressing cover fire. Flames were beginning to puke out the window and front doors of Lucy’s.

I cranked the throttle wide and bounced the kicker twice, then hit the switch. Boom! A bullet whizzed past and took off the right mirror. El Toro was born. The roar of drag pipes filled the air as the 115 inch nitrous sniffing bull came alive. I dropped the clutch, hit the gas button and hung from the apes as I sailed out of town, Special Agent Orange riding fast behind me, lying on his tanks.

There was a tremendous explosion. At first I thought somebody had shot a gas tank and blown one of us up. Then I realized Special Agent Orange had just T-boned the oncoming Sheriff’s car. Steam rocketed from the smashed radiator on the patrol car and the Sheriff looked to be unconscious. Attempting to change clips, I nearly ran into a stop sign. Two bullets rang off the back of the squadcar as I roared up. Special Agent Orange laid on the pavement 20 yards from his buckled scoot. I reached down and grabbed him by the collar with both hands, dragging his small 160 pound frame over the fatbob gas tanks of El Toro. Two rounds dinged off my rear fender. I turned and skipped a half dozen bullets off the pavement to back the renegade cowpunchers off for a few crucial seconds.

“That’s new paint, ya cocksuckers!” I hollered.

“Time to ride, Orange!” I could see chemically unbalanced cowhands running for their trucks.

I hit the gas button for a second time and the big bike ran out of town with the front tire hoovering six inches over the pavement for the first 200 yards.

Special Agent Orange’s boot toes bounced and danced off the pavement as we shot through the darkness at 135. I struggled to keep the out of balance chopper on the road.

Without warning Special Agent Orange came to. He looked around and then began swearing.

“What?!” I screamed, wiping blood off my lip. “Did you think this kind of research was easy?!”

I shut down and allowed Special Agent Orange to get on the rear fender. Not far behind I could see headlights from dozens of pickups. Kansas pickups run fast and El Toro was badly overheating from the gas. It was going to be a hard flattracker race across the open plains of Kansas with nothing but highway between us and the Rock Creek Ranch where we’d be able to hide.

“Dumb, stupid, shit suckin’, knothead!” Special Agent Orange shouted into my ear as we rode. El Toro began to cut out. She was overheating and vapor locking. The trucks were a mere mile behind us already and I could see muzzle flashes.

“Oh, have a Blackberry,” I yelled, reaching into the saddle bags and stuffing a cold black can in his hand as we rode. “Look at how much we learned tonight.”

“What in hell, did we learn?” Special Agent Orange demanded. A burst of sparks lit up the highway ahead of us. “Shit fire! They’s shootin they rifles at us!” Special Agent Orange yelled, whipping the rear fender with the remnants of his leather horse reins. “Hya, mule! Hya, mule!”

“We learned that you’re not very good at pool, that’s one thing we learned!” I yelled, lying flat over the tank and hitting the gas button for a third time.

“Not very good at pool?!” Special Agent Orange retorted loudly, nearly rolling off the rear fender as the gas took hold.

We roared past a herd of cattle who’s eyes glowed back in amazement in our headlight.

“Hell, that ole’ bison woman was making a mockery of you on that table! A damned mockery! I saved you $5 by not letting the game finish!” I shouted over the roar of the wind.

Special Agent Orange went for his wheelgun, a move I had anticipated. I ducked down behind the right gas tank and he emptied the monster harmlessly into the night sky.

“Oh that’s it, have a temper tantrum! That’s an intelligent way to act,” I chided, handing Special Agent Orange another beer.

“Nice night out, isn’t it?” I shouted, after a moment. The pickups had faded into the distance and I shut off the gas. I could tell from the chattering below that I’d geeked the rings and heads, but if big El Toro could keep us ahead of the gas drunk cowhands and get us home, that was a set of heads well spent.

“What in thee hell did you go and give them sonsabtiches them damned gasoline beans for?”

“Research,” I quipped, sizing the bullet hole in the mirror with my finger.

“Bullshit! You done that for your own damned amusement!”

“Aw hell, if I hadn’t taken you along you’d just be home herdin’ yer one damned ole’ cow around in circles.”

“I’m not just herdin’ her around! That’s a new technique of strip grazing that will revolutionize grass management!”

“Damn it’s breezy tonight,” I commented nonchalantly.

“Yeah, that nitrous sure gives an old scooter her head, don’t it?” Agent Orange commented with a smirk.

“Think that sheriff is dead?” I asked, spilling my beer as we flew past an old hanging tree.

“Believe he was just restin’,” Agent Orange chortled, causing me to nearly run off a bridge.

“Wheeeee! Mind the paint!” I squalled as I madly corrected and El Toro drug the right fuel tank along the rail, forcing Special Agent Orange and I to lift our legs and sending a tidal wave of sparks over the railing and into the creek far below.

“Aye gawd, Zebra, one thing about The Fear a man can sure count on! She ain’t never borin’!”

I looked in the remaining mirror and to my horror found a six foot tall lizard grinning stupidly back at me from behind. Sweet Jesus!, I thought to myself, yanking my H&K free and rapid firing behind me in the lizard’s general direction, only to hear the hammer falling on an empty clip. I quickly hid the gun under my torn shirt. No need to make this bastard mad, I figured. Just ride it out. When the damned thing asks to pull over to piss, hit the gas button and leave the sorry reptilian savage standing in the great abyss of grass for the coyotes and cougars to dine on. Ha, ha. Ah yes, the cougars, I thought to myself, they would take care of that lizard all right.

Later that night, as I rode through the warm, waving prairie grass on a chattering El Toro, enjoying the cool night air, I thought about how nice it was to be home.