Northern Colorado was a seamless blur of pain which started from the second joint in each finger and continued in a building symphony of skeletal torment where it crescendoed somewhere at the tip of my coccyx.
Then we rode into a river of chrome. Rolling rubber, sound, cracking leather, raging hair, taillights, headlights, boots, beer, blood, tattoo ink and body sweat stretched into oblivion, Hell's salmon run. Every on-ramp spewed more iron into the main artery, crowding, gunning, gassing, braking, jockeying, fighting for position to be allowed into the flow, red blood cells from the bad side of town as they rammed and brawled for passage through the narrow capillaries on their way to the aorta.
We rolled in a stream of fresh bikers, filled up with coffee, sleep and gusto. But we were just trying to get through, to make it without falling off and becoming pink stripes with helmets at the end. Sleep was smothering me. It was the only thing I thought about when I was able to think at all. I could crash now, I thought, it wouldn't be so bad. I probably wouldn't even notice it. Just drift off and let her slide. Sleep right through it. Maybe I'd be lucky and get a nice, warm hospital bed. Or better yet, a quiet, padded, silky coffin that I could have all to myself. I could close the lid and drift off to sleep...
In Cheyenne we parked in front of a small cafe. El Cid and I sat on our bikes, staring across the street at an abandoned post office. My ears are ringing, I thought. It's so quiet now and my ears areringing so loudly. I wonder how they could make so much noise on their own. Aren't ears supposed to be hearing instruments? So whatare they doing making so much noise? It's not so cold now. That post office sure looks lonesome. I wonder what the best love letter thatever went through there read like?
I don't know how long El Cid and I sat there. I vaguely remember other bikers walking out and watching us closely as they wandered past, their conversations drifting off into silence as they observed the blank, penniless, straight ahead gazes we bore, sitting atop our bikes, exhaustion drunk.
It was the clicking of Lucy's chrome, which broke me from the trance. Thank God for shrinking chrome. I had tried several times to leave the trance on my own, but like a dream one can't wake up from, I did not possess the power to break the spell.
"Sturgis?" the waitress asked as she sat down the food El Cid and I ordered. "That's six hours north of here."
"Six hours?" I said in horror. "You must be mistaken. We were told back at Vail Pass it was only two from here."
"Well, two, plus four. That's probably what they meant, honey," the woman said with a look of concern.
"Six hours..." El Cid echoed in a tone of clean defeat.
"Best bet is to take 85 north. That's the way most of the boys ride. If you leave now you'll be there by nightfall," the waitress added.
El Cid applied a fixed look of despair to my face.
"We can't make it," he croaked hoarsely. "We have to be back in L.A. in 48 hours."
1/2 WAY BREAK POINT
I would have rather run my tongue along the entire length of a hot tailpipe than hear the words.
"We'll have to ride two fourteen hour days now just to get back in time and we've already been riding for twenty four hours straight.We'll be lucky if we can even make it home from here, much less adding twelve hours round trip to it," El Cid said hoarsely, his eyes black with fatigue.
I had nothing to say. He was right. We had been gutshot in Vegas and like any gutshot in the field, you keep thinking you can make it because it bleeds slowly and mostly on the inside and you always underestimate how far it is back to friendly territory and help, a cheap survival instinct that amounts to nothing but an elongation of the misery.
We saddled up and rode the mile back to the interstate. I stopped on the high sweeper that led south. The roar of brothers heading north to Sturgis was that of God falling down the stairs. The sun was shining. The temperature was hovering in the early 80s. Not a cloud or snowflake or piece of ice or badge in sight. Nothing but open road and streaming leather.
El Cid and I rode south trying to keep our eyes straight ahead toavoid the waves and looks of disdain from the brothers heading toSturgis. I pulled over.
"I'm going on," I said.
"What?" El Cid yelled, deaf from wind and exhaustion.
"I'm going on," I repeated.
"Going on where?" El Cid hollered.
"Going on up north," I told him.
"Are you fucking serious?" El Cid yelled in fury. "You heard those people. It's six fuckin' hours to Sturgis and we've already ridden an hour south of Cheyenne. Seven fuckin' hours. That's fourteen hours round trip if all you do is tag in at the tip of Main Street and then we'll have to ride straight through all the way back to L.A. We've already been on the road for 48 fuckin' hours!"
"I'll see you back in L.A."
"Goddammit! You cocksucker! Nobody rides from fuckin' Las Vegas to Sturgis to L.A. straight through!"
"I'll bring you a T-shirt," I said as I fired up Big Lucy.
El Cid glared at me, livid.
"We stay one hour, motherfucker, long enough to settle the score with Bandit, then we get the fuck out of there and head home!"
"Let's ride," I said.
"You cocksucker, you miserable cocksucker!" El Cid bellowed as we rode across the oncoming traffic, down through the grass median and up onto the northbound lane. I opened up the bleeding blockhead. It was insane, manic, an act of desperation of the rarest kind.
We rolled at 110 for the next four hours. Endless miles of openprairies, the Wild West as seen by a whipped Mexican renegade and a Kansas cowpuncher.
We came into Lead, South Dakota, at 6 a.m., having lost a lot of the time we gained on the open plains to the winding roads of the Black Hills National Forest.
Recent rains had left the place muddy and cold. El Cid and I were again soaked and freezing, but we were only 15 miles fromSturgis.
"What should we do?" El Cid asked at the town's red light. "Weshould get a hotel room, that's what we should do," he continued,answering his own question.
"Don't be ridiculous," I countered. "This place has been booked up for a year."
"Doesn't cost anything to try," El Cid said.
We rolled into a hotel gorged with leather, sweat, and American chrome. Ten minutes later an angel of the Lord handed me the keys to a two bedroom suite complete with a Jacuzzi.
"Yeah?" Bandit said, answering the phone at his hotel room in the Cottonwood Lodge in Spearfish.
"The Eagle has landed," I said.
"You made it. I didn't think you were going to from the sounds of the faxes. What the hell were you doing in Vail?" Bandit asked.
"Vail? We were never in Vail," I lied.
"One of the faxes I got from you was from Vail," Bandit said. "The route I gave you took you through a different area."
"Ah yes, about that route," I said.
"I bet that ride up through the pass was miserable."
"Got cool near the top."
"And what the hell were you talking about when you said, 'the lizard talked'?"
"You mean the lizard that was trying to pull off my spark plug wires wasn't working for you? He said he was when El Cid cut off his legs."
"What?" Bandit asked.
"We can only stay a little while," I said. "We burned up a lot of daylight with breakdowns."
"Oh...did you run into some trouble out there?" Bandit asked in an investigative tone.
"I'll tell you about it over breakfast," I said, watching El Cidcoldly sharpening his knife, his forked tongue flickering down toscent the edge of the blade and test for sharpness.
That night we went out to eat.
"I've got a party for us," El Cid said as he sat down to a huge slab of pot roast.
"A party? I can't even see straight."
"Some bros told me how to get there. It's close. We'll only stay for an hour."
"How in God's name do you expect to stay awake?"
"I always pack some reserve Melatonin, in case of emergencies," El Cid replied cheerfully.
Suddenly I felt a buzzing sensation in my spine.
"I put a few in your drink," he continued, laying the pot roast twain with his blade.
"You lousy..."
A warm sensation of complete and utter victory rushed over me. Yes, a party. A party would be just the ticket.
We rode into the wild Black Hills that night, following a band ofbikers known as the Frenchmen. They spoke no English and wore what could be described as traditional dress.
It was a bash of a most unusual nature. Nude women were pursued by crazed libertines, who operated long whips and sang bawdy songs laced with vigorous language bearing many lacerating double entendres.
I noticed El Cid speaking to a particularly intense Frenchman.
"Meet the Marquis De Sade," El Cid said triumphantly as I approached.
"Welcome to my castle," the Duke said graciously, bowing.
The Duke had apparently hooked El Cid up with a woman of particularly lusty proportions. His description of her was outlandish to the point of causing hope to spring forth, for even a woman who fell near wholly short of such lofty predictions would still indeed be a worthy catch due to the simple reach of De Sade's descriptive portrait.
"To give a man a perfect reason to rid himself forcefully of botheyes, agreeing at once that to cast his orbs gainst all other beautiesof man or Nature would leap beyond simple folly, but would indeed rank as blasphemy, she would not but need to cross a single sitting room disrobed," the Duke assured us. "My perfect beauty you may make an acquaintance of, but heed this warning, fair libertine brothers-should your hand develop an urge to so much as brush aside a single lock of her perfect silk, you would do best to at once remove it with your sword. And should your mind play host to the boring brain maggot sent forth by the winged batfly, causing you to bid adieu to your senses and allow you to entertain but for a lone jot of time the notion of bringing to my delectable lass a tarnishing of her honor, by all means leap upon your brother's dagger, heart first. For this one is mine prize and if and when she shall be dismembered and deflowered, disembowelled and dismissed, it shall be by my hand, by my dogs and by my decision. So, gentlemen, step after me smartly and I shall introduce you."
De Sade led us down a long, cold, wet, stone hallway all but devoid of any natural light. After some long walk through many locked doors, which De Sade opened with a single skeleton key attached to his belt with a bloodied leather thong, De Sade opened it.
Sitting upon a bench, her back to us, was a woman of the finestscent, the most demure beauty, flawless skin of cow1s cream. Upon her left shoulder sat a tall crow that freshly shat upon her at perfect two minute intervals.
"I deliver unto thee, Venus," De Sade assured us.
"Run," I said to El Cid, unable to uneye the goddess.
"We should at least stay and have a chat," El Cid said, staring atthe silent goddess with fathomless lust.
"Are you insane? That's exactly what that deviant mutation wants us to do," I whispered. "That would give him the excuse to bust us on the rack."
"You go on ahead. I'll catch up," El Cid replied, eyeing the silentand motionless goddess as he rounded the end of the table.
I ran like a bike thief.
Four hours later El Cid was beside me, a dark leer of unfettered bliss on his face.
"We should go now," he said softly, as though he was announcing the end of visiting hours at a mortuary.
"Death be thine bosom brother and agony thy cloak!" DeSade bellowed from high atop the castle, his voice ringing through the Black Hills and silencing the riot of garish outlaws. "Let he who hath made dirty my fair Venus witness the beginning of the pain brought forth by his woebegotten deeds and let said past virgin's final duty be to locate for mine searching eyes the traitor whom has brought upon her this disalliance with her unmortal physique!" The Duke then flung the severed head of Venus high into the air. It arched and fell, bouncing once and landing at the feet of El Cid, starring coldly up at him, still beautiful beyond all description.
"Located villains, all agonies thee shall know! Eternal woe isyours!" the Duke roared, pointing a sword at El Cid. "Turncoat! Rapist! Sodomite! All mine own loved sports leveled gainst my fair child by not I, but by the one whom I forbade! Prepare to be devouredby a single worm!"
"Let's ride!" El Cid said, dashing for his bike.
It took two hours to lose the Marquis DeSade and his libertine brothers. We were so lost that we had no hope of ever finding our way back to Sturgis. Then suddenly, we rode over a crest and straight into Spearfish, just as the orange otherworld burned up over the mad horizon.
El Cid and I were too smart for the Bay Leaf ruse. We hid in thebushes outside the Cottonwood Lodge. The Packrats, a band of outlaws Bandit ran with who rode overpriced custom rocketships were holed up there. We knew we couldn't take him with so many friendlies.
We'd take him when he rode to the Bay Leaf to meet us. He hadclearly chosen a public place so we wouldn't be able to kill himwithout making a scene in front of many sympathetic witnesses.
At 10 a.m. the lazy brigand wandered out, a one-legged hooker under his hairy arm. Both El Cid and myself recoiled in terror. Bandit gave the aged tart a stout swat on the ass and a five spot and she hopped off into the morning haze.
"My god," El Cid gasped. "Look at that bastard."
"Quiet, you fool!" I growled. "He'll hear you."
"He's taken on the form of Pan," El Cid hissed in dread.
Bandit had indeed taken the form of the dreaded goat of all evil, Pan. His ram horns curled back in long, graceful arcs, almost touching his shoulders. His twitching black nose tested the wet morning air, the virgin sun shining on his ebony, blinking eyes. Suddenly, he let out a loud snort and pawed at the ground several times. It was clear to me at last that the deranged El Cid had been right all along. All our misfortune, all our miseries, all our accursed strife had indeed beenBandit's doing.
"Great Scott, we can't kill a thing like that!" El Cid said, panicking.
"Steady, my fair Spanish brother," I said. "We can and we will."
I pulled the big H&K out of my holster and drew a bead on the maestro of our grief. I was squeezing off the round when Bandit got wind of us. Instantly he bolted for his bike and took cover behind it, testing the air with his black nose, his ears twitching nervously. He let out a loud bleat, alerting the others.
"Shoot him!" the ever impatient El Cid roared.
Bandit was on his bike and heading off across the lawn of theCottonwood Lodge in a flash, hanging off one side, using the bike as ashield in an expert example of trick riding. I let loose witheverything I had, but the rounds bounced off harmlessly as he headed for the interstate.
El Cid and I were on our bikes and after Bandit, chasing him all the way to Sturgis. Bandit blasted under the banner which read, "Welcome to Sturgis Rally and Races, 1998."
"Don't let him get mixed into the bikes!" I yelled to El Cid as werode hard to cut him off. But it was too late. The streets wereteaming with thousands of bikes and bros and immediately Bandit rocketed into the melee.
El Cid and I searched for two hours, but Bandit had given us the slip.
I shook El Cid's gloved hand.
"Welcome to Sturgis, El Cid," I said.
"Welcome to Sturgis, amigo."
The high was passed now and we had a straight through blast to L.A. and we'd already been on the road since Vegas.
We rode for three hours before I realized the sun was on the wrong side of us. I was 15 minutes ahead of El Cid, somewhere outside of Douglas, Wyoming, when I pulled over. El Cid rolled up, exhausted, tense.
"Broke down again?" he asked anxiously, knowing we had no more time to lose.
"If it's after noon, and we're heading south, why is the sun setting in the east?"
El Cid looked about in horror.
We had left Sturgis so tired we had become turned around in the Black Hills and had driven to within miles of the Montana border, adding another six hours round trip to our journey. Half a mile later Lucy went down backfiring. We noodle, prod, curse, pray, curse again and for no apparent reason she fires. God receives many thanks on anameless Wyoming blacktop.
We rolled into Denver as the moon was breaking over the eastern horizon.
Somewhere in the night Lucy lost her speedometer. I let El Cid set the pace after that. The last thing we needed was to be sitting in some local mounty's jailhouse.
A few hours later El Cid lost his headlight. We ran off of Lucy's and kept going.
White dash after white dash after white dash passed through the fleeting universe of my highbeam. Bushes, ghosts, tall, skinny,frightening road signs standing on one narrow, untrustworthy wooden leg appeared and disappeared in the worst possible place, behind us. Could signs chase men, I wondered. I looked over at El Cid as he rocketed along in utter blackness. Was he dead? Could he talk? Was he a spirit? Deer, deer, deer everywhere, biting down on the brakes so hard your hands sting in the palms. Then clean blacktop, perfect, unchanging for mile after brutal mile. The mad, mad road. Pink piss in Albuquerque. Bloody tears in Guadalupe. El Cid's hand stops working after the big hills. More electrical tape, to keep the hand on the throttle, much cursing, dark thoughts on a dark road leading into places we don't want it to go. No choice but to follow, ride the black snake down the hole of death straight into hell. El Cid, taped to his own throttle. Leaps forward to accelerate, leans back to stop. Everything will be all right if we just keep rolling. Rolling always rolling, stopping is death for sure now. Got to keep rolling. Atlast we stop for a short nap, close the eyes. Let the mind stop. Turn it off for just a few precious minutes.
El Cid awakens me with a scream. I leap up, tripping in the tallgrass. The knife, I see the knife. Where am I? What is El Cid doinghere?
"You fucked her!" he screams.
Confusion, panic, darkness of a never ending night, a night that has eaten us both, stumbling and screaming, running, falling, barbed wire in my hair.
"You fucked her!" he screams again.
"Fucked who?" I yell back into the night. I know he is out there somewhere with that damned knife.
I can hear the blade striking the grass, with great shearing sounds. "You fucked her and now you're going to pay, you honkey!"
"You mad fiend, I didn't fuck anyone!" I yell over my left shoulder, trying to keep him from locating my position in the tall, black grass.
"I see the stains, I see the stains!"
Light, sudden light, blindness, hard pencils in the side, heavy,dried, dead, broken grass under the skin. I am blinded by my ownflashlight which El Cid has gotten out of my saddlebags. He is aboveme, screaming. My pistol is in my coat. I can't find my coat.
"Look, look!" he screams, motioning me to move toward his motorcycle.
I oblige, searching frantically for my coat as I advance through the tall grass.
"Here!" he yells, pointing to water marks on his bike.
"No, no, those are water marks. Remember the rains in the Rockies? Remember? Remember the Rockies?"
"Liar!"
I look deep into his eyes. He is gone.
"All right, all right! I slept with your motorcycle! And you knowwhat? It meant nothing to me! It was dumb, meaningless sex and Idon't even feel good about it!"
El Cid is jolted, a full body jolt. He takes a step backward. Heapproaches his bike. Leans forward. Falters. Falls to his knees. Ihear him whispering to the machine in a soothing tone, softly stroking the round fuel tank.
The Spaniard falls hard. The knife is knocked from his hand from the impact of my boot. He looks up at me, blank, searching. I kick the knife off into the tall grass.
El Cid sleeps, his head still tilted up, his hands still in the shapeof the handlebars. He mumbles in his sleep, "Forgive me, motorcycle,for I have sinned. It has been four thousand miles since my lastconfession. I have mocked speed limits, I have stolen gas."
The priority now is to get home, get home without going to sleep. Get home, whatever it takes.
I give El Cid a kick and he leaps up, remembering nothing.
I40 west. Mile after mile, click after click. Fuel station afterfuel station. Rolling, rolling, rolling. Indians. Cactus. Sand. Fluttering concentration. Heat, burning, itching, maddening, searingheat, fighting, raging, warning for every last kernel of focus.
The straightaways are the most deadly. Long, lulling, soft focused, infinite...
"Don't call me 'El Cid.' They know me here," El Cid whispers.
He refuses to cross the border into Arizona.
After 20 minutes of negotiating, I finally convince El Cid that if he buys enough local Indian jewelry, he'll pass as a simple tourist drifting through. It works. Three hundred dollars later El Cid looks like a piece of rolling turquoise. Anything to get home. I'd kill the deranged crank, but I need him. My drive belt is running on the side of the pulley hard enough to have burned off an inch of sidewall. I am covered in engine oil from leaks I can no longer even keep track of and Lucy continues to stall.
Rolling, rolling, rolling, always rolling. I expect to passChristopher Columbus in the oncoming lane. Rolling, the blackness ofthe asphalt astounding me, so much asphalt, I am afraid the countrywill be covered with it, afraid it will turn to liquid underneath mein the senseless sun, the thermonuclear rage that showers down fromabove and makes of my helmet a cooking pot.
Something is different. Something has changed. Something. El Cid is gone. Somewhere in Arizona I have lost El Cid. A crash. I slideto a stop, awake for the first time in days.
Diving through the median I ride back down the interstate, scanning ditches, looking for fire or smoke or blood or rubber marks or broken chrome or a helmet or glove or a toenail, but I find nothing. I ride backward for 30 precious miles. Nothing. He is dead. The hell with him.
I turn around and push on. Half an hour later I pass the point where I noticed El Cid was missing. How does one just lose a riding partner like this, I wonder as the front tire rolls and rolls and rolls. This has never happened before, I assure myself. It has never happened before. The thought does not comfort me.
The desert. I am in it again. The Mohave is where they got the idea for hell. The desert is where all things end. I am in the middle ofthe fifth or sixth giant valley, each 40 miles wide and I stillhave 300 miles to go. The old man at the last fuel stationsaid the temperature was 123, but I think that's too low. A statetrooper on the side of the road whips at flames coming from the top of his engine with his jacket. Eye contact as I pass. He is doomed. Onevery incline the shoulder is lined with the big trucks, boiled over,dead. Rolling, rolling, rolling. Searing sunlight that scalds theskin like purified radiation, rolling the cold stinging core ofuranium up and down one's arms. Each valley is the same as the last. Am I riding in a circle? Comfortable. I am comfortable out here. Iam the lone rider in a vast dead sea. The blood on the back of mydried throat tastes slightly metallic, like when one handles abattery. The spinning front wheel, the buzz of the engine, I am highon the infinite singularity of my charge. I am comfortable. I noticethis. I wear my leather gloves out here, the cuffs of my long sleeveshirt tucked into the black gauntlets. To keep the skin on my hands. My entire head is shrouded with bandannas. One over my face,gunfighter style, just like granddad wore them. One over my head,tucked into the top of the mirrored goggles. Every inch is covered. Still I burn. Burning, burning, burning my face the wind, hates me,hates flesh, hates all living things, a strong armed thug who takesmoisture by force. Buttoned to the top, the face bandanna tucked intothe collar of the shirt, anything to keep out the sun and blowtorchwinds. Agony on a molecular level. Rolling, rolling, rolling, ElCid, Bandit, faded stop signs, cold pancakes, Denver, wet snow,stinging rain, reeking leather chaps, knotted beards, black rock inblack hills, delirium, blued straight pipes, scratched fishtails,tobacco breath, tattoo bleeds, honest leather boots, silver,decomposing animals, headlights, forgotten monuments, lame goats, oil smoke, syrup, brotherhood, engine heat, strangers, phantom deer,chrome washers, belted darkness, mesas, fleeting cowboys, goggles,laughter, cold, heat, rolling odometers, freedom, dreams, failure,victory, barbed wire, wet wives, shivering girlfriends, stouthandshakes, gas stations, yellowed scorpions, matted elk, detours,clouds, sunrises, moons, outraged orange cones, dirty license tags,keys, saddlebags, pain, illusions, reality, blind, defensible truth.
I roll into L.A. at midnight. Big Lucy coughs out and dies on theI10 heading west at the 405 intersection. Ten miles from home and I'm down for the seventh time. I try every trick and at last, busted with fatigue I begin to push my horse. The bike I always thought of as being light and lithe is now pig iron and chrome, heavy, crazilybalanced. Streaking across the plains never happened. So tired. Inearly drop it. I try, but cannot push it onto the on ramp. Carhorns, the roar of tires on interstate. Confusion. Blinding lights.I hit the starter button by mistake, the big bitch coughs to life. Iride dodging traffic, splitting lanes, raping no-man's-land, a wingedinstant of fear, sound, soiled chrome and paid for determination tocar person after startled car person.
I got Big Lucy home to Palos Verdes and coasted her up into the garage, a shot, spent wad of glory blown onto flat oil blacktop.
I'd made Sturgis and returned home in four days...4,851 miles, 50 miles an hour, 24 hours a day for four days straight.
And Bandit? He had to come back this way sometime. And I knew if he didn't, it meant that El Cid was still out there somewhere, alive.
The End
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