Biker (8 page)

Pratt put it back and shut the safe.

Pratt phoned Louise Lowry and asked if she would take in his mail. “Anything I can do, just ask,” she said.

After a final check Pratt hit the road. He headed north on 12/18 toward Baraboo. From there it was a couple of miles to the interstate. A handful of other bikers trickled onto the road. Some passed, giving him the sign. Once on the interstate there were more bikers, convoys of them. Pratt saw license plates from every state in the east plus Puerto Rico. Bike Week didn't even begin until tomorrow. He saw convoys of helmetless hard-asses, riders and old ladies trailing braided leather streamers, older prosperous couples on Gold Wings trailing matching trailers with teddy bears bungeed to the sissy bars, the Fast and the Furious on Yamaha Yzs, Honda RRs, Ducatis and GSs with their butts in the air wearing full-face helmets.

A home-made trike the size of a Rolls-Royce rumbled by with a V-8 engine. The driver wore antique aviator goggles and a leather helmet with his beard in the wind like a character from a Jules Verne novel.

Pratt shook his head. He didn't see the point of the land yachts. They took up as much space as a car and couldn't bank into a turn.

He made camp at the Sioux Falls KOA, a wooded site along the Sioux River, chock-a-block with true believers. Pratt set up his pup tent, rode his bike into town and had supper at an Arby's. The restaurant was filled with bikers heading west. He phoned Cass from his booth.

“Hi, babe. How you doing?”

“I'm fine,” she said. “I'm holed up in my bedroom with a shotgun filled with double ought buck in case those fucking
maricons
come back.” Her words sounded slurred.

“If you see those guys call the police. Don't mess around.”

“Forget it, baby. I don't need no fuckin' cops. I thought I saw someone eyeing the place this afternoon but maybe it's just nerves. I wish I had some big fucking dogs for protection.”

“Well listen. I just called to tell you I'm fine and I miss you. I'll hit Sturgis tomorrow afternoon and I'll phone you then.”

“Yeah. Oh I miss you too, baby. I wish I had y'all here to keep me company instead of this old shotgun.”

“Don't shoot yourself. Talk to you tomorrow.”

Pratt nodded to several booths of bikers on his way out, got on the bike and returned to the campground. Fireflies twinkled in the humid Midwest evening. Mosquitoes strafed his ears. He smacked on some Deet and sat on a bench for a while listening to the carousing, music and wild bursts of laughter, an occasional whiff of marijuana. Bikes popped and roared long into the night. Pratt screwed wax ear stopples into his ears and fell asleep.

He got up early and pulled out the plugs, filling his ears with the roar of other early-rising campers. The mood was festive and friendly. Bikers greeted each other as if they'd known one another forever.

Pratt broke camp and put an hour under his butt before stopping for breakfast at a service plaza outside Mitchell. At the Missouri he headed north to get off the interstate. He headed west on 14. Thousands of other bikers had the same idea. The trickle of bikes had formed into mighty streams all rushing toward Sturgis. A dozen bikers swooped by on Valks with swords mounted on their backs. By the time they all passed, Pratt figured out they were the Nordic Raiders out of St. Paul.

County mounties crouched in the median. From time to time Pratt passed some hapless jerks by the side of the road next to their inert bike as a Sheriff's deputy looked up their licenses in air-conditioned comfort. The South Dakota Highway Patrol's Dodge Chargers had a sinister quality as if the devil had designed them to strike fear into travelers.

The sun seared in a cloudless sky. Towns were few and far between, interspersed with fields of corn, alfalfa and soybeans. Grain elevators stood lonely sentinel at every town. Pratt pulled over at a roadside—a gravel lot and a picnic table already filled with resting bikers. The fifty-gallon trash receptacle overflowed with discarded fast-food wrappers and paraphernalia.

Pratt took off his leather jacket and stripped down to a turquoise tank top. He put the goggles back on and roared west, feeling the wind suck the moisture from his skin like a
chupacabra
. Insects smacked a Billy Cobham solo against the windshield. Every gas station and fast-food joint between Pierre and Sturgis was a mini-con filled with laughing, red-faced, bearded and tattooed bikers, their old ladies and bikes. Pratt flashed the biker salute a million times.

As he got closer to Sturgis the highway became more congested until it was virtually wall-to-wall bikers punctuated by the occasional motor home, terrified parents gripping the wheel, eyes straight ahead, thrilled kids hanging out the windows exchanging hand signals with the bikers. A biker slowly cruised up to the open rear window of a Lincoln and high-fived a delighted five-year-old.

A hundred and fifty miles from Sturgis the highway opened briefly and the big bikes rolled westward at seventy miles per hour with mere feet between them. Pratt hung a hundred feet behind a contingent of Minneapolis Raptors rolling in tandem, fat with bulging saddle bags and old ladies. Pratt glanced in his rearview.

Something red winked a hundred feet back, juking and jiving with incredible speed, weaving in and out between slower bikes like a mechanical needle. Pratt couldn't take his eyes off it, navigating on autopilot. He flicked his eyes back and forth between the road and the rearview.

It was upon him. It was past, leaving behind a weird howling croon as the helmeted rider hoiked the bars and went into a wheelie at well over a hundred miles an hour. Jaw on the tank, Pratt watched the lunatic shoot through traffic, finally throwing down the front wheel and accelerating up the shoulder like a missile.

Only one bike in the world made that sound or moved that fast.

A Ducati Desmosedici.

CHAPTER 13

Thirty miles out traffic came to a halt, bikers lined up four abreast across both lanes as overwhelmed state troopers attempted to keep order and keep the line moving. All the rushing rivers of chrome, rubber and steel converged in the shallow pond of Sturgis.

The sun beat down. Heat from three hundred thousand internal combustion engines rose up. The world shimmered in the heat. The highway was a solid mass of machines and humanity rumbling and buzzing like a frenzy of flies. Pratt shut his engine off and walked the bike forward, grateful he'd laid in a six-pack of bottled Gatorade. It took him two hours to cover the eight miles to the entrance to the Buffalo Chip, which lay east of town near Bear Butte.

The line waiting to get into the Chip stretched for two miles along the shoulder. Pratt worked his way toward the back of the line in inches, fighting other bikes and pedestrians the whole way. Good-natured grumbling.

“Yo, Gut Wrench!” The voice of a rudely woken bear split the buzz.

Incredulous, Pratt looked at the line of bikes waiting to get in.

“Over here, Numb Nutz!”

Pratt couldn't believe it. Man Mountain Maier, former War Counselor to the Bedouins at the head of a group of six. Pratt hadn't seen him since before his conviction. He pulled up next to Man Mountain and kicked out the stand. They exchanged the soul clasp.

“Shit, man, it's good to see ya!” Man Mountain rumbled. “How long you been out?”

“Got out in '07, Mountain.”

“You wanna ride with us? Save you some time.”

“I don't want to cut in line.”

“Forget that shit! Every club here has been cuttin' in members! Hey, make room for my man Gut Wrench!”

Man Mountain threw out the kickstand, got off and introduced Pratt to the rest of the club as “Gut Wrench.” Man Mountain was only five six but was bulked up like the Hulk. With his white Santa Claus beard he looked like your worst nightmare of a troll. The other Bedouins were younger and not as hell-bent. After the big bust that sent Pratt to prison the Bedouins all but disbanded, only to reform years later with a more sober and mature outlook. Man Mountain was the only charter member left.

A pumped kid with zigzags cut in his hair solemnly clasped Pratt's hand. “Man, you're a fuckin' legend. Fuckin' Gut Wrench. C'mere, man. I been hearing about you all my life.” The kid gathered Pratt in a crushing embrace. “Rock on, dude.”

Pratt was mortified by his nickname and had done all he could to forget it. Nobody asked him why he was there. It was just a given. It took three hours to buy their tickets and work their way to their campsite through the heat, dust, dogs, bikes and children continuously cutting in front of them. They wound behind the immense stage that contained luxury accommodations for the guests. The rest of the Chip contained no accommodations save for the notorious concrete pillbox lavatories radiating stench like air fresheners in reverse, and lines of porta-potties, a recent addition to handle the overflow.

A red-hot iron pressed against every inch of exposed flesh.

The Chip smelled of suntan lotion, beer and barbecue.

Choking dust hung in the air.

Tens of thousands of people partied too hard to notice.

The Bedouins had staked out a place at the West End Camp in the southwest corner far from the stage, right up against the barbed wire marking a farm. Pratt set his pup tent at the end of the line next to the fence. Some Bedouins had no tents and planned to sleep under the stars. Great if it didn't rain. If it rained, as it did about one quarter of the time, the Chip turned into Andersonville.

As Pratt stood atop a grassy knoll surveying the acres and acres of biker encampments, he thought,
I'm too fucking old for this
. There was only one thing left to do. He pulled out his cell phone and called Cass. Got a message.

“Hey babe, I'm at the Chip. It's hot and crowded. Talk to you later.”

There. Done. Should he have told her he loved her? He'd only known her three days! He wished he had that book, the one with all the rules.

It was already seven and some country duo was twangin' away on the big stage. Edgar Winter was the headliner. Pratt got on his bike and rode the half mile to the front of the stage and the vast semi-circle of concessions at the back of the field. He ate a brat and drank a beer and settled down to watch the show.

Down in front several hundred bikes were parked tighter than a Harley showroom facing the stage. Pratt sat on the ground midway back amid biker families on blankets. Some had brought folding chairs and portable tents. Caravans of people moved to and from the drink concessions holding plastic cups of beer. As the sun sank behind the hills the crowd grew until there were several thousand people camped out in front of the stage.

The acoustic had packed up and left the stage to a smattering of applause. A man in jeans, white shirt and suit vest came out with a wireless mike. “HELLO BIKERS!”

A roar of white noise rose from the crowd accompanied by the shriek of unmuffled engines.

“We're gonna ask you to turn those engines off so we can get this show on the road.”

“WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU?” a bull moose bellowed.

“I'm Bob Jacobs, your master of ceremonies! BOB JACOBS! BOBJACOBS.COM! Now I'd like you all to give a big, Buffalo Chip welcome to the man who, more than any other, made ‘chopper' a household word: Peter Fonda.”

Peter Fonda came out to huge applause followed by a husky biker wheeling a chopper with an extended fork. Fonda wore snakeskin boots, a Nudie shirt with mother-of-pearl buttons, a ten-gallon hat and aviator shades. He waved to the crowd and said, “I'm here to give away the Make-A-Wish Foundation's raffle chopper.”

Thirty feet behind Pratt three Hells Angels carried a heavy nitrous cylinder, which they set up on a promontory and began filling balloons. Five bucks a pop. It had been a Chip tradition for over twenty years. The cops tended to overlook this mild crime. Indeed, there were no police in the Chip unless they were undercover and cycle gangs were notoriously difficult to infiltrate.

Fonda joked with the crowd, opened the envelope and read the winning name. A man whooped and cartwheeled onto the stage. Arm in arm with Peter Fonda he posed for photographs.

Fonda concluded and handed the mike to BOBJACOBS.COM. Bob Jacobs introduced Gretchen Wilson. Standing O.

Pratt remained where he was, of interest to nobody but interested in everything. You couldn't deal crank like nitrous. Chip security would tell the cops. The Chip's owners did not want drug busts or ODs to become part of the Chip Experience.

The crank dealing went on in the shadows, a lot of it in the big semi-circle facing the stage. Pratt got up, wandered through the crowd to the drink vendor at one end of the semi-circle and bought a Pepsi in a jumbo cup. He went behind the booths and walked the semi-circle in shadow, glancing between the booths sipping his Pepsi. The human zoo never failed to fascinate.

Black bikers had become a common feature in recent years. Dykes on Bikes had also increased their numbers. Pratt walked the circuit checking out babes and colors. Gretchen Wilson ended her set to another standing O. BOBJACOBS.COM reminded the crowd about the Red Cross tent accepting blood donations. Pratt wondered if they did any drug testing—before or after.

A rippling blast of alto sax erupted from the stage. Edgar Winter. Pratt turned toward the stage and got shoved aside by a burly mass of muscle and body odor emerging from between two booths. A shove like that would normally ignite an ass-whupping but Pratt wasn't thinking about that. His eyes were glued to the patch on the back of the man's black leather vest.

Pratt followed the War Bonnet into the crowd.

CHAPTER 14

The War Bonnet twitched across camp right through people's campfires. One dude yelled, “Hey asshole!” The War Bonnet stopped and turned slowly like a Ouija board planchette. He had a face like a mako shark. Dead eyes. The dude shriveled. The War Bonnet made a beeline through campgrounds across roads heading southwest, the direction of the Bedouins' camp.