Good Vibrations (12 page)

Further down the road towards where we'd parked the bikes, we passed a used boot store of galactic scale with one-owner Texan high-heels lined up in pairs on the sidewalk like a Wild West funeral parlour. All US bikers wear cowboy boots with their jeans over the top. A fashion so universal must have something going for it apart from looking cool. I had been thinking of changing my ancient World War Two dispatch rider's boots (always worn outside the jeans, comfortable beyond price and tough as nails), which the locals called ‘shit-kickers', for some haute couture and this had to be the place. Tragically, out of the hundreds on offer, one of the only two pairs that fitted turned out to be pigeon-toed. The boss suggested I bought them and wore them on the opposite feet for a month or two to straighten them out, but I could see me hitting the brake with the wrong boot, so I turned them down. The others were snakeskin, all style and no substance, but Roz treated herself to a pair of high, light brown ‘ropers' with little Cuban heels and sexy lace-up fronts. They were comfy from the start and looked great, but she wouldn't wear them riding, preferring the first-class protection of her full-on racing boots brought from a colder land. The ropers went home by mail.

The salesman took Roz's money, stepped easily through the usual opening gambits, then advised us that the main problem with the US nowadays was that the dollar had become more important than the people. A second man stepped out of a closet and agreed with him. He was someone you could not ignore.

The newcomer stood six and a half feet tall, with no fat on him. Good teeth, full lips and a broad smile, in a black shirt, black Stetson, dark blue Levi's and boots with holes in the toes. In his huge hand he carried a cheap-looking, brand-new violin in a grip like a poacher holding a pheasant. I asked him about local country music as soon as I saw his instrument, but he did not play. Instead, he sold these fiddles for the incredible price of $40 apiece. He had just returned from Indianapolis where he had made a killing on a trunkful.

Unlike most Americans we met in the middle of the country, this man held opinions about foreign policy.

‘You Brits did a great job down in the Falklands,' he said, and I sensed him sizing up whether he or I was the taller. ‘People who walk into other folks' houses with guns and say “Git!” want putting away. We have enough of that stuff over here, but when whole governments climb in on the act, why, someone's gotta stop them. Your Mrs Thatcher, she sure knew how to call a halt. Best leader since FDR.' While pleased to hear this endorsement of my country, I wasn't sure how to respond.

‘I don't know why we didn't do more to help,' said the store owner. ‘That all wanted doing.'

‘Jeez,' responded the big fellow. ‘Them Brits didn't need no assistance, but we did tell some interfering busybodies to stay out of the ring.'

‘Who was that, then?' I asked.

‘I guess mebbe they didn't tell you guys,' he said, ‘but some heavy hitter with a capital to the east of you was makin' all sorts of hints that they'd send their troops in to back up the bandits. The USA told 'em to stand aside from somebody else's quarrel, or they'd have serious trouble on their hands.'

The laughing eyes disappeared, replaced by Lee Van Cleef sighting down his Peacemaker in
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
, and I believed every word he said. Behind that look was an iron will and total confidence in the power of his country to prevail in the cause of justice. I have met more sophisticated Americans who might call this fiddle salesman's attitude naïve, but I found it reassuring. There was not a hint of arrogance in him, and I knew who I'd rather have beside me in a bunker with red-hot shot flying overhead.

‘You guys want music,' the salesman interjected, ‘you'd best head for Branson, Missouri. That town's built on music. You go there.'

Back at the bikes, I noticed Roz touching her forearm carefully, and asked what was the matter.

‘I've been bitten, I think,' she said, carefully unbuttoning her sleeve that was turned down against the sun. ‘It's throbbing like mad.'

Her wrist had swollen to twice its normal size. Angry and puffy. It wasn't surprising she'd blown out that morning. She needed a doctor and she needed rest.

Hardy was a tourist town. Plenty of fancy ‘Bed and Breakfast' homes charging more than we could afford. Camping was out of the question. The doctor was off-duty on Sunday, so we filled up the bikes and asked how far to Branson.

‘Seventy miles, I guess,' said the elderly gas station attendant, leaning against the unleaded pump.

‘More like fifty-five,' contradicted his sidekick, whittling a stick in the shade of a battered timber kiosk.

I glanced at my folded Rand McNally state map. It looked further than either of these estimates.

‘I should say it's a full 150 miles,' put in the owner of a mud-caked truck from the other side of the pumps.

‘Anyways, you keep right on goin' through the hills past Mountain Home, up 62 as far as Harrison. Then you hang a right in the centre of town and hit 65. You'll be four hours on them rigs if you don't hurry.'

‘Yeah,' broke in the pump man laconically. ‘Three hours, mebbe four…'

It was easy to forget that Americans on the road think distance in terms of hours, not miles. The heat was far less oppressive here in the hills, and the afternoon could only become cooler as the miles spun by. I looked a question mark at Roz.

‘Let's go for it,' she said, zipping her leather and carefully fastening the studs over her bad arm. ‘I'll take a break there. If it's no better, I'll find a hospital in the morning while you sort out some music.'

And so we wound our way through the Ozarks, disappointed at the lack of hillbillies and hoping for better from Branson; Roz nursing her throttle arm and me yearning for Oklahoma, Kansas and the wide open spaces.

10
THE BEGINNING
OF THE BIG
WIDE WORLD

I don't know what I'd imagined for Branson, music centre of the Ozarks, but the reality was definitely not it. It had been a long day, with frequent stops to water up and for Roz to rest her arm, and the first we saw of the town was a long, deeply undulating strip that materialised around us out of the woods. Among the fast food and service stations were expensive hotels with smart new cars parked in the lots. Mini-theatres offered all manner of electrified country singers, retired pop stars, dance bands, everything except the clean, bluegrass music we'd been hoping for. As we thrummed our way down the hill we realised that the place was a temple to tourism. We'd transgressed the travellers' line again, so with sinking hearts we retreated to the river where our luck turned. By the water's edge, we found a ‘resort motel' that hadn't changed since the 1960s. The neat, individual lodges were arranged like a tiny village, with a loose square in the centre. The office was part of an older timber house. To complete the ambience, the place needed one or two '57 Chevrolets and a panhead Harley with a rider in a Marlon Brando cap. What it got was us. Nobody else. All the tourists were paying big bucks uptown.

I clattered up the steps to the check-in and banged the bell. A young woman of stunning beauty appeared, dressed like a football cheerleader in flouncy skirt, blouse and headband.

‘Sure we have a cabin. It's thirty-five dollars, I'm afraid, but there's a fridge and cooker and a TV as well as the usual…'

Up the hill, the crowd were being charged $85 plus for a bed and a bathroom. I took the room, sight unseen, and the girl thanked me. She had grace as well as looks.

We moved into the cabin, set to stay two or three days while Roz got well, then we chained up Betty and hopped aboard the Heritage to hunt for dinner. The Roundup had peanut shells all over the floor and an Appalachian harp on the wall. It hadn't been played in years. The steaks were large and tender but the booze was non-existent because it was Sunday. I needed a drink and Roz looked as though she'd kill for a whiskey. We threw a few peanuts around for the sake of good manners, then bopped home to the cabin where I had kept the last quarter-pint of Haggerd's moonshine for just such an emergency. We drank it between us and felt better, as he'd promised we would. It was full-strength lightning, not yet diluted for human consumption, so I took mine fifty–fifty and had sweet dreams behind the blinds. Roz went for the whole experience and didn't feel a thing till her arm woke her with a deep, dull ache at five. She gulped down a handful of pain killers and turned on the television.

I awoke two hours later to a time warp of a younger, simpler America that a casual visitor might imagine has been eclipsed by progress. Opening one eye carefully, I saw our room by daylight. A throwback to
I Love Lucy
. Chequered plastic cloth on an angular table with biblical tracts on the wall behind it, vinyl chairs, tartan sofa in orange and brown, the standard mock wooden walls and a screen door to an open veranda. Roz had the kettle on as she watched an ancient television set with round Bakelite knobs instead of digital tuning and a zapper. As if specially ordered to match the surroundings, a 1950s black-and-white comedy was showing. Andy Griffiths, strutting his stuff in surroundings that matched our own to perfection.

‘How do you feel?' I grunted. ‘Hung over, and no better.' She angled her head towards the screen. ‘I keep expecting a pink caddy to stop outside full of young guys with army haircuts draped around girls with ponytails and sticky-out skirts.'

Then she showed me her arm.

We were in the hospital by eight. At nine, we were out once more, surprisingly few dollars the poorer after the sort of service any Brit in a casualty queue with less than a broken neck would find hard to believe. We were loaded with antibiotics and reassured that Roz was only suffering from a buffalo fly bite.

‘Lucky for you it wasn't a brown recluse spider,' the nurse had observed. ‘They dig a great hole in your flesh. Sometimes, they're fatal. Take all the pills and have a couple of days' rest. You'll never know it happened.'

So we relaxed in our little home. I stocked up at the corner store and Roz started the pills. By midnight she was up alternately vomiting and prostrate with diarrhoea and I was awake with a badly burned leg that was my just reward for riding into town in shorts. A Harley exhaust burns just as badly as a Matchless or a Kawasaki. The difference is that while other bikes keep their pipes low down out of harm's way, Harley-Davidson site theirs where they will impress the bystanders and burn the skin off the legs of any clown who forgets.

At nine the following evening we were both feeling surprisingly improved. The swelling had almost disappeared from Roz's wrist and my burn had scabbed over, so we fired up Black Madonna and headed out towards a bar 3 miles away, where I'd eased my thirst on the foraging trip and met the bartender who had been out polishing his ancient Harley.

The parking lot in front of the bar was notable for black shadows and lack of neon lights, but the headlamp picked out a selection of wreck-status cars, an interesting white Italian Moto-Guzzi at least twenty years old with a leopard-skin seat, and one extremely smart Jeep land cruiser. Inside, it was almost as pitchy, but the air was alive with twanging guitars wailing somebody's grief on the hi-fi, cigarette smoke and the honest smell of booze. Jim the biker-barman kicked a deadbeat off a barstool to make room for Roz and pulled us each a glass of fizzy lager on the house.

It wasn't long before we were part of the general conversation at our end of the bar. Sitting next to us was a handsome man of around my own age with a leather vest, a long queue of grey hair and a major hair braid. Beside him was a girl in her thirties with hair redder than a traffic light, a major body and a ‘go-get-'em' attitude.

‘You guys headin' up for Sturgis?'

‘No decision yet,' I replied dismally, avoiding Roz's eyes. ‘I guess you're going?'

‘We are,' said the grey-haired man. ‘I've been a coupla times, but Red here goes most years.'

‘Where are you from?' I got in first, for once.

‘I'm from the East Coast,' said our man. ‘Merchant seaman. I work three months, get three off. I love it up in Dakota. Cooler in summer, but don't mess with winter.'

Roz brightened at the prospect of sweat-free slumber.

‘So you've ridden across this far, same as we have?'

‘No way!' cut in Red, ‘Rich has a camper van. We travel in that, sleep over in it nights. The Guzzi goes on a trailer. We take her down for a buzz round sometimes in the evening.'

‘Don't you feel you should be riding all the way?' asked Roz, perhaps deliberating about a better way of doing this thing.

‘Jesus no,' responded Red. ‘Not on that ol' Guzzi. Have you seen the buddy seat? My ass would never stand it. Plus, it's cheaper this way. No room bills. Most people ship their bikes out to Sturgis one way or another. If you ain't riding there, where are you going?'

‘San Francisco, then maybe back to Baltimore.'

‘Sweet Jesus!' Red took another look at Roz. I had to say that if the two women had been assessed on image alone, it would have been Red cracking on across the prairie with her headband flowing in the endless wind, and Roz pruning lupins in her garden. But as Bernard Shaw's butler observed, ‘You never can tell, sir. You never can tell.'

Jim's girlfriend Kim now joined in the conversation. Red was dressed for the road, if provocatively, but Kim was in a cocktail dress and heels, long blonde hair and manicured hands. She was another reminder that things are often not what they seem. Her main interest in Red, Rich and the Brit contingent was the machinery. She turned out to be a motor mechanic, more interested in how a Harley can air-cool its back cylinder at desert temperatures than anything, except Jim himself, who cut a manly figure as he kept the punters' glasses topped up.

Nobody could say why it is that Harleys don't seize up in the heat, but Rich was soon extolling the virtues of the stylish Moto-Guzzi, whose own twin cylinders are arranged so as to poke out on either side into the airstream. Roz had lost interest before he started and soon Red had also heard enough.

‘Jim!' She called along the bar, ‘bring us all a rattlesnake!'

Jim upturned a variety of spirit bottles into a huge shaker, whirled it around a few times, then poured the contents into six large glasses.

‘Better drink along with you guys, I guess,' he said. ‘That way I know how bad things are getting.'

Roz had taken a cocktail of pills before leaving the cabin, and I glanced at her anxiously, but she was obviously firing on both cylinders, so I put the question of her sickness from my mind. The rattlesnake bit like its namesake and Red had ordered another round before the first had reached the bottom of our glasses.

‘We'll all get together up in Sturgis,' she said, loosening up, but handling the booze like a professional. ‘You'll change your mind, Roz. Bound to. Bear Bluff's the place to camp. I pitch my tent right under the cliff. There's plenty of action, but I never saw nobody get shot.'

‘That all's at the Buffalo Chip campground,' put in Rich. ‘You don't wanna go there. Not with a lady.'

‘So how do we find Bear Bluff – if we ever make it?'

Before he could respond, a scuffle broke out at a table near the door. Four youths, who according to law must have been over twenty-one, began pushing and shoving. Standing by them was a girl perfectly turned out for stirring up the boys in shark-skin jeans with a chunky zip at the back and a black, lace-up bodice.

Jim watched them hard for ten seconds, then things simmered down again.

‘Bear Bluff?' Red continued, ‘Well, you go down towards… you take a right… Oh shit, I don't know. You can't miss it. Sturgis is a tiny town. Just ask anyone.'

After two more rattlesnakes I was facing up to the fact that I must either leave the bike where it was for the night or run the gauntlet of the cops. The looming buildings surrounding the bar were perfect for hiding bike bandits. All manner of people passed though Branson and I'd heard reports of organised gangs heaving half a dozen Harleys on to low loaders and driving them away. The drunken ride home was going to be the best of two bad options, so I decided that I might as well be shot for a bull as a calf, stood my corner and ordered more rattlesnakes.

‘I'll do these.' A tall, elderly man with the regulation Stetson and perfect cowboy drawl joined our group. ‘Tired of drinkin' alone!'

Cactus Jack stood 6 feet 3 inches, lean and hard with a bootlace tie and high-heeled boots under a pair of blue jeans finished off by a cow's-skull belt.

‘Where you from?' Jim asked as we made space. I was struck by the relevance of this gambit between strangers who, on the face of things, have no more in common than having to choose between the same presidential non-entities. Never again would I open a conversation by mentioning the weather.

‘Down in Texas,' Jack grabbed a stool, ‘grew up over the border in New Mexico. Right now, I'm sellin' jerky. Used to be a cattle man, but my wife passed away three months gone. Home's kinda empty. I'll stay on the road for a year or so. Mebbe then I'll settle down again.'

We drank quietly for few minutes while Roz found out that ‘jerky' is dried meat of the type that cowhands would victual on for the long trails before the days of refrigeration. Like the similarly redundant salt cod of the North Atlantic, its backers were guaranteed a market long after the product could have been consigned to history.

‘That stuff jus' tastes so good.'

It was around midnight when the girl in the lace-up leather top over by the door started screaming at the guy next to her to take his hands away. In no time, the young men were laying into each other. One hit the deck and was taking a kicking, the others kept upright and were lashing out with their fists. No knives yet. Rich and I were full of drink and little use to anyone, but Jim came flying over the bar like a champion hurdler, powered up by a tankful of rattlesnakes. He waded into the war zone without hesitation while the rest of us were clambering to our feet to go and help him. All four fighters gave him their immediate attention, urged on by the girl who had caused all the trouble. Things turned difficult and one of the guys managed to pin Jim from behind. I lurched off my stool, but before I could take a step, Cactus Jack sprang into the action like an antelope. Ignoring his undoubted age and what must have been half a pint of whiskey, he grabbed two of the guys by the hair, literally cracked their skulls together and while they were still staggering, threw them out on to the street. The odds were now even and the other pair didn't wait to be asked to leave, but as they rushed for the door, Jim grabbed one by the collar.

‘The check's forty-seven dollars, mister,' he announced grimly, bleeding slightly from the corner of his mouth. ‘I'll take fifty for cash.'

The man fished a bill out of his shirt pocket and scurried out, dragging the girl after him.

Jim straightened his collar, shook Jack solidly by the hand, mopped his face and served up a free round. Jack muttered something about the diversion having blown away a few cobwebs, and began to talk as only a man who spends too much time alone can.

Being raised on a New Mexico ranch back in the forties and fifties, he had been at once innocent and sophisticated.

‘Didn't know white girls had fannies 'til I was eighteen,' he announced solemnly. ‘Thought that was only for them Spanish women.'

I watched his eyes. He didn't seem like a racist, but then he winked at me. He'd done well for himself with the girls from the kitchen and had steered clear of the boss's daughter, that was all. Without a pause, he began describing the days when he and a partner ran cattle up to New York City on trucks. A thousand head at a time.