Good Vibrations (14 page)

As we were leaving, the museum was closing. The cleaner turned up early for her shift and told me her grandparents had homesteaded here in Kansas after arriving by wagon train. She'd read her grandfather's diary, she said, and he had believed it would take a thousand years to pioneer and populate the West. In fact, the usable land was subdued in less than a century.

Just around the corner we dragged the bikes under a motel porch. Inside, surrounded by such recent violent events and the descendants of those taking part, we shared the sort of dinner the cleaner's grandfather would have been grateful for. Another companionable plate of canned beans.

After we had ‘done the dishes', we stepped outside to eye the weather. One glance at the afterglow of the sunset removed any desire to venture afield. The sky was in torment. It was clear at the land's rim, but above us and towards the dying light the clouds were writhing. Lightning flickered, and far off we could see distinct cones of whirling greyness groping downwards as nascent tornadoes tried for full-blown status. The cloud base bulged and seethed as would-be twisters probed earthwards before retreating back into the mother cloud, not having quite managed to form. Against the lurid sky in the extreme distance, two columns looked as if they might make it, but after a few more minutes the night shut down the show. We went inside, double-locked our door and turned on the Weather Channel.

Throughout our travels, the television Weather Channel was our constant companion and valued assistant. There is no foreign equivalent to this remarkable service, which exclusively churns out meteorological information, national and local, twenty-four hours a day. With storms always around the corner, it was both entertaining and important to keep in touch with the announcers, some of whom already seemed like old chums. These celebrities did their best to keep us dry while glorying in the outrageous nature of the weather pudding served up to much of the American population. That night, a jolly chap in a pale grey suit joyfully advised the nation of ‘humongous storms' in southern Kansas. Ten minutes later, after a break to check up on the astoundingly low prices offered on furniture at our local superstore, his state equivalent came on the air. This proved to be a charming girl with a worried expression who gave it to us straight:

‘Storm Warning tonight. Extremely heavy rain expected west from Wichita into eastern Colorado. Tornado warnings for Comanche and Kiowa counties.'

Roz checked the map. These extensive tracts of land lay immediately west of Medicine Lodge, so we hadn't been seeing fairies out there on the porch.

Thirty minutes later the heavens opened, with unimaginable rain and almost continuous lightning. The gushing roar of the water pounding on to our roof made watching television impossible, so we reluctantly switched off. Thanking our stars we had not tried camping, I got up, padded over to my pack and poured us a shot of Wild Turkey.

‘What on Earth can life have been like in a teepee with no other option?' said Roz. I myself had been considering what it must have felt like to face such conditions from a covered wagon, but before I could reply, the unmistakable chatter of a full-sized Harley sounded immediately outside our door. There was no problem about hearing that through the downpour. Since absolutely nobody could be riding voluntarily though the wall of water tumbling from the matt black sky, the noise could only be some opportunist stealing Madonna. I hurried into my jeans and leather jacket, slipped my feet into deck shoes and stepped out looking for trouble. The Heritage hadn't been touched, but out of the madness of the night a man wearing only leathers and a headscarf for protection was wrestling an ancient ‘panhead' Hog under the portico. Behind him, still out in the rain, was a long, yellow Honda tourer, a proper motorbike. Astride it was a black figure looking slightly unsteady.

Relieved that the situation demanded assistance rather than a confrontation and ashamed of my paranoia, I dived out into the deluge. With the thunderclaps and the rain there was really too much racket to talk, but words were unnecessary to see what was required. Together, the man and I grunted and heaved the two heavy motorcycles into the comparative shelter in front of the next room. Once inside, he gave me the upturned biker's handshake. Roz appeared at the door with the whiskey and we all necked a slug.

Steve was around my age. With only his riding jacket and chaps for defence, he was so wet he looked as though his skin had been leaking. As the puddle around him grew, however, his main concern was for his companion. Nell already had her helmet off, and as she kicked out of her boots and began to peel off the layers of her highly professional wet-weather gear, her eyes were fixed on Steve with a mixture of gratitude and adoration. First came a crash-resistant waterproof; next, a balaclava headpiece that ran down over the shoulders. Beneath the outer layer she wore black leather chaps that fitted loosely over extremely tight jeans. When she turned around to take them off, I realised for the first time that American riding chaps do not encase the buttocks like full riding leathers, but somehow lace across them. You don't see these in Europe, probably because they are banned for being worse than provocative. As she wriggled out of them and the jeans to reveal tight-fitting full-length underclothes, I realised with astonishment that this girl was dry. Steve made for the shower. Nell reached for the whiskey again.

‘That is one hell of a man!' she announced as the rain continued to cascade down the roof, drowning the sound of Steve's life-saving ablutions. I couldn't argue with her judgement. He'd held on to his figure well although his black beard was streaked with grey. His hands had been oily from some mishap with one of the bikes, and his eyes were the darkest brown, looking out through the grey curls plastered to his face. He had stared into extreme distances for a long time. As for Nell, she was young, blonde, and slender, with film-star teeth, blue eyes and high cheekbones. Like a Swedish immigrant from 1880s Minnesota.

‘How did you two get together?' asked Roz. Even their bikes looked incompatible. His was black and battered from thousands of miles and forgotten adventures, almost a museum piece from the 1970s; hers, the latest model and, apart from today's fresh mud, clearly squeaky-clean. The Honda was as yellow as Betty Boop, but bigger and meaner.

Nell sat down on one of the two beds. She looked deeply knackered.

‘He picked me up on the roadside back in California. I have to get back to Missouri by tomorrow night. I'd over-reached myself and I was washed out. Steve rode along with me all day. In the evening, he said he'd see me home.'

‘But that's thousands of miles there and back. Was he going that way?'

‘I don't think so. But it's all the same to him. He's an ex-'Nam US Marine. He just lives on two wheels.'

At last, a full-on biker. This guy was no dude on holiday. ‘I have to be back at work in thirty-six hours,' Nell continued, ‘I'm a school teacher…'

‘Godalmighty!'

‘… and my headmaster said if I was late one more time I'd be looking for a job. I love my class, so it's Missouri or bust. But I'd never manage without Steve to keep the pace going. It seems easy with him up front.'

‘How far do you make in a day?' queried Roz, seriously interested now.

‘We've run five hundred miles since breakfast this morning,' Nell replied casually. ‘It was OK, but we've seen some stuff. He brought us over the highest pass in North America.'

‘Where's that?'

‘I don't know. Somewhere in Colorado.'

Roz was turning this over in her mind when Steve stepped out of the shower room. He looked meadow-fresh, but his clean vest was saturated from a day in his battered saddlebag.

‘Rain's slowed us badly,' he said, hanging his kit over the door. ‘Reckon we carried this storm all the way from the Rockies. It's taken the legs right off us. If it doesn't move on, we'll have to live with it all the way to Missouri.'

An alarming squall shook the building and rattled the door.

‘You did OK today, Nell,' he continued. ‘I thought that wind would blow you clean off coming down the mountain.'

We left them to their intimacy and tried to get some sleep, but it wouldn't come. For a short while the lightning eased, but soon it returned. The storm took on a near-human malevolence in the small hours as I dozed in a world where Steve was leading a wagon train, trying to live peaceably alongside the Indians while greedy whites undercut him at every turn. Nell had turned into a pioneer woman, fresh from the East Coast, recently widowed and in dire need of protection.

A further lightning attack woke me and suddenly I knew who Steve had been reminding me of. It was another ex-Marine, as light-complexioned as Steve was dark, but both carried the same powerful aura of competence. Clint was his name. A blacksmith by trade, we met him working in a shipyard in Connecticut shortly before Roz and I fell foul of a New York tycoon during a piece of dirty dealing that seemed set to rob us of our boat. Back in the mid-eighties the vessel in question, seriously damaged in a collision for which we were subsequently found blameless, was all we had in the world. She was also home to us and our young daughter, so we were not about to give up without a struggle. Matters rapidly deteriorated into a lawsuit. One bitterly cold day, an ugly-looking customer turned up on the catwalk and, in the course of what might have been casual conversation, pointed out that it didn't cost much money down in the Bronx to have a nuisance rubbed out. I didn't take this too seriously until my car was torched. It was then that I called Clint. He arrived before dawn, kitted up for trouble.

For a number of nights he and I huddled at the aft hatchway to the boat while my family stayed locked below decks further forward, waiting for the knocking at the entry that might presage serious violence. It never came. Perhaps someone had decided that destroying my car was enough, but when Clint drove his truck into the downtown New York City boatyard on that bleak winter's night he had been ready to risk his life to do what he believed was right. There is more of this spirit alive in America than is generally broadcast to the outside world. We hear about massive drug problems, organised crime, psychotic serial murders and the greed of multinational business – and all of it is authentic – but are told little of the silent majority. Lying in the storm at Medicine Lodge, I remembered them, and was glad.

It was still raining at first light, but I thought I detected movement outside. Roz heard it too. She clambered from her bed to boil the tiny kettle which she always carted in off the bike because motels rarely feature in-room tea-making facilities.

‘If they're really leaving in this rain, the least we can do is offer them a cuppa,' she yawned. ‘Why don't you give them a hand with their bikes?'

I opened the door. Down the slope, the highway was running like a river. Steve was manhandling his Harley out on to the parking lot, his sodden cowboy boots squelching with each struggling step. I helped him, then together we turned to the yellow Honda, which daylight revealed to be a really lovely bike. By the time we had them both facing the right way we were soaked through. Roz nipped between the rooms with four teas in a drawer she'd pulled from the dressing table.

‘I suppose you'll be going to Sturgis?' she asked as we sipped.

‘I'll mosey on up after I get Nell home,' replied Steve. ‘See you there?'

I shuffled my feet and Roz looked at Nell.

Nell stared out at the dirty dawn and was more reticent.

‘I promised to get together with some guys I met in a gas station in Reno,' she said as calmly as though she'd come across them at her local package store. ‘So maybe I'll make it. Don't know what I'll tell the head this time, though. It gets harder and harder. Guess he thinks I'm some sort of moll.'

She pulled her helmet over the balaclava and started the Honda.

‘Let him think what in hell he likes,' she said. ‘Maybe see you there.'

Revving positively, the school-ma'am exited neatly from the forecourt into the gushing stream that had been a road less than twelve hours ago. Steve kick-started the panhead, nodded to us and followed her towards the wide Missouri. It was 6.30 a.m., so Roz and I went back to bed.

When we awoke, the rain had stopped and the whole world was steaming. According to the Weather Channel, there had been almost 6 inches of rain since the previous evening. Roz turned to me.

‘That Steve,' she said, ‘he's a hero.'

I glanced at her sideways. Perhaps he was, but Nell was a very attractive woman.

‘When I took in the tea, both beds had been slept in!'

Down the hill by the river bridge, we found a householder leaning on his garden gate. Both he and his house were under water to thigh level. The plastic deer he had selected as his yard ornament was self-consciously standing up to its neck in the red, flowing tide. We stopped to sympathise, dry-shod on the levee that must have been thrown up for occasions such as this, and noting that he looked far less miserable than his situation permitted.

‘Aw, shit,' he said, gazing ruefully at his antelope, ‘things are going to be a mess when this goes down, but at least we didn't get no twisters. Them poor guys over in Comanche County had their homes blown clean off the ground.'

We commiserated; then, like tens of thousands before us, set our eyes west down the undulating highway towards Dodge City. Gas stations were far apart now, and running out of fuel became a serious possibility, especially for the Sportster, but we made it across the uncultivated range lands on Betty Boop's last gasp.

We hit Dodge City mid-afternoon. The town is well known for its historic position at the head of the Chisholm cattle trail to Texas, for saloons, gambling and gunfighters, and for Boot Hill Cemetery where the townsfolk buried the remains of those who died with their footwear on. Railroad yards and cattle fattening stations were the first impressions of this sprawling, low-rise town on the prairie. Roz had no special interest in the place, but I was drawn in by the name alone.