Mini-mart Archipelago

Mini-mart Archipelago

              Lickety split down the highway, road stretching out like hot steel, a long strand of burning track;  a raceway for lizards, tumbleweed and big anonymous semi tractor-trailers, ghosts in the long commercial night.  Highway 50 runs through northern Nevada. It is the moon, burning hot in the daytime and lonely cold in the night. An infinite fabric of sand broken only by the tops of red and black lava up thrusts and a littering of weathered Budweiser cans and unidentifiable plastic from things that were only marginally useful to begin with. No shoulders, rest areas or curbs. No road signs. Not even a stray telephone pole. But for the asphalt of the roadbed the only evidence of an industrial society would be the incidental vapor trail of the B-22A's that fly out of a base unmarked and hidden in the tectonic hills that run northeast to southwest. Nothing. No thing.
         Stop. Get out of the truck. Turn the motor off. Stand still. Listening. You can hear the blood rushing through your ears. Ever been to a loud rock concert? After its over, when you get out into the evening, late, standing still in the street, it is like this loud noise that stops being there and it almost hurts it’s so quiet. Highway 50 through the desert is like that. There isn’t even a breeze that could interrupt that silence. 65 million years of sitting there doing nothing comes at you all at once like the eons compressed into a softball that flies out of nowhere. Bops into your face, into your perception of time.
                Micro view of the road side. As if you can look at the sandy shoulder and read something into the debris. Interstate tea leaves. Bits and pieces of rusty metal, mostly. But odd pieces spanning decades. An old lug nut, but then you’d expect that.  A rusted church key. A sliver of black rubber. An unidentifiable piece of glass, worn and rounded almost the kind of thing you’d expect to find on a beach. But nothing organic, nothing living. Not even an ant. Here, the sand encroaches on the road bed and blurs the straightness of it like nature does to everything Euclidean. Almost no evidence of human history, no culture, no society, no lines or laws, just sand and heat and visibility. Nothing contrived. Real, hard. There will be one hundred miles or  more of this before the next stop but I don’t know that yet.
         Back space: I get off Interstate 80 about ten miles east of Reno, to take Highway 50 across northern Nevada. I don’t like the interstates. They’ve become like rides at Disneyland. The two road systems don’t directly connect but almost. I have the sense to top off the tank and load up on water before leaving civilization...not always a complimentary description unless you’re hungry, thirsty or bleeding.
         Mini-mart: microcosm of what we have become and are becoming. Convenience. Easy-in, easy-out. Everything the traveler needs. Step right up! Air-conditioning, Cheese Puffs, Ding Dongs, Red Bull, Coffee...Sunflower Seeds, Oreos, corn dogs, toffee...doughnuts, Tic Tacs, Nachos with yellow goop they call cheese sauce. The cheese sauce has always made me suspicious. I wonder what they grind up and put in that stuff. I wonder if it’s even organic. Quarts of oil, air freshener and maps so we never get lost. Always the same stuff. Gatorade in liquid blue, nutty looking things in little bags that I can’t identify. Same suspicions like the cheese sauce. Everything manufactured. Everywhere you go. Nothing local anymore. Nothing fresh. If it wasn't food one hundred years ago then it aint food now. The more progressive of these profit machines might have an apple or two for sale. Sometimes there are hard boiled eggs in little cellophane packets with a cracker and a little packet of salt. Designer cans of things to drink in multi-colors some of them looking Chinese. Pulp newspapers selling everything from jobs and apartments to college degrees and sex. Packets of pills that claim vitamin energy bursts. Packs of cigarettes that are probably a hundred bucks a pop by now. Everything telling how good it is, good for you or that somehow it will make you better than you are. Step right up!
         Chevron in red, white and blue fiberglass that doesn’t seem to fade in the ultraviolet nightmare that is going on outside. Heat rising off the pavement becomes a predator, you can see it. Gas pumps, maybe 20 of them under the only shade for miles. Costs a buck to put air in your tires. But air-conditioning and air-conditioning. The sirens sweetly singing. Makes you want to loiter inside which is exactly what they had in mind. There is absolutely, unequivocally and with a total degree of certainty nothing memorable about this place. No one will look back. There will never be a fond memory. She will never say to him, “Oh, honey, do you remember that sweet little mini-mart in...” wherever.” There is nothing outstanding about this oasis. Nothing distinguishable. Even the toilets are clean, mostly. It is like every other of the one or two million that spread out across North America. The faces become the same and the names will not be changed to protect the innocent because there are no names, anymore. Even the security cameras mounted inside and out and connected to the latest DVD system won’t remember. A million years from now, some future archeologist digging for human remains will find this little stop n’ go and all that will remain will be bits of metal. No significance will be attached to it and the scientist will move on to another dig without further thought or comment.
         Back in the truck, up through the gears, windows wide, the sun working its way in like water through cracks. Leaving the Mini-mart I pass a sign that says, “You are about to drive on the loneliest road in the world.” It is the last sign I see.
         Doesn’t matter out here how fast you go. There are no speed limit signs and no cops anyway. No cell phone reception and that’s good too. Just real straight road bed, sand, heat and terribly blue sky all as far as you can see. Even the cactus can’t get along out here. The little white pick-up truck is running as best as can be expected. Four Atlas water bags hang off the sides from the roof rack. You don’t see these anymore. They’ve been replaced by plastic jugs. There’s a moral there and a milestone.
              An hour later FM radio reception fades to static. Two hours later, all radio reception is gone. No country-western, no Christian sermons, no farm reports. Not even AM from LA or Denver. On the eastern horizon I can make out the tops of the rift in the distance. A big black ugly scar rising up out of the milky white desert running southeast to northwest. Sharp pinnacles like black razor backs that, little by little, rise up as I move along proving, once again that the earth is round. I recall hearing about a group located somewhere called the Flatlanders who are dedicated to the proposition that the earth is flat despite all of the evidence to the contrary including pictures of the planets from satellites and the space shuttle. This is important. If that group of folks are composed of people that know better but become members out of a decent, if not a little warped sense of humor then they get my support. But for those members who really believe that the earth is flat and all that scientific evidence is part of a conspiracy, a cover up, then we should pay careful attention. Not because they are going to cause problems but because they are the poster children for all the people who believe whatever they want regardless of how reality, evidence, facts and common sense wants to smack them in the head and wake them up. I wouldn’t want my sister to marry one of those.
         Closer to the rift and it is becoming mountainous, several thousands of feet high. I wonder how this road is going to make it through. No tunnel, can’t see a pass. Wonder whether I’ll need radiator sealant by the time I got to the top. It is blacker and sharper and more menacing than it first appeared. I get to the base of this range and what had been 120 miles of straight asphalt nothing becomes a rising winding angry snake. The road narrows and starts wiring its way up through colorless sandstone ravines eroded way beyond the point of sadness by rain that must have fallen sometime after the last ice age. The distant views are gone but the lifelessness remains. I’ve lived in the southwestern deserts long enough to know that there are few places so dry and desolate that you can’t find a lizard or two. Not here. Nothing. No sign of organic material. I wind upwards through this moonscape for another forty five minutes, the road so torturous that about 20 miles per hour is the best I can do, hoping that no cars or trucks are coming the other way and of which I am confident there are not. And then around a bend, in a narrow arroyo is the remains of an old wooden shack, a sliver of rusted corrugated steel roofing left on top of broken wooden posts and the remnants of walls leached the color of the sandstone. I stop and inspect. Again, that deafening silence. No foot prints in the sand of the arroyo. No sign that anyone’s been here in a long long time. There is a hole in the wall of the ravine behind the shack and I realize that this shack is all that remains of a prospector’s dreams gone south or more probably, west. Someone had tried to mine a claim here once. Wonder what they were prospecting for? Silver? Tin? Uranium?
         Higher up the road and I start getting glimpses of the great distance over the desert that I’ve traveled. This is reassuring somehow. Sometimes I get lost in canyons and need the perspectives of the high country to get my bearings back. The tan and gray wasting sandstone is now studded with a mixture of weathered lumps and sharp shards of black volcanic lava and pyroclast. I’m getting closer to the real rift, closer to the bones. Another mile and there is a ravine off to the left with a rail car rusting and broken on the stones below. Maybe it shouldn’t be called a rail car. It isn’t much more than a small wagon with a square steel bucket and wheels made to ride the rails. But I haven’t seen railroad tracks anywhere. I don’t stop this time but I notice the first sign of life, a black hawk or maybe a buzzard flying, circling high over head. I’m thinking that there must be something dead nearby.
         Pushing onwards, the landscape changes again. The black lava takes over and the colorless sandstone is replaced by piles of volcanic boulders, black and round lumps, like wind ravaged pillows. Some of them as big as a dump truck. I pull over to pee on a side wash and notice a second evidence of life, ants. There are tiny black ants scurrying this way and that in the sand by the road side. I figure I’m about 3,000 feet above sea level and still no sign of any vegetation. But there are ants.
I read a sci-fi story once about a galactic federation of intelligent life forms that met every year or so to discuss the latest developments among the various sentient species represented. Their discussions included proposals for the admission of new species. The speaker gets on the universal translator and explains the following, “Fellow beings, I would like to introduce a species from a small planet which is called ‘Earth’ in a G2 star system in the center of our galaxy. This species is applying for membership in our federation. Our ambassadors have found that this species is quite resilient and prolific having survived countless tectonic disasters, ice ages and two thermonuclear wars. Despite these challenges they have survived because they have learned to work together in peace and with intelligence. I propose they be admitted to our federation. A delegation from Earth is being ushered in now.” And with that a door opens and members of the earth delegation are brought before the group.  They are ants!
         I drive the old pick-up higher up the narrow winding asphalt, climbing up this great volcanic scar. I pass through one false summit after another but I think I must getting closer to the top... as other hopes have flown before. There are great monolithic lava spires jutting like volcanic canines up into the blue sky. In the crumbling shards at their bases I see the first signs of scrub vegetation. Little sponges of soft green appearing in the cracks and crevices. That means that there must be some source of water in the ground, in the rocks themselves. I can’t believe that this place has seen rain in a hundred thousand years but the lichens and small bush say otherwise. I look west in the rearview mirror and occasionally catch further glimpses of the great desert from whence I came. It is as intimidating to look back on it as it was to drive through it.
         The curling road begins to widen and then level out and I see other decrepit shacks and wasted structures. Each are located near holes in the earth, mine shafts, left open and unboarded. I have this strong sense that these structures have not been touched, not visited, not handled in anyway since their prospector/builders left them a hundred years ago. Some of them have the vestiges of old machinery left rusting in the sun. A-frames, winches and even a portion of a cannibalized steam shovel along with unidentifiable pieces of metal lay scattered about. I resist the temptation to stop and explore the old mines, to hike back into the tunnels left so long ago. I think about what kind of folks would leave not cities or even towns but would depart from places with water and things that grow freely to live and work in the dry hot emptiness of these mountains. Was the profit from the metals they’d hoped to find so great?  Or maybe their  prospects in their former lives was proportionately dim. Maybe they were running from wives, lovers, the law or the government. Or all of the above.
              The road straightens and I come over a rise and find what once might have been a small village. It looks like the Hollywood movie set of a ghost town except that it is real. It is not contrived to look like anything. It has not been painted ever. There is no paper mache nor are the artists to render a faux antiquity. It is simply the remains of a mining community that once existed when the economics of mining silver were promising enough to support the hopes of a tawdry few. A row of tiny aging and dust covered shops is on the right with wooden facades which once announced their purpose long since faded beyond recognition. These shops are not boarded up nor are they open for business. They are in the exact same condition as they were when their owners left for greener pastures maybe a hundred years before. A century of dust has collected on their window panes which are no longer transparent but oddly remain intact. Wooden hand railings on their front porches have deteriorated, split and fallen. These structures remain standing but they have settled over time so that there appears to be no right angles left, no door jambs that are square and they are titled a little to the right. They all appear infinitely tired like each building wants to lie down and not get up again and over more time they will have their way. Like the abandoned mines there are no foot prints in the sand at their entrances. They are dark and full of cobwebs and the  detritus of furniture too big to be carted away by their former occupants.
         I drive by in second gear trying to take this all in. There are ghosts here that whisper, that want to tell the stories of the lives of the folks who went bust here but there is no one to hear, no one to listen. Except me, so I think. Up ahead, on the left, on a little rise is a cinder block cracker box of a building, painted light brown, surrounded by new chain link with a crown of concertina wire and a huge antenna sticking up from the roof. It is the only new structure here. New, being anything built in the last 50 years or so. It is also the only evidence of paint. I slow as I pass and hear the first sound other than my truck since I left the interstate about five hours ago; the quiet hum of a generator from within the building. There is no sign posted, not even a no trespassing sign. I wonder what this array is for. There are satellite dish looking things on the antenna tower and I imagine that it must have something to do with micro-wave transmission.
         Further up the road I can see a half dozen more old wooden buildings on the left. They appear larger and although I don’t see any cars I get the sense that some of them are being used or are actually open for some kind of business although I can’t imagine what. Like the other abandoned shops they are connected and fronted by a large facade aimed at making them look larger and more enterprising than they actually are. There is a long front porch, sun beaten, dusty and empty of chairs and benches that once accommodated its former patrons. The largest of the stores is in the center and I get the sense that it might once have been a general store of some kind. Maybe there was an assay office and a barber shop as well on the block. Can’t tell anymore. I get closer and I’m astonished and quite pleased to find that the front door of this store is open and I notice that there is a neon Corona Beer sign hanging in the window. Proof there’s a God, it’s a saloon! An honest to God, sure as shootin’ watering hole way out here in the middle of nowhere. No mini-marts here, no post office, no gas station, not even a church. But a bar! I’ve resisted all kinds of temptations in life but not this one. I pull in front of the saloon, right up to the porch, shut off the motor, and get out. There are abandoned and rusting hitching posts with steel rings that once held the reigns of horses every five feet or so.
         Bang, in your face, there’s that silence again. I can’t hear anything, so much so that I try to pop my ears in case there’s a clog in there somewhere. A hold over from days long ago that I spent working for a living underwater. Nothing. No traffic sounds, no slamming of car doors, no roar from engines, no sound of rubber tires on asphalt. No wind, not even a breeze. No bugs, no humming of insects. No buzzing from electrical wires. Not even the clatter of dishes or the inadvertent dropping of something hard on a floor. No sound of people talking, no music. Nothing. Just complete and perfect silence. Like the absence of all light deep in an underground cavern. It is unnerving. I stretch. I’ve got that stiff feeling you get when you’ve been sitting behind the wheel for a long time. I take off the old leather Stetson that I wear and find my head drenched in sweat and I remember how hot it is which, of course, is part of the justification I engineer for having a beer. Not that I need one. The justification, that is.
         I peer in the front door of the saloon in case it’s another mirage left over from the drive through the desert. It appears dark and cool inside. I see the shadows of a pool table in the back and a row of empty vinyl covered bar stools along a bar counter. Yep, it’s bar and yep, its open and nope, it seems as empty as everything else around here. Damn, but that’s okay. I amble in envisioning that a hundred years ago I might have walked in here with spurs on my boots and six guns in my holsters and a leather bag of gold nuggets in my pocket. I walk down the length of the bar counter and take a stool towards the end.
I don’t know whether you believe in past lives or not. Sometimes I do because it explains things I can’t otherwise find the answers for. One of ‘em is that whenever I walk into a bar or even a restaurant I can’t sit with my back to the door. I find myself looking for a corner to back up into that offers me a tactical viewing position. The feeling, and it’s just a subtle feeling, is that I need to have a vantage point that allows me to see the attack coming, never to be shot in the back. So I theorize that I was gunned down in a saloon in a prior life. This is why I take the stool at the far end of the counter.
         Again, that eerie silence. I should be hearing the sound of refrigeration equipment but nothing. I remember being as quiet as a mouse but I must have made some kind of noise because shortly I heard footsteps and a woman appeared from a doorway at the back of the bar. She might have been in a small kitchen or an office. I couldn’t see. She was tall and lithe with long dark brown hair streaked with the beginnings of gray hanging down her back. In denims and a faded blue work shirt, she had large copper bracelets on her slender wrists and a necklace of finely braided cow hide with silver and turquoise beads. Her skin was noticeably dark even in the darkness of the saloon and made me speculate that she had no small amount of Indian blood in her veins.
         She walked behind the bar and right up to me like I’d been coming in there everyday for years. Taking a white bar towel and as she wiped the dust from the counter in front of me, “Hi, what can I getcha, hon?” She had a smile that I’ll remember a lot longer than the beer.
         “Howdee, ma’am?” I tipped my hat and smiled back at her. “That sign ya got there says Corona and if you happen to have one that’s cold, I’d like it.”
         “Sure thing. Lime?”
         “Yes ma’am.” I’m beginning to think that I’d died somewhere along the road and that this was the first stop in heaven. I watched her move to a cold case, remove a bottle, pop the cap on an opener mounted to the side of the counter and then place a slice of lime in the top. I studied her movements. She was strong and more than easy on the eyes. What in hell is a good looking woman doing here, I wondered. She produced a cardboard coaster and placed it and the beer in front of me and off she went.
I went to college in Denver in the early seventies with about 15,000 other young men and women. I’m a pretty social guy and make friends easily but Denver was the loneliest place I’ve ever been. I made more friends off campus than on.  People didn’t talk to each other except the friends they’d already acquired. It seemed that being surrounded by so many people became an exercise in keeping people away, keeping safe distances. Kind of like working in a restaurant and being surrounded constantly by food when you’re on a diet. It doesn’t mean that you don’t get hungry but in the end you have to be very selective. It wasn’t a user friendly environment. Conversely, I’ve been a back-packer all my life and have taken many long treks through some pretty remote country. I’ve noticed that when you’ve been out in the wilderness for a week or more and haven’t seen another living human in days you get a real hunger for human contact. When you finally do run into someone you both stop and talk sometimes for a few minutes, sometimes over night, over a camp fire or over a meal. Ages and backgrounds don’t matter. It’s just good to sit and talk for a while. It kind of recharges the batteries a little.
         So here I was in this saloon, miles from anywhere, desolate and empty. I figured that not that many people pass through this little metropolis and a stranger would be the kind of anomaly that would be welcomed and encouraged even if just for the price of the beer. I guess I was a little surprised that this woman scurried off so quickly. I would learn later that her name was Edith and she was the great granddaughter of a Crow tribal chief.
         I must have been hotter than I realized because I drained the first Corona in a minute or so. Edith came right back offering another which I wasn’t going to turn down. Nursing the second I began to study the details of the saloon. The back bar stood out amongst everything. About 25 feet long and from floor to ceiling it was a Mahogany masterpiece. There were four sections of beautifully turned columns supporting carved arches and separated by mirrors and set upon a deep counter covered with various bottles of whiskey, gin, vodka, tequila and glassware stacked in small pyramids. Where every other piece of wood within eyesight had been unpainted, untended and bleached by the sun, this back bar and counter had been meticulously cared for. It was rich, dark and well oiled and had a patina the color of Swiss chocolate. It would have looked perfect in the Oyster Bar in the Plaza Hotel in New York. I wondered how it got there? Where it came from? And the cost? It must have been very expensive for someone at sometime. Edith flicked a switch on the wall by the end of the back bar and slowly, inexorably, the three wood bladed ceiling fans above started to churn, humming and then swishing, the only audible back ground noise.
         I could have said to her, “What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?” But I didn’t and wouldn’t because that sounds too much like a cheap line and it would have misrepresented my intentions which were honorable and gentlemanly. Instead, I asked, “If you don’t mind me asking, but what’s a beautiful woman like you doing tending bar in a place way, way out here?” Before she could roll her eyes or reduce me to sludge with a glance, I started again, “I mean, is this place yours? Do ya live here? How do you get enough business to stay open way up here?” And then realizing what an idiot I must sound like, I added, “I mean it’s none of my business of course. I’m just curious. Haven’t seen another car in several hours and this place seems...well...off the beaten path.”
         It occurred to me that she probably gets the same question from every poor bastard lost motorist passing through that didn’t know her or her saloon. She answered right away and without thinking about it.
         “It’s the land. My great granddaddy was a chief in the Crow nation. During his lifetime he acquired thousands of acres of land up here and was smart enough to hold onto it. He kept it in the family until it came to me. This saloon has been here since 1852 and also belonged to my family.” Her eyes didn’t betray the pride she felt at this. “I’m the only one left and I own it and plan to keep it that way.” She spoke with an openness that was surprising and refreshing. “You can’t see it from the road so most folks don’t know that it’s there but about two miles north of here is a small community. I think there’s about 800 of us now. I live up there.”
         “You get enough business to keep this place going?”
         “Comes and goes. This is the only stopping place on about 180 miles of state highway and everyone that goes through here stops. I got a pretty decent crop of regulars that make the run from Salt Lake to Reno who prefer to avoid the interstate. Don’t get many truckers though. The big rigs can’t handle the canyon roads.” Her mind drifted for a moment and then she returned. “In truth  this is the only bar in a radius of more than a hundred miles in every direction and sooner or later everyone who lives here and the other towns in these mountains comes here. Somewhere between birthdays, weddings and certain celestial celebrations, that’s what I call ‘em, I do enough to keep the doors open and the lights on.” She smiled. “What brings you up here? You’re not lookin’ to buy a bar, are ya?” She chuckled.
I like to think of myself as different. I’m a bit of an individualist. If wearing green becomes popular you can count on me to wear blue. If everyone shaves their heads then I’ll grow my hair longer than it already is. Been this way since I was a little kid. I’ve always had an aversion to being pigeon holed. I don’t like being part of any group even if only by classification. I kinda go out of my way to avoid being typical. Makes me feel this lame feeling. Subtle.
         “No. Came from Reno and heading to Salt Lake. I try to get off the interstates whenever I can. Rather see something I haven’t seen before. Guess I’m just passing through.” I get that lame feeling. Didn’t matter what I said, she was pretty enough to make me feel a little on the short end. “Glad to find ya though.”
         “Me too.” 50,000 watt smile and everything is okay and right with me and the world again. I glance at her hands and they are lean and strong and maybe a little calloused. Hands that do things, I thought. Hands that are not afraid to get dirty, hands that have been in rough places. Knowing hands. Jesus, she’s attractive. The second Corona is spent lost in fantasies about Edith and me. A beautiful woman in this rocky wilderness. An Indian princess possessed with the ancient  wisdom of her Crow heritage. A shaman, and very lonely, I imagine. It is late evening, a full moon and the stars afire in the night. I pull up in the street at the front of the saloon on my horse. Strike that, on my steed. She is closing the front door and she looks up at me. Without words we stare into each others' eyes. She comes up to my side and I grab her by the arm and hoist her up onto the back of the saddle and we take off at a gallop racing up into the hills. In the moon light I see her tepee on the ridge, pure white cow hide with red painted Indian hieroglyphs and a curl of smoke escaping at the top. She takes me inside and sits me down on soft buckskin. Not a word is spoken. She produces a mortar and pestal into which she sifts a dark brown powder from a leather pouch which she grinds into dust. She places a small scoop of the dust in a long clay pipe, an eagle feather dangling from the end, which she lights and passes to me in a quiet ritual. We exchange the pipe a few times and then we both ascend into another universe of lights and spirits. The ground melts away and the tepee disappears and there is only the stars. She lays me down and makes almost violent love to me and we are engulfed in flames. Her back straightens and she begins to moan and her moaning escalates into howls and then she becomes a she-wolf screaming into the night above. I feel like I am riding a wild animal at a hundred miles an hour and about to be hurled over into an abyss. I have this intense fear of falling. She grabs me and holds me with a fierceness that is feral and I can hear in the distance the calls of other spirit wolves. I think I am about to explode when I hear this deep rumbling in the far distance. A thousand buffalo stampeding across the plain? A low basal rumbling that gets louder and seems to intrude into this moment stealing its reality. I focus on her, her movements, her flailing dark hair in the moon light and then the rumbling gets louder. The night sky blinks in a star burst, trembles like the shimmering heat of the desert and then it is all gone and I am back at the saloon staring at my almost empty bottle of Corona. Damn.
         But the rumbling in the distance is real and it distracts my attention again. It is getting louder. I haven’t been here for even an hour and already I am accustomed to the silence so that the sounds of machinery however far away is abruptly noticeable. I go to the front door of the Saloon and look west down the foothills. I see nothing but I hear the sounds of what? A big diesel? No. There’s more than one engine. The sounds of a pack of big Harley’s cruising up the snake road but still way down below. That’s my guess but I recognize that I’ll find out soon enough. Back to work on the Corona and I start thinking about Harley’s, packs of them. Ain’t gonna be one of those weekend warrior groups with matching leather outfits and helmet to helmet radio phones. Not way up here. I’m thinking, wondering, worrying that it’s some outlaw biker gang of metal headed nomads or a marauding band of Hell’s Angels. Who else would be riding en masse in the northern Nevada rift? I wonder if they’ll stop here. Duh! Of course, they will. It’s a saloon in the middle of nowhere. No cops. No law.
         A passing comment on the nature of testosterone. I’m not a small man. My medicine name is Talking Bear which aptly describes me although I’m as gentle as a baby calf. Over the years, however, I’ve been in situations where there has been some boozed up mental midget who wanted to pick a fight with me just because I happened to be the biggest body to throw punches at. I am not confrontation shy but I avoid physical violence whenever it can be avoided. Not because of great altruistic notions of peace and tranquility, which I do support, but mostly because I’ve had my nose broken several times, lost a tooth once from being hit with a chair in a dive in San Pedro, took stitches from a beer bottle on a barge bar in Morgan City, Louisiana and broke my hand once on the rock hard forehead of a drunk cowboy in Haggerman Valley, Idaho. In the end, it hurts and nothing is gained but scars, an extreme sense of foolishness and the notion that intelligence and reason has been betrayed by beer and frustration. I can hold my own even at my advanced age but prefer the more thoughtful forms of conflict resolution. I’ve been around Hell’s Angels before and they can be a rowdy bunch especially when they’ve been drinking, snorting Cocaine, tweaking or whatever the substance of the day happens to be. I’m thinking that right now might be a good time to get back in the truck and get out of Dodge when Edith takes my bottle away and hands me another. Same 50,000 watt smile, oooh, and I think that if I leave right now then who will defend this lady’s honor when the Hell’s Angels arrive?
         The voices in my head compete for reality. Listen, you’re getting weird about a group of Hell’s Angels and you don’t even know that’s what they are. You haven’t seen ‘em yet. Who knows, they might just be a group of the local guys from around here on bikes. Sort of a lost in the boonies motorcycle club. Be rational. And then the other voice; trust your instincts, dude. They’ve saved your ass more than once. Back and forth in my head. Ah, c’mon, chill. Don’t get worked up over things you only imagine. You have more brains than that. Edith doesn’t seem to be nervous and she’d probably have a better sense of this than you. It’s hot. Enjoy the beer. Take what comes. Isn’t that why you’re way out here anyway? Live life, get away from the interstates and everything that has become normal. Leave the big cities behind. Get away from safety and sanitary. Get dirty. Think and feel and experience outside the box. Okay, okay. I take a slug of the Corona. Good. And the rumbling gets louder and closer.
              I’ve wrestled with demons in my years and have managed to escape the strangleholds of more than a few. But one of my last vices is smoking cigars, cheap cigars. Vile habit, filthy,  terrible odor and leaves you smelling like an ashtray. I’m gonna quit. Un huh. But after a lot of hard physical work, after a good dinner or with a cold beer, they taste pretty good. I decide to step out onto the front porch for a smoke. This is really an excuse to check the truck and make sure I locked it up tight. I’m standing on the front porch finishing a Swisher when up from the west comes the herd of Harley’s. Yep, Hell’s Angels with chrome, leather and cut-off denim jackets and even in the distance I can see the “MC” patches on the front of the jackets. There are six of them and they are being led by this huge Viking of a man with long blond hair trailing in the breeze and chrome studded leather cuffs on his wrists that lace up forearms as thick as hams. Long chromed fork extensions off the front of an old Harley pan head, steel-toed jack boots pointed out from the front pegs and black leather saddle bags over the rear wheel. One of ‘em has a stereo mounted on his machine with the volume cranked up playing Don Henely’s “Dirty Laundry.” I hear my beer calling me back into the bar and I head back, Corona-whipped, to the inconceivable and irrelevant safety of my bar stool.  I glance at Edith who seems completely at ease. She must know them, maybe they are regulars and I’m getting uptight for nothing. But this doesn’t ease the feeling that we are a long ways from help if it’s needed.
         Sure enough, the chrome thunder parade pulls up right out front and makes my little pick-up seem all of a sudden small and insignificant. They are loud. Very loud, as they rev their motors before shutting them down. Then the last bike sputters and dies and there is that vast and viscous silence again. The quiet before the storm, I think. I am waiting for something to happen when Thor, the Viking biker walks in the front followed by his assemblage. He looked big riding up the road but that was the illusion of distance. Standing in the doorway with the sun shining at his back I really appreciate how big he is. Has to be 6' 7" and 300 lbs. He has a bit of a beer belly but he isn’t fat by any stretch. A full beard, graying at the corners of his mouth, an iron cross hanging from his left ear lobe and a gold front tooth, he looks like a family sized version of Greg Allman with silver mirrored sun glasses. He bellies up to the bar and his entourage follows like unshorn and haggard sheep. The floor boards creak under their weight. Nobody seems to take notice of me which is good.
         “Edith!” he yells. “Edith, honey, fresh provisions for me men and horses. Set ‘em up. Bring me that bottle of Jack and leave it. We need some cold ones, too.”  He wrestles himself onto a bar stool and is flanked on either side by his boys, pulls out a Camel and lights it with a blue tip match from his jacket pocket which he throws on the floor without a thought. The guy sitting to his left is black. I don’t mean Afro-American. I mean he is wearing a black bandana stretched tight around his head, a black leather jacket and black chaps and is sporting a black Fu Manchu mustache on a face that hasn’t really become well acquainted with a razor in some time. I catch a closer look at him and he hasn’t gotten intimate with soap and hot water either.
         Black Jack elbows Thor, leans close and whispers something in his ear. Thor listens and then turns and glances down the bar at me. Not a good sign. Edith arrives with a handful of shot glasses and a fifth of Jack Daniels, lines up the shots and pours all six in one pass not spilling a drop. Hmmm, maybe she’s done this once or twice before, I consider. Edith takes each glass and slides them down to a waiting recipient. They hoist the glasses and everyone looks to Thor to see what he’s going to say.
              “Fuck the government, you piss heads. Fuck the bastards,” Thor growls and all six take the shots down in a gulp. “Oh yeah.” mumbles Black Jack. “In the ass,” someone else says but I can’t identify who. “And that Smokey back in Winnemucca, let ‘im rot in hell.” Thor adds. Edith doesn’t have to be asked. She refills each one and she doesn’t bother giving them coasters. She doesn’t seem the least bit nervous. Good sign. Another six shots go the way of the first. Meanwhile Edith brings chilled beer mugs out of a cooler and sets them up. Then a half dozen bottles of Sierra Nevada. Now all the boys are lighting cigarettes and Edith brings ashtrays. I make a mental note to find out if it is illegal to smoke in bars in Nevada. Thor is the alpha male. Each of the boys in the crew seem to cow tow to him. When they talk, they are talking to him. When Thor laughs at something that is said then they all do. They are mostly being quiet but in the noisiest way possible. I work on my beer and consider escape strategy.
                The guy closest to me is also the smallest of the group, maybe 5' 7", 165 lbs. I figure him for short man’s syndrome, a Napoleon biker. He hangs out with a bunch of guys big enough and mean enough to stomp him into dust like a bug and I’m thinking that he has a chip on his shoulder that’s bigger than his Harley. They all drain the beers and Edith is right there with another round of bottles and she refills the shot glasses pausing to check the level of the fifth of Jack that is now almost empty. Napoleon kind of has his back to me and I check out the Hell’s Angels patches. His says “La Crascenta” on the bottom and I figure that if that’s where they’ve ridden from, then they’re a long way from home. Aren’t we all. He’s got a leather wallet hanging out of his back pocket attached by a chrome chain to his belt. He’s also sporting a long bone-handled knife in a leather sheath. I wonder if it has any practical use. Maybe they skin and eat what they kill, I wonder.
         Edith goes to the back bar and opens a cabinet door in which I can see a CD player. She sifts through a stack of CD’s searching for something particular. These guys have had three rounds of shooters and two rounds of beers. I hope she picks something soothing, something quiet that won’t get them riled and rockin’. Maybe a sonata or a piano concerto. Damn, if she doesn’t put the Allmon Brothers on. Bad sign. All of a sudden I’m picturing Thor, after a couple of more rounds, beating me to death with a pool cue to the tune “Whippin’ Post.”  I take another slug of Corona and wonder if the Saloon has a back door. Edith cranks the volume up. Bad sign. I light a cigar and no one seems to give a shit. I focus on the beer bottle in front of me.
         Somewhere in the middle of Statesboro Blues the boys are starting to get rowdy. Been down this street too many times. They’re talking about somebody named Bobbie who beat the hell out of someone else, I couldn’t catch the name, with a lug wrench for no god-damned good reason. “Cracked his skull pretty good.” says one of the boys on the other side of Thor. “Yeah, well he had it coming, the little prick,” says Black Jack. Thor just grunts at that. Their voices are getting louder but probably not as loud as their gonna get. “Hope he’s gonna be all right, the little shit owes me four hundred bucks.”
“Eeeeeeeeeeeeee. Aw shit, I gotta pee.” This comes in a slur from the Mexican member of the gang sitting the farthest away from me. The nicest, if not the most accurate way of describing this guy is that he is a fat Spanish gorilla. Has to be one of the hairiest people I’ve seen in society and in the wild too. He’s wearing a black boot leather vest and a Christmas red dirty T-shirt with huge clumps of black curly hair sticking up out of the neckline, even over his shoulders, that seems to meld into a long black beard, split in the middle, braided with brass beads on the end of each braid. He looks like a Pancho Villa that has slept outside in the dirt for a long time. He is massive and he gets up off his bar stool and walks/staggers past me holding his crotch and mumbling, to the back of the saloon where the restrooms are located.
         “Hey Carlos, don’t do it, man. Don’t do that. It’ll make you go blind, dude.” Thor yells. Everybody laughs and chimes in, “Be patriotic, Carlos, give it a yank for me.” And stuff like that. They all turn back to the counter and Edith pours another round of shots. Napoleon is hunched over doing something I can’t see. Then he sits upright and snorts a line of something from the back of his hand. He squints his eyes as the rush hits him and daintily wipes his nose. He sucks in a wad of mucous in his nostrils, swallows it and chases it with a slug of his beer. His eyes are watering. He turns and looks at me.
         “What the fuck are you lookin’ at, asshole?” The conversations stop and everyone looks at me to see how I’m going to respond. I say nothing in the midst of my sudden adrenaline shit storm but just look him in the eye trying not to belay anything that could be considered a challenge or out right fear.
                “I said, what the fuck are you lookin’ at? You gotta fuckin’ problem?
Sometimes, when you are cornered and faced with the threat of imminent death, reason and cunning disappears and animal instinct takes over. You don’t think, you just act. You may not even be aware of what actions you are taking. Time slows down to slow motion, you can’t feel pain, but you are ever so alert. I didn’t realize that I had grabbed the neck of the Corona bottle which I would have used on Napoleon’s head or face if needed. Napoleon didn’t realize it either but big Thor did. He broke the tension and said, “Haven’t ya ever seen Hell’s Angels before, boy?” Every word spoken was too loud and he emphasized the word “boy.”  They all snickered with excitement at the beating that was coming.
I stood. Again, that instinct, fight or flight thing, but I didn’t have the good sense for flight. The big bull goose biker was now the center of this testosterone challenge and I was in deep shit.
         “Yeah, I’ve seen Hell’s Angels before. Known a few. Rode with some.” I said back with steel in my voice. Where did this come from and where in the hell was this going? I didn’t know any Hell’s Angels. Closest I’d been to one was at any one of a number of rock festivals I’d been to back in the sixties.
         “Fuck you, you little pussy. You ain’t nothin. You don’t know shit.” Thor drained another shot of JD. He seemed even bigger and he had this fire in his eyes like he was hungry and about to dig into a good barbecue. “Bet you never even ridden a bike, you little fuck.” Translated on another level, this was like the boss biker saying to the boys, I’m gonna grind up this little peckerwood for dinner and you all have my invitation to help. Some of them were salivating but I didn’t notice, my eyes being locked on Thor’s, waiting for the first move.
         “Yeah, well fuck you too, pal.” My arm with the hand that held the Corona raised a little. Damn it. “I rode in Chocolate George’s funeral. And I was a friend of Sonny’s little brother.” It took a moment for that sink in and then the malignant violence in his eyes disappeared. He squinted at me and stroked his beard in confusion.
         “Motherfucker, what year were born?” trying to put the challenge back into his words.
         “‘48,” I said.
         He paused for a long time trying to do the math.

                I need to digress. In the spring of 1967, before my fifteenth birthday, I was actually born in 1952, four of my buddies and I piled into a 1956 Country Squire station wagon that we’d purchased from a local junk yard for ten dollars and drove from Massachusetts to San Francisco, Haight/Ashbury, and the summer of love. What happened on that trip is a whole ‘nother story except to say that we eventually arrived in the Haight and spent several outrageous weeks with the artists, the hippies, kids from all over the place, street musicians, psychedelic everything, flowers, peace and a wonderful smorgasbord of good drugs. Major sensory overload.
         One afternoon I wandered into a local head shop. Like everyone else, I didn’t have any money so I was just eye shopping, checking out the posters of Jefferson Airplane, Jimi Hendrix, Vanilla Fudge and the like all in mad day-glo colors awaiting a black light. While I browsed, I came across this 8" X 11" glossy photo of a parade of Hell’s Angels. A wide boulevard, maybe three lanes across ending on a hill in the foreground and from where the picture was taken were thousands and thousands of Hell’s Angel’s on Harleys, six or so abreast and stretching down the boulevard into the distance as far as the eye and lens could see. There had to be at least ten thousand bikers, maybe more. I asked the groovy looking hippie at the counter what it was all about. He just looked at me like I was stupid or from another planet and said simply, “That was Chocolate George’s funeral, man. You know, like his end, ya dig?”
         “Who was Chocolate George?”
         “Oh, wow.” He said in mock disgust. “Like Chocolate George was this Hell’s Angel, man. He was like king of the spade bikers. Oakland, ya know. He had power, man. He was real. He was like connected to the greater Is. Pretty fuckin’ far out dude. And then he was taken down by the man. Shot by the pigs. He will be missed.”
         “Wow. Thanks, man. Peace.” I flipped him the sign and left the shop. Over the next few days, I asked around. Local people who’d been in the area awhile knew of him. Some told me that Chocolate George was every bit as much of a legend as the guy in the head shop made him out to be. Apparently he was gunned down by the police for what reasons I never found out. Whoever he was, he was revered enough by the Hell’s Angels and greater biker community to merit a funeral procession of motorcycles the likes of which would have competed with JFK’s. Even to this day, there are still a few old-timers that remember the procession. It made national headlines and was on the evening news at the time. For whatever reasons, that photograph had made quite an impression on me, had stuck in my mind all these years only now to reappear facing death at the hands of Thor and his pack of looney tunes.

              You could see Thor trying to force the wheels in his head to turn and the coke and JD was not lubricating the process, apparently. Finally, he said, “Okay, so that makes you two years younger than me...and then, well, yeah you would have been....yeah that’s right.” The malice was gone and his eyes brightened. “You said you were a friend of Sonny’s younger brother?”
              “Yeah.” Christ, I didn’t know whether Sonny Barger, the founder of the Hell’s Angels had a brother and I was hoping Thor didn’t either. “Yeah, Billy and I rode together sometimes. I happened to be with him and the old man on the day of the funeral and I got to ride up front, man. Gotta tell ya, it was quite a thing. More bikes and more colors in one place than...I mean everybody was there. Had to be 15 or 20 thousand. Cops everywhere. They even brought in the national guard, man. But it was cool, like everybody left their shit behind for that one day. It was somethin’.”
              “Hey, listen up you fuck heads,” Thor says to the crew, “This guy rode with Sonny. He was at Chocolate George’s funeral. I mean he was there. Fuckin’ for real, man. That’s some heavy shit.” It was like someone had thrown a switch and the gang who, a moment before, was ready to lynch my ass, were now about to become my best buddies. Except Napoleon who was tweaked and probably did know who Chocolate George was but going to play along because Thor did and if I was okay with Thor then I would have to be okay with him. But I think he was a little disappointed that he wasn’t going to get to knock me around a bit.
              “Edith,” Thor, in that same booming voice, “Set this man up!” Edith came with the a shot glass, filled it out of a new fifth of Jack Daniels and then went down the line pouring each glass to the rim.
              Thor raised his glass and everyone followed suit. “Hey man, here’s to ya. And here’s to the old days.” The seven of us downed the shots and Edith, like Snow White tending to the seven dwarfs refilled ‘em again. When she got to me she gave me the subtlest look of both amusement and respect and maybe a little relief as well.
         “So what the fuck are you doing way up here? Where ya from?” Thor asks me.
         “Just passing through, don’t like the interstates, and never been this way before.”
         “Hmmmph, I hear that.”
         “Came from Reno but I’ve been living in LA. I like LA less than the interstates. Was time to go.” I tip my hat back on my head and raise my glass, “To the wide open road, no cops and hot showers.” Then I suck down another shot. I seem to be communicating with Thor. In fact, I would say that we are kind of hitting it off. Maybe it is because the rest of the boys are younger than him and I remind him of his earlier days when life was better, simpler. Maybe it is because he thinks that I am a part of it. I don’t know but I sure like the reprieve.
         “What were ya doin’ in LA?” Even the bikers have to ask the age old American question, what do you do? They have to know, just like everyone else, where you fit into the social hierarchy. I always feel a little creepy when people ask me what I do for a living. I feel like I’m lying which I am not.
“I practiced law there for about twenty years, but I just quit. Just can’t do it anymore. I was good at it to be sure, but in the end it just kinda sucked the life out of me. I figure that there’s a better way. Now I’m on the road looking for it.”
         “No shit, piss heads ya here that you guys? This guy a fuckin’ lawyer! No shit! Wouldn’t have guessed. You ain’t wearing a suit or nothing like that.” It is like another switch has been flicked. Everyone looks at me with a new respect or maybe like my shirt is stuffed with hundred dollar bills and I’m blind.
         “Yeah, well, I know I don’t look the part, never exactly felt a part of it either. But the money was good.”
         “I’ll bet. I coulda bought a fuckin’ house free and clear with the dough I’ve paid mine. What kinda law did ya do?”
         “Family law, mostly, a little criminal, a little probate. Stuff like that.” I offered.
         “Family law, huh? You do child support?”
         “Bread and butter. Everyday. Big part of just about every case.”
         “You deal with the DA?”
         “Yep. At least three days a week and in several different counties.”
         Thor gets up and moves his bar stool down next to mine and all of sudden the whole crew is gathered around. “Listen,” Thor says, “I got this notice in the mail that the State of California is gonna suspend my driver’s license for non-payment of back support. Can they do that? Hey, Carlos, come over here.” He waves Pancho Villa/Carlos over and then looks back to me. “Carlos is having a shit of a time with his old lady. She hired some motherfucker cocksucker little lawyer with Italian shoes who wants to take his house and his bike. Wants to gut him like a fish.....”

              The next three or so hours passed with me giving the boys free legal advice, strategies on how to deal with the Department of Child Support Enforcement, the DMV, a short lecture on community property, the IRS, why it would not be a good idea to threaten to kill Carlos’s wife’s lawyer and on and on. We all got drunker and drunker. There was plenty of back slapping, threats against the government, against all democrats and communists, most women and the gay and lesbian community in general. Edith kept the glasses filled and around dinner time brought out a tray of tortillas, carne asada, beans, jicama root in lime juice and fresh guacamole. A good time was had by all. I noticed that no one else had come into the saloon all afternoon and now it was getting on into the evening.
         Maybe around eight o’clock or so, I figured it was time to get back on the road and I wanted to leave before the winds of my good fortune started to blow the other way. I stood and motioned to Edith that I needed my tab.
         “It’s taken care of,” she said, motioning at Thor. “It’s on Pete and the boys. I think they’re kinda grateful for the legal advice.” So Thor’s name was Pete. No one during the whole afternoon and evening had said it out loud.
         “No shit!”
         “Yeah, no shit.” That mysterious smile on her face again like she was acknowledging that the spirit of good luck had just paid me and her saloon a visit.
         “Well, thanks ma’am. I appreciate your kind hospitality. I best be hittin’ the road.” I tipped my hat to her and turned to leave. Thor/Pete got up and before I could cross in front of the group, grabbed me in a bear hug.
         “You’re fuckin’ all right man. Thanks for helpin’ us. We won’t forget. You ever get near La Crescenta you got friends there, now. Go to the Anchor Bar. They’ll know where to find us. If anybody fucks with ya, then they’re fuckin’ with us, ya know what I mean?”
         I returned the hug, thanked him for the drinks and said my good byes to everyone, did a round of hi-fives with everyone but Napoleon, reminded Carlos to transfer title to his bike to Thor/Pete before his wife files, reminded all of them not to say anything to the cops when they are being shaken down and a few other well chosen words of wisdom. I walked out the door and stood on the front porch looking up at the million diamond point stars in the night sky and a crescent moon just peeking up above the ridge. The heat of the day had long since broken and in that eerie, post rock ‘n roll concert  silence there was a coolness and calmness that far exceeded the sum of the parts. I felt pretty good. Damn good considering. I stepped over to the truck, lit up a smoke and opened the front door when Edith came up behind me. She placed her hand on my arm.
         “I, uh, really wanted to thank you,” she said with a sincerity in her eyes that made me melt.
         “What for? I should be thankin’ you. I had a good time.”
         “You see, Pete and his boys ride through here every couple of months. It usually means trouble. Two months ago, they got into it with one our local boys and we had to send him to the hospital all the way up in Elko. Folks here, when the see their bikes out front won’t come in. ‘Though, there are more than a few watchin’ right now to make sure they don’t start anything with me.” I looked around to expecting to see snipers on the roof tops and didn’t. “Can I ask you a question?”
         “Sure.”
         “All that stuff about Chocolate George and the Hell’s Angels, was there a word of truth in it?”
         “Nope. Not a word.” I smiled and explained to her about that day in the Haight in the head shop          and photo of the funeral ride.
         She looked at me with a devilish twinkle in her eye. “I don’t know whether it is better to be lucky or smart but I get the feeling that you’re both.” She paused giving me that 50,000 watt smile again. “Well, thanks anyway. If you get back this way again, be sure to stop in.” She leaned over and kissed me on the cheek.
         I got into the cab of the truck before my knees buckled and fired her up, into gear, out onto the still hot asphalt and wound my way east again. Driving down the eastern slope of the volcanic rift under the moon light, shadows dancing off the pinnacles like ghosts I couldn’t help thinking about Edith and the Saloon. About a third of the way down I happened to glance in the rear view mirror and I thought I saw a great white tepee with red painted Indian hieroglyphics framed in the starlight on the razor backed ridge.
         “If I get back this way again, I think I’ll definitely stop by,” I said out loud to no one. And then I drove down into the eastern Nevada desert echos of whoops and war cries fleeting across the empty sands like ancient night time Harleys.





Jamie Stevens,
Copyright 2009, all rights reserved