The Gorgon Festival (11 page)

“My father is a psychiatrist.”

“Then he lacks insight… Freddie told me your papa was in politics.”

“He is.”

Well, Ward thought, the two professions did overlap in certain areas, and perhaps her father needed more help than she. Buoyed by the thought of making love to this splendid girl in a three-way manner, therapy for him, for her, and for her father, Ward was prancing when they rounded the corner of the building and headed down through the parking lot.

Suddenly Ward spotted a Schweinjaeger 605, first in a line of motorcycles angled backwards against the wall. He whirled Dolores around to inspect the machine, all of its details visible in the overhead light of the parking lot. It had double chrome mufflers with a bank of triple headlights, the center one a spot, and a tandem seat with a leather-upholstered backrest and safety belt. Instead of the conventional chain drive, it had a stainless steel differential rod.

“Look at this,” he breathed in admiration to Dolores, noticing below them three motorcyclists lounging against the wall, each with his right boot sole propped against the bricks in identical fashion, each with helmet slung on the right side of the belt.

The Schweinjaeger’s speedometer was set for r.p.m.s rather than miles per hour, the mark of a quality product, but Ward thought the owner had overdone the decorations. Raccoon tails dangled from the handlebars. A decal of an American flag was pasted on the side of the gas tank, and, circling, he could read on the mud guard: SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL HARD HATS.

One of the loungers left the wall and approached Ward and Dolores, walking with a crab-like sidling, keeping his left thigh forward. Probably a victim of a traffic accident, Ward thought, as he drew nearer. He wore a crew cut, Ward noticed before the man put on his helmet. Most of his hair was in his heavy, scarred black eyebrows and tufting from his nose and ears.

Deference seemed appropriate, as the man was almost thirty, over six feet tall, and nearly half as wide across the shoulders.

“Is this your bike, sir?” Ward asked, smiling.

The man’s helmet also displayed an American flag, and sewn above his right pocket was a blue strip holding three white Navy stars with red centers. He didn’t return Ward’s smile, and his voice rumbled, “That’s my hawg.”

“Whatever you call it, it’s beautiful.”

“Take a good long look, boy. Most likely it’s the last you’ll ever see… You all right, Little Mama?”

“I’m coming down too fast, Big Papa,” Dolores said. “I’m going to get the agonies.”

“I’ll get you to a brewery, directly… Honey, has this Pinko been molesting you?”

“He’s not a Red. He’s Al. He wants to ask you if he can take me home.”

“All the way to Orange County? Little Mama, you know you can’t tell it when you meet a Red. They’re subversive.” He swung his massive head toward Ward. “Whose home you aiming to take Little Mama to, Pinko?”

With sickening certainty Ward realized he had misread the situation. Both Freddie and Margie had warned him, but he has assumed the Orange County Patriots were merely conservatives. Dolores was the mama of a motorcycle gang.

All Ward could rely on, now, was his charm, reasonableness, and the community of interests created by a mutual regard for motorcycles.

“Hers, Big Papa.” Ward smiled. “She seemed confused, disoriented…”

“Careful what you say about Little Mama, boy.”

“But I felt she needed protection, and…”

“Then you must have figured she had something to protect. You been thinking dirty about Little Mama, boy?”

Ward’s situation demanded a desperate remedy.

“Big Papa, you don’t understand, but…”

“You saying I’m dumb, boy?”

“I’m saying I was trying to get to you, because…”

“You calling me a queer, boy?”

“Listen, Big Papa. I’m a short-hair, like you. I drive a motorcycle, like you. I voted for Goldwater, and I want to join your club.”

“Well, boy, why didn’t you say so?” A grin gave the face a coarse magnetism and Ward the hope that he might be getting through to the man.

“Arms, Lefty,” Big Papa’s voice rumbled among the parked cars. “Fresh meat!”

He turned back to Ward.

“If you want to join the Patriots, you got to prove your loyalty. Let me see your helmet.”

Ward handed his helmet to Big Papa, who stood sideways before him. Big Papa pivoted around to his side bag and pulled out a decal.

“Little Mama, lend me your head.”

Little Mama walked up to Big Papa and he put the helmet onto her head, adjusting the chinstrap. Carefully positioning the decal, he adhered it to the front of Ward’s helmet and stood back to admire his handiwork, saying, “Real nice, honey.”

Two young men emerged from among the cars. One wore a short-sleeved leather jacket because his biceps were too large to fit a normal sleeve and the other, one-armed, carried a car radio in his hand. They had flags on their helmets but wore no stars.

“Boys, meet Al. He wants to join the Patriots.” He turned to Ward. “You understand, boy, before you take the loyalty oath there’s a security check, initiation fees, and a haircut.”

Lefty had laid down his radio and he sidled around in front of Ward, saying, “I’m Lefty, Al,” and extending his left hand as Arms extended his right, saying, “I’m Arms.”

Ward extended both hands and the two did not let go after they shook hands. Instead, they pinned his arms to his side. Ward resented a trick that had made him a prisoner by presuming on his friendliness and goodwill, but fear dominated his resentment. Not since the Normandy landings had he felt such dryness of mouth and urgency of bladder, and a phrase from his youth kept recurring to his mind, “Keep a firm sphincter, Ward.”

“Ball Bearing, front and center,” Big Papa called back toward the wall loungers, and one broke away from the wall, sidling up with the crab-like motion which Ward now assumed to be some cabalistic ritual among the Patriots. He wore two stars above his right pocket.

“Ball Bearing here!” He reported in a voice almost cultivated.

Ball Bearing was a slightly built man with large gray eyes and sandy hair and the thin line of a mustache. With an air of remote detachment about him, he reminded Ward of photographs of the young William Faulkner.

Big Papa looked Ward up and down with a slow, implacable contempt as he spoke to Ball Bearing. “Two-Star, this Red conspirator is the clumsiest would-be infiltrator into the Patriots I ever saw. He tells me he voted for Goldwater and he thinks I’m dumb enough to buy a cover story that would make him about eight when he voted. But I’m not charging him with disrespect. Take him down in the corner. I want him tried and found guilty of intent to lay. When he rounded that corner he was pussyfooting in front of Little Mama worse than she did the day I got the Schweinjaeger… Now, I got to get Little Mama to some candy before she crashes.”

Other black-jacketed men wearing kidney belts were sidling out from among the cars, they, the men, regarding Ward with that same hostility and circumspection their leader had shown, not saying anything but merely looking with expressions at once both contemptuous and profound, as if they saw Ward at the epicenter of some soundless fury around which they had swirled from the day of their birth and around which they would be moving in mindless rage and frustration until they lay dying.

There was an interlude of silence as Big Papa strapped Dolores into the tandem seat, still wearing Ward’s crash helmet, and roared off down the alley. Quite deliberately, the two had conspired to steal his helmet.

Two-Star turned to Arms and Lefty. “Take him down into the corner… Brazos, front and center.”

The last man against the wall came over and said, “Brazos here.” He wore one star. He had the Texas look—the leathery, wind-beaten face and high cheekbones of a cowboy and Indian.

“Put Hoot Owl on the west and the Loon on the east end of the parking lot…”

Two-Star was giving instructions as Ward was led down into the dark corner of the alley. As they passed the line of motorcycles, the Patriots started the motors and set them on idle. Thoroughly concerned, now, Ward hoped the rumble of motors might merely announce that court was in session, but he was self-possessed enough to realize that there might be other reasons for the noise. One might assume, for instance, that this was a kangaroo court and the roar was designed to cover the thud of fists against flesh. From the major premise it would then follow that the fists would be theirs and the flesh his.

When Two-Star returned to the group, accompanied by Brazos, his voice sounded soft and reassuring beneath the low rumble of the motorcycle engines when he spoke to Ward.

“Son, there’s nothing personal about this trial. We Patriots believe in law and order. Our Three-Star, Big Papa, has given us the order to try you for intent and his order is law… Breeches, give him a security check.”

Again Ward’s wallet left his pocket.

“Patriots, is this Commie loaded!” Breeches said. “Credit cards from here to yonder.”

“Count his initiation fee, Breeches,” Two-Star said, “and you, Razor, check Breeches while he counts.”

Turning to Ward, Two-Star said apologetically, “These pre-trial proceedings take a little time.”

“Eight hundred and twenty dollars,” Breeches whooped. “This Commie’s a capitalist.”

“Liberate it,” Two-Star said.

Ward recognized the terminology from World War II. He was being robbed. Anger built up in him at his helplessness and the men who were taking advantage of it, but despite his anger and his fear, his mind absorbed and weighed every detail, his memory recorded each name. Still, he could not understand the sideways stance the men adopted when facing each other.

The answer came from an unexpected shout of warning.

“Guard your crotch, Al!”

The cry keened over the tops of the parked cars, and looking upward toward its source he saw Freddie the Hustler atop a delivery van.

“Get that black bastard,” Two-Star said.

Four of the Patriots separated from the jury and swung out through the cars, but they wore hobnailed boots and Freddie wore sneakers. His first leap over the four-man net closing in on him cleared two autos and placed him atop a station wagon. Freddie had covered fifteen feet in a standing broad jump.

It seemed incredible to Ward that members of the same club could do to each other what these men obviously feared, but more frightening was the knowledge that he had stood vulnerable before them for so long. Figuring Two-Star, in front of him, for a right-footed kicker, Ward swung his left thigh forward.

“We’re doing no crotch job on you, son,” Two-Star explained with absurd gentleness. “We’re only giving you a haircut.”

He turned to his leathery-faced subaltern. “Where’s the Barber?”

“Chasing the jig.”

“Forget him, Brazos. We’ve got a trial to conduct.”

“Barber, front and center,” the One-Star, Brazos, yelled. “With clippers.”

A clean-cut, helmeted youth with blond eyebrows emerged from between the cars, holding a short length of sprocket chain in each hand. He cast a casual but professional glance at Ward’s hair as he, too, stood sideways in front of Ward. Ridiculous though the precaution was, Ward realized that the youth was guarding his crotch from Ward.

“How do you want him styled, Ball Bearing?”

Two-Star rubbed his chin reflectively. “All he’s guilty of is the intent to lay Little Mama. That’s worth only a Sing Sing or at most a modified Monk, but Big Papa was unhappy about the way he pussyfooted around Little Mama and it might make Big Papa unhappy if we let him off with less than a Mohawk.”

Ward felt indignation and relief. Such young men in the past, he had read, used German storm troopers as models, but apparently the current fad was to imitate the French maquis who sheared the hair from Frenchwomen who fraternized with German occupation troops.

“A Mohawk takes a little time,” the Barber said thoughtfully, “since I’d have to trim for his warlock. And we’re out of our territory.”

“Very well,” Two-Star said. “Give him a Yul Brynner.”

The Barber took his hip-forward stance in front of Ward.

“Would you tilt your head slightly to the right, Al? I don’t want to clip your ear.”

Since the Barber had no clippers, Ward assumed he was studying hair contours and tilted his head. He was determined to remain detached about the invasion of his person, consider it no more than an extreme prank.

Psychological shock almost dulled Ward’s pain when the chain in the Barber’s left hand whipped up and lashed the side of his head slightly above his right ear. To obtain a cutting motion, the Barber blunted the force of the blow with a forward jerk as the chain lashed into the side of Ward’s head, but the force remained strong enough to bounce Ward’s head to the left where it was lashed and swung back by the chain in the Barber’s right hand striking in the same relative position. Left and right, swish-thud, Ward’s head bounced with the rhythm of a punching bag.

Here was sadism, gratuitous and calculated, performed by an all-American boy in the trappings of a patriot. Ward was being scalped by lacerations at the hands of an expert. Overlap of chain cuts from opposite sides of his head was infinitesimal, and the slits were climbing toward the peak of his head in precisely parallel furrows.

With two quick strokes across the crown, the haircut was finished, and the Barber stepped back.

“You can check it, Ball Bearing, but I don’t think I missed any spots.”

“Tilt his head back, Patriots,” Two-Star’s voice was now grotesquely gentle, “to keep his blood from blinding him. Cut off his bandana to wipe his forehead… Too bad about that pink suede shirt. Must be an eighty-dollar item.”

Over the top of the cars the voice of the dark angel called, “Guard your crotch, Al.”

Two-Star’s delicate concern for his shirt enraged Ward. Faking grogginess, he tottered to a sidewise position, his head lolling backward on his neck. He had been trapped by the logic of his position; in a community of violence, a man of peace must accept the life style or remain forever vulnerable to his neighbors. Ward accepted the situation and adapted to it.