The Scarred Man (8 page)

    "Who you ridin' with, man?"

    In answer to his question, I offer a dreamy wave of the hand. Pretending to be stoned is the easiest way out. He shrugs and says something to the girl, and they both laugh. But he is not quite satisfied. He drops back, and I see him talking to another rider wearing the insignia of the Easy Deuces. They are both looking in my direction. I wait impatiently for the line to move so that I can get lost in the crowd.

    Far off to the right, Mount Washington is a monument of serenity above all this squirming mass of humanity. Fifty yards behind me there is an outburst of angry noises, the crash of glass. A fight has started. A diminutive rider in a sleeveless leather jacket is wielding a broken bottle, challenging all corners. It is too soon for fighting; not enough tension, sexual or alcoholic, has been created. Possibly he is tripping out on the acid. In any event, the outlaws do not want a fight at this stage of the game. I see the giant who has been questioning me earlier reach out a paw. He pounds the little man on the skull like a man hammering a nail. The unconscious rider slumps to the ground. The line moves forward.

    At last we are at the checkpoint where each of us is asked to produce his driver's license. At the same moment we are handed mimeographed copies of a restraining order prepared by the authorities of the State of New Hampshire. It names as plaintiff the people of the State of New Hampshire and as defendants John Does and Jane Does, listing them under the names of some of the gangs present, Satan's Slaves, Iron Horsemen, Easy Deuces, Himmler's Henchmen, Shitkickers, and sundry similar organizations; warning them against violating any public law, statute, or ordinance; or committing any public nuisance; or carrying or possessing weapons such as blackjacks, sling shots, billys, sandclubs, sawed off shotguns, metal knuckles, switchblade knives, tire chains, or firearms of any type. This last seemed a farcical regulation, since it was obvious that all of the riders (including myself) were carrying weapons of some sort that would fit into the prohibited categories. But no one wanted to begin a search of the thousands of outlaws who were growing increasingly restless under the hot sun. At last we were waved on.

    The town was set prettily in a fold of green hills. Except for a little trouble with the redcoats during the Revolutionary War, it had been small and white and peaceful for two hundred years. Now it was about to know more trouble than it could ever have imagined. The invasion of the British was nothing compared to that of the outlaws who were descending on Kildare.

    Startled heads popped out of windows as we roared into town. A few of the more cautious merchants had boarded up their store fronts, but most were open for business. The riders might be expected to leave fifty dollars a head in Kildare during the course of the long weekend. Ten thousand times fifty meant half a million dollars of outlaw money for the honest burghers.

    A hard-faced sheriff in a shiny black squad car came down the line with a bullhorn: "This is Sheriff Kranski talking. Now all you men are welcome here in Kildare, but you got to keep order. We got a nice campground set aside for you up at Moon Lake, and that's where you're to go. You stay up there, and we won't have no problem. Nice clean ground and good swimming. We can't have all of you in town at one time so them as wants supplies can appoint one guy from each club to come into town and get your beer and stuff…"

    His voice was drowned in a storm of angry protests.

    "Shit! What is this, a fucking concentration camp? What does he mean one guy from each club? How much fucking beer can one guy carry? What about the independents who don't ride with no club? Are they supposed starve to death or something? Fuck this fucking shit!"

    I sat quietly on my machine. It did not appear to me that the sheriff was on very firm ground. His forces consisted of no more than three deputies and half a dozen forest rangers. If the outlaws were provoked enough to run wild, the sheriff and his deputies would have had it. I wondered if anybody had thought to alert the governor.

    Sheriff Kranski was still trying to be reasonable. He was a big man who had obviously made his way through life with his fists rather than his head. Now he found himself pressed into a situation calling for a delicate combination of control and diplomacy. Here was Rome with the barbarians at the gates. Depending on how he handled the situation, Kildare might be in for something resembling the rape of Nanking.

    "Now let's cut out that racket!" The sheriff bellowed over the shouts of the crowd. "If you got a legitimate beef of some kind, I'll hear it. But I sure as hell can't hear all of you at once. You got to have some kind of a spokesman. Let's have each club send its leader up here to the car where I can talk to them."

    Half a dozen men wearing the colors of the various clubs detached themselves from their units and walked up to the sheriff's car. They talked for ten or fifteen minutes while the rest of us stewed in the sun.

    At last the sheriff picked up his bullhorn again: "Now listen, you men! We've worked it out the best way for everybody. You're all going up to the campground at Moon Lake. There's a fella up there named Moore, runs a general store. He sure as hell can't handle all of you at once so the store will be closed. But what he will do is make a trip into the campground with his pickup truck to bring the supplies you want. Now he ain't gonna make but the one trip; so after you get up there, you figure out what you'll need, and he'll bring it in. Now if we all work together on this we can have a nice quiet weekend with no trouble."

    His announcement was received in sullen silence. It seemed obvious to everybody but the sheriff that the last thing the outlaws wanted was a nice quiet weekend. But. since their leaders had agreed to the scheme, there seemed little choice but to go ahead with it. Machines were kicked into life, and the whole ragtag army of cyclists began to move through the village in the wake of the sheriff's car.

    

    

    We ate dirt all the way to Moon Lake. The place was strictly low rent, the usual assortment of shacks, Moore's combination general store and snack shop featuring frozen pizza and hero sandwiches. A short stout man in his sixties was out in front guarding the store. He wore a webbed pistol belt and on it a .45. He was talking to one of the deputies as I passed by, and I heard him declare loudly, "The first one of those bastards gets out of line, I'll plug him right in the belly button." Probably Mr. Moore had been seeing too many reruns of "Gunsmoke." I could only hope for his sake and that of the town that he would have no occasion to use his weapon. The deputy-a pimply-faced youth with a pool hall complexion patted his own low-slung piece and said with an air of bravado, "They won't try nothin' with us, Mr. Moore."

    Two teen-age girls in shorts and halters came out from behind the store to watch us pass. They were heavy-legged and big-busted, and their appearance drew cheers and obscene comments from the riders. Moore angrily ordered the girls back into the house, and they gave him sullen glances before retreating.

    The sheriff had stopped his car at the head of the so-called campground. It wasn't much, simply a cleared patch of raw earth that had been bulldozed out of the forest. If there were any sanitary facilities, they were not apparent. The resentment created among the riders by their first sight of this ravaged landscape was immediate.

    "What kind of fucking dump is this? No water, no crappers, nothin'."

    The sheriff did not attempt to answer these comments, instead he put his prowl car into gear and ground off in a cloud of gravel. His last words were, "Take it easy, boys. The beer will be along pretty soon."

    We milled about uncertainly, some of the riders laying out their bedrolls while others passed joints from hand to hand. No one was happy about the campground, but on the other hand, no one seemed quite sure of what we ought to do about it. At that moment Moore's pickup truck, loaded with several dozen cases of beer, groaned up the slope.

    Moore, still wearing his .45, stopped the truck and called out, "Com'n get it, boys."

    The giant redhead who had exchanged words with me at the roadblock shouted back, "You expect us to drink that piss warm?"

    "You can drink it any way you like," the storekeeper answered. "But this is the way you get it. C.O.D."

    The giant got up from his bedroll and walked over to the truck. Without a word to the storekeeper, he reached into the back of the pickup, heaved out one of the cases of beer, and threw it down with a crash onto the rocks fronting the beach. There were shouts of acclaim from all over the campground.

    "That's the way, Tiny! Show that mother what he can do with his mothering beer!"

    Moore might still have got out of the situation by trying to laugh it off. Instead he reached for his gun. The pistol was half out of its holster when the next case of beer caught him straight in the belly. He went over backwards with the gun still in his hand. Tiny came down hard on the storekeeper's wrist, and the man squealed with pain. The giant picked up the pistol and heaved it into the lake. Then he gave the storekeeper a mighty kick in the ribs.

    Moore groaned. The kick had been brutal enough to snap a couple of ribs. Tiny was getting ready for another when I said, "Hold it!"

    I got up and walked toward them.

    "He's an old man. One more like that, and you're liable to bust his spleen or stop his heart. Do you want to spend the next twenty years behind bars because of a lousy can of beer?"

    "What fucking business is it of yours?"

    "If you kill him, there will be hell to pay for all of us."

    "Not unless some mother talks, there won't."

    I shrugged. "Suit yourself."

    The moment had passed. Tiny's impulse toward murder had been dissipated. Moore groaned and tried to sit up. I gave him a hand.

    Tiny regarded us both with disgust and then said, "Ah, fuck it."

    "Can you drive?" I asked Moore.

    "I… guess so."

    "Then I'd advise you to get into that truck and clear out of here."

    Holding his side he limped over and managed to squeeze behind the wheel. The truck disappeared down the winding track.

    I went back to my bike. A conference was taking place among the leaders. The mood of the riders was growing increasingly ugly.

    I unrolled my poncho and lay down on the muddy ground. I was sick to death of the whole crew. But I could not leave until I had done what I had come for.

    While they cursed and gabbled among themselves, I lay back with my eyes closed.

    "I swear I never knew his real name," Stud had said. "We called him Soldier. He must have been from somewhere up north because he was all the time talking about the rally at Kildare. He had Satan's Slaves colors, but I think he was mostly an independent. When he split, he didn't even say goodbye. Like one day he was here, and the next he was gone."

    "What color were his eyes?"

    "Are you kidding? I wasn't making love to the bastard. How would I know the color of his fucking eyes?"

    "Tattoos?"

    "Maybe he had them, maybe he didn't. Look, there's maybe a couple hundred guys come and go down here in the season. Unless they get out of line, I don't pay no particular attention to them."

    "You're lying," I had said raising the .38.

    "Wait! Now, wait! Be reasonable. Why would I risk my ass to protect some mother I don't even know?"

    "You know what he looks like."

    "Sure."

    "Tell me."

    "He looks like a million other guys. Nothing special."

    "Big or small?"

    "About my build."

    "Light or dark?"

    "You mean his hair?"

    "Yes."

    "Blond last time I saw him."

    "What does that mean?"

    "It means it could be almost any color now. A lot of the guys dye their hair."

    "You'd better start remembering something else pretty fast."

    "Wait! Listen, there was one thing…"

    "What?"

    "He'd done time."'

    "How do you know?"

    "Because I've been in the joint myself, and an ex-con can always spot another."

    "What prison?"

    "I think he said Arkansas. Tucker Farm or Cummings or one of those. I know he was in the flat top there because he was all the time talking about it. You know what I mean by flat top?"

    "No."

    "Solitary, man. Now come on, put away the piece." He was attempting a smile although the fear still stank on him like dried sweat. "What's a piece of ginch more or less? You want ass, man, I'll get you mammas will blow your mind. No snatch is worth killing a guy for. So we pronged her. She'll get over it. She…"

    His eyes widened and his voice dried up with fear as he saw my finger tighten on the trigger. He lunged towards me. The bullet took him in mid-air and threw him back into the dark water.

    A shadow passed across my face and I looked up. Tiny's chick, the teenager in the net shirt, stood over me.

    I closed my eyes again, thinking she might go away.

    "Sleepin'?"

    "No," I said.

    "What's your name?"

    "Shaw."

    "Mine's Pearly."

    "Hi, Pearly."

    She sat down beside me on the poncho and offered me a drag from her joint. Her eyes had the slightly bombed look of the habitual head. Her rounded young buttocks were encased in faded jeans that fit like a second skin. Her blond hair, unlike that of many of the other mammas, appeared to be her own. I found it difficult not to stare at her firm young breasts, naked under the net.