Good Vibrations (20 page)

Here, the crush was drastic. The broad, Wild West main street of Sturgis is designed for a winter population of around 5,000. Now it was home to what was effectively a nation of bikers.

‘There's something like 200,000 machines here,' I overheard one long-haired knight of the road tell his companion.

‘Someone else just said that,' observed Roz,
sotto voce
, ‘but it must mean the number of extra people here, including all the hangers-on. If it was bikes, that would mean half a million humans, and there certainly aren't that many. There's an awful lot, though…' she tailed off as an even denser mass of approaching metal deafened us. The street was virtually impassable as we struggled to wrestle Madonna into a parking space. Two hundred thousand or not, the effect was monstrous as bikes and owners strutted their stuff in the blazing sunshine.

Phenomenally executed tank art abounded. Paintings of Indian chiefs heroically greeting the sunrise shouldered up to neighbouring bikes where half-naked babes reclined in the inviting poses normally reserved for the noses of World War Two American bombers. Bikes with buffalo horns instead of handlebars crushed against sidecar outfits that seemed to contain all the owner's worldly goods, right down to the dog, all kitted out in scarf and goggles. Side panels painted with liquid fire competed for attention with tanks bearing the US flag with a dagger or machine gun and motifs such as, ‘Free Spirit', or, ‘Live whole and die free'. Vast trucks with their diesels idling to keep a cool cab were parked immediately off Main. Superheated gases from gleaming exhausts distorted billboard sides decorated with ghost horsemen, buffalo herds and biker cowboys that would have outfaced the most cynical of art critics.

Towards lunchtime, the strip became so crowded that it was virtually impossible to ride down it, let alone make a pass at its length in a motor car. The only tourist we saw trying was lost without trace. We refreshed ourselves in every bar, elbowing alongside the posers, the enthusiasts and the occasional genuine hooligan, but we never found our friends.

‘I'll bet you they've all vanished into the same legend as the gang warfare and the mob sex,' I said to Marek, who had also failed to find a Canadian he was hoping to run into. In a final effort to dig out some deep-down human colour, the four of us jostled into town on our last night to try our luck in the once-infamous Broken Spoke Saloon.

We jammed the bikes into the side parking lot soon after midnight and shouldered our way to the bar through massed, uniformed motorcyclists sipping small beers. Another great band was blasting away for all it was worth along the only solid wall. The other three sides of the huge room were open to above head height, allowing drinkers to wander in and out more or less at will, while affording those inside an uninterrupted view of the world's most spectacular motorcycle parking lot. Interesting bikes were suspended from the upper walls, mostly Harley-Davidsons, but one ‘Indian' graced the scene with its 1930s styling. I was pleased to note a British Norton and, of all things, a Matchless, a lifetime away from the Mersey Tunnel. Amongst the metal were charts of North America covered in markers indicating sites on prairie, mountain, desert or in towns where ‘fallen brothers' had met their violent ends.

Marek stumped up almost as much for a round of drinks as Roz and I had recently paid for a full night's lodgings, and we squashed into a square yard of floor space. The bodies were so densely packed that taking in an overall impression was impossible, but it was safe to say that although fashions in here were even more racy than on the road, the action was slower than the last bike at an Angel's funeral. Shapely women accompanied some of the boys, as usual wearing imaginatively revealing variations on the traditional biker gear. Two close by had opened their jerkins to reveal breasts straight from a tabloid newspaper, but despite the provocation, none of the brave lads were fondling them.

‘Keep your eyes down, boys,' Marlika had spotted Marek and I shaping up. ‘If you so much as tweak a nipple, you'll be sued for sexual harassment. You're not in Amsterdam now!'

At the bar, a couple of aggressively unattached girls were either searching for love or touting for custom. One, a tall woman whose face revealed her to be around forty, still had a figure like Miss America. Clothed modestly in a halter top and tight jeans, her roving eye brimmed with promise. Her blonde chum was shorter but more than made up for her lack of stature in all other departments. Her cowboy hat set off a ‘come-on-boys' grin and her faded jeans were so tattered they were literally falling off her tanned bum. As we drank our cloudy beers, we watched several guys plucking up courage to tackle this pair, but after an hour there was no sign of close contact. Nobody danced, although the drummer of the band had clearly been sent by God; nobody was shot, although it seemed more than likely that a number of those present would be armed, and if there was any casual sex going on, it was in the cosy privacy of some RV.

‘I don't know why Americans can't let themselves go properly,' said Marlika suddenly. ‘It's bloody frustrating. Look at this scene. It's the best in the world. But where's the action?'

‘I've known plenty from this side of the ocean who could walk on the ceiling after a few pints,' I argued, although really I was right behind her.

‘They're all in your memory,' Roz put in. ‘We knew some lunatics in the old days, but the puritans seem to be winning now.'

‘They certainly know how to set a scene though,' Marek growled, ‘and look at this waste of talent.'

He had hit the spot with his last remark. All the rest was idle talk. Like him, I'd been trying not to think about the possibilities of this bar for a single man who knew what he wanted. In the end, our wives took pity on us and we were led away, seething with frustration. Muscling back to the bikes, we dragged them out of the tangle of ironmongery and the four of us roared off into the night.

On a whim, without even discussing a plan, we steered into the Black Hills, gaining altitude all the way. We clattered through the gold-rush town of Deadwood, where Wild Bill Hickok was gunned down from behind as he played poker in Saloon Number Ten, on through the active mining community of Lead, tucked deep into its system of conjoining valleys, and made a further 10 miles towards the Wyoming Line, then stopped in total darkness.

For the first time in four days, the only motorcycle noise was that of our own machines cooling off as we split a full hip flask of Bourbon. It was cold in the still night, and fresh with the scent of the pine trees. We shrugged down inside our gear, huddling together for warmth. Suddenly, the eerie howl of a timber wolf rang out around the mountainside above us. A second took up the refrain, with more joining in until the hills were echoing with the ancient cadences. My spine shivered as the supernatural sound rose and fell under the circling stars. For a while, I tried to gauge whether the pack was heading our way, but soon I realised that these secret inhabitants of the sacred mountains were going about their prehistoric business with less interest in me than I had in a rabbit back in the Badlands. Left undisturbed, their descendants would be wailing their melancholy song long after both me and all the motorbikes in the world were dead and rotten.

16
THE GREAT DIVIDE
AND THE DEEP
GREEN REDWOODS

A moment arrives about half-way through a month-long ocean sailing passage when the mariner stops looking back to the previous existence before departure, and starts considering the possibilities of the destination. This is an emotional effect over which a sailor has no control. Coming on watch, he settles to the helm and chooses his steering star, only to find himself thinking about what he will order when he hits the first restaurant on the new continent, or what mountain he will climb. At the same time, the troubles and joys of his past life begin to fade into history. Then he knows the procession of days is working on his soul. Traversing Wyoming and on up through Montana, Roz and I experienced the same phenomenon. We recognised the signs, asking each other whether pioneers and settlers lurching down the Oregon Trail had had a similar impression.

Mountains almost the whole length of both Americas lay across our path and the country was opening up into views that seemed to encompass half the planet. California and the West Coast were still 1,000 miles away, yet we had come so far that, quite unexpectedly, our initial destination felt within reach. For me at least, the succeeding days continued to deliver meaning enough by virtue of the road flashing below my boots, but the journey had adjusted my mindset and I realised that, like the stormy sea passages that had preceded it, it would leave its marks on me.

Perhaps it was significant that this powerful response coincided with our arrival at the Little Bighorn, the site of the confrontation between Custer and the Sioux. That crucial encounter was the inevitable conclusion of the increasing scale of mining activities in the Black Hills, which the US government had guaranteed would remain undisturbed forever. Repeated betrayals, broken promises and the sickeningly predictable shooting down of women and children finally left those Indians who had rejected the reservations with no effective choice. In large numbers they came upon Custer's troops. Under the wide skies of Montana, inflamed with impotent injustice, they showed the man who had opened up the ‘Thieves' Road' into the Black Hills what they were capable of. The aftermath of this humiliating annihilation of the white man was one of systematic revenge upon the Indians, culminating in the Wounded Knee massacre.

Despite their effective combat credentials, the Sioux and their allies the Cheyenne proved as powerless to stop the European expansion into even a small part of the West as had any other Native American. One of history's great expansions was in full marching order, backed by a well-organised political and military system. The Indians never stood a chance.

As we breasted the rising prairie, Big Horn County was as impressive as its name, with huge panoramas of undulating hills covered with waving grass and dotted with bushes of darker green. The sun shone from a cloudless sky and tourists flocked to a visitor centre occupying a stretch of ground that would have brought delight to a buffalo in search of a fruitful afternoon. Under a large sun awning on the putative site of the General's last stand, a bus-load of these good folk were receiving the word about Custer over the tannoy. Signs pressed us to go the same way, but we ignored them and strolled across to where rows of immaculate headstones marked the graves of the fallen. These appeared to be white men only but, in fairness, it may be that the Indians disposed of the bodies of their own dead elsewhere.

Walking the battlefield was forbidden, but a minibus offered tours. Cutting our losses, we returned to the bikes instead, thinking how much better the Sioux had managed their memorial at Wounded Knee. Next, we sidestepped the gift shop and made 5 miles across the otherwise deserted prairie. The only sounds to break into the rushing whisper of the breeze were occasional shouts from a distant cowboy working a small herd of cattle. Only the ever-circling birds were as they must always have been.

After the Little Bighorn, the ‘California-bound' feeling firmed up. I felt I could almost smell the sea. We expanded our daily runs, and without any prompting I found myself humming an obscure folk song I once heard sung by two middle-aged sisters. It is the story of a woman dreaming of leaving New York State – her ‘home away from home' – pleading to go with her man to the paradise of the northern California coast. The heart of the message is the desire to travel alongside him to Mendocino. Closing her eyes she hears the sound of the sea, and nothing else matters any more. 

The roads we chose were poor in surface, but as the foothills of the mountains approached, the vistas grew and grew until it seemed we were seeing the world through a fisheye lens. I swear the plain tilted up at each edge, so vast was the area we were trying to take in with our small-scale English eyes. Despite the pitted roads, we were both running at 70 mph or more now, Roz watching for every bump and niche, me keeping an eye open for the now common deer or antelope which can snuff a rider as efficiently as a rifle bullet just by leaping out of a ditch under his front wheel. Every bartender had a tale of some poor brother who ended up in deadly embrace with a buck that fate sent his way at the wrong moment. A ‘fashion biker' crawl made some sense in this respect, but the high plains of Montana blew such considerations to the winds. The craving for freedom that is an integral part of the speed illusion drove us on with open throttles. After a while, I became almost drunk with the unfolding scenery which must surely be among the world's finest, retreating to my California fancy with the McGarrigle Sisters, their journey seemed to parallel our own as they passed South Bend Indiana to career across the Western Plains, ultimately tackling the distant barrier of the high Rockies.

One more sagebrush-scented day gave way to the mountains rising in majesty across the skyline. Climbing steadily, we negotiated ‘Suicide Pass' and rode over the Great Continental Divide less than twenty-four hours after traversing the incredibly wandering Missouri for the last time. From now on, the rivers would be trending westward. More fuel to the California fire.

Still coming to terms with the downhill feeling, we stopped at a railroad barrier shortly beyond the Divide where a locomotive had come to a temporary halt. When it had pulled its unusually short train away with the standard roar of exhaust, rippling clank of couplings and whistle of turbos, we were confronted by the Last Chance Saloon across the tracks. I wheeled into the forecourt of this low-slung, tarred shanty at the foot of a steep, wooded incline to stretch my legs and was shortly being interviewed by a large man who had burst out of the batwing doors into the sunshine.

He ignored me for a moment as he perused Black Madonna, then he spoke.

‘Where you from with them plates on your bike?' His breath was pure Budweiser.

‘England.'

‘Thought so.' He deliberated this improbable information with agonising slowness, then concluded, ‘holy shit,' so deliberately that each syllable took a full second to fall from his lips. He clamped his ‘Mom's Donuts' hat hard over his eyes and drove away on a red tractor. Although not talkative, he seemed a nice man, so I concluded the bar couldn't be as bad as it looked and persuaded Roz to break her ‘no beer' principle while riding. Although the days had cooled off with the rising altitude, even at 6,000 feet it was still 90 degrees in the midday sun, so selling the idea wasn't hard.

‘Just the one…'

Inside, the place seemed as dark as night, probably because there were no windows. Accustoming my eyes to the gloom, I made out two spare stools at the bar. The bartender scored high marks for not opening with, ‘We have…' and listing a dozen types of bottled beer, none of which I had ever heard of. This conventional politeness pervades American eating and drinking establishments and after the novelty has worn off it can drive a traveller to booze. Such courtesies were not on the agenda at the Last Chance, so I tried my cool US biker act.

‘Gimme two Coors.' It sounded extraordinarily rude to me, but our man clearly expected nothing else. He served them up without comment.

‘You guys from England, did I hear?' The man beside Roz was leaning across her. His mate on his far side was also taking an interest. I had seen them walk by during the crux of our conversation with the Mom's Donut man outside.

We confirmed that we were.

‘You ridden all the way on them fancy rigs?'

Roz's glance flickered my way.

‘Depends what you mean by all the way?' I responded carefully, suspecting this to be a wind-up that might need slick handling.

‘Like, from your door to Montana.'

I looked hard at Roz and let her reply.

‘We had to fly the first bit, you know,' she said, ‘and the bikes came over on a boat, but we've ridden from Baltimore.'

The hillman nodded, reassured to have us placed.

‘Figured you'd never have biked it from England. How it is here, you see, we're suffering sore from them states back East.' He was sure now of the nature of his audience and was readily backed up by grunts from his sidekick.

‘Suffering?'

‘Sure. Suffering. First, we got them comin' out here an' buyin' up all the best properties. Montana's our state, but they're tryin' to turn it into some goddamn National Park.'

I had no problem sympathising with this, but the man looked at me suspiciously, convinced already that I was some sort of subversive from Massachusetts, or Rhode Island, or England.

‘This Clinton's the worst of them,' he continued. ‘Taxes are crap. Gas is huge money…'

‘It's five dollars a gallon where we come from,' I said, getting fed up with this. I'd just filled up at $1.35. Petrol hadn't cost as little back home since the 1970s. ‘Besides, you have no sales tax. You must be one of the few states that can say that.'

‘That's all shit,' he rambled on. Five dollars for gas was the tallest tale he'd ever heard, his expression said. ‘The worst of it is, Clinton wants to take our guns. That's fine for him livin' safe in a city back East, but he don't have to face no grizzlies or cats in the backwoods. How we supposed to defend ourselves if we ain't got no guns?'

The barman brought more beer for our advisors, though I saw no order pass between them, nor money on the table. I thought about the firearms and the nights waiting for the hitman back in New York City. I almost laughed, but the drunk was still talking.

‘Them grizzlies'll eat you for pleasure,' he went on, warming up as soon as he saw Roz flinch, a classic bully, feeding on the signs of vulnerability. If only he knew, I thought. ‘And the cats…'

‘Cats?'

‘Yeah. Cats. You know – mountain lions. They take twenty, thirty kids a year.'

‘Two or three, I heard,' I interjected, having read the handout offered free at the state line.

‘You'd 'spect politicians to say that,' put in the second redneck with a sneer. ‘They don't want to put off no tourists, see?'

‘Anyways,' continued his mate, ‘you folks wanna watch out for bears in these mountains, 'specially with a woman. They love the smell of women. Particularly at what you might call “that time of the month”.'

‘An' they love the stink of sex,' Roz had clearly had enough as ‘number two' made his play for ruining her trip, ‘'course, if you're properly armed, bears ain't no worry…'

Roz finished her beer, setting the bottle down with eloquent dignity.

‘I'll speak to the Governor,' she said evenly, watching their eyes drop from hers, ‘because after what you've told us, I can't believe all state parks don't already have large ‘No Sex' signs at the entrances.'

We left in tight order and camped that night by a rushing river in the impossibly named ‘Deadman's Gulch'. No grizzly, puma, or any other wild thing disturbed our uneasy slumber, but as usual we hung our victuals in a tree rather than bring them in the tent with us and encourage unwanted animal visitors.

Despite recognising the rantings of the Last Chance drinkers for the rubbish it was, even Roz was shaken by our encounter with redneck Montana. I lay beside her on my crippling airbed, listening as ever for the dreaded rustlings in the trees, casting my mind back to a graphic statement by another American upset by President Clinton's attack on the gun culture.

Back in Kansas, not far from Dodge City, we had discovered a strange crop on a dead-flat field. Instead of corn, squash or alfalfa, the land was sown with closely packed plywood statues representing leaders of the nation. These brightly painted cartoon sculptures were, according to the accompanying sign, the work of one M. T. Liggett, an artist so confident of receiving no hate messages from the passers-by that he even left his phone number. President Reagan was let off lightly. His caricature was unflattering, but the legend was simple. ‘Best,' was all it said. President Clinton did not receive such generous treatment from this pithy social commentator. The most powerful man in the world was depicted as ‘Bubba Bill', all pink bare flesh, pot belly and striped red boxer shorts. A pennant with the word, ‘Hero', dangled from exposed, diminutive ‘privates' and he wore a yellow hat. The attached sign read, ‘Commander-in-Chief – Yellow Beret Draft Ducker.'

Further down the long line of images, beside a cryptic representation of the popular maverick candidate Ross Perot, was another burlesque of Mr Clinton, this time with a full written indictment:

‘The right to own a gun is being lost to a yellow-livered cowardly jackal that was too damned gutless to carry one during the Vietnam War. More than 58,000 men died with guns in their hands while the lousy bastard dodged the draft at Oxford. Character doesn't matter???'

We hoped that Mr Liggett loved his neighbours and that they put up with him, because this extraordinary assertion of the right to say what one thinks had left us gasping. Free speech is one thing, but it was hard for us to believe that this sort of massive licence wasn't somehow illegal. But if it was, the sheriff obviously agreed with its content and looked firmly the other way.