So, I'm standin lookin out into the God almighty desert, watchin this pitiful little two-lane excuse of a road wander off over the horizon, and I'm wonderin, seein as I haven't seen a damn thing for over two hours, the trip odometer says 119, which means I'm about 50 miles from bein completely out of gas, just what the hell do I think I'm doin out here anyway. I mean, it's hot as shit, no water, no shade, no brush, no trees, no fences, nothin. Just endless miles of this broke down, was supposed to have been paved, pothole havin, rock dodgin, ass busting, looks like it hasn't been worked on in forever, fuckin hot ass road.
Just seems longer than it is, I'm thinkin, but still can't shake feeling like I might ought to have turned left a hundred miles ago and headed north instead.
"Yeah, north woulda been good." I'm mumblin to myself now. Not a good sign. The desert ignores me, and just sits glarin in the sun. I'm thinkin we're both under siege here, me and the desert. So we're like, partners then, bound by our common threat, annihilation by overdryin. Gettin this revelation makes me feel better somehow. Like maybe my coming to that understanding puts me more in tune with those things that live here, both the seen and the unseen. I mean, it's not like I'm gettin real nervous or anything, a lot can happen in 50 miles, but still.
A hot breeze touches me, passin by on it's way to the Harley's waiting cooling fins. I take another swallow from the water bag. Hot water, nasty with the flavor of dusty burlap and rubber, but wet enough.
The bag was passed to me by this crusty old biker I met at last gas. He'd pulled in at the pump next to me on a wheezy ‘46 knuckle that looked like it hadn't seen paint in forever. Bikers being what we are, he comes over and asks me about my ride, (an ‘86 FXRD) and we shoot the shit while we gas up.
After I finish answerin his questions about the RD,( you mean you really got a radio on that thing?) we get to talking back roads, and then he had suggested this route. "Good scenic ride" he'd called it, a semi toothless grin crackin his leathery old face. And after convincing me that it was "pretty mellow and a hell of a lot more fun than the interstate," added, " and you might ought to be borrowin this bag seein as you was headed out that way." I shoulda known better then. " You can give it back next time I see ya.", he says. Yeah, I think, like I'm ever gonna see this guy again. But I take and fill the bag with water from the station cistern, not bein one to disrespect my elders, and strap it to the tour pack. I remember wonderin how old it might be.
"I hear you laughin, asshole," I say, remembering that grin. "Yeah, you really put one over on this youngster, ya did. Just wait ‘till I see your crusty old ass again, then we'll see who's laughin."
I ‘m thinkin I might even make time to look for him.
The pipes on the RD ping a couple more times and fall silent. Damn it's hot. I size up the distance to the next horizon, figurin it at maybe 10 or so miles, and strappin the bag on the luggage rack, slip back into the hot leather saddle. I bump the starter and the bike grunts once and rolls over... "Another hour or two and we walk maybe," I say, tappin the tranny into first. The bike grumbles, and the desert just glares back into space. I ease the clutch out and we roll out onto patchy pavement. Shit, they would‘ve been better leavin the damn road dirt as to have these big loose chunks of rotting asphalt givin way to bigger spaces of loose rock and dirt. This has been getting worse by the hour and looks to be gettin shittier by the mile.
I just manage a modest 45/50 mph and the big bike don't like it much either, bouncin hard and slidin around in the worst of the bigger patches. Sand holes sneak up like terrorists and turn the whole bike dancing thing into a medium speed wrestling match. Finally, after 15 more miles of worse and slower progress, and just about the time I think we're gona have to walk anyway, we get a break and a few miles of decent road. Now, we can settle in and roll on a little throttle. The asphalt is a long narrow ribbon now, anywhere from two or six feet wide, winding around the roadbed in long gravely curves between the holes. This is better, the RD purrs. We cruise. The wind dries the sweat the last few miles worked up, feeling cooler at first, but turnin hot way to soon.
That horizon I remember sayin seemed ten miles or so turns out to be a good twenty, and now I'm doing the math about how much farther I might be ridin given the slower speeds, but offset by the down shifting and tire spinnin, and then I come to the edge of the world.
I ease the bike to a stop right there in the middle of the road, (hell, there ain't nobody out here anyhow) hit the kill switch and get off. The RD's grumble dies away and then there is only wind and the pipes pinging.
Here the road does this fairly steep, looks to be about four hundred foot drop down the face of this cliff and then away forever across what has got to be the Great Salt Lake bed. Yeah, a lot down, a lot away...a lot away. That old buzzard has to be laughin his ass off over this one.
I get out my map and start tryin to find out where I fucked up. This can't be right! But after a few minutes of careful scrutiny, I figure this is part of the great salt lake that might be on somebody's map, but ain't on mine, and I'm about as far out into the middle of nowhere as a man might could get.
Yep, where there had been nothin before, there was less than nothin now.
I stare out into the shimmering heat waves. A cold spot of "Oh Shit" starts easin up in my gut. I stand there a while, not long , and think about tryin to ride back the way I'd come and just maybe I might run into somebody and be saved, but I figured this is the worse of my choices-goin backwards has always fucked me up in the past-so I wind up takin the cap off the gas tank for a look at how long I might have before I was gonna have to get real inventive about alternative fuels. From the look of things, with reserve... I stop trying to figure it out. It was gonna be however long it was.
I unstrap the water bag and take a drink. The water in it is hot enough for coffee and tastes like dirty latex. I dig my binoculars out of the tour pac, and start scannin the horizon. The glasses do a pretty good job of cutting through the heat shimmer, and lookin as far down the road as they let me, which is a few miles further, I can see there is still nothin...Shit. The water bag is about a third full; the fuel tank, about a quarter. I take another hit off the bag. Might as well keep things even.
The sun is droppin a little now, but hardly enough for any break from the heat. I figure it'd be better runnin across that at night, if we can get across that, so I make shade with my ground cloth and the bike and crawl under with that water bag to wait for dusk.
Now, I gotta tell ya, this whole time, which has been hours, I still haven't seen or heard another thing. Got to be a first for me. Not a car, no planes. Just this road, and it would pass for abandoned on a busy day. I'm thinkin that the interstate shoulda showed a long time ago, and that this road has got to go somewhere, else why would it be here? I take another couple hits off the bag and try to get some sleep.
Shit... Sleepin hot ain't ever been somethin I enjoyed doin. While I can escape the misery of the heat, it always brings weird dreams. Like this one-there's a bell ringin, but I can't find out where the damn thing is. A little dingin bell like farmers put on sheep. I keep hearin it, and hearin it, until finally I come to and I'm layin there next to/under the bike. It's some cooler now, the sun a lot lower, almost gone, leavin a rosy -silver kinda light on everything. A new wind has picked up, a cooler one, and is pulling on the ground cloth, tapping a metal grommet against one of the RD's mufflers. "Bell mystery solved," I'm thinkin as I roll out from under the tarp and drag myself off the ground. A cloud of dust and sand falls away as I stand up and is carried over the edge by the wind.
I wonder how long I've been out. Seemed a short time, but all that dirt got me wonderin. Had to ‘a been that breeze then, had to ‘a been.
I walk around some, trying to shake off the heavy feelin I get from sleepin in the heat, takin in the view from the edge and gettin my mind off that dream and back to the reality of survivin this run. I check the fuel gauge and the level in the tank again just to be sure, the tires, look for loose parts. I have some jerky and eat a piece or two.
The rosy-silver light fades to rosy-gray. I hit on the bag again. The water is still hot, not quite as hot as earlier, but still nasty and dry tastin. My own canteens were emptied in the first few hours of this trip, one from a hole rubbed in it where it had been bounced one to many times, the other by me before I started on the bag. I think about the old biker again, thankful for the musty old water bag, but still cussin myself for trustin him about this road.
Takin up the glasses again, I peer out across the flat, now not so obscured by heat waves, and this time, at the edge where the light of day is givin way to night, I think I pick up the glimmer of light. Man-made metallic lookin light. I study it for a while, just to make sure it's real and not some figment of my overheated head, but it stays in place, so I figure it must be real. It's something anyway.
After the initial drop, the road coasts down that four hundred or so feet out onto the flat over a couple of miles. I figure I'll save a few drops of fuel by just rolling over the edge and down until the bike runs out of momentum. Which is what I do after packin the tarp and all away.
Pushin the bike up to the crest, I take a couple deep breaths, screw my hands onto the handle grips, and throwin my leg over the seat, push on over the edge. So now we're rollin down that mountainside into the gathering darkness, half slidin, half fallin, the road all loose at first, rocks and sand chasin us down, the bigger stuff passing, speedo risin until it says something like 90, but it's hard to tell with all the rattling and bouncin. I'm just hangin on tryin to keep the back end from passin the front and the wind is screamin and the road is getting better and flatter and then at last we're out onto the flat for at least another mile and a half before I tap the starter. The RD drops to that contented purr as we settle in at 60, the headlight burning us a tunnel through the night sky.
The ride smooths out and for the next 20 minutes the bike and I just cruise. The road here hard and undamaged, lettin the tires sing their highway song. It's almost completely dark now, and gettin downright cold, so after a bit, I pull to a stop, shut the bike off to save fuel, and get to unpackin my leather. The wind has sound on it here. Not anything you could put a name to, just little pops and jingles, squeals and cries. All wrapped up with the hiss of moving air-ancient, forever... Once I even think I hear the sound of plodding horses and the jingle of tac, some voices and that damn bell from my dream, but except for the salt and the wind, there is nothing else.
I dig my jacket out, get my maglite, and walk to the edge of the road to check out the ground. White as sugar, dried extra crispy, and in all directions unbroken, featureless and bleak. I try pickin at it with my buck knife, it's deep and hard packed. Salt crystals glitter in the flashlight beam. I figure they coulda just about of painted a line on it (which, except for the inch or so of rise where the roadbed is, they did) and that woulda been good enough.
It's about 40 minutes when I have to switch to reserve. Like it's really reserve. I think reserve is just there to let you know your gona walk in 30 miles or less.
I slow down some and focus on that light in the distance. How much farther? Surely not that far. I've already come farther than I thought I was going to be able to.
Droppin to about 40 mph, I'm startin to really think about drag and wind resistance and milage. And packin spare gas if I come out of this alive.
Thirty minutes later the bike makes that first cough of starvation and five minutes after that we roll to a stop. The trip odometer says 197.4. Well, I always wanted to know how just how far I could go on a full tank, but I sure woulda liked to have been somewhere else when I found out. Shit..
I switch off the ignition and the headlight goes out, lettin the night close in around us. I push out the jiffy stand and settle the RD onto it. It's about as dark now as it's probably gona get.
Lookin back the way we've come, there is only darkness and stars. No moon tonight. Ahead, only darkness, stars, and way off, that light. Shit. The salt seems dimly illuminated from within, and the road at least, stands out against it, a black ribbon into a blacker night. That ‘Oh Shit' feeling grows a little. "This is good, right?" I ask the night sky. Yeah, right.
Wind moves over the flat unhindered, and I think about sails. I stand around awhile, chewin a piece of jerky, ponderin my options. I fish my cell phone out of the saddle bag and turn it on. The display flares on, the phone scans around, and then prints ‘no service' across the LCD. "No shit, really?" I'm talkin to the phone now, not a good sign. I put it up and eat the jerky.
Finally, I just heave the RD off the stand and start pushin. I mean, what the hell else is there to do. And I ain't leavin the bike... Fuck that. So now I'm pushin the RD along, talkin with it like I would any good horse, hopin I might get to somewhere before sunrise. I didn't want to be caught out here in the full blaze of day if I could help it.
The water bag is less than quarter full now, nowhere near enough for a full day of pushin the bike in this place.
I pick up the pace a little at that. Shit. There is only the wind, and the crunch of the RD's tires against the road. My boot heels count miles. A couple of times I swear I hear a bell, and once way off, the sound of an engine for a beat or two, but I never see anything. After many hours, a fog rises from the salt and even the stars go out. I walk.
After a time, I stop and check the clock on the RD's dash. 3:42 am. Three, maybe four hours till sunup. I rest a few minutes, take a drink, and press on.
An hour later, it feels like I'm startin to push up hill, but I can't really tell. Probably just gettin tired. The fog is thick and smells faintly of pine, but it's dark and I don't want to stop. I push.
Dawn catches me restin. One minute it's almost pitch black, the next, a gray smudge appears overhead. I'm laying on my back in the middle of the road, lettin the ache flow out of my legs and when I open my eyes again, it's gray. The fog is still thick, I can see the wind pushing it around in swirls. Time to go. I want to keep layin here, but I know better. Plenty of time for layin around later, after it's too hot to push any more. I grab the RD and shove off, and right away the ache returns.
That ‘Oh Shit' feeling, like the one you get when you realize you just entered a corner way too fast, owns most all my gut now.
I think that the nasty ass water in the bag must be makin me sick. I go through a whole thing about am I ready to die?, and how nobody knows I'm out here, and I how won't even be considered overdue for a week. All that.
I talk with God some about it, but He just laughs and reminds me that it's better to push a Harley than ride a rice burner and to stop whining and keep pushin. That helps, I push.
Another hour passes and the fog is startin to thin down some. The bike is killer heavy and the road is still dead flat. My feet are numb, (a good thing) but my back is just about all in.
I'm just about to call a halt when I smell bacon cookin. I stop then. The smell vanishes into the fog and is gone. I wait a minute to see if it's gonna come back, but it doesn't.
The fog is thinnin a lot now, and rays of sun are beginning to break through. Too weird. I decide I must be hallucinating from fatigue, but I need to keep movin.
So I take up pushing again, and I guess I make about a 100 yards or so, when I hear something sounds like sizzilin and metal dishes bangin together, and then the fog breaks and there-no shit-there at the side of the road, crouched over a one burner propane camp stove with a-no shit-pan full of hot grub on it, is that same crusty old son of a bitch I'd met the day before. Two cups of coffee sit coolin off on the road beside his battered old knuckle. There are a couple of gallon cans labeled "Gasoline" by the front wheel. A small gold bell I hadn't noticed the day before is danglin from the left floor board.
"You still got my water bag, boy?" he says without lookin up. "I need some for the taters."
I stare for a minute. The old fucker seems to sorta glow a little.
"Well?" he says, lookin up now.
"You're real then?" I'm lookin for his eyes, but they're hidden behind his shades.
"Still like to kick my ass too, I'll bet," he says without missing a beat.
I look at that pan of food, and the two coffees. The gas, the bell...
"You were expectin company then?" I ask, lowering the jiffy stand and settin the RD down.
He stops fussin with the cookin then and looks me and my bike over real slow. We look a lot like him and his bike now. The RD is dust covered and tired lookin. I figure I look about the same or worse.
He splits the food in the pan into equal halves and hands me a plate. That grin then. "Better to push a Harley than ride a rice burner, eh boy?" he says.
"Ya know, I think I heard that somewhere before." I say, looking at the RD and thinkin about pushin the heavy beast all night. "Rice would've been easier to push."
"True," he agrees, "but not near as much fun, right?" He's lookin at me, grinnin his grin, makin me feel a little like a bug in a jar.
I'm still a little warm from pushing the bike, so I take off my jacket and sit down in the roadway next to the RD and settle into eatin his cookin, which is about the best I've tasted in a while. Even his coffee, which he makes by filling his little pot with water, a handful of grounds, a palm full of sugar, all at the same time mind you, and then boiling the whole mess, is great. I watch as he fills his cup again, and then adds a little chunk of salt from the lake bed. He tosses me a piece of the salt, about the size of a sugar cube, and tells me to add it to my coffee, that it'll help. "Is this gona be anything like the help you gave me in pickin a more scenic route?" I'm starting to feel a little more like myself now, his food, coffee, and company all working on lifting my spirits.
"Liked that little trip, did ya?" he laughs. "Bet ya got a big kick out of the view from the rim on the other side. That's always been my favorite part of this ride, especially that drop off the edge."
He picks up the coffee pot and checks the contents. "You want the rest of this coffee?" I hold out my cup and he pours the rest of the pot into it. There is still food on my plate, so I set to finishing it while I watch him putter around his camp, packin up his gear, using a fist sized chunk of the salt and a small amount of the water in his bag to clean his mess kit. Everything he packs goes into it's place like it's always been there. His old leather bags show wear and indentations where the different pieces fit. I watched his coffee pot settle into it's nest at the rear of the right bag.
"You've had that bike a while I guess?" I ask between mouthfuls.
"Probably longer than you've been alive the way I figure it." he says. " Bought it new a couple years after the war, and it's been with me ever since. You might say she's more like family than just a bike." He comes over and picks up my now empty plate and cup and sets to cleaning them, and then puts them into their place with his gear. "You got a name, boy?" he asks as he opens the left bag, takes out a funnel and picks up the gas cans.
"It's Ed." I answer, getting to my feet to help him with the fuel. "People who know me call me Crazy Ed. But Ed will work. You?"
I take the funnel and one can of gas from him, remove the gas cap and hold the funnel in the hole while he pours the RD's breakfast into her.
"Collie Smith." He says, holdin out his gnarled, salt encrusted hand. We shake. His hand is hard and calloused, his grip strong. "What's the crazy part about."
"Probably for doing crazy shit like talking to crusty old biker trash and taking whatever roads they might recommend, among other abnormal antics." I tell him. He really cackles at that and slapping me on the back, calls me a "college boy", and finishes putting the two gallons of gas into the tank in a silence that is broken only by the wind and his quiet chuckles to himself.
When we're done he packs the cans onto the back of his rig and then throws a leg over the knucklehead and when he picks it up off the stand, it just starts running. No electric start, and I never saw him kick it. He grins then. "Like I said, she's more like family than anything else." He prods his clutch with his left foot and slips the tank mounted gear selector into low.
"You gona let me pay you for the gas and food?" I say loud so he can hear me over the rumble of the knuckle. "There's a little place about thirty or so miles on from here," he hollers back. "Pay the girl at the bar!" And then he just dumps that clutch and is gone into the leftover mist. I can hear the knuckle's bark fading away as he works his way through the gears. He heads out the way I came in, west toward the rim. I think I would have liked to have watched him ride back up that drop. And damn, I forgot to ask him how the hell he got here before me.......
I set myself about gettin ready to go myself then, checkin my tires, oil, lookin for those loose nuts and bolts. The wind finally blows the sound of Collie's ride away across the flat and I finish my inspection of the RD. It's still a little cool, so I put on my jacket back on, lock my luggage, slip into the saddle and hit the starter. The RD starts right up, her sound filling the air around me like music. I let her warm up for a few minutes, feel her wake from her iron sleep, shaking off her stiffness and then we're off.
For the first few miles it's just the flats, but the mountains are coming fast, and in ten more miles, I'm in timber fifty feet high. The leftover patches of fog disappear behind me as the road is climbing for real now, the surface becoming hard packed dirt after leaving the flat of the lake bed. It does a lot of curvin around to the left, then switchin back to the right, and still no traffic, and then just like he said, when my odometer is reading thirty-one, I come across a small gas station/restaurant. A small sign out front says Smith Mercantile.
I pull up to the pump and fill my tank, to the very top this time, and go inside to pay up. This place is a little general store along with being gas station/restaurant, so I cruise the isles, picking up a few groceries, a one gallon gas can, get a cold beer from the old Coca Cola cooler, and head for the check out counter.
There are old time pictures all over the walls, along with old road and product signs, antique bits and pieces of times past. And like he said, there's a fine lookin young girl tendin the store. I put my stuff on the counter, and we make small talk while she rings everything up. Where I was from, where I was going, how I came to be here, that stuff. She starts to finish up with my stuff just about the time I get to the part about Collie Smith saying I should pay her for what he did for me, and also add the one gallon of gas I'm gona put in the can... She stops then and looks at me like I got a screw loose or something. "What?" I ask her. "You say Collie Smith says you should pay me for two gallons of gas and a breakfast?" she says a little wide eyed. "Yeah." I say. "Old guy, rides a ratty old knucklehead that starts itself, never takes off his shades?"
She rings up the new charges without sayin anything else and I pay her. "You should wash up before you leave." she says. "There's a washroom around back." "I smell that bad?" I ask her, but she doesn't answer, or laugh, just gives me a little shy smile and shrugs her shoulders.
I go out to the gas pump and fill my new gas can with gas and find a place for it on the RD. The store is situated in a cleft in the mountain side, not much more than a large turn out really. A light breeze stirs the air and insects fill in the blanks in the soundtrack. I fish out my shavin kit and head out back. I round the corner of the main building to find a small bath house, complete with shower and fresh towels. A small sign states that showers are fifty cents each and use as much water as you need, but be sure to clean up after yourself. A quick look in the mirror convinces me I should take advantage of this offer and after changing into some clean clothes (jeans, clean socks and another tee shirt) I leave my fifty cents on the counter and head back around front.
I find the girl sitting on the bench out front of the store with a small package, and an old photo. "You look better now." she says, walking over to the bike. She hands me the old photo which turns out to be of a young guy, a girl that looks a lot like her, and a fresh '46 knucklehead. The couple looks flushed and excited. The young guy looks kinda familiar, and then I recognize him, it's Collie Smith about eight hundred years younger. "That's my grandparents when they were just kids." she explains. "They started this store back in the forties. There was some talk back then that a big highway was going to go through here, that's why this road you're on was started in the first place, and my grandfather wanted to be here when it got here, but when the plan changed they decided to keep the store here anyway. They loved riding that bike together. Granddad even named the bike after her. After she died he still went riding every weekend, just like they always did together.
One weekend before he left on his ride, he came and told me that every now and then he might have to extend credit to this or that person, and that if they showed up and payed that I was to give them these things.
Strangest thing though, granddad has been gone for more than ten years now. He rode his motorcycle out that weekend and never came back. About a month later the sheriff found his body along side the Harley on the other side of the flat at the rim. So far, you're the forth biker to come that way to get here."
She sighed a little and handed me the package. "So I guess this is yours." She smiled that shy smile again and takin up her picture of the young couple, walks back into the store. She never looks back.
I stand there a minute lettin this new info soak in, listening to the bugs and the birds, takin in the serenity of the place, and then turn my attention to the small package. Just a little bundle wrapped in brown paper and tied with a piece of string. I set it on the seat and unwrap it. Inside is a small brass bell, and a new version of the old man's water bag. I hang the little bell from the front left crash bar and then go to the old water pump that's standing over a small concrete tank by the side of the building. I fill the bag as full as I can get it.
It takes me a few minutes to figure out just where to put it, what with the new gas can and all.
It winds up fittin perfect, swinging from the back of my tour pac.

By Crazy Ed

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