Good Vibrations

by Tom Cunliffe

  Far from Folsom Prison, that’s where I wanna be.

  But that train jus’ keeps on blowin’, an’ that’s what’s killing me.

  Twenty-five years after one of the century’s most visionary concerts, the echo of the amplified bass still thuds out its alternate fifths to shake the throbbing sadness of a new audience.

  At dawn, a grey mist was rising off the water. The river still flowed clean over its stony bed, the railroad was empty and Bertha covered the sky.

  5

  RUNNING THE

  STORM

  Back on the byroads of Virginia, it was half-way to lunchtime before the message sank in that we were unlikely to find breakfast in the tiny settlements that flashed by at 15-mile intervals. Many of these did not feature on our map at all and the ones that did had nothing to offer the hungry, so we gave up the search and motored up a deserted gravel track to heat up our last can of pork and beans.

  Suddenly a sharp bang cracked the cloud-deadened stillness, followed by a single echo.

  ‘Christ, what was that?’ Roz jumped, although we both knew it was a gunshot. We gulped our beans faster as more shots followed and a man in a battered pick-up materialised to check out our victualling habits. Just to keep us on our toes, a steady series of vehicles followed. I suppose a couple of smart Harleys propped up in the forest beside a pair of Brits eating from the pan made an unusual diversion, but the words of wisdom we’d been offered so freely were taking a vigorous exercise gallop around my brain.

  ‘Watch for weird people out West,’ or, ‘… full of Hicks,’ had just been samples. I recalled the fate of the two archetypal bikers in the film Easy Rider, blown to kingdom come by a redneck with a hunting gun, and grinned reassuringly at the passers-by. None of these guys had spruced up to peer at us and several of them carried rifles, but they nodded in a neighbourly way as they rattled slowly by. In the end, I concluded that their interest was mainly curiosity and asked myself who was afraid of whom in this country, and why.

  The morning heated up in earnest soon after we had eaten, and we were not outrunning Hurricane Bertha. The cloud marched ahead of us down the road and always the blue sky was chasing away behind the rounded hills ahead. The Appalachian valleys stretched long, narrow and gentle as we hummed along, but the humidity climbed with the threat of rain and we stopped for relief by an antique Lutheran church on a wooded mound, immediately west of the tiny village of Sharon. Still in regular use, the white, weatherboard building dated from a different world. It was raised in 1817 when Indians roamed their ancestral woodlands in growing confusion and settlers from Europe began to clear the first fields.

  Roz collapsed beside her motorbike to rest. I pushed open the chapel’s heavy door and entered the calm twilight within. It was cool and so still that my ears buzzed with tinnitus from two hours of undiluted Harley. The air had the same odour of antiquity that one finds in a healthy vintage boat, and I remembered the vessel whose sale had made this journey possible. She had been over eighty at the end and I will recall the rich complexity of her smell to my grave. You can look at pictures of ancient buildings, but until you have breathed their air, you cannot hear them speak.

  Two timber lecterns stood on either side of the shallow chancel, each bearing an ancient, gilded Bible in the 1611 King James version. No modern translation here to make light of the thunder of God’s word. One was open at the book of Jeremiah, offering the casual reader a glimpse of a nation’s future as the prophet tells that Judah will be carried away into Babylon. He concludes with a memorable cry of despair:

  ‘Wherefore came I forth out of the womb to see labour and sorrow, that my days should be consumed with shame?’

  Whoever had set these Bibles was in a dark mood, for the second offered little comfort after the gloom of the first. I found Isaiah in the blackest moments of his prophecy:

  ‘We wait for light, but behold obscurity; for brightness, but we walk in darkness. We grope for the wall like the blind… we stumble at noonday as if in the night; we are in desolate places as dead men.’

  Hoping I was committing no trespass, I turned the crackling, gold-edged page in search of something more positive and was richly rewarded.

  ‘Arise, shine, for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee.’

  I made myself comfortable in a front pew for half an hour and tried to extract some sense from what I had read. My brain filled with jumbled images of people in pilgrim costume sitting in these seats, deliberating on the meditations of a preacher whose mind probably knew no doubts and whose bones now rested in the adjacent graveyard.

  It is the nature of mankind to daydream when sitting in church. God knows where the thoughts of the inaugural congregations had wandered. Perhaps they centred on the valley, the village and the steady striving to raise living standards for those whose journey west had stopped here. My own kept returning to my bike, the road, and my modern-world view. All we had in common, it seemed, was our language and the thin, unbroken thread of religion. Or so it would have been, except that decades of spiritual idleness have so worn down my capacity to pray that even here, where the past was plainly in evidence, it was hard to probe deeper. I left as peacefully as I could, unwilling to disturb the ghosts I had almost awakened, but my boots clumped heavily on the oak floor as I walked to the door.

  In the shady graveyard, a tablet of stone reminded the passer-by that this settlement was once wiped out by dispossessed Indians. A solitary child had survived to tell the tale. It is said that the little girl hid behind a bush and escaped detection, somehow surmounting this unimaginable trauma to grow up a healthy woman. She went on to contribute her full share of offspring to the expanding white population who, by virtue of nothing more than numbers and industrial energy, would inevitably displace their antecedents. To the casual traveller at least, the Native Americans have vanished from these early-settled hills like the smoke of their fires, leaving only stone arrowheads buried deep in the leaf mould as evidence of their existence.

  Meanwhile, a light drizzle had begun and Roz was clambering into her weatherproofs. At least there was no traffic to dash spray on to her visor or my shades. The only moisture would be falling out of the air or flying from our own wheels. Bertha rumbled and flashed around the hills but never really got going that afternoon. She managed a few heavy showers, yet unlike the situation in Britain where temperatures rarely rise above 75 degrees, showery weather in the American summer is of little consequence to the biker in no hurry, because the road steams dry within fifteen minutes of the day brightening up. All you have to do is find a handy tree under which to wait. There was still no proper rain by mid-afternoon, but the clouds were weeping and boiling above us. Bertha was drawing back to gather her strength. Even at the death, a hurricane can deliver a spiteful blow.

  The tarmac was beginning to glimmer in the sun’s final halfhearted effort as we cruised a drawn-out dip labelled ‘Fertile Valley’. Reflecting its name, the land looked as productive as a freshly ploughed Devon field. We stopped to fuel up at a general store run by a young woman with brown hair done in braids, the smoothest skin in the world and strong, unusual features. Two elderly gents drank beer at a dark corner of the wide, U-shaped mahogany counter. They peered through the window at our bikes and ignored the flickering images on a large television set where a man in jail was receiving a thinly-disguised blowjob from an enthusiastic young female on the right side of the bars. A pair of children were similarly unimpressed by the rhythmic action, as was the lady’s assistant, a teenage girl.

  Trying to divert my gaze from the huge screen, I paid for the gasoline while Roz struck up a conversation. Pots of spicy stews simmered on a hob on top of the counter. The women were discussing the contents, one of which was a chilli of some sort called ‘Sloppy Joe’. In short order we were on first-name terms with Shannon and ordering an unscheduled meal which cost us next to nothing. The chilli was served promptly but we were certainly not eating ‘fast food’. I could feel
my system soaking up some serious benefit. Just as I was turning to leave, an energetic new arrival announced himself as Shannon’s husband. Earl was older than his wife, and his accent was so deep in the hills that until I had tuned in to its music I had to try hard to follow his tale about a domestic electrical circuit he had patented. This was all set to transform the civilised world and make him a few bucks into the bargain. He was installing one in the neighbour’s store in the next hollow that very afternoon and would we care to swing by and expand our minds by checking it out?

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Follow me then.’

  Earl didn’t bother to put on his shirt. He just swept Shannon into his well-used car – V-8 American, I was pleased to note – sank his foot into the carburettor and snarled away. We chased him at a gallop. I could see Roz in my mirrors, hanging on to Betty Boop reaching never-before-attempted angles on the curves as both of us watched for stray gravel. This lurked on hidden corners, either washed off the hillsides by the rain or thrown on to the road by the tyres of drunken, midnight home-runners. Gravel is the end of the line for a bike cranked over on a bend. On four wheels, you can always try opposite lock as you go into a slide. On a motorcycle, your only hope is that you land the right side of the bike and don’t hit anything hard as you grind down the road. Tailgating a fast car on an unfamiliar, twisty trail can therefore have ugly consequences.

  Tucking in behind another bike is better, because either the leader knows his stuff and will be watching for loose surfaces, leaves, horse-shit and anything else that induces a skid, or he doesn’t and won’t be. He’ll also take the sting out of any tractor or boy racer that comes speeding around the next bend on the wrong side of the road. So long as he concentrates, you are in good shape. If not, you have two positive chances. Either you’re both in luck and the road surface is smooth, or he loses it and hits the slitheries or the tractor. When it’s the latter, your unhappy leader gets wiped out first, leaving you with a sporting chance of either stopping or dodging his remains. I contemplated these facts of life as we swung the bends, praying that Roz wouldn’t lose her bottle and drop the bike, while feeling glad that I’d done the decent thing making sure I was the first to follow that car.

  6

  BANJOS,

  MOONSHINERS

  AND THE FEDS

  The rain started in earnest as we arrived at Haggerd’s store. With its rickety wooden sidings, sloping roof and porch propped up with rustic posts, it nestled in the West Virginian hollow like the sleeve image of a country music album. Haggerd was out back checking his oil tank, wearing blue dungarees that appeared to have grown on him. His powerful face looked out from a shock of white hair making him appear nearer fifty-five than his actual seventy years as he moved with purpose to greet us. Roz and Shannon splashed in through the door, but Earl and I hung out under the porch with him drinking bottled beer. Haggerd unloaded his grief concerning bureaucracy which, he said with Earl’s full concurrence, would bring the country down.

  ‘Fifteen different permits I needed to erect this here oil tank,’ he grumbled, ‘and eight thousand dollars in administrative fees. Not so long ago you could have built the thing for that money and had change.’

  ‘Surely they have to have some sort of regulations so people don’t spill the stuff all over the place,’ I observed.

  ‘Ain’t nuthin’ to the guys who make the rules if we do spill it,’ grunted Earl. ‘They’re hundreds of miles away in the city. But these tanks today are so tight that there ain’t no more spillage. All that paper serves no purpose… ’cept to breed more of the same useless crap.’

  He lobbed his empty bottle expertly into a waste can 15 feet away and opened the fly screen into the store. Inside, the place was out of time. Shelves lined the walls, forming the alleyways typical of a small supermarket anywhere in the Western world, but these were of well-worn wood, not some easy-clean composite, and many of the products on sale were 1950s and beyond. Hardware like Grandpa used peeped out from behind buckets of nails. The basics of handed-down cooking skills were prominent, including yeast for home bread-baking. Jostling the packets for space were cans of Stockholm tar, a vital unction for traditional boats and now almost unobtainable in coastal communities anywhere. Horses use it too, though I’ve never understood why. Baseball hats and other crucial items of gentlemen’s outfitting drooped from the ceiling, while huge bags of potato chips were piled up near to the counter so that whoever was running the show could grab a snack.

  The overall effect was one of a darkness where anything on earth could be found by an informed searcher. Save for the small front windows and the door, the only light came from an unshaded bulb dangling over a sagging, round table where the weeks’ newspapers were open to be read by the customers. Coffee was available. A tattered sign announced that alcohol consumption on the premises was illegal, but the regulation group of ‘good old boys’ sat minding their own business, enjoying an ‘Old Milwaukee’ in the late-day humidity. The rain pelted down on the still-hot tin roof.

  Haggerd picked a cardboard six-pack out of the tall cold-locker and tossed it on to the table. We pulled up shaky kitchen chairs, flipped the tops off our bottles and settled on to our seats. Shannon came and sat on Earl’s lap. Roz was still over at the counter with Dolly, Haggerd’s wife, who was confiding that Shannon, the lady we had marked down as in her early twenties, was actually thirty-nine and the mother of four. Her first grandchild was almost due. Perhaps her eternal youth was something to do with being part Indian.

  I looked at Shannon sideways in the dimness. Her colouring was pure Anglo-Saxon settler, but the native blood showed in the outline of her face. I remembered the memorial to the victims of the Indian massacre back in the shade of Sharon churchyard and the terrified child who hid in the bushes to see her parents butchered and then went on to raise children of her own. Somewhere, as the wheel turned, one of her descendants or a compatriot had done better than call a truce with the red man.

  Travelling in the young land of America, it is easy to see that when an energetic population pushes forward into new territory under pressure from behind, fate is on the march. Nobody can stop what must surely happen. Those caught at the frontier, whether advancing or retreating, are hurled about like rag dolls, their souls laid bare by the harsh searchlight of their times. Heroes arise on both sides, and cowards. The greedy, the hardworking, the rapacious, the cunning, people who will die sooner than give ground and those ready in the end to submit and change, all find their place. Some display the best in humanity, others the worst; many just keep their heads down and live their lives, but none will alter what must inevitably come.

  Earl, meanwhile, was revealing himself as something of a Man of the Road.

  ‘Used to be a gang of us with motorcycles,’ he was saying, leaning forward, elbows on knees. ‘We’d meet Friday nights down the valley, drink beer an’ shoot the breeze. Sometimes we’d go off for a ride together. We had a sort of pres’dent who said where we’d go, an’ that was the end of it. Either you went there with the rest or you was out. We took it in turns to be pres’dent.

  ‘One time, we was down at Harry Harper’s place late on, havin’ a brew an’ a barbecue. Harry was the pres’dent. He finishes his steak an he says, “I dunno ’bout you boys, but I’m headin’ out to Nashville for breakfast.”

  ‘There was some grumblin’, let me tell y’all, but we was all fuelled up, so away we went.

  ‘We rode all through that summer night, through the Cumberland Gap and on down across Tennessee. The moon came up late as we was passing Knoxville an’ we was in Nashville for bacon an’ eggs like the man said.’

  ‘So then did you all slug back home?’ I enquired. ‘No sir,’ Earl took a deep swig. ‘We kick-started those bikes an’ Harry headed straight on out West. We blasted clear across Arkansas and Oklahoma. It came on dark around Oklahoma City – which was eight hundred miles from the Grand ol’ Opree. We stopped for gas and food and damn me if Harry didn’t kick her ov
er an’ keep right on going. By now some of the guys had gone back an’ a coupla ol’ knucklehead Harleys had broke down, but the rest of us, that’d be half a dozen or so, we followed that crazy bastard on down into Texas.

  ‘We ran the panhandle in the night-time at ninety miles an hour. Never saw no cops. In the mornin’ the sun came up behind us an’ we was in New Mexico. We swung north and climbed off in Santa Fe.’

  ‘So what did you do then?’

  ‘We drank some whiskey an’ turned for home.’

  Whether or not this yarn was true, it was well-received. Earl’s audience now began pumping him for details.

  ‘Was you all ridin’ Harleys?’

  ‘Mostly. One British Triumph and a Honda 400.’

  ‘A 400! How did that ever keep up?’

  ‘She was quick enough,’ Earl expanded. ‘Feller ridin’ her was nearly eighty. He never gave up, but on the second afternoon he starts askin’ the guys to spell him cos that saddle was mean. I took her for an hour an’ that was enough, let me tell y’all. How that ol’ feller sat on that thing to Santa Fe I’ll never understand. I didn’t say nothin’ when my hour was up because these were hard men. Your butt hurtin’ wasn’t somethin’ you’d admit to, but I had to hand it to him. He had balls.’

  The talk ran on until it was almost dark outside.

  ‘Where you folks restin’ up tonight?’ asked Haggerd.

  ‘We’ll get back to the highway and find ourselves a room. Then on down towards the Cumberland Gap in the morning.’

  Earl shook his head.

  ‘You don’t want to be goin’ anywhere in that rain,’ he said, and it was true. A wall of water was falling from the sky and the road outside the store had turned into a muddy stream. It was motorcycle mayhem out there.

  ‘You could leave the bikes with Haggerd an’ stay at our place,’ offered Shannon, but Mrs Haggerd was a jump ahead in her hospitality.