Good Vibrations

by Tom Cunliffe

  ‘But there isn’t a lot of that.’

  ‘No,’ she acknowledged, ‘but every time one of those wagons goes past, I feel as if it’s attracting me like a magnet. I daren’t breathe until it’s gone. It’s terrifying, my back’s giving me stick and there’s something wrong with my wrist.’

  I had known Roz for over a quarter of a century. We’ve seen tough times together, and I understood that she wouldn’t complain until almost at the end of her resources, yet this all seemed over the top. I’d been riding as slowly as seemed reasonable, and apart from a truck or two every few minutes, the traffic had been almost non-existent. The road had been narrow and unusually twisting with an indifferent surface, but I had not seen any special challenge in the morning’s ride. To her, it seemed to have become a nightmare of fear and danger.

  ‘Try to be reasonable,’ I began, falling headlong into another perfect masculine blunder from sheer frustration, ‘this is like Utopia.’

  I must have involuntarily raised my voice in frustration, because my wife came back at me with interest.

  ‘Don’t you shout at me!’ she said with venom. ‘You’re big, you’re strong and you’ve been riding since your voice broke. I still have to think about having the clutch on the handlebars, and every time I stop or start, I know that if I let the bike go down more than ten degrees I’m going to drop it. How can you be so bloody thoughtless!’

  I shook my head in despair. It was no good arguing that I hadn’t even thought about shouting at her, so there was nothing useful to add. Roz took this as dumb insolence.

  ‘Have you any idea what it would be like to hold on to this bike if you only weighed 125 pounds?’

  With a full tank and her travelling gear, Betty Boop topped the scales at over 500.

  Without another word we carried on into the township of Hardy, parked up and went looking for some lunch. We had a serious problem, and we did not walk hand in hand.

  Hardy is another small town, but unlike Hoxie, the main thrust of its effort is given over to entertaining visitors and relieving them of their money.

  The clapboard Hardy Café on the narrow main street was packed full of families tucking into Sunday lunch, but we found a corner table underneath a plastic flowerpot with plastic ivy. On the wall beside us was a painting of a silver catfish dressed, like the diners, in blue dungarees and a cowboy hat. Between his whiskers, this fish was smoking a corncob pipe. I ignored his unwritten promise of fresh river-food and ordered the safe bet of Sirloin Tips, this time with ocra on the side. Then we addressed the main issue.

  The bottom line was that quitting was no option. So long as the traffic was thin and the roads not too demanding, Roz was going to be content to come slowly to grips with the new discipline. If ever she was obliged to park the bike on an awkward slope, she would kick down the side prop to prevent Betty Boop falling all the way and when she was ready to start up once more, I would stand by to heave the heavy bike upright until Roz was letting in the clutch. I would also help out with the back-murdering manoeuvring that came our way every night as we wrestled the bikes into precarious shelter between the stanchions of motel half-roofs or the tree-roots around the tent. As she said, it wasn’t that she hated the motorcycle. She’d always enjoyed fast cars.

  ‘I’ll just have to hang on through these hills,’ she announced, pushing half a plate of tips to one side. ‘It’s got to be easier on the plains. The weather might be harsher, but looking at the map it’s straight, straight roads for a thousand miles. By the time we reach the Rockies, riding Betty’ll be a piece of cake.’

  I kept on chewing my sirloin. If she’d made her mind up, life was going to be easier by far.

  ‘I know you’ll do what you can to help,’ she added unexpectedly, ‘it’ll get better. You’ll see.’

  And it did, for a while at least.

  Out in the street, we walked straight into a yard sale. The proprietor, a huge man dressed exactly like the catfish, right down to the corncob pipe, was divesting himself of the family tools.

  Among the usual selection of chipped chisels and beaten-up screwdrivers, was a complete set of caulker’s equipment and a weird, three-pronged iron device on a stout broom handle. At a thousand miles from the sea, it was more than odd that a caulker had passed this way and left his tools behind. Caulking mallets could once be bought in any respectable chandlery, but the irons were, and still are, the sort of personal items a tradesman grows used to. They pass down through families and are rarely seen second-hand, even on the coast where this outfit must have originated. I asked the giant what boats he had caulked, and he did not know what I was talking about. I told him. He shoved his hat back on his head, rubbing his hand back and forth in the sweat standing on his broad brow.

  ‘That so? Well, hot-dawg!’ He perked up when I picked up the item on the stick.

  ‘That’s for diggin’ out frogs,’ he said broadly. ‘Kinda useful for a frog dinner. But y’all know that. Bein’ as you’re from outta town, you can have her for twenty-five dollars.’

  I backed off fast.

  ‘Well, how ’bout ten bucks then. You won’t find a better one,’ he paused, realising he was missing the mark, ‘but I guess you folks’ll have one already back home?’

  ‘That’s right,’ interjected Roz. ‘Like you say, it’s not as good as yours but it’ll do us for a while. Besides,’ she added archly, ‘frogs aren’t as big as they used to be.’

  I knew she’d based this statement on the fact that up in Nova Scotia, where I had worked on an inshore long-liner, the fish were now far from what they had once been. A quarter of a century earlier, the boys and I had cruised into port in the evenings with a catch that started at 18 inches and went up to 3 or even 4 feet in length. On a recent visit, our skipper, now long retired, told us there was a moratorium on line fishing because in the wake of the foreign ‘vacuum’ trawlers, people were taking cod hardly mature enough to breed. Mention the size of fish up there and you’re one of the crew. Why not frogs too? Maybe the backwoods were frogged out.

  Roz must have got it right, because the would-be salesman shook our hands like good buddies as we left, even though we hadn’t bought a thing. It was good to see Roz back on top of the game.

  Further down the road towards where we’d parked the bikes, we passed a used boot store of galactic scale with one-owner Texan high-heels lined up in pairs on the sidewalk like a Wild West funeral parlour. All US bikers wear cowboy boots with their jeans over the top. A fashion so universal must have something going for it apart from looking cool. I had been thinking of changing my ancient World War Two dispatch rider’s boots (always worn outside the jeans, comfortable beyond price and tough as nails), which the locals called ‘shit-kickers’, for some haute couture and this had to be the place. Tragically, out of the hundreds on offer, one of the only two pairs that fitted turned out to be pigeon-toed. The boss suggested I bought them and wore them on the opposite feet for a month or two to straighten them out, but I could see me hitting the brake with the wrong boot, so I turned them down. The others were snakeskin, all style and no substance, but Roz treated herself to a pair of high, light brown ‘ropers’ with little Cuban heels and sexy lace-up fronts. They were comfy from the start and looked great, but she wouldn’t wear them riding, preferring the first-class protection of her full-on racing boots brought from a colder land. The ropers went home by mail.

  The salesman took Roz’s money, stepped easily through the usual opening gambits, then advised us that the main problem with the US nowadays was that the dollar had become more important than the people. A second man stepped out of a closet and agreed with him. He was someone you could not ignore.

  The newcomer stood six and a half feet tall, with no fat on him. Good teeth, full lips and a broad smile, in a black shirt, black Stetson, dark blue Levi’s and boots with holes in the toes. In his huge hand he carried a cheap-looking, brand-new violin in a grip like a poacher holding a pheasant. I asked him about local country music as soon
as I saw his instrument, but he did not play. Instead, he sold these fiddles for the incredible price of $40 apiece. He had just returned from Indianapolis where he had made a killing on a trunkful.

  Unlike most Americans we met in the middle of the country, this man held opinions about foreign policy.

  ‘You Brits did a great job down in the Falklands,’ he said, and I sensed him sizing up whether he or I was the taller. ‘People who walk into other folks’ houses with guns and say “Git!” want putting away. We have enough of that stuff over here, but when whole governments climb in on the act, why, someone’s gotta stop them. Your Mrs Thatcher, she sure knew how to call a halt. Best leader since FDR.’ While pleased to hear this endorsement of my country, I wasn’t sure how to respond.

  ‘I don’t know why we didn’t do more to help,’ said the store owner. ‘That all wanted doing.’

  ‘Jeez,’ responded the big fellow. ‘Them Brits didn’t need no assistance, but we did tell some interfering busybodies to stay out of the ring.’

  ‘Who was that, then?’ I asked.

  ‘I guess mebbe they didn’t tell you guys,’ he said, ‘but some heavy hitter with a capital to the east of you was makin’ all sorts of hints that they’d send their troops in to back up the bandits. The USA told ’em to stand aside from somebody else’s quarrel, or they’d have serious trouble on their hands.’

  The laughing eyes disappeared, replaced by Lee Van Cleef sighting down his Peacemaker in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, and I believed every word he said. Behind that look was an iron will and total confidence in the power of his country to prevail in the cause of justice. I have met more sophisticated Americans who might call this fiddle salesman’s attitude naïve, but I found it reassuring. There was not a hint of arrogance in him, and I knew who I’d rather have beside me in a bunker with red-hot shot flying overhead.

  ‘You guys want music,’ the salesman interjected, ‘you’d best head for Branson, Missouri. That town’s built on music. You go there.’

  Back at the bikes, I noticed Roz touching her forearm carefully, and asked what was the matter.

  ‘I’ve been bitten, I think,’ she said, carefully unbuttoning her sleeve that was turned down against the sun. ‘It’s throbbing like mad.’

  Her wrist had swollen to twice its normal size. Angry and puffy. It wasn’t surprising she’d blown out that morning. She needed a doctor and she needed rest.

  Hardy was a tourist town. Plenty of fancy ‘Bed and Breakfast’ homes charging more than we could afford. Camping was out of the question. The doctor was off-duty on Sunday, so we filled up the bikes and asked how far to Branson.

  ‘Seventy miles, I guess,’ said the elderly gas station attendant, leaning against the unleaded pump.

  ‘More like fifty-five,’ contradicted his sidekick, whittling a stick in the shade of a battered timber kiosk.

  I glanced at my folded Rand McNally state map. It looked further than either of these estimates.

  ‘I should say it’s a full 150 miles,’ put in the owner of a mud-caked truck from the other side of the pumps.

  ‘Anyways, you keep right on goin’ through the hills past Mountain Home, up 62 as far as Harrison. Then you hang a right in the centre of town and hit 65. You’ll be four hours on them rigs if you don’t hurry.’

  ‘Yeah,’ broke in the pump man laconically. ‘Three hours, mebbe four…’

  It was easy to forget that Americans on the road think distance in terms of hours, not miles. The heat was far less oppressive here in the hills, and the afternoon could only become cooler as the miles spun by. I looked a question mark at Roz.

  ‘Let’s go for it,’ she said, zipping her leather and carefully fastening the studs over her bad arm. ‘I’ll take a break there. If it’s no better, I’ll find a hospital in the morning while you sort out some music.’

  And so we wound our way through the Ozarks, disappointed at the lack of hillbillies and hoping for better from Branson; Roz nursing her throttle arm and me yearning for Oklahoma, Kansas and the wide open spaces.

  10

  THE BEGINNING

  OF THE BIG

  WIDE WORLD

  I don’t know what I’d imagined for Branson, music centre of the Ozarks, but the reality was definitely not it. It had been a long day, with frequent stops to water up and for Roz to rest her arm, and the first we saw of the town was a long, deeply undulating strip that materialised around us out of the woods. Among the fast food and service stations were expensive hotels with smart new cars parked in the lots. Mini-theatres offered all manner of electrified country singers, retired pop stars, dance bands, everything except the clean, bluegrass music we’d been hoping for. As we thrummed our way down the hill we realised that the place was a temple to tourism. We’d transgressed the travellers’ line again, so with sinking hearts we retreated to the river where our luck turned. By the water’s edge, we found a ‘resort motel’ that hadn’t changed since the 1960s. The neat, individual lodges were arranged like a tiny village, with a loose square in the centre. The office was part of an older timber house. To complete the ambience, the place needed one or two ’57 Chevrolets and a panhead Harley with a rider in a Marlon Brando cap. What it got was us. Nobody else. All the tourists were paying big bucks uptown.

  I clattered up the steps to the check-in and banged the bell. A young woman of stunning beauty appeared, dressed like a football cheerleader in flouncy skirt, blouse and headband.

  ‘Sure we have a cabin. It’s thirty-five dollars, I’m afraid, but there’s a fridge and cooker and a TV as well as the usual…’

  Up the hill, the crowd were being charged $85 plus for a bed and a bathroom. I took the room, sight unseen, and the girl thanked me. She had grace as well as looks.

  We moved into the cabin, set to stay two or three days while Roz got well, then we chained up Betty and hopped aboard the Heritage to hunt for dinner. The Roundup had peanut shells all over the floor and an Appalachian harp on the wall. It hadn’t been played in years. The steaks were large and tender but the booze was non-existent because it was Sunday. I needed a drink and Roz looked as though she’d kill for a whiskey. We threw a few peanuts around for the sake of good manners, then bopped home to the cabin where I had kept the last quarter-pint of Haggerd’s moonshine for just such an emergency. We drank it between us and felt better, as he’d promised we would. It was full-strength lightning, not yet diluted for human consumption, so I took mine fifty–fifty and had sweet dreams behind the blinds. Roz went for the whole experience and didn’t feel a thing till her arm woke her with a deep, dull ache at five. She gulped down a handful of pain killers and turned on the television.

  I awoke two hours later to a time warp of a younger, simpler America that a casual visitor might imagine has been eclipsed by progress. Opening one eye carefully, I saw our room by daylight. A throwback to I Love Lucy. Chequered plastic cloth on an angular table with biblical tracts on the wall behind it, vinyl chairs, tartan sofa in orange and brown, the standard mock wooden walls and a screen door to an open veranda. Roz had the kettle on as she watched an ancient television set with round Bakelite knobs instead of digital tuning and a zapper. As if specially ordered to match the surroundings, a 1950s black-and-white comedy was showing. Andy Griffiths, strutting his stuff in surroundings that matched our own to perfection.

  ‘How do you feel?’ I grunted. ‘Hung over, and no better.’ She angled her head towards the screen. ‘I keep expecting a pink caddy to stop outside full of young guys with army haircuts draped around girls with ponytails and sticky-out skirts.’

  Then she showed me her arm.

  We were in the hospital by eight. At nine, we were out once more, surprisingly few dollars the poorer after the sort of service any Brit in a casualty queue with less than a broken neck would find hard to believe. We were loaded with antibiotics and reassured that Roz was only suffering from a buffalo fly bite.

  ‘Lucky for you it wasn’t a brown recluse spider,’ the nurse had observed. ‘
They dig a great hole in your flesh. Sometimes, they’re fatal. Take all the pills and have a couple of days’ rest. You’ll never know it happened.’

  So we relaxed in our little home. I stocked up at the corner store and Roz started the pills. By midnight she was up alternately vomiting and prostrate with diarrhoea and I was awake with a badly burned leg that was my just reward for riding into town in shorts. A Harley exhaust burns just as badly as a Matchless or a Kawasaki. The difference is that while other bikes keep their pipes low down out of harm’s way, Harley-Davidson site theirs where they will impress the bystanders and burn the skin off the legs of any clown who forgets.

  At nine the following evening we were both feeling surprisingly improved. The swelling had almost disappeared from Roz’s wrist and my burn had scabbed over, so we fired up Black Madonna and headed out towards a bar 3 miles away, where I’d eased my thirst on the foraging trip and met the bartender who had been out polishing his ancient Harley.

  The parking lot in front of the bar was notable for black shadows and lack of neon lights, but the headlamp picked out a selection of wreck-status cars, an interesting white Italian Moto-Guzzi at least twenty years old with a leopard-skin seat, and one extremely smart Jeep land cruiser. Inside, it was almost as pitchy, but the air was alive with twanging guitars wailing somebody’s grief on the hi-fi, cigarette smoke and the honest smell of booze. Jim the biker-barman kicked a deadbeat off a barstool to make room for Roz and pulled us each a glass of fizzy lager on the house.

  It wasn’t long before we were part of the general conversation at our end of the bar. Sitting next to us was a handsome man of around my own age with a leather vest, a long queue of grey hair and a major hair braid. Beside him was a girl in her thirties with hair redder than a traffic light, a major body and a ‘go-get-’em’ attitude.