by Tom Cunliffe
‘Reminds me of 1944,’ said the caretaker slowly, ‘you Brits was always makin’ tea as we battered our way into Germany.’
Mr Hambling fought with 101 Group Paragliders in Holland and onwards across the Rhine.
‘Funny thing is, my descent is half German, half Irish. You might ask why I was fighting on the side I was.’
‘And?’
‘My country wanted me. That was enough.’
Happy to talk about his war, he went on to say that as he had fought and watched men of several nations die, only the Brits had impressed him.
‘You guys are the only people we can rely on,’ he said as we shook hands.
Heading towards Dodge City, Roz finally relaxed into riding at 70 mph. By midday the temperature was up around 100 degrees and the road took on the quality of a hallucination. The illusion of water began only 200 yards ahead, becoming denser towards the horizon so that the ever-narrowing strip of tarmac and the immense fields on either side of it swam in the heat. The handlebars and the soft twist grip of the throttle provided a link with gravity, our bodies baking above the scorching engines mirrored the surrounding austerity; but at these speeds, the constant throbbing hammer of the V-twin engines smoothed out to a humming, high-speed resonance that released the brain from the general discomfort, creating a weird sensation.
Small farms flashed by, mostly in the distance up dirt tracks. More often, we passed abandoned wooden homesteads, all their paint long since burned off by the cruel sun, roofs falling in, with greenery searching every crack for a place to grow. Insects thudded into Roz’s leathers and my open shirt, smacking into us like pebbles as they burst, and every approaching truck rammed home the message that if either of us made a mistake, our own vulnerable bodies would receive identical treatment.
The first sight a plains biker has of a converging eighteen-wheeler comes when the truck is at least 3 miles ahead. It appears as a smudge of colour several feet above the road, probably breasting a rise in the distance. Maybe it disappears for a while behind the next undulation, but converging speed is around 130 mph, so it moves closer fast. After a minute, it has grown to a ridiculous height, its chrome reflecting the sun like flickering lasers, two stove-pipe exhausts belching heat and engine fumes at the angry sky. Soon, it stands 100 feet tall, teetering in the mirage and beginning to rock ’n’ roll. As for forward progress, none is apparent on account of the zero perspective of the head-on meeting until suddenly, when it is as close as the length of a football field, it becomes deadly.
Massive and roaring, it is on you in seconds, swaying on the uneven surface as it rushes by leaving glimpsed impressions of its world. The sun glinting off the windscreen and the driver’s shades, his shirt sleeve flapping at the open window, perhaps a split-second sighting of the name of a far-off town painted on the door.
‘Cheyenne.’
As it passes, it shoves a wall of hot air that picks up the motorbike and hurls all quarter-ton of it to one side like a broom sweeping a dead mouse off the back porch step. The blast is so thick you can feel it. Diesel exhaust, grit and gravel, with oblivion thrown in if you are napping on the job. Then it’s gone, but every Freightliner carries a reminder of that slender thread by which we hang on in the land of the living.
Small communities clinging precariously to the road spun by as we ran due west immediately north of the state line. Straight, wide main streets, a few stores, a county police station with a ‘full-size’ patrol car outside, a doctor’s surgery, a lawyer’s office and a church. Side tracks were built up for 100 yards before giving way to the fields that have replaced the prairie, many with the solitary ‘one-horse’ oil wells which are to be seen everywhere in Kansas and Oklahoma. These bore-holes, anything from 100 to 1,000 feet deep, are milked by simple contraptions that look like small Victorian beam engines. On a quiet day, they can be heard alongside the birdsong, squeaking rhythmically as they slowly rock to and fro, generating wealth for the oil company and paying a percentage to the landowner. For some, the fruits of the arrangement cover the grocery bill. In a few cases, several units supply a farmer’s retirement income.
Every so often, an active well will stop to let the head build up once more, so the inactive pump far away on the grassland could merely be dormant, or it might be as dead as the windmill nodding like a sleeping sentry outside any of the derelict homes out on the prairie.
One afternoon after lunch in a prairie township, I decided to give my bike her head. There was no chance of taking a wrong turning, because there was no significant junction for 25 miles. Roz accelerated away with the sun high on her left while I waited in the shade of the bank for five minutes, checking my oil and tyre pressures. When she was 6 miles up the road I pulled out, noting that the cops were still at lunch, their heavy-duty Chevrolet cooking in the glare.
Out of town, the smooth road stretched away straight down the latitude with the telegraph wires drooping from their tall poles and disappearing into the distance like an art school perspective exercise. I accelerated up to 80, listening to the staccato of the exhaust merge into a single drone, taking in the scene as Black Madonna got into her stride. All around, the baked fields reflected the burning sky like lakes. Parched trees floated on non-existent water, sunflowers flashed by in the ditches, and a group of bullocks stood in an ancient buffalo hollow, up to their flanks in what looked like a dewpond but was probably an illusion. Towering white clouds gathering for the afternoon storm painted their shadows over the land, while far away, tall grain silos glimmered like ghosts on the boundaries of perception. Lazy buzzards hovered, finger-feathers at their wings’ ends eternally trimming their flight as they hung from the up-currents, seeking the casualties from the wild side that men do not notice.
At last the road was clear. Nothing in the mirrors but the shoulders of my faded cotton shirt. Time to open up. Without a hint of subtlety I wound my right wrist fully clockwise until the throttle hit the stop. Unlike a modern sports bike, the Harley didn’t leap forward in a crazy adrenaline rush, she just sat down on her fat back wheel and steadily surged ahead; 85, 90, 100, 105, chasing Roz into the mirage of the highway. The bike was flat out now, nudging 110, all trace of the classic Harley-Davidson ‘chumpa-chumpa’ sound lost in the wind noise and the deep roar of a big engine running as fast as it is meant to, freed for once of the fetters of speed limits. The wind was ripping me away from the handlebars but I held tight and let her go, high as an eagle. The familiar vibration of the bike rammed itself straight up my spine until she was part of me and I of her. No bends, no traffic, no cops, just the champagne of life on the edge, 10 miles north of the Oklahoma line.
It seemed no time before Betty Boop appeared ahead, a splash of yellow beneath Roz’s black leather jacket, trundling along at 70. They were riding the heat haze fully 3 feet above the tarmac and I ran up behind them as though they were standing still.
Late that afternoon we rolled into Medicine Lodge. Directly westwards from here, the land falls away a little so that the town seems elevated. We were tired from the heat, but a mock stockade on the outskirts of town beckoned with the promise of a museum, so we stopped to find out what they had to show us. Like the glorious road that led to it, the museum was deserted except for the lady curator who asked us for $6 apiece. Twelve bucks would buy us a good dinner in these parts, so I expressed reluctance to part with the cash. The curator understood. Her own life was in limbo until she could save enough to get back to Alaska. Money was hard to come by and you had to keep hold of it, but it was still going to be $12.
‘Tell you what, mister, you take a look round and if you think it’s worth it, pay me when you come out. If it ain’t, just leave quietly.’
This sporting offer made me feel as mean as I was. I handed her the money straight away and did not regret it. Our attention was called to all manner of odd artefacts, but the item that was worth every cent and a good deal more just to look at was a peace treaty. This document hung in a glass case. It was signed by a represent
ative of the ‘Great White Father in Washington’ and a number of Indian chiefs on behalf of their people gathered around this stockade. The names of the dispossessed rang like the thunder that was beginning to rumble overhead. Black Kettle, Standing Bear, and Woman’s Heart. The paper with all their marks on it in lieu of white man’s writing looked almost fresh, hardly mature enough to be a museum exhibit. Dispassionate fate had been drawing its cruel curtain across this part of the prairies around about the time my grandfather was weaned in a Victorian manse in the security of central England. Not long after signing up to what Black Kettle hoped might be a lasting compromise with the white man, he was ridden down by Custer’s soldiers and shot dead on his pony with his wife behind him.
As we were leaving, the museum was closing. The cleaner turned up early for her shift and told me her grandparents had homesteaded here in Kansas after arriving by wagon train. She’d read her grandfather’s diary, she said, and he had believed it would take a thousand years to pioneer and populate the West. In fact, the usable land was subdued in less than a century.
Just around the corner we dragged the bikes under a motel porch. Inside, surrounded by such recent violent events and the descendants of those taking part, we shared the sort of dinner the cleaner’s grandfather would have been grateful for. Another companionable plate of canned beans.
After we had ‘done the dishes’, we stepped outside to eye the weather. One glance at the afterglow of the sunset removed any desire to venture afield. The sky was in torment. It was clear at the land’s rim, but above us and towards the dying light the clouds were writhing. Lightning flickered, and far off we could see distinct cones of whirling greyness groping downwards as nascent tornadoes tried for full-blown status. The cloud base bulged and seethed as would-be twisters probed earthwards before retreating back into the mother cloud, not having quite managed to form. Against the lurid sky in the extreme distance, two columns looked as if they might make it, but after a few more minutes the night shut down the show. We went inside, double-locked our door and turned on the Weather Channel.
Throughout our travels, the television Weather Channel was our constant companion and valued assistant. There is no foreign equivalent to this remarkable service, which exclusively churns out meteorological information, national and local, twenty-four hours a day. With storms always around the corner, it was both entertaining and important to keep in touch with the announcers, some of whom already seemed like old chums. These celebrities did their best to keep us dry while glorying in the outrageous nature of the weather pudding served up to much of the American population. That night, a jolly chap in a pale grey suit joyfully advised the nation of ‘humongous storms’ in southern Kansas. Ten minutes later, after a break to check up on the astoundingly low prices offered on furniture at our local superstore, his state equivalent came on the air. This proved to be a charming girl with a worried expression who gave it to us straight:
‘Storm Warning tonight. Extremely heavy rain expected west from Wichita into eastern Colorado. Tornado warnings for Comanche and Kiowa counties.’
Roz checked the map. These extensive tracts of land lay immediately west of Medicine Lodge, so we hadn’t been seeing fairies out there on the porch.
Thirty minutes later the heavens opened, with unimaginable rain and almost continuous lightning. The gushing roar of the water pounding on to our roof made watching television impossible, so we reluctantly switched off. Thanking our stars we had not tried camping, I got up, padded over to my pack and poured us a shot of Wild Turkey.
‘What on Earth can life have been like in a teepee with no other option?’ said Roz. I myself had been considering what it must have felt like to face such conditions from a covered wagon, but before I could reply, the unmistakable chatter of a full-sized Harley sounded immediately outside our door. There was no problem about hearing that through the downpour. Since absolutely nobody could be riding voluntarily though the wall of water tumbling from the matt black sky, the noise could only be some opportunist stealing Madonna. I hurried into my jeans and leather jacket, slipped my feet into deck shoes and stepped out looking for trouble. The Heritage hadn’t been touched, but out of the madness of the night a man wearing only leathers and a headscarf for protection was wrestling an ancient ‘panhead’ Hog under the portico. Behind him, still out in the rain, was a long, yellow Honda tourer, a proper motorbike. Astride it was a black figure looking slightly unsteady.
Relieved that the situation demanded assistance rather than a confrontation and ashamed of my paranoia, I dived out into the deluge. With the thunderclaps and the rain there was really too much racket to talk, but words were unnecessary to see what was required. Together, the man and I grunted and heaved the two heavy motorcycles into the comparative shelter in front of the next room. Once inside, he gave me the upturned biker’s handshake. Roz appeared at the door with the whiskey and we all necked a slug.
Steve was around my age. With only his riding jacket and chaps for defence, he was so wet he looked as though his skin had been leaking. As the puddle around him grew, however, his main concern was for his companion. Nell already had her helmet off, and as she kicked out of her boots and began to peel off the layers of her highly professional wet-weather gear, her eyes were fixed on Steve with a mixture of gratitude and adoration. First came a crash-resistant waterproof; next, a balaclava headpiece that ran down over the shoulders. Beneath the outer layer she wore black leather chaps that fitted loosely over extremely tight jeans. When she turned around to take them off, I realised for the first time that American riding chaps do not encase the buttocks like full riding leathers, but somehow lace across them. You don’t see these in Europe, probably because they are banned for being worse than provocative. As she wriggled out of them and the jeans to reveal tight-fitting full-length underclothes, I realised with astonishment that this girl was dry. Steve made for the shower. Nell reached for the whiskey again.
‘That is one hell of a man!’ she announced as the rain continued to cascade down the roof, drowning the sound of Steve’s life-saving ablutions. I couldn’t argue with her judgement. He’d held on to his figure well although his black beard was streaked with grey. His hands had been oily from some mishap with one of the bikes, and his eyes were the darkest brown, looking out through the grey curls plastered to his face. He had stared into extreme distances for a long time. As for Nell, she was young, blonde, and slender, with film-star teeth, blue eyes and high cheekbones. Like a Swedish immigrant from 1880s Minnesota.
‘How did you two get together?’ asked Roz. Even their bikes looked incompatible. His was black and battered from thousands of miles and forgotten adventures, almost a museum piece from the 1970s; hers, the latest model and, apart from today’s fresh mud, clearly squeaky-clean. The Honda was as yellow as Betty Boop, but bigger and meaner.
Nell sat down on one of the two beds. She looked deeply knackered.
‘He picked me up on the roadside back in California. I have to get back to Missouri by tomorrow night. I’d over-reached myself and I was washed out. Steve rode along with me all day. In the evening, he said he’d see me home.’
‘But that’s thousands of miles there and back. Was he going that way?’
‘I don’t think so. But it’s all the same to him. He’s an ex-’Nam US Marine. He just lives on two wheels.’
At last, a full-on biker. This guy was no dude on holiday. ‘I have to be back at work in thirty-six hours,’ Nell continued, ‘I’m a school teacher…’
‘Godalmighty!’
‘… and my headmaster said if I was late one more time I’d be looking for a job. I love my class, so it’s Missouri or bust. But I’d never manage without Steve to keep the pace going. It seems easy with him up front.’
‘How far do you make in a day?’ queried Roz, seriously interested now.
‘We’ve run five hundred miles since breakfast this morning,’ Nell replied casually. ‘It was OK, but we’ve seen some stuff. He brought us over the
highest pass in North America.’
‘Where’s that?’
‘I don’t know. Somewhere in Colorado.’
Roz was turning this over in her mind when Steve stepped out of the shower room. He looked meadow-fresh, but his clean vest was saturated from a day in his battered saddlebag.
‘Rain’s slowed us badly,’ he said, hanging his kit over the door. ‘Reckon we carried this storm all the way from the Rockies. It’s taken the legs right off us. If it doesn’t move on, we’ll have to live with it all the way to Missouri.’
An alarming squall shook the building and rattled the door.
‘You did OK today, Nell,’ he continued. ‘I thought that wind would blow you clean off coming down the mountain.’
We left them to their intimacy and tried to get some sleep, but it wouldn’t come. For a short while the lightning eased, but soon it returned. The storm took on a near-human malevolence in the small hours as I dozed in a world where Steve was leading a wagon train, trying to live peaceably alongside the Indians while greedy whites undercut him at every turn. Nell had turned into a pioneer woman, fresh from the East Coast, recently widowed and in dire need of protection.
A further lightning attack woke me and suddenly I knew who Steve had been reminding me of. It was another ex-Marine, as light-complexioned as Steve was dark, but both carried the same powerful aura of competence. Clint was his name. A blacksmith by trade, we met him working in a shipyard in Connecticut shortly before Roz and I fell foul of a New York tycoon during a piece of dirty dealing that seemed set to rob us of our boat. Back in the mid-eighties the vessel in question, seriously damaged in a collision for which we were subsequently found blameless, was all we had in the world. She was also home to us and our young daughter, so we were not about to give up without a struggle. Matters rapidly deteriorated into a lawsuit. One bitterly cold day, an ugly-looking customer turned up on the catwalk and, in the course of what might have been casual conversation, pointed out that it didn’t cost much money down in the Bronx to have a nuisance rubbed out. I didn’t take this too seriously until my car was torched. It was then that I called Clint. He arrived before dawn, kitted up for trouble.