The Making of Blackwater Jack

by Roy F. Chandler

  Instantly, Shooter had hold of the bar helping lower it into its hooks. Release from the strain was almost as painful as the lifting, but Gabriel’s loud and enthusiastic congratulations eased some of the muscle ache, and Tim knew from many similar lifting experiences that his body would relax and the agonies would move on.

  The important thing was, he had lifted three hundred pounds and completed three repetitions.

  Gabriel Galloway said, “Not bad, Tim. Keep at it, and you’ll be able to lift some real weight.”

  Tim could hear the satisfaction in Shooter’s voice. He also knew that Gabriel Galloway could not have bench pressed three hundred pounds if his very life had depended on it.

  It was time to lower the Harley and put it on the road.

  Satisfying all around.

  3

  Same Day

  They cooled down sitting on Tim’s porch in chairs dating back to Old Dog’s tenure. Shooter was lavish with his comments.

  “Damn, Timmy. You heaved that monster weight around like it was nothing. I don’t personally know another bozo in the county who could do that.”

  “I do. Paul Wolf could do more.”

  Shooter thought about it. “Yeah, Paul is strong. Wasn’t he third in the state power lifting or something?” Galloway added, “But that was a long time ago.”

  Using an old towel, Tim dried sweat. “Well, I’m not going for more. Three hundred was my goal, and I got it. Now it’s time to bring the bike down and see what shape she’s in.”

  Shooter was plain with his criticism. “It’s time you quit pumping iron. You’ve bulked up until you look like one of those freaks in a muscle magazine.”

  “It won’t last. But some muscle will stay, and I won’t ever have to worry about being a spaghetti-armed geek like someone I know.”

  Gallaway ignored the buddy-tolerant insult and added equally improbable opinion. “I suppose you will try to model yourself after me, but remember, I am also snake quick and as shifty as an antelope running in brush—as well as strong and very masculine looking, of course.”

  Tim rose, stretching and threw a pair of hard left hooks at an imaginary target.

  He said, “And you’re modest as hell, too.

  “I’ve got Diet Mountain Dew and plain old Coke. Which’ll you have?”

  “Make mine a Dew,” Shooter spoke to Carlisle’s disappearing back. So he went on.

  “When are you going to move out of this old chicken coop and live in a real house, Tim? This was fine for a guy like Old Dog, but you aren’t him. You ought to buy a house, maybe down in Fred Thebes’s development. Live in a place where your friends won’t be embarrassed to park their cars.”

  Tim reappeared. He stood on the old and leaning-a-little porch allowing his eyes and his thought to run through earlier times with powerful memories. He flipped an ice-cold can to Shooter, hoping his bit of extra shake and the toss would create pressure and pop when Gabe opened it.

  “Old Dog fixed this place up with everything that a man needs or should want. I’ve got heat in the winter and air conditioning the rest of the time. I live right here in my parents’ yard where my stuff is safe and where I can scrounge meals when I want them. But, you’re right, and I’m planning on moving once I decide where I am going.”

  Shooter interrupted. “Your folks spend more time in Florida than they do here in PA, so you aren’t feeding free, and … “

  Tim said, “Enough grumbling. You aren’t any better, Galloway, still living in that old farm house that’s propped up by four by fours—so far out in the country that you can’t get decent telephone service. Talking endlessly, about building a new place doesn’t t get it done.

  “You’re the guy with big bucks, Galloway. You’ve got a mysterious job that you won’t talk about, and a gorgeous girlfriend who I’ve considered putting moves on. You should buy something nice and set an example for us poorer, younger guys.

  “Come on, we’ll lower the Harley. I need someone on the crank while I do the hard and dangerous part.”

  Shooter fought his way from the depths of the saggy chair adding only, “Moves? You’ve got moves? Tim, you’re a ball of sweat that thinks dressing up is changing your jeans every week or so. Don’t even peek at my girl. She might explode a lung laughing.”

  Galloway opened his can and it fizzed all over the porch.

  “Hah, you thought you’d get me by throwing the can, Carlisle. Not a prayer. I’m always ahead of you, and now you’ve got your porch to clean up. Hmm, I think my boots are already sticking in the stuff.”

  Tim half snarled. “It’s Diet Dew, Gabe. There isn’t any sticky in it. Humph, think I’d take a chance with you? Anyway, you are wearing city-slicker low-cut shoes, not real Perry County boots.”

  At the barn, Galloway studied the suspended Harley and the ancient cable and hand crank that connected to thick nylon straps around the motorcycle.

  “How much does that machine weigh, Tim? This contraption looks older than the first Adam.”

  “It’ll hold, pardner.”

  Tim placed his long barn ladder against the side of the suspended Harley before explaining. “Now, the plan is that I will climb the ladder. I’ll fasten the hook on the end of the cable to the nylon straps around the bike. When I tell you, you’re job is to tighten the cable enough to take the weight off the motorcycle. When the bike is just hanging from the cable, I’ll unfasten the nylon ties around the ridgepole, and we will be ready to lower.”

  “Yessa, Massa Tim. I’se ready. What was that thing about turning this here crank?”

  Tim groaned. “I’m cutting your wages.” Then he went up the ladder.

  The cotton sheets he had draped around Old Dog’s Harley so many years before were half rotted. They drooped loosely, and he simply tore them away. The old shovelhead looked exactly as he remembered it.

  Tim hollered down. “Man, this bike is as good as new. It hasn’t leaked a drop of oil onto the old sheets. I think I’ll put in new gas, fill the tires, and start for California.”

  Galloway was neither interested nor amused. “Just hook up the cable before you wobble off that rickety-assed ladder and I have to make a hospital run.”

  Tim fastened the cable’s big hook to the straps supporting the motorcycle.

  “All right, just tighten the cable until the bike swings free.”

  The winch clicked, and Galloway sonorously sang, “Now we all work on the Mississippi, now we all work while the white boss plays … “

  The bike’s weight shifted slightly, the motorcycle swung free, and the ridgepole creaked loudly.

  Shooter’s voice floated up to Tim. “Oh man, it’s coming down. The whole barn roof will cave, and we’ll be found buried so deep they’ll just cover us over and level the ground.”

  “The weight just shifted, Galloway. Look at those rafters. This ridge pole could hold three Harleys and never notice it.”

  “Just quit talking about barn building and get that ancient iron down so I can breathe again. God, you are really slow, Carlisle. It’s probably due to so much weight lifting.”

  Tim unwound the straps that had held the cycle to the ridgepole noting that they looked new—nothing better than nylon. Now the Harley swung free and clear from the cable running through Shooter’s winch.

  Galloway’s voice came again. “Better hurry, I feel my hands starting to slip.”

  Tim moved his feet to the outside of the ladder’s uprights and slid to the barn floor without taking a step. He unhurriedly moved the ladder away.

  There was no strain at all holding the winch. The pawls locked in place—it was just Galloway causing trouble again. Tim snickered to himself. Shooter Galloway was worth having around.

  Tim ordered, “Ok, ‘winch-man’, lower the bike down to about eight feet off the floor. Then hold it.”

  Tim left the barn with Shooter’s complaints following. He returned driving an ancient pickup truck. He parked the truck’s bed directly under the dangling Harley and dismoun
ted.

  Galloway was loud. “What in hell is that? Is that Old Dog’s pickup? Lord in the morning, it has to be. I thought you’d junked that bucket years ago.”

  Tim was short. “Quit degrading my equipment. Just lower the bike until it’s sitting in the truck bed. Maybe between rants you’ll notice that there are bike tie-downs all over this truck. I went to Daytona in this Ford the year Uncle Dog died.”

  “That was so far back I can’t remember. What is this, an F-100? My God, it has a two piece flat windshield.” Shooter peered inside the cab. What’s that big pipe with a cue ball on top of it sticking out of the floor?”

  “The truck’s a stick shift, Gabe, and that’s the stick. Just lower the bike.” Tim was in the truck bed waiting.

  The Harley’s flat tires settled in as though the truck really did fit the bike. Tim got a saddlebag’s dried out straps open and hauled out treasures.

  “Here’s Uncle Dog’s old leather jacket.” He smelled the stiffened leather. Yep, smells just like Old Dog did.” He held the battle-scarred jacket at arms length.

  A bit disappointed, he said, “Too small for me, Shooter. I’d like to have worn Uncle Dog’s gear on my trip, but he wasn’t that stout a man.”

  “Stout? What’s wrong with your memory, Tim? Old Dog stayed as lean as he was during his war years—until the cancer ate him up, of course. Then he got so skinny I remember him claiming that if he drank a coke you could read his temperature like you would a stick thermometer.”

  They laughed in pleased memory. Tim added, “Yeah, he used to say that.

  “But let’s get the bike tied down and take it on over to Smally’s shop. He said he’d go over it for me. I’m sure hoping he will, ‘cause Harley shops don’t really want to work on these old bikes, and most of their mechanics don’t really know what to do with them anyway. Smally will know, and I’ll be on the road by the weekend. Tim hauled tie down straps from a saddlebag, and they cinched the Harley tightly in place.

  They climbed aboard, and Tim ground the starter. The ancient V-8 eased into a smooth if worn rumble that Shooter found encouraging, but he claimed otherwise.

  “Maybe I’d better follow you over in my own truck, Tim. This rattle can probably won’t make it over Middle Ridge, and …”

  “Silence, Galloway. Just lean back and enjoy the ride. We’re Old Dogging it now, and let me tell you, that’s the way to live your whole life—no exceptions.”

  The old pickup surged from the barn and turned left onto Cold Storage Road.

  Shooter slumped low in his seat. “Oh God, Carlisle, you’re going through Bloomfield in this junk heap. Suppose people see me—a man of position and respect—in here. I’ll never live it down.”

  Tim said, “I’m not going through town, you phony. Geez, what are you … thirty years old and still whining? I’m turning right on the valley road and going up to Adams’ Corners and heading north from there. I’m avoiding the steep hill just behind us, that’s all.”

  He paused before adding. “I’ll be glad to pull over, and you can ride in the back with the Harley. Nobody will notice you there.

  Shooter’s voice was urgent. “Never mind all of that, Carlisle, just test your brakes. Right now, darn it, before we reach the main road and we squirt out into traffic.

  “Oh God, I’m doomed. There are people a man just shouldn’t associate with.”

  4

  Two Weeks Later

  The Old Dog bike had groaned a little crossing Tuscarora Mountain. The long, north side downhill had allowed the engine to cool, and it felt as if all of the parts had woken up after their years of sleep and were again smoothly working together.

  Tim settled deeper into his uncle’s worn saddle and felt at home there. He hoped Old Dog could see him from wherever he was and could feel his nephew’s satisfaction at being on the road, his belongings behind his seat and acting as a comfortable easy-riding back rest—just as Tim had watched his uncle sally forth a hundred times, off to some only hinted-at destinations to hang with cronies, to remember exciting times, and to create new ones.

  Like his uncle, sleeping his eternal sleep in Alaska, Tim Carlisle planned few particular directions. He would head more or less south and west until he ran out of land. Getting there was not the point—the journey was.

  Of course, there were special stops along the way. Harley-Davidson’s home in Milwaukee was certainly one.

  The biggest and most important destination was Sturgis in South Dakota. Tim had never been, but he knew the town and the nearby Black Hills as if he had traveled Lazelle Street in town and the Iron Mountain and Needles highways dozens of times.

  Old Dog had talked often of the carrying on he and his riding brothers had enjoyed. You couldn’t pick up a biker magazine without an article or two covering Sturgis rallies either past or about to happen.

  Tim planned to camp at The Buffalo Chip, as Dog often had, but he knew from his reading that The Chip had grown from an out of town, raggedy-assed camp with some fire pits and portable toilets, into a multi-million dollar operation offering top level country and rock music with every motorcycle entertainment known available. It wouldn’t be the same, but it would be the closest he could get while seeing Sturgis, and it would be terrific—he knew it would.

  That special excitement was too many miles and days ahead to examine. Today was a first day, a time to cruise more than a few miles while his bike tested itself and its rider. He would avoid major roads, always angling west a bit and see what the eastern mountains had to offer. The Great Smokies lay to the south, and it might be neat to ride The Blue Ridge parkway until he got into North Carolina before swinging west. If he did that, he could revisit Virginia’s magnificent Natural Bridge, and pause for a night in Asheville, said to be a handsome town—and he could ride The Tail of The Dragon.

  Old Dog had done that many times and always spoke of riding the Dragon with an amused chuckle. Three hundred and ten turns, or something like that, in eleven miles. Big sweepers with ever-tightening nearly one hundred and eighty degree turns that made foot pegs scrape, struggling to stay on the black top. Yep, he would have to ride the Dragon before he headed off into Tennessee and Kentucky, and … .

  Tim Carlisle rode and dreamed his day away.

  Tim camped the first two nights, but locating a spot to roll up in his blanket or pitch his small tent proved surprisingly difficult and time consuming. The more or less Free Range riding era had passed. Farmers no longer allowed passersby to enjoy campfires, or anything else, in their woods and fields.

  Although he watched, Tim saw no gatherings of bikers in empty fields or welcoming woodlands. The spots he finally settled on had little to recommend them, and he felt that a shotgun-armed landowner or a local deputy sheriff might step out at any moment to order him away or worse yet lock him up for trespassing.

  What Tim did note were motorcycles parked beneath the colonnaded portico entrances of not inexpensive motels. He pulled up to a group of Harley and Victory bike riders to ask.

  Yep, everybody hit the motels at night. The old days of roughing it and squatting around smoky fires were gone. Everybody wanted hot showers, air conditioning, and memorable meals served at tables.

  Tim made the mental adjustments without undo despair. So, bikers had more money now than they used to have. For sure the bikes were giant steps above those ridden by his uncle and the other 1%ers of even a decade past.

  A few riders came over to examine the old shovelhead as if it were a link to times past but not forgotten. Tim liked the attention and the wonderment that he, a young guy, rode such an outdated but still fascinating piece of equipment. He mentioned Old Dog, and on his third day one rider remembered him.

  The biker was grizzled and appeared a bit frail. He rode a trike assembled from an older Evolution-engined Harley and a bolt-on rear wheel kit.

  The rider answered to Nick, and he remembered Old Dog from flat track races held in youthful days at Langhorn, Pennsylvania.

  Just when h
ad that been? “Oh, it could have been in the middle nineteen-fifties,” he supposed.

  Nick sort of recalled that Old Dog Carlisle was just out of the service. He’d been in the Korean action, the old man thought. “How is Old Dog, anyway?”

  Tim had no good news there. Old Dog had been dead from cancer for many years.

  Nick was certain that Dog had been riding a panhead back then. He almost had to have been, Tim reasoned, the shovel had not yet been invented.

  “The Tail of The Dragon” was even more than Tim had imagined. There were actually one hundred and eighteen significant turns in the eleven-mile stretch of mountain highway that began in North Carolina and ended in Tennessee.

  On his first run, Tim seriously scraped his floorboards. He stopped to re-gather himself on the western end above the lake and to discuss the Tail with a number of other first-time riders.

  An important discovery was that many of the unforgiving and strangely sloping turns tightened as they were ridden. If not aware and planning ahead, a biker found himself either off the road, and probably wrecked, or across the center line and trying not to be ticketed or run down by a motorcycle committing the same crime in the opposite direction.

  On this day, State Troopers were on the scene. A marked car was positioned at each end of the Dragon with a single car from either state perched at the summit. Nothing was said about excessive speeds, but if a bike crossed a centerline, the troopers struck, and the fines were memorable.

  Then Tim rode The Dragon to the east, and he did a little better. He bought a T-shirt at the restaurant and motel before challenging the mountain road for a third and final time.

  He supposed it might be a long time before he again rode this way, so he took the mountain at a far more reasonable speed and enjoyed the scenery as he crossed the summit to enter a different state. He even raised a hand to the trooper (Tennessee in this case) and received a friendly wave in return.