by John Boyd
“Is this your bike, sir?” Ward asked, smiling.
The man’s helmet also displayed an American flag, and sewn above his right pocket was a blue strip holding three white Navy stars with red centers. He didn’t return Ward’s smile, and his voice rumbled, “That’s my hawg.”
“Whatever you call it, it’s beautiful.”
“Take a good long look, boy. Most likely it’s the last you’ll ever see… You all right, Little Mama?”
“I’m coming down too fast, Big Papa,” Dolores said. “I’m going to get the agonies.”
“I’ll get you to a brewery, directly… Honey, has this Pinko been molesting you?”
“He’s not a Red. He’s Al. He wants to ask you if he can take me home.”
“All the way to Orange County? Little Mama, you know you can’t tell it when you meet a Red. They’re subversive.” He swung his massive head toward Ward. “Whose home you aiming to take Little Mama to, Pinko?”
With sickening certainty Ward realized he had misread the situation. Both Freddie and Margie had warned him, but he has assumed the Orange County Patriots were merely conservatives. Dolores was the mama of a motorcycle gang.
All Ward could rely on, now, was his charm, reasonableness, and the community of interests created by a mutual regard for motorcycles.
“Hers, Big Papa.” Ward smiled. “She seemed confused, disoriented…”
“Careful what you say about Little Mama, boy.”
“But I felt she needed protection, and…”
“Then you must have figured she had something to protect. You been thinking dirty about Little Mama, boy?”
Ward’s situation demanded a desperate remedy.
“Big Papa, you don’t understand, but…”
“You saying I’m dumb, boy?”
“I’m saying I was trying to get to you, because…”
“You calling me a queer, boy?”
“Listen, Big Papa. I’m a short-hair, like you. I drive a motorcycle, like you. I voted for Goldwater, and I want to join your club.”
“Well, boy, why didn’t you say so?” A grin gave the face a coarse magnetism and Ward the hope that he might be getting through to the man.
“Arms, Lefty,” Big Papa’s voice rumbled among the parked cars. “Fresh meat!”
He turned back to Ward.
“If you want to join the Patriots, you got to prove your loyalty. Let me see your helmet.”
Ward handed his helmet to Big Papa, who stood sideways before him. Big Papa pivoted around to his side bag and pulled out a decal.
“Little Mama, lend me your head.”
Little Mama walked up to Big Papa and he put the helmet onto her head, adjusting the chinstrap. Carefully positioning the decal, he adhered it to the front of Ward’s helmet and stood back to admire his handiwork, saying, “Real nice, honey.”
Two young men emerged from among the cars. One wore a short-sleeved leather jacket because his biceps were too large to fit a normal sleeve and the other, one-armed, carried a car radio in his hand. They had flags on their helmets but wore no stars.
“Boys, meet Al. He wants to join the Patriots.” He turned to Ward. “You understand, boy, before you take the loyalty oath there’s a security check, initiation fees, and a haircut.”
Lefty had laid down his radio and he sidled around in front of Ward, saying, “I’m Lefty, Al,” and extending his left hand as Arms extended his right, saying, “I’m Arms.”
Ward extended both hands and the two did not let go after they shook hands. Instead, they pinned his arms to his side. Ward resented a trick that had made him a prisoner by presuming on his friendliness and goodwill, but fear dominated his resentment. Not since the Normandy landings had he felt such dryness of mouth and urgency of bladder, and a phrase from his youth kept recurring to his mind, “Keep a firm sphincter, Ward.”
“Ball Bearing, front and center,” Big Papa called back toward the wall loungers, and one broke away from the wall, sidling up with the crab-like motion which Ward now assumed to be some cabalistic ritual among the Patriots. He wore two stars above his right pocket.
“Ball Bearing here!” He reported in a voice almost cultivated.
Ball Bearing was a slightly built man with large gray eyes and sandy hair and the thin line of a mustache. With an air of remote detachment about him, he reminded Ward of photographs of the young William Faulkner.
Big Papa looked Ward up and down with a slow, implacable contempt as he spoke to Ball Bearing. “Two-Star, this Red conspirator is the clumsiest would-be infiltrator into the Patriots I ever saw. He tells me he voted for Goldwater and he thinks I’m dumb enough to buy a cover story that would make him about eight when he voted. But I’m not charging him with disrespect. Take him down in the corner. I want him tried and found guilty of intent to lay. When he rounded that corner he was pussyfooting in front of Little Mama worse than she did the day I got the Schweinjaeger… Now, I got to get Little Mama to some candy before she crashes.”
Other black-jacketed men wearing kidney belts were sidling out from among the cars, they, the men, regarding Ward with that same hostility and circumspection their leader had shown, not saying anything but merely looking with expressions at once both contemptuous and profound, as if they saw Ward at the epicenter of some soundless fury around which they had swirled from the day of their birth and around which they would be moving in mindless rage and frustration until they lay dying.
There was an interlude of silence as Big Papa strapped Dolores into the tandem seat, still wearing Ward’s crash helmet, and roared off down the alley. Quite deliberately, the two had conspired to steal his helmet.
Two-Star turned to Arms and Lefty. “Take him down into the corner… Brazos, front and center.”
The last man against the wall came over and said, “Brazos here.” He wore one star. He had the Texas look—the leathery, wind-beaten face and high cheekbones of a cowboy and Indian.
“Put Hoot Owl on the west and the Loon on the east end of the parking lot…”
Two-Star was giving instructions as Ward was led down into the dark corner of the alley. As they passed the line of motorcycles, the Patriots started the motors and set them on idle. Thoroughly concerned, now, Ward hoped the rumble of motors might merely announce that court was in session, but he was self-possessed enough to realize that there might be other reasons for the noise. One might assume, for instance, that this was a kangaroo court and the roar was designed to cover the thud of fists against flesh. From the major premise it would then follow that the fists would be theirs and the flesh his.
When Two-Star returned to the group, accompanied by Brazos, his voice sounded soft and reassuring beneath the low rumble of the motorcycle engines when he spoke to Ward.
“Son, there’s nothing personal about this trial. We Patriots believe in law and order. Our Three-Star, Big Papa, has given us the order to try you for intent and his order is law… Breeches, give him a security check.”
Again Ward’s wallet left his pocket.
“Patriots, is this Commie loaded!” Breeches said. “Credit cards from here to yonder.”
“Count his initiation fee, Breeches,” Two-Star said, “and you, Razor, check Breeches while he counts.”
Turning to Ward, Two-Star said apologetically, “These pre-trial proceedings take a little time.”
“Eight hundred and twenty dollars,” Breeches whooped. “This Commie’s a capitalist.”
“Liberate it,” Two-Star said.
Ward recognized the terminology from World War II. He was being robbed. Anger built up in him at his helplessness and the men who were taking advantage of it, but despite his anger and his fear, his mind absorbed and weighed every detail, his memory recorded each name. Still, he could not understand the sideways stance the men adopted when facing each other.
The answer came from an unexpected shout of warning.
“Guard your crotch, Al!”
The cry keened over the tops of the parked c
ars, and looking upward toward its source he saw Freddie the Hustler atop a delivery van.
“Get that black bastard,” Two-Star said.
Four of the Patriots separated from the jury and swung out through the cars, but they wore hobnailed boots and Freddie wore sneakers. His first leap over the four-man net closing in on him cleared two autos and placed him atop a station wagon. Freddie had covered fifteen feet in a standing broad jump.
It seemed incredible to Ward that members of the same club could do to each other what these men obviously feared, but more frightening was the knowledge that he had stood vulnerable before them for so long. Figuring Two-Star, in front of him, for a right-footed kicker, Ward swung his left thigh forward.
“We’re doing no crotch job on you, son,” Two-Star explained with absurd gentleness. “We’re only giving you a haircut.”
He turned to his leathery-faced subaltern. “Where’s the Barber?”
“Chasing the jig.”
“Forget him, Brazos. We’ve got a trial to conduct.”
“Barber, front and center,” the One-Star, Brazos, yelled. “With clippers.”
A clean-cut, helmeted youth with blond eyebrows emerged from between the cars, holding a short length of sprocket chain in each hand. He cast a casual but professional glance at Ward’s hair as he, too, stood sideways in front of Ward. Ridiculous though the precaution was, Ward realized that the youth was guarding his crotch from Ward.
“How do you want him styled, Ball Bearing?”
Two-Star rubbed his chin reflectively. “All he’s guilty of is the intent to lay Little Mama. That’s worth only a Sing Sing or at most a modified Monk, but Big Papa was unhappy about the way he pussyfooted around Little Mama and it might make Big Papa unhappy if we let him off with less than a Mohawk.”
Ward felt indignation and relief. Such young men in the past, he had read, used German storm troopers as models, but apparently the current fad was to imitate the French maquis who sheared the hair from Frenchwomen who fraternized with German occupation troops.
“A Mohawk takes a little time,” the Barber said thoughtfully, “since I’d have to trim for his warlock. And we’re out of our territory.”
“Very well,” Two-Star said. “Give him a Yul Brynner.”
The Barber took his hip-forward stance in front of Ward.
“Would you tilt your head slightly to the right, Al? I don’t want to clip your ear.”
Since the Barber had no clippers, Ward assumed he was studying hair contours and tilted his head. He was determined to remain detached about the invasion of his person, consider it no more than an extreme prank.
Psychological shock almost dulled Ward’s pain when the chain in the Barber’s left hand whipped up and lashed the side of his head slightly above his right ear. To obtain a cutting motion, the Barber blunted the force of the blow with a forward jerk as the chain lashed into the side of Ward’s head, but the force remained strong enough to bounce Ward’s head to the left where it was lashed and swung back by the chain in the Barber’s right hand striking in the same relative position. Left and right, swish-thud, Ward’s head bounced with the rhythm of a punching bag.
Here was sadism, gratuitous and calculated, performed by an all-American boy in the trappings of a patriot. Ward was being scalped by lacerations at the hands of an expert. Overlap of chain cuts from opposite sides of his head was infinitesimal, and the slits were climbing toward the peak of his head in precisely parallel furrows.
With two quick strokes across the crown, the haircut was finished, and the Barber stepped back.
“You can check it, Ball Bearing, but I don’t think I missed any spots.”
“Tilt his head back, Patriots,” Two-Star’s voice was now grotesquely gentle, “to keep his blood from blinding him. Cut off his bandana to wipe his forehead… Too bad about that pink suede shirt. Must be an eighty-dollar item.”
Over the top of the cars the voice of the dark angel called, “Guard your crotch, Al.”
Two-Star’s delicate concern for his shirt enraged Ward. Faking grogginess, he tottered to a sidewise position, his head lolling backward on his neck. He had been trapped by the logic of his position; in a community of violence, a man of peace must accept the life style or remain forever vulnerable to his neighbors. Ward accepted the situation and adapted to it.
Intent on his inspection, relaxed and perhaps contemptuous of his victim, Ball Bearing stood with his hands on his hips, legs spread. He was not guarding his crotch.
“His hair’s matting fast,” the Two-Star said, “but I see a couple of spots above his right sideburn… hmmph!”
With the fluidity of a striking cobra, impelled by the frustrations of a quarter-century of nonviolence, Ward kicked. His thigh propelled his steel-capped toe in a perfect trajectory and with superhuman strength. All pain was obliterated by the exultation he felt when his toe, carrying all before it, imploded into Ball Bearing’s groin.
Figuring the Patriot’s weight at 160 pounds and a conservative lift of four inches on the vertical and a twelve-inch movement along the horizontal plus a six-foot slide on his back after his heels struck the ground, Ward calculated that his kick would have scored a 102-yard field goal in the Coliseum.
One-Star assumed command.
“Drain Oil, you and Crank Case take No-Star over to his hog and try to revive him. He just lost his two stars, but he learned to guard his crotch.”
“That’s locking the stable after the stallion’s gelded,” the Barber said.
“He wore his helmet in the wrong place,” the ape called Arms commented.
“This changes the charges to assault on a fellow Patriot,” Brazos said, turning to Ward.
“I’m no longer interested in the kangaroo court procedures of you crabs on the pubes of a subculture of hopheads.”
“What did he say?” Brazos asked the Barber.
“I don’t know, but it didn’t sound like a compliment.”
Clearing the court took hardly more than three minutes. As Two-Star was carried past Ward he was moaning, “Kill me, shoot me. I’m ruined.”
“Fellow Patriots,” Brazos addressed the group, “you’ve got a new field commander, and Pm no pussyfooting bleeding heart when it comes to Pinkos. Let this be a lesson to all of you; never trust a Red, and guard your crotch. But he ain’t getting off light. There’s a new judgment in this here court. Boys, I’m ordering a crotch job on this subversive… Crotch Job, break out your long chain. Breeches, you handle the breeches. Sprocket, left ankle. Razor, right ankle. Muffler, set them engines up a notch… Drape him over that Cadillac hood.”
It was not done easily. Sprocket lost a front tooth when Razor’s bloody hand slipped off Ward’s ankle, but it was done.
“That’s Miss Frost’s Caddy,” Freddie yelled from the bleachers.
“Hold it, Patriots,” One-Star commanded. “Move him over to that ’70 Lincoln. Miss Frost is bad news.”
Ward was shifted over to an older model and spreadeagled across the hood, completely exposed to the stars.
Knowing the agony he faced, Ward tried to concentrate his consciousness on one spot to blot out his physical awareness. In the irrelevancy of panic, the only positive thought he could muster came from his gratitude that the new cars had no radiator ornaments. Then, all the power of his imagination focused on the head of Chief Pontiac, two braids, hooked nose, jutting chin, but one feather or a war bonnet?
When his imagery wavered in mental confusion, Ward knew no instant yoga would soften the pain he must face, the anguish, the indignity of emasculation, but face it he would. Not for it nor what the potent Patriots in their rage might else inflict would he cry, “Hold.” Sustained by indomitable hate, he would survive and return to plant the blood-avenging toe into the crotch of Big Papa, Brazos, Arms, the Barber, Breeches, Crank Case, Crotch Job, Hoot Owl, Lefty, the Loon, Muffler, Razor and, yes, Little Mama.
What mattered sex to a eunuch?
Closing his eyes, Ward awaited the
first slash from the sprocket chain of a New Right flagellant.
CHAPTER SIX
Concentrated on thoughts of revenge, Ward was oblivious to the hoot of an owl and the quavering of a loon, to hands releasing his limbs or the voice of Brazos speaking with quiet urgency, “The fuzz… Patriots, let’s get outta here.”
He was first conscious of a rough hand shaking his shoulder, the far-off dwindling roar of gunned hogs, and a voice of authority ordering, “Off the hood, Juliet. All your Romeos have left you.”
Ward opened his eyes to see a man with a new helmet looking down at him with the old contempt. Instead of the terrifying stars and stripes, the helmet bore the emblem of the Sheriff’s Department, County of Los Angeles. Weakened by shock and blood loss, Ward struggled to a sitting position as the deputy called across the lot, “I’ve caught their red-headed fairy over here, Sarge… We can book him for indecent exposure and property damage. He’s messed up the hood of a Lincoln.”
Before the sergeant answered, Ward heard the high-pitched voice of Freddie calling as he rounded the line of cars, “He ain’t the one, Mr. Poe-leece. I’m a witness.”
With incredible speed the deputy pivoted on his huge hocks, drew his pistol, and was pointing it at Freddie and yelling, “Up against the wall, you black mother-lover.”
“I tell y’all, I’m the one who called the poe-leece…”
Without breaking the flow of his babble, Freddie turned and leaped twenty feet to land flat-footed in front of the wall behind him. While in flight his legs spread wide, and when he landed his palms were pressed against the wall, his head lowered, his butt jutting out in a stance for the frisk.
“… I’m not going to be calling the poe-leece on myself, am I? You gentlemen done saved that young white gentleman. He didn’t mess up that Lincoln, sirs…”
Other deputies, guns drawn, were converging on the slender black, and one was moving cautiously forward to make the frisk, using the same sidling motion of the Patriots. Freddie’s whining expostulations amazed Ward. Moments before, the gazelle had talked with glibness and wit. Now he sounded like a field hand caught in the chicken house.