American Outlaw

by James, Jesse

  Enlarging factory fenders was a bum job, though. Performance Machine had their fenders manufactured in China, and working with that cheap steel was a total mess. The metal would bubble and spatter terribly under a welding torch as I attempted to split them, and then rejoin them with new steel. But, I reasoned, if I started from scratch, with better metal, I could make a really cool-looking fender. High quality, durable. Generally kick-ass.

  A name had been kicking around in my head for a while, too, one that I thought had a certain ring to it.

  “What do you think of the handle West Coast Choppers?” I asked Karla. “For my business, I mean.”

  “Wow,” Karla said. “I like it. It’s catchy.”

  We made a good team in those days, at least when we weren’t squabbling. Karla was still dancing then, had been doing it for going on a decade. Eventually, though, she came to an impasse, because the swimsuit dancing that she had grown up on had sort of started to go out of style.

  “They’re all little sluts,” Karla said, crying, one night when she came home after work.

  “Hey,” I said. “What’s wrong? What happened?”

  She buried her head in my chest. “The other girls I work with . . . I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Come here.” I got up and got a glass of water from the kitchen sink for her. “Stop crying and tell me what’s going on.”

  She sniffed, and wiped away the tears from her eyes. “My boss . . . he says I have to go topless.”

  “I thought they didn’t do that where you worked.”

  “We don’t!” Karla spat. “But my boss says all the other places are doing it these days. He says the customers expect it.”

  I sat there for a second. “What do you think you’re gonna do?”

  She shrugged and looked so helpless. But then she screwed up her face, and gave me that determined kind of look that I had come to associate with Karla. “I’ll just go topless, then.”

  And she tried, for about two weeks. But it was awful to see. Every night, Karla came home from work bawling her eyes out, pissed at the rude crowd, and incensed at the younger girls who were cutting into her money.

  “I was so close to punching that Jezebelle tonight, I swear to God!”

  “Honey . . .”

  “I mean, I am like this far from wrapping up her hair around my fist and yanking her down to the floor!” She paced back and forth across the linoleum of our kitchen. “Tell me that I won’t! I’ve done it before and I am FULLY capable of doing it again!”

  “Karla.” My voice was loud. “Just stop for a second.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t want you doing this anymore.”

  “Who cares what you want?” She looked at me incredulously.

  “Come on,” I said. “Give me a break. What I mean is, I don’t think you want to be doing this anymore.”

  She bit her lip stubbornly. “Oh, believe me, I do. I’m better than any of those little tramps.”

  “I know you are, Karla,” I said. “You have class.”

  “Yes, I do,” Karla sniffed.

  “But you’ve done it. You’ve lived it. It’s enough. It’s time to move on.”

  She stared at me for a second, helplessly. “But what else can I do?”

  “Work with me. Help me get my business off the ground.”

  She was quiet for a moment, considering. “Not the worst idea I’ve ever heard.”

  “Right?” I asked.

  “You could use a lot of help, is what I really mean,” Karla said. “You’ve got no sense of how to balance a bankbook, for one thing.”

  “Well, see, there you go.”

  “Not to mention you know nothing about marketing.”

  “Right,” I said, clearing my throat.

  “I’ve always wanted to try to learn about business accounting,” Karla said, excited all over again. “I think I might have some talent at it.”

  “You’ll be just great. Let’s move on to the next stage, okay?”

  She came closer to me, and I wrapped her up in my arms.

  “I got your back,” I said. “I promise.”

  She kissed me and we hugged. It felt really good, to have her heart up next to mine, to have her little body sitting up on my thighs, clutched close to me.

  “You really think I was good?” she whispered. “I mean . . . at dancing?”

  “Karla,” I said to her, truthfully, “you were the best I ever saw.”

  9

  My life felt full and busy. I was trying to figure out how to get my own business off the ground, but I continued to work at Boyd’s during the day, knowing I’d never find myself in the company of so many experts again. Unbeknownst to me, though, my life was about to get even fuller.

  “Hon?” Karla said to me one morning as I was getting up and getting ready to ride to work. “Can I talk to you?”

  “Sure thing,” I said. I buttoned the top button of my Dickie’s shirt, letting the others hang open in my Long Beach gangbanger fashion. “What’s up?”

  “I . . . I think I’m pregnant.”

  I was stunned.

  “Are you serious?”

  “Yes,” she said, looking pale.

  I waited, mulling the news over. After a moment, I was able to let the news sink in. “Well, that’s good.”

  “Good?”

  “Yeah,” I said. I came nearer to Karla and put my hands on her shoulders. “Aren’t you happy?”

  “I am,” she admitted, blushing. “I just didn’t know what you were going to say.”

  “I’ve been hoping we’d have a kid.”

  “Really?” She looked at me happily. “Man, you never told me that! You’re always surprising me, Jesse.”

  “We need another welder around here,” I continued.

  “That’s very funny,” Karla said.

  “What?” I said, smiling. “A little fella with a strong set of hands is just what I need out there in the garage.”

  “How do you know it’s going to be a boy?” Karla asked, her hands on her hips.

  I looked at her quizzically. “I’m Jesse James. Of course it’s going to be a boy.”

  When I let Boyd in on the news, he grinned real big at me.

  “Congrats, kid. And listen, if that girlfriend of yours wants another baby, just let me know.”

  Boyd reminded me of my dad sometimes. He was a good hustler. I think out of everyone I’ve ever met, he was just the master of massaging money out of people. I can’t even count the number of times people came into the shop all pissed, threatening to sue him, because their superexpensive custom car had some imperfection in it, or wouldn’t be ready on the agreed-upon date.

  “You promised!” they’d scream, red-faced, spitting into Boyd’s face.

  “Listen, can I talk to you?” he’d ask them seriously. “I’d like to tell you precisely what occurred with your car; I think you’ll find it very interesting.” And he’d shoulder them into his office, like they were the last friend he had on the earth. Forty-five minutes later, the pair would walk out arm in arm, and Boyd would escort them to the parking lot, where he would bid them a respectful adieu.

  “What happened?”

  “Wouldn’t you know?” Boyd would say to me, shaking his head, impressed with himself. “That fucker just sprung for two more cars.”

  Boyd had a softer side to him, too. He was dedicated to employing developmentally disabled adults in his shop. The whole time that I worked there, Boyd had three or four of these guys in there, working alongside his team of seasoned pros to churn out hot rods. I didn’t quite get it at first—obviously, they slowed down our production schedule to some degree, and I was always a stickler for moving fast. But after a very short while, I discovered that I loved working and learning alongside these guys. They just had the biggest hearts ever. One really special worker was named Gregory. Boyd tended to coddle Gregory, but I treated him just like any other coworker.

  “Yo! Gregory. Come here for a se
cond. I got something to tell you.”

  He would put down his tools and look at me, interested.

  “Hey man,” I’d whisper. “Fuck you.”

  Gregory’s eyes would get all wide. “Fuck you, Jesse!”

  I was never happier than when I was buying Hershey bars and Dr Pepper’s on my breaks, and trying to feed them to Gregory to get him all wired on sugar. He also loved Power Rangers, so I’d always wind him up good by starting conversations about them.

  “Boy, you like those Mighty Morphins, huh, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” said Gregory, looking excited. “Goldar!”

  “Goldar’s one of the bad guys, though, isn’t he? Are you a bad guy, Gregory?”

  “Yes.” He squinted at me, giving me his best impression of an evil villain.

  When Gregory celebrated his fortieth birthday, I bought him a big Power Ranger glove, one that made all these electronic sounds. Man, his eyes sure did get big when he unwrapped that glove.

  “For me!” he said, cradling the glove possessively.

  “Now, hold on, that glove is not for Gregory,” I said, “it’s for a badass Power Ranger, okay?”

  His birthday was on a Friday. The following Monday, bright and early at seven a.m., his parents showed up with him at work. They were very old, and this morning they looked very tired.

  “Are you Jesse?”

  “I am,” I said.

  His mother handed me back the box gently. “Thank you very much, but we’re going to have to return this to you.” She cleared her throat and looked sideways at her son. “Gregory hasn’t been to sleep yet this weekend.”

  “Whoops,” I said, reddening, as I accepted the box. “Hey, Power Rangers have to sleep, too, Gregory,” I reminded him.

  For a while, Boyd’s was like home for me. But then things started to get bumpy. I was making the shop a ton of money with the wheels, and Boyd started to treat me with favored son status. The grumbling started then, and it only worsened when Boyd gave me a new van to drive around.

  “Really, Boyd?” I said, impressed. It was a brand-new Astrovan, lowered, with cool seventeen-inch wheels. “I dig it.”

  “Something to drive that hot pregnant girlfriend of yours around in,” Boyd explained.

  “Gotcha,” I said, laughing.

  “It’s not a fucking present,” Boyd said. “Just so you know. It’s on loan, so get that through your head. But you’re doing real good. Just look at it as a small bonus, to let you know my heart’s in the right place.”

  Unfortunately, the word got around real quick that the boss had given me a car. Right away it started getting a little political and cliquey in there. Guys who’d started to open up and accept me clammed right up.

  “Boy, I wish I had a new car,” one of the guys complained loudly, as he passed by my wheel station. “That’d be pretty sweet.”

  “Yup,” said another guy, shooting me a hateful look. “My Jag’s about dead. I guess we’ll all have to hitch rides with Jesse James. That is, if he’ll be so kind as to pick us up in that shiny new van of his.”

  “It’s ridiculous,” I complained to Karla, that evening. “Why should I be putting my energy toward a team that actually resents me for doing the best job I can?”

  “Maybe you should give notice,” she suggested. “That doesn’t sound like a very healthy environment.”

  “I’d love to,” I said. “But we’re not exactly doing a million in retail yet, are we?”

  I’d set up a space in the garage where I could build my fat fenders, and I’d manufactured a few of them from raw material. My design was good, and my craftsmanship looked up to par; I’d put one over the rear wheel on my Harley and to me, it looked pretty damn cool. But a nagging problem remained: Who was I going to sell them to?

  I was stumped. On top of the issue of sales, my problems seemed magnified by a shadow of doubt: try as I might, I couldn’t quite accept the idea that I could actually become a successful person by starting my own motorcycle business. When we were growing up, the biker world simply wasn’t respectable—it was for Hells Angels and speed freaks. Even though I loved this work, the thought of a man working steadily at this particular craft to support his family still seemed a bit foreign to me.

  And I wasn’t the only one having doubts.

  “Please don’t take this the wrong way,” Karla said. “Because, I’m actually curious. But I mean, why would anyone pay so much for a motorcycle fender?”

  “Well, I don’t know,” I admitted. I placed my hand on her growing belly to soothe me. “It is kind of odd, when you stop to think about it.”

  “I mean, why do guys care so much about bikes in the first place?” Karla wondered, her arms folded.

  “Beats me,” I said. “One of life’s greater mysteries.”

  But somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew that there was a pretty good answer to Karla’s question. Motorcycle fans saw themselves as rebels, just like punks did. Rejecting the status quo of society generally takes a certain kind of courage, but more than that, it takes style.

  I was a jock turned delinquent turned bodyguard turned welder. I knew my market: men. They were ex-cons, trespassers, and reprobates; but more, they were guys who saw themselves as fitting in somewhere outside of normal. A fierce-looking chopper was their indispensable outlaw badge. When they thought about peeling out, riding into the desert, boots smoking with the speed of the ride, I wanted Jesse James and West Coast Choppers to be the first name off their lips.

  “Yep, honey,” I said to Karla, affectionately running my hand over her stomach once more. “Pretty weird. I really have no idea why anyone gives a damn.”

  ——

  So for the time being, I stayed on at Boyd’s, ignoring the dirty looks my coworkers sent my way. Fuck them, it wasn’t like Boyd had given me a Porsche. At night, I hung with my lady and teased her about being pregnant.

  “Hey, you want one?” I asked, motioning to my beer.

  “Real funny, Jesse,” she sniffed. “God, I wish you could be pregnant for just one day, and see how easy it is.”

  “I got troubles of my own,” I cried. “I’m out there trying to start a business! Make a buck for this little baby!”

  “Who are you trying to sell your fenders to, Jesse?” Karla asked.

  “Well,” I said, “I took a few to the swap meet last weekend.”

  “Are you serious?” Karla laughed. “The swap meet? Did you actually sell any?”

  “One,” I admitted, embarrassed. “Look, I understand the swap meet, okay? That’s where I grew up.”

  “Okay,” Karla said, looking serious. “No more fooling around. It’s time for us to get cracking. What we need to do is go around to some shops. We need to get you to a place where someone might buy, like, ten of your fenders.”

  “Maybe Performance would want some,” I mused.

  “There you go,” Karla said. “We’ll start there. Where else?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “There’s probably about ten bike shops in the area we could try.”

  Karla grinned. “So what are we waiting for?”

  Karla was right. Most of the bike shops we talked to liked fenders, and agreed to take on a couple right away, to see if they’d sell to customers. And immediately, they did. I started receiving progressively more excited phone calls from store owners, demanding that I furnish them with more custom fenders.

  “This is incredible!” I told Karla. “I mean . . . I can’t believe it. People really like these things!”

  “Of course,” Karla said, sounding authoritative. “A chopper really looks good with a wide back wheel, covered by a fat fender.” She giggled. “Don’t it?”

  Soon, the orders began piling in. From one week to the next, they doubled in size. Then tripled. My margin was great: I was selling each fender for several hundred dollars, and reaping a nice profit on each piece.

  One day, Karla approached me with a snooty look on her face.

  “As West Coast Chop
pers’ official business manager,” she announced, “I request a meeting with our chief Grease-Monkey-in-Charge.”

  I laughed. “What is it?”

  “Jesse, I’ve been looking over the books,” Karla said, her voice filling with rising excitement. “You’re making more on your fenders than at the hot rod shop.”

  I was completely taken aback. “That must be a mistake.”

  “It’s not, babe. I checked the numbers three times. Honestly, it almost doesn’t make sense for you to keep on working there.”

  “But I like those guys,” I said, after a second. “And I owe a lot to Boyd.”

  “And we have a baby on the way,” Karla reminded me, patting her stomach. “Just think for a second. Imagine how much we could be earning if you decided to put all your time toward your own business.”

  I was silent for a moment. “I’ll think about it.”

  But the breaking point came soon. One evening, when Karla was nine months pregnant and huge, she approached me cautiously. “Hon,” she said, “do you know how much West Coast Choppers cleared this week?”

  “Nope,” I said honestly. But I knew it had to be a lot. I had stayed up most of each night working to fulfill massive orders from independent bike shops, then rising early as usual to get to Boyd’s. I was beyond exhausted.

  “Ten thousand dollars,” she said quietly.

  I was amazed. I stood there and said nothing.

  “It’s time for you to resign, Jesse,” she said gently. “Like, today.”

  ——

  So I quit. Our garage up on Hackett Avenue wasn’t going to hold me anymore. It had gotten so full of tools, it’d take me forty-five minutes to move everything around before I could even have a space to work. I had a mill, a lathe, and a paint booth, all smashed together in a two-car garage.

  “Do you think you might help me find a space?” I asked Doyle Gammel, a few days after I left the hot rod shop.