American Outlaw

by James, Jesse

  But even more than making a bundle, I was attracted to the idea of the bike as sculpture. Harleys were gorgeous machines, but if you bought them from a dealer, they all looked the same. You plunked down fifteen grand as an expression of your own individual badass nature, and then you lost it in the parking lot among dozens of identical copies.

  It didn’t have to be that way. I had ideas for elongated handlebars, dynamic frames, silvered gussets, and chromed-out wheels. We’d capitalize on the momentum we’d generated thus far; our guerrilla advertising and enthusiastic word of mouth would do the rest. It would take a huge amount of effort, dedication, and talent, no doubt. But I was beginning to believe that I might have enough of all three to succeed.

  ——

  As I began to spend more and more time at the shop, Karla was not pleased.

  “I never see you anymore,” she said.

  “Honey,” I said, “West Coast is at a fragile point. You understand that, right?”

  “No. Explain it to me.”

  “I just took on two more guys,” I said. “They need my guidance.”

  “You just got a pool table in there, too.”

  I laughed. “Well, Doyle about rented me the whole place, and we needed to fill a room. Look, can’t I blow off some steam after I get done slaving? You know, I’m working fifteen-hour days.”

  “You have a daughter, Jesse. You have responsibilities at home, too.”

  “I know,” I said gently. “I will try harder to make time for all of us. I promise.”

  But even as I said it, I knew I was lying. The momentum was building for West Coast Choppers, and it was just too damn exciting to be away from there even for a minute. With more employees around to work the hammers, I was freed up to do design work, and I wanted to seize on it.

  “What’s that?” Rick said to me, looking over my shoulder in the small office I’d converted into a drawing studio.

  “A frame I’m working on,” I said. “See how it’s gonna be all elongated and smooth?”

  “You think people will want to ride like that?” asked Rick dubiously, staring at the long, curved backbone and the intricate piping I’d drawn.

  “I don’t know,” I said calmly. “I guess we better build one and find out.”

  I slaved over the shop jig, welding the tubes for a week, failing at the work, frustrated, then coming back time and time again to correct it. Finally the piece was born: a complicated but ultimately very functional elongated custom frame that would hopefully serve as a structural base for a beautiful motorcycle.

  “I’m going to patent this,” I told Rick proudly. “My CFL frame.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Choppers for Life.”

  Slowly, I was becoming better at my craft. Projects I’d seen as overly complex or simply too intimidating seemed wholly within the realm of possibility. Hell, I might as well try, right? I spent a full fourteen-hour day attempting to handcraft a gas tank out of aluminum sheeting. I hand-pounded the metal, softening it, shaping it, coaxing it underneath the foot-tensioned planishing hammer. Back and forth, back and forth, I ran the metal, until it was butter-soft and shining. I welded the partitions together, coaxing shape, form, and function out of what had previously been dull and flat.

  I can’t believe this! I laughed to myself, when I was done. It actually worked!

  It was addictive. I wanted to do it all the time. Thinking back to the years I’d spent running around with rock bands, knocking people’s teeth out, I could hardly believe I’d been that person. This was so much more fulfilling. It was a completely encapsulating existence, creative while still being badass, and littered with wads of money around every turn.

  Local fame was even part of the package. As our brand grew in recognition, the Long Beach and Riverside motorcycle freaks began to talk to one another, and I had gearheads coming by every day, just to hang around the shop.

  “Whattaya say, Jesse, you got a job for me? I’m a dynamite painter, man, I can make candy flames shoot up at a moment’s notice! That gas tank of yours would look pretty fuckin’ bitchin’ with some custom flake, tell you that!”

  Everybody seemed to want to be included. We were growing at such an absurd rate, with so many new orders coming in for custom bikes, that I was actually able to employ some of the more talented guys who came by. Again I expanded into Doyle’s studio, taking over another nice-sized chunk to use as a paint shop.

  “Dude, you ever think about making T-shirts?” my friend Chino asked me one day. Chino was a fixture in the low-rider world, the accepted master of hydraulics and lowered Impalas with crazy rims. “Put that cool-ass logo on there, and I bet you could sell a load, man . . .”

  So T-shirts with our Maltese cross got thrown into the mix, too. Right off the bat, they went like hotcakes. I’d pictured making only enough for the guys at the shop to wear, so we could be our own little gang, but the locals clamored for them, and we sold out our first thousand-order run in under two weeks.

  I was feeling hot. The energy of success ran over me constantly, like a current of electricity. I wanted to work all day and drink all night. Sleep just didn’t interest me, and after a while, neither did home. I dug up a few friends from around the way who were still stoked to go out and get drunk on weeknights. Mike Newman, Baby Hud, Paul McFadden—they were all six foot two or bigger. Nobody fucked with us. If they did, it got ugly real quick.

  “Let’s get us some beers,” Mike said.

  “Let’s get us some trouble,” I countered.

  Mike had a real saucy mouth on him. He was the worst fighter in our group, but for some reason, he was always the one starting shit. One evening, we were at a bar on Bayshore and 2nd, when he overheard some Long Beach City College football players doing some drunken bragging about their schedule.

  “Hey, what was that team that fucked your knee up, Jesse?”

  “Long Beach City College.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought,” said Mike. “Hell, they were punks then, and obviously, they’re punks now.”

  They looked at him, irritated. “And who are you, tough guy?”

  “John Madden,” said Mike, pushing his bar stool out from under him and letting it thud onto the floor. “Can’t you tell?”

  “Well, come on,” said their biggest guy. He swung at Mike, just missing smacking him in the mouth with the meat of his fist. When Mike tried to swing back, another football player clocked him in the side of the head. His head hit the bar with a dull thump.

  “Oh, boy,” I said, putting down my beer and cracking my knuckles. “This just got fun.”

  Hud, Paul, and I dropped into fighting stances and began to trade blows with the other players.

  “Fellas, fellas!” cried the bartender. “We just freaking redecorated in here!”

  My sparring mate was a big, baby-faced lineman. His skin was peachy-soft, blotchy from the alcohol. He couldn’t have been more than twenty.

  “I’ll give you one chance to turn around, sonny,” I told him gently.

  Instead, the baby lineman gave a guttural war cry.

  “GRRRRRRRRAAAAAAARGGHH!” He came flying at me, his fist cocked back, the weight of his huge gut and man-tits all packed behind a big haymaker.

  I dropped to my knees and punched him hard in the crotch. His face went purple. When he bent over, I kneed him hard in the face. Blood spurted up from his lips and nose. “I said you could leave. That’s really what you should have done.”

  Our fight spilled out into the street. A random drunk jumped in, and hit me hard from behind with a forearm shiver. I collapsed to the ground, laughing in the excitement of the brawl.

  “Hey, somebody’s watch is down here!” I yelled. I slipped the metal cuff over my wrist, and rubbed the back of my head absently. “Man, finally. I’ve been needing a cool watch.”

  We always seemed to run away just before the cops came, protected by the magic of youth, stupidity, and success. Long Beach was an industrial wasteland, but we ru
led it. The Reno Room knew us well. Strip clubs let us sit in the corner, form our own little men’s club. I was never there to hit on the chicks. I just liked to get nice and drunk there. Felt right. I needed some time to be stupid, to be irresponsible. To not worry about shit.

  “Jesse, dammit, if you’re going to come in at three in the morning, at least be quiet about it!” Karla hissed, as I stumbled into our bedroom late one night.

  “Sorry, sorry,” I mumbled drunkenly. “Go back to sleep.”

  “I can’t go back to sleep!” she said, pissed. “It’s not that easy. I’ll be up for at least an hour now.”

  “Try harder,” I responded, collapsing into my pillow heavily.

  “You smell like a goddamn pack of cigarettes,” Karla said, sitting up angrily. “Where were you? Gold Club? The Rio? The Fritz?”

  “Leave me alone,” I mumbled. “Just let me do my thing.”

  “I don’t see you!” Karla said, crying. “Chandler’s learning how to walk. Did you know that? You’ve hardly even been here for it!”

  “I’ll do better,” I said. My head was throbbing painfully. “I swear, okay? So do me a favor. Lighten up.”

  “Jesse,” Karla said, “we gotta talk.”

  Slowly, I lifted my head from the pillow and looked at her.

  “I’m pregnant again.”

  “Oh, boy,” I groaned. “Listen, let’s talk about this in the morning . . .”

  “I want to get married.”

  “But why?” I protested. “I mean, I just don’t see . . .”

  “No more, Jesse, okay?” Karla said, cutting me off. “I mean, seriously. We gotta get married. If you can’t do that for me, then, I’m gonna leave you.” She stared down at me seriously.

  Both of us stared at each other, and after a second, I just broke out laughing. Karla shook her head.

  “I mean, what the fuck?” she said. “We’re gonna have another child, honey. I think we need to do a little better than this!”

  “I’m kind of a mess, huh?” I admitted.

  “Oh, just kinda,” she said.

  “So you wanna get married, huh?” I groaned softly, pulling the pillow over my head, hiding under it.

  “Yes.” She pulled the pillow off me. “It doesn’t have to be any big ceremony. But I want a ring on my finger, Jesse.”

  “Well,” I said, “let’s talk more in the morning. It doesn’t sound completely out of the question.”

  Karla stared at me. She folded her arms.

  “All right, all right!” I cried. “Damn, no one ever won an argument with you in your whole life, did they?”

  “Nope,” said Karla, smiling proudly. “No one ever did.”

  ——

  We were married in a very small ceremony in Long Beach, and some six months later, our second child was born—a boy. We named him Jesse Jr.

  “Look at this punk,” I said, holding him to my chest, marveling at his small fingers and tiny nose. “This one’s gonna be trouble, I can tell.”

  “No, he will not,” Karla said. “I want my son to be a sweetheart.”

  “He’s another Jesse James, hon,” I said to her. “You don’t have much chance, I’m afraid to tell you.”

  It was thrilling for me to have another child around. I loved Chandler and Jesse Jr. so deeply, and so totally without effort. I received a deep kind of satisfaction from spending time with them, a glow that I couldn’t put into words. It was a bit like when I’d gone up to Seattle, and entered the shipyards for the first time; this sense that I had been born to do this. Experiencing fatherhood was like sinking neatly into a hole that had been bored out especially for me. I felt so incredibly thankful for the fact that by coming into this world, my kids had changed my life.

  Yet at the same time, I remained totally driven. It’s a paradox that all successful men who have families must deal with: they love their kids completely, but at the same time, they are addicted to an idea of “making it” that forces them to go out into the world and do battle. In my bones, I knew that West Coast Choppers was on the cusp of becoming something huge. And that notion excited me greatly. It got me out of bed in the morning with a frenzied sort of nervousness that demanded I head over to the shop.

  “We have someone on the line who would like to speak with you about purchasing a new custom, Jesse.”

  Melissa was my new secretary, a tattooed chick in her thirties who sported a Bettie Page hairdo and fit the image of our upscale-yet-down-to-earth Long Beach bike shop.

  In recent months, I’d hired on more than ten new employees, including a team of polishers, two master painters, more welders, and now a woman to work the phones. Karla took care of payroll. That left me captaining the ship, which recently seemed to be sailing at a faster speed every time I looked up.

  “Okay,” I said, sipping my first cup of coffee of the day, scanning over an inventory sheet. “Who is it?”

  “He says he’s Tyson Beckford,” Melissa whispered. She covered the phone. “Oh my God, do you think it’s the Tyson Beckford? That man is the most beautiful human being on the planet.”

  Of course, it was him. Word of mouth was beginning to make our brand well known across the United States and Europe. The custom choppers we were producing were loud and brash-looking. They often inspired a kind of double take by random passersby. “Who the hell made that for you?” they asked. Through excited discussions in parking lots and at parties, West Coast Choppers had slowly begun to amass a list of wealthy clients who were very interested in seeing if they could get one of our custom bikes.

  “Tell Mr. Beckford that I’ll build him a bike, but only if he takes you out to dinner,” I joked.

  Melissa blushed and handed me the phone. “You better talk to him.”

  Simply put, we were rolling. The shop felt like a team, and I was the natural leader. It felt like being back on the field for La Sierra—I was so serious about what I did, people naturally fell in line behind me.

  Then one afternoon, Doyle approached me and asked if we could have a little talk.

  “I’m gonna have to ask you to move, Jesse.”

  “What the hell are you talking about, Doyle?”

  “I’m sorry, kid.” He shrugged. “But I’m selling the building.”

  “Why?”

  “The weight machine business is bullshit,” he said. “I’m too old for it anyway. Look, a guy gave me a real sweetheart buyout, so I have to take it while I can.” He clapped a friendly hand on my shoulder. “You need more space than I can offer, anyway.”

  “But Doyle,” I said, “I have all these employees. I’m putting out thousands of dollars every week just to keep them coming in to work, and . . .”

  “Hey,” he interrupted, “life is not fucking fair. The deed’s already signed. You got thirty days.”

  That afternoon, I rode my bike all over Orange County. Maybe I should find an upscale location in Redondo or Manhattan Beach, I thought, rich clients might dig it. But nothing looked right to me, and after a while, I realized I would never feel comfortable in the high-income tax-bracket neighborhoods. I was a roughneck. Long Beach was my home.

  After days of searching, I found an absolutely massive space in Long Beach, at 718 Anaheim.

  “This is as big as a city block,” Karla said, shaking her head. “You can’t afford it.”

  “Yes, I can,” I said.

  “Jesse,” she said, warningly. “It’s risky. Think of the overhead.”

  “I can do it,” I told her. “With more space, I’ll be able to take on more projects. I can make more bikes. We’ll manufacture more fenders.”

  “Who will make them?”

  “We’ll hire more staff.”

  “And pay them how?” Karla cried.

  “Trust me,” I snapped, annoyed. “I can pull this off.”

  The building at 718 Anaheim was totally trashed when we moved in, and it took two solid weeks of cleaning and construction to get it into even rudimentary shape to support a motorcycle shop. T
he tension mounted. Again, I had to wonder if I’d bitten off more than I could chew.

  Thank God for my son and my daughter, who brought things back to such an elemental level.

  “Daddy,” Chandler said, “can you make me a toy?”

  That, I could do.

  “What do you want, sweetie?”

  “A frog!” she announced, hugging me.

  Holding Chandler in my arms or listening to my infant son’s heartbeat . . . it awed me. I had basically stumbled into having kids, but now I couldn’t imagine being away from them for even a day. Anything they needed from me, I tried to give to them. And they almost always needed only my love.

  Being a dad, I couldn’t help but reflect on my own relationships with my parents, who had never really seemed interested in giving me this kind of physical closeness. Remembering made me bitter. I couldn’t help it.

  “I just can’t believe my dad doesn’t know his own grandkids.”

  “It’s a lost cause, Jesse,” Karla said. “Forget it.”

  It blew my mind, because I saw how adorable and how perfect my kids were. I couldn’t understand how people who were flesh and blood weren’t willing to make the effort to know them. I took the rejection personally, as if it was happening to me all over again, instead of my kids.

  ——

  Months passed, and my shop and my kids grew. Unfortunately, so did the differences between me and Karla. Though we functioned as a team, the tension between us was mounting. The more we squabbled, the more I retreated into booze. The more I drank, the madder Karla seemed to get. It was a vicious cycle, and I didn’t know how to make it stop.

  Then, in the spring of 1999, an event occurred that would change my life. A producer from the Discovery Channel, Thom Beers, called and proposed making a documentary about our shop.

  “But why?” I asked, honestly flummoxed.

  “Have you been watching TV lately, Jesse?”