The door on the other side of the gas station opened. I turned, nodded to an older man heading to the bathroom, and turned back. The biker had since dismounted, and there were two things that I noticed immediately.
One, though he was pretty well built and muscular, he wasn’t that tall. I was on the taller side, well over six feet tall, so I was biased, but this guy was probably five feet, maybe nine inches at most.
The second thing I noticed was the badass design on the back of his cut. It showed what looked like a Grim Reaper pointing forward, a scythe in hand. I had seen nothing like it, and it looked fucking awesome.
I looked at the man’s bike. It was both pristine and properly aged, like fine wine. It was a thing of beauty, but it also had seen its fair share of activity. Most of our bikes among the Bernard Boys were just old; none of us could afford to buy new ones.
Whoever this guy was, he looked like he belonged to a biker club. He may have been short, but he carried himself with ease; he did not look nervous being here. Maybe he didn’t know about the Bandits, or he did and didn’t give a fuck. Either way, I was mesmerized by that Grim Reaper on the back of his cut.
I didn’t get in awe often, but this was very much a case of feeling like I’d met an idol.
The man turned and walked toward the store. I hurried back to the register, trying not to seem like I was a teenage girl gawking at her music star crush. The man opened the door, looked at me, and nodded. I coolly nodded back, watching him go back to the beer aisle, grab a Blue Moon, and approach me.
“Hey man, your credit card machine isn’t working out there,” he said. “Can you put ten on pump two?”
“Of course, man,” I said, cognizant of how I was trying to sound tougher and deeper. “And one Blue Moon, right? That’ll be fourteen-twenty-two.”
The man produced a ten and a five and told me to keep the change.
“You don’t need to tip—”
“I don’t need to keep it,” he said. “Buy yourself some candy.”
Who was this man, riding into town on a bike like that, so willing to part with money?
“Thanks,” I said. “By the way, that’s a kickass bike out there.”
“Oh, thanks!” the man said, far more affable than I thought he would be.
“You new to town? I don’t see other bikers here a lot.”
The man’s face immediately shifted from cheerful to guarded. He still had a smile on his face, but I could tell there was something about my question that left him a little on edge, a little protective.
“I moved to Albuquerque with… just got here,” he said. “I live downtown, but I like to get out on the open road and drive sometimes. Provides some nice freedom.”
“Oh, cool, so you ride a lot?”
The man chuckled, but I could sense that he was looking to get back to his bike.
“It’s… it’s just a hobby of mine,” he said. “Relaxing and calm. Nothing more.”
He sounded like he was trying to rationalize his bike riding, not embrace it.
But even with that odd shift in tone, that bike and cut still enamored me. I’d heard of motorcycle clubs before, but none of the Bernard Boys had ever suggested forming one. It seemed like a world none of us were ready for, given how we were all too poor and probably a little too immature.
The things I had read stated that MCs included actual street rats and street gangsters, people who would fuck you up for staring at their girl. We were tough, and we did not take shit, but we weren’t outlaws, we weren’t keepers of justice; we were just a bunch of older guys with no proper sense of direction, no real opportunity to find our direction, passing the days with each other until something new popped up. Even for those of us who still cared—guys like myself and Zack—we didn’t have the means to pull it off.
Still, MCs seemed fucking cool. They were badass. They had cuts like that.They could fight back against the Bandits.
And the sheriff? Perhaps.
Let’s not get carried away here.
Still, as I tried not to make it obvious that I was watching the biker pump gas, I searched “MC” on my phone, going down a rabbit hole I knew well now. Unfortunately, asking Google about MCs was like asking your grandma about Marvel comics; too often, the articles that popped up were clickbait, designed to present the worst or the most shocking about MCs. There just wasn’t a lot of information that presented them in a balanced light, though I had once read Hunter S. Thompson’s book about the Hell’s Angels and found it intoxicatingly interesting.
And then I saw a new headline from the Los Angeles Times.
“Springsville used to be the crime capital of California. Now it’s gone a full year without a murder.”
