PAGAN
LOVE AND WILDING HEARTS
17.
Bad Cop, No Donut…
Shortly after
Cindy left a sheriff drove up and checked me out. He
was a tall fat man with a slow swagger and a cigar. (Well, he might have been a chief of
police of even a state trooper—after all these years I don’t remember for sure.
The point is: he was a big cop.) He wanted to know what I was doing in his neck of the
woods and what I was going to do about the flat. I explained my circumstances and told him
I was taking highway 6 clear westward across the state, and through Ohio since it was a
real beautiful highway and then I was heading south to Arizona for the winter. He listened
in a calculating manner and then he told me he owned the only garage in the area that
serviced motorcycles and that he had a tow truck. He offered to bring my bike and me over
to his place and fix me up. I misunderstood him to mean he was offering to help me for
free. I think he planned it like that.
Now as I was to
find out, this individual was not a pleasant man, and he was no one I would deliberately
care to know if there was any way to avoid it. He was a king-sized jerk, a giant-jerk. But
he was the only person around who could put on a new tire and repair my damaged wheel,
which required welding thanks to my dumb move of riding on a flat. And he didn’t care
about any financial difficulties I might be having. As he worked on my bike he stated
matter-of-factly that he charged a certain rate and did not give any slack on the bill.
When I tried to tell him I didn’t have much money he flat told me, “—People
without money shouldn’t travel.”
When he was all
done he told me my bill came to forty-seven dollars. I only had thirty. He said that was
too bad because he could not let me have the bike until he received full payment for the
work he had done. There was no arguing with him. He told me the best thing I could do
would be to sell my Triumph to him and hitchhike out of town. I asked him how much
he’d give me for the bike. He said it was worth about fifty dollars in the shape it
was in. I told him sorry, I couldn’t sell it for that price. He reminded me that I
had a bill to pay and that I would not get the bike until I paid up. I offered to send him
the money later.
He pointed to a
sign and asked me if I could read. It read “No Credit”. I said yes. He asked me
if I understood what it meant. I told him I did. He said apparently I didn’t since I
had asked him for credit when if I had understood the sign I would have known that he
didn’t give credit. He asked me if I was dumb. I told him I was good for my word and
I really would send him the money. He laughed.
“You
really think I would ever trust a little creep like you to send me the money after you got
where you were going?”
And so it went
for several minutes. Soon he was calling me worse names and insinuating some real sick
things. He was making me angry.
I went and found
a pay phone and called my mother and explained the jam I was in. She said she’d
Western Union some money to me right away. I returned to the sheriff’s garage.
He stood there
mouthing his cigar from one side to the other looking down at me. He was about six foot
three, and three hundred pounds of pork. He was watching to see what I was going to do. He
said, “It’s all repaired... You could try to run around me and jump on it and
get away without paying... Maybe you could do it? Who knows? Wanna try?”
He just stood
there looking at me moving his cigar back and forth. I told him of course I didn’t
want to do anything like that.
And he
didn’t stop there. He kept at it. I felt as if he wanted to kill me. Or something as
bad. I don’t know what. He probably wanted to find an excuse to put me in his jail
where he could beat me up daily. To tell the truth, I started praying silently. I
don’t care if you laugh. I seemed real close to the edge here, real close.
I told him I had
telephoned my mother and she knew where I was and was going to help me out. All of a
sudden he softened a little. I wondered if he was thinking that it limited anything he
could get away with doing to me now that my family knew where I was and what was happening
here in his little house of motorcycle horrors. That’s what I think. He knew he
himself might be on thin ice.
The money
didn’t arrive before he closed up shop. He said he didn’t believe anyone was
really sending me any money.
“—Why don’t you just admit it that you were lying to me about that money you little punk?”
He
chomped on his cigar and glared at me.
I took my
sleeping bag off the sissy bar and walked out the door. He
asked me where I was intending to sleep? I told him wherever I could roll out my bag. He
said he’d better not catch me doing that. He said it was illegal to sleep outside
anywhere except in an authorized camping area and he promised he would arrest me if he
caught me at it. I asked him where I was supposed to sleep then? He said that’s what
motels were for—and that I’d better get a motel room if I knew what was good for
me. I told him a motel room would sure eat up
a lot of my money. He said that was no concern of his. “—The law is the
law.” He asked if I intended to flagrantly break laws around him? I answered that
I didn’t intend to do that and told him I would get a motel room. I walked a long way
down the road with my bag and he drove passed me slowly in his patrol car a couple times.
Finally when he seemed to be nowhere around I ducked into some thick trees and shrubs and
laid real low and watched. A half hour later he cruised by slowly again but I could tell
he didn’t know where I was. I slept till morning.
The money had
arrived and I picked it up and went to get my bike. When
I got to his shop he asked me where I had slept and I told him somone put me up in their
house outside of town; I didn’t know their names. He grunted. He was looking at
Demetrious.
“—I
hope you’re not thinking of carrying that dog with you on the motorcycle.”
He stood there
slapping a big crescent wrench into the palm of his hand, gumming his cigar and I
perceived that he was seething with rage inside. He ignored the green money I held out.
“Demetrious
always rides with me...”
I started to explain.
“—That
constitutes cruelty to animals and could not possibly be safe.”
he monotoned. “I couldn’t allow it.”
I
assured him it was safe. I straddled my bike and called Demetrious and my pup jumped into
my lap and got into his place.
The
cop told me I didn’t have to pay him any money for the repairs—all I’d have
to do is give him the dog. I told him I couldn’t do that. I handed him the money. He
took it. I put Demetrious back on the floor so I could push the bike out of the shop. The
cop stood in the doorway blocking my passage.
“Do
you think you can get that bike past me?”
He asked venomously.
I
told him I had explained to my parents what I was going through with him and that they
were powerful people in their California community and knew plenty of other influential
people—and that there was going to be a whole bunch of trouble if anything shitty
happened to me. That was a total bluff. No one in my family has ever had anything that
could ‘be even remotely construed as “power”. But he didn’t know that.
All he knew was that my family lived in the magical land of California, and maybe my
family were everything I’d said they were. I watched his eyes. The standoff lasted
another minute and then he stepped back a few steps and I squeezed past him out into the
sunlight. I loaded up all my gear onto my bike. He watched me, chewing his cigar.
“Seventy
five dollars for the dog. That’s my final offer.” He looked at me.
I told him again
that I wasn’t interested in selling Demetrious. I
called my dog and Demetrious jumped up on the tank and I fired up the engine and tooled
out of the yard and down the road. When I hit the city limits I stepped on the gas down 6
until I got to southbound highway 15. I had already
checked it out on the map. I knew that cop figured I’d be heading west on highway 6
all the way across the state—and I had a suspicion he had some kind of plan waiting
for me up ahead—so I decided to try to outsmart him by jagging south towards Virginia
as fast as I could, and without stopping for anything but gas; down in Virginia I could
turn west again and cross the states to Arizona. If my trick worked I’d never see
that turkey again.
***
When I passed
across the border into Maryland I let out a holler.
The day was so
warm! The Triumph was roaring like a mountain lion between my legs! Demetrious was
watching everything on the road. Children in station wagons were all flying over to one
side of their car and smearing their faces up against windows to get a better look at the
huge dog on the motorcycle; pointing, waving, rolling down windows and trying to yell
questions against the rushing air. And I kept the hammer down, making fine speed, through
rolling hills and over rivers and quickly we were out of Maryland and passing Winchester,
Virginia on highway 81. Good traveling.
Then the bike
started trying to stall out. There seemed to be a burnt valve. And when I pulled over to
start it again, it would not start. The battery was dead, too. It looked like I might have
a bad alternator in addition to the other problem and I didn’t have the money for
those repairs. It all made sense now though. That cop had had my bike under his roof. It
had always run great. Why should it develop an electrical problem all of a sudden? And a
valve problem? He must have tampered with it. My battery probably hadn’t been
charging since I left his shop and it had finally run down. If I had stayed on hwy 6 in
Pennsylvania I would have broke down where he might have been able to get hold of me
again. I had foiled his plans though by heading south to Maryland instead. Sometimes
intuition pays off. If a person on the road doesn’t develop his or her intuition they
won’t survive…
I charged the battery at a gas station and the
bike rolled a few more miles and conked out again. I knew I would have to find somewhere
safe to park it for the winter. We couldn’t just stay around there indefinitely,
gathering money and know-how to do the repairs—hanging out in shopping malls and
haunting a community where we had no friendly ties. I was simply too weird and
wild-looking and the coming cold weather would certainly make my plight appear even more
desperate to the regular folk who were already driving by slowly, gawking. Obviously
Demetrious and I would have to hitchhike west to more familiar turf. In the coming spring
or early summer I could easily hitchhike back with enough money to repair the bike.