Lockdown Day 32: Thursday 23rd April, 2020

The parking lot was rammed, it was jamming. Petrolheads lounged around cradling coldies and checking out the industrial strength machinery slotted around the lot, flared pick-ups – Dodges and Fords mainly; rusty beaters – impossible to tell what they once were; V8 excess – Camarros, Challengers and Chargers, Mack’s custom E-type Jaguar, a couple of Corvettes and a Stingray. This was a remote outpost of Detroit with only Mack’s trusty Big Cat and a couple of Japanese trucks flying the foreign flag. Even Mack’s Jag flew under a flag of convenience as it had been so chopped that many of the internals were now born and bred apple-pie American.

  I stared around the baseball caps, mullets and crops, the clutched packs of Marlboro and Luckies, the tattoos and T’s, a few confederate flags and NRA bumper stickers, milling trailer trash and country cousins, college kiddies and truckers, even some Mexicans in a couple of neat Lowriders on the edge of the lot. America. Give us your poor, your huddled masses and we’ll sell them a car and the dream of freedom. But never, ever suggest to them they’re not really free, they’ll kill you for it, often with extreme prejudice.

  I checked out my Harley Davidson. It was black. I liked that. Black. The only colour for a bike. Matt black, the black of the abyss, the black that midnight would love to be, the black that the void looks back at you with, a complete absence of light, no reflection from the smooth matt surface. That black. Even the rear brake lens was latticed by black artwork. So black. The only relief came from the braided steel pipes and the intricate Celtic infinite circle motifs etched on the crankcases and filter cover, blood-red on the gas tank. Crucified on a Celtic cross the tiny motto ‘Bop till you drop’ called out from the rear fender above the mini-plate.

  Mack slung the trash into the bins “Look. Ya missed a bit on yer bike. There’s still some chrome and stainless under the dirt. Who’d’a thunk it?”

  “Less of the insults, big guy. Bikes are for riding, not polishing. There’s nothing less natural than a big gleaming V-twin with no muck on it. Just tells me it’s never been on the road.”

  “Ah know what ya mean, but ya do take it to extremes. Ah mean, d’ya ever wash your putt?”

  “That’s what rain is for.”

  “Looks like ya been doin’ some work on her.”

  “Yeah. It was getting ratty so I took it apart over the winter and uprated a lot of the stock Harley bits that needed to go. It’s got a lot more poke now and it handles better.”  

  “So what ya done?”

  “Still the stock ’85 softail frame with Performance Machine wheels and a White Bros lowering kit. The matt black straight-thru pipes are ceramic coated and I salvaged the mini fairing from the knucklehead Randy trashed last fall. I think it’s neat even though I hate fairings. Internally it’s got reinforced crankcases; Bandit stainless inner clutch hub and Kevlar plates; reinforced inner primary, 20 thou over pistons and high compression moly rings; Crane pushrods and high tension springs, roller rockers and a 550 adjustable cam with a Mikuni flared venturi carb – 42mm. 

  “Cool. What’s she pullin’?”

  To Mack hogs were always female while cars were male. I wasn’t sure what that said about him but I wasn’t going to bring it up in conversation any time soon. Mack was a great guy but took some strange things personally. He pretty much always called me Highway though few others still did. He wouldn’t take any lip from anybody about the Jag although I doubt he owned anything else not American through and through. And when I’d once joked that he must have had too much acid in the Sixties I thought he was going to deck me. Funny thing was, Jay had told me Mack thought I was dodgy and unpredictable at times. It’s a weird world.

  Much as I love my bikes I could never see them as human, neither male nor female. I still had my old Triumph Bonneville stacked in unmarked boxes back in Scotland, almost rebuilt, just needing the engine slotted in and the running gear slipped on, a phoenix casualty of the open road waiting to rise. Blew the engine on the M8 heading back from Edinburgh one evening. Luckily, that bike was almost part of me. Subconsciously I must have known something was wrong because I pulled the clutch for no reason just as the engine seized. Lucky. Really lucky. I was doing 80 in the fast lane just past the Newhouse roundabout and if the Bonnie had hit the deck I’d have been under the wheels of any number of the 18 wheelers heading into Glasgow. I coasted over to the hard shoulder, weaving through the traffic without power. Nearly shat myself. But much as I loved that bike it was still cold hard steel and aluminium, bright chrome, stiff rubber, cracked leather seat. It was a machine. It was a tool, a means to an end, mine to control, to point and to throttle back and take to the limits. It always did what it was told. And if it all went wrong it was my fault and mine alone. Crash and burn. All on my own. You could certainly never say that about a woman.

  I could understand the sex on wheels thing though, nothing hotter than a thumping Harley revving its nuts off. Well-dressed sex on wheels with all the right curves and moves but underneath all grunt and groan, torque and tension. Kind of disturbing when you put it that way. Maybe bikes were female. 

  “I’m getting ten and a half second quarters out of it. Can’t see me getting much better than that without blowing the bank, although I was looking at nitrous. But it’s my day to day scoot so I can’t afford to fuck it up.”

  “Yeah. Gotta be careful with that nitrous. Ah’ve got two stage in the Jag but ah don’t use it much.”

  “That is some pussycat. I love the way it purrs.”

  “You’re not fuckin’ kiddin’ me”

  I wheeled the bike through the lot and into the back yard. The plot behind was still vacant, the old gas station beyond the creek dangerous and decaying. It had been boarded up for years and almost every day more of it crumbled. A twelve-foot high mesh fence surrounded the compound, topped with razorwire. There were a couple of chops already out back, I recognised Breed’s Electra Glide and Johnny Pockets’ old Duo. I gestured over at the decrepit gas station. “Nobody looking at that lot then? I hate the way the County Mounties slip in there at night and hide behind the old carwash to ambush poor speedfreaks when the highway’s deserted and just ripe for a drag. It would be good if someone took it on and did something with it.”

  “Cost too much. They’d have ta excavate the gas tanks ta make it safe and that’s gonna cost. Suits me anyway. Six-lane highway on two sides with an empty lot behind us and the bike shop the other side. Means we don’t annoy the neighbours.”

  Mack padlocked the gates and we headed in the side door to the office. I pulled the office door behind me as he slipped a silver stash box from his left boot. He unhooked the gothic mirror from above the desk and sprinkled the white gold on the glass. He drew his boot knife from the other leg and fine-tuned the powder. We saluted the president then lined up in his honour. 

  “Old Abe would be turning in his grave if he knew what he was up to just now.”

  Mack just nodded contentedly, “Land of the Free, Highway. Land of the Free…”