Lockdown Day 34: Saturday 25th April, 2020

As Stonk slipped on his skullcap and Jay followed him, helmetless as ever, we jumped into Doc’s old chevy and took off down the freeway. It didn’t take long to reach the park. When we hit the parking lot, Doc said he was too drunk to walk sand kept on going, driving on through the trees, stopping just short of the top. As Slo-mo and I climbed the dry yards to the top, Doc put his boots up in the rusty saloon cranked up some outlaw Country and rolled a couple of ditchweed Bull Durhams.

  On the hilllock I eyed up Slo-mo carefully, waiting quietly, emptying my head, stilling my pulse, inviting the void, watching for the moments to move between.

  He opened with an unusual gambit “Stonk hates you.”

  “I got that. Got nothing against him myself.” I wasn’t sure I was ready for this. I hadn’t dealt these cards and was a firm believer you should never play the game by someone else’s rules. Except I was always ready for this. Decades of people trying to intimidate you bring their own harsh lessons. I was eight the first time some kid tried to stab me. I learned long ago that even if you left the house not looking to fight with anybody you had to be willing to fight with everybody to get back home. I was standing above him on the hilltop. He was big, so he’d fall harder and further. He might tower over me but I packed 200 pounds of hard-worked muscle. Being smaller can be a big advantage. So can getting people mad. And I’d always been good at getting folk mad, intentionally or otherwise. I wondered if he was carrying. He didn’t usually, just a buck-knife on his belt and a back-up in his boot. I had heard he had had a problem with the safety some years back, got mixed up between on and off. Shot his own foot and didn’t trust guns ever since. Thank heaven for small mercies.

  “Ya know why he hates ya?”

  “Doesn’t like Geminis.”

  “What? No. You’re a Brit. He hates Brits”

  “Scottish first, British second. So what? Yankee Doodle doesn’t like to dance with daddy?”

  “Whatya sayin’?”

  “Never mind.”

  “You’re a Brit. He’s Irish.”

  I laughed, “Stonk? Irish? I’m more fucking Irish than he is. What was it? Great-great-grandfather float over during the famine? His mother swallow a shamrock when she was getting done by a donkey in a field of Idaho’s best? He likes drinking warm Guinness in the Dublin Castle?”

  “He’s Irish. He told me. And you’re a Brit.”

  Yup. That could explain why he hated me but it wouldn’t explain everything. I still thought he was going to make a move on the club. Money is one hell of a big motivator. He just had an extra reason to hate me. Lucky me.

  Slo-mo was rattled. I stoked the embers further.

  “Well that’s just fucking wonderful. He thinks he’s a bog-bunny. So what’s he been up to all these years? Bankrolling the bombers?  Fundrasing for IRA baby-killers?”

  It was working. Slo-mo was getting fired up. But before I could feed the flames, the rumble of hard-revving Harleys preempted my next move even though they were still out of sight behind the latticed steel and pipework of the plant. The roar grew louder and, true to form, when they pulled into sight Stonk was leading the way with Jay some half mile behind. I tracked the bikes along the portage road while keeping half a wary eye on Slo-mo. The sun was low in the skies, flatlining over distant Minnesota plains. A chill northerly whipped in, the tail end of an arctic wind ghosting across lonely prairie provinces and over the Great Lakes.

  As Stonk roared onto the farm road he hung a hard right before entering the yard. Weird. That was weird. Rather than cutting straight through the buildings and taking the shortest route, he was going around the outhouses. Strange, that was longer, would slow him down and make it easy for Jay to overtake him. Confused, I scanned the site again and then I could see why Stonk had detoured. Behind the outbuildings, a Caterpillar tractor was parked up out of sight of the approaching riders. I peered closer and then I saw it, the odds equaliser, the hidden killer. A ditch had been channelled across the yard just where the bikes had always exited, a 6 foot utilities trench waiting for the pipes to be laid. Stonk couldn’t have seen the earthmover or the ditch from where he turned off. The bastard had known it was there when he challenged Jay.

  As Stonk looped around the buildings and hit the dirt track beyond the digger, Jay thundered into the yard by the old chicken coop. At the last moment he saw the danger and kicked up an enormous dust twister lowsiding his scoot in the chicken-shit yard. He slid in a tangle of arms and legs and arms and boots and churning dirt along the ground behind the bike. The engine cut out and in the endless hush I could see nothing but dust. We waited as the dirt cloud mushroomed then began to settle.

  Suddenly the roar of a V-Twin kicking back into life split the silence and a shadowy figure appeared in the dust-devil maelstrom. Jay had hauled up the hefty beast and picked his way through the buildings round the trench. The mad bastard was still up for it. But he’d never beat the damn train. Carriages packed with late commuters and evening evacuees would take an age to pass. He’d be stuck at the railroad crossing while that bastard Stonk gloated all the way back to the Pheasant Plucker. And as he waited there the pain would kick in when the adrenaline rush subsided and the blood and the bruises and the road-rash screamed at him. I could taste his pain as I stood there. We’d all been there, we’d all been down the road, we’d all had breaks and bruises, been bloody and beat. But Jay was still going and I knew full well why. We can all be beaten but you never, never, never quit. 

  Stonk was well down the farm road when the train pulled into view. As he straddled the tracks he paused to look over his shoulder. Bouncing over the rails and away from the crossing, he could see the dust devils raised by Jay and hear the screaming eagle engine as the bike stormed towards him. Jay was motoring, faster than I’d ever seen him pull this run before, kicking the dust up behind him, consuming the dirt road speedway. He was crouched low over the flat tracker bars, straining to gain any aerodynamic advantage, slicing through the wind, throttling back in an eternal exultation of the wild ride while playing chicken with hellfire and damnation. Dancing with the devil. He was up for it and nothing was going to get in his way.

   The train was rolling closer as it gained momentum on the long haul to the next station. Steaming near to full-tilt at this point of its route, it was an engorged steel horse engulfing the miles at great pace. Jay was careening along the earth road faster and faster, pulling closer and closer to the open crossing. I was willing him more speed while screaming at him to stop. But I knew he wouldn’t stop. It wasn’t in him. It wasn’t his nature. He had to get across. He had to beat the train. Then he could still catch up to Stonk and thrash his ass again.

  The bike was strident in its prayers as it red-lined all the way, the anguished engine threatening to blow, howling its primal scream into the unfeeling breeze. Straining against harsh reality to chalk up another victory, gain another notch for the saddlebag, roll into the parking lot with yet another win, Jay hurtled on.

  Cruising into the evening sun there was nothing the engineer on the train could do, even if he recognised the accelerating speed demon for what it was.

  Jay almost made it.

  He never braked.

  Never hauled on the anchors to pull up safe but beaten.

  Never tried to scrub off some speed and throw it down in the dirt. 

  He shot through, full-tilt, full-blast, full-boogie and almost made it. Almost.

  The engine struck the back wheel of his Harley full on. It exploded in a sickening heavy metal thunderclap of chrome and rubber and flesh and blood, sinew and bone and petrol and oil and fluids, an all-too-human rag-doll parody of some blockbuster spectacle, nothing like the movies. Devil dust clouded the scene and for the second time that evening I could see nothing. Sparks flew from the squealing train as it braked violently, to come to a traumatised standstill far, far from the scene of the crime. As the dust settled the sound of silence grew. I could see pained wreckage scattered along the track, tangled up in blue. Nothing moved. Nothing moved. I couldn’t see Jay. Couldn’t tell what had happened to him. Couldn’t see a body.   

  I turned on Slo-mo but he was already running down the hill.

He was lucky.