Vasquez Rocks: Bad bikers eat their veggies

By DENNIS ANDERSON
Valley Press Editor

Chapter 4: Whiskey for my horses and fresh blankets for my men

Melba Trousdale never really trusted Gort Beerata, but she knew that if trouble was big enough, her ex-brother-in-law was handy. Handy with fists, guns and escape routes. This did not make ideal marriage material, but he could locate an exit and he knew how to guarantee bail.

Which was why Melba called Gort first when her potential fiance got snatched by a giant tentacle and abducted by something green, glowing and scary at Vasquez Rocks. So, now she was clinging to Gort's greasy jean jacket and feeling the wind in her face as they thundered up the highway toward the Big Rock Inn.

The Big Rock Inn is an amiable place where you could hold a "beer summit," and free spirits often do. A pool table, booths and industrial strength chili, the Inn serves travelers needs, many of the travelers arriving on two wheels.

Ride up to the Big Rock Inn on a Saturday night, as Gort and Melba Trousdale did, and you would find Legion Riders, and the Patriot Guard, and lots of independent bikers, a rough but generally friendly crowd.

"Welcome home, brother," Gort said, greeting a biker with a South Vietnam flag and dragon stitched on his Levi jacket.

"Kinda young for the 'Nam, ain't ya, sparky?" the grizzled biker asked Gort.

"Desert Storm," Gort replied. "Got lost north of the Euphrates."

Melba looked at Gort in genuine surprise. "I didn't think you were a vet, Gort."

"Foreign Legion," he said.

"The French Foreign Legion?" Melba said.

"Four stinkin' years in Djibouti, but then we got to kick Saddam out of Kuwait, and it all seemed worthwhile."

"Whatever," the 'Nam vet said. "Welcome home, Frenchy, and thanks for your service, I guess."

"Avec plaisir," Gort said.

Gort elbowed easily through the Saturday night crowd of jeans, and leathers, headwraps and bandanas, goatees and tattoos, broad shoulders. Some of the guys looked scary, too.

"What are we doing here?" Melba asked.

"I told ya, Melba," Gort said. "I do my best thinking when I'm working out the geometry."

Gort chalked a pool cue and waved to Ivy, the lead cheerleader at the Big Rock Inn. Gort had his eye on her, even though he knew it could never be. Ivy had been to college, and Gort had only graduated the county honor farm, although he could speak barracks French and order beer in seven languages.

"Ivy, my darling," Gort called out as he racked the balls. "Got any Blackout Stout? Any Dead Guy Ale?"

"You know the answer, Gort."

"Oh, all right, I'll have a honey wheat beer with just a frisson of raspberry, and a slice of lemon."

Ivy brought Gort his usual bottle of Bud Light. Gort kissed Ivy's hand, which had a filigreed line of skin art Ivy that started at her wrist and went all the way up her shapely arm. Some nicknames make sense.

Gort knocked back the brew and signaled for another. With his other catcher's mitt of a hand he fired the pool cue like a bolt action and the balls cracked in a tetrahedon pattern.

"Six, green," Gort said. And it dropped in the pocket. "Geometry," he said. "Focuses the mind."

A gray-bearded giant stepped in from the darkness. The giant had either been waiting in the shadows, or he'd been out to the men's room. Either way, he was the biggest giant in the inn. He wore a rumpled Fred C. Dobbs fedora, a sweat-stained khaki shirt and an eyepatch. His blue jeans had gone white and his tan work boots were a faded chalk. He carried a forked stick that could double as a dowser's wand.

"If it ain't 'Big Foot O'Riley,' " Gort said. "I was hoping I'd run into ya here."

"Don Diego Rivera O'Riley," the giant said. "Those who know me, know me as Don Diego. I have changed."

He had a faraway look in his eyes. The eyes, deep set, twinkled from behind a nose sculptured like a potato. The beard, silver white, had streaks of henna in it.

"Well, pard, you haven't changed that much," Gort said. "And ya could use a new hat while you're at it. That thing was in style when Bogart won Best Actor for 'Treasure of the Sierra Madre.' "

"African Queen," Melba corrected Gort.

"It was Walter Huston, and he got Best Supporting in 'Sierra Madre,' " Don Diego O'Riley said.

"Everybody's a cinephile these days," Gort said.

Ivy brought a pitcher and set it on the edge of the pool table.

"I was coming in from my spiritual odyssey when I heard the break on the pool table," the man formerly known as Big Foot said. "Only one hand breaks left-handed, while drinking a light pilsner and places the cue so the balls track in a tetrahedon pattern, and that would be you, Gort Beerata."

"Ya got me there," Gort replied.

"Now we must fight to the death as we vowed we would once do out on the mesa," Don Diego O'Riley said, lifting his dowser wand as if ready to drive the snakes out of Ireland.

"Hold off on that a minute, Diego," Gort said. "I got a lady friend here says her boyfriend has been abducted by aliens."

Don Diego O'Riley brightened immediately. His eyes fell on Melba Trousdale.

"Really?" he said. "Have you had an encounter?"

"My boyfriend got grabbed by a giant tentacle at Vasquez Rocks."

Diego O'Riley's wire brush eyebrows waggled. He slowly lowered himself to the Rock Inn's floor, and crossed his legs.

Ivy hurried up and put a frosty mug in his hand.

"If I don't get him a brewski, he'll go into a trance and he'll stay there for hours," Ivy explained to Melba.

"Is it dangerous?" Melba asked.

"Not really, but it's simply impossible to close the joint when you have to sweep up around a seven-foot medicine man."

"On the house, Big Foot," Ivy said, handing him the frosty mug.

"Don Diego, please," the giant said, seizing the mug like a 300-pound frog snapping at a fly.

"What's he doing?" Melba asked Gort.

"A little mental work," the big biker said. "The man is a virtual Wikipedia when it comes to alien abductions. Thought he could help us."

"Gort," Melba said. "How thoughtful. I thought you were just bringing us out here to tie one on."

"It's not like I'm not a serious guy." He grinned and winked at Ivy, who rolled her eyes.

Ivy helped Diego O'Riley tip his beer over his cracked, parched lips, and he brightened up out of the trance.

"Please, m'aam, I'd like another," he said, grinning.

It was at that precise moment the crowd quieted down from a dull roar to a church murmur. Six men strode into the bar. Shave-headed, rope-muscled, beady-eyed men. They were bikers, all right, but these were different bikers.

"Here comes trouble," Gort said.

These men were not Legion Riders, not Patriot Guards, not lone wolf riders. They were a biker gang, tattooed on the face like Maori warriors descending on Auckland. Or Oakland. They were bad to the bone, attested by the bones they wore in their pierced noses.

"Who are those, Gort? Hell's Angels?" Melba asked, quietly.

"Worse than Angels, honey," Gort said. "They're Vegans."

"They only drink bourbon and branch water, so they don't pollute their bodily fluids. They only eat soy burgers. These guys make the Angels look like Rotarians."

"That's odd," Melba said.

"Odd doesn't begin to say it," Gort said. "They're mean. We want to stay out of this."

He chalked his pool cue. He tested its balance, both as a cue, and maybe as a billy stick. He looked out the window, longing for the touch of his M203, the Vietnam-vintage M-16 with the 40 mike mike load of willy peter in the grenade pipe.

To be continued Sunday, Oct. 11.