the sound: Jimi Hendrix – Crosstown Traffic, Jimi Hendrix – All Along the Watchtower, The Doors – Hello I Love You, The Band – Chest Fever, Janis Joplin – Piece of my Heart, Richard Strauss – Also Sprach Zarathustra, Marvin Gaye – What’s Goin On, Prince – Purple Rain
By the time we were ready to leave the hospital we had Rosie with us, and knew for sure that Barry would be ok. We all ate some, slept or napped some, and most of the boys at one time or another had gone round the corner to a bar for a much needed bracer.
We walked out the door to the bikes and Boomer suggested it might not be a bad time to head to The Dump. Robert and Grey both looked at him as Grey ushered Rosie into the middle of the truck seat.
“ya’ll go ahead…we’ve gotta go talk to Mama” Robert said. “Baby…I’d appreciate it if you’d come too.”
My head snapped around at his use of a word like appreciate…and my curiosity got the best of me as I agreed to go along.
I began to clamber into the passenger side of the pickup with Rosie and Grey but Robert pulled on my arm as if to get me to go with him. I looked up at him and he quietly said “please”.
I walked with Robert to Snot’s bike as Snot climbed into the now clean box of the truck but Rosie hollered out the window of the truck “Robert, I want Baby with me!” I turned to look at her and Robert gave me a little shove in the back towards her. “Get along then” Robert replied as he kinda slumped and then threw a leg over Snot’s bike.
I climbed into cab of the truck as Robert started the bike and pealed out of the parking lot like his very life depended on it. All of the bikes pulled out ahead of us and headed in the opposite direction to The Dump. Grey, Rosie, Snot and I followed Robert but were possibly 5 minutes behind him
Grey shook his head ruefully as Rosie suggested to her eldest brother that “it would be nice to have just one uneventful day in this family.”
We traveled quietly through the streets of the city on our way back out to the farm. The sun was up and beating warmly on us in the early morning as we entered the industrial warehouse area that signals the edge of the city.
I started to nod off only to be awakened by Grey’s strident exclamation….“shit! shit! shit! shit! shit!….and one of them’s black”
I sat up and glanced about me to see what the commotion was about just in time to see Snot’s bike parked on the sidewalk and Robert standing off two police officers with their guns trained on him.
I realized that the cops didn’t know that we were with Robert and that up to the point where we’d passed them there seemed to be a whole block of parking meter’s with their little metered head’s knocked off.
We continued slowly past so as to not attract attention and turned right one building down, at the next corner, coming to an abrupt halt as Grey stopped the truck.
Rosie, Grey, Snot and I piled out of the truck and I realized as we raced up to the corner of the building that both Snot and Grey were armed.
I had just enough time to wonder where guns had come from before we reached the corner of the building and peered around at Robert and the cops.
Robert was now in handcuffs and had his back to the wall while both cops stood in front of him. I could see what Grey meant, one cop was white and one was black but neither of them were very large men. I glanced around at Snot and Grey but thankfully neither man seemed ready to make a move.
I looked to Robert again and I could see the cords standing out on his neck as the black cop berated him, poking him in the chest all the while, calling him a criminal and a total waste of taxpayer’s dollars. The white cop tried to shush the black one but he was having none of it, his tirade just continued until he got to the part where he started in on the subject of the bikers in general and then their stupidity in general and then he moved from there on to the subject of genetics and inbreeding in bikers.
Suddenly, I was physically yanked back around the corner and just as I was a commotion broke out between Robert and the 2 officers. “well he’s cuffed” I thought, “so it’s not like he can cause much trouble.”
I heard Rosie, who was still peering around the corner mutter “oh fuck…there he goes” and slid forward to see Robert standing with the black cop in his hand and up off the ground by the gurgler while he pushed away the white cop who was trying to pull his gun again. Robert had him by the wrist forcing his hand to remain on his gun in his holster.
The black cop began to seriously thrash and struggle as I realized that Robert had the remains of a pair of handcuffs still on his wrists.
He’d snapped them in two.