Chapter 57

the sound: Joe Cocker – Many Rivers, Annie Lennox – Love Song for a Vampire, Procul Harum – Whiter Shade of Pale, Ottmar Leibert – After the Rain

Again, it seemed for an instance, that time stood still while I looked about me with incredulity at the position I found myself in.

I saw with complete clarity the shocked look on Robert’s face, and the look of disgust that overcame GreyBeard’s, and then the fear on Rosie’s.

I looked down from their faces to their hands, to see Grey’s wrapped in Robert’s shirt, Robert still loosely holding the pistol and Rosie’s fingers flexing nervously as if she was missing something to hold onto.

I looked down at the heap of naked man laying in a jumble at their feet and had a brief moment to remember that this face of “sleeping” serenity was some mother’s son, as well as one of the fucking prankster’s that had got me here in the first place before people sprang into action all over the field.

Before I knew it there were people bustling about getting ready to leave, Grey and Robert had loaded BarnYard into the flatbed of a pickup with Rosie poised over him holding compress’s to his blood streaked hip and buttock, front and back.

A brief struggle ensued while the elder brothers “debated” over who was driving. Rosie screamed something virtually unintelligible about “arteries” at them and Robert hung on for one second more before slumping in defeat and running around to climb into the passenger seat while Grey hopped in and the truck roared to life.

As I watched the lights of the truck fishtail up the hill towards the main road, I felt more than saw Boomer race by me, grabbing my hand and towing me to where his motorcycle was parked. All around me the sound of motorcycles starting with little or no conversation as everyone mounted up and followed the truck in a long procession.

Boomer and I were about mid group as we hit the highway and I was thinking about how I’d always loved the “look” of riding in a group but how it was even “prettier”, if you will, at night.

There was no conversation between Boomer and I and I watched as the formation of riders seemed to fall apart while each and every motorcycle raced its way along to keep up with the truck or to blast around it and move ahead of the truck.

As we entered the outskirts of the city the boys and couples on the lead bikes ran interference at busy city intersections to keep the truck from having to stop. Who knew a city could be so busy traffic wise at 2 in the morning?

At one intersection a bike went over and I had time to briefly see the rider get up as another parked his bike and headed for the driver’s door of the car that had “nudged” his bro as he’d attempted to keep the car out of the intersection.

We blasted past following the truck…the truck that didn’t slow down at all...the truck that went faster even,

“Funny how you never seem to see a cop when you need one” I thought (a thought I’d maybe come to regret later).