Ride Away Home Page 9

  WE’RE AT a table in the Jefferson’s main dining room, Lemaire, named, the back of the menu explains, for Étienne Lemaire, who served as Thomas Jefferson’s mâitre d’hôtel. White linen tablecloths, crystal glassware, heavy silver utensils and a formally solicitous staff, as befitting Richmond’s only AAA Five-Diamond restaurant, according to the menu. The place is full; the other diners are turned out in jackets and ties for the men, and dresses for the ladies. I feel rumpled and underdressed, but no one seems to notice, or, if they do, they don’t seem to care.

  As we eat and chat, no one mentions the elephant at the table, that being the question: what was a Minneapolis tax lawyer doing on a Harley-Davidson in the company of a young girl at a rest stop off I-95 in Virginia, and why was I so careless that she could steal my motorcycle, wallet, and cell phone? They are too polite to ask.

  On top of the glass of champagne in my room, and two draft beers in the bar, I’ve had my share of five bottles of fine wines served with dinner, and now a snifter of Cognac, quite a bit more than I usually drink. I’m feeling the relaxed warmth of male fellowship, as well as gratitude for their roadside assistance in my time of need.

  Although I vowed to tell no one about the purpose of my trip, I did share it with Marissa Kirkland at the Arcadia B&B. These are men of accomplishment and intelligence whose opinions about my situation might be helpful. When there is a lull in the conversation, I say, “Gentlemen, let me tell you a story, and see what you think.”

  13

  Seven motorcycles roll along the meandering band of I-95 South cutting through the farmland and horse pastures of North Carolina: three groups of riders, two abreast, with Alan Dupree alone on point. I’m positioned on the starboard side of the middle group, straddling an Alpine White BMW R 1600 GT purchased with my newly minted Visa card at a dealership on Jefferson Davis Highway just south of downtown Richmond.

  I did a Google search of area motorcycle dealers after breakfast at the Jefferson and then made a morning tour of a few of them, browsing brands—Harley, Honda, Yamaha, BMW—with the Disciples, again as a passenger of Harold Whittaker. Everyone enjoyed this and various opinions were offered. I chose the BMW because I liked the look of their bikes and have always had good luck with the company’s automobiles. My fellow gangsters voted unanimously for this baby; it even has antilock brakes. The sales kid threw in a tee shirt, quipping, “The tee shirt’s twenty-two thousand dollars, the cycle’s free.”

  With my strained finances, the cost of the new motorcycle is a stretch, but I figure I’ll apply the insurance money from my stolen Harley and also sell the BMW when the trip is done. I’ll ask my agent if I can also file an insurance claim for the repair bill less the deductible.

  It’s a seven-hour run from Richmond to Savannah, where we’ll spend the night. The next day it’s a four-hour ride down to Daytona Beach on Florida’s Atlantic coast. After I spun out my story over dinner, the boys graciously insisted that they would accompany me to Key West after a shortened stay at Bike Week. They made it clear they are captivated by the righteousness of my mission, by the sense of high adventure, and by their curiosity about what will happen when I get there. I’m certainly curious about that too.

  I thanked them, saying we’ll talk again about Key West after Bike Week. The truth is I would be glad to have the company the rest of the way, but I’d feel guilty about altering their plans. Only Langdon has been to Key West, they said, and it’d be fun to see. So maybe …

  Even though we had a big breakfast at the Jefferson, it’s nearly two P.M., and I’m hungry. As if he can read my mind, Alan, in the lead, points toward a sign announcing that the Five Aces Truck Stop & Cafe is at the next exit. We follow him down the exit ramp and roll into the restaurant’s parking lot.

  The only seats available are at a counter in the “Professional Drivers Section,” reserved for truckers, whose rank in the hierarchy of motorists calls for them to be segregated from the civilians, like officers from enlisted men at chow time. The Happy Chef back in Wisconsin had that, too.

  Tom scans the dining room, shrugs, and leads the way to the counter. Maybe we can pass. We take stools as a waitress brings ice water, fills the coffee cups at our places, hands us menus, and pulls her order pad out of her apron pocket.

  “Okay if we sit here?” Harold asks her, in the interest of full disclosure. “We’re not truckers.”

  The waitress smiles. “Figured that. It’s fine with me, darlin’, if it’s fine with those good ol’ boys,” she answers, nodding toward the other customers in the section, none of them paying attention to anything but their food. We place our orders, and are waiting for our food when a man who must weigh three hundred pounds, seated at the end of the counter, says, loud enough for us to hear, “Well look at that, a buncha queers sitting in the drivers’ section.” Referring to us, of course, who look like what we are. Pretend truckers and pretend motorcycle gangsters.

  The man mountain is dressed in bib overalls with no shirt and has what look to be prison tats on his massive arms: a swastika, a dagger with blue blood dripping off the point, and a Cupid’s heart with whatever name was in the center scratched out. His long brown hair is tied back in a ponytail and he has a scraggly ZZ Top beard. I think of the movie Deliverance, the “Dueling Banjos” theme song playing in my head.

  “If you drop your fork, don’t bend over to pick it up,” Tom says quietly. He must be thinking of the same movie.

  “Bigfoot’s got a big mouth,” Langdon says. I can’t tell if the man heard him.

  The waitress moves down the counter refilling coffee cups. When she gets to Bigfoot, he tells her, “I think my meal should be on the house, Hazel, given that these dickheads are makin’ me sick.”

  Hazel shrugs and goes into the kitchen. Bigfoot finishes his meal, picks up his check and, as he passes us on his way to the checkout counter, says, “Sure hope I don’t run over any motorcycles on my way out of the lot.”

  Langdon slides off his stool, follows Bigfoot to the cash register station and taps him on the shoulder. What the hell is he doing? The other Disciples seem unconcerned. Bigfoot turns and snarls, “You need somethin’, faggot, or do you just got a death wish?”

  Langdon smiles, reaches into the pocket of his jeans, comes out with a pearl-handled, double-barreled Derringer and pokes it into Bigfoot’s big belly.

  “Tell you what, you Neanderthal ape,” Langdon says, somehow conveying menace in his soft Southern drawl. “What say I accompany you outside to make certain that unfortunate possibility does not occur.”

  I wonder if the sight of the Derringer or the word Neanderthal surprises the guy most. After a tense moment, the big man says, “Fuck it, ain’t worth the bother.” He turns back to the cashier, a red-haired teenage girl with braces on her teeth, pays his check and leaves, muttering something we can’t hear. Of course, Bigfoot still could run over our cycles, but, for whatever reason, he doesn’t.

  Langdon slides the pistol back into his pocket as we join him at the cashier’s station.

  “Feed a cold, starve a fever, and confront a bully, my mama always said,” he comments with a grin.

  A man in his forties with a nametag on his shirt identifying him as Harlan, the Five Aces’ manager, comes over to us.

  “Your lunches are on me, boys. That guy was out of line. But if you’re ever back this way, I highly recommend you sit in the civilians’ dining area, not with the truckers.”

  NIGHT HAS fallen as the Devil’s Disciples plus one roll into Savannah. As we bump along a brick-paved street through a residential neighborhood we come upon an older gent strolling purposefully along a sidewalk. He sports a neatly trimmed Vandyke and is nattily turned out in a white linen suit, Panama hat, and white buck shoes. He carries a battered brown leather briefcase, and taps the sidewalk on every stride with a brass-tipped walking stick.

  I imagine this man and maybe his son as attorneys in practice together, the firm’s name is something like Beauregard & Beauregard, PA, the name
engraved on a shiny brass plaque bolted onto the front of an ivy-clad red brick row house. Maybe a bottle of Southern Comfort in the drawer of a scarred oak rolltop desk, to celebrate a courtroom victory, or a sunset. How much more genteel and satisfying (in my fantasy) than toiling in the billable-hour coal mine of Hartfield, Miller, Simon & Swenson, in that high-rise glass box in downtown Minneapolis. And in a family firm, you don’t get fired.

  The man glances at our passing motorcycle parade. He smiles and tips his hat. If the Disciples were a bona fide motorcycle gang, and began circling and taunting this elderly fellow like Lee Marvin and his band in The Wild Ones, he might produce a Derringer like Langdon’s, or draw a sword embedded in the walking stick, and shoo them away.

  Langdon has relatives in Savannah, he explained last night, an aunt and two cousins. The aunt, now in her eighties, is his father’s sister, the cousins her sons. He has not seen or spoken with them in many years. His father made his money “from cotton and tobacco.” Langdon is an only child. For some reason his parents never spoke about, a family feud developed, Langdon said.

  “There were hints of infidelities, somebody slept with somebody they shouldn’t have, and maybe of a joint business venture gone bad, I think I recall something about a sure-fire investment in a racehorse,” he told me. “Sex and money! All very Southern Gothic. Think Tennessee Williams. Now I hear that Aunt Lucy is in failing health, and my cousins, Jubal and Nathan, who are named for Confederate generals, have failed in a number of business enterprises of their own, including a muffler shop franchise, a lumberyard, and a liquor store. How one could not make a go of a liquor store in Savannah is beyond me,” Langdon told me. “I guess I’m getting soft, because I’m going to slip away while we’re in Savannah, meet with the boys and do the right thing by the family, meaning that an appropriate amount of money will change hands.” He smiled. “That being the only way family feuds ever do get resolved.”

  Langdon leads the group to a small white-frame house surrounded by a black wrought iron fence, located away from the fashionable neighborhoods and tourist attractions. Pots of red geraniums hang from the ceiling of the front porch. There is no sign and no other indication that this is anything but someone’s residence. I wonder if Langdon has a friend in town who has invited us to dinner, although I wouldn’t guess that friends of Langdon Lamont would live in a neighborhood such as this. Here, it might still be called “black bottom.”

  We follow Langdon into a parking lot covered with white gravel so deep that my rear wheel slides sideways and I almost dump the BMW.

  “This is Mama Sally’s,” Langdon tells me. “Another regular stop for us. Only the locals know it. Aunt Lucy introduced me to it pre-estrangement. The best Southern cooking on the planet. An orgasmic experience, I tell you.”

  Dinner is served family-style at a large round oak table that is covered with platters and bowls filled with good Southern cooking. If nothing else, I’m certainly being well fed on this trip. I have a vision of me getting as big as Bigfoot. Maybe I’ll go to Key West and sit on Slater Babcock until he talks.

  The conversation over dinner is about anything but the sad history of the Tanner family, which I appreciate. Over dessert, Miles offers another of his quotations: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” He adds, “I’m feeling content and generous so I’ll just tell you that’s from …”

  “Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina!” Alan Dupree exclaims. “Had to read it in my comp lit class.”

  Miles looks annoyed just for a moment, then grins. “Okay, fair’s fair, drinks are on me, retroactively.”

  Yes, I think, draining my coffee cup and pushing back from the table, as full as I think I’ve ever been, Tolstoy got that exactly right.

  After dinner, we ride over to the Mansion on Forsyth Park, a grand old Colonial in the historic district. I dream that I am an infantry private—it is not clear in which army—in a bloody Civil War battle, and am relieved to awaken in the morning without injury.

  BY EIGHT A.M., we’re on the road again, south on I-95 toward the Florida border and then through Jacksonville and the beach-front towns of the Palm Coast and into Daytona Beach. Langdon got up early and said he took care of his family business to everyone’s satisfaction: “All will be forgiven, provided that my check clears,” he joked.

  It’s unseasonably warm, the temperature in the high 70s, so it’s tee shirts and jeans all around, except for Langdon, who’s wearing a white aloha shirt with red flowers, and khaki shorts with his boots. I’ve been honored with the point position. Not long out of Savannah, we begin to encounter other groups of riders headed south, roaring past us over the speed limit, wolf pack after wolf pack of cycles streaking toward the biggest annual gathering of like-minded souls in the nation—Daytona Bike Week. They are mostly on Harleys, plus a smattering of other big-shouldered American brands like Indian and Buell and Victory, and custom jobs of unidentifiable make. Lowriders and ape bars and gleaming chrome and wild paint jobs no factory produced. These are genuine outlaws, the real deals. The women on the rear seats mostly are wearing leather halter tops and shorts, skimpy bikinis, or leathers.

  I’m reminded of Hannah, my felonious Lolita. A few women ride their own bikes and look as though they could kick any man’s ass if he suggested they should be relegated to a rear seat. All eyes front as they pass, not so much as a glance over at us; even though we wear the colors of an actual cycle gang, we reveal our true colors by cruising at the speed limit, which only pussies do.

  The boys assured me they’ve never been hassled at Daytona for showing up on their Japanese bikes. In fact, a contingent of retirees from Boynton Beach showed up last year on Vespa motor scooters and was welcomed with amusement, never having to buy their own drinks in the beer tents, Langdon reported. The only real pariahs are those kids zooming around on “crotch rockets,” those high-speed, low-slung racing bikes where you tuck yourself down beneath a streamlined cowling, chest on the gas tank, and gun it around town as if you’re on the Daytona 500 race track, Tom explained. “Everyone hates those little shits,” he said. “Me included.”

  The Daytona Beach exit coming up, Alan passes me and takes the lead. We follow him onto the exit ramp and swing east onto US Route 92 toward the Atlantic Ocean, bikers everywhere, ready to party hearty.

  We begin to pass municipal light posts festooned with banners reading “DAYTONA BEACH/WELCOME BIKERS.” The city is delighted to have the revenue Bike Week generates, Tom told me, but the residents would probably like it better if it came from a convention of free-spending Baptists or Knights of Columbus.

  We swing off 92 and navigate along side streets through downtown Daytona Beach, which are impossibly congested with Bike Week traffic, then head over the Main Street causeway across the Halifax River and onto a long, narrow barrier island. We follow Alan left onto South Atlantic Avenue and come to the community of Seabreeze, identified by a grey wooden sign with white lettering and a carved seagull.

  Alan leads us into the driveway of a two-story white house built on stilts so that the first floor is a good eight feet above sea level. We kill the engines, lean our cycles onto their kick-stands and dismount, stretching stiff backs, rotating necks, unbuckling helmets as the hot engines tick.

  “We always rent this beach house,” Victor says. “Eight hundred a night during Bike Week, but it beats the hell out of motels, where the other guests are up all night shouting and fighting, or camping out on the beach, which gets even louder and funkier, and the mosquitoes bite like piranhas.”

  “Pricey, but not so bad divided by six,” Harold adds.

  “By seven,” I say.

  “The Magnificent Seven,” says Alan, who is more into classic movies than classic literature, as he laughs and slaps me on the back.

  It was lunchtime when we arrived, so we unpacked, then rode to a waterfront seafood shack they liked for lobster rolls and iced sweet tea. After that, Alan led us on a sightseeing cruise around town, for my
benefit. We took a stroll on the beach, then went back to the house, had cold beers on the deck, and chatted about politics, and the upcoming baseball season, and how good it was that home prices were rebounding—just guys, shooting the breeze. It was nice; I almost felt like my old, pre-family-tragedy self again.

  That night, as is the custom, Miles cooks steaks for dinner on a gas grill on the deck, which we eat with a salad Vic prepares, and several bottles of good cabernet sauvignon. Dessert is a key lime pie. It is Harold’s job to e-mail a list of provisions to the rental agent that will be waiting for us upon arrival.

  After dinner, we stay up late drinking Ramos Gin Fizzes, “a true Southern gentlemen’s drink,” Langdon announces, which I watch him prepare in the kitchen while the others relax outside on the deck.

  Langdon learned the drink recipe during “a lost decade” in New Orleans, he tells me. Ramos Gin Fizzes are not standard cocktail fare in Minnesota. Langdon, whistling “Swannee River,” blends gin, lemon juice, egg whites, sugar, cream, orange flower water and soda water in a cocktail shaker. He pours the creamy, frothy concoction into tall chilled Tom Collins glasses and carries them outside on a big plastic tray. We enjoy our drinks as an electric bug catcher announces its kills with crackling zaps. Langdon makes several trips back into the kitchen to fix more gin fizzes. I lose count of how many I drink; they go down easy, like milk shakes.

  During a pause in the conversation, Vic says, “Why don’t you offer a belated toast, Jack, even though we’re already in our cups.”

  On the spot, all I can come up with is: “ ‘No deduction otherwise allowable under this chapter shall be allowed for any item … With respect to an activity which is of a type generally considered to constitute entertainment, amusement, or recreation, unless the taxpayer establishes that the item was directly related to, or, in the case of an item directly preceding or following a substantial and bona fide business discussion …’ ”