A Ride On Halloween Eve.......

The storm cells had lashed down from the crest of the Cascade Mountains all day long. The white, swiftly moving clouds carried high winds and swirling snow, but they hadn’t dampened my enjoyment of the ride, a ride I had rather daringly decided to take on Halloween Eve. On the contrary, I was laughing inside my helmet like a being demented when I swung into the White Pass gas station for fuel and a coffee.

As I rocked the Nighthawk 750 back onto its center-stand, someone behind me said, “a good road, what?”

I turned to find a small man with a long face and penetrating eyes. He was dressed in old fashioned trousers and high boots, and his worn jacket appeared to be of waxed cotton.

“Hell of a road,” I enthused. “Love this route! Are you Canadian?” His accent was rich and obvious.

“Welsh,” he replied. “Will she do the ton?”

“Pardon me,” I asked.

“Will she make 100 an hour?”

“Oh, hell, yes! I think the top-end is somewhere around 120.... but I’m too old for that! She’s not one of the new super-bikes, but she was cheap and she is smooth.... just right for these curly roads.”

He squatted to look closer at the engine, nodding. “Four cylinders,” he mused.

“I also have a Wing, for the wife and me, “ I said, pulling my helmet off. “But, damned if I don’t like to get out here alone occasionally on something, well, smaller....no, not just smaller... something more...well.... more responsive.”

He rose up and smiled at me. “Something with a ‘touch of blood’, hey? You must have a motorbike income!”

I thought that a strange comment but let it pass.

I looked around. “Where’s your bike?”

“Around back, “ he replied. “I needed a spot of air, and the hose is there. It’s an old thing, not like yours at all.”

“Want some coffee?”

He hesitated, staring at me with those penetrating eyes. “Well, I suppose so.”

“My name is Gough,” I said, offering my hand. He shook it fleetingly, ignoring my introduction. Uncharacteristically, I took no offense at that.

Inside, the waitress smiled at us and gestured at a coffee urn surrounded by thick mugs.

“Coffee, “ I asked the man in the cotton jacket.

“Umm, no, rather...., “ he looked at the waitress. “Have you tea?”

After the waitress had brought him a pot of hot water and a bag, he sat looking at the bag with a puzzled look on his face..

“Tear it open, dip it in.”

He did so, and we sat down at a small table. Over us, a small color TV on a shelf blasted out CNN.

He gestured at it with his mug.

“You Yanks have fallen into that, hey?”

“Yeah,” I replied. “Freakin’ Arabs.... can’t predict what they’re gonna do.”

“Your main problem isn’t the Arabs, it’s the Mesopotamians and the Persians – that and your inability to understand any of them.”

“Well, trying to put the damn country together is all we’re trying to do.”

He sipped his tea, grimaced.

“It’s not a country, not by far,” he said. “It’s three.... Sunni, Shiite, and Kurd. It’ll never go together. And to be effective with the Arabs, you must adopt their kit. Americans are quite useless with other people’s kit, aren’t they?”

He saw the look on my face and visibly softened. “No offense, old boy.... when we Brits were in there the Colonial office wouldn’t listen, either!”

He stood, clasped his hands behind his back. “Matter of fact, we were the ones who created Iraq... height of stupidity, really..... three old men.”

I looked at him. “Were you a soldier?”

He looked out into the white storm. “Rather..... RAF..... and you?”

“Tanker,” I replied. “And armor scout.... but maybe we’ll get ‘er done over there, yet.”

He turned and looked at me with a strange smile, and then back out at sunlight suddenly streaming through the clouds. “All men dream, but not equally.....mountains are strange,” he said. “I prefer deserts myself.”

“The roads are too straight in deserts......”

“Perhaps, but the destinations are not at all apparent.” He pulled on long gauntlets of thick leather.. “Must be off, ta for now.......” And without another word he put some bills on the table and went out the door.

I sat sipping my coffee, and thinking of the strange Welshman. The waitress sang softly to herself and CNN blared in the background. Suddenly, there was a rich, syncopated thunder and an impossibly long, black and nickel-plated apparition passed by the window, its dual fishtail exhausts gleaming in the watery sunlight. I stumbled to my feet and ran to the window, my blood as cold as the ice pelting down from the white clouds above.

“Jesus Christ!” My voice cracked, “Holy Mother of God!”

The rider sat forward on the long bike, wearing goggles and an old pilot’s cap backwards on his head. He waved once with a casual, leather-gloved hand, and then he was gone, the bike snarling in the wind.

The waitress was beside me. “What was that,” she asked.

I swallowed, and spoke with a dry, halting voice. “It was a Brough Superior,” I said. “I’ve never seen one before, but, as sure as the God above, that was a Brough.......”

I turned to the girl. “The fellow just here, the Welshman, did he give his name?”

“No,” she said. But then she smiled. “I got the air hose out for him when he first came....he did call his bike a name, though.... Bo-journey..Bo-jarney, somethin’ like that......”

“Boanerges,” I said, my breath ragged in my throat.

“That’s it, I think....,” she said. “What’s it mean?”

“Sons of Thunder,” I replied. “Have you ever heard of TE Lawrence? Lawrence of Arabia? That’s what he named his Broughs....Sons of Thunder......”

The waitress stared at me like I was truly the madman that I was acting like, and moved carefully back to her counter. I then paid her and went out to my bike on wooden legs, while above me the white clouds, like desert Arabs on camels, raged across a tortured sky.