Sample Chapter

Well, Kickstand was already falling in love with Ted, (short for Clarisse Theodora Brown) but I wanted him head over heels in love. That’s why I wrote this chapter. CLICK HERE TO PURCHASE

Chapter 26. Bikes

From Redemption for a Redneck

copyright 2011

John P. Schulz

  One never knows what an early Saturday phone call will lead to. I looked at the display, though, and saw that it was Kickstand calling.

          “Hello?”

          “John, this here’s Kickstand.”

          “How are you on this fine Saturday morning?”

          “I’m fine. I got a question for you.”   

          I thought, “Here goes another Saturday.” I said, “Go ahead and ask.”

          “John, you ever ride on a motorcycle?”

          “Yes, I rode on a motorcycle one time.” I immediately got a picture in my mind of a terrifying ride that I had taken on the back of a motorcycle holding on to a drunk biker many years ago.

          Kickstand asked, “You want to go on another one?”

          “No,” I replied, “When I go for a ride, I like to have four wheels under me, not two.”

          Kickstand asked, “Do you know what a bug run is?”

          I knew the answer to that. “Yes, I do,” I replied, “A bug run is when a bunch of bikers get together and put a yellow sticker on their headlights, go for a long ride through the country, and then give a trophy to whoever has a bug closest to the center of the sticker at the end of a ride. You guys usually use a bug run for a fund raiser, right?”

          “Good for you.” Kickstand said, “Listen, we’re gonna have one today and we want you to be the referee. You know Chuck, the motorcycle mechanic?”

          “I know of him. He’s the guy that all you motorcycle guys bow down to because he’s the God of motorcycle repair. Right?”

          He answered, “Right again, John. Well, Chuck’s in the hospital and his fambly needs grocery money. We gon’ do us a bug run this afternoon and get up some emergency money for him. The entry fee is fifty five dollars per bike. The five dollars goes for the trophy and a beer at the end of the run. Fifty dollars from each bike will go to help Chuck’s family out. We got about twenty bikers signed up.”

          This sounded like a good opportunity to get a close up glimpse of the redneck biker culture, so I said, “All right, what do you want me to do?”

          “Well, we just want you to be the referee. All you got to do is collect and hold the money and the trophy, supervise the placement of the stickers, and then watch the judging when we get back to make sure nobody cheats. Eric, he’s a machinist, he’ll be there with the dividers and other tools to measure the bugs on the stickers when we get back. You get to present the trophy.”

          “All right,” I said, “I guess it’s for a good cause and it sounds like fun. What do I need to do?”

          “We gonna meet at Brickyard’s about three thirty this afternoon. You just need to be there and get with me about three. Hambone is already cooking. We’ll buy your dinner for you. The ride will take about four hours. Ted’s back and she’s gonna ride with me.”

          I grinned, “Well, I know that makes you happy, Kickstand. It sounds like fun. I’ll see you at three.”

          “Thanks, John. We all like the way you’re always there to help.”

          I showed up at Brickyard’s bar and Community Center sharply at three. After I parked, I sat in the car and looked for a moment at the array of highly polished motorcycles parked in the lot. Bikers and biker chicks were standing around in small groups drinking beer and talking. I saw Kickstand standing by the bar entrance. I got out of the car and walked over to get my instructions.

          Kickstand was standing next to a handsome red and chrome motorcycle, looking around anxiously, watching the roads from all three directions. I noticed that Ted’s pick up truck was absent. A couple of tattooed bikers with shaved heads were squatting down on the other side of the motorcycle pointing, questioning, and shaking their heads. I stood back and admired the polished machine.

          Kickstand pointed proudly at the bike. “This here’s my pride and joy, John. There’s several kinds of older Harley Davidsons. There’s a shovel head and a panhead that lots of people know about. The names come from the shape of the head on the motor. This here’s a nineteen forty one knucklehead. See how the rocker boxes look like the knuckles on your fist when you close it?”

          I had no idea what he was talking about so I just nodded and mumbled “yes, that’s interesting.” Then I asked, “Where’d you get this beautiful antique, Kickstand?”

          “It was my Granddaddy’s. When he come back from the World War Two, he couldn’t find no work ‘cept in the mill and he didn’t want to do that so he started running moonshine up to Chattanooga. He was making good money and he needed something to get him from his house to where they kept the moonshine car. He didn’t want the moonshine car nowhere near his house, dontcha know, so that’s when he got the motorcycle. All he ever did was to ride it out to the country and then back home again. When I was a kid, Granddaddy had him a Lincoln and this here bike just set in the barn. He took me for a few rides on it and he taught me how to drive it, but mostly it just set there in the barn. He always told me I could have it when he died.

          “After I got out of jail and started making some boilermaker money I got Chuck to rebuild the motor and fix it up. I repainted it and put some chrome on it.” He stopped to brush off a bit of dust that had settled on the gas tank.

          “This here’s the bike model that the hippies made choppers out of. I thought about turning it into a chopper but then I thought again and kept it original.”

          I walked around the bike and acted like I was admiring and studying it. I had absolutely no idea what I was looking at or for. It was pretty and shiny, though. I looked over at Kickstand and saw a look of relief cross his face. I turned toward the road and saw Ted’s pick up truck pulling into the parking area. Kickstand grinned.

          “Ted’s gonna go with me, John. I didn’t know if she would or not but I asked her anyhow and she said it sounded like fun. I’m getting to like her more and more. I could live with her and treat her like she ain’t never been treated. She just don’t seem to see it, though.”

          Then he frowned. “I got a problem, though. All of a sudden this here bike ain’t running right. If we don’t figger out what’s wrong I won’t be able to drive it on the run. Then I’ll have to ride behind somebody and Ted will have to ride behind somebody else and I cain’t hardly stand the thought of that. I hope they can figger it out, though ‘cause Chuck’s in the hospital and I’m thinking he’s the only one that would know.”

          Kickstand walked around to the other side of the bike and entered into a discussion on what the motor problem could be. I could tell that they were all baffled. Ted walked up holding a pink motorcycle helmet. She walked toward me.

          “Hi, John. You goin’ on the ride?”

          “No, Ted, I have to stay here and be the referee.”

          “Oh, well, it’s good to see you, anyhow.”

          She walked over to Kickstand who smiled broadly. She stuck out her hand and shook his, “Hi, Kickstand, how you doin’?”

          Kickstand looked at her sadly, “I ain’t doin’ so good, Ted. The bike ain’t running right and none of these guys can figger it out.”

          He paused and looked at Ted, “You probly wouldn’t understand, being a girl and all.”

          Ted grinned and said, “It’s ok. We can ride with other people.”

          “I cain’t hardly stand that idea, Ted. I wanted me and you to go together.”

          All of the other bikers were standing around scratching their heads and discussing Kickstands bike. No one had come up with the answer.

          Ted said, “Kickstand, go over there and hit the kick start.”

          Kickstand looked at her in an astounded manner and walked over to the motorcycle. He straddled it, took the throttle on the handlebar in his hand, adjusted the gear box to neutral and kicked the starter. The motor fired and ran for a couple of turns and then popped a few times and backfired. He looked over at Ted,

          “See, Ted,” he said, “It won’t do nothing but that and sometimes it will run for a few seconds and then pop and backfire again. I know it ain’t the carburetor, we done rebuilt that last week.”

          Ted put her hands on her hips and said, “Well, any fool ought to be able to tell that it ain’t the carburetor just by listening to it.” She turned to Pork Chop and said, “Bring me that concrete block from over there under the deck.”

          Pork Chop jumped and quickly got her the concrete block.

          Brickyard and Roadkill were standing to the side of the bike looking at the motor. Ted walked between them and, with a sideways move of her hips she bumped first one and then the other of them out of the way.

          “I cain’t do nothin’ with you guys in the way,” she said. “Pork Chop, but that block over here for me to set on.”

          Pork Chop did as he was told. Ted sat on the block at the side of the motor, adjusted her position and reached in her purse, pulling out her make up bag. I was fortunate enough to have been standing at the front of the bike so I could see exactly what she was doing. She unzipped the bag, reached inside and pulled out a Swiss army knife.

          “Men,” she said as she opened the knife’s screwdriver and started removing the chrome screws from the face plate of the motor. “You men ought to know by listening that it ain’t the carburetor. Brickyard, hand me that piece of card board over there so I can put these here screws on it and not lose them.”

          Brickyard hustled over with the cardboard. Ted slowly removed each of the six screws and set them on it. She used the screwdriver blade to gently pry the face plate loose and then set it next to the screws being careful not to scratch the chrome.

          There was total silence in the parking lot as twenty large, mean looking men dressed in black watched the small woman sitting on the concrete block. She reached back inside the make up pouch and pulled out a fingernail file. She held up the file and looked up at the faces that circled her.

          “All you got to do is listen to the motor,” she said. She fiddled around inside the motor housing.

          “Anybody that knows anything would know that this here fingernail file is exactly twenty nine thousanths of an inch thick.” She stuck her thumb nail inside.

          “And these here magneto points is touching each other and they’re supposed to be spaced at exactly twenty nine thousanths of an inch and they ain’t.”

          Ted used her thumbnail to pry the points apart and stuck the fingernail file between them. She let the points hold the file in place while she used the screwdriver blade on the Swiss Army knife to loosen the screw that held the points and adjusted them so that they were snug but not too snug on each side of the file. She felt the assembly carefully with her finger to make sure that it was just right and then carefully tightened the adjusting screw. She looked up at Kickstand.

          “This here screw has got to be tightened just right. If it ain’t tight enough it will slip and if it’s too tight, the points don’t have the right action. Some Man must not of done it right.”

          I looked over at the men crowded around the motorcycle. Their faces held looks of awe, amazement, and total respect. They had never seen anything like this. The look on Kickstand’s face was one of total, unmitigated love.

          Ted continued to work, “After you get the gap between the plugs right, you got to get them clean and remove the carbon that has built up ‘cause some Man didn’t do it right.” She moved the file carefully.

          “You got to do exactly three and a half passes between the points with the file. One,” She slowly moved the file away from her, “Two,” she moved the file in the other direction. A dropping pin would have sounded like an anvil hitting the driveway. “Three,” she said, moving the file back away from her, “and a half.” Ted pulled the nail file from between the points and set it down on the cardboard. She then picked up the face plate, set it carefully in place, inserted the screws in the holes, and tightened them up with her army knife. She stood up.

          I could feel the silence closing in like a vice as Ted finished and just stood there looking down at the thumbnail that she had used to raise the points. She studied the nail closely and then started using the fingernail file to scrape at a small dab of grease that had lodged under it. She never looked up as she softly broke the silence.

          “Far that sucker up, Bubba.”

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