I've been clean for a year and a half now and held steady work for the last six months. After a year of pitching her on-again-off-again emotional fits Sherry Lee has finally stopped her running around and settled into my little three-room cabin up on Ziyante Creek. It's 4th-of-July weekend so we've got four days off together. All and all, life is pretty good for a change--it's about time.

      Sherry Lee's arms are wrapped tight around my waist and she's snuggled-up close against my back. I can feel the warmth of her breath on my neck. The asymmetrical rhythm of my shovel-head motor fills the night as we roll north out of Santa Cruz, up the coast on California Highway One.

      To our left rides Pyro Mike, packing his old lady, Gwen. The long front-end on his totally bitchin' custom Pan flexs only slightly on the few ripples in the pavement. Behind Mike on a cut-down FLH--similar to mine but really ratty--rides Jimbo and Lynn. Directly behind us rides my best friend, Reese; Sherry Lee's twin sister, Terry, perched on the back of his shiny new Sturgis.

      Traffic is heavy but moving well as the thousands of flat-landers from the Santa Clara Valley begin their annual pilgrimage to the isolated north-county beaches to set off their store-bought, safe & sane fireworks. Pyro Mike has a few homemade surprises for them in his saddle bags. A slight breeze off the water tempers the heat of the summer night. I can feel it cool on my face. Sherry Lee runs her fingers through my hair, kisses me on the back of the neck and snuggles-up a little closer. Sherry Lee can be a very good girl--when she wants to be.

      As we approach Greyhound Rock the highway narrows to cut through a notch in the coastal foothills. Two hundred feet ahead some moron opens the driver's-side door of his parked van and steps out onto the highway. The car in front of us slams its brakes hard and goes into a wobbling skid.

      The ever present veil of sand the prevailing westerlies blow across the highway from the beach is going to make stopping in time to avoid crashing into the skidding car impossible. Even if we could stop in time, the screaming tires of the already out of control car behind us tell me he's not going to stop before nailing us to the car ahead. The holiday exodus from the valley has cars parked bumper-to-bumper on both sides of the two lane blacktop and the opposing lane is totally clogged. There is nowhere to go but neither can we stay where we are!

      Pyro and I brake hard and start looking for a way out of what is rapidly becoming a very nasty situation. Sherry Lee tightens her grip and hollers out an un-encouraging, "Oh jeez!" Had I been her, I'd have chosen a stronger expletive.

      I out-brake Pyro and try to slip left behind him as he shoots up the narrow gap between the two rows of traffic--the only way out of this death trap we can see--but Jimbo has only a rear brake on his rat and has reacted late. He fires by me on the left clipping my handlebars as he goes. This sends me careening back to the right and into a momentary speed-wobble. I feel Sherry Lee's fingernails dig into my chest and her thighs tighten up on my butt; but she keeps her seat and keeps herself centered over the bike. Like I said, Sherry Lee can be a very good girl when she tries.

      We're now only 40 feet from the car ahead. I'm seriously considering laying it down and then trying to roll out of the way of the car behind us. But I know that by now Reese has to be right on my ass--if I put her down he'll likely ride right through us. I lock up the rear wheel and pitch the 600 pound black and chrome monster back to the left, broadside. Reese rockets by. The foot peg of his Sturgis clips my front wheel causing it to begin washing out. The whole situation is really starting to suck.

      I force myself to relax and let my mind take me back to my younger days and the AMA fairgrounds circuit. Instantly, I'm back aboard my old KR-750 Harley dirt-tracker, pitching it into turn three at the end of the back shoot at the San Jose Mile. I'm not thinking anymore, just riding on instinct.

      I pull the bars down onto the right-hand stops, let off the brakes and plant my left foot, stiff-legged and flat, on the sandy asphalt. I haven't owned a steel hot-shoe in years but I know the leather soles of my knee-high Acme engineer boots will suffice in a pinch. I slam the throttle open wide.

      The bike fires left, then, with the front wheel finally starting to bite, it begins to straighten up. We are aimed right down the white line between the opposing lanes of traffic. The wildly spinning rear wheel begins to grab the sandy road surface and we lunge forward. Slapping back and forth between the two rows of traffic like run-a-muck firehose the bike's fish-tailing rear end first hammers a giant gouge in the door of an adjacent south bound navy blue Beamer, then swings back the other way so close to the car we'd been following that my right knee takes off its side mirror as we blow by.

      Out of the box now, and clear of the danger, I snap the throttle closed and ease back onto the brakes. We roll to a stop next to Reese and Terry with the tire squealing, metal rendering, glass crunching sounds of the chain-reaction collision unfolding behind us filling the night.

      With the echoes of the last, long, "Scrreeeech, BANG-tinkle-tinkle," dying away, we shut down and ask is anyone hurt? Amazingly, all eight of us are OK! En-mass and pissed, we head back up the white line toward the van on foot. Jimbo is cussing like the Mekong Delta gunboat sailor he once was and is ready to kick some ass.

      Just short of the van we come to the first in the long line of wrecks. The accordianed front-end of the car that had been behind us is indistinguishably co-mingled with the last five feet of the car we had been following. The ripped-off door of the van lies by the side of the road. Between the two cars, crushed to a multi-colored-fluid oozing pulp, lies the moron--he is quite dead. This five feet of crumpled, bloody, mayhem is all that remains of the space in which we had all been riding not sixty seconds before.

      Lynn and Gwen take one look at the deceased and run to the side of the road to begin throwing up. Reese follows quickly behind them. Terry starts to cry. Pyro Mike pulls a M-80 out of his vest pocket and tosses it through the missing door into the van. It blows out all the windows. Jimbo is totally pissed because the moron is too dead to beat up.

      Sherry Lee is almost as tough as the biker-chick image she pretends, but now, unable to pry her eyes off the dead guy, even she starts to cry. After a moment she spins around, bangs hard into me and snuggles up in a way that makes her seem tiny. "Jeez, Hon, that was freakin' close," she says. Then, shooting a quick glance at the mangaled body, "That could've been us!"

      "Nah," I say, "It was no big deal, babe. I had it covered all the way."

      I give her big old bear-hug and a peck on top of her pretty little head. Then a good rub up and down her back with the flats of my hands; she always likes that.

      After a bit she stops crying. Wraping her arms around me, chin on my chest, she looks up and lets out a relaxed sigh; her face now shinning brightly. "I knew you'd get us out of it," she says, "you always do."

      I just smile. Then, knowing she's all right, and giving her one last rub up and down her back, I send her off to check on her sister; because I don't want her to notice I'm beginning to tremble--or to ever know how close a thing it had really been.

***

© Gary M. Pinkston, 1996.