The Vernal Equinox of Death and Kisses
and Other Short Stories
by Antonio Hopson

EXCERPT

DO BIKERS BELIEVE IN FAIRY TALES?
First published in The Subterranean Quarterly

The bikers worshiped her as a mythical goddess.

“Last night, I seen her,” said Mississippi Charlie, “She came riding up on me real slow like she was gon’na tell me som’thin’ sexy.”

“No shit?”

“No shit,” Mississippi Charlie assured. “She was wearing that blond-colored leather jacket, unzipped to her belly button.”

“Ooooo!” the bikers crooned. “What was underneath, old man?”

“Nuthin’ 'cept a black studded bra,” said Mississippi Charlie. “She pulled her hog up right next to me and winked.”

“Like hell!”

“I’m tellin’ ya! I saw her studded bra –then she winked a little wink at me.”

Their goddess was named Darla, a name they chose because it conjured up pictures of virgins, chastity, bluestocking virtuousness and pristine, inexperienced damsels –yet Darla possessed a Harley Davidson.

“What did she look like that night, old man?” said a young biker.

“Well,” Mississippi Charlie began, “she looked kind’a tired, like she’d been up all night at a party and ain’t had no sleep. She looked like she was smoked like that.”

Not all of the bikers appreciated their goddess characterized in such a manner and they let out little grunts and growls. So Mississippi Charlie carefully amended: “But, when I took a more careful look, she seemed fresh and clean. Boys, I thought I was lookin’ into the eyes of a seventeen year old. Skin so tight, you could play quarters on her belly.”

“What else?” said the young biker.

“Well,” said Mississippi Charlie scratching his head, “Her jacket was kind’a draped down over her shoulders, real sexy, like.” He stood up to show them, and the bikers whistled at him. “Oh man they was pretty –silky and curvy with the moonlight shinin’ down on ‘em. They had pretty little freckles speckled all over ‘em.” In appreciation, the group nodded at one another. Freckles made their goddess seem naive and exploitable. “I saw a pearl necklace too. At least I think they was pearls cause I ain’t never seen no real pearls before. ‘Cept in a magazine, maybe. But I could tell they was sompin’ special 'cause the way she kept runnin’ her fingers over 'em like they was precious pink nipples!” Mississippi Charlie suddenly paused, assessing the situation. He looked around the table a bit sheepishly and took a small sip at his beer.

“Pearls make her seem kind’a prissy,” said Biker Dave finally, “I don’t think I like that much.”

The others grunted in agreement. Another long silence opened up. Someone coughed by the jukebox. A rack of billiards exploded.

“Tell us about the hog,” Said Blade.

Mississippi Charlie straightened in his chair.

In West Seattle there were five and a half women who owned Harleys (“Sucker-Punch Sarah” didn’t count as a whole woman due to the fact that he/she was a transvestite), but only one owned “The Hog of Hogs” – an FLHR RoadKing. It was the principal bike made by The Harley Davidson Company –the Cadillac of rebel. It weighed seven hundred and twenty pounds, but with factory installed rubber-mounted shocks, it could fade into a hairpin corner as easy as a hawk changes directions. Sixteen-inch wheels were its wings, and the gray steaming concrete its medium. Mississippi Charlie, a veteran biker, remembered a time when the RoadKing did not come equipped with a push button starter. The push button starter, he romanticized, was invented by the engineers employed by the Harley-Davidson company because they knew well the lifestyle of their consumers. “Fer instance,” he told them, “They’s knows that we bikers need to sometimes make a fast get-away!” Indeed, one could technically jump onto the RoadKing and start it before its rider even fell into the soft saddle seat. Mississippi Charlie lectured that because the bike had a long history behind it, each re-designed model of the past had been tinkered with, but the designers understood that perfection had long ago been achieved. “There are those who compare the Hog to The Obelisk,” he announced in grand style, “or to the Archimedes screw. 'Cause each one done endured the test of time, and so too will the RoadKing. It’s no wonder we bikers simply call it: The Kind, as in the kind of bike any self respecting, hell-bent for leather biker would be proud to call their own!”

“Get on with it, old man,” demanded Toronto Ralph, “and tell us what she did next, ya' old geezer!”

“Yeah, then what happened?” another asked.

Mississippi Charlie hesitated a moment, pausing in deep thought because suddenly a dark void appeared before him. It was a hole with no light and no direction to move; no words to invent. He stuttered, “Well, heck . . . then, well

I. . .” then he saw a light in the void and moved toward it, saying at last: “There I was, boys, on my hog. Right next to the one and only Darla'Queen of Bikers'! I tried not to be scared and I swallowed real hard and told her, like I was a gentleman, 'Can I buy you a Fat Tire Ale at the Alki tonight, Missy?'”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah!”

“Did she pull out her .357 Magnum and pistol whip ya?” said the young biker.

“Hell no, man!” said Mississippi Charlie, “Everybody knows she don't carry no pistol, boy! She carry a sawed off shotgun that's strapped to her saddlebag!”

“Oh yeah,” ambled the young one, “that's right, I do remember that now.”

“So then, she killed her bike, and took off her beanie helmet, you know?” asked Mississippi Charlie, “The one with the bumper sticker that says: 'What the hell are you lookin’ at?'”

Everyone at the table nodded, except for Toronto Ralph.

“Now listen, you!” He had grown impatient of this long, foolish denouement. Toronto Ralph had endured a million Darla stories, and there wasn’t anything special about this one, not yet. He stood up and told the old biker: “If you don’t get to the point of all this, I’m gon’na kick your tired old ass myself!”

“Ok, ok.” said Mississippi Charlie indignantly. “Like I was saying, she pulled up next to me and I asked her out like a gentleman. Then she told me that she could do better than that. She says in a real husky voice that if I could keep up with her, she’d take me home and spank me the way that my mama ought to have when I first started-a-lookin’ at bikes!”

Some of the bikers smiled inwardly, letting visions of their mothers filtrate into gentle parts of them, or pictures of their first Harley. Biker Dave enjoyed a synthesis of the two. When he was a child his mother had drugged his father and stolen his bike. That very same bike would soon belong to Biker Dave because two years later she had drugged his stepfather. This time, mother and son sped off into the night riding side by side. The poignant memory almost brought a tear to Biker Dave’s eye, so he pretended to suddenly need to relieve himself and in the bathroom he called his mother.

“I love you—you old broad,” he told her.

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