Barger nods, seeming to understand. We didn’t come here for trouble, Sheriff. The way we heard it, you had trouble waitin for us.
Well, what did you expect? We heard you were coming in for a rumble, to tear things up. Baxter forces a smile. But there’s no reason why you can’t enjoy yourselves here like everybody else. You guys know what you’re doing. There’s nothing wrong with you. We know that.
Then Barger smiles, very faintly, but he smiles so seldom that even a grimace means he thinks something is very funny. Come off it, Sheriff. You know we’re all fuck-ups or we wouldn’t be here.
The sheriff shrugged and walked back to his car, but one of the deputies picked up the conversation and soon found himself telling five or six grinning Angels what basically decent fellows they were. Barger went off to get a beer kitty going. He stood in the middle of the big clearing and called for donations. We had been there about half an hour and by this time I’d suffered a fatal run on my own stock. Puff had spotted the cooler in my car. I hadn’t planned to roll into camp and instantly dispose of my beer supply for the weekend, but under the circumstances I had little choice. There was no hint of intimidation, but neither was there any question in anyone’s mind that I’d brought the beer for any other purpose than to share it at this crucial, bone-dry time. As it happened, I had barely enough money for gas back to San Francisco. Once my two cases were gone I couldn’t buy a single can all weekend without cashing a check, and that was out of the question. Beyond that, I was — and might still be — the only journalist the Angels had ever seen who didn’t have an expense account, so I was a little worried at their reaction when I’d be forced to plead poverty and start drinking out of the kitty. My own taste for the hops is very powerful, and I had no intention of spending a beerless weekend in the withering sun.
In retrospect this seems like a small point, but it didn’t at the time. It was an ill-chosen moment to cast my bread on the waters. . . the suck-tide was running. Somewhere in the cacophony of foaming and hissing that followed the discovery of my cache, I recall saying, to nobody in particular: All right, goddamnit, this thing had better work both ways. But there was no reason to believe it would. At that stage of their infamy the Angels equated all reporters with Time and Newsweek. Only a few of them knew me, and the others were not going to be happy when I began lurking around the beer supply, draining one can after another in a feverish effort to even the score.
Many hours later, after the beer crisis had passed, I felt a little foolish for having worried. The outlaws gave it no thought. To them it was just as natural for me to have their beer as for them to have mine. By the end of the weekend I’d consumed three or four times as much as I’d brought with me. . . and even now, looking back on nearly a year of drinking with the Angels, I think I came out ahead. But that isn’t the way they balance the books. Despite their swastika fetish, the fiscal relationship between Angels is close to pure communism: from each according to his abilities and to each according to his needs. The timing and the spirit of the exchange are just as important as the volume. Much as they claim to admire the free enterprise system, they can’t afford it among themselves. Their working ethic is more on the order of He who has, shares. There is nothing verbal or dogmatic about it; they just couldn’t make it any other way.
But none of this was apparent that afternoon in Bass Lake as I watched my stock disappear while Barger called for funds. Although Sheriff Baxter had left, six deputies had attached themselves to the camp on what appeared to be a permanent basis. I was talking to one of them when Barger joined us with a handful of money. The sheriff said that place by the post office will sell us all the beer we want, he said. How about using your car? There’s likely to be trouble if we take one of the trucks.