I didn’t mind and the deputy said it was a socko idea, so we counted out the money on the hood of the car. It came to $120 in bills and roughly $15 in change. Then, to my astonishment, Sonny handed me the whole bundle and wished me well. Try to hustle, he said. Everybody’s pretty thirsty.
I insisted that somebody come with me to help load the beer in the car. . . but my real reason for not wanting to go alone had nothing to do with loading problems. I knew all the outlaws lived in cities, where the price of a six-pack ranges from $.79 to $1.25. But we were nowhere near a city, and I also knew, from long experience, that small stores in remote areas sometimes get their pricing policy from The Gouger’s Handbook.
Once, near the Utah-Nevada border, I had to pay $3.00 for a six-pack, and if that was going to be the case at Bass Lake, I wanted a reliable witness — like Barger himself. At normal city prices, $135 would fetch about thirty cases of beer, but up in the Sierras it would only cover twenty, or maybe fifteen if the merchants were putting up a solid front. The Angels were in no position to do any comparison shopping, and if they were about to be taught a harsh lesson in socioeconomics, I figured they’d be more receptive to the bad news if it came from one of their own people. There was also the fact that sending a penniless writer to get $135 worth of beer was — as Khrushchev said of Nixon — like sending a goat to tend the cabbage.
I mentioned this on the way to town, after Sonny and Pete had agreed to come with me. You’d of come back with it, Sonny said. A person would have to be awful stupid to run off with our beer money. Pete laughed. Hell, we even know where you live. And Frenchy says you got a boss-lookin old lady, too. He said it jokingly, but I noted that raping my wife was the first form of retaliation that came to his mind.
Barger, like the politician he is, hastened to change the subject. I read that article you wrote about us, he said. It was okay.
The article had appeared a month or so earlier, and I remembered a night in my apartment when one of the Frisco Angels had said, with a beery smile, that if they didn’t like what I wrote they’d come over some night to kick down my door, throw gasoline into the hall and then put a match to it. We were all in good spirits at the time, and I recall pointing to the loaded double-barreled shotgun on my wall and replying, with a smile, that I would croak at least two of them before they got away. But none of this violence had come to pass, so I assumed they either hadn’t read the article or had managed to live with what it said. Nonetheless, I was leery of having it mentioned, and especially by Barger, whose opinions automatically become the Hell’s Angels’ official line. I had written the piece with the idea that I would never again have any contact with motorcycle outlaws, whom I’d referred to as losers, ignorant thugs and mean hoodlums. None of these were terms I looked forward to explaining while surrounded at a remote Sierra campsite by two hundred boozing outlaws.
What are you doin now? Barger asked. Are you writin somethin else?
Yeah, I said. A book.
He shrugged. Well, we don’t ask for nothin but the truth.* Like I say, there’s not much good you can write about us, but I don’t see where that gives people the right to just make up stuff. . . all this bullshit, hell, ain’t the truth bad enough for em?
* Several months later they decided that truth was not enough. There would have to be money too. This created tension, which blossomed into resentment and finally violence.
We were almost to Williams’ store, and I suddenly remembered my burr-haired inquisitor with his high-powered language barrier. We made the turn at the bottom of the hill and I parked the car as inconspicuously as possible about thirty yards from the store. According to the deputy at the campsite, the sale was already arranged. All we had to do was pay, load the beer and leave. Sonny had the cash, and as far as I was concerned, I was just the chauffeur.