Hell’s Angels. A Strange and Terrible. Saga by Hunter S. Thompson

I didn’t take his remark very seriously, but by the time the weekend was over I knew he hadn’t been kidding. If Barger had been stomped by a mob of locals, nothing short of a company of armed militia could have kept the main body of outlaws from swarming into town for vengeance. An attack on the Prez would have been bad enough, but under those circumstances — a police-planned beer run — it would have been evidence of the foulest treachery, a double cross, and the Angels would have done exactly what they all came to Bass Lake expecting to do. Most would have finished the weekend in jail or the hospital, but they were expecting that too. It would have been a good riot, but looking back, I no longer think the initial clash would have been evenly matched. Many of the vigilantes would have lost their taste for the fight the moment they realized that their opponents meant to inflict serious injury on anybody they could reach. Big Frank from Frisco,* for instance, is a black belt in karate who goes into any fight with the idea of jerking people’s eyeballs out of their sockets. It is a traditional karate move and not difficult for anyone who knows what he’s doing. . . although it is not taught in self-defense classes for housewives, businessmen and hot-tempered clerks who can’t tolerate bullies kicking sand in their faces. The intent is to demoralize your opponent, not blind him. You don’t really jerk out the eyeball, Big Frank explained. You just sorta spring it, so it pops outta the socket. It hurts so much that most guys just faint.

* Or Frank Number Two — not legendary Frank, ex-outlaw and -president.

Red-blooded American boys don’t normally fight this way. Nor do they swing heavy chains on people whose backs are turned. . . and when they find themselves in a brawl where things like this are happening, they have good reason to feel at a disad­vantage. It is one thing to get punched in the nose, and quite another to have your eyeball sprung or your teeth shattered with a wrench.

So if there had been a full-strength fight that afternoon, the locals would probably have been routed after the first clash. But it would have taken a while for the police to muster enough strength to prevail, and in the meantime the outlaws would have wreaked all manner of destruction on the merchant Williams’ property — breaking windows, looting beer coolers and probably rifling some cash registers. A few would have been shot by Burr-head and his crew, but most would have tried to flee at the first sign of serious police action. This would have led to wild chases and skirmishing, but Bass Lake is a long way from Angel turf and not many of them could have made it all the way home without being captured at roadblocks.

Barger knew this and he didn’t want it to happen. But he also knew that it was not a sense of hospitality or concern for social justice that had got them a campsite. Tiny Baxter had a bomb on his hands, and he had to tread carefully to keep it from going off. This was Barger’s leverage — the certainty that his people would behave like wild beasts if they were pushed too far. But it would last only as long as things stayed quiet. John Foster Dulles might have called it a balance of terror, a volatile stand-off which nei­ther side wanted to upset. Whether this was a just or desirable situation for a woodsy American community to find itself in is, again, pretty much beside the point. As weird and unreal as the Bass Lake confrontation might have sounded to radio listeners in New York or Chicago, nobody on the scene had any doubt about what they were seeing. Right or wrong, it was happening, and by the time the Angels were settled at Willow Cove, even the locally made restraining order was irrelevant. The outlaws simply had to be dealt with in terms of moment-to-moment reality.

I hadn’t planned to get physically involved, but after the narrow escape at Williams’ store I was so firmly identified with the Angels that I saw no point in trying to edge back to neutrality. Barger and Pete seemed to take me for granted. As we drove around the lake they tried earnestly to explain the importance of the colors. Pete seemed puzzled that the question had ever come up. Hell, he said, that’s what it’s all about.