Barger talked steadily for nearly an hour, fully aware that he was being taped and photographed. In that respect it was the end of an era, for soon afterward he realized that the wisdom he dispensed and the poses he struck for the cameras were worth money, and by the time the article appeared, his expansive mood had turned to gall.
The rest of the stay at Bass Lake was relatively peaceful. Many of the Angels spent Sunday afternoon at the beer market, performing for an overflow crowd of tourists. They poured beer on each other, exchanged lewd chatter with the citizens and had a fine time keeping everybody on edge. Old men bought beer for them, middle-aged women called out insulting questions and the cash register clanged merrily.
Back at camp there were moments of tension when the Willow Cove inlet was invaded by three big hydroplanes full of muscle beach types and bikini girls. They weren’t necessarily looking for a fight, but they came on strong, as one of the Angels put it, and for a while it looked as if something bad was building up. The police had made no provisions for staving off an attack by water, and when the hydroplanes arrived there were no deputies in camp. The men on the boats were all in their twenties, wearing bright form-fit trunks with deep tans and short waxed hair that stayed combed even in the water. There were about twenty male specimens, and five or six girls who looked like something off the French Riviera. They tied up the boats to some trees across the inlet from the outlaw camp and began to play around lazily — diving, tossing the girls around, passing beers back and forth, but ignoring the outlaws completely.
A hundred feet away, on the other side of the inlet, the Hell’s Angels lounged in all their grubby splendor. There were no sun tans, bikinis or waterproof watches on that side. The outlaws stood on the rocky beach in jockey shorts, wet Levi’s and matted beards that made their skin seem pale and moldy. Several were splashing around in the water with their clothes on. Some of the girls wore bras and panties, others rolled up their toreador pants as high as they would go, and a few were swimming in men’s T-shirts. It looked like the annual picnic for the graveyard shift at the Never Sweat copper mine in Butte, Montana.
The Angels didn’t do much swimming. It doesn’t fit their style, and only a few know how. Shit, I’d sink like a stone if I went out in that water, said one. I guess I could learn to swim if I wanted to, but what the hell? I wouldn’t do it more’n once a year anyhow.
Finally, after some roosterish banter, some of the muscle beach people swam gracefully across the inlet to answer questions the Angels had been yelling about the boats. They wanted to know about the engines, which looked so big that the outlaws couldn’t understand why they didn’t sink the hulls they were mounted in. One was a 400-horsepower Oldsmobile V-8 with a supercharger. This was the only common language the two groups had, but it served. After a half hour of shop talk and a few shared beers, one of the boat boys offered to take some of the Angels for a spin. They came back laughing excitedly. Man, that thing did a big wheelie all across the lake, said one. I couldn’t believe it. That thing is outta sight!
The only other incident of the run occurred on Sunday night, just before the beer market closed at ten. The Angels who’d been there all day were totally drunk when it came time to go, but they insisted on doing it up right. Whenever they exit in a group, drunk or sober, they boom off like a flight of jet fighters leaving a runway — one at a time, in rapid succession, and with overwhelming noise. The basic idea is that individual launches keep them from running into each other, but the Angels have developed the ritual to the realm of high drama. The order of departure doesn’t matter, but the style and rhythm are crucial. They carefully prime their carburetors so the bikes will start on the first kick. An outlaw whose hog won’t leap off like a thunderbolt feels a real stigma. It has the same effect as a gun jamming in combat or an actor blowing a key line: To be or not to be. . . quoth the raven.