The Bodfish Bandit

The Bodfish Bandit

A SHORT STORY BY RONALD SWARTLEY

FIRST BUMPED INTO this guy at a service station on the edge of East Bakersfield. You see, I’d made the mistake of leaving my blue, lightning-striped helmet sitting on the saddle of my fourbanger while I went paying a visit to the gas man’s john. These kids—just coming home from school I guess—made a grab for the helmet. But, lucky for me, they went the wrong way after snatching it.

They ran right by this guy I’m trying to tell you about. He had his BMW parked off at the edge of the ramp, working on the gas tank it looked like, and he neatly, painlessly, collared this kid who had the helmet.

This guy retrieved the helmet, and then proceeded to a short, off-the-cuff lecture on the evils of petty thievery. That’s the scene that caught my eye as I came out of the john—this fellow with ly helmet dangling from his forefinger, Jbcturing the now well-chastised kid.

Well, I was grateful. That metallic blue, lightning-striped helmet and I had gone through a lot together: Daytona, Baja, and Atlanta to name a few. More important, I happened to be wearing that helmet the very moment I met Mona. Mona’s my baby. When she’s not in school, she lives up near Lake Isabella, at this place called Bodfish, California. That’s where I was headed when I ran into this guy at the service station.

So, being grateful and all, I asked him how I might repay this favor he did me. I was real serious about it too. So he thought for a moment, rubbing his chin, looking off into the distance; then he said yes, there was something I could do. He’d drained this water out of his gas tank, see, but he didn’t know if he got it all. Would I follow him for five ^»iles or so, since he happened to be ^(foing the same direction I was? Sure I would, I said. I’d be glad to follow him a way—to be sure he didn’t get stranded out on the road somewhere.

So I wheeled around, strode smartly back to my bike, and mounted up. I looked back over at this guy then, expecting to see him ready to go, and he’d hardly moved. He was going about things awful slow—slow as molasses.

He kind of struck me as the “slow” type anyway. He was of a middling height, age about 55 maybe, bald as a ball bearing, and moved slow—awful slow. I could tell those five miles I had to follow him were going to be pure hell. Even if he hadn’t been the dawdling type—which he was—that BMW 60 of his was bound to be slow of its own accord.

He finally did get ready to go ^Mrough. What really made me laugh was ^^ne sight I saw as he donned the leather jacket which he retrieved from his sad-

dlebag. Plastered all over the back of that jacket was a great big yellow dragon, snorting big red flames, and with a lot of white teeth gleaming. It was the most ridiculous thing I’d ever seen—this meek, humble, slow moving old cus, sporting a yellow dragon on his back. Jeez!

Anyway, he got his leg slung over the saddle, got the bike started up and in gear, and eased out onto the highway.

We had to stop at both stop lights going out of town. I pulled up beside him at the second one and asked him how his bike was doing.

“Oh, fine,” he said meekly. “Yes, it seems to be running just fine.”

Poor old cus, I thought. What are guys like that doing riding motorcycles out in traffic anyway? But, what the hell—he’d saved my helmet for me hadn’t he? So I gave him a smile of encouragement. He seemed to need all the help he could get.

We moved on out of town then, me keeping a discreet distance behind. Yeah, I didn’t want it to seem like I was rushing him any. There would be plenty of time for my style of riding after I got past him. I was looking forward to the twisting, turning course of Highway 178 as it moves on up the hill toward Lake Isabella. Yeah, it was gonna be sheer pleasure moving expeditiously around those curves.

The old guy up ahead was keeping that BMW at a rock steady 55 mph as we covered the flatlands approaching the hills. That was probably as fast as he’d ever gone, poor guy. Too bad he’d never really gotten to smoke it down the road like a real clutch ‘n throttle grabber. Oh, well . . .

We were approaching the first curves and the first upgrade soon, and I was itching to start leaning and powering through those curves. And I was thinking of Mona too, at the end pf those curves, 30 miles up the road.

“Well old fellow,” I muttered, “It’s time I said ‘adios’ and ‘sayonara.’” I revved the “750” and prepared to make the old eus long gone. But, damn! A car coming. Two cars. Have to ease around between curves I guess. . . .And yes, now’s the time! But no, I let him get a little too far ahead there somehow. I’d get him on the next straightaway though, and that was for sure.

Jeez! I laughed at that fire-spitting dragon again. It was still a comical sight to see as I watched it disappear around the curve.

I slowed a little and shifted down. This road was definitely starting to get serpentine. I banked the bike way over, keeping a careful eye out, because I didn’t want to catch up so fast that I’d ram into the back of the poor old

geezer.

I made it around the curve and onto a little straightaway—and no, I didn’t run into him. I didn’t even get close. I thought there for a minute that maybe he’d run clear off the road, because I didn’t see him at first. But then, I did see him, and somehow, some way, he was still well up ahead. Jeez, I guess maybe I’d slowed down too much for him coming around that last curve. Yeah, that musta been it all right. Maybe I was being a bit too cautious with him.

Well, there was a remedy for that. I shifted my weight a little in the saddle, and hunkered down a little, and took a little bit tighter grip on the throttle. I gave the Go-knob a good twist and rocketed forward toward the next bend, meanwhile watching the yellow dragon disappear again. Yeah, the next time I saw that dragon I’d be right on top of it. Guaranteed!

I whistled around the curve, banking sharply, engine whining in high pitch. I craned my neck hard, looking for the BMW’s rear fender.

But there was none. No fender, no dragon, no trace at all—not till I got clear around the curve. Then I saw him, still up ahead and hardly a bit closer than he was before. “Holy, holy, holy,” I intoned in a low voice. “That must be somebody else up there. I musta passed him somehow and didn’t know it.”

But no, there was that yellow dragon again, flashing in the sun, disappearing around the next curve. “Hey baby,” I moaned again, “this is waaay too much!”

I hunkered even deeper down in the saddle, gripped the throttle even tighter, and pulled my visor down for the first time. Yes, it was war now. Now we would really see what we would see. This situation had obviously gotten clear out of hand.

The next curve was to the right and I eased a little left on the approach and blasted through it, well over and in good control. A sharp left followed and I cut through, accelerating, noticing the gushing, rushing Kern River down, way down, below. Another sharp right followed, and I knew that coming out of that next turn I would see the BMW again. I knew that crotchety old cus would be there, close on, wondering who the hell it was climbing up his back all of a sudden. I smiled and chuckled at the prospect. I was amused at the expression which was bound to be on the dude’s face.

I roamed through that turn, hearing the high-pitched scream of the engine reverberating off the cliff wall on the right. Now! Now we’ll see you, you old fuddy duddy, and at close range too. I (Continued on page 119) Continued from page 43 focused my eyes in then, looking for a dragon. . .but there wasn’t any dragon! I refocused to a middle distance—and there wasn’t a dragon there either. I threw them into long focus then and I spotted him. He’d gained on me! The bald-headed, pot-bellied, slow-as-molasses son-of-a-gun had gained on me. I blinked my eyes several times, put my visor back up, shook my head back and forth and then looked up again, and he wasn’t there. He’d disappeared around the next turn.

Well, I can’t tell you how damned hard I worked to catch him from then on. I called back from the past all the tricks I’d learned from every race I ever ran. I took chances I should never’ve taken, and dripped a gallon of sweat doing it. I did everything humanly possible to close the gap between me and that meek, humble faker, but it was no use. It wasn’t much longer and he was so far ahead that he was totally lost from sight. Yeah, he was a regular fleeing bandit.

I ambled into Bodfish a little while later, crestfallen. I dragged slowly through town toward Mona’s mom’s house, feelin’ awful low.

I was just about to turn into the driveway of Mona’s place when lo and behold something frighteningly, shockingly familiar hove into view. Up there in Mona’s mom’s driveway, standing isolated and serene, was a BMW 60, remarkable in its similarity to the one I’d lost so much face with just a few minutes back. I rechecked the house number, and, yes, it was the right house. I nosed up into the driveway, came to a halt, and crawled off. A second later and here comes Mona running down the sidewalk toward me.

“Hi, Babe,” she said.

“How doo you do?” I replied, a little weakly.

“Have you met Popsie?” she asked, looking over my shoulder up the driveway. I turned, and there was “Popsie.” The bald-headed, slow-as-molasses gent was coming out of the garage toward us. We shook hands, and we both smiled; but we said nary a word. Somehow he looked younger than I recently remembered him.

Mona took me by the arm then, turned me around, and headed me up toward the house.

“Popsie’s a motorcyclist too,” she said. “He spent 30 years riding with the Highway Patrol,” she said. “He still rides in motorcycle races, too,” she went on.

“Aw, knock it off!” I mumbled, barely audible. Then, a little louder, “How’s your sweet ass?” And she smiled. 0