Page 73 - Leather Blues

Leather Blues 61

the beer. They were exhilarated by their long run and the
prospects of the night. For the next hour more bikers pulled
off the highway, singly and in small groups. The brother-
hood grew and mingled. They chugged their first beers. They
popped their saddlebags for toys they carried into the parlor
and laid next to Chuck’s equipment.
The seventeenth and last rider, his shirtless torso bulked
big with brawn, his jaws lined with a thin cut of beard, his
forehead wrapped in a sweatroll of red bandana, pulled into
a loud cheer. Before he was off his bike he had two beers
shoved at him. He took them both. When Doc arrived, the
bikers knew the run was complete. He always started later
than the rest so he could trail the crowd. He was an MD
and if a biker got into trouble with anything from an exhaust
burn to a spill, he was only minutes behind. Doc kicked up
his big hog and stomped up the porch to Chuck. “This must
be,” he said, “the party you called.”
After work, Denny had ridden straight home. He walked
past his mother preparing supper, walked through his par-
ents’ bedroom into the bath, tossed a razor, toothbrush, and
soap into a towel. In his own room he pulled a couple of
T-shirts from the restraightened bureau and rolled an extra
pair of jeans and denim jacket into the old army blanket he
had slept on the summer his cousin had forced him out of his
bed. He secured his roll with a leather belt. From the false-
bottom drawer he pulled the two small physique magazines
and burned them in the wastebasket. Now he had the real
thing. Thin black smoke spiraled up to the ceiling.
“Denny?” his mother called from the kitchen, “is some-
thing burning?”
The paper curled and blackened. Small flames burst up
the legs of the muscle men. Heat ate their groins and melted
their bellies. Fire crossed their pecs. Their faces dissolved
into ash. Denny did not answer his mother.
She started up the stairs. “Is something burning?”

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