Chapter 6 – Wheels of Rage by Kurt Saxon

Big Mike is about the only one who gets caught up in Noah’s frenzies. Together they make up a pair of moon howling run amuck artists that terrifies even some of the other bikers.

One time a cop had a couple of his kids poisoned and sick because of some bad meat his wife bought from a two-bit market butcher. Being a straight type officer with a shiny badge, he could not run amuck on the butcher himself. What he did was to call up the Iron Cross clubhouse.

He knew Noah and had seen him in the market three days ago. He also knew what time of day he could be found in the clubhouse. As it happened, Noah took the call. The cop said, “This is Bernie, the butcher at the market down from you on Orange.”

Noah said, “Yeah, I know the place. I was in there a couple of days ago.”

The cop then said, “I seem to recognize you from your voice. Aren’t you that big, creepy, degenerate son-of-a-bitch, not to mention fool, they call Noah?”

Noah exploded and screamed, “You can’t call me no fool. I’ll kill you!”

The Cop went on, “Well, you won’t kill nobody, you freak. You come into my shop again and I’ll rip off those false whiskers of yours and kick your pansy, faggoty face to mush.”

The cop hung up and Noah just stood there trembling until his rage built up to the berserk level. When he was primed for mayhem, he raced over to Big Mike’s place so he could share in the excitement. Noah was in such a state that Big Mike’s wife hid the children.

When Noah finally got enough control to explain what he was so wild about, he and Big Mike stormed over to the market and parked in back. Then they went inside and to the meat section and saw Bernie, a runty little squirt past fifty. If they had glared at him, he would have died and if they had thought a second, they would have realized he wouldn’t have made such a call.

Bernie was too wretched for stomping so without a word Noah jerked him up and carried him into his meat cooler. There he hung the squirming bundle by his shirt on a high meat hook. Then they quickly took joints of meat and several hundred pounds of steaks and packaged cuts and threw them all out into the street. Passersby grabbed the meat up and ran, not wanting to get involved.

When the two had made about five trips outside, they saw a squad car coming. Running back in they confronted the whimpering grocery clerk waving a handful of bills he had taken from the cash drawer. He told them to take the money and not hurt him.

Noah shouted, “We’re not here to rob you, you viper. Keep your money.”

Then Big Mike snatched the money and they ran out the back way.

Later the cop called up the clubhouse and anonymously confessed the hoax. He thanked them for running amuck on Bernie and suggested that it would be a good thing if all the bikers dropped dead.

Another incidence of Noah’s rage happened after he and Ape and some of the other bikers came back from a good-will run to Mexico. Noah had bought a Datsun jeep and had torn the hell out of it across the border. Then he thought he should try and get all the warranties honored. He and his wife went over all the papers so he could convincingly demand his rights when he went to the dealer.

He was also preparing to tangle with the salesman who had sold him the Datsun. It seems the salesman had admired the convertible Noah was driving and offered him a hundred and a quarter for its top. Since the car belonged to somebody who lived down the block from the clubhouse, Noah figured the sale of its top would be a clear profit.

When Noah had returned from Mexico, smarting at the Un-American treatment they had received at the hands of such contrary foreigners, he was broke. He thought he would just hot-wire the convertible again and run it down there and collect. He called the salesman to make sure he was there with the money and the salesman was not sure he wanted the top after all.

While he was fuming at this, Syble told him the dealer had added a hundred dollars on to the finance charges she did not think belonged there. Then Noah went tearing over to see Big Mike and invite him to go along and help destroy the Datsun empire.

They went in and Noah looked for the salesman but could not see him. The manager was there, though, and Noah immediately began yelling that they were a lot of goddam thieves and a bunch of double-crossing bastards.

There were women and kids all over the place and the salesmen began herding them out, mainly as an excuse to leave themselves. When the place was pretty much cleared Big Mike was looking over the leavings trying to decide who to stomp first.

The manager said, “Well look, couldn’t we discuss this outside? Let me take a look at your jeep.”

They went out and the manager walked around the jeep. The left front springs sagged and the front fenders were buckled and a headlight was missing. When they got around to the back the manger looked and said, “Why, these look like bullet holes. The Fender; through the back window; that just over the gas tank. This jeep’s been in a shooting of some kind. Our warranty doesn’t cover this damage.”

Noah raged, “That’s beside the point. You’re nit-picking, you devil. Look at these tires. Worn down to the cloth. You call these tires? I just drive around Glendale. Those yellow vermin are responsible and you back them up.”

While Noah was rattling on, the manager thought it best to edge back inside. Noah and Big Mike followed and Big Mike looked around at the various Japanese vehicles. He thought of doing a dance on their hoods and roofs to show what he thought of foreign imports. He resented most foreign vehicles, especially those from Japan. He had owned a Toyota once and had tried stealing parts for it and so had worked up a good case against them all.

While Noah continued to jump up and down and scream at the manager, Big Mike stood behind the manager and was getting ready to knock his head off. He cocked his fist and, looking at Noah, moved his lips silently asking, “You want me to hit him?” Noah shook his head, since he still hoped for some sort of refund.

Then he took out the sales contract and showed the manager where the hundred dollar overcharge was. When he looked over the contract the manager said, “Wait a minute. You people are in the wrong place. There’s another Datsun dealership that looks just like this one about two miles west of here. Besides, on this overcharge you are accusing them of; you misread twenty-six hundred to twenty-eight hundred. You’re being charged a hundred dollars less than you thought you were, not a hundred dollars over.”

Noah did not bat an eyelash to show his embarrassment. Instead, he shouted, “So that’s the way you think. That’s the kind of logic you use. Honest people don’t stand a chance dealing with you.”

Then he and Big Mike stalked out.

When New Year’s Eve came around the club was all ready to welcome it in with class. There were thirty-five Iron Crosses at the clubhouse along with several of their wives and girl friends. There were even a few independent outlaws, men not affiliated with any club, either because no club would accept them or because they were loners by nature.

The party had barely begun when The Three Little Pigs showed up. They were motorcycle cops who partied with the various clubs occasionally. They kept just a hair within the law themselves and were usually under suspension for drunkenness or brutality.

In their association with the outlaws it was understood that they would share the guilt for any atrocity committed while they were present. They had even phoned in tips about proposed raids and anti-biker legislations. They were also good sources of otherwise hard to get weapons. Big Mike figured them for screwballs but tolerated them.

This night they brought news of a super wipe-out New Year’s Eve bash thrown by a millionaire in his Burbank mansion. Every New Year’s Eve this sucker got his kicks by giving a kind of pageant which he called “The Wave of the Future.”

It was sort of like predicting what the new year would bring. Last New Year’s Eve the theme of the pageant had been “Brotherhood”. He had invited a mob of blacks and leftists and workers and intellectuals and establishment hacks to come together to tell how each would approach the problems of brotherhood. From the beginning it had been nothing but each heaping shit on the heads of the others.

That’s just about how the year actually turned out. Consequently, the theme for this year was to be “Chaos”. The bikers were to be the answer to the lack of harmony in the rest of society. It was believed that the Chaos theme was the most accurate prediction the millionaire had ever made.

Jack, one of The Three Little Pigs, briefed the bikers on the party. “First of all, there will be all you can drink of anything you want. Terrific eats, too. Also, everyone who goes, including your old ladies, will get twenty-five dollars cash. And anybody can leave and come back here after about an hour.

“We want to make this a real mind bender so you all have an hour to go home and get a weapon, preferably a 38 Special, a 45 or a carbine. We got blank ammo for those weapons so don’t go sneaking in any live rounds.”
After describing the act they were supposed to put on, he said, “Now, one important thing. There is to be no thumping these super straight citizens, especially no gang stomping. You’ll blow their minds just with your presence. Also, they will be just as funny looking to you as you are to them. So enjoy the show and don’t make trouble. Before we head out Big Mike will have to assure me that he will do what he can to keep you people in line. I don’t mean to put anyone down but this is all gravy for you and it would be a pity if some of you louse it up.”

Big Mike spoke out, “Jack’s right, you guys. This thing sounds like a winner to me and I expect anyone who goes out there to have automatically promised to behave. If a citizen gets vile, we overpower him, we don’t stomp him. Anyone who tries to screw up this deal is out of the club and into the hospital tonight. Now everyone go home and get your guns.”

In a little while the bikers were back at the clubhouse with their guns. They threw them all in the camper and remounted their bikes and headed out. Soon they came to a sprawling estate in Burbank and went around in back of the mansion. Each wheeled his scooter through a small door and onto a stage and began loading his gun with blanks. They they waited while the millionaire came through the back stage where they were and went through a large curtain where he was to lecture the audience out front.

The millionaire faced his audience, very shaky at the sight of the bikers who he had just vaguely imagined from The Three Little Pigs’ descriptions. Loosening his tie, he grabbed the microphone and said, “Last New Year’s Eve most of you were here when I gave my ‘Brotherhood’ theme. The fact that the divergent participants couldn’t get together, that they quarreled and some actually came to blows, made my theme of brotherhood a fit travesty to herald a year of hatred and dissension.

“Last year was a year no one wanted after he had tried it out. We are glad it’s over but I prophesy we’ll wish we had it back when we compare it with this one, the year of chaos.

“History shows us that when the strong among the rulers relinquish their hold on a society it is not the weak and the meek who rise to power. No, it is the strong among the lower classes who take over with an even more oppressive rule over the continually oppressed.

“I’ve heard some of you out there say that when this corrupt establishment falls, the poor, the blacks, the Chicanos will finally get their rights. Now you are going to see what will replace the corrupt establishment. While you watch, you keep thinking about those rights.”

At his signal, forty barbarians kicked over their choppers’ engines and the crescendo caused many of those in the audience to pack in together like a herd of terrified sheep. Then the curtain raised. Red lights in back of the bikers gave them the appearance of ascending from Hell. Green lights in front of them gave them a more monstrous look than they usually had.

Then they put their bikes in gear and headed for the audience down two ramps at the sides of the stage, shooting as they came. The citizens did not know the guns were loaded with blanks and the bikers would not have cared if they were real.

` It was a corny act but the panic that followed was more than the millionaire had counted on. The women were screaming and fainting and the men were punching and kicking and even biting in their wild attempts to get away.

The idea worked out by The Three Little Pigs and the millionaire the day before was that the bikers were to come down the ramps and go around the people in the center of the ballroom. Hugging the walls, they were then to go out the doors into the patio.

Instead, the frantic crowd poured out of the ballroom onto the patio and about a third of them fell into the huge, heated swimming pool. Five bikers trying to avoid this or that knot of people, also went into the pool, taking even more citizens with them.

Most of the lead bikers saw they could not get through the crowd so they stopped. This caused those following to run into them and for awhile everyone was running amuck on one another. Surprisingly, there were no real injuries. One pregnant socialite had a miscarriage but later said it was alright since she didn’t know who the father was anyway.

After the bikes and the guests were fished out of the pool, drinks and crackers covered with weird garbage were passed around. Several of the bikers spat the crackers out and demanded food. Then, large tables loaded with smorgasbord goodies were pushed in by waiters in fancy uniforms. Other tables had bottles of whiskey and gin and six-packs and the bikers were finally in their element. They all agreed that this was almost as much fun as burning credit cards.

Most of them took advantage of the heated pool and took delight in throwing each other and the citizens in. Soon the patio was left to the bikers and the few guests who were already wet and enjoying sitting around with the bikers drinking and listening to their silly conversation.

Aside from a low-level diving board there was one that was twenty feet high. For awhile some of the bikers amused themselves with climbing up the ladder and falling off the board.

Then two of them caught a Chinese waiter and dragged him up the ladder and threw him down into the pool. They thought that was fun so they did it again. After the second splash he clambered out and ran screaming into the mansion with five bikers after him. The Chinaman got away but the bikers captured another waiter and played with him until they were tired of the game.

With so many hyper-masculine bikers strutting around, most of the elegant broads at the party were in heat. The bikers without wives or girl friends obliged the debutantes by leading them off to various bedrooms in the mansion.

There was no standing in line like a lot of people think outlaw bikers are supposed to do. The Iron Cross does not consider gang-bangs and group pile-ons to be any kind of class.

One very hot-eyed teenage heiress, drunk out of her mind, propositioned Ape and Gorilla Snot and Pinocchio. She told them she wanted to be gang raped. Pinocchio told her to get lost.

She continued to whine and beg to be ravished and even call them fairies. Gorilla Snot said, “Get on away, you nasty thing. You ought to be ashamed acting like that.”

Ape said, “We might stomp you but we won’t rape you, you jail-bait weirdo.”

Then she threatened to tear her clothes and holler, “Rape!”

The three bikers grabbed her up and she shrieked with joyous anticipation. Then they hustled her outside and tossed her into the pool.

When bikers are partying they are usually very happy people. Then they aren’t quarrelsome and won’t fight unless deliberately provoked. They can sense hostility and if it isn’t there, blunders are excused.

After the initial shock was over, the guests and the bikers mingled and found one another mutually entertaining. The liberal types expected to get all kinds of meaningful dialogue from the bikers. But they were trying to communicate over a gulf wider than that between the liberal and the ghetto black. The black at least wants something and so they can communicate on the basis of wants and needs and the problems of meeting them. The biker, however, wants nothing the liberal has, except maybe his wallet or his wife. The liberal’s life style, a steady job, bills, responsibilities, are what the biker fights to get away from.

A scrawny little liberal asked Samson, “In your struggle against exploitation do you identify more closely with your black brothers or with the Mexican Americans?”

Samson just looked down at him like he was a bug and then he emptied his can of beer over the little man’s head. There was something about Samson that kept the guests from asking him any more questions.

The millionaire figured his guests would like a less risky way of finding out about the bikers’ attitudes. He asked Big Mike if he would be willing to get up on the stage and answer questions and Big Mike was delighted.

The millionaire and Big Mike went up to the microphone and the millionaire said to the guests, “Mr. Brown, here, is president of the Iron Cross Motorcycle Club. He’s willing to answer any questions you have about his organization.”

A spinsterish social worker type of woman asked, “Just supposing you motorcycle persons should take over; what provisions would you make for the minorities?”

Big Mike replied, “Well, lady, I think that’s a real stupid question but since all you people talk like that I’ll answer you. First, we don’t give a shit for the minorities. You seem to be putting us bikers in the same bag with a lot of blacks and Mexicans and militants of all kinds.

“We got nothing in common with all them. They all want a piece of your action. We don’t. They demand all kinds of rights and justice. We make our own.

“You’re on top now but you’ll finally give in to them and they’ll wipe you out. Then, because we’re so well armed and organized, they’ll see us as another power structure and attack us. Then we’ll wipe them out.

“Then the people who survive, we’ll set them up like serfs like in the middle ages. And if any of them get out of line we’ll chop their heads off. Then there won’t be any more crap about rights or justice. Then there will be peace. Don’t everyone want peace? We’ll probably be the only ones to bring peace in a thousand years, man.”

The little liberal with the beer in his ears protested, “But that’s monstrous! You think you can attain peace by total oppression?”

Big Mike answered, “Can you tell me of a time when there was both peace and freedom too? I’m not any kind of historian but I remember reading someplace that Genghis Kahn, when he took over China, boasted that a virgin carrying a bag of gold could walk from one end of the empire to the other and still be a virgin and still have the gold.

“He didn’t put up with anybody who was against his interests. I suppose most people had a good life unless they were frustrated bandits or rebels.

“Of course, all this is, like they say, academic; it’s parlor talk. The real shooting hasn’t started yet. And it’s dumb for you to worry about what happens to the people who do you in. In that sense it’s none of your business.

“It’s like the guy who owns this place told you. You’re the strong among the upper classes and we’re the strong among the lower classes. When you’re out of the way we strong among the different groups of the lower classes will fight over your carcass and let the devil take the hindmost.”

The next question was from a more down-to-earth type. He asked, “Why the motorcycle? Say this breakdown you predict comes. Wouldn’t, say, jeeps or landrovers be more practical and safer? I can’t see a motorcycle as an attack vehicle.”

Big Mike replied, “You got some good points there. But take right now. On a motorcycle you have fun. It’s a thrill. It’s also cheaper. On a chopped Harley you get forty-five miles to the gallon or better. That’s economical.

“As far as an attack vehicle goes, you’re right. In an ambush we don’t stand much of a chance. But maybe that just makes us that much more wary. Aside from that, the economy is stressed even more. When there’s no more gas to buy I don’t want to screw around scrounging gas for no fifteen miles to the gallon Landrover. Besides, with the roads clogged with wrecked and out of gas vehicles, I wouldn’t want to risk high banks or deep ravines at the sides of the roads. No, a scooter has it all over a four wheeled vehicle in case the system should collapse.”

Big Mike went on answering more questions and the bleeding hearts gave way to those really interested in motorcycles and the scooter enthusiasts life style. After the party there was a noticeable upsurge in the purchase of Harley-Davidson Sportsters bought by high class types and taken around to the bike shops who did custom chopping.

By this time everybody was mellow. One old lady millionaire was sitting on the floor drinking beer from a can with some of the bikers’ women. She was telling them what a spastic she had for a husband and wishing he were a biker.

Paranoid George had been drunk and asleep on a couch and woke up laughing. He told some bikers and some citizens that he had dreamed he and the bikers had been presented to the Queen of England at Buckingham palace. As he told his dream, one of the citizens stopped him and suggested he start at the beginning and share the dream with everybody there.

He was duly hustled on stage by two bikers and a citizen. When he got up there he realized he had nothing to drink and refused to talk until he had been brought a beer.

Then he said into the microphone, “Like I was saying to the guys, I had this dream about the Queen of England. I guess it was brought on by all the fine things around here in the mansion.

“Anyway, it seems we was all in England and was presented to the Queen in the Buckingham Palace. Big Mike was doing the presenting and he said to the Queen, ‘This here is Gorilla Snot, your Honor.

“She shook hands with Gorilla Snot and said, ‘Pleased, I’m sure’. Then she looked him up and down and said in that funny accent they have, ‘You’re a right bloody ‘eathen, you are’.

“Ape was circulating around back about this time and not having nothing else to do he goosed her. Then everybody started talking at once and hollering and the action moved out in the street.

“Then the Rolling Stones put Ape on their shoulders and carried him around in the street and they were yelling, ‘Remember Pearl Harbor’ and Ape was hollering, ‘God save the Queen!’

“There were people selling papers and yelling, ‘Extra, extra, knighthood proposed for man as goosed the Queen!’ Then everything started fading but it was a real nice dream and that Queen was a real fine broad.”

It was three in the morning and guests and bikers alike were crashed all over the place drunk and out cold. By about eleven next day everyone had woke up and left.

The millionaire paid up to the penny even though his mansion was pretty much a shambles. He thought it was all worth it, though, and said it was the best pageant he had ever had and the last.