by Darrel Bird
***
Jessie stole Jim Dugan’s Kawasaki 1100, a much bigger motorcycle for the road and headed out again. This time he ended up on the mean streets of east L.A. He joined a small biker gang called the “Cut Throats,” which never cut anybody’s throat, but just rode the streets, stealing gas to get from one place to the other. Every one of them had a face full of zits, including Jessie.
One fine day in the spring, there were a half a dozen of them on a ride, heading to downtown L.A. to siphon gas, when a group of Hell’s Angels stopped alongside Jessie and another dude at a red light. The big bad bearded Angel smarted off to Jessie about his Kawasaki. “Why don’t you get yourself a real bike kid?”Jessie never said a word, just took out a .9m auto, shot the dude off his bike, and then rode off when the light turned green.
Somewhere along the line, Jessie had gone “plumb hog wild and pig crazy.” Nobody ever could figure out just what set him off, but something did. The Angels swore they were going to get him, but the truth of the matter was that most of the Angels had good jobs and families. That’s the only way they could pay for their expensive Harleys, so they kind of put it off to the other guy being a fool for insulting a stranger's bike in the first place.
The Angels went back to work and let it slide, and the police never did find out who shot the Angel; they didn’t try hard either, because they figured as long as the gangs were killing one another, it saved them the job of rounding them up and putting them through the courts, just so the liberal judges could put them right back on the streets.
So Jessie was free because of lack of interest. The Cut Throats, who never cut anybody’s throat, wanted to decorate Jessie with a patch, but Jessie saw what they were – just zit-faced gas thieves – so he headed out again, and this time he ended up on the outskirts of Portland Oregon, broke, tired and generally pissed at the world.
