Lead Belly

by David Donaghe

opposite direction and I recognized Chico and a couple of the bros. I grinned and waved, knowing that there’d be talk in the clubhouse tonight if they recognized me. It ain’t everyday that you see a biker from the great beyond rumbling down the road on his Harley. In my rearview, I watched them turn into a Seven Eleven parking lot and park their scooters. I turned off onto a dirt driveway leading to an older run down mobile home sitting off by itself. I pulled up to the trailer, killed the motor on the Pan Head and climbed. off. Lead Belly’s eyes widened when he saw me. He was sitting on the front porch with a gun in his hand with the barrel up to his temple playing Russian Rolette when I rode up, but when he saw me, he lowered the piece to his lap. Two evil looking demons wearing filthy black robes stood on both sides of him hissing in his ear. “Do it-one more time,” one of them said. Green slim covered the demon’s face, he had warts all over his skin and I saw pieces of decayed flesh on its evil cheek. They both reeked like three-day-old road kill.

  “You have no business here!” the larger of the two evil sons of bitches said turning toward me, but Lead Belly couldn’t hear them or see them. He had his eyes glued on me. I drew my hand back as if throwing a soft ball and a ball of blue light shot out of my palm hitting the evil SOB in the chest. He flew backward and both of the Devil’s imps disappeared into a flash of white light. Lead Belly jumped to his feet and the pistol fell to the deck of his front porch. He stuck his hands out if front of him to stop me.

  “Hold it right there! I know who you are! You’re dead! I saw your picture! You’re in the book of the dead! If you’re here, that either means that I’m dead too, that I ate my piece and you’re here to take me away and I’m not sure I wanna go! If I’m not dead, I’m startin’ to loose it and I’m seeing things! Either way, I don’t wnat what you’re sellin’.”

  I raised my hands into the air. “Calm down bro. I just want to talk. You’re up there on that porch playing Russian roulette and thinkin’ about killing yourself. You can forget about Biker Heaven if you do that. You’ll wind up on the lost highway, and that’s not a place you want to be.”

  Lead Belly fell back to his chair and motioned to another chair. “Sure. Let’s talk. It’s probably just the Jack making me see you anyway. You want a shot?”

  A grin crossed my face when I climbed up onto the porch. “We’ll have some of mine,” I said, pulling a bottle from my vest pocket. “It’s a hell of a lot better than the stuff you can get here on Earth.” I took a hit, sat down in the chair facing Lead Belly and handed him the bottle. He took a shot, his eyes widened and a smile crossed his face. “Hell yeah! That has to be the best Jack I’ve ever tasted.”

  “And it don’t give you a hang over in the morning,” I replied and took back the bottle.

  “What do you want to talk about?” Lead Belly asked.

  “I’d like to talk about, could of, should of, and would of,” I said.

  Lead Belly let out a snort. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “We’re gonna talk about what could have happened if your old lady, Cheri hadn’t of overdosed. What should happen, and most likely will happen, if you kill yourself, and what could happen, and most likely will happen if you don’t,” I said and handed him back the bottle. “The funny thing about this bottle of Jack, is that it never runs dry.”

  Lead Belly smiled, feeling the fire in his belly after he took a hit and said, “Okay, so talk.”

  “You’ve seen that old Christmas movie, called The Christmas Carol, right?” I asked.

  “Don’t tell me. I’m gonna meet the ghost of Christmas passed, present and future?” Lead Belly said and grinned. He took another hit from the bottle and handed it back to me.

  “Something like that,” I said waving my hand toward where my bike set parked in front of the mobile home. My spirit bike changed into its true self, its colors magnifying and its brilliance radiating light. Another spirit bike, similar to mine materialized out of thin air.

  “Holy shit! I ain’t never seen a scooter like that!” Lead Belly exclaimed jumping to his feet. “What kind of bike is that? It looks like my dream bike, only ten times better than I could even imagine!”

  “It’s a spirit bike. It’s yours on loan while I’m here. Let’s ride,” I said standing to my feet.

  We climbed on the scooters and motored down the road. “These bikes don’t feel that much different! Where we goin’?” Lead Belly asked.

  “We haven’t opened them up yet. Believe me; they’re out of this world. We’re gonn take a trip through space and time,” I yelled, over the sound of the engines. When we reached the paved road, we turned left. “Goose the throttle and pull back the bars!” I yelled and shot up through the atmosphere to the stars. Lead Belly shot up after me.

  “Hot damn! I never owned a bike that could fly before!” Lead Belly said. The silly grin on his face made me laugh. He gazed about at the vastness of space and at the Earth orbiting below us. “How can we breathe up here?”

  “We’re not actually in our physical bodies. Let’s head back,” I said and descended through the atmosphere. We touched down on the same old dirt driveway leading to Lead Belly’s mobile home, but this time things looked different. Trash littered the ground, old car parts lay scattered about and Led Belly’s Harley lay in pieces on the ground looking like a basket case. Yelling and screaming along with a couple of children crying emanated from the house when we pulled up.

  “Who lives here now?” Lead Belly asked. “I never kept the yard like this.”

  “You do. This is three years down the road. This is what your life would have been like if Cheri hadn’t of overdosed.”

  We climbed off the scooters, and climbed up onto the porch. Lead Belly paused next to the steps to listen to the noise coming from inside. “That sounds like Cheri yelling, but she never used to be that bad.”

  “This is what it would have progressed to if she had lived. Let’s go inside. They won’t see or hear us,” I said.

  “What do you mean they?”

  “You’re going to see an older version of yourself. It might freak you out a little.”

  “You better give me another shot of that Jack,” he said gripping my arm.

  I grinned. “A shot of Jack never hurt a damned thing,” I said and we stepped through the front door. Standing in the living room of his small mobile home, Lead Belly’s mouth dropped open in shock. Trash littered the floor, two small, filthy little boys wearing dirty dippers and no shirts played amongst the squallier. Lead Belly glanced at the older version of himself. He sat in his lazy boy wearing a dirty Harley Davidson tee shirt with the sleeves cut off.

  “God look how skinny I am, and how dirty,” Lead Belly said.

  “You’re back on the shit. Watch.”

  The older version of Lead Belly leaned over a coffee table, took a baggie from his pants pocket and snorted a line of speed.

  One of the little boys toddled up to him with his arms raised and said, “Daddy.”

  The older version of Lead Belly back handed the kid and yelled, “God Cheri. Can’t you get a handle on these brats? While you’re at it clean up this place!”

  Cheri came out of the kitchen wearing a dirty pair of white shorts and a white wife beater tee shirt. She looked skeletal and had a residue of white powder on her nose.

  “Maybe if you’d get a job, they wouldn’t bother you so much,” she said and hustled the kids away.

  “Look at their arms. See the burn marks? Cheri gets her kicks out of burning them with cigarettes when your not here.”

  “God she looks bad. I never thought about having kids, but if I did, I wouldn’t treat them like this. I wouldn’t make them live like this.”

  “That’s what Crystal Meth does. It makes it where it’s the only thing you care about and it takes you to where you don’t want to go.”

  “This ain’t real. What you’re saying is that if Cheri had lived, this is what would have happened?”

  “Most likely. You are better off with out her
,” I replied. We heard the sound of motorcycles and I glanced at the door. Two Harleys pulled up out front followed by a pickup truck. A door slammed and we heard three men climb the steps up onto the porch.

  “Oh shit!” the older version of Lead Belly said, and tucked the bag of dope into his back pocket. Someone on the front porch banged on the front door. It wasn’t a pleasant knock, but more like a knock that a cop might make, or someone who was real pissed off at the person inside. The older version of Lead Belly jumped up and opened the door. Chico, Tiny and Dirty Dan swaggered inside.

  “Hey bro,” the older version of Lead Belly said and tried to give Chico a hug, but Chico shoved him across the room.

  “You ain’t my bro. You stopped being my bro when you went back on the shit, you damned tweaker,” Chico said.

  “It’s like that then?” the older version of Lead Belly said.

  “Yeah. It’s like that. We’re here for your patch. Get your cut.”

  The older version of Lead Belly let out a sigh and went to a closet. He came back a few seconds later and handed Chico his club vest.

  “Look at the kid. Look at his arm,” Tiny said.

  Chico crossed the room and bent down to one of Lead Belly’s boys. He gently took hold of his arm and examined the cigarette burns. Chico ruffled the hair on the boy’s head and then stood up. He motioned to the older version of Lead Belly and nodded at Dirty Dan. “Set him down at the kitchen