Chapter 9 of Last Journey by RomTom

The bus was leaning suspiciously to one side so I kicked the two right rear tires and sure enough, the inner one was flat. Since we hadn’t yet had time to repair the one that went flat in Crookston we had no spare. They were doubles and the outside tire seemed to be holding up all right so we drove carefully into Lake Preston; however in doing that I totally ruined the tire which might otherwise have needed only a simple repair.

So we were suddenly in the market for used tires. An odd thing about those large-sized used truck tires is that most places sell them for high prices, like over fifty dollars, even if they barely have any tread left. And recaps aren’t cheap either; they cost almost the same as new ones.

Some of my distant relatives have large farms near Lake Preston and I wondered if they’d have any old tires my size they might give me. 800x20 is a common size for farm trucks. We drove out to Wendel Nelson’s farm and stood around chatting with him and his son. From the looks on their faces I’d say they didn’t quite know what to make of having a hippy for a relative. And the Bike Bus probably appeared to him to be something out of a really weird dream. His farm seemed strange to me too with sixteen hundred steers standing around knee-deep in a slimy mixture of mud and manure and not a blade of grass in sight. But blood is thicker than water and we had a good visit. Wendal had a good used tire for us too. We thanked him and took it back to Lake Preston to get it mounted.

I returned to the place that had fixed the manifold gasket earlier. The gasket was still leaking slightly in spite of all the bolt tightening I had done; it was sucking air and sapping power. I told them about the studs being so loose that it appeared they had not been properly tightened to begin with. They looked at the gasket and concluded it was ruined again. They’re only made to be tightened-down once. They said they’d put on a new gasket at no charge the following day as they had to order the parts.

We couldn’t drive far in our condition so we parked for the night at the ancient little park. In the morning we were surprised to discover that the other rear tire on the same side was flat too! So now we needed two tires! They patched one of the leaks and mounted the used tire we’d got from Wendal (which also required a patch) and I bought one new tire for $125. The bill totaled $194. They also put on the gasket.

Tom and Carol Nelson invited us to come to their farm for a home-cooked meal. We parked the Bike Bus beside the barn. It looked serene sitting there and I took some photos.

I introduced Carol and Tom to Steps. He’s such an impressive character, with his jet black mane of hair and his piercing hawk-like eyes, not to mention his kindness and dignity. They liked him right off and he liked them, too.

Carol offered to wash all our dirty clothes and told us to feel free to use the shower. We laughed. What? Get rid of all this dirt? There’d be nothing left of us! .

Steps came out of the shower looking reborn, grinning ear to ear and combing out his tangles. Ellie’s turn came next and she came out fresh and smiley too, wearing a clean dress. I alone hung back and watched with suspicion: Was this all just a cruel, devious plot to turn us into Lutherans? Uff da! We ate outside on a table with a clean tablecloth, clean dishes and silverware, delicious food. Such amenities were so rare for us. There was even desert. Wow.

After we ate, Tom and his little daughter went out to feed the foxes and Steps and I tagged along. He had about fifty silver foxes, each in its own cage. He raised them for their fur. The poor creatures looked angry. He reminded me they were wild animals, not domestic. I’d have thought that any creature raised by the hand of man would be—could be—gentled, tamed. But as he fed them he stressed to me that they would think nothing about biting off one of my fingers. I took a few photos. The foxes had large round crazy eyes. They paced back and forth in the cages quickly, and never took their eyes off us. They hated us.

This was the second time I had seen them and I kept thinking how they were born in those cages and lived their entire lives surrounded by wire mesh suspended twenty-four inches above the ground, and how their paws did not ever even once in their lives touch the mother earth. Never once did they run at full stride. Never once did they know what it was like to be free and alive. For me, the image of the caged foxes was a deeply haunting one.

Step’s dark Indian eyes looked upon the poor creatures somberly. Later in the privacy of the Bike Bus Steps confided to me that he couldn’t understand why anyone could do that to wild animals. He said it was one more proof that the white men’s world was fucked from its core. He went on to say that if an Indian wanted a fox’s fur he would shoot it in its wild state. An Indian would have too much respect for any living creature to mistreat it so cruelly. Respect for the Earth and for the spirit of the Creator manifested in all living things was as much a part of an Indian’s psychology as the air he breathed. How had the white man evolved to become so bereft of wisdom?

Steps asked me for some money. I knew if I gave him money he’d use it to get drunk. He said he just needed it for expenses, not for booze. I gave him $20.

I hadn’t had a chance to say anything to Tom and Carol about Steps and booze and before I knew it they’d brought out beer. Ellie and I sat around with them and drank a beer and then we retired for the night. Steps remained sitting and drinking with Tom for several hours and got considerably drunk. When he finally came into the bus to get his bedroll he was irritable and unfriendly. He said:

“Yeah, I know what you’re thinking. You think I shouldn’t drink. Well, Fuck you! You ain’t my mother. If I want to drink, I’m gonna drink. And what the hell you gonna do about it? Nothing. I fuckin’ slave for you cleaning this bus and you gripe about giving me twenty lousy dollars. Fuck you, RomTom.”

He went on like that for five minutes. He was in a foul and dangerous mood. He took his bedroll outside and rolled it out on the grass.

The next morning he was conciliatory and I shrugged the whole thing off, but I tried to tell him I’d prefer that he didn’t drink anymore on the trip. He said he understood what I was saying.

We stayed with Tom and Carol Nelson and their two children for two days. I fixed up a little bicycle for their young daughter. She was thrilled. I also repaired Carol’s old bike and made it run like new.

Tom told us that several other families of relatives in the area wanted to throw a picnic for us in the Lake Preston Park on Sunday. Steps and I both were thinking the same thing; that it would be really strange for old road hippies like us, coming straight from a nudist, pot-smoking Rainbow Gathering, driving the wildest rig ever seen on these highways, to sit around on a. summer Sunday with folk from a tiny South Dakota town.

We left Tom and Carol’s farm fairly early the next morning and drove into Lake Preston. I parked the Bike Bus in a prominent spot in the park where it could be seen and appreciated. We’d given the bus a good cleaning and it looked real good inside and out. Before long carloads of relatives began arriving and unloading picnic baskets and table cloths - and jars of homemade jams and pickles. Relatives we hadn’t yet met introduced themselves. There were Lees and Nelsons and Thompsons and some others whom I have forgotten.

They were all farm folk and they sure knew how to cook. What was common ordinary fare for them was a feast for us. Steps filled his plate at least three times. Me too. We laughed about it. Steps and I were getting to be good friends, all in all.

And so we spent the warm summer day at those picnic tables listening to their old stories about people who had died decades ago and telling about our own adventures in the Bike Bus and about the Rainbow Gathering, which was totally beyond their comprehension, just as stories about the Bike Bus would have been if it hadn’t been parked right there in front of their eyes. Seeing is believing.

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I did a little videoing at the picnic and took some photos. Even Ellie seemed to be having a good time. I think she was dazzled by the genteel spirit of these country folk. We both were. Oh yeah, Steps was too. He told me so.

After the picnic we drove the Bike Bus to see the nearby house my great-grandfather Torsten Uglem had built and lived in back in the twenties and thirties. I knocked on the door and met the owners. They gave me a tour. The place had high ceilings and tall cabinets. It was well-built, this handiwork of my ancestor. I could feel his spirit. He died in 1940, many years before I was born. I wish I’d known him.

We rolled out of Lake Preston heading west on 14 which eventually turned into highway 34. The road led onto the Creek Indian reservation where there was one main town. Fort Thompson.

I was hoping to park there and make some money repairing and selling bikes. We found a cafe with a wide parking area and met the owner, an Indian woman. She said we could set up in her parking lot.

But the reservation was pretty impoverished. We didn’t get much bike business. The lady store owner told us if we came back at the beginning of the month when everyone got their government checks we’d have better luck, but that was a week away.

Steps picked up a couple six-packs which he drank openly, defiantly, in the bus. At first he kept his cool and I let it go but by the time they were empty he was not charming anymore -- his temper flared and I was the object of his scorn.

He drank until late in the night, sitting in the forward portion of the bus, ranting and cursing loudly. Ellie and I could not sleep with that going on but we feined sleep to keep from having to interact with him and through half-closed eyes we watched him stumble around drunkenly and throw things in the shadows. He had us quite frightened as he directed most of his vituperations in our direction. As volatile as he was we dared not say a word. Finally he rolled out his bedroll on the floor and slept.

In the morning he wanted to sleep late. When I tried to carefully step over him to go outside he awoke and blew up in anger. I let him fume and didn’t provoke him further with a reply. What I had to say would wait until he was sober and human again. I was sure getting tired of the monster side of his personality. The night before he had threatened violence more than once and it began to look inevitable if his drinking continued. What a fun vacation!

The lady in the cafe wasn’t getting much business either but she was a happy person and she had her daughter and friends to keep her company during the days. The cafe was a new endeavor for her and she didn’t know if it would succeed. She had some personal belongings for sale on a table. I was surprised to see a camcorder among them very similar to my own, only not quite as deluxe. She wanted $400, a real bargain.

I thought I would like to have a spare camcorder so we got to talking. She had two bikes that needed total overhauls. One of them was a fairly nice English Raleigh. Both bikes needed parts too, deraillers and chains and cables. So, I did $200 worth of bike repair for her and gave her $300 cash and she gave me the RCA camcorder. I made sure I got a bill of sale and a serial number, knowing full well how things are on Indian reservations.

The $300 was a real bite out of the money we’d need for the trip but on the other side of the figures I made a hundred dollars during the three days we spent in that place fixing and selling bikes and I figured I could stop and fix enough bikes as we traveled to make up for the extravagance. The camcorder looked brand new and it worked great...

We prepared to leave. The last customer paid his bill and Steps watched me count the money I had made and asked me how much of it was his share? He was serious. I was providing him with a free ride to the West Coast and feeding him and giving him spending money when he needed it and all he was doing was sweeping out the bus occasionally. He didn’t know how to fix bikes. Once in a while he tightened a fender bolt for me if he was bored and needed something to do or he polished the rust off a chrome wheel. Apparently he figured he deserved half the profits of my bike repairs and sales just because he was there too.

I began to worry that he would abscond in the middle of the night with everything of value that he could carry. I kept both camcorders locked up in the back of the bus and anything else of value too. I even hid the majority of our remaining money—about three hundred dollars—and led him to believe we had only a hundred bucks left for the trip.

He eyed me suspiciously and said he knew I was rich and had lots of money, and that I was greedy and selfish. Whew! It’s a hard thing when you have an Indian friend whose beautiful personality turns to shit when he drinks...

We left the Creek reservation and headed south dropping down to hwy 18 where we turned west again. Directly ahead was the Rosebud reservation and the Pine Ridge Reservation and Wounded Knee.

But the road was hilly and there was quite a bit of construction so the going was slow. Night fell and I tried to keep on driving but suddenly I started getting very tired. I could hardly keep awake. We looked for some place to pull over but it was so dark it was real hard to see anything to the right or left of the headlights. We couldn’t find a spot to park and so we went on and on like that, mile after mile.

The road was going upwards for some real long stretches, second gear situations; sometimes first gear. And then there’d be a long down hill stretch and then another eight or ten mile uphill grade—real slow moving in the dark.

Sometimes we’d see we were passing a place where we might park but it was too late and we couldn’t find anywhere to turn around so we had to keep going. And I was getting more and more tired with each miles. Steps sat beside me talking to me to help keep me awake. He was pretty much his normal self again and I was in the process of forgiving him in my heart.

But that was secondary now. This crazy, narrow, highway full of temporary highway deviders, and blinking yellow reflectors was scary. And I was so tired I was yawning huge yawns -- and my brain was trying to conk out. I had the wing window wide open to aim cold air in my face and I was chewing on bread which always helps me stay awake for some reason. Anything to stay alert...

Just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse we came to a terrible area of highway construction on an uphill grade. They were repaving the road and traffic was rerouted onto a bumpy gravel roadbed, very narrow. The bumps were awful. And the construction went on and on and on! Mostly it was uphill and there was no place to turn off. We just had to keep going. There wasn’t hardly any traffic either way and it soon became obvious that we could avoid the gravel and the bumps if we crossed over and drove in the lane reserved for vehicles headed east, which was just fine as long as no one was coming towards us in that lane. But there were a lot of curves and hills and it was dark and if anyone was speeding at us from up ahead he might be in for a surprise. As slow as we were moving, we would need some time to get out of the way. So we were on the edge of our seats straining our eyes to look ahead for any sign of oncoming lights. And man oh man! All I wanted to do was see some sort of side road where I could pull off and go to sleep.

The long uphill grade seemed to go on forever. The engine was balking at all the abuse, straining and backfiring sometimes. I wondered if the radiator needed water. One more worry... So tired. So tired.

Steps and I both got excited as we finally came to the top and we saw residential houses off to the left side of the road. Whoopy! We’d park there for the night. We strained our eyes to locate the road into that tract. All of a sudden, there it was! I slowed down and quickly turned the bus left and crossed the highway heading for the dirt road. As the front wheels left the highway we felt a huge BUMP. We’d suddenly dropped at least ten inches. The old Bike Bus sure didn’t like that! Almost immediately afterwards, the rear wheels dropped over edge. Crash. What a noise! The Bike Bus proceeded forward in it’s momentum… Meanwhile above us all hell was breaking loose! Boom! Clatter! Crunch! Whoooooosh! Splatt!!

Thirty feet later the Bike Bus came to a stop. We were all trying to get out the door at the same time to see what in the hell was happening. But the door would not open. Neither door would open. Both doors are on the right side of the bus. The second door on the right side was way in back beside the bed, but we never used it. We went back and cleared the stuff out of the way and pushed that door open and got outside to see what the heck had happened..

What a sight it was that greeted our eyes. The entire twenty foot long rack of rebuilt bicycles on the right side had broken loose and fallen off the top. The whole mess was jammed against the doors. There were bicycles and bike parts everywhere. Me and Steps and Ellie put our strength together to move the twisted tangle of wreckage far enough away from the front door so it could open. We stood looking at the mess in utter awe.

I walked back to the highway to see what had happened and there it was -- the new east lane was ten or twelve inches above the normal ground. No one had thought to build a proper on and off ramp. This was a little Indian village. Had it been a white community there would have been a carefully and properly made ramp onto the new roadway. I could see the tracks of other vehicles that had had to hop up onto the new highway. What a bump! It would be hell even for a normal car. But for the heavy old Bike Bus it was a pure disaster.

Steps exploded angrily as he looked at the debacle of twisted wreckage. He blamed everything and everyone, mad at fate, at life. Over and over he asked:

When I didn’t answer he said he was going to hitchhike away in the morning and leave me to figure it out myself. He said this wreckage wasn’t his problem, as though I needed him around to help straighten it out.

It’s true that the situation was chaos and that I did not know exactly what I was going to do about it, but I was not upset; rather I felt calm. Steps was yelling about that too. He looked at me wide-eyed and asked imperatively one more time:

Futilely we picked up pieces of bikes and stood holding them in our hands. Our flashlights explored the broken welds, the bent frames of expensive touring bicycles, the pretzelled aluminum wheels.

The faces of an Indian man and woman moved into the beams of our lights, their eyes full of emotions...

“No, Thank God. Our rack just collapsed when we dropped off of the new highway..”

“Yes. There’s a bad ledge there. I guess you didn’t see it in the dark...”

“At least those bicycles didn’t fall on the highway. You’re lucky they fell here where they’re in no one’s way.”

“Well, my wife and I just live in that house there. We’ll come over in the morning and give you a hand picking things up. Don’t worry. You’re safe here...”

When the Indian couple had gone I fully realized that this village would be our home for awhile. It’s funny... For several days now I’d been thinking that it was a shame that we had to come all these thousands of miles and passed through so many Indian lands and we could not seem to take the time to really stop and get to know them... to experience the beauty of their culture... I wondered if the Goddess who lives in the stars had been listening to my thoughts, because it appeared we would be among these beautiful people for awhile.

We found our way to our bedrolls and dreamed the gypsy dreams we were made of.

With the morning came the Indian children. Imagine how they felt when they looked out their windows and saw the Bike Bus and all those bikes sprawled all over the gravel!

The wooden bus door opened and ten little deep tanned faces peered in at us curiously. They asked questions all at once, their voices rich in the musical accents of the Lakota Sioux for whom English is a second language.

Ellie put the coffee pot on the stove and began to fry up a batch of eggs. Steps rolled up a cigarette and watched the children over the rims of his glasses. The smell of fresh coffee filled the bus and the children were still standing in the doorway. They were busily looking at all the books and art objects that cluttered the interior and asking us what each was. They were keeping us very busy with all their questions. Steps and I were alternating in giving them answers. Ellie began to laugh. What a pack of wild little Indians we had there just aching to climb aboard and start grabbing things!

We couldn’t have them coming aboard the bus; that would spell trouble. Whenever one of them ventured too far inside Steps would holler out:

“That’s far enough youngster. We can’t have you inside. Now, put that thing down. It doesn’t belong to you. Well, I’m not sure WHAT it is... What is that thing, RomTom?”

“It’s a knick-knack. It’s for looking at, not touching. Now get back you little rascal or we’ll have to sic the bear on you.”

I’ve had the old blackbear head for years. An elderly Quinault Indian grandpa gave it to me in Tahola in trade for some bike repair for his grandchildren. The blackbear head was a hundred years old and I’d used it many times to freak out all kinds of kids and young women and curious dogs.

“Bear? Is there a BEAR in here, too? Naw. There ain’t no bear. You’re foolin us...”

“Yeah, there’s a bear. But he’s sleeping now because he just ate a kid yesterday and it always makes him tired. Don’t wake him!”

“You’re foolin us!”

At that Steps reached behind him and brought up the old bear head slowly from behind the front passenger seat, with its open jaws and jet black eyes. The nearest Indian kid saw it and jumped backwards toppling all the other kids like dominoes.

We laughed and laughed. Oh, how we laughed.

When we finally stopped laughing I told Steps:

“The Goddess put us here. Steps. She busted us down right here deliberately. It’s as plain to me as anything has ever been in my life.”

Steps looked at me long and hard. He started to say something and stopped. He just looked at the children with a far away look in his eyes.

“Maybe you’re right, RomTom.”