Norton Commando

By Rick Hartford

Eddie Baker was running from the men in the Sharkskin suits.

His Norton Commando rumbled down a dark highway under a black velvet sky painted with strokes of heat lightning.

Eddie had no idea what town he was in. He wasn’t even sure what state. Georgia, maybe. Hours earlier, just on the edge of night, his headlight burned out.

He made it to a  gas station with a couple of ancient pumps under a neon red Pegasus sign. Inside, a grease monkey heard him come in and looked around the raised hood of a 64 Plymouth Barracuda.

 Be right there,” he said, wiping the sweat from his face with a shop rag. He closed the hood and lit up a Camel. 

“Two-seventy-three V8 with a supercharger,” he said, smiling.” “It still has the push button TorqueFlite transmission.” His blue denim shirt pocket told Eddie his name was Robbie.

Eddie showed him the headlight. “Got nothing Brit in stock,” Robbie said, “But I think I have something that’ll fit.” 
Just as he finished hooking up the new headlamp the lights went out in the station and the pumps shut down. 

“Lightnin’ strike,” Robbie said.  

Eddie wasn't sure about that.

He pressed some cash into Robbie’s right hand. 

“Best you be going, Robbie.“I got some people looking for me. They are the kind of people that make lightning strikes. Robbie looked puzzled. “Yeah, Eddie said. “That’s what they do. They are going to want to know when you saw me and when I left and what direction I was headed. Neither of us want that.”

Eddie went outside, started the bike and sped off down the highway.  

Robbie called his girlfriend on his mobile. He told her about the stranger on the bike. After about fifteen minutes he locked up the joint and got into his Jeep Cherokee Sport and started to pull out of the lot. Then he remembered that he had left the air conditioner on. "Just leave it," he said to himself. He couldn't. It was a lot of money down the drain. His girlfriend would kill him. He left the Jeep running and trotted back to the station. He was walking out the door when a black Ford Victoria pulled in.

Two men in grey sharkskin suits got out of the car. They were both wearing dark sunglasses.

They looked like twin Slendermen, Robbie thought.

One of the twins spoke. 

“Open her back up kid, I gotta take a leak.”

“Bathrooms are out back and they ain’t locked,”Robbie said.

“Open her up,” the man repeated.  The man  looked at Robbie’s shirt pocket. “Hey Robbie,” he said. “You are Robbie, right? Not wearing anybody else’s shirt? 

“I”m Robbie,”  Robbie confirmed. 

Sharkskin picked up an aluminum baseball bat which he found leaning up against the counter.

“This your bat?”

“Yeah, it’s mine.”

“You play ball?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you a righty or a leftie?’

Right, said Robbie.

“Put your right hand on the counter,” Sharkskin said.

Eddie ran out of gas. He walked the bike quickly down the road, glancing over his shoulder, waiting for a killer’s headlights to appear behind him. Then he saw a clearing up ahead on the right. Eddie pushed the Norton down a gravel path that parted a bamboo forest which crackled like wildfire in the wind. He hoped there were people at the end who were willing to let him stay for the night. He had done a lot of wandering in his day. Bedding down in the hay in a barn was a familiar pleasure to Eddie. He had yet to meet a farmer’s daughter in that barn, but neither had he had to face down the farmer’s pitchfork, either.  

Eddie was what they call a road runner. 

He transported illegal goods, anything you could think of, as long as it could be stored in the two leather saddlebags on his bike. The shipment this time was about one million dollars in rare postage stamps of Marylin Chambers.

He hadn’t delivered them. He stole them and sold them for a hundred grand. 

’That’s my Eddie,” his old girlfriend Tasha used to say to him sarcastically. “A real winner.”

Eddie came to the end of the drive. He could see a figure on the front porch, swaying back and forth on a glider that squeaked “hell’s here, hell’s here, hell’s here.”

Eddie put down the kickstand. An old woman looked down at him from the glider as she swung back and forth, her long gray hair billowing back on the downswing and then curling around her face on the return.

“Evening,” Eddie said. The old woman wore an ancient cotton dress with a faded floral print that made her appear to be fading away into the night. If she heard him she showed no sign of it, although her steely eyes never left his. Another figure appeared at the door. She also had long gray hair, but had a smile and eyes which seemed to drink in the vision of the rough looking young man standing before her. 

“Matilda, don’t be rude. Introduce yourself to this handsome young man,” the second woman said. 

Matilda did nothing of the sort, so the birdlike woman on the porch took it upon herself to be hospitable. 

“I'm Blanche,” the tiny woman said. “This here’s my sister, Matilda. And then there’s Grace. She’s inside making dinner. How is it that we are honored by your presence?”

Eddie opened his mouth to answer, but was drowned out by Matilda. “I”m screwing him first.”

Blanche burst out laughing.

“Ignore her, sir. She’s stark raving mad.”

Eddie smiled and shook his head.

“Miss Blanche, Miss Matilda. I was passing through and ran out of gas. I was wondering if I could spend the night and maybe buy some fuel from you if you have any.”

Blanche brought her tiny hand to her mouth. 

“Oh my. Let me ask Grace. She knows all about that kind of thing;”

Blanche turned her head toward the darkened foyer. “Grace, are you available?”

There was a few minutes of silence before Grace appeared at the door. In contrast to Blanche, Grace was a big boned woman. She had long gray hair too, but there was a toughness about her. 

She looked Eddie up and down, like inspecting livestock at a county auction. 

“He’s mine,” she said flatly.

This time Blanche did not laugh.

“I had dibs on him first!” Matilda said. 

Grace ignored her.

“”Come on in and tie on the feed bag,” Grace said. “We were just about to sit down and we have plenty, so don’t worry about taking advantage.”

The inside of the farmhouse was dark and smelled of mold, cigarette smoke and dog, although Baker couldn’t see signs of any animal. He thought of asking but cut himself off. 

Let things unfold.

The dining room table was set for five. There was a chandelier overhead, decorated with dozens of prisms that spread a soft gold, red and blue light on the diners. 

“Is there anybody else joining us?” Eddie asked.

 Matilda looked at him with those piercing eyes. “Ajax, our dog,” she said. “You were wondering about him.”

Eddie met her stare. 

“Clairvoyant?” 

“I know what you want and I’m going to give it to you,” she said. “How’s that for clairvoyant?”

“What she means is a place for the night,” Blanche said, covering for her crazy sister. “Grace, our guest was asking whether we have any gasoline to spare. His motorcycle ran out of fuel.”

“The three of us are farmer's’ daughters, don’t you know,” Grace said, looking directly into Eddie's eyes..

Matilda cut in: “And he ain’t here cause he’s dead. We buried him right in the back yard and put a bird bath over him.”

“As for the gasoline, everything has its price,” Grace said, ignoring Matilda. Blanche looked away, blushing. Matilda broke out in a wide grin.

Eddie looked at the ceiling.

The candles in the chandelier began flickering.

Grace stood and placed her napkin on the table. 

“We are going upstairs to get ready for bed,” she said. 

“We’ll be waiting,” Matilda added.

Blanche said nothing, staring at her hands on the table.

“I see you have a barn out back,” Eddie said. “I’ll bed down in there. Thanks for having me for the night.”

“The night has just begun,” Grace said. 

Eddie grabbed his sleeping bag from the Norton and headed toward the barn in the pitch black. He had no intention of staying the night. He had seen a car by the barn and prayed it had gas. After putting his bag down in the hay he waited until the lights in the house went out. He left the barn and found a garden hose attached to a spigot at the house. He cut it off a three foot length for a syphon. He walked the bike over to the car and soon he had the taste of gasoline in his mouth as he crouched under the tank of the bike. Once he had a flow going he shoved the hose into the bike tank. The tank was almost full when he heard a noise. It was Blanche. She was dressed in a flimsy white nightdress and looked like a ghost as she flitted through the night, stopping next to him. 

Eddie looked at her face. She was actually quite lovely, and younger than he had at first thought. She reached out and held both of his hands. 

“Mr. Baker, I’m sorry for how my sisters have behaved tonight. I want desperately to make it up to you.”

“You don’t have to feel that way,” Eddie said. “I’m fine with you, and your sisters, so don’t worry.”

Blanche held Eddie’s eyes.

 “I want you to take me,” she said. She pulled him toward the barn. Once inside she lay on his sleeping bag in the hay and held out her arms to him.

At dawn they lay together in the straw as Eddie looked at her sleeping. Blanche looked young and beautiful in the early morning sun, her gray hair turned golden. 

She woke and kissed Eddie on the lips.

“Come with me,” he said. 

She smiled and rose, taking him by the hands. She led him outside to a small cemetery behind the barn.

There were the headstones: Matilda, Grace and Blanche, side by side.

Blanche looked at him. 

“I can never leave, Eddie. But you can stay with me. Forever.”

She glanced over his shoulder and Eddie turned to see the men in the sharkskin suits coming down the drive. One of them was holding a baseball bat in his right hand, slapping it in the palm of his left. Their eyes were hidden behind dark lenses.

Eddie ran for the Norton, the engine coming to life in a single kick. Blanche stood next to him, her eyes pleading.

“Get on!” Eddie yelled.

“I can never leave. But you have a choice.” She looked at the approaching men.

He touched her face, and then kicked it into gear, giddy in his lust for life.

Eddie slowed the bike just yards from the highway and looked back. Blanche was alone on the road, a white shadow in a billowing nightgown fading in the light of a summer morning.