their bodies, leaving nothing but a few hops and grain as it went.
“You know,” Bill spoke, “I know I’ve pissed a fortune in my life; enough beer to fill a beer truck, buy a house in the mountains, do a drug deal.”
Everybody laughed. Riley sat drinking his beer and became silent while Bill and Ronnie told stories. Bill noticed his quietness, “Now don’t go getting sentimental on us yet, Riley.”
Riley was known to grow despondent. His attacks would come at various times, eating, drinking, driving, sitting in the tent with the guys, in the middle of making love. Riley had a general and precise understanding of the futility of the human condition. At times, there was not enough outside stimulus to keep the wisdom covered, and he would see everything as the passing thing it is.
He looked at Bill and Ronnie, “We’re just like all the rest,” he spoke quietly, “cramming moments and periods of time we love into small bits of life. Hung up, strung up, fucked up; God, how depressing to be lumped in with mankind.”
Bill sipped his beer as Riley continued. “Remember when we first met — sitting in our log homes, cutting wood, freezing our asses — boy did we know the world. We believed we were the changers of life, everybody would join the flock. Remember sitting and smoking pot, discussing life and love, war, hate? Now look at us, scattered across the face of America. We fit. We molded our thoughts and beliefs until we fit.” Riley started to continue, but Bill cut in.
“Everybody had to fit, everybody has to, Riley. Nobody here is a hermit, nobody can keep the vigil. Fuckin’ world is too big. We were just like everything else, a passing, that’s how it is. Nobody likes it, but that’s how it is.”
Riley looked at Bill, looked at Ronnie, sipped his beer. “I know,” he spoke with a twinkle in his eye. “I know, but what a bummer.”
Ronnie chuckled, “You ex-hippie fuck. Maybe you should go back to living off the land or sell a load of pot.”
Riley scratched his ear, “No, that’s over. Used to be a bunch of guys sold pot, heros, culture heros, not now. Italians, Cubans, and Colombians now, big fat grease balls with diamonds and fancy cars, and people who will cut your fingers off and kill your mother. Gangsters, nothing but gangsters. You know, it’s like everything else, too many people, too popular. If you have good thing going, keep it small and quiet.”
One of the big-titted barmaids walked down in front of them smiling. Riley lost his melancholy look as he stared at the tits before him.
The girl looked at Riley. He pushed a ten dollar bill in front of the girl and spoke, “Ten bucks and let me see your tits.”
The girl didn’t stop smiling, but leaned forward and whispered, “See that man at the end of the bar?”
“Yes,” Riley answered, “the big guy with the nose that looks like it caught too many fists?”
“That is my husband,” the girl answered.
Riley smiled, “Ten dollars to keep your mouth shut.”
The girl laughed and slipped the ten dollars in her cleavage.
Ronnie chuckled, “This isn’t your freshman photography class here.”
Riley shivered, “Give me that wrapper, I need another toot.”
Frank Cummings felt the four horses moving in the trailer. He scratched his balding head and sipped on the Coors beer. In the back of the truck was all the gear, tents, packsaddles, fishing poles. Every year, he brought the pack gear and the four horses. Of all the men, he still lived in the mountains. He had become a guide and outfitter, hanging on to his dream of freedom. Somehow, he had managed to stay alive during the lean years. By growing a few pot plants, he always seemed to make it. While the others were getting their ladies pregnant, he was like Riley.
“No sir, not me,” he swore. And he went down and had the knots put in. It wasn’t that he didn’t like kids, he just figured that if the world was as fucked up as it was, why have more people to make it more fucked up?
“After the war is when we’ll need more kids,” he told everybody, “but not mine. I’d hate for people to walk around with my brain.”
During the year he never went to see Bill in Albuquerque, even though he was only a hundred miles away. Frank was the kind of guy who loved his friends dearly, but after a week, people made him nervous. He would have to run back to his cabin and sit alone and relax. There were periods in his life when he could only sleep with a gun by the bed, one behind the door, one in each drawer he might open, and one in his back pocket. To most people, Frank was distant, quiet, not easy to understand or get to know. Handsome in a cowboy way, he was a loner, a man who sat and watched the world from his hermit hideaway. To Frank, life boiled down to his favorite phrase, cocksuckers; everything, everybody, at one time or another, was a cocksucker. Horses were cocksuckers, trees, chainsaws, trucks, doors, radios, presidents, kings, mailmen, tax men, and people in general. Frank finished the warm beer in his hand and parked the truck across the street from the Wagon Wheel. He could see the reflections of his three friends behind the Miller sign. He took some hay from the truck, fed the horses, and walked toward the bar.
Entering the bar, he looked at the backs of the heads of his companions. The various people in the bar were all involved in some overly loud conversation about something the government was doing to fuck it all up.
Frank walked up behind Bill, Riley and Ronnie and hollered, “Cocksuckers.” The three men jerked around, relief flooding their faces.
“Jesus Christ,” Ronnie blurted out, “we were getting worried.”
“Won’t be me the first to die,” Frank laughed, “only the good die young.”
The four men sat and were silent for a moment. Frank got his beer and looked at the others. He stood.
“A toast to ex-hippies and dreamers and outlaws at large.” He raised his voice and looked at the other men in the bar and hollered, “Fuck the communist cocksuckers.” The various people responded with grunts and scowls.
At mignight they decided it was time to go. Bill left the bar first. Outside, the stars seemed as though they could be touched. Bill stood and saw the Narrow Gauge train resting silently with the night. Bill saw what looked like the engineer climb down from the engine. For a moment, it was as though the man with the bib overalls and the train silhouetted behind him were pulled out of place and made one entity. The train seemed to twist and turn until the headlight was following the old man and it watched him until he walked into a small house by the tracks. Bill looked at the train and the space where the man had been. He began to wave his arms and make strange noises. When the others came out of the bar, he was standing there looking crazed.
They looked at him. “What is it? What is it?” Ronnie asked.
Bill shook his hands and looked at the stars. “I know what it is,” he hollered, “I know what it all is.”
“What is it?” Frank asked.
Bill put this hands down and lowered his voice, “There’s not enough outlaws left; do you understand, there’s not enough outlaws left.”
Bill turned and looked at the train, then turned and looked
