Easy Rider

Easy Rider

    The next morning, Riley folds forward the backseats in the Highlander to turn the rear area into cargo space. Willa Sue and Riley pack all their clothes and personal stuff into plastic garbage bags and the waterproof marine duffles they used on their trip to Dominica, before the trial in Port St. Joe, and they put all of that into the Highlander.

    Riley then calls the phone number Stay Hungry gave them, and a man answers, "Biker Heaven, how may I help you."

    "Yes, my wife and I met some bikers at Alabama Jack's a few days ago, and one of them said you could advise us about a bike we can ride together - the wife says she's gonna do the driving, I'm on her bitch seat."

    "For real?"

    "For real, that's what she said. We didn't know then that we were going to move to Birmingham, Alabama, so what I'm wondering is, can you give use a contact to call in Birmingham, who can help my wife make good on her word?"

    "Can you tell me the name of the biker who gave you my phone number?"

    "They never told us their real names, something about they would have to kill us, so we gave them nicknames. Such as, Stay Hungry, Biker Chick, Tarzan of the Apes, and Steve McQueen. They all had my wife write their nicknames on their bare chests, except for Tarzan, whose chest was real hairy, so she wrote his nickname on his back. Stay Hungry tried to talk my wife into going out back, and she told him she was my biker bitch. She didn't say, she is pretty good art karate and he was just a hairbreadth away from having a memorable experience."

    "That's fucking hilarious. Even so, I need to know your names before I make a referral. The FBI, NSA and DEA are really clever these days."

    "Sure, I'm Riley Strange and my wife is Willa Sue Jenkins." 

    "Thanks, I already knew that from my friend calling me in stitches and telling me about you two. He indeed was smitten with Willa Sue. I can't wait to tell him he is damn lucky she didn't smite him. Here's a Birmingham number, 205-545-2453. Ask for Lefty. I'll call him to let him know I gave you his phone number."

    "Thanks."

    "Glad to do it. I hope you run for president, Riley, and that you and Willa Sue do get a nice Harley and ride it all over America, meeting folks, and giving the Bushes and Dick Cheney hell. My father was killed in Vietnam. A cousin of mine is in Afghanistan. If you make that road trip, call me me during your travels and I can give you people to call, who will put you and Willa Sue up for the night."

    "Thanks, do you have a name?"

    "Yeah, you can call me, Easy Rider."

    "Thanks."

    Riley opens strangerthanfiction.com and posts news of Willa Sue and him moving back to Alabama, for what reason they know not, but who are they to argue with an archangel?

    Within moments, a comment appears in moderation:

Merlin:

Tortured souls have a large, rich inventory of stories they can tell, and sometimes do tell, or weave, or simply spew, as if a sneeze, or vomit, as non-fiction, fiction, and even stranger than fiction - and poetry that sometimes writes itself, the witless subject dragged senseless along. Of course, that's a theory, nothing to do with me in Alabama. Welcome home, strangers! :-)

    Then arrives an email from Larry King:

Hey Willa Sue and Riley - 

Connections between Birmingham and LAX are not great, so we arranged a private jet to pick you up at noon, Sunday, at Birmingham Aviation across the runway from the Birmingham airport. We booked you at the same Los Angeles hotel. 

We arranged for a retired FBI polygraph expert to wire you up live for all of America and the world to hear what you have to say, especially the current president telling you he had been threatened by his vice-president. We are promoting that already. 

Oprah and I really are looking forward to seeing you two.

Larry 

    Riley replies:

Much thanks, Larry. 

We're really looking forward to being there, and maybe you should ask the retired F.B.I. agent to arrange witness protection for us.

Willa Sue says she owes you a great big kiss, and do you want it before, during, or after the interview? You can let her know when we see you. 

Riley

    Willa sue gives Riley "the look," says, "You weren't exactly joking about witness protection, were you?"

    Riley shakes his head, says, "Sadly, no."

    "Can the F.B.I. do that for us, if it turns out we need it?"

    "Not that I know of, Witness Protection is for at-risk witnesses in federal prosecutions, and how could the F.B.I. hide us? We'd have to have plastic surgery to change our well-known faces."

    "That aside, isn't this kinda a federal prosecution?"

    "No, not yet, anyway."

    "It sure seems like a federal prosecution to me, Riley."

    "Agreed, President Bush should have notified his Secret Service detail and the F.B.I. immediately, and, boy, wouldn't that have been something to read all about in the newspapers and see on FOX and CNN?"

    "Didn't you tell me that Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, "Silence in the face of Evil is itself Evil. God will not hold us guiltless"?

    "Yes, and the Washington Post's masthead is, "Democracy dies in darkness". But, so far, in the media, only Oprah and Larry King have wanted the American public and the world to know what President Bush told us."

    Riley's computer dings signaling a new comment in moderation at strangerthanfiction.com:

Merlin

Since you two are returning to the land of snakehandlers and Southern Baptists, who swear they don't drink or swear, Poetic Outlaws posted a Sigmund Freud analysis of religion in my Facebook timeline last Sunday morning, and going on 81, and time being mostly what I have on my hands, I seconded someone else's hilarious comment.

Poetic Outlaws

“Thus I must contradict you when you go on to argue that men are completely unable to do without the consolation of the religious illusion, that without it they could not bear the troubles of life and the cruelties of reality. That is true, certainly, of the men into whom you have instilled the sweet -- or bitter-sweet -- poison from childhood onwards. But what of the other men, who have been sensibly brought up?

Perhaps those who do not suffer from the neurosis will need no intoxicant to deaden it. They will, it is true, find themselves in a difficult situation. They will have to admit to themselves the full extent of their helplessness and their insignificance in the machinery of the universe; they can no longer be the centre of creation, no longer the object of tender care on the part of a beneficent Providence. They will be in the same position as a child who has left the parental house where he was so warm and comfortable.

But surely infantilism is destined to be surmounted. Men cannot remain children for ever; they must in the end go out into 'hostile life'. We may call this 'education to reality. Need I confess to you that the whole purpose of my book is to point out the necessity for this forward step?”

—Sigmund Freud,

The Future of an Illusion

David

The power of faith is far beyond the comprehension of man and to think he can fathom the mind of God is comical.

Merlin

From what little I read of Freud, he dealt with plenty of religious people, whose beliefs, for better and for worse, skewed, or mangeled, their minds, emotions and actions. Freud's contemporary, Carl Jung, also a psychiatrist, is reported to have been asked at a party, "Do you believe in God?" He replied, "Believe? I know!" There is an unfathomable chasm between belief and faith, and having direct experience with that which cannot be fathomed, but its presence and effects are plain enough for anyone not blind, deaf and dumb. I know this personally, I live it daily. It is as real as brushing my teeth in the morning, driving my car, even though it is not of this world, nor is it of religion, although religion certainly claims to be its authority, and psychiatry and, I suppose, philosophy certainly claim to be its superior.