"It is unsightly."
"Hey, Chiun, look at that! Wailing Mining's Paul Bunyan Resort and Showplace. You listen to Wailing Mining, don't you? Boy, all your favorites are here."
"Wailing Mining never performed with Wylander." Chiun was on the defensive.
"Yeah, he was on that special on pay-per-view-Wylander's Winter Wonderland or something:"
"I never heard of it."
"You tried to get me to watch the damn thing last December. You said it would snap me out of my Christmas depression."
"But you did not watch it-"
"I saw enough of it to get more depressed. And that's the guy who sang the chestnuts-roasting song with Wylander."
"Remo, you are speaking nonsense. You have never paid attention to the music I enjoy and you do not know what you're talking about."
"Hey, I'd be in denial, too, Little Father. This place is sleazier than Las Vegas."
"I am not in denial! The powers behind these monstrosities are not in the same league as the beauteous Wylander. This is trash!"
"White trash?" Remo clarified.
"Exactly!" Chiun exclaimed. "More precisely, American trash."
"Does it get any trashier than that?" Remo asked hypothetically, then answered his own question. "Oh. French trash."
Chiun nodded seriously. "Although that phrase is redundant."
It seemed as if every block contained a resort more extravagant and tasteless than the next. A rotating icecream sundae with picture windows turned out to be the revolving restaurant atop Clarabelle Escalande's Candy Castle and Performing Arts Center, Theatrical Home to the Reigning Queen of Country. All Our Rooms Are Sweets! exclaimed the signboard, which wasn't garish enough to compete with the oddly shaped mass of neon across the street.
The neon lit up one letter at a time until it had spelled the word "Arkansas." The billboard below it exhorted them to stay at the Arkansas Hotel, home to the million-selling band State of Arkansas. Experience All the Thrills of Arkansas-Right Here in Tennessee.
Between every resort were gift shops, T-shirt shops, candy shops, refreshment stands and fast-food restaurants. They all had some extravagant sculpture representing them. Purple elephants and flashing aliens. Even the local dive bar sported a human-sized neon bottle tilting to pour neon beer into a neon mug. When they couldn't think of anything better, they resorted to dinosaurs.
"This place is a joke. Or a nightmare," Remo commented. "I'm not exactly sure which."
"Molly Pardon's Magic Country Kingdom will be a welcome relief to this excess," Chiun remarked. "I am surprised that you are not enamored by it all, Remo. There are many bright colors."
"I get my fill from your wardrobe," Remo said. "Don't set your hopes too high for Mollywood, Little Father. Somehow I doubt her standards are head-and-boobs above the rest of this place. And I was hoping you'd give me a hand with the Caribbean king."
"You need help persecuting the freedom fighter?"
Remo sighed. "You know I'm on the right track this time."
"I know no such thing."
"You're full of it. You know the stuff is on board this bus. You know I'm the one who figured it out. Me. Remo the Pale Piece of Pigs Ear Piece of Crap Reigning Lazy Ass Master of Sinanju. But your friggin' ego is so friggin' huge because you're Chiun, Chiun the Wise, Chiun the Patient, Chiun the I'm Never Wrong and Remo Is Never Right."
"Are you through?"
"No, but you are. There's Molly Pardon and her high-class Magic freaking Country Kingdom. Go have a ball."
Chiun examined the distant spectacle of Molly, her inhuman upper-body proportions digitally recreated on a vast screen made from hundreds of lights.
Come On In, Y'All! the sign proclaimed, and several hundred cars were obeying her command, creeping at a snail's pace through the front entrance and into vast parking lots. In the distance they could see the ticket gates, towered over by a roller coaster with several loops, a water ride that tried to replicate a river in the Smoky Mountains and a single ravenous-looking dinosaur. "You are right," Chiun said. "Huh?"
"Mollywood. It looks to be as tacky and low-brow as the rest of this Pigeon Fudge place."
"Yeah."
Chiun sighed. "And you are right." This time Remo said nothing.
"I have detected the smell on this bus. The poison used on the people to make them into killers. It was not here before and now it is. I found it hard to believe."
"You didn't have faith in me."
"You were suffering from the arrogance that comes of being a newly appointed Reigning Master. Your pride tainted your judgment."
"Not enough to make me wrong."
"This is so."
"So?"
"So I will not hold your unseemly outburst against you."
"Thanks a whole lot."
Chiun nodded magnanimously. "You are welcome."
Chapter 23
Just because you were a biker didn't mean you were a bad guy. Some bikers repaired PCs or sold advertising for the local newspaper and restricted their biker activities to a few hours on a Friday night. Then there were the beer-drinkers and hell-raisers. The kind who got arrested every once in a while and maybe had a few turf wars and maybe sold a few drugs.
And then there were the serious hard-case bikers. The true one-percenters. They hated the world because, for whatever reason, the world hated them.
But there were some hard-ass bikers that even the one-percenter subculture thought were beneath its dignity. They called themselves the Smoking Hogs, but other gangs called them Mollyriders, or Hell's Pigeons, or Pigeon Fudge-Packers. From Louisville to Charlotte the Hogs were a laughingstock.
Donald Deemeyer had heard the laughter. It hurt your feelings to be laughed at like that, you know? Some of his gang actually moved away from Pigeon Fudge and tried to integrate into a more respected motorcycle social club. It never worked out. They always found out where you came from, and then you got laughed out of town-in fact, you got laughed all the way back to Pigeon Fudge, Tennessee.
And that kind of ridicule, year after year, it got to you, you know? If made you feel bad. Made you kind of bitter.
Donald Deemeyer found a useful outlet for that anger. It happened one night when the Smoking Hogs attended a biker festival at a roadside motel in the Smokies. It was an annual event, with motorcycle social clubs from all over the region.
The taunting started early this year. The new leader of the Raleigh Rampagers seemed to think the Smoking Hogs came just for his entertainment.
Donald Deemeyer finally got fed up and called the Raleigh Rampager leader a pussy. The Smoking Hogs jumped on their bikes and the Rampagers roared out after them, pursuing them on the twisting mountain roads. When the Rampagers closed in, the Hogs let them have it.
Eight quarts of motor oil.
The Rampagers slipped and slid and piled up on the mountain road. It was a mess, and a miracle that not one of them careened off the mountain. They were still trying to get back on their bikes when the Smoking Hogs reappeared.
"You Pigeon fuckers are dead! Dead!" the commanding Rampager shouted.
But he was incorrect. One too many times Donald Deemeyer had been ridiculed. He dumped the contents of a red plastic gasoline container at his feet. It trickled downhill, mixing with the oil. The other Smoking Hogs had gasoline cans, too. Donald Deemeyer lit a match and the Rampagers burned alive.
When the flames sputtered out, the Smoking Hogs returned to the biker party. It was curious how the raucous, drunken revel became deadly quiet.
"The Smoking Hogs and the Raleigh Rampagers have patched things up," Donald Deemeyer announced. "Haven't we, old buddy?" He dragged a fire-blackened corpse into the light of the bonfire.
"See? No more nasty comments about the Smoking Hogs!"
The bikers knew how to deal with a knifing or a brawl or a shooting, but this one had them stunned. "Does anybody else want to say anything about the Smoking Hogs?" Donald demanded.