Robert Wintner

The Modern Outlaws Robert Wintner

The Modern Outlaws are men convened by chance for a motorcycle trip through Montana. Understated with expressions of good taste, they suffer the common lust. Rapacious appetite for wine and women leads to thundering obtrusion on sleepy hamlets and shady dives, where they take what may be taken. Buster hides his hostility. Stuey triumphs over poverty with excessive chrome, including braces at forty-five. Wheelie must prove his namesake. Derek is happily married, suave and shameless. Wade is stoned. Dave takes blood pressure pills at the pinnacle of industrial leverage. Rodney is Born Again and a petty thief. Joe is a sociopath. Its all around the table with glad-handing and too many names to remember and just as many i. d. s, and we laugh like honest men at a Rotary luncheon. We shake hands on our new business, understanding that it doesnt mean shit, not one speck of it, because getting lost and becoming someone else begins with the utterance of your very name. This is the roll call of resurrection morn. Im Buster. I sell microscopes. The early years were gilded with promise, but this is now, what happened to us. The outlaws emerge, reflected or mocked by their custom motorcycles.