Fear and loathing in Las Vegas, and other American stories Read Online Free PDF

hundred of us, so they opened the bar early. By eight-thirty there were big crowds around the crap-tables. The place was full of noise and drunken shouting.
    A boney, middle-aged hoodlum wearing a Harley-Davidson T-shirt boomed up to the bar and yelled: “God damn! What day is this—Saturday?”
    “More like Sunday,” somebody replied.
    “Hah! That’s a
bitch,
ain’t it?” the H-D boomer shouted to nobody in particular. “Last night I was out home in Long Beach and somebody said they were runnin’ the Mint 400 today, so I says to my old lady, ‘Man, I’m goin’.” He laughed. “So she gives me a lot of crap about it, you know . . . so I started slappin’ her around and the next thing I knew two guys I never even seen before got me out on the sidewalk workin’ me over. Jesus! They beat me stupid.”
    He laughed again, talking into the crowd and not seeming to care who listened. “Hell yes!” he continued. “Then one of ’em says, ‘Where you going?’ And I says, ‘Las Vegas, to the Mint 400.’ So they gave me ten bucks and drove me down to the bus station. . . .” He paused. “At least I
think
it was them. . . .
    “Well, anyway, here I am. And I tell you that was one
hell
of a long night, man! Seven hours on that goddamn bus! But when I woke up it was dawn and here I was in downtown Vegas and for a minute I didn’t know what the hell I was
doin’
here. All I could think was, ‘O Jesus, here we go again: Who’s divorced me this time?’”
    He accepted a cigarette from somebody in the crowd, still grinning as he lit up. “But then I remembered, by God! I was here for the Mint 400 . . . and, man, that’s all I needed to know. I tell you it’s wonderful to be here, man. I don’t give a damn who wins or loses. It’s just wonderful to be here with you people. . . .”
    Nobody argued with him. We all understood. In some circles, the “Mint 400” is a far, far better thing than the Super Bowl, the Kentucky Derby and the Lower Oakland Roller Derby Finals all rolled into one. This race attracts a very special breed, and our man in the Harley T-shirt was clearly one of them.
    The correspondent from
Life
nodded sympathetically and screamed at the bartender: “Senzaman wazzyneeds!”
    “Fast up with it,” I croaked. “Why not five?” I smacked the bar with my open, bleeding palm. “Hell yes! Bring us ten!”
    “I’ll back it!” The
Life
man screamed. He was losing his grip on the bar, sinking slowly to his knees, but still speaking with definite authority: “This is a magic moment in sport! It may never come again!” Then his voice seemed to break. “I once did the Triple Crown,” he muttered. “But it was nothing like this.”
    The frog-eyed woman clawed feverishly at his belt. “Stand up!” she pleaded.
“Please
stand up! You’d be a very handsome man if you’d just
stand
up!”
    He laughed distractedly. “Listen, madam,” he snapped. “I’m damn near intolerably handsome down here where I am. You’d go
crazy
if I stood up!”
    The woman kept pulling at him. She’d been mooning at his elbows for two hours, and now she was making her move. The man from
Life
wanted no part of it; he slumped deeper into his crouch.
    I turned away. It was too horrible. We were, after all, the absolute cream of the national sporting press. And we were gathered here in Las Vegas for a very special assignment: to cover the Fourth Annual “Mint 400” . . . and when it comes to things like this, you don’t fool around.
    But now—even before the spectacle got under way—there were signs that we might be losing control of the situation. Here we were on this fine Nevada morning, this cool bright dawn on the desert, hunkered down at some greasy bar in a concrete blockhouse & gambling casino called the “Mint Gun Club” about ten miles out of Vegas . . . and with the race about to start, we were dangerously disorganized.
    Outside, the lunatics were playing with their motorcycles, taping the