Klebo Doolin came to town riding a black Harley with the words Hawg From Hell written on its gas tank . . . and packing a .44 magnum colt pistol.  He rode down the main street of Mission, Texas a couple of times, then went to the Red Rooster Lounge and waited.  When Sid Garcia came in just before dark, Klebo shot him between the eyes and killed him dead as a wedge.  Then he sat back down at the bar and ordered another beer.  He barely had time to finish it before the cops showed up and hauled him to jail, and that's where the unusual tale of Klebo Doolin and what had just happened at the Red Rooster started to unfold.

It turned out that Klebo Doolin was from Arkansas, but he spent most of his time riding up and down the border from Presidio to Brownsville on the American side and from Ojinaga to Matamoros on the Mexican side.  Sometimes he went back to Arkansas to hang out for a while, but he always came back.  He owned a little piece of property up near Zapata close to Falcon Reservoir, but he just slept there.  It was little more than a shack with a shed for his Harley, and he liked hanging out with some of the local bikers.

Klebo started hanging out at the border when his ex-wife married Sid Garcia back in 1990.  Until then, he had hardly been out of Arkansas, except for a few bike trips over to Oklahoma and up into Missouri.  He had a kid, just a baby girl then, and when his wife married Sid and took the kid down to the border, Klebo followed them to Mission.  Finding a job along the border was easy for a slick mechanic like Klebo, but he was too restless to stay in a shop all day long for five days a week.  He opened a little cycle repair shop there in Zapata, but you could only find him there about three days a week . . . if you were lucky. 

Some folks blamed Klebo's restlessness on the war in Nam, since that's where he got shot up and left with just one arm and one leg.  He wore the replacement parts the government fitted him with, and he drew a disability check from Uncle Sam.  Despite his disabilities, he rode a cycle well, and often.  The only thing he loved more than cycles was his daughter, named Ruth after his mother.  Little Ruth was a bright child, and she thought Klebo hung the moon.  He thought she was the most perfect thing he'd ever seen, and that's why he killed Sid Garcia.  Sid made the mistake of fooling with Klebo's only contact with innocence, and he died for doing it.

Sheriff Joaquin Lucero arrested Klebo for murder, then started his investigation.  Klebo's cycle pals started grumbling right off.  No gringo was going to get a fair shake in a county that was 99 percent Latino (should we call them Mexican-Americans?), especially when he killed a city councilman and respected citizen.  Sid wasn't a nobody in his home town of Mission, but most people didn't know the Sid Garcia that Ruth knew.  To her he was a child molester, a sexual predator. 

Klebo  never was much of a talker, not even when his own well-being depended upon his words.  But he told Sheriff Lucero that he saw signs of sexual child abuse in his daughter, that he had finally asked her what was going on and had been told that Sid had been doing bad things with and to her.  Klebo said no more about it - not to anyone.  He took care of the problem his own way when he shot Sid dead.

At first Sheriff Lucero did not believe the story, but after bringing in some experts in sexual child abuse he became conviced that something vile had happened in the Gomez household.  And before long others came forward to offer some proof that Sid might well have been a sexual predator.  But still, it did not look good for Klebo because public sentiment was very much against him.  Most people were unwilling to believe that Sid had been a bad man.  If the case had gone to trial at that time, Klebo would no doubt have lost and gone to prison for life.

But Klebo Doolin never went to trial, or to prison.  You can't try someone you can't find . . . even if someone is really looking for him.  Klebo disappeared from the Mission jail one night.  Word had it that he escaped, overpowered a keeper and ran off into the night.  A few days later a body of a gringo was found floating in Falcon Reservoir, with Klebo Doolin's wallet in its pocket.  Case closed.  Justice had been done.

But a one armed biker with a false leg still rides the border on a blue Harley bike, and with despreocupado written on the gas tank.  Free and easy, that's what this rider is.  He rides mostly in Mexico, but no one knows where he lives . . . except perhaps Ruth Doolin.  She's grown now and attending college in Edinburg, but she goes to Mexico a lot.  Sheriff Lucero is retired now and plays a lot of golf.  And he likes riding his old Harley too, and he visits down in Mexico on occasions.  It's just a rumor, but I hear he found a cycle mechanic down there he really likes.

D. Paz, 1/3/08