Diesel
I sit on the kitchen floor, staring at the broken cupboards and thinking about Willa. She must’ve woken up when I was still snoring, wondered about what to do, and then crept out without saying a word. Maybe she stopped at the door and looked down at me, or maybe she didn’t. Maybe she just got out of here as quickly as she could. I think about her creeping down the hallway, wincing as the steps creaked, looking over her shoulder to make sure I wasn’t following her. Is that really what I am? A man who causes his lover to sneak out in fear? Am I really a monster?
One of the cupboards makes a snapping sound and then detaches from the wall and slams onto the counter, plates sliding down and smashing on the floor. I laugh grimly to myself. “No,” I mutter. “I’m not a monster at all.”
I get up, since sitting half-naked on the floor ain’t going to accomplish anything, and then sudden rage hits me and I punch the wall, leaving a small hole in it. That didn’t accomplish anything, either. But at least it felt good. I wipe paint and plaster and blood from my fist and go into the bedroom, looking for a note. There isn’t a note. There isn’t anything except the smell of her, fading now. I take a deep breath, let it out. It’s shaky, just like my fists, just like my lips, just like everything. I want to break something. More than that, I want Willa back here.
When my cell buzzes, I leap across the room, thinking it might be her. When I see that it’s Grimace, I think about not answering it. There’s nothing he can say that I want to hear, especially not at four in the morning. I think about throwing the phone through the window and letting it smash in the street below. Then I remember how Grimace would come to the slammer and sit on the other side of the glass and ask me, “How’s it goin’, kid?”
I remember Grimace slapping me on the shoulder when I first joined the Riders and telling me I had an eye for metal. I remember looking up at Grimace and thinking he was the coolest person I’d ever met, my dad … this was my dad, I remember thinking, not that evil policeman. This man …
I answer the phone, because there’s really nothing else I can do.
“Yep?”
“I need you to come by the burger joint.”
“In town? Do you know what time it is—”
“Come around the back. Knock on the boarded-up door. I’ll let you in.”
“All right, but Grimace—”
He hangs up the phone, leaving me to stare at the screen and wonder what the hell’s going on. The burger place is where we sometimes eat after a job or a ride, or every now and then we’ll have a meeting there. But boarded-up doors? The place was open the last time I checked, which was a couple of days ago. I get dressed slowly, wondering if I should just go back to sleep and ignore him. I want to go and find Willa, but that’d really make me into some kind of boogeyman. I can’t go chasing through the night after her.
As I climb into my bike and ignite the engine, I think about this dream kid, think about whether or not he’d have to deal with shit like this, with women pushing him away and father figures twisting him into a weapon. He wouldn’t. I wouldn’t let that happen. If I had a kid, he’d be me but better, me but an updated version, with schooling and intelligence and the ability to talk about his feelings and all that important shit. I think about Willa holding a bundle in her arms, making cooing noises and smiling up at me. It’s an image that’s returned to me time and time again since I met her. A child would be like hitting the reset button on life. There’d be something of me left behind when I’m gone. Now all there’ll be are charred husks of buildings.
I spit onto the concrete and push all this from my mind. I have to stay focused. I have to stay Diesel. I can’t start getting overly emotional about shit. That’s not the way this life works.
The burger joint has been boarded up, quickly by the looks of it. Two of the boards are on sideways, one of them hanging from two nails at the top, the bottom flapping in a light breeze. I lead my bike around the back, prop it on the stand and knock on the boarded-up door that leads into the alleyway. There’s some rustling behind the door, the sound of movement, and then the nails are being smashed from the other side, landing at my feet. I step back as the board collapses into the alleyway.
Grimace is standing in the doorway, filling the frame, his shoulders almost brushing either side. “Come on,” he says. “I need your help.”
He leads me through the kitchen into the dining area. We stand by the counter looking over at the dead Skull Riders. There are four of them. I’m not close to any of them, but I know them. I’ve played cards with them. They all lie dead in a pile in the middle of the room, their corpses splayed atop each other, eyes dead, mouths wide open, tongues hanging loosely. Blood decorates the floor and the walls, splatters on the walls and big streaks on the floor from where the bodies have been dragged. Their throats have been slit viciously, cutting deep into the bone, and one man has had his eyes squished in the sockets.
“Shit,” I mutter.
“Shit is right,” Grimace says. “Fucking shit. Fucking bastard. There’s a couple more, too.”
“These are our men.” I don’t know what else to say.
“Thanks for telling me,” Grimace says. “I might not have known otherwise.”
I bite back a retort. “What happened?” I ask instead.
“Chino.” He says the word like a curse. “Fucking Chino. What else? I got a message a while ago, said this: Chino would like nothing more than a greasy burger. Arrogant fucks. I came by here and found this, so I quickly boarded up the windows and the door, and here we are. These are our men. They need to be taken to the clubhouse. And this place needs to be cleaned.”
“All right.” I roll up my sleeves.
“All right?” Grimace turns to me, squinting. “These men were your brothers, and you say all right?”
The urge to punch him in the face comes to me. I swallow it down, along with the urge to headbutt him and spit in his eye. “I’m here ready to help you out,” I say. “That should be enough. I’m not going to fall to my fucking knees as well.”
Grimace darts forward, but the sad truth is he’s older and slower than me. I dart aside, grab his arm and push it up behind him, paralyzing him. “Get your fuckin’ hands off me, boy.”
“I will if you calm down,” I say. “I can’t if you’re gonna come at me again.”
“I won’t.” He lets out a melodramatic breath. “See? I’m fuckin’ Zen.”
I let him go, stepping back. He turns to me, smiling. “Damn, boy. You’ve outgrown me.”
“Seems that way,” I say quietly, part of me wishing I could be the same kid who looked up to this man and that was that, no complicated emotions, no confusing feelings. But that kid’s dead. He probably died in prison, if he ever existed at all.
Grimace shrugs, and then nods at the bodies. “Why don’t you get these back to the clubhouse, and I’ll start cleaning up?”
“I’ll need a car.”
Grimace tosses me his keys. “My jeep is parked out front. Bring it around the back and I’ll get moving these bodies.”
“All right.”
I go to the front of the takeout place, start the jeep, and drive it quietly around the back. There was a time where I’d feel like a real bigshot behind the wheel of Grimace’s car, but now I just see Willa in the blackness of the night, her shadow on the windscreen. Grimace and I carry the men into the trunk of the jeep, piling them up and then covering them with black tarpaulin.
I know I’ve got the riskier job as I drive toward the clubhouse. All it would take is a single cop car and I’d be screwed. But I make it back to the clubhouse without a problem, and soon the four men are laid out on the tarpaulin in the garage, ready for one of our police contacts to come and sort out. We can’t ditch the bodies, because then we wouldn’t be able to have funerals. I arrange the men, wondering if I should care, wondering if it’s fair for me to feel so much for Willa and almost nothing for these men, men who are supposed to be my family.
As I leave them there and go and wait in Grimace’s office, I don’t feel like I’ve left family. I just feel like I’ve left four dead men. That’s all.
Grimace barges into the room an hour or so later, shaking his head, looking like all he wants is to have Chino right here in front of him. He kicks the chair and looks up at the ceiling, as though wanting to get at God, too. “We need to send a message to this bastard,” he says. “We need to send one loud and fucking clear. We’re the Skull Riders, Diesel. Do you know what that means? Do you have any goddamn clue? We don’t step aside for bastards like Chino. We’re the big bad wolves.”
“Okay,” I say.
He turns to me, looking like he wants to come at me again. But something has changed between us. He knows I’m not a kid anymore. He knows he can’t scare me anymore. “Okay,” he echoes. “I’m talking about the life and death of our club here.”
And I’m thinking about Willa. My thoughts are consumed with her. One track of my mind is in this room, sure, but the others, however many exist, are somewhere else, all focused on Willa. I’m sleepwalking. My real life is with her.
“All right,” I say. “What’s the plan?”
He scowls, looking disappointed. Maybe he wishes the old Diesel was here, the one who’d go crazy and punch the walls and rant about how this was my brotherhood and nobody was going to threaten that. Maybe he wishes the Diesel who’d parrot whatever he wanted to hear was standing in front of him. I just stand there, waiting. I’m not here to make him feel like a boss.
“I have the address of a warehouse,” he says. “We’ll make him pay.”
I sigh. Of course he has the address to a warehouse. That’s the only damn thing I’m good for in his eyes, so of course he does.
I ride out to the warehouse, thinking the whole time about Willa, about how she just left me there, and all because of what I’m about to do. I do my normal check of the warehouse, going through with a flashlight and calling out to make sure nobody’s in here. I’m about to leave when some homeless guy emerges from the darkness, wrapped in a dirty brown blanket.
“What’s going on?” he stutters.
“How many of you are here?” I ask him. I can’t hide the anger in my voice, even if it’s not anger at him. It’s anger at Grimace, and Chino, and the whole situation.
“Six, seven, including me, sir.” The homeless man bows his head. “We was quiet when you were calling but that last bit … what you mean there’s gonna be a fire? Here?”
I look over his shoulder. A woman, about Willa’s age, just as grimy as he is.
“That’s my wife, mister,” the man says, moving so that he’s standing between us. Maybe he thinks I want her. “What d’you mean, sir?”
“Nothing,” I say, dropping my matches into my pocket. “I don’t mean a damn thing, friend. Go back to sleep.”
I walk away without looking back. It’s the first time I’ve been sent to burn a place down and haven’t seen flames in my rearview mirror when I’ve ridden away.