Slick
I have to ask for the name of the bar twice. Even when I’ve got it, I find it damn hard to believe that Grizzly would ever go to a place like that. He must have another reason for agreeing to the location, something I don’t know about. I wonder for a second if it might be Heather. I remember seeing them together when I was a kid sometimes, but they always seemed to dislike each other. I let it slide and climb onto the bike, kick it alive, and make for Primadona. Sitting outside the bar, just down the street, I do a quick scan of the surrounding areas. No Clint. No club men. Just an everyday street with a bar at the end of it.
As I climb from the bike, I keep feeling a phantom gun in the back of my head, reckoning that at any second one of Clint’s men is gonna get the drop on me. But I listen as I walk and don’t hear shit. Still, it’s only when I’ve walked through the bar’s doors and seen the hen party in the corner that I feel any sort of safe. I reckon Clint’s men ain’t above shooting up a place like this, but they wouldn’t wait this long, lettin’ me get close to Boss. When I reach the table, Grizzly is running his finger along the rim of an empty whisky glass and Brat is just sitting there with her hands in her laps, looking between us anxiously.
“Drink?” I say, as my opening line, not sure what else to say.
“Whisky,” Grizzly says.
“Alright.”
As I turn towards the bar, Brat says, “And me. Please.”
“Alright.”
I go to the bar and order three whiskies. The three of us sit silently, listening to the low, thumping music and the giggling of the hen party, as we wait for the drinks. When they arrive, we all drink them down in one gulp, Brat making a hissing noise and shaking her head. Then Grizzly sits up, placing his elbows on the table.
“Why am I here, Slick?”
“’Cause you wanna hear me out, I reckon.” I watch him as I speak, trying to gauge if I’m right. I’ve been giving it some thought. “Two months back, you locked me in the clubhouse. After I did the most for this club that’s ever been done. I reckon you didn’t just come to this idea on your own. I reckon you had that fuck Clint whisperin’ in your ear every step of the way. I reckon you’re here ’cause you’ve started to see things in Clint that you don’t like. Maybe what I said to you at the house has got you thinkin’, I dunno. All I know is you’re here and willin’ to listen, which means somethin’ must’ve changed.”
Grizzly looks away, muttering, “You’re not wrong.” I have a moment of hope, but then he follows it up with, “But that don’t change the fact that you’re drooling all over my daughter.”
“I love your daughter,” I say. “I wanna be with your daughter. Here’s the truth, Grizzly, the truth you must know by now. Charlotte is mine. Charlotte is my daughter. And if you think a man like me is goin’ to step away from my daughter and her mother, even if they happen to be your daughter and grand-daughter, you need to remind yourself who I am.”
Grizzly looks at me like he wants to punch my face in. I’ve seen him look at men like that before, and I’ve seen him smash their faces in before. But then he relaxes and leans back.
“You’re right,” he says. “I’ve known. Course I’ve known. I’m not fuckin’ blind. But I never was happy about it. That’s the truth. I wanted Brianna to have a life outside the life, a man who wasn’t—”
“Like you,” I say.
“Like me,” Grizzly agrees. He sighs, and then rubs his forehead. He looks more like a man who just wants to be left alone than the Boss right now, a man tired who hasn’t slept in years. “I don’t know if you’re right about Clint,” he says. “Got no damn idea. That’s the problem. I’ve got no damn idea no more. Got so many bastards comin’ into the club vouched for by Clint. The other day, I hear two of the bastards callin’ him Boss. I let it slide, ’cause they didn’t know I heard ’em. But . . . it’s gettin’ out of hand. But there’s one thing, Slick. There’s one thing I need to know. Clint says you betrayed us up there in Seattle. I need to know the truth. I need to know what happened up there.”
I grip the edge of the table, real dread taking hold of me. Images come into my mind: bloody, painful. Beside me, Brat makes an encouraging noise. Or maybe it’s a word. I don’t know; I can’t hear. All I can hear are the screams and begging pleas and roars of desperation from the men I was forced to kill; all I can hear are the Skull fucks calling me Beast, cheering me on as I kill mostly innocent men for their goddamn entertainment. All I can hear is a voice whispering in my head telling me I’ll never be good again, never be Sky playing with Brat on dirt bikes in the Rockies. I’ll always be the fuckin’ Beast, an animal, a killer, a traitor.
“Slick? Slick?”
Her voice comes to me like it’s inside my head, not outside. I hear her whispering inside, trying to draw me out. Then she places her hand on my forearm and I sit bolt upright like a gunshot has just gone off.
“Shit, sorry,” I mutter.
Grizzly squints at me, searching. “Let it out, son,” he says.
It’s the first encouraging thing he’s said to me since I got back from that hellhole.
“You might wanna de-patch me when you hear it,” I say.
“Let me decide on that,” Grizzly says. “Just let it out.”
I didn’t want to tell Brat like this, in a bar with Brittany Spears being tortured on the karaoke machine, the whole place smelling like glitter and cocktails. But I know I don’t have a choice, either. This might be my only chance to let Grizzly know what went on and have him actually listen to my side of the story, without Clint twisting him against me. I take a deep breath, thankful for Brat having her arm on my shoulder, giving me support. It’s tough for a man to talk about normal, everyday shit that goes on in his head, let alone this stuff.
So I get through it all as quickly as I can, telling it from start to finish. I go over the guns being fakes, my bike breaking down on me, being thrown into the warehouse where all I could do was read and wait for the Masked Man to inflict his goddamn torture on us. I tell about the machete and the gunshot. And then I get to the night of blood and I have to order another whisky. When I’ve necked that and my chest is a little warmer than it was a minute ago, I go into the night of blood, explaining to them both about how the Skulls had shotguns and forced me to keep killin’ unless I wanted to die. When I get to this part, Brat starts to cry, soft sobs, dabbing at her face with a napkin. I can’t look at her, not yet, ’cause there’s still more to tell. I go on, and tell them about how after they decided I was the Beast, they forced me to ride with them and wear their patch. I tell how I was forced to fight other Seattle clubs with ’em, kill, steal, act as courier or muscle, and how there were always three men following me everywhere I went, ready to put a bullet in my head. I tell Grizzly that every time he came down and saw me in the cell, that was a show, put on by the Skulls to fool him.
And then I sit back, panting with the force of the memories, and wait for Grizzly to tell me that this shit is unacceptable, that this is the shit that gets a man de-patched, or worse.
Brat is still sobbing, can’t seem to be able to stop. She takes my hand and brings it to her lap, gripping it with both of hers. I expect Grizzly to say somethin’ about this, but he doesn’t. He just watches me. His expression is changed, now. It’s more like how he used to look at me when I was young, when I was his adopted son, before all this stuff went down.
“I held your father as he died,” he says, looking past me now. “Those fuckers shot him through the chest, and I held him when we waited on that damn slow ambulance. I held him, blood all over me, looking down at my best friend and seein’ the life go from his eyes. Do you know what he said, Slick? Do you know what his last words were? My son ain’t got a mom, and now he ain’t got a daddy, neither. Take care of him, Jacob. Take damn good care of him.”
Grizzly smashes the table with his fist, causing me and Brat to jump in our seats. “Whisky!” he roars.
When he’s drunk the whisky, he says, “What do you want with my daughter, Slick?”
“To be her protector,” I answer at once. “To watch out for her and my daughter. To be there for ’em.”
“Done,” Grizzly says. “Fuckin’ done. And fuck anyone who’ll get in the way of that. I told your dad I’d protect you, and I failed. I fuckin’ failed. Every time I wanted to take the boys down to Seattle and storm you out of that hellhole, I had Clint in my ear, tellin’ me it was too dangerous, you weren’t worth it. And I fuckin’ listened.” He makes a growling noise, and then lifts his whisky glass before realizing it’s empty. “Listen, I can’t say I’m happy about you two bein’ together. I wouldn’t go that far. But Brianna has always said I wouldn’t be happy with anyone she chose. And I reckon that’s right. Sittin’ here with you, Slick, and hearin’ your story, I believe that for the first time. If you ain’t good enough, who is?”
“That means a lot to me,” I say. “A damn lot.”
“Alright, let’s get back to the clubhouse before we start growing lady parts.”
“Dad!” Brat squeals, her voice breaking through her tears. “Why’d you have to go and ruin a nice moment like that?”
The three of us make for the exit. “I’ve gotta tell the men that you’re all good, Slick. Let ’em know that you’re one of us again, and not to bother you in anyway. You’ve got a few loyal to you anyway, ain’t you? Spike and a couple of the old boys.”
“A few,” I agree, as we walk out into the street. “Don’t know how Clint’s men’ll take it, though.”
“They’ll take it,” Grizzly says. “That’s all that matters.”