6
I was delivered back to Missouri, dumped on the icy hard ground in a field in the middle of winter like a sack of garbage. Familiar faces filled my vision.
“You’re home now, Kid.” My heartbeat settled at the sound of my Vice President’s deep voice. Chaz held my head in his lap in the back of the van that barreled toward the clubhouse.
Once there and settled on a pool table, needles punctured me, an IV inserted. The doctor scowled as he unwrapped the gauze bandages covering my hands.
“Ah, shit.” Chaz groaned. “Oh man, oh man,” he muttered over and over again, rubbing a hand down his mouth, staggering back a step.
I succumbed to the dull throb of the tugging, cleaning, wrapping.
Where was she?
I searched for her eyes, her touch, those soft fingers skimming my skin. A slight tickle, soothing, slow. Yeah, that was it. Up my arm. A kiss inside my elbow, her lips lingering there, her breath a soothing mist over me.
Rena.
Wait, no, no.
Serena.
A needle pricked my skin.
I sank and flew with her whispering sweet words into my ear, her hands in my hair, fingertips trailing up and down my arms. I reached for her like I always did.
Touch me. Touch me.
“Get these antibiotics, more of these bandages. Pain meds. He’s badly dehydrated too.”
My other hand was being tugged. My eyelids stretched and strained toward the dull ache. The doctor was bent over my hand, concentrating. Stitching. My head knocked back against the table. I searched the faces that hovered over me. I was back at the club. Back at the Flames of Hell.
It all came rushing back like a movie at high speed.
Siggy? Dad? Where’s Dad?
My chest caved in. Siggy was gone. The old man was dead. I’d forgotten. For a split second I’d fucking forgotten.
The bandages on my face were peeled back. I breathed through my mouth, my heels digging into the table, grunts escaping my lips.
“Jesus.”
The medicinal smell of cleaning solutions, careful dabs.
I settled into a dark pool and floated on the murky surface.
Floated into the dark.
I forced my eyes open.
My leather jacket hung on my chair the way I always kept it. “Black Elk”, my used paperback about a Sioux mystic, sat on the same corner of the desk where I’d last left it.
My desk. My bed. My room.
“He’s awake.”
“Finally. It’s been a few days.”
People visited and smiled at me. A shiny vase with a top on it I’d never seen before caught my eyes on the dresser opposite my bed.
“Chaz?” I gestured at the vase with a lift of my chin.
“It’s your old man, Kid. Cremated.” Chaz shrugged, gnawing on his lower lip.
I stared at the vase. It stared at me.
The old ladies ran around applying ice packs, aloe vera, and vitamin E gel on my wounds, making sure I took my meds on time, feeding me soups and stews.
Some young girl I didn’t know set down a paper plate filled with small sandwich squares. “It’s smoked turkey with bacon and Swiss. They told me to make it for you. That it’s your favorite.” She smiled nervously. “I cut it into small pieces so it would be easy for you to handle.” She darted out of my room.
My eyes landed on the sandwich. A dizzying spiral uncoiled in my stomach, looping through my gut, squeezing in my chest.
Sliced white bread. Sliced white bread.
The stench of the cell.
Serena feeding me.
The touch of her hand. A slight smile in the dim light that lit my world.
The cold slime of the concrete under me.
Drip of the hose.
My mouth dried, and I heaved for air. Cold sweat prickled at my hairline.
The vase across the room.
The vase.
Have to get away. Have to make it stop.
I kicked my legs.
The sandwich stared back at me. If I ate it, would she come to me? My Serena? No, no, she wasn’t here and we weren’t together. There wouldn’t be any touching, there would be no—
“Honey, you want me to help you with the sandwich?” Kerry, Chaz’s old lady, stood over me. “Kid, you okay? You don’t look so good. Is the fever back?” She leaned over me her hand moving toward my face.
Not her touch, not hers… “Don’t!” I choked on my breath.
“What is it, baby? What is it?”
My arm wouldn’t obey my command. It wouldn’t lift, wouldn’t point at that fucking white Wonder bread a few inches from me. Block it from my view.
“No!”
Kerry snapped up the dish and handed it to the sandwich girl who appeared behind her, eyes round. “Get it out of here.”
I collapsed back on the bed, moaning.
“It’s all right, baby, it’s gone. Is that what it was, the sandwich?”
I wanted to bury my face in my pillow, but I couldn’t do that. My face burned.
“No more sandwiches, okay?” she said.
Sandwich girl brought in a bowl of chili and dashed back out of my room. Kerry helped me eat. When we finished, Kerry brought in Ryan, an occupational therapist friend of hers to look at my hands, at my stumps.
Ryan examined me and said I was going to have to work on “fine and gross motor coordination.” He told me we’d be using small balls and hand grips to strengthen my forearms, wrists, and fingers to help compensate for the loss of my middle fingers. Gripping and grasping exercises to accelerate the return of my grip strength and improve my dexterity would become my new everyday habit. As I got stronger, we’d add a variety of dumbbells and weight plates for me to pinch and claw and pull, and different kinds of handles to hold and drag all kinds of weights.
Both Kerry and Ryan waited for some kind of response out of me.
I had to be able to ride, hold a gun, use a knife. I didn’t want stiffness to get in my way, hold me back, and I sure didn’t want arthritis when I got older. No fucking way.
“I know you’re in pain now,” Ryan said. “And all this probably sounds overwhelming, but—”
“Bring it on,” I said.
He smiled. “I’ll set up a schedule for you.”
Ryan left my room, and Kerry handed me a tall plastic cup with water and a straw. I wasn’t thirsty. I wanted answers.
“Kerry, tell me what happened with my dad.”
She set the cup back on the desk by the bed. “They haven’t told you?”
“No one’s said a thing. I’ve been asking. But—”
“They don’t want to upset you. You’ve been in and out of consciousness for a few days now, honey.”
“Tell me.”
“Kid...” She pressed her lips together.
“What the hell’s going on?”
“Calm down. You just got over a high fever.”
“Tell me the fucking truth!”
Kerry let out a breath. “Fuse had a heart attack. He collapsed on the spot.”
What Serena had told me was true.
“He was real upset about you going on that drop,” Kerry said. “He’d followed you and Siggy that night. He saw them kill Siggy, he saw them take you.”
“I knew it. I thought I’d heard him yelling.”
“He came back and flipped out. Then the not knowing what they were doing to you, hearing the threats and what it meant for you, for the club. He wasn’t eating right or getting any sleep, constantly wired. He wouldn’t let me take him to the doctor. Probably wasn’t taking his pills. You know how he got.”
“Did you see? Were you there? Was he alone?” My scratched voice choked on itself, I couldn’t get the words out, goddammit.
“It was late at night. He was in the office with Reich. Reich said—”
“Just the two of them?”
“Yeah.” She let out an exhale. “Why don’t you take a nap? I’m gonna get a move on and get home. I’m real sorry, baby. Real sorry. We all miss him.” She folded over the napkin she’d used on my mouth, dropped it in the empty chili bowl, and left.
My pulse rattled in my throat, and I took in a deep breath to fight it. My dad never liked Reich. Dad was the veteran, the old codger, the has been, the back seat driver, but a figure to be respected. Around the club, the elders deserved special consideration, and they got it. For the most part. Fuse had made his mark on his club and had been a bro for over thirty years. Reich was the up and coming officer, the Sergeant at Arms with new ideas and a lofty sense of self.
I needed to keep my cool, keep it together, find out more.
My head sank back into the pillow, my eyes landing on the vase again. Urn. Whatever.
A swirl of dizziness overtook my brain, my stomach twisted. I moved my hand, and the numbness and stiffness of that ugly paw only made my chest heavy. That aching, shooting pain was still there where my finger used to be.
I jammed my eyes closed and clung to the fact that my dad had stood up for me to his literal dying breath. I clung to that like it was a piece of scrap metal skimming the surface of the ocean after the plane crash of my life. Whenever he had stood up for me, which wasn’t too often, he did it big.
The first time Fuse stood up for me was when he’d got me out from under my mother’s crazy. He’d actually given a shit.
I laid eyes on my father for the first time when I was seven years old. He was this giant of a man from where I was playing on the floor in front of the television at the neighbor’s house. His dark brown eyes flashed at me, his wide shoulders and massive chest expanded under a worn black leather jacket, and a chill raced up my neck. I dropped the Hot Wheels car in my hand.
He plucked me up from the floor, and we sailed through the living room, past Miss Sally, through her front hall that always smelled of Lysol right to the front door.
“Wait, wait, what’s going on now?” Miss Sally said, her voice shrill, her worn house slippers shuffling behind us.
He didn’t stop or slow down as he moved us out the door. “This is my kid,” he said as he lifted me up onto the saddle of his towering, two-wheeled, metal monster. His voice was sure, firm. He would not be denied. My fingertips curled into the thick leather of his jacket.
Finally. Finally my dad had come for me. I had a dad like I always believed I did. Mom would never talk about him. Never ever. She’d just ignore my questions every time, huffing and puffing, making faces, grabbing another cigarette.
Miss Sally made one last effort. “Yes, but his mother—”
“How long she been gone this time?” He slid big leather gloves on his enormous hands. In fact, his whole outfit was leather. Totally cool.
Miss Sally pressed her lips together, her arms stiff. “‘Bout a month this time.”
He got on the monster bike and the thing jerked in his hands. With a sudden movement, it blew up and roared, shuddering underneath us. My heart raced and boomed along with that great big engine. I looked down to see the shiny metal rattling. Would I ever see this place again? Miss Sally? Mom? I didn’t care, this was too exciting. New adventure. I was going somewhere new, somewhere better. I was gonna get more.
He kicked at something and we took off. Whoa. Sitting on that saddle, we were so high. So very high. He picked up speed real fast.
“Hold on, kid.”
And I did. I held on real tight.
I pressed into his huge back, all of me clinging to him, to his motorcycle. He drove so fast, the laugh froze in my throat, my bones vibrating with his engine.
He was taking me home with him. A home where there’d be more than what I’d ever known so far, a more that I knew existed for me.
On the road we stopped for a burger and a milkshake, and he got me my own helmet.
He laid a hand on the top of my head over the helmet. “You like that?”
I loved it. I grinned. “Oh yeah. I like it.”
Ohio.
Indiana.
Illinois.
Missouri.
We arrived at a gate that opened as if by magic. The yard was filled with men wearing jackets with blood red flames. Just like my dad’s. They were all staring at me.
“What the hell is this? Who’s he?” A tall, pretty, dark haired lady stood in front of us as we got off the bike.
“He’s my kid,” came his reply.
My kid. Heat flared over my face and down my chest.
The woman’s face suddenly turned ugly, and she exploded like firecrackers on the Fourth of July. Nasty words erupted from her mouth, the same kind of words that Mommy always used when she complained about men.
She didn’t want me.
“Meghan, come on!”
“How the hell do you know he’s yours?”
“I just know,” he said.
“That’s bullshit.”
“I couldn’t just leave him. She’d dumped him at a neighbor’s house and took off. Wasn’t right.” He glanced at me. “I couldn’t just leave him.”
I had his dark eyes, thick lashes, dark wavy hair, and a dimple in my chin just like his. He later showed me a photo of himself at my age with his dad. Yep, the three of us looked alike. Same long nose, same moody facial expression. It wasn’t science, but it was enough for him. For me too.
“Well, you can do it on your own,” said Meghan. “You are not bringing your bastard into my house. Not under my roof with my girls.”
“They’re my girls too, you know!” he shot back.
“Oh I know. Do you know?” She charged off.
“Aw, come on, Meghan! Come on, baby. What’s one more mouth to feed?” He stalked off after her, the two of them yelling and lots more bad words splatting everywhere like muddy rain drops.
I stumbled. My back hurt, my legs and arms ached, my head pounded. A young lady took my hand and led me inside a building that was more warehouse than house. We walked into a kitchen with big old fashioned dingy white appliances.
“You hungry, honey?”
I shook my head. My stomach was cramping something awful. “Bathroom please.”
Miss Sally always made sure I said please for everything otherwise I’d get me a dark look along with a tsk tsk, a lecture about ungrateful children, and a stinging pinch in my side to drive her point home. I’d learned fast.
The lady took me to a bathroom, turning on the light switch for me. I closed the door. Everything we’d eaten on the road came up and out of me. I cleaned up after myself and scrubbed my hands and face with plenty of soap and cold water.
She knocked. “You okay in there?”
I opened the bathroom door. “Tired.”
“How about you lie down for a bit, huh? Take a nap. They might be a while.”
“Yes, please.”
She opened another door. There was a small room with no window, but a big bed with a bright blue cover, a small wooden table with bad words carved on it, and a crooked lamp. I took off my shoes and socks and fell face down on that bed. The bed cover smelled clean and powdery. Not musty like Miss Sally’s or dirty like Mommy’s.
I slept.
When I woke up, the room was in darkness, and I was alone. I scrounged around for my socks and shoes, put them on, and pressed down the hallway. Where was Dad? He didn’t forget me, did he? No way. He’d brought me all the way here to be with him.
I entered a big, noisy room. Men wore leather vests like my father’s. A lot of them had really long hair, beards and mustaches, big jewelry that looked scary and mean. They played cards, pool, drinking from bottles, watching TV.
“Hey, who’s the kid?”
“He’s Fuse’s,” answered another voice.
“Oh yeah?”
“Is that why Meghan’s in an epic snit?” asked someone else.
A roar of laughter.
“Hey, kid, come sit here if you want.” They made room for me on the sofa. I climbed in and sat down with them.
“Wanna slice?” A beer bottle gestured at a half empty pizza box. “Have at it.”
I ate. We watched TV shows about bounty hunters, crocodiles, shark attacks. They talked loudly. I fell asleep on that sofa.
I woke up and the TV was off, but heavy breathing and soft crying filled the darkness along with the smells of old beer and smoke. I rubbed at my eyes. A girl and a man kissed and wrestled on another sofa like I used to sometimes watch Mommy do in our house.
My mouth was dry, and I got up to find something to drink. I found a cola in the fridge back in the kitchen where the light was on. Around the corner from the kitchen, feeling down the walls, I found the room where I’d slept before. I was relieved I didn’t get lost. I nosedived back into that nice smelling big bed, wrapping the soft blue cover around me.
I woke up the next morning and I was still in my clothes, on that bed, in that room. Dad hadn’t come for me. Tears welled up in my eyes and blinded my vision. I couldn’t see the room no more. I was alone in a strange place. More than alone. My insides ached in a new, different way than all the other times before when Mom would leave me and Miss Sally would come get me.
I saw my dad two days later.
“Hey kid, how you doing, huh?” He gripped my shoulder. “You having fun?”
My stomach squeezed together like an accordion. Fun? I guess. Sure. Wait, what? What if I said the wrong thing?
“Uh, yeah,” I replied.
“Cool.” He rubbed the toe of his right boot into the ground as he stared at me. He turned and strode off, taking the moment with him.
I didn’t realize it then, but that’s what I’d get with my dad. A bunch of moments here and there.
I ended up staying on my own in that bedroom at the clubhouse for the next sixteen years. I was the club’s kid. One of the old ladies or the girls who’d hang out would take me to school. I got fed three square meals and plenty more each day.
I didn’t want to leave, so I figured out how to be useful.
By the time I was eleven, I’d learned how to cook for myself and for the others, making big batches of spaghetti and meat sauce every Thursday night for everyone. I figured out how to do laundry, separating whites, bright colors, and darks. Figured out the dishwasher, too.
At family type dinners, I watched my dad sit with Meghan and their two daughters. He sometimes ran a hand over one of the girl’s braids, and the girl would barely notice as she yakked with her sister and played with her Barbie. If it had been me, I would’ve noticed. I would’ve.
I didn’t live with Dad and Meghan and their two daughters at their house, and Meghan didn’t let me and my half-sisters hang out or play together either. The three of them usually eyed me from a distance like I was a dirty curiosity, until eventually they’d lost interest. I barely knew them.
The “old ladies” took turns looking out for me, and Kerry was my favorite. She’d pick me up from school, help me sometimes with my homework, take me to the movies with her two kids, and bring me her homemade brownies and pie. I was older than her kids, so by the time I was thirteen, I’d babysit them once in a while.
The nights when it was just the men partying at the clubhouse without their old ladies, like when they celebrated the membership of a new brother, I’d get locked in my room. A few times they’d forget though, and I’d watch the party from the kitchen. On one of those party nights, I spotted Dad with a girl on his lap I’d never seen around before. He pulled her top off and stuck one of her boobs in his mouth. She was laughing and rubbing herself up against him. All the guys were doing different shit with different girls, drinking, smoking from bongs or just plain cigarettes.
“Oh aren’t you a cutie pie?” A blonde girl came up next to me. “Hey, do you know where I can find a lighter or some matches?”
I took a lighter out of my pocket and handed it to her. I was always prepared. Someone always needed something. That was me. Water carrier. Beer bringer. Lighter bearer.
“Yay.” She planted a wet kiss on my cheek and took off into the thick of the party.
The girl Dad was with did a little dance for him, and he laughed loudly.
Meghan’s outrage at my existence hadn’t died down all these years. Years later he’d tell me he’d brought Meghan home the clap after being with my mom. First a disease, then a kid. No wonder she was super pissed with him on a permanent basis.
I’d learned that Dad couldn’t help himself where women and booze were concerned, like I couldn’t say no to Oreos or chocolate ice cream. But I didn’t get it. Seemed like he had stuck himself in one big stupid mess. And he still couldn’t be my dad. Not like the other dads were with their kids. Like he was with his daughters.
I remained the one thing he openly denied and rejected to appease Meghan. The booze and the bitches were okay, though. He’d slapped me on the same scale as his raunchy habits, but I was the one who weighed the whole damned thing down.
I made sure I fit in at the club. This was my home now. My more than before. There was no more to be had. This was good enough, and I was good with that.
By the time I turned fifteen, Dad had landed in jail for possession. Meghan got real mad at him and started turning on the charm with Reich. Instead of returning the charm, Reich seduced her sixteen-year old daughter. I’d found them fucking on the kitchen table one night.
My room being just down from the kitchen, I used to hear a lot of shit. That night a girl’s high-pitched squeaking noises had woken me up, and I went to investigate, figuring I’d see something I could use as a visual once I got back to my own bed. But what I saw nauseated me. Tracy, my half sister, had this expression on her face that was something in between fear and excitement. Reich had his one hand around her throat, and her face was red.
Reich noticed me, but kept pumping into her fast, glaring at me from the kitchen island where he had her splayed out half-naked. He tilted his head and flashed me a dramatic snarl of his white teeth, like a wolf warding off a competitor to his prey. He grabbed a tight hold of a titty, taking full possession of his meat of the day. She let out a wail.
“You like that, don’t you, you little fucking tease!” he’d said through his clenched jaw, and she only moaned in reply.
I’d receded into the dark hallway once more and went back to my room where I finished a half empty bottle of bourbon I’d taken from the bar earlier. I drank and listened to the sounds of their bodies slapping together, her cries, his thick grunts.
The next day Reich threatened me, telling me to keep my mouth shut or he’d tell Meghan that I’d been the one who’d touched her precious daughter. I was sure he’d probably told Tracy to back him up on that, and I was sure she would. I knew better than to get involved in that mess. Meghan would only blame me for something.
But Meghan was no dummy. She figured out the truth real quick, and wasted no time going to the state pen and telling Dad all about it. She left him steaming, and he had his first major heart attack. That night he was taken to the hospital where I got to see him after he had a bypass operation. Meghan didn’t bother visiting him. She left the club with her girls to go out east.
Two years later, when Dad got out of prison, first thing he did was go after Reich, but by that time Reich was a big shit around the club, and Dad’s quest for revenge wasn’t met with too much sympathy by his bros. I don’t think he’d ever gotten over the lack of vengeance or the lack of true brotherhood in the face of such an injustice.
Dad didn’t hear from Meghan and his girls much or talk about them, at least to me, and I was glad. I didn’t give a fuck about them. They were like mosquitoes trapped in your room at night, always present, buzzing around. I was relieved to be rid of them.
As I’d gotten older, Dad had taken more of an interest in me, whenever he was around, that is. Maybe it was easier for him once I hit my late teen years; we were two guys with some shit in common. He helped me pay for my own bike and fix it up. He taught me stuff he knew well: setting bombs, setting fires for insurance fraud, covering your tracks, shooting straight, how to survive long runs, how to drink, how to roll a joint, how to fuck a woman.
I wanted nothing more than to prospect for the club once I got out of high school. He’d told me his father had been a founding member in the years after the Vietnam War. Dad had dropped out of high school and joined up in the heyday of the club in the explosion that was the seventies. Now it was my turn. The day it became official that I was to prospect, he gave me a gift. A small package covered in brown paper.
I tore open the paper.
“It was your grandad’s,” he said.
A brass compass slightly smaller than my palm. Dented in spots, scratched. Beautiful. Intriguing.
“Said it was his lucky charm,” Dad continued. “Got him out of a lot of scrapes with the commies. It’s from World War II actually. He always kept it with him, and he used it here riding. Said he needed it to keep him on the straight and narrow. If there was one thing he wasn’t, though, it was straight and narrow.” He laughed loudly, and I grinned at him, envious of the memories he was reliving. “He gave it to me when I got patched in, and I want you to have it now. I’m real proud of you, Kid. Real proud that you’re shooting to be a Flame. He would’ve been too.”
My heart lurched.
I wanted to hug him, needed to hug him. I would’ve, but I stopped myself. Dad wasn’t a hugger or affectionate, even with his old lady and their daughters. If I was lucky, I’d get pats on the back here and there, a hand ruffling through my hair. I’d learned to enjoy the fleeting loaded silences between us.
I’d been a prospect for three months when I’d been taken by the Smoking Guns, taken as payback for us ignoring their warnings to stay off their territory.
Doing business on their territory with one of their contacts had been Reich’s great idea, and everyone had been game. “Show them what we’re made of!” But I remember Dad shaking his head, grumbling the words “stupid show off” as he’d lit another cigarette.
“Justin!” Dad had yelled out in the woods. That’s the last thing I remember, him shouting my name. He’d never said my name before. I was hauled off by the enemy like a hunted buck deer, and Dad’s deep voice had stretched out toward me in the dark.
“Justin!”
But I was on my own.