8
Days rolled by.
One week connected to the next.
I got assignments, and I got them done. I spoke when spoken to. I hung out with the bros as often I could bear it. I hated calling attention to myself anymore than I had to, I was already enough of a freak with my fucked up hands and facial scars. Not to mention those looks of pity.
Spring was finally sticking around, and we were on a run to Austin, Texas. It felt so damned good to be back on my bike and riding for a long stretch on the open road. No ice, no snow, no rain. All of us in our tight formation, Flames before and behind me on the highway, Flames as far as the eye could see. We had stopped at a big bar on the outskirts of town. My eyes followed Reich, who as usual was the center of attention, the life of the party. He had a new girlfriend he’d brought with him, and was parading her around the crowded parking lot, shaking hands with men from another friendly club, not a care in the world.
I still couldn’t shake the bitterness inside me over the part Reich had played in my dad’s demise. I fanned those flames inside me every chance I got. It was my addiction.
“Man, you okay?”
I tore my focus away from Reich and steadied my gaze on Gyp, who’d been a fellow prospect and was now a junior member like me.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m great.”
“Have another beer.”
I was wasted already, but I took the icy bottle from him and drank deep.
“You two oversee the prospects guarding our bikes,” said a familiar cutting voice.
“Us?” blurted out Gyp.
You didn’t talk back like that to an order. I raised my head. Reich stood in front of us, his bitch on his arm. “You want to rethink your question, fuckhead? You gotta show ‘em how it’s done, Gyp. Lotta clubs out here from all over. Ain’t taking any chances.”
“Yeah, ‘course. We’ll make sure everything’s good out here,” Gyp replied, his teeth dragging along his thick lip, his left leg shaking. His nervous tic. He had to cut that shit out.
Reich laughed, his attention shifting to me. “Yeah. How about you, cowboy? You been keeping mighty quiet these days. You got anything to say?”
“Nope.”
“Huh,” his eyes narrowed at me. He strode off.
Gyp and I stayed outside with the two prospects and made sure no one touched or breathed on our brothers’ bikes. There were plenty of people out here, everyone talking shit, sharing weed, buying and selling almost everything else, checking out each other’s rides. After a few hours the party inside had emptied out to the parking lot and the open area was banging with music and liquor and food service.
Reich was talking with Demon Seeds from Montana and One-Eyed Jacks from Colorado. Making cocktail party talk, slapping hands on shoulders, laughing at stupid jokes, flirting with different women, while he flirted with someone else.
A fight broke out just past where our last bike was parked.
“Stay here!” I shouted at Gyp over the roar of the crowd in the lot. I loved a good fight and was sick of standing around playing classroom monitor. Anyhow, Gyp was messing around with some girl he’d met, and he wasn’t about to go nowhere. He already had his tongue down her throat and his hand up her skirt.
One of our guys was involved in the fight, and I dove in to take his back. I got shoved and shoved back. People slammed into me, and I slammed right back. The booze, the wild jungle vibe, the driving metal music of the band playing only took me higher and deeper into the crush. I punched, I slugged, I bashed.
A hand grabbed me by the jacket collar and pulled. Reich.
“Get the fuck off me!” I yelled, twisting in his grip.
He sneered. “You nuts or something? You got five guys on you!”
That ages old hatred and resentment blistered inside me. I didn’t care about the five or five hundred men hitting me, I only cared that Reich was in my face. “Get off me, asshole!”
“Such a shit! Just like your ol’ man.”
“Fuck you! He’d still be here if it wasn’t for you. You—You killed him! You killed my dad, I know you did!”
He grabbed me by the throat and pulled me out of the throng like a school principal dragging a misbehaving boy out of the playground. He shoved me up against the high fence. “Listen and listen good. Your old man was a pain in my ass. Wouldn’t shut the fuck up, always arguing, butting in, contradicting just to hear himself blow air in the room.”
“My dad lived and breathed this club. It was literally in his fucking blood. He stood up for what he thought was right.” I ground my heels into the asphalt, my head twisting.
Reich’s eyebrows arched high and tight. “What he thought was wrong. You gonna tell me different now?”
“My dad was fighting for me. For the dignity of the Flames.”
“Dignity?” He let out a dry laugh, his eyes piercing mine. “There’s a fine word. Bet you don’t even know the meaning of it.”
I knew what Reich thought of me. I was the club puppy, the junkyard mutt. I was there to do his bidding only, not be a true brother, not to have a voice.
“You got to learn your place.” His tone seethed.
“My place? All my life I’ve been tucked into a place and stayed there, head down, out of people’s way, convenient for everybody else. Not anymore!” I pushed against him, and he head-butted me.
I reeled backwards, pain exploding through my skull.
“There’s plenty more if you don’t watch your mouth. You have no idea what it takes to run a club, make tough decisions.”
I steadied myself on my feet. “Yeah, you’re really impressing me now.”
His hands flew in my face, his arms snapping my head flat against the ground. He pushed himself on me, his beer breath filling my nostrils. “Don’t you ever fucking open your mouth to me again. I swear I’m gonna finish what the Smoking Guns started by slicing off that tongue and feeding it to my dog. You’re here to obey orders and do as you’re told. Not to question, not to make waves.”
He released me, pushing me forward and kicking me in the back. I skidded to the pavement, the side of my face scraping on the gravelly cement, the pain excruciating. Brand new, pointy, dark brown boots appeared in my sightline.
Reich kicked me in the side. “You feeling me now, kid?”
I choked on the dust and dirt, blood on the back of my hand where I’d wiped my face.
He spit on the ground and walked off.
My head throbbed, and pain radiated through my body. I pushed myself over onto my back and gulped in fresh air, but the air wasn’t fresh. The thick humidity of the night was ripe with pot and cigarettes, beer on cement, scorched rubber on asphalt.
Reich was going to pay. One day I would make him pay.
Two weeks later, our chapter got back from Texas. We had a meeting to go over old business and new.
“One more thing,” Coop announced, his hands spread open on the table. “Finger, you’re being sent to the northern Nebraska chapter of the Flames of Hell. Membership has been dwindling down there and they need good people.”
My back stiffened. Northern Nebraska? One of the shittiest chapters on the map.
Chaz’s face was set in a scowl as he busied himself collecting a bunch of maps and papers into a pile. The other members muttered and sighed, shifting in their seats, sharing glances.
“Nebraska?” I repeated.
“What the fuck?” Gyp mumbled next to me, a hand tugging through his spiky black hair.
Down the long meeting table, Reich studied me, his muscular arms folded tightly across his chest, a toothpick shifting between his lips.
He couldn’t just take me out, or keep making my life miserable. Nah, he wouldn’t dare. I was a symbol for the Flames now. With my pedigree, POW status, and scars, I was a huge asset, a living testimonial to standing up to the brutality of the enemy, and also of the new treaty between our historically hostile clubs.
Nebraska. Change.
I needed a change. I was chased by ghosts here, wasn’t I? Ghosts of my past and an uncertain present, not to mention a future that seemed distant, unclear. I was still living in that same small dorm room I grew up in at the club, for shit’s sake, surrounding myself with bits and scraps I’d scavenged.
Somewhere else, I could make something of myself without all this drama if I put in the effort. Yes, even in Nebraska.
Something for me.
What do I have? My colors.
In Nebraska I wouldn’t be Reich’s bitch waiting for him to drop kick me whenever he felt like it, however it entertained him. Things in Nebraska were crap, bottom rung on the ladder, but I could work with that. That was an opportunity.
It was time for me to invest in me.
I could finally plan on getting Serena out and bringing her with me, keeping her safe.
I had to plan.
When I was fourteen, I’d gone out one night with my dad to set a bomb at this rich guy’s house who owed money to someone the club owed a favor to. My dad had set up this intricate wiring in his basement workroom, then at three in the morning we’d laid it out at the target location, setting up the bells and whistles.
“Why don’t you just set up a thingamajig with a remote control and let that be the end of it?” I’d whined in the icy cold air, slipping on a patch of mud for the tenth time.
He’d grabbed onto my arm and pulled me close to him. “I don’t just blow shit up, Kid. I design an experience. It’s a thing of wonder for them and for me. You know those cartoons and old western movies with the long cord connected to the pack of dynamite? And it sparks along, traveling up the cord until kaboom, it blows?”
“Yeah, yeah, of course.”
“There may not be cords and dynamite packs anymore, but I still set the distance, the time interval of the kaboom—it’s a dance. I don’t just blow shit up like some moron. You got to consider the timing, the spectacle, and the afterwards. Each one has its own requirements and rewards. It’s up to you to set the time for yourself to move to a safe distance, ‘cause you still want to be part of the experience. At least, I do. It demands patience, planning, precise calculating. And many times you need to improvise at the last minute. You gotta be ready for anything at any time.” His eyes actually gleamed. “Any jackass can mouth off, pick a fight, shoot his gun. What I’m talking about takes creativity. Know your opponent, be conscious of the blow back, where the particles will fall. And leave no clues behind. It’s always tempting to go the big immediate route, but trust me. It ain’t worth it. Most assholes don’t get that, but I’m telling you, it’s worth the work you put into it.”
My father, the Fuse, was a fucking smart man.
A smile broadened my lips, my gaze remaining on Reich.
Yeah, Nebraska.
I leaned forward on the great wood table, folding my hands together. “Nebraska, huh? Cool.”
Chaz glanced at me, sitting up in his chair. Reich’s eyes narrowed at me, his brow a tense ridge. His highly anticipated explosive device had malfunctioned.
“They need good people there. You’ll be an asset, Finger.” Coop knocked his gavel against wood, and my pulse thudded.
Fuck you, Reich.
I pushed back from the table and strode out the door. I packed my extra pair of boots, my two other jackets, the few clothes I had, the compass, and headed for my bike.
I never wanted to be reminded of that room again. That room being the only home I’d ever known since I was seven years old. All the shit in it—the small TV, the clock radio, the posters, the worn out blankets, the whatever the fuck, weren’t mine, but theirs, and I wanted no part of any of it no more. I was going to shake all of it and all of them off me like dust.
Dust.
I grabbed the urn filled with my dad’s remains.
“Finger, wait up!” Gyp came running after me as I loaded the back of my bike. “Oh man, this sucks.”
“Nah, it’s fine. It’s better this way. I’m good with it.” I pulled tight on the bungee straps over my duffle bag and clipped them over the back.
“You left a lot of shit behind. You want me to pack it up and send it to you?”
“No. You take whatever you want. Dump the rest.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“Shit, I’m gonna miss you.” Gyp hugged me and let me go real quick. “Sorry.”
I shrugged. “Come for a visit.”
He shoved his hands in his pockets. “Yeah.”
I got on my Panhead and started her up. Her roar warmed my blood in the cold morning air. I swung out of the property and took off.
Three and a half hours later on Highway 136, I finally got to the border of Nebraska at Brownville. The iron suspension bridge spanning the Missouri River beckoned me in the distance.
I pulled over at the side of the road, grabbed the urn and headed into a grove of trees. I hurled my father’s ashes over the straggly green grasses and short bushes, dumping the urn.
“Goodbye, Fuse.”
He belonged here. I didn’t. I knew I didn’t.
I got back on my bike and started her up, my eyes landing on the old narrow truss bridge over the Missouri. My pulse picked up, I grinned. It was hardly a magnificent gateway to a new life, but it was my gateway, my new world.
I would create my own place in the Elk charter, and I would earn it, make it mine.
Up on the slight incline of the ramp I kicked up my speed and crossed over the great river into Nebraska.