CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Thia
“I can go into town my myself,” I said, climbing up into the driver’s seat of my dad’s old Ford.
Bear had grabbed me some dry clothes from the house, but couldn’t find the keys. After a few minutes of pulling wires out from under the steering wheel he managed to get it to start by twisting some wires together. “Just tell me what you need and I’ll get it.” I went to close the creaky door but Bear held out his hand and caught it.
“I’m not letting you go alone,” Bear said. “We got time before the MC figures out that Tank and Cash are not of this world anymore. Tank’s phone was busted but I sent a few texts from Cash’s to Chop before they went for their late night swim. Bought us some time.”
“Okay, so we have time. That means it’s safe. You don’t have to come with me,” I argued, again trying to pull the door shut and again he stopped me.
“You afraid to be seen with me or something? Afraid what the townsfolk are gonna think?” he teased.
“No, it’s not that.”
“Ah, so you think the big bad biker is going to scare the natives,” Bear said, stepping up into the truck. I had no choice but to scoot over to the passenger side to avoid being crushed underneath him.
The truth was that I couldn’t seem to think around him. A few minutes to myself might be able to clear some of the Bear induced haze that had been following me around, but there was no way in hell I was about to tell him that, so I came up with something that was still true, although a little less important on my scale of reasons for not taking him into town with me.
I threw my hands into the air, letting my frustration show. “I think you don’t seem to own a shirt and Emma May at the Stop-N-Shop is going to take one look at you and have heart attack number three.”
The corner of Bear’s mouth turned upward in a crooked smirk that made little lines appear at the corner of his eyes. He slowly leaned over me, closer and closer. I leaned away, plastering myself against the seat like I was trying to force myself to be one with it. “You think I’m hot, Ti?” His cool breath fluttered against my neck. “You jealous? Afraid I’m gonna make some little old lady’s panties just as wet as I make yours?”
“What…what are you doing?” I asked breathlessly when he reached across my lap.
“I drive kind of…wild,” Bear said, pulling the old lap belt across my waist and clicking it into the rusted buckle.
I breathed a sigh of relief and disappointment when he sat back up straight and started up the truck. He lifted up off the seat and pulled out something that had been hanging from the back of one of his pockets.
A shirt.
He pulled it over his head.
More like a tight black tank top.
If anything it did more to enhance the defined muscles of his chest and the ones on his stomach that trailed down to the V that pointed down into his low slung jeans. “See? You were wrong, I do own a shirt,” Bear said with a wink. With one long arm across the back of the bench seat, his fingers brushed my shoulder as he turned the truck around and headed down the driveway.
“Like that helps,” I muttered.
“Didn’t catch that,” Bear said, although I had a feeling he had.
“I’m perfectly capable of driving,” I said.
“I’m sure you are, but you’re with me right now, and as long as you’re with me, I drive.”
I turned my head toward my window and rolled my eyes.
I watched the orange grove pass us by as we made our way down the road and past the spot where Bear had raked over the dirt to erase any and all traces of the crash from the night before. Oranges were stacked high under the trees. The sickening sweet smell that had been permeating the air for weeks before THE NIGHT that changed everything had turned into something that smelled like takeout left in a refrigerator for a week too long.
“Why does it smell like something died out here?” Bear asked.
I shot him an obvious look. “Maybe because something did?” I replied sarcastically.
“Not what I meant, Ti. You know it. I mean, why are the oranges rotting?”
“When Sunnlandio pulled their contract it became pointless.”
“Why?” Bear asked, looking genuinely concerned. He lit a cigarette using the old push-in lighter on the dash. He rolled down the window and leaned out with his elbow on the ledge, his hair blowing in the breeze.
I shrugged and tried not to launch into the evils of the Sunnlandio Corporation. “Short story is that they discovered it was cheaper to import from Mexico.”
“But why let the oranges rot?”
“Harvesting costs a lot of money,” I explained. “And when you don’t have buyers lined up it becomes as much of a waste as the oranges to attempt a harvest. Chain supermarkets and big juice companies already have their own contracts or their own groves, or like Sunnlandio, they’ve switched over to importing. It’s cheaper to let them rot which sucks because it’s such a waste. Can’t even donate them because that still means that someone has to pick and deliver them.”
“You’ve been doing this all on your own?” Bear asked, taking a drag of his cigarette. I’d told him what had happened with the grove before but being face to face with thousands of rotting oranges made the situation even more real. Even more disturbing.
“Most of it. Dad had his hands full with Mom. I did what I could. Farms all across America are in the same boat. Whether it’s oranges or another crop. Letting it all rot right off the trees because they can’t afford to pick them. People are starving all around the country and I’m sitting in the middle of tons and tons of dead fruit.” I shook my head.
“How the fuck old are you again?” Bear asked suddenly. When he’d asked me previously I’d said seventeen but that was before Mr. Carson so nicely reminded me that I’d missed my birthday.
“Eighteen,” I said for the first time. Bear raised his eyebrows like the math didn’t compute. “I had a birthday, recently. VERY recently.”
“I can’t believe you’ve been doing all this shit on your own.” Bear ashed his cigarette out the window. “Where I come from most eighteen year olds can’t string two sentences together, especially the girls that hung around the club, and you’re out here running a fucking orange grove.”
I laughed. “You make it sound like an accomplishment. When in reality I haven’t accomplished anything. Just the opposite. Maybe if I knew more, did more, I could have saved it.” I sighed. “There isn’t anything impressive about that.”
“How have you been living? Your family?”
“I got a job at the Stop-N-Shop a few nights a week.”
“THE Stop-n-Shop?” Bear asked.
“Yeah, the very place that started it all,” I sang, staring out the window as we passed row after row of my failure.
“I also used to drive over to Corbin to clean motel rooms on the weekends,” I said. “After I paid the grove’s expenses it was enough for us to get by…sometimes.”
“You realize that’s crazy right? You have two jobs to support your other job?” Bear asked.
“Turn here,” I said, pointing to the slightly wider road hidden behind an overgrown bush. Bear turned the wheel and the truck jumped and swayed from side to side as it navigated the bumpier cut through the road that led into town. “And don’t call me crazy,” I added, crossing my arms over my chest.
“I take back ever thinking that you were mature for eighteen, because right now you’re pouting like a little kid,” Bear said as we passed the first sign that we’d reached the edge of town, Margie’s Used Appliance Warehouse which was more junk yard than warehouse.
“Am not,” I argued, looking straight ahead. “You can park there.” I pointed to the empty street in front of the Stop-N-Shop.
“Logan’s Beach isn’t exactly a big city, but this place is like a ghost town.” Bear turned off the truck and got out. I did the same and when I hopped down he’d already met me on my side.
“Yeah, ever since they closed the exit of the highway the only people left here are farmers, and more and more of those are disappearing, abandoning their farms and moving where the work is.” I shielded my eyes from the sun and looked around. Two trucks and a John Deere were parked across the street in front of Mickey’s Bait Shop and Bar. Two bicycles were tied up on the post in front of the Tick-Tock Cafe. “Looks pretty busy to me,” I added.
Bear looked around again like he was missing something. “The hardware store has an auto section,” I said, heading into the store. “Mostly parts for fixing trucks, but you might luck out and find what you need there,” I said, pointing over to Handy Hardware and Feed Store.
“Catch,” Bear said, tossing something at me that I caught before it hit the ground.
“Why?” I asked, staring down at the silver skull with the diamond eye that had been in my possession for a large part of my life. “It’s not mine.”
“Just hang onto it for me. I’ll call you when I’m done,” Bear said. “Be quick and keep your eyes open just in case.”
I rolled my eyes, squeezing my palm around the ring. I put the chain back around my neck and its familiar weight was more comforting than any hug could ever be. I nodded, heading toward the door. “Ti, I need your number.” Bear pulled a cell phone out of his front pocket.
“I don’t have a phone.”
“If you don’t have a phone then why did you just agree that I should call you when I’m done?”
“The old fashion way.” I cupped my hands around my mouth and shouted, “THEEEEEEEEYYYYYAAAAAAAA!” I pushed open the glass doors and left Bear laughing in the middle of the road.
* * *
Bear
“You lost?” The guy behind the counter at the hardware store asked. He wore overalls without a shirt underneath, the jean material stretching over his protruding stomach.
Lost? Maybe slowly finding my way.
He looked me over, his eyes stopping on the tattoo on my good shoulder. The skull symbol of the Beach Bastards. “I don’t want no trouble,” The man said, holding up his hands like I was robbing him.
“Put your hands down, man. I’m not looking for trouble today,” I said.
“Don’t look like you’re avoiding trouble,” he said pointing to my freshly stitched up injury.
“That ain’t none of your concern, but I meant it when I said I wasn’t looking for trouble.”
I had trouble. Plenty of it in the form of a pink haired girl with so much attitude it made me crazy.
And hard.
Crazy fucking hard.
The man nodded. “Been a while since The Bastards have been through these parts. I just want to let you know that nothing’s changed. I’m still waving my white flag. I’m still inactive.”
“Inactive?” I asked. He turned around and pointed to the huge wolf symbol on his back, clearly recognizable to me as the symbol of the WOLF WARRIORS even though parts of it were covered up with the straps from his overalls. Chop had started a fight with the Warriors years ago about gun running from Miami, I didn’t know the specifics of the fight, all I knew is that Chop said we were at war so we were at war, and I’d put my share of WOLF WARRIORS to ground.
“They called me Bones back in the day, but now I just go by Ted.” The man turned back around.
“You don’t have anything to worry about. I’m kind of between MC’s myself at the moment,” I joked, pulling at the collar of the shirt I was going to take off the second I got back in the truck, because while wearing my cut used to be like wrapping myself in soft leather, the simple tank felt like it was strangling me.
Ted nodded, visibly relaxing when he finally got it through his head that what I wasn’t looking to stir up a decades old war between old men over something I didn’t give a shit about.
“What can I do you for?” he asked with a smile, flipping off Biker Bones and flipping on Toolman Ted.
I looked around the small store but didn’t see anything I could use at first glance in the tiny three shelves of auto parts. “I don’t suppose you got a bike section in here. I’m in need of some parts.” I glanced out the door and spotted Thia in the store across the street, filling a red basket.
Ted shook his head. “Ain’t got no bike parts on the shelves but I might be able to do you one better.” He ducked under the counter and walked over to a door that was covered with keys on little hooks. I didn’t even realize it was a door until he turned the knob and opened it. Ted stepped aside and waved me over. I almost fell over after seeing what was on the other side.
It was a graveyard.
A bike graveyard.
“The Mrs. don’t want me to have nothing to do with bikes since I left the Warriors, so she made me move all this from the house. She thinks I threw it all away.” Hundreds of feet of bikes in different stages of rust and rot. Parts hung from the ceiling and off the walls. A small footpath had been cleared on the floor but other than that it was pieces and parts stacked on top of one another.
“I’m not a solider anymore, but I never lost my love of the machine that made me want to ride in the first place,” Ted said, slapping me on the back. Rival MC or not, Ted, the guy from the hardware store that dressed like he was applying for one of those BIG FAT REDNECK shows, was probably the only person on the earth who understood what I was going through.
“This room makes my fucking dick hard, Ted,” I said with a straight face.
Ted laughed and walked back over to the counter. “Sort through and find what you need. We’ll sort out price when I see what you come out with.”
It only took me fifteen minutes to find what I needed in Ted’s bike junkyard. I paid him and said my good-byes.
I dumped the parts in the bed of the truck and wiped my greasy palms off on my jeans. I looked around for Thia, but didn’t spot her through the glass doors of the store. I took one step in that direction when a shrill scream pierced the air.
I reached inside the cab of the truck and grabbed my guns, running top speed toward the scream.
Toward Thia.