Chapter Eleven
Roxanna
“Wake up, Houdini.”
I open my eyes. Groggy. My neck’s stiff and my shoulders ache from sleeping against the truck door.
It’s getting dark.
The world is flat and ugly and empty.
“Where are we?”
“North Dakota.”
Whatever good mood I might have at getting some sleep and still being alive is sucked away by the empty void of North Dakota in the dark.
“I think this is the most depressing wakeup I’ve ever had. Why are we here? What is this place?”
“We’re at a bar. Dirty Hank’s. We need some food, something to drink, and some rest before we get back on the road.”
“We’re going to eat what some guy named Dirty Hank wants to put in our mouth? This feels like you’re reneging on your promise not to kill me.”
“It’s a roadhouse. Most of them have shitty names. But they’re fine, otherwise. I’ll bet there isn’t even a Hank that works here.”
“So, we’re eating at a place owned by someone who thought it was a good idea to call it Dirty Hank’s? I think that’s worse. It just shows really bad judgment.”
“Just shut up and come on it. And keep your head down.”
“Keep my head down? Why?”
“This is a biker bar. And, even though I haven’t seen anything saying it belongs to any one MC, there’s a chance we could be stepping into another club’s territory. If that happens, it could get messy. So, try not to draw any attention to yourself — other than the looks you’re normally going to get.”
I blink. I’m way too groggy for any of this.
“Looks? What do you mean by that?”
“You’ve got a way of catching eyes, that’s all.”
“Are you hitting on me?”
I am too tired for this shit.
He winks at me. “You did grab my cock earlier. What would you call that? A bit of friendly conversation?”
I’m blushing. “That was an accident. Like I said about a million times.”
“Then consider me telling you the truth about your looks to just be an unfortunate slip of the tongue. Let’s go, Houdini.”
I glare at him, but I’m still blushing. Why would he say that? Is he just fucking with me? Every time I think I’ve got him figured out, he twists me all around.
I follow him inside. For all his talk about not drawing attention, he’s still got his cut on and he’s not doing a damn thing to hide it.
The inside of Dirty Hanks looks exactly like what I’d expect a place called Dirty Hanks to look like. Dark, smelling like a mix of moldy cheese and old beer. Bras and one dollar bills hang from the ceiling. Everything — from the tables, to the chairs, to the bar — is made from wood that looks so old it’s probably only a decade or two before it goes petrified.
There aren’t that many people inside, thankfully. Just a couple of old guys in the corner playing pool and sporting facial hair that would make a Confederate general proud. There are a few other groups of twos and threes throughout the bar, including two guys at a corner table wearing more denim than should be legal.
Nash is, far and away, the biggest man here. And, at probably six-foot-four and with every part of him rock hard muscle, I feel safe next to him. Even here.
“Take a seat,” he says, pointing to an out-of-the-way booth. “I’ll get us a few drinks. You want anything to eat?”
“Do I?”
He sighs. “Listen, this is probably the only spot for grub within a hundred miles. And, odds are, whatever place we get to next is going to be worse than Dirty Hanks. So get over it and eat something.”
“Worse? Really?”
“Look, I know this place looks like a shit hole—”
I interrupt him. Because this place doesn’t just look like a shit hole.
“Nash, the guy mixing drinks looks like he’s spent the last decade living alone in the woods. I can smell him from over here.”
“That’s not him. That’s just the smell of the bar.”
“So, tell me why a place that smells like feet is going to be the better choice than somewhere else?”
“You ever been in a bar that smells like ass and been forced to eat because you know there’s not any more food or drink for the next two hundred miles? We’re in North Dakota, Houdini. Pickings are slim here.”
“Ugh. Fine. Get me whatever’s going to be safest to eat.”
My stomach grumbles at the thought of food. Even gross food. I’m famished, but I have this feeling it’ll be singing a different tune later.
“Burger, probably. And I’ll get you some vodka. Sip it as you eat — preferably while you’ve got food in your mouth. The alcohol will help kill whatever critters are in there. It’s an old biker’s trick.”
“Are you serious?”
I gawk at him.
“Not one bit. I’m just fucking with you,” he says, grinning.
“What? Why would you do that?”
“Because you have this idea that places like this and the people that hang out here are off in some way. Just because it’s a bit dirty or rough around the edges doesn’t make it bad,” he says. “Besides, the face you make when you’re nauseous is pretty cute.”
“You’re a bastard, you know that? How can I be sure you’re not fucking with me by telling me this place is ok?”
“Think about it like this, darlin: would this place even be standing if it gave a whole bunch of bikers food poisoning?”
“Point taken. I’ll have a burger.”
He heads up to the bar and I occupy myself looking around Dirty Hanks. Those Confederate castoffs have stopped playing pool and are hanging out by the jukebox, pounding beers and debating about whether to play some Hank Williams or some Van Halen. They stick a few quarters in, hit a few buttons, and they make the right choice: neither. Instead, Iron Maiden starts playing.
Nash comes back to the table with two burgers and two glasses — one beer, and one with some ice and clear liquid inside it.
“Vodka. On the rocks. Just in case,” he says, winking.
“I’d better not die,” I tell him.
“I won’t let that happen, Houdini.”
The words have barely left his mouth before a the sound of a dozen, deep-throated snarling engines joins the chorus of Iron Maiden blaring from the jukebox.
Bikers. Lots of bikers.
His expression changes, and I see a flicker of concern, but he doesn’t lose a bit of the confidence that has him looking like he could take any man in the room.
“Keep your head down,” he says. “Bartender didn’t bat an eye at my cut. This place isn’t claimed by any club, so long as a pack of Iron Devils don’t walk through that door, we’ll be fine.”
“Iron Devils?” I say, raising my voice over the growing thunder of bike engines. “What are Iron Devils?”
“A rival club. A bunch of bitches. They’ve had it in for my club, the Wayward Kings, for years. It’s goes back to just after ‘Nam,” he says, pausing to take a sip of his beer. “Some of them came back after a bit of a detour to the Golden Triangle. They picked up drug contacts. They got into the business and tried to expand their shit to our territory. It got bloody. We’ve done our fair share of illegal shit, but we don’t allow drugs.”
“So, you’re ok with guns and murder and whatever else you guys do, but drugs are too much?”
“There’s a code to it, Houdini. Think of it like this: a gun kills what I point it at. And I don’t point it at anyone that doesn’t deserve it. But drugs? They wreck whole fucking communities. You ever seen a kid born an addict?”
“No.”
“It breaks your heart in ways you can’t imagine. You see it once, you don’t want to see it again.”
Outside, the snarling engines die to silence. Nash seems unaffected, casually eating his burger, but I can’t keep my eyes off the door. There’s this sense of impending danger that grows with each passing second. Any moment, dozens of bikers — convicts and criminals and outlaws — will come through that door. My appetite for Dirty Hanks burger is fading, and it wasn’t that strong to begin with.
Doors open. The bikers file in.
One by one, wearing sun-faded leather, well-worn chaps and dirty jeans. Beards of all shapes and sizes, men of all ages, they enter and they make a bee-line for the bar. One of them, a giant of a man with a beer gut the size of a fifth grader, posts up by the door.
I hardly eat, but I finish my vodka without a problem. I try to look inconspicuous, but it’s hard because I’m the only woman in this whole bar. And here I am, staring intently into a highball glass, conspicuously trying to look inconspicuous.
Maybe they’ll think I have some disorder and leave us alone.
Then, Nash sits up straight, and I can practically see his ears perk up.
Bit by bit, the group of new arrivals circulates through the room, going from person to person. It’s the same story each time: they circle around their target, loud, practically shouting, and then I see whoever they’re talking to hand over a wad of cash.
It’s a shake down. It has to be.
And that man-mountain at the door is going to make sure nobody leaves until they get all that they want.
They wind their way through all of Dirty Hanks and I’m so preoccupied by staring that I almost don’t hear the chorus of howling engines that presages the arrival of more motorcycles until it’s right outside the doors.
My heart beats inside my chest like a drum being played by a heavy metal drummer on meth. Each step, each ravenous look from the dozen leather-clad men coming towards us, makes my pulse leap. My eyes catch sight of the solid impression of pistols in the jeans of at least three of the bikers.
This is it.
“Haven’t seen your type around here before,” one of them, a Paul Bunyan-big guy in his late 40’s, wearing a torn flannel shirt under his patched leather jacket, says. He’s looking right at me.
I get tunnel vision staring back at him.
The room goes still in anticipation of the violence to come.
Nash shrugs and looks up at him. “We’re just passing through.”
“Well, welcome to Dirty Hank’s. Name’s Andy. Friends call me Road Rash.”
Nash grunts. “I’m Nash. And my old lady’s Roxanna.”
Andy holds out his hand and Nash shakes it. I do the same when he offers it to me. “Nice to meet you both. You made a good call stopping here. Especially if you’re heading west. Only place for grub that way is Wicked Willy’s and, honestly, the food there ain’t great. Burgers usually come out dry, and my old lady ordered some hummus from there last week while we were taking a ride out to Fargo, and found out the hard way that Wicked Willy doesn’t put tahini in his hummus. Can you believe it? No tahini?”
“It’s a fucking travesty,” another biker murmurs.
The other crowd around Road Rash nods and grumbles their agreement.
A chorus of bikers lamenting bad hummus.
I stare. What the literal fuck is going on here?
“Damn shame,” Nash says. “Did they at least use a good olive oil? The times I’ve been short of tahini, it helps to have some good olive oil. And you can compensate with a bit extra garlic and some spices.”
A hush descends over the group.
“Wicked Willy uses canola oil.”
The group erupts. Nash’s eyes flare.
Someone pounds their fist on the table.
“I’m sorry to hear that, brother,” Nash says, once he gets his composure back and the group’s calmed down.
Road Rash holds out a jar. It’s stuffed with cash — tens and twenties and even a few fifties — and there’s a slit in the lid.
“So, I hate to do this to you, since you all seem like nice folks, but I’m going to have to ask you to fork over some cash,” he says.
This is the shake-down.
“Fair enough,” Nash says. His voice is even, steady, as he reaches into his back pocket.
He keeps his gun back there.
I tense. My knuckles pop as I grip the butter knife that came with my burger. It’s not much of a weapon, but it’ll have to do.
And then out comes Nash’s wallet. He pulls free a couple bills and stuffs them into the jar.
“What’s the cause?” he says.
“Milk and Bookies,” Road Rash answers.
“Excuse me?” I blurt out.
“Milk and Bookies,” Road Rash says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “The charity.”
“What’s going on here? What is this?” I say, looking to Nash for some kind of explanation.
“It’s a poker run,” Nash says.
“A poker run? What?”
One of the guys behind Road Rash, a skinny guy with engine grease stained hands, holds up a sheet of paper with a list of names on it and pictures of playing cards next to each name. “Guys register, pay a fee, and then at each stop on the way, you get to draw a card to make a poker hand. At the end, you can win a prize if you’ve go the best hand. We also hit up people on the way for donations.”
“This year’s cause is Milk and Bookies,” Road Rash chimes in. “Child literacy’s important out here. Small communities like this, we don’t always have all the resources to make sure kids have good books and the schools are always short on cash. So we do what we can to make up the difference.”
My jaw is somewhere on the floor. I might be able to find it if I could just kick my stupefied brain into gear.
“What? Did you think they were going to rob us?” Nash says, a shadow of his smirk twisting the edges of his lips upwards. Then, he turns to the guys. “She’s a bit new to the lifestyle. No offense, brothers.”
“None taken. We’ve all been there at some point,” Road Rash says. “And thanks for your contribution. We want all our kids out here to know that readers are leaders.”
What the fuck is going on and why do I feel like such an asshole?
“I hear you,” Nash says. “Reading’s gotten me through some tough stretches. Especially these last few years.”
“Same here, brother. My little girl was going through a bit of a rough time at school. Some of her friends were pitching her shit, some of the boys being assholes, you know the drill. I sat her down and read the Hunger Games to her, doing a little each night.”
“That Katniss sure is a boss, isn’t she?” Nash says, nodding. “I went through those books like a wildfire. Couldn’t get enough of them. Read that opening bit about the reaping and knew I was hooked. It was just so ominous that I had to find out more.”
Andy — Road Rash, I remind myself — nods, hands over the jar of money to the other guys, who leave to go finish up the collections. He pulls up a seat at our table.
“That Katniss. She’s got an outlaw’s heart. She loves her family, she’s resourceful, she’ll break rules if she has to, what with the hunting and selling stuff in her district’s black market. But she does it out of love. I want my little girl to have that, you know?”
“Same here. I’ve got a little one myself and would be damned proud if she took on a role model like Katniss. That, or maybe that Hermione Granger, you know? In a lot of ways, Hermionie’s the true hero of the Harry Potter books,” Nash says. “What about you, Roxanna? Any favorite books?”
My tongue feels like a lead weight.
I fumble around in my brain for some set of books I can mention.
How the hell did I get here?
“I like those Game of Thrones books,” I say, after a silence that’s so long I wouldn’t be shocked if they thought I was illiterate.
Nash and Road Rash both nod.
“Good stuff. That little Arya is ruthless,” Nash says, pride overflowing in his voice.
“Sure is,” Road Rash says, with an appreciative grunt. “And that Daenerys? The way she just outplays all those dumb-as-shit guys who think they know better. And what she and Khal Drogo had? Holy hell, it was beautiful.”
Nash grunts what I think sounds like an ‘Amen’. “They really found a footing together. I ain’t ashamed to say, the way they talked about each other as one another’s moon and sun and stars, it got me right here,” he says, touching his chest right above his heart.
“That’s some relationship goals, man,” Road Rash says.
Nash waves at the bartender, who sends another round of drinks over and I tuck into mine right away, because I have a feeling I’m going to need it and a lot more to get to a point where I’m comfortable with what’s going on around me. Meanwhile, Nash and Andy carry on about books.
Books.
Young adult books and grown adult books, books to read to their daughters when they’re younger and books to read to their daughters once they get older.
These bikers are not like what I expected. They’re rough men — without really even looking I can see the scars and the tattoos that hint at a life that’s anything but easy — but what keeps these men going is family. Their voices light up as they talk about their wives, their sons, their daughters.
It’s all about family and the brotherhood that they share with one another.
In their own way, they have with each other what I’ve wanted for myself for so long: shared connections, a feeling of familiarity, brotherhood.
I’m through my drink before I realize it and, without me asking, another full glass winds up on the table in front of me. Nash winks at me. I take a sip and I feel ready.
With a smile on my face, I lean in and wait for a break in the conversation. “Let me tell you about my favorite book.”