Avery West

My dream job was to work with the art galleries in the Mt. Pleasant County and eventually for the state of Pennsylvania. I was always artsy, which meant I was able to get away with a lot of shit. My brother, on the other hand, not so much. I had him by four years, but the previously studious, scholarly little brother thing afforded that he received consequences that I would never obtain. That was how my dad viewed mattered between his son and daughter.

Lenora and dad were together during a time when it was frowned upon for them to even be in the same room. Oddly enough, they had kids late in life, but my thirty years compared to their sixty seemed minute considering how great the two of them looked.

Mom was a long-haired beauty, who was actually on the front page of Hummelstown’s cover magazine in her day. Dad looked like a bouncer from those television shows but in actuality, he was a carpenter. The man liked to work with his hands and he was really good. People from all over would buy his work, since he had a unique flair that was not easily replicated in his field. Dad always said, I took after him with my talent.

My parents worked hard to provide for my brother and me, letting us know that we could do anything. Maybe they worked too hard for us because my brother, was smart but for some reason he kept finding himself in all kinds of trouble after he entered college.

As a teenager, he was fine, but once he turned twenty, that was when everything began to erupt. I am not sure if it was the freedom of being on his own or simply college life. I thought it had a lot to do with the guys he considered friends, who happened to be the stupid soccer team at Lancaster College. Soccer was the only sport that did not require a minimum grade point average to play. They also sucked, because they took anyone who could play. This is why Nathan West, my brother, ended up on the team along with the other misfits who weren’t good enough to play for the division one and two schools.

Mom and Dad kept bailing him out of trouble, but dad was getting fed up. I was later recruited to assist with Nathan and the misfits but was only minimally helpful because well, we’re grown now, and I no longer babysit. I had finished my two years at community college and currently was a customer service representative to make a living for myself. On the side, I was a part-time artist, which was beautiful, but it didn’t always pay. As a matter of fact, it did not pay well unless it was combined with being famous, having your own business that was secured by someone famous or some other work of miracles that required being famous.

My job as a rep, was okay, but needed a new one fast due to my temperament. The artistic side of me was a little impulsive and getting hung up on every hour, on the hour was exhausting. Let’s just say I would act first and then ask questions later. It was a trait that I had embraced but at the same time, it did not always go in my favor. Hence, the many formal write-ups that could end with me being jobless sooner, rather than later.

It didn’t help that my concentration was blown, because just yesterday, I was informed that my brother was beat down by some bikers outside of the Puff Bar. I didn’t spend my time in Manor, but I knew the Puff Bar and the only bikers that were usually there were the Vipers and some little spin-off they had. They were the type of club that only rode Harleys. By the time I received the call to go to the hospital, took one look at my brother and I nearly blew my top off.

His entire face was twice its normal size with his eyes swollen closed, lips busted and gashes everywhere. He could barely talk but with his left hand, he wrote which of his stupid soccer friends we could call. They swore they weren’t there but said that Nate was definitely meeting some girl at the Puff Bar. We filed a police report and all they said was as soon as he was able to talk and give a description, they would have a sketch artist put something together, to get a warrant.

However, it was an ambush, which meant Nathan probably wouldn’t have seen anything. I didn’t have much faith in the law or what they planned to do. A lot of this stemmed from my younger life and what my parents had instilled in me when I was growing up.

A black man and white woman, being together was not the ideal situation. People tried to intimidate them by burning crosses on their lawns, calling my father a nigger to his face, threatening his family, sneering at my mom and calling her a nigger lover. Let’s just say the police did nothing about those things. Not one thing and my parents never forgot it and brought us up with the same societal awareness.

You take care of yourself because looking for folks to help you, even the ones that are sworn to protect you, might not go the way you think.

This philosophy came from my mother, more so than my father. He tried to keep the brunt of the injustice just for him. He did not want us to be jaded, but Mom always said to be careful and often emphasized how cruel the world could be and has been.

Lenora West did not often say we should take the law into our own hands, but she insinuated on many occasions that if the law didn’t do something, we should. My parents never did, that I know of but again, I’ll just blame it on the artist in me. So, I got creative.

I was sitting at the Puff Bar, which was across the street from the general store, in my bright yellow Jeep Wrangler with my red and pink artwork painted on the side, so I could scope out my prey. It made my vehicle different, and I’m sticking to that creative logic.

I planned to take pictures of the bikers who entered the bar and show them to my brother, since the police had nothing. That was the goal, but after seeing one lone biker ride up with that cocky grin on his face, I saw red. He strutted his ass into the general store but parked in front of the bar. That was when I got the bright but stupid idea.

There was no time for analysis or even clear reasoning. My brother’s bruises and his swollen face popped into my mind, which caused me to turn my four-by-four vehicle on and I mowed that bike over like it was roadkill. Then I ran over it again by backing up. Some metal bent, a wheel popped off and rolled away, while the crunching under my tires provided the brief but unadulterated satisfaction. An image in my peripheral vision, caught my eye and that was when I hear the yelling over the roar of my engine. Shifting the truck in a lower gear, I moved forward again until I saw a biker waving frantically on the other side of the mangled metal.

Reluctantly putting the car into park, because I hadn’t lost my mind enough to go for attempted manslaughter and running his ass over. I did, however, hop out of the car, with my hands on my hips, ready to breathe fire down on his biker ass.

“You crazy ass bitch,” the man yelled as he looked back and forth between what used to be his bike and me. “The fuck is wrong with you?”

Watching him, I saw that he was tall, lean, handsome with the black hair on his face, above his upper lip and around his cheeks. Those faded jeans fit his muscular thighs and those boots were worn, just like his bike. Despite his pretty face, I hated him because of what he’d done to my brother, but just when I was about to tell him, something caught my eye.

Mt. Pleasant used to be a small community of folks who worked together, and the bikers were a group that came and disrupted life as we knew it. My dad used to always say, “These bikers are out of control.”

They’d ride into town and just set up shop where they wanted, using violence and everything else to intimidate people. Those were mostly the Vipers, and nobody liked their asses. However, there was one group of bikers who weren’t like that. They used to be menacing but some years ago, they had changed. Actually, became some sort of avenging angels from what I’d heard. They were the Guardians and fuck me, but the guy in front of me had a patch with wings extended on a bike that read, Legion of Guardians.

Holy shit.

I’d attacked the wrong biker club.

“Shit,” I murmured.

“Shit,” he screamed with his hands in the air, animatedly waving them, from side to side. “Shit? You run my bike over like it’s a fucking bug and say shit.”

“I, uh, I had the wrong club. I’m sorry…,” I started to say.

He cut me off, “You had the wrong fucking club?!?”

The pretty man was full out yelling and his voice was getting deeper and louder as he was approaching me. It wasn’t in an intimidating manner, but the man was mad as hell. I hopped back in my car and called to him, “I’ll handle it. No need to call the insurance company, I’ll handle it.”

I might have been in more accidents than I should have been. My insurance basically said they would drop me if anything else happened. There also might have been a case or two of road rage, but nothing serious. Just a tap of my bumper to a slow ass pedestrian who was walking slow as a turtle and he didn’t even have the right of way. My car lightly grazed his calf and he began to start his Oscar-winning career by falling out, hitting his head on the sidewalk and faking his concussion. I’m sure he paid a doctor and my insurance covered all of his medical bills. That was only a few months ago, so I was on thin ice. My case also wasn’t helped because a woman had recorded me yelling at him before my car tapped him, “Move the fuck outta of the way.”

He yelled back, “I’ll sue your ass if you hit me.”

My response was, “That’s why I have insurance, bitch.”

That did not go over well as it was evidence submitted against me in court. So, with this incident, I would most definitely lose my license and my insurance. In an effort to save both, I gave the man all of my information, on my artfully crafted business card in the shape of a paintbrush that had to be unwrapped to see the full print of the text.

“Just call me with the damages and I’ll pay for it.” I left out the somehow. “No need to call the insurance company, okay. What’s your info?”

“My info?” he was still coming towards me with a menacing look that would have melted a lesser person.

Instead of waiting for him to volunteer my information, I jotted down the tag number of his plate, which was twisted around to the side of his seat.

So… not good.

When I turned to look at the man, who stood several feet away from my door, like he expected me to turn into a raptor and devour him. His face was twisted up in anger and also confusion, then he sneered. “I’m not giving you shit.”

Then he was gone.

He just walked away.

Hell, I didn’t follow him or run, since I figured I just got off scot-free. I did not want to press my luck, so I let the man be.

Until three days later, when a non-local number called and informed me that I had lost my insurance coverage. On that same day, I got an email stating that my license was revoked.

Goddammit.

I told that pretty man that I would handle it. He just wouldn’t listen, which boiled my blood even more. Without processing much, I hopped in my truck and made my way over to Manor, where the Guardians usually hung out. This, I knew for a fact, since their bike shop was across the way. They had received national recognition, along with one of their mechanics, who also did landscaping. It was in the Harrisburg Times, too, which was big time for Pennsylvania.

Pulling up, I just so happened to see my enemy talking with another biker, who had long hair but was much more rugged than the one I met the day before. He looked like he took no shit, from nobody. Very biker-ish.

My mouth started before my brain, and I hopped out of the vehicle, pointing to the asshole and yelled, “You.”