by A. J. Downey
He finally shook his head as though banishing a thought and said, “You’ve ridden with Jared before, and everything’s been fine.”
I nodded. “I know, but that’s only been local little trips, nothing at freeway speeds, honey, and nothing longer than twenty or so minutes from the house. Long Beach is something like four hours away if I remember correctly, and it’s mostly freeway speeds of sixty to seventy and then winding highways of fifty to fifty-five.”
He thought about it, and then said, “Jared only wants you to ride part of the way, right?” I nodded. “Then can it be the later end where the speeds are a little slower and there’s not as much traffic?”
I nodded and touched the side of my boy’s face. Was I a little sorry about bringing this to his attention? Yes, a little, but I thought it was more important to keep safety in the forefront of my boy’s mind.
“I love you,” I told him, and he smiled.
“I love you, too, Mom.”
“Go get Jared for me?” I asked.
He nodded and went over to the front door and poked his head out. Jared looked up, his phone pressed to his ear.
“Yeah, go ahead and throw a Karen Tax on that,” he said. “This shit is redic.”
I smiled and could only imagine what a ‘Karen Tax’ meant.
“Uh, huh… yeah, man, I gotta go… Okay, cool. Bye.”
He hung up the phone and came back inside, and I leaned a hip against the back of our recliner.
“Everything cool?” he asked as Marc shut the door behind him.
“Yeah, but what’s a Karen Tax?” Marc asked.
Jared grinned. “It’s when the cost of a job goes up, sometimes exponentially, when the homeowner is being an absolute Karen.”
“You literally charge people extra just for putting up with them?” I asked, eyebrows raised.
“Damn straight,” he said, and Marc laughed.
“That’s cool.”
“So, you guys are still coming, right?” Jared asked, and I smiled.
“Yes, but Marc has some rules.”
“Mom!” Marc looked a little mortified and Jared nodded in understanding.
“No, sounds legit. Let’s hear ‘em.”
“Uh, just if my mom rides with you, can it be later on the highway at slower speeds and where there’s less traffic?” he asked.
Jared looked thoughtful and nodded slowly. “Sounds perfectly reasonable,” he said. “Can you maybe do something for me?” he asked.
“What’s that?” Marc asked.
“On Saturday night, we ask the teens to sort of be Camp Counselors to the younger ones. S’mores, scary stories by a campfire in the trailer park we stay in – which is not exactly like it sounds! You’ll just have to see on that, but it’s so us adults can hit one of the bars in town and cut loose just a little bit.”
Marc looked to me, and I nodded. He was a responsible kid.
“Yeah, sure, okay.”
“And there you have it. First lesson learned about club life. We take care of each other.” Jared winked at the both of us and Marc and I smiled at each other.
“One last thing before this adventure,” Jared said. “I need to know your sizes, both of you.”
Whatever could that be for? I thought.
It turned out it was for tee shirts, or so I thought at first. Fun shirts that said things like Support Crew and Hang Around in Training, which I had no idea what that second one meant but Jared had advised me and Marc that since we were so new, to try and not ask too many questions – that it would make us look like citizens and if we did have any lingering questions, to try and quietly ask him or Aspen or one of the other Western Washington chapter’s ol’ ladies.
The clubhouse wasn’t in what appeared to be the best neighborhood, but Jared assured me, my car would be safely parked in the club’s parking lot over the weekend.
“Do you have cameras?” I asked, looking around, and some of the guys had laughed at me for asking. I didn’t want to sound stupid anymore, so I didn’t say much after that. To be honest, it was all more than a little overwhelming.
I liked Aspen. She was sweet and cool as a cucumber amidst the barely controlled chaos that was getting everyone in order, vehicles packed, and everyone on the road outside the clubhouse.
Approaching her forties, she was blond and had light green eyes, slightly lighter than my own. She was the ol’ lady of a big brother they called Fenris, who looked like he had just stepped out of being an extra on that History Channel show, Vikings.
There was only one man bigger, an inch or two taller than Fenris and just as rough looking with his long brown hair and brown beard and that was a brother named Dump Truck. We’d been advised not to ask how anyone had come about their nickname, which I guess the club called them road names, because I guess it was deeply personal information sometimes. I could respect that, even if I couldn’t fully understand it.
Jared had told us about his road name, Glass Jaw. It was a boxing term, he said – which I had known that, even if Marc didn’t. He said all it took was one fight where he’d been tapped just right and he had gone down like a ton of bricks. The name had stuck and while it was a bit of a mouthful, most of the other guys just called him ‘Glass.’
I didn’t know if I would ever get used to that, but I could try.
Marc took to it like a fish to water. I think he had it a bit easier than me, since all of his friends on his video games had different nicknames they called gamer tags. All of them self-chosen, unlike the biker’s road names which I guess were bestowed upon them when they got their vests. Or so Aspen filled me in.
It was a lot of vocabulary to learn in a short amount of time, but somehow, we managed.
Marc was honestly a big help in that regard, keeping me straight on the lingo.
I didn’t know what to expect, but I guess I expected something… I don’t know… smaller? I mean, not as many people.
There was Jared, and then Maverick, Dump Truck, Fenris, a bitter blond man with super curly hair pulled into a short ponytail they called Tic-Tac, and a man that I recognized that had been on Jared’s crew in my basement they called Mace. Squatch, who looked like a Sasquatch as mean as that sounded, so not a big stretch of the imagination as to how he got his road name, and a tall, almost willowy black man with gorgeous ebony skin tone, a charismatic smile, and pencil thin dreadlocks they called Major. Unfortunately, Major absolutely reeked of marijuana to the point it almost gave me a headache, but then again, weed and I had never really gotten along the few times I had tried it. All it did was make me feel like I had a gnome with hammers pounding on my brain and good Lord, the sleepiness. One hit and I could sleep for days.
After I had been introduced to Major, Jared had swept me along to introduce me to Deacon. He was a suave-looking older gentleman, maybe fifties but could even be sixties, who looked good for his age. A silver fox, I think most women would call him. He was a kind man and had that suave look to him although he was completely gentlemanly and respectful.
Finally, there was Nine, Cipher, and Blackjack, and a bigger man called Derry to round out the rest of the crew.
The women were a whole other story. Aside from Aspen, there was Kestrel who everyone called Little Bird and who was paired with Dump Truck, which I just could not fathom how that worked out, but it did, and you could just see how positively in love with each other they were.
It made me smile, but it also made my heart ache just a little, and that voice in the back of my mind whispered that was supposed to be me. Jealousy was a bitch, but I shoved that bitch down just in time to meet Marisol who looked a little young to be with Maverick, but I reserved judgment. I mean, who was I to throw stones at anyone?
Then there was Dahlia who didn’t really seem to belong to or be with anyone but who sort of naturally gravitated toward Tic of all people. She was a fiery one, like Marisol, and I got the impression she and Marisol maybe didn’t always get along.
Finally, there was a quiet, almos
t who I would describe as a hippy chick with a very decidedly modern flair that everyone called Raven, although I couldn’t be sure if that was her real name or not. She was with Mace.
Marisol was introducing her little brother Mateo to Marc since they would be riding in the back seat with each other in Aspen’s SUV which looked pretty new.
“About fuckin’ time he got here,” Jared muttered, and a final brother pulled up on a bike with a person riding his back tire in a box truck.
“Who’s that?” I asked curiously.
“Used to call him Sauley when he was a prospect,” Glass said. “Some still fuck up and do. He’s only been patched a few months. Now he goes by the road name of Fish.”
I shaded my eyes and asked without thinking, “Why Fish?”
“Careful with that,” Jared cautioned.
“Oh, sorry.”
He smiled at me, winked and said, “A few months before he became a full member, he got a job at the Market at one of the fish stands and kept coming around reeking of it. So, he got Fish.”
“Who is that behind him in the truck?” I asked.
“That’d be Dipshit.”
“I’m sorry?”
“New prospect. If you don’t want to call him Dipshit, call him ‘Prospect.’ That will do just fine.”
“I cannot even pretend to understand your ways,” I said laughing. Who called someone Dipshit?
“Yeah, well, he comes by the name honestly. He is kind of a dipshit.”
“He barely looks eighteen!” I said.
“He’s eighteen, started hanging around about six months ago, just became a prospect last week. He’s one of Deacon’s project kids. Deac is sponsoring him. Good kid for the most part, likes to get into fights but can’t blame him. He grew up rough. In and out of foster care, dad’s a drunk, mom’s an addict. The kind of kid society gives up on before he’s even had a chance just because his parents are who they are. He’s still figuring it out.”
I chewed my bottom lip and said, “He’s not much older than Marc.”
“True,” Jared said. “Like I said, though. You can’t blame a kid like him for having the rep of a bad seed. He doesn’t know any better and he ain’t got the type of parents to show him.” He lifted a shoulder in a shrug and asked, “How is he supposed to know?” I looked up at him and Jared’s eyes were shuttered. “Schools are just interested in maintaining the status quo, and it sucks learning by being in trouble literally constantly. Gets to a point where you’re like ‘fuck it, I can’t do anything right’ and it’s even further downhill from there.”
“You sound like you speak from experience,” I said softly.
“Guilty,” he said. He looked back over at Fish and… the prospect.
“Some of us kids slipped through the cracks.” He huffed a bitter laugh. “Society likes to think we’ve turned our backs on them but when it comes to a lot of the guys standing here,” he shook his head, “kids like me, and Dipshit over there? Who really turned their back on who?”
Hm.
It was food for thought and something my thoughts chewed on for almost the entire ride down through Olympia and beyond.
The towns started to grow sparse, and we stopped for lunch after turning off of the main highway. It was there that Jared grabbed my hand and lifted his chin at Marc to hold up before we went into the burger place that was completely old-world mom-and-pop and like it had never left the fifties.
“Marc, you good if your mom rides with me the rest of the way?” he asked.
Marc grinned. “Yeah, I kinda want to see this.”
I rolled my eyes at my kid.
“Okay, but first you’re gonna have to change,” he said to me, and I blinked in confusion.
“Into what?” I asked, taken aback.
“Prospect!” Jared shouted and I winced. It was better than shouting out Dipshit but still…
The prospect came jogging up from the box truck and handed Jared two stuffed bags marked with the Harley-Davidson logo.
“The real reason I needed your sizes.”
“C’mon, Mamma. I’m here to help.” I jumped slightly at the voice behind me and turned to see Dahlia grinning. She was dressed to match the joint we were invading, all sexy and cool, fifties pinup bombshell.
“Go on, let Dahlia get you taken care of.”
“Yeah, Mom,” Marc said, grinning at me stupidly. “I know what you like. Jared and I will order for you.”
“Gee thanks, kid.” I shot Marc a look like et tu and followed Dahlia to the ladies’ room.
So, I didn’t have to take anything off but my shoes, really. Thank goodness for that. My sneakers were swapped for a pair of knee-high boots that laced in the front and the back, but thankfully had a zipper up the inside of the leg. Those were easy enough. What wasn’t easy, at least not on first glance, were the thick leather chaps she helped me into. They were plain, but butter soft and fit me almost like a second skin.
Next came the leather jacket which fit me like a dream and was beautifully embroidered with hummingbirds at the lapel and on the sleeve here and there amidst embossed flowering skulls. I didn’t know how they had done it, but the leather was permanently raised with the pattern, and it was actually stunning.
“Okay, hold still,” Dahlia said when I looked at myself in the mirror, speechless. She went to gather my hair and I ducked slightly away.
“What are you doing?” I asked. I had always been super particular about my hair.
“Trust me, darlin’, you’re gonna want this in a sheathed pony or a braid or you’ll be so snarled and knotted up you might never pick all the tangles out.”
“Oh,” I murmured and let her do what she needed to. She pulled my hair into a long ponytail and took this long piece of leather and wrapped it around it, snapping snaps all along the joining length until it was snuggly protected in a leather sheath like the rest of me.
“There you go, all done,” she said.
“Thanks,” I said, blushing faintly.
“Don’t worry, honey, we’ve all been there,” Aspen said, coming out of one of the bathroom stalls and beaming at me.
I smiled back at her and stepped aside so she could wash her hands.
“They’re gonna go nuts when you step out there. You look just like one of us,” Dahlia declared, and she looked proud of herself.
She wasn’t kidding when she said they were going to go nuts. Wolf whistles, shouts, cheering, and applause left me blushing fiercely and feeling about three inches tall with their looming attention and scrutiny.
I was so not used to being the center of attention. I sort of slunk back to Jared’s side and sat down between him and Marc who was laughing at my expense.
“Remember,” I told him. “I gave birth to you. I can take you out.”
That, of course, just made my kid laugh harder.
The ride into the little town of Long Beach was beautiful. Despite the cooler air coming off the water and the wind from the bike itself as we traveled along, it was hot under all this thick black leather with the sun mercilessly beating down from a cloudless sky. We slowed, rumbling through the little town’s streets, passing bars and restaurants, a little touristy oddity museum, and an old-fashioned ice cream parlor.
We went further, the water on our right, sliding past a distillery and across from it one of the tallest buildings in town. Fancy and rich, a hotel or time-share condo by the look of it.
It was interesting to me. I vaguely remembered some things and others were so new. That was the thing about it, though. You could clearly see the divide between old and new. Most of the houses and buildings were salt worn and dilapidated, while others were newly restored and gleamed softly in the summer sun with new paint.
It was vibrant traveling along in the line of motorcycles, the vibrations thrumming through me like a second heartbeat as we joined the traffic jam of other bikers cruising the main boulevard through Long Beach to its outer edges.
The bikes all congregated at a str
ange little motel and campground full of antique travel trailers, all kitted out in their little permanent fixed parking places. I hopped off the bike with a smile at Jared’s urging as he backed into the rows of motorcycles along the street out front of the place which was charming and unique. Each travel trailer gleamed, some freshly painted, some just their stainless-steel selves in their little bubble forms. Each one parked, each little plot decorated in a different sort of landscape.
This one surrounded by potted cactuses, that one surrounded by rocks that weren’t native to the Pacific Northwest, but maybe somewhere like Moab. The oranges and reds stood out starkly among the conifer trees soaring against the sky throughout the little RV park.
There was a great lodge off to one side with communal facilities such as bathrooms and a picnic shelter in the center of the expansive park.
I couldn’t see how far it went, but clearly it was the only place that was big enough to host all five chapters that Jared had said were coming.
Tents were already being pitched throughout the camp spaces scattered among the trailers, and I could now see why Jared hadn’t bothered to even try to describe the place. I mean, I could hardly describe it myself.
Marc bounded up to me just as Jared heeled down the kickstand on his motorcycle and leaned the heavy machine onto it.
“Mom! Check this place out!”
“I know!” I cried grinning. We were about a block down from the nearest beach access, an easy walking distance.
“Aspen told me to check with you and Jared before I went out and found a place for my tent,” he said.
“You can honestly pick anywhere but I’d get too it quick if I were you, before all the good ones are gone,” Jared called.
“I’d rather you stay close to where we’re staying but I don’t know where that’s going to be,” I hedged.
“Aw!” Marc’s grin didn’t diminish.
“Babe,” Jared called, pulling a pack from one of his saddlebags. “It don’t matter where he goes in this zoo – he’s gonna be safe as safe can be, I can promise you that. It’s a different way of life out here to begin with. Not like the city.”