by Krane, Kasey
Okay, so it’d been fun to buy enough blankets in Mexico to survive an ice age for only $20 and I was now the proud owner of a lavishly decorated sombrero, although God only knows what I was going to do with it. Even more importantly, my passport was no longer a virgin - it had a pretty pink stamp from the country of Mexico.
But now, it was time to be brave - to actually drive to Deming and find out if I really had a father. If he would let me into his life, or just walk away. My mom may have kept them apart while I was alive, but that inscription at the front of the journal…I couldn’t help but think that my mom wanted them to meet, like one last request from the grave.
Goddammit. It was so hard to think that I was going to do all of this without my mom at my side. She’d been my best friend my whole life and it hit me all over again that my mom was truly gone. When I had turned to ask my mom what color she should pick out for my sombrero, she wasn’t there to ask. When I had turned to ask my mom which hotel looked less scary to stay in for the night, she fucking wasn’t there. She’d left me, abandoned me, and maybe my mom hadn’t wanted this anymore than I did, but it fucking hurt so bad, it was hard not to get angry at her, at the world, at the person who took my mom’s life, at everyone and everything.
In the solitude of the Coronado National Forest, I let the tears fall, and my heart grieve.
* * *
I pulled into the town of Deming and took in the wide streets, the dust, the browns and tans everywhere, and let out a sigh. After the beauty of the high desert of Albuquerque, it was hard to fathom why anyone would choose to live in a hellhole like Deming. The heat waves danced off the asphalt, giving the whole town the look of a fun house at a carnival, distorting and bending the world at random. It was not only ugly, but a little creepy.
I leaned forward and squinted at the passing signs, looking for the Dead Legion Clubhouse. Okay, so they probably wouldn’t advertise a motorcycle club with a sign, but I really didn't have much else to go on. In fact, my knowledge was pathetically limited: My dad’s name was Butcher, he used to belong to the Outlaws but for unknown reasons now belonged to the Dead Legion, and the club was located in Deming, New Mexico.
So here I was, in the armpit of New Mexico.
As I wandered up and down the streets with absolutely no luck whatsoever, I started to worry that this had been the most godawful wild goose chase I could've ever embarked upon. Should I give up? Should I go back to Albuquerque? Finally, I spotted the Deming Library and decided to pull in and see if anyone there could give me directions. I climbed out and pulled my sticky shorts away from my thighs – despite having my AC on at full blast, I still couldn't seem to stop sweating from the overpowering heat. I walked into the cool of the library and up to the front counter, where I saw two men sorting through stacks of books
“Excuse me, I'm here looking for the Dead Legion motorcycle club? I know they’re in Deming, but I can't seem to find them.” The two men exchanged glances and one disappeared into the back room while the other gave me an overly bright smile that instantly made me suspicious. It just seemed so…awkwardly large.
“You must be from out of town, then,” he said. I looked at him hesitantly – that fact seemed pretty obvious to me. In fact, the chances seemed pretty damn high that he was trying to stall, although I couldn’t begin to guess why.
“Yes, I'm from Albuquerque, but I have business with one of the Dead Legion, so I'd like to find them.” I was trying to keep the exasperation out of my voice but I knew I wasn't doing a very good job. I had just covered a lot of hot asphalt and an answer would be nice.
“Albuquerque? That's quite a drive from here. How long did that take you?” he asked, completely ignoring my request for information. I knew now that he was for sure stalling but I couldn't figure out why.
“Look, I can come back later and give you my full vacation itinerary, but right now, do you know where the Dead Legion clubhouse is at or not?”
“I'm sure he does, considering it's just one block over,” said a deep voice from behind me and I spun around to see Knight standing there in the doorway. I couldn’t help the big grin that spread over my face. Although I had expected to see Knight again, it was still a shock to actually have him in front of me.
“Hi, Knight!” I said happily.
And then it hit me. He probably thought that I had driven all this way to stalk him. Which was just about the most embarrassing idea on the face of the planet.
“So, I’m…I know that this looks like I turned into your stalker/super fan but I promise…” I stumbled, unsure of how to make it seem less creepy than it appeared to be. “It's not bad! I'm here on a mission.” Which sounded about as lame to my ears as I was sure it sounded to his. Ugh. I shoved my sweaty hair away from my forehead just as my stomach let out a long, low rumble. Fuck. I was a mess and there was no hiding that fact. I had wanted to check into a hotel room and clean up before finding my dad, but that was not exactly an option now.
Instead of calling the police and requesting a restraining order against me, Knight instead said kindly, “Let’s eat lunch. You can explain your mission over food.”
3
Knight
Our contact at the local library called me letting me know that some cute girl was here from Albuquerque asking about the Dead Legion. As soon as I walked inside, I recognized her as the fine ass that was at the diner earlier. And I couldn’t help but be excited.
But now, we walked next door in complete silence. Awkward silence. Goddammit, I wish I was better at knowing what to say in these kinds of situations. Or just better at talking, period.
It was exactly this kind of social situation that made me hate my tongue most of all. The way that it didn't do what I wanted; the way that it all got caught up inside. When we were seated at the table by a harried waitress, the silence got even more pronounced. I scrambled to come up with something to say, anything to say.
“I never caught your name,” I blurted out a little too loudly, a little too emphatically, when it finally occurred to me that she knew my name but I didn't know hers. That was a perfectly legitimate topic of conversation, right?
“Oh, so sorry,” she said apologetically. “I’m Leia.”
“Leia, as in Star Wars, Leia?”
“Yes,” she let out a frustrated laugh. “My mom was apparently a huge fan and decided to name me after her.”
“I’m guessing you don’t like it very much?”
“Not really,” she said honestly.
“Then why don’t you go by your middle name or something like that?”
She stared at me as if I had just pronounced words of wisdom that she’d never contemplated before. “While, I guess because my mom always called me Leia,” she said slowly, contemplatively. “She said it was my name and that I needed to use it and be proud of it. It never occurred to me to go against her wishes. But she’s gone now, so I guess it doesn't really matter, does it?” She glanced away and I was struck simultaneously by the pain in her voice and by the length of her eyelashes. Which was a stupidly romantic thing to focus on but they were thick and long and lush and I had never seen eyelashes like that on someone, not without 7 gallons of mascara anyway.
It didn't help that I only dated women that hung around our club, if you could call fucking them dating. It was more like scratching an itch.
“What happened to your mom?”
“Two months ago, she was hit by oncoming traffic. The other driver was an older lady and her tire blew and she lost control and crossed through the median on the freeway and hit my mom straight on. My mom never woke up. She was in a coma and her brainwaves stopped and her body just shut down and I knew that she wouldn't want that – to just lay there in a hospital bed and slowly waste away. I had to give the okay to take her off life support and…” She trailed off. I knew that she was fighting back the emotion threatening to overwhelm her, and I got panicky inside – I didn't do well with crying females. I didn't do well with females at all, but the crying
variety was even worse. Before I could figure out what to do, she seemed to regain control of herself. She looked up, straight at me, and continued her story.
“That’s why I’m here. I started going through her stuff and I found her journal and you see, I always thought my mom and dad just had an affair.”
I simply stared at her, hoping that her comment would be explained, because it made absolutely no sense to me whatsoever. I would’ve been less confused if she’d finished that sentence with, “and you see, I’m an alien.”
Okay, so maybe the same amount of confusion…
“She always told me that he was a good guy but that he couldn’t be in our lives and I just figured that meant it was an affair. But I started reading her journal and that isn't it at all. Do you know Butcher?” The panic I had felt at not knowing how to strike up a conversation with Leia was nothing compared to the panic now welling up inside of me.
Butcher? Oh God, let it be a different Butcher.
She continued without giving me a chance to respond, which was good because I had absolutely nothing intelligent to contribute to the conversation.
“When my mom first met him, he was in the Outlaws Motorcycle Club but she had clipped out a newspaper article that she put into the back of the journal that had a picture of my dad and some other people from the Dead Legion - you were in that picture, actually, so you must know him - and the Dead Legion were presenting a check to the hospital. He was part of a photo shoot for that a couple of years ago and somehow my mom saw that and kept the picture. She didn’t want to give my dad up, I guess. Do you know how Butcher ended up in the Dead Legion?”
I continued to just stare her. I was famously cool under pressure and I thought that this was because I let very little of what I thought show on my face. I was sure my face was stone cold hard right now - not a flicker of emotion on it - but that sure as hell didn't mirror what I was thinking. I wished most desperately for something - anything - to happen, that would keep me from having to answer this question. A Sangre through the front door? Ghost coming back to life? It all sounded fine to me. Something…
My phone rang. My hand dove into my pocket and I whipped out my phone like I was grabbing onto a lifesaver.
Probably because I was.
It was Bishop. I swiped to answer the phone call.
“Yeah?”
“Judge fucked up and got himself pinned down by the Sangre,” Bishop said without preamble. “He’s up by the Playas mine. We have to save his sorry ass. See you at the clubhouse in two minutes.” And then he was gone.
I went immediately into emergency mode – focused and ready. “Sorry, gotta go.” I threw a twenty down the table to cover her meal that we hadn’t even ordered yet. I could eat later. “What hotel are you staying at?”
“I…I haven't checked in anywhere,” she stammered.
“Good. Go to the Cactus Motel. I’ll stop by afterwards and make sure you’re okay. Do not open the door to anyone but me. Understand? No one.”
Her eyes were wide and she looked a little pissed but I didn't have time to argue with her. “Promise me,” I demanded. She gave one small, reluctant nod and I turned around and strode out of the restaurant and back down to the Dead Legion clubhouse. Ever since Carmen came back into Judge’s life, he’d turned into a real dumbass. How the fuck did he get pinned down by the Sangre?
I wasn't sure what I looked forward to more: Killing some Sangre or wringing Judge's neck.
4
Leia
After eating a cheeseburger and fries that tasted so good that I was sure I would have to run a marathon to make up for it ,if I were the kind of person to run a marathon, which I most assuredly was not, I wandered outside.
As much as I hated to admit it, my choices were damn limited at this point. I could go back to the library and ask more questions, but I was pretty sure that this would only result in another Dead Legion showing up at the door, ready to drag me away. I could go to the clubhouse, but it didn’t seem like it was a good idea to piss off the person who I wanted to get answers from and Knight would most assuredly be pissed off if I showed up at the clubhouse after he’d ordered me to go to the Cactus Motel.
Other than that, there wasn't much else to do. I wasn’t exactly Nancy Drew, and until a Dead Legion decided to tell me where my father was at, I didn’t have any other leads. Looking up the name “Butcher” online was a waste of time - that brought back way too many hits. Not that I would admit to anyone how it was that I knew that.
With a sigh, I decided to go to the Cactus Motel, although I hated to give in to Knight’s dictatorial demands. If he really did show up that evening at the motel, I would tell him just that in no uncertain terms.
Googling the address for the Cactus Motel, I found my way over to it. When I pulled up in front of it, I looked at its dreary, uninspiring façade and grimaced. I could only hope that the inside looked better than this.
Once the motel owner found out that a Dead Legion had recommended that I stay there, he instantly became much more obsequious. Was there any place in town that didn’t answer to the Dead Legion? I told myself that it was good that my dad belonged to such a popular club, but it was hard not to think that the town was taking it to an extreme. For hell’s sake, any time librarians were acting as lookouts for motorcycle gangs, something was skewed with the world.
I unloaded my bag and then sat down on the queen bed. I had been upgraded to a two-queen room, and the owner assured me that it was the nicest room in the joint. Worn brown carpeting and bedspreads that had seen better days made me wonder what the other rooms looked like. At least it seemed clean - bonus points for that.
After a quick shower and new, non-sweaty clothes, I began to feel more human.
And then I began to fidget, unsure of what to do with myself. I wasn’t one to just sit around and do nothing, but it seemed like the universe was conspiring to make me do just that. I had been forcing myself to spread out the journal entries and not just devour them all at once, since they were all I had left of Mom, which left me with Facebook. Hoping that my friends and acquaintances had restrained themselves from filling up my feed with politically based posts, I opened up the app on my phone.
It was then that I found that Deming, New Mexico was the focus of the whole world.
Which was just about the Weirdest Thing Ever.
While on the topic of bonus points, none of the Deming posts were political, so, you know, there was that. I scanned down my feed, trying to figure out why the Dead Legion were the most popular MC gang not only in Deming but across the country and around the world. As I started to read the linked articles and watch frantic reporters in videos, I realized that it was all tied back to the kidnapping of 30 little girls from a local Catholic school. I had heard about it, of course - tribes in the remote jungles of the Amazon without electricity had heard about this kidnapping - but I hadn’t paid much attention to the story.
I scrolled further down my feed, soaking in the news that the little girls and their teacher had been rescued from a mine called Playas.
And then a press conference went live and it popped up everywhere. Intrigued, I clicked on the link and watched the teacher, Carmen Williams, begin to speak.
“Today, the Dead Legion finished what the Sangre started almost two weeks ago. They are the true heroes here.” Holy fucking mother of God, there was Knight standing right behind the teacher. I felt a small fissure of excitement run through me as I studied his impassive face. To think I had been eating lunch with him only hours before, and now he was on national television, getting praised for helping save 30 little girls.
What a crazy day.
“When the Sangre climbed onto that bus and shot me, I couldn’t fight back except with words, and that day, words did not matter.” She was holding a little Hispanic girl in her arms, and the girl seemed to be clinging to the teacher like a barnacle on a rock. But rather than pushing her away, the teacher seemed to be clinging just as tightly to the lit
tle girl. The love that radiated between them would’ve been obvious to a blind man.
As she continued to speak my eyes scanned the screen quickly. Hold on, I don’t see anyone who looks like my dad there. I had seen the blond guy who’d been at the diner with Knight, and quite a few other guys in leather vests, but none of them had looked anything like the picture in the newspaper clipping.
Where was Butcher? Why isn’t he there to take a bow in the national spotlight?
The video cut back to a newscaster, who excitedly summed up the breaking news of the day.
“The Dead Legion are a small motorcycle club that the locals all say take care of their town and take care of them. After what we’ve seen happen today, I think it’s safe to say that the Dead Legion really do take care of their own.”
I closed out of the video and laid back on the bed and stared up at the popcorn ceiling. Goddammit, now I wasn't going to be able to yell at Knight for being so high-handed with me. He'd obviously been called away when shit had started to go down, and maybe it wasn't realistic for me to expect him to give me a full explanation of what was happening when children’s lives were on the line.
Sometimes, I really hated being so logical.
I didn't know how long I lay there, drifting in and out of consciousness, before I heard a knock on the door. I started to call out that the door was open but then remembered Knight’s very specific instructions.
I pulled myself up off the bed and walked over to the door to peer through the peek hole. It looked like Knight, all right, although it was hard to tell through the tiny warped glass, but I figured that there were only so many Indians who were going to show up at my door. Allowing myself the only revenge I could get for Knight’s necessary-if-irritating-high-handedness earlier, I called through the door, “Who is it?”