by A. J. Downey
She tried to argue with him as I rushed to comply, handing the pitcher and cups to Frida who stood by struck dumb by what was happening. Abuela continued to argue with him as I swept past her into our house to go to my room and gather my things, but he was a force to be reckoned with. I stood speechless in the hall, ears straining for a mere moment as he fired back at my grandmother and waited, heart thundering, blood rushing in my ears, drowning out everything else they were saying which spurred me into action.
I rushed into my room and took up my old hand-me-down but much-loved backpack which was already packed with my favorite clothes. I did it every month when they came. It had become a ritual; I packed every night the night before they came in high hopes that were as thin as a spider’s web and just as fragile.
I took out my diary from its secret hiding place in one of the floor vents, along with a bandana stuffed with my mother’s jewelry I had stolen from her when I was thirteen and hidden so she wouldn’t sell it for more drugs.
“Marisol, what are you doing?” My little brother stood in my room behind me as I stuffed the book and small wrapped bundle in the top of my pack. I sat on my bedroom floor, in front of the closet, and took off my wedge sandals and shoved them into the top of my pack before I cinched it closed.
“I’m going away for a while, Mateo, but don’t you worry. Abuela will take good care of you and when I can, I will come get you. I promise,” I said, shoving my bare feet into my boots, wrapping the laces around the hooks, and tying them tight.
“No!” he cried and looked stricken.
“Mateo, you have to be brave for me, little brother. I have to go. It’s for the best.”
“But I don’t want you to!” he cried, and his little chest heaved as he took a great hiccupping sob. My own chest squeezed down painfully so, and I felt my own eyes prickle with tears. I reached for him and grabbed him, hugging him tight.
“It’s only for a little while,” I said. “I love you so much, and I have to do this, for us,” I said.
“No!” he said, clinging to me.
I could only imagine how my little brother was feeling. First Dad, just before he was born, then Mom when he was three. I was the only family he had left and now, I was leaving, too.
“I love you, so much, hermano. You must be good for me. Promise me, okay? Promise me you’ll be good.”
He pulled away, chest hitching, eyes streaming, and he wiped them with the back of his arm.
It was all happening so fast for him and my heart ached.
“I promise!” he wailed. “I’ll be good now, just please don’t go!”
I stood up, bag in my hand and fetched down my jean jacket from the hook on the wall by my door. I stuffed my pack between my knees and put it on, Mateo lunging, wrapping his little arms around my waist and clinging to me. I hugged him, kissed the top of his head, and tried not to cry too.
“I love you so much,” I said and did the hardest thing I had ever had to do. I tore myself away from his grasp and marched away from him toward a new destiny for us.
My abuela had met her match in Maverick. I skipped steps and strode for him and his motorcycle that he sat astride as he held out a helmet to me.
“That all you want to take?” he asked, eyeing my pack in my hands.
“That’s all,” I affirmed, steel in my spine and wrapping painfully around my heart.
He traded me, taking my pack, and holding it on his bike before him as I put on the helmet, working the strap to hold it onto my head. He took off his coat and handed it to me after peeling the vest off and putting it on over his tee, the arms of which had been taken off, the holes giving glimpses of his flank through them as he swung the vest behind him and slid his arms through the holes.
He handed me back my backpack as Mateo screamed at me from the front porch. “Marisol, don’t go!”
“Let her go, she doesn’t care about you!” our Abuela cried, her cruel streak a mile wide and twice as long, as I got onto the bike behind Maverick, their leader.
I unleashed hell on her, cursed her up and down, six ways to Sunday and told her what a puta perra she was.
“That’s not true, Mateo, and you know it! I love you, manito!” I cried, my own voice finally cracking as my throat grew thick with tears.
“You sure you want to do this?” Maverick asked me as he fired up his bike and I resolutely put my arms around him.
“Absolutely,” I said in his ear and he made some sort of signal with his hand, wheeled us around and away.
Still, I couldn’t breathe.
Not yet.
Chapter Three
Maverick…
It caught me off guard, but not enough for my brain to fail in doing the calculations. I had it. Enough to cover financially. There was just one thing.
“How old are you?” I demanded.
“Twenty,” she answered without any hesitation, with no hint of a lie… which immediately made me suspicious.
“Oh, yeah? Let’s see some ID,” I said.
“Mav?” I turned on the seat of my bike, looking over my shoulder at Fenris who’d spoken. He raised his eyebrows, holding out his hands in a ‘what gives’ gesture. I waved him off. The rest of my crew riding with me all looked surprised but didn’t say a word.
Marisol handed me over her identification, which she’d slid out of one of the back pockets of her jeans. It was real, printed vertically, but the dates said she wasn’t quite twenty yet. She was nineteen, but she’d hit twenty in a few short weeks.
I flicked my eyes to hers and the desperation in her gaze decided me right then and there.
“I could use an extra set of hands for something for the next month,” I said. “She wants to go; I can bring her back on the next run – we’ll see if she can square the debt in that time.”
“No.” Abuela shook her head and Marisol rattled off something in Spanish, clearly trying to argue the point.
“I said no.” Abuela turned her attention off her granddaughter and back to me. “You don’t want this girl. She is nothing but trouble. You could pick any girl here for whatever you want—”
“I did,” I said, cutting her off. “I picked her.” I thrust a chin at Marisol and said, “Go pack some shit, put on some better shoes, and make it fuckin’ quick, we got someplace to be.”
I got the distinct impression that Abuela wasn’t happy, but not for any love of her granddaughter. There was nothing but spite on the old woman’s face.
“The girl lies. All the time. Lies, lies, lies, lies, lies! You can’t believe a word she says!”
“Duly noted, but you’ve got your choice. Cash or her ass, so you suddenly got the cash?” I demanded.
Her mouth thinned down again, and she turned her head, refusing to look at me.
“I’ll take that as a ‘no,’” I declared and called back to my guys, “Anybody got an extra lid?”
“Shit, he’s fuckin’ serious right now,” I heard one of my boys mutter in surprise. Squatch, I think, but I wasn’t mad at him. This was pretty fuckin’ out of character for me – but sometimes you had to ride on instinct and mine was saying to seize the fuckin’ moment, so that’s what I was doing.
“I’ll have her back at some point,” I said with a wink as Marisol came running out of the house, an old tan, rugged but also worn and frayed canvas backpack clutched to her chest, a pair of sturdy brown ankle boots on her feet to replace the wedge sandals she’d been wearing.
Deacon walked up to me and handed me a spare helmet for her pretty head. I handed it to her with one hand, taking her backpack with the other. She’d put on a short, jean jacket but it still wasn’t enough so while she worked on putting on her helmet, I shrugged first out of my cut then out of my own coat, handing her the latter. She shrugged out of her jean jacket while the guys finished off passing out the meds.
When she got done, she shoved her jean jacket into the top of her already stuffed backpack and I asked, “That all you want to take?”
“That�
��s all,” she affirmed and a kid, couldn’t be more than seven, stepped out onto the front porch, face streaming with tears.
“Marisol, don’t go!” he cried, and his nanna hissed at him.
“Let her go, she doesn’t care about you!”
That was the first time Marisol got fired up about anything that I’d had the occasion to see. She cursed the old lady out in a string of fiery Spanish that left several people looking alarmed and several more with silent smirks that they tried to hide behind their hands.
“That’s not true, Mateo, and you know it! I love you, manito!” she cried and got onto the back of the bike behind me. “And I’ll be back for you!”
Manito, I knew. It meant ‘little brother.’
Interesting.
I fired up my machine and she jumped, but put her arms around me without hesitation, holding on like she’d done this before.
“You sure you wanna do this?” I called, giving her one last out.
“Absolutely,” she responded in my ear and I gave the signal and wheeled us around, the boys falling into formation behind us. We rode for Moses Lake and the halfway point to meet up with Idaho for their share.
Despite Rebel and the rest being locked up, the Eastern Washington clubhouse was still owned by the club and wasn’t in any kind of default – at least not yet. Depending on the decision of the National President, Dragon, it could either be let go and the contents either divided up among the four remaining Pacific Northwest chapters, liquidated completely, and the resulting cash absorbed by the National coffers, or a new chapter rebuilt from a combination of other chapters stepping up, members relocating, or nomadic brothers settling down and moving in.
As it was, two of the remaining three brothers that hadn’t gotten locked up in this mess were lookin’ to absorb into my chapter if we would have them. Personally, I was on the fence about that one. They were good guys, don’t get me wrong, but it was yet to be seen if they were as truly club loyal as they claimed to be.
We did the trade-off with Idaho at a different location each time in the surrounding area. We’d been over the clubhouse in Moses Lake for wiretaps and bugs and the like, and the place had come up clean – but that didn’t mean we hadn’t missed something and as a general rule, you didn’t shit where you ate to begin with.
So, every time we stopped to overnight at the Moses Lake clubhouse, we made sure to head there clean, considering the fate of our brethren.
I sent Marisol in to use the bathroom and told her not to come back out to the bikes for at least twenty minutes while we conducted business out here. She nodded fervently and made herself scarce while we waited for the Idaho boys who had to loop around to get us back on this side.
We were at the Schrag Rest Area off I-90 Eastbound, and since our Idaho boys were coming westbound, it got a little weird. Not to mention, it got a little dicey doing any sort of shit at a rest stop. Washington State Patrol tended to roll through on the regular, which is why I did this shit. They never expected you to do shit right under their noses and it was basically like hiding in plain sight. So, we waited.
If State Patrol happened to roll up while we were waiting, we stood around smoking, vaping, and just generally lookin’ like we weren’t doing shit else, except stopping for a piss break and a smoke, waiting on them to either hassle us or fuckin’ leave.
Occasionally, we rolled up and the little piggies were already here and we had to wait on them to leave. Once a while back, they rolled up just as we got finished with the trade and set to roll out.
So far today, we’d been lucky and hadn’t encountered them at all.
We didn’t do these rest stop exchanges very often because of the Staties. In fact, I couldn’t remember in recent memory, the last time we’d done one, but this was also a last-minute deal. The original agreed upon location had fences go up and construction begin sometime between the last run and this planned one so this, in addition to Marisol, was totally improvised.
Speaking of the girl…
“Mav, you maybe wanna let the rest of us know just what the fuck you are doin’?” Deacon demanded and I turned.
“To be honest with you, Deac – I have no idea, but don’t you worry. I did the math. Your cut ain’t affected none.”
“We’re not worried about that,” Cipher declared. “I ran the numbers too.”
“So, what’s the problem?” I asked, squinting in the direction of the restroom as the two Idaho brothers rolled up.
“Later,” Fenris growled and I nodded.
We made the exchange with Hollow and Vex, Marisol rematerializing just as we finished up talkin’ shit and cuttin’ up. I threw her some chin, impressed that she hung back by the outbuildings and waited for me to indicate it was okay to approach.
“We’ll see you happy bastards later,” Fen said and Hollow, a tall and skinny motherfucker, nodded.
“Until next time, amigos,” he declared and cambered his lanky ass back on his chopper with the ape hangars. Vex put a middle finger to his forehead and gave us a literal one-fingered salute. I laughed and shook my head and the two of them fucked off back to the border.
“Let’s go get us some well-deserved shut-eye,” I said. Riding through the hottest part of the day, and the majority of us having been up late last night, we were all tired. These were always big weekends with a lot of miles.
“Let me back out before you get on,” I told Marisol and she nodded.
“I know,” she said, and I smiled.
We rode back to the Moses Lake clubhouse. The accommodations there left a lot to be desired, just a bunch of couches and floor space to crash on and roll out bedrolls if we had them, but it would do for tonight.
I could tell the guys weren’t all the way happy, especially with my decision to take a woman as payment – but that was something she and I still needed to discuss.
“Marisol.” I said her name as I finished hefting my own pack onto my shoulder from where it’d been bungee corded to death to my back fender.
She looked up from where her eyes had been fixed on the ground, a fire in their depths which she quickly quelled when my eyes met hers.
“What?” she finally asked when I didn’t say anything right away.
“We get in there; the guys and I are going into another room to talk. You don’t bother us for anything in that room. We’ll be out when we get out,” I told her.
She nodded. “Before you even ask, we’re clear. Crystal clear.”
I smiled. “Atta girl.”
We went in and the three remaining guys from the Eastern Washington chapter looked up from the table they all sat around.
“My boys and I are going to avail ourselves of your chapel for a moment. This is Marisol. She’ll be accompanying us back over the mountains. For all intents and purposes, she’s mine for the time being so keep it aboveboard if you don’t mind.”
“Cool, yeah, yeah,” Goner said, tipping back his chair like some high school kid rather than the dude in his thirties, or maybe even forties that he was. Goner was short for Gonorrhea, as in he had an eye for and fucked entirely too many skeezy hos back when he was a young buck and kept coming up with the clap. As far as I knew, he kept his dick clean now, but I didn’t want to chance him or anyone else thinkin’ Marisol was fair use among us.
These guys, if they ended up coming over the mountains with us, still weren’t from our chapter. Every chapter operated somewhat differently and ours, shall I say, was definitely more liberal than a lot of the other chapters in the area. We adhered to slightly different tenants, and I could tell my guys were dying to know what the fuck I was up to where Marisol was concerned. While we had the ability to pay for things like pussy if we wanted to, and there wasn’t anything wrong with sex work or sex workers – they knew it wasn’t my jam and this smacked just a little too much of human trafficking even for my liking.
Truth of the matter? I was probably projecting. The guys were probably curious, but that didn’t necessarily mean they we
re thinking any kind of ill of me. They were likely just waiting to hear me out on my reasoning. Trouble was, I wasn’t exactly sure my reason on this. Sometimes I just ran on instinct, and my instinct was there was a lot more to the pretty little Latina than met the eye. I had a gut feeling there was a lot more than good sex to be had, if she was on board for it that is. I didn’t do shit without consent. I wasn’t a fuckin’ rape-o piece of shit.
I followed my boys into the chapel, Marisol wandering the edges of the room, curious eyes roaming over pictures, plaques, and other sundry items tacked to the walls. There was a wall of proudly displayed mugshots of members current and past and she let her eyes rove the photographs with their printed list of charges below them on proud display.
I shut the door behind me and my guys and turned. Fenris, Squatch, Deacon, and Cipher all looked at me.
“We’re taking girls as payment now?” Deacon asked and I could tell he was on the struggle bus with his morals.
“It was a snap decision,” I said. “Something in her eyes just about every time we rolled on up through there was tellin’ me she wanted out but couldn’t get out on her own.”
“Just what do you plan on doing with her?” Cipher asked.
“I have no fucking idea. Probably have her cook and clean my place – something, I don’t know. I’ll figure it out. I always do.”
“She’s pretty,” Squatch observed carefully.
“If she’s down to fuck then I’d go there, but definitely not without her consent and I damn sure am planning on making it crystal clear that I didn’t ‘buy’ her with that intent.” I put ‘buy’ in air quotes where it belonged.
“Maybe she’s got family on our side of the mountains,” Deacon mused, pulling on his bottom lip.
“Maybe,” I agreed. “I’ll look into it.”
“She was pretty eager to volunteer as tribute,” Fenris said and the guys all glanced at each other. We hadn’t even bothered to sit down or really take up any places around the table. I sat on the corner of the table, bracing one boot against the cracked and unfinished cement floor.