Coyote Lee

by Jessie Cooke

  Manson, obviously sensing his president’s mood, kept the lead for a little longer and brought the room to order. All eyes were on Coyote as he said, “I know you all have questions, and you’ll have even more when I’m finished. But first of all I need you to understand that I’m not stopping to answer your questions until I’m finished, and what I have to tell you is about a decision already made. You’re not going to change my mind, so if that’s your endgame, you may as well not waste your time trying.” The room was deathly quiet except for the scratching of the treasurer Granite’s pen. Granite and Manson were the only people Coyote had spoken to on his way back to California from Boston about what he had done. He had to prepare his VP…and his treasurer would also be a huge part of this. Granite hadn’t said a word on the phone, but Coyote expected him to have plenty to say once he ran the numbers that they would be losing. He was a strange man, and he stuck out like a sore thumb around the other bikers thanks to the way he dressed. He looked like a businessman, all the time. Coyote knew, however, that despite the man’s sharp mind and penchant for numbers, he was also ex-military and had a reputation as being one of the deadliest shots that ever lived. He didn’t have much personality and his face normally showed as much enthusiasm as a rock…thus his name. While Granite did his addition, or subtraction, or whatever, and Manson twisted his hands together with worry underneath the table, Coyote got up and went to the chalkboard on the wall behind them.

  “I’m going to lay a foundation for you all here first,” he said, picking up a piece of chalk and drawing a circle on the board. “This is the US.” He drew a square on the bottom of one side and one at the top of the other. He pointed at the lower square and said, “This is us, in California…Think of it instead as your immediate family.” He hit it with his chalk several times as he said, “This is your old lady, your kids…your blood.” He pointed at the other square and said, “This is Boston. This is our family in Boston, it’s your brother’s immediate family. This is him, his old lady, and their kids. You love them. You’d fight for them…you might even die for them. But…what I need you to really think about is this…what if instead of you dying for them, you were asked to sacrifice your immediate family for them? What if you had to send your sons to die for them? What if your old lady and your kids were suddenly at risk because of them?”

  Coyote let that sink in for a minute and then he said, “There was not a man on this earth that I loved and respected more than Doc Marshall. That love extends to his son. I was a Southside Skull before I came here and started this club…This club, all of you, and my old lady and my son are now my own family. My love for my brothers in Boston didn’t go away and neither did my willingness to help them. But the only men who have died in this fight so far have been the Sinners, which I don’t give a shit about, and my immediate family, which I do. We have two women in this club now who won’t ever see their old man again. We have three children who have lost a father. We’ll take care of them, but do you think their lives will be the same?”

  He didn’t wait for an answer. He went on to say, “I’m sacrificing my immediate family for my brother’s fight. I know a lot of you, especially those of you who don’t have an old lady and kids yet, aren’t going to understand this…but I can’t keep sending my family over there to die. I can’t and I won’t. And that’s what I told Dax Marshall when I went to Boston.” He put down the chalk and went back over to his seat. The room was still quiet; even Granite had stopped scratching out numbers. They were waiting for Coyote to give permission for them to speak…that was a positive sign; at least it wasn’t anarchy. “Okay,” he said, once he was seated. “You got something to say, raise your hand and wait to be recognized. I’ll hear you out.”

  Coyote wasn’t surprised when Crow was the first one to raise his hand. “Crow,” Manson said. Crow stood up and said:

  “What does this mean for us…going forward?”

  “Dax wasn’t happy about my decision and I didn’t expect him to be. He says if I refuse to send him manpower, then he stops sending us financial support.” More hands went up, but Crow wasn’t finished.

  “So what does that mean, for this club’s future, financially?”

  Coyote looked at Granite, and he took it, “The Southies send us ten to twenty grand a month. The loans for the new property we’ve been looking at would have had to come through them, as we’re maxed out. Much of our financial well-being depends on Boston.”

  Crow frowned and looked back toward his president. “So you just made the decision, that we could do without that, on your own?” Crow’s tone was bordering on disrespect and so was his question. Coyote had known they weren’t going to take this well…but he also knew that he didn’t have to explain himself. He was their president and if they didn’t like his decisions, they all knew they were free to leave. Coyote didn’t hold his men to blood in and blood out. As long they didn’t walk away with anything that was his…they were free to go.

  “I did,” he said. “I made that decision because it’s my right, as your president. If you think about it like the diagram I drew up for you, I’m the head of this family. You’re all my dependents, my children. I have to make hard decisions every day that affect you…and like it or not, I don’t always have to consult you when I do that. Ultimately, this is a dictatorship and the man wearing the patch that says president is the dictator.”

  “So we should just keep our mouths shut and take orders,” Crow said.

  “If that’s what you choose to do.”

  “What other choice do I have? What other choice do we have?” Crow asked him.

  “You can leave,” Coyote said as he stood. He needed a drink and he suddenly needed to see Colleen. He needed to fix this shit between them before he could fully concentrate on anything else. There was too much going on. He felt like he was losing his mind. He needed her. She was his stabilizer.

  “Leave?” Crow said as the crowd of men began to rumble. Coyote scanned the men’s faces, letting his eyes rest on his son’s for several seconds. He wondered if Wolf wasn’t thinking about his mother just then…what would he have to say about all of this? If he knew his son as well as he thought he did, he would hear it soon enough. He refocused on Crow and said:

  “I love all of you. I do everything I do, every day, with the ultimate goal of keeping you and your families safe. But yeah…if you don’t like the way I run this club, you can leave. Take your family and whatever you came into this club with and go. Nobody will try to stop you. I’m sure Dax would be happy to have you if you went back East. I’m done talking about this now. Y’all got work to do and I have some things I need to attend to.” He could hear a buzz of voices behind him as he walked out, but he didn’t let his brain process any of the words. He walked out into the great room and over to the bar. He grabbed a bottle of Crown Royal from under the counter and carried it with him, out to his bike. By the time he got up to the house, he had finished almost half of it. He knew he had a problem, but he told himself that he had bigger problems to worry about at that moment. He was going to figure out what to do to save his wife, and his club…and then he’d give some thought to his alcoholism, and his soul.

  25

  Things change. Sometimes they change for the better, and sometimes for the worse…but the bottom line that humans had to accept was that nothing ever stayed the same. One change led to another and then another…and sometimes change gave you something to celebrate, and sometimes, it kicked your ass. That was where Coyote was at on this cold morning in the fall of 2008. He was sitting in the dark, in the empty clubhouse, on a barstool, but he felt like he was lying on his back in the center of the ring and looking up at life. Life was looking down at him, waiting to see if he would get back up, or finally tap out. The idea of tapping out was so tempting. He had made so many changes that he wasn’t even sure who he was any longer…and now, the point of all of those changes was moot.

  Coyote debated going around behind the bar, taking one of the whis
key bottles down, and pouring himself a drink. He had been sober for over two years, and the debate in his head was nothing new. But up until that moment he’d been able to kill that voice in his head quickly, if not easily, by thinking about Colleen. That morning, however, his thoughts of her were only egging him on. He put his head down in his hands and closed his eyes. He knew he should do what he went over to the clubhouse to do…but he was stalling. Instead, he sat there at the bar in the dark and let his mind go back to the catalyst of all the change.

  It was the day that he made the decision to break from the Southies. He did that for his family, but quickly afterwards he had to begin to make even tougher decisions. His “job” didn’t come with medical insurance and the cost of Colleen’s medical treatments, tests, and hospitalizations were going to be astronomical. Her parents were still living. They had retired and were now living in Florida. But Colleen hadn’t wanted them to know about her illness. She was afraid it would kill them, worrying about her. Even if she had told them, Coyote wouldn’t have ever been able to set his pride aside and ask them for a loan. So, he did the only other thing he could do. He found new ways to finance the club, and most importantly, pay for the best medical treatment that was available for Colleen’s disease.

  When Coyote first started the club two and a half decades earlier, he’d done it with the idea that the 1% patch they wore would be more of a symbol of their disdain for “normal” society. He wasn’t an advocate for drugs, or guns, or any of the things that went along with either of those. But he did know that they were both the fastest way to earn a lot of cash and once the financing from Boston was gone, cash was what they needed. Thanks to their central location in California, and Coyote’s contacts from the old days when he was with Doc and even some from his days of working for Slinko, the Westside Skulls rapidly became major players in both the drug and gun-smuggling businesses. They were doing business with dangerous men that the club had spent years avoiding…but he’d said it to his men and he had to say it to himself sometimes a dozen times a day…you do what you have to do, to take care of your family.

  They were supplying most of the guns in the valley now and Coyote was smart enough to know that the longer he played with fire, the worse he would get burned in the end. They had managed to stay off the radar of law enforcement for a long time thanks to their long-term reputation as being “legitimate,” so he tried not to spend too much energy worrying about that, but that was changing too. The local police noticed the changes in the club’s numbers when Coyote started patching in a handful of ex-military men, and he also opened his doors to some of the men who had grown weary of the mess in Boston and were looking for a home that wasn’t under siege all the time. Coyote knew they were being watched, so they did their best to look like choirboys in public…but still, shit happened.

  They had attracted a lot of unwanted attention just a few weeks earlier and Coyote was holding his breath, waiting for the fallout of that to crush them. Manson had taken a group out on what was supposed to be a “routine” gun sale to a local street gang. The guys had picked up the guns near the Oregon border and that had all gone off without a hitch. But the gang in question had shown up with the idea of screwing the club out of thousands of dollars, and that hadn’t gone well. There had been a shootout and one of the gangsters died. Coyote’s men and the gangbangers scattered when the police began to arrive, but one of his newest recruits had been caught. Bruf and Wolf both said that they tried to go back and help him, but by that time the cops already had him and now Coyote had to wait and see just how loyal young Mouse would be when the DA started offering him deals. Coyote thought about paying someone to make contact with the kid in county jail and either pay him off or put the fear of God in him, but he decided that might just make matters worse. Coyote and several of his men had already been interviewed by the police and they had all denied any knowledge of the gun buy that day, or the murder. They basically left Mouse to take the fall, and that sucked. Coyote felt like shit about abandoning the kid…but he had to look at the big picture.

  “Dad?” The sound of Wolf’s voice brought him back to the moment, and the harsh reality of what he’d come over to the club to do. “Why are you sitting here in the dark?” Coyote saw his son’s brown eyes scan the counter in front of him. He was looking for the bottle. Wolf didn’t have any more faith in him than he did in himself, but in a few minutes none of that would matter. He was sure that once he told his son what he came to tell him, Wolf would gladly share a bottle.

  Coyote cleared his throat and said, “Have a seat, son.”

  Wolf sat on one of the stools with his long legs stretched out in front of him. Coyote didn’t often think about what a good-looking kid his son was, but at that moment he looked at him and he wondered what Wolf’s children might look like someday and if he would be around to see them for himself. He didn’t even have a steady girlfriend yet and although he was discreet about it, Coyote knew he spent a lot of time with Trisha. There wasn’t much that went on in his club that Coyote didn’t know. He had found himself actually wishing one day that Wolf would get her pregnant. That would be an odd wish for a man if his wife weren’t dying. One of Colleen’s biggest regrets was that she wouldn’t live to see her grandchildren born. Since Trisha was the closest thing to an old lady that his son seemed to have, he often wished she would just get pregnant so that Colleen could at least get to meet one of Wolf’s babies, but Coyote suspected Trisha was too smart for that.

  “Is Mom okay?” After almost two years of remission, Colleen’s cancer came back. It was about three months ago and because the doctors said that there was no hope even if they treated it again, she had refused to put herself through all of it again. The treatments were worse than the disease, and as much as Coyote and Wolf didn’t want to accept that she was dying, they couldn’t blame her for that. She finally told her parents, and they came out and visited for almost a month. Coyote was glad to see them go a few weeks before, but now he was feeling guilty about that because the next time they came out, it would be for her funeral.

  “No, son. She had an awfully bad day yesterday. Trisha is with her now, but the nurse was here earlier. She gave her a lot of pain medicine and she says that it won’t be more than a day or two.” Coyote had practiced that, but he still didn’t get through it without choking up. Wolf didn’t say a word, but he had tears running slowly down his face. Coyote realized not for the first time that as sorry as he felt for himself, if life would have spared his son…it could have fucked him all it wanted to.

  Wolf finally wiped at his face and stood. “I’m going to go up and see her.” Coyote nodded, and Wolf started for the door. Coyote was already giving the bottles on the wall behind the counter a closer look when Wolf stopped and said, “Are you coming?” It was only the thought of his son finding him there drunk, and having to tell him that she was gone, that got him up off the stool and following Wolf out the door.

  Coyote slid off his bike at the cemetery, wishing that he’d taken another swig from his flask. Colleen had been gone for two days and he had spent most of that time sipping whiskey and pretending that he was paying attention to the funeral arrangements. He was careful not to take in too much alcohol at once, since his body wasn’t used to it. He wanted nothing more than to be drunk off his ass…and numb… but he had to think about what that would do to his son. Wolf needed him to at least be present…but present had been as much as he could manage. Manson had helped Wolf with the arrangements and Granite had written the checks. The girls had all pitched in to make food and set up for the wake afterwards, and every man in the club had asked what he needed…what they could do. The support was both touching and annoying. All he really wanted was to be alone. He wanted to curl up in the bed they had shared for over twenty-five years and drown in his memories…and a bottle. Instead, here he was about ready to watch his lifeline be put into the ground while people who could never begin to imagine how much he loved her stood by with tears in their eye
s and rolling down their cheeks.

  The little cathedral where they’d had the church service that Colleen’s parents had asked Wolf to set up had been packed with people. Colleen’s relatives were all there and insomuch as they probably all knew who she had spent her life with, they still seemed a bit put off when they finally saw him. When she was alive, Coyote had been more than willing to do whatever he had to, so she could maintain her relationship with her parents, and his son could know his grandparents. But when the rest of her family was involved, aunts, uncles, cousins…he always begged off, and Colleen had let him get away with it. At least Wolf had met most of them…when he was a lot younger anyway. Coyote had stood back there and let his son do the greetings and shake the hands and accept the condolences. His own hands were shaking too hard to touch anyone else’s.

  Once the long, almost excruciating service was over, most of the relatives left and everyone else had gone out to the cemetery for the good old-fashioned biker funeral. The Westside guys had led the hearse on their bikes, with Wolf and Coyote in the lead. Coyote saw a group of bikes fall in behind the car as they turned a corner, but he didn’t realize until they got to the cemetery…that it was the Southies. He had managed a quick swig out of his flask while Wolf went over and greeted them first, but he wasn’t going to get out of this one.

  He saw Dax first as he walked over toward them. He hadn’t seen the boy in three years and even after all this time it still shocked his system a little to see Doc’s eyes looking out of his face. Doc had been gone for over six years now, but the last time Coyote saw him seemed like only yesterday. He wondered many times what Doc would think of the rift between the clubs. But the truth was that he knew what he would have thought…and he knew that Doc would have never been as nice about it as Dax had. Dax broke from the group and approached Coyote first, away from the others. He had genuine sympathy on his face when he said, “I was so sorry to hear about Colleen. The last I heard, she was getting better. I’m sorry that I didn’t reach out to you while she was sick.” Coyote’s eyes filled with tears again. The boy had his father’s face, wit, and intelligence…but that was his mother’s heart beating inside of his chest. Dallas would have been so proud of him. Coyote opened his arms and Dax hugged him.