Then he got fed up with it all, and figured that even if he didn’t actually commit suicide, there were other ways of making sure life didn’t last long. Mexico seemed like a good place to drink yourself to death in a fairly cheap way. He just had to make sure someone shipped him back to Seattle to be buried next to Trudy and Lorna once he died. So he headed towards Mexico, and that was how he ended up in Greenville.
He walked into the bar and immediately noticed a group of men in cuts sitting around a table. It wasn’t a huge surprise because he’d seen the bikes with their mark outside. During the two years on the road and with different MC clubs, he’d learned how to behave around them. So he gave them a respectful nod to acknowledge their presence before sitting down to order a beer and a burger.
Once he’d finished his second beer, one of the guys sat down in front of him. When Sisco once again gave him a nod, he extended his hand, and Sisco took it.
“I’m Brick,” the guy said. “Is that your Ironhead out there?”
“Yeah,” Sisco nodded.
“Nice bike.”
“Thanks,” he said and tried to smile, but those muscles hadn’t been used much lately, and he suspected he mostly looked uncomfortable. “I saw your rides, too. There were some really nice ones there, especially the Ironhead Bobber.”
“That’s mine,” Brick smiled. “Where are you heading?”
“Mexico.”
“Got someone waiting for you there?”
He hadn’t known it at the time, but once he got to know Brick, he realized Brick had been onto him within five minutes. He’d known Sisco was a mess. It could’ve just been some brotherly bond between Ironhead-owners, but Brick had thought he could fit in if he cleaned up his act. But at the time, Sisco had tried to keep up his act.
“No. Just thought I’d see the sights.”
“So, Ironhead, got a name?”
“Sisco.”
“As in Cisco the Kid?”
It happened every time, and every time he heard it in Trudy’s voice and a chill went down his spine. Yet it never occurred to Sisco to say his real name. He liked that feeling, and he liked hearing Trudy’s voice, even if it was just inside his own head. His reply was a reflex.
“No, as in a small commune on Corsica. Sisco with an S.”
“Fuck!” Brick stared at him and started to laugh. “I bet there’s a really good story behind that.”
Sisco almost threw up. There was only one person who’d said that before, and now it was like he could fucking hear her giggling next to him. Until that moment, he hadn’t truly thought she was watching over him. He’d hoped, but right then it felt as real as it ever had, or ever would. That Trudy, in some way, was still with him and watching over him. He couldn’t reply, but that didn’t stop Brick for a second.
“We’re on our way to the clubhouse. If you tag along we’ll get you some beer, pot, and maybe some tail to go with that.”
He nodded, still slightly dumbstruck, and got up from behind the table. As if on cue, the rest of the patches got up and followed them outside. It wasn’t that fucking odd. He’d been picked up for clubhouse parties in similar ways a few times. If you showed them you knew the code by acting in the right way, it happened. At least if they sat down with you and got a good feeling about you. They took you to the clubhouse, got you drunk as fuck and stoned as hell to get to know you properly. Sisco knew the drill and drunk as fuck sounded pretty nice to him.
His heart almost stopped when he walked into the clubhouse and heard that the song ‘Trudy’ was playing.
“You okay, kid?” Brick asked as he clapped his hand on Sisco’s shoulder. “You look like you just saw a ghost.”
“I kind of did, and she was a bit too fucking obvious.”
“Maybe you’ll tell me about her along with how you got named after a small commune on Corsica.”
“I’ll tell you about Corsica, but she’s a bit harder to talk about,” he admitted.
Brick just nodded. “Okay. I get that.”
It hadn’t taken Brick long to get the full story from him. About as long as it took Sisco to decide that the Marauder Riders MC was the kind of club he could imagine staying with.
What really made him decide was when Brick said he was welcome to stay, but that they weren’t looking for suicide bombers. They wanted loyal members who worked for the club, and not members who were working towards their own death.
He liked the atmosphere; it truly felt like a family, and Sisco knew better than most that family wasn’t just about blood. He made sure to keep in touch with his other family, and Jane came to visit him pretty often. Whenever Riot Act had a gig close by, he went to see them and hung out with them a little. There were others he kept in touch with for a while, even Laurie and Casey. They’d quickly had two more boys, then he sort of lost contact with them, but Jane kept him updated.
Once they’d gotten his full story, Brick, Bear, and Bull never held it against him that he avoided the kids around the clubhouse, and there were a lot of kids there. Not at the parties, but pretty much any other time of the day. When kids were born, he stayed the fuck away from the hospital, and if anyone questioned it or made any comments about it, he said it was between him and Brick. If they had a problem with it, he was available to talk it over with them in the ring. No one ever had a problem after that.
When Brick hung the patch over Sisco’s shoulders, eighteen months after they’d met at that bar, it had felt like coming home again. A different home, and a different kind of family, but a family nonetheless.
EPILOGUE:
She Was My Wife
-o0o—
Present day, Greenville, Arizona
Sisco saw Jane the second he walked through the doors of the bar he’d stopped at for a beer and burger on his way to Mexico years earlier. A lot had happened since then, to her, him, and to the music scene that once had been his entire life.
He’d noticed that the bands that made it, which were still going strong, were the bands that had quickly turned away from the labels’ demands. The ones who kept their friends around instead of the label reps—bands like Riot Act. Or the smaller bands who stuck to their own way through it all, who saw early on what happened to other bands when they got their big break. A lot of those were still recording albums and touring.
He still talked to Pete regularly, and they met up for a beer or he went to see Riot Act when they had gigs close by—and he still thought they were amazing. So some things didn’t change.
A few years earlier, Jonah had told him he was the one who had bought all of Trudy’s paintings from their house. He hadn’t liked the idea of Trudy’s private paintings with some stranger in a suit, and he could afford it, but he’d told Sisco that if he wanted them, all he had to do was say the word. As far as Jonah was concerned those paintings belonged to Sisco. Sisco’d been touched by the gesture and knew that the painting of Trudy’s blue ass was among them. For a second, he’d thought about taking it but had changed his mind. Instead he’d asked Jonah to hang on to at least that until Sisco was ready for it.
He’d called Jonah a few months earlier to let him know he wanted it, and that was one of the reasons Jane had come to see him.
When she stood up from her chair to meet up with him in the middle of the seedy pub, he laughed. She was wearing a gray striped skirt and a matching suit jacked with a crisp white shirt underneath it.
“Is that what you wear to a date with an outlaw biker?” he asked as he gave her a tight hug. Then he kissed her cheek. “It’s good to see you, hottie.”
“Good to see you, too, stud,” she mumbled against his chest.
Jane had done well for herself. She had started an art gallery in Seattle the year after he’d left. She was now one of the big art connoisseurs of the northwest, making tons of money that she pumped into whatever charity she felt deserved it. Most of them good ones, from what he could tell. A lot of them worked to support young women from bad circumstances who wanted to make it in the
art business—girls like Trudy. He had to love that.
“I brought the painting from Jonah,” she said and stepped back to hand him a wrapped package. “He said this was the one you’d asked for. A blue ass-print? Hardly one of her best.”
“It’s Trudy’s ass,” he said with a smile and leaned the painting against the table as he sat down.
“Hang on, is this is the painting you guys fucked on?”
“That’s the one.”
“All good?” she asked and studied him closely. He’d never lied to her, and he wasn’t about to fucking start now. And he wanted to talk to her about it.
“I don’t know. You know that girl—Violet?”
He’d told Jane about everyone in the club, and she’d met most of them, too. She was the only one who knew why Vi was special to him.
“Your friend’s daughter, the tattoo artist?”
“Yeah, her. She had a baby today.”
“Oh. Now I feel old.” Jane took a sip of her beer. “Well, maybe that’s a sign it’s time. A lot of water under the bridge, and shit like that.”
And shit like that. A lot of the things from back then had been resolved. Not everything, but some of them.
The Green River Killer had been caught, and more importantly, so had Letty’s killer. Almost a decade after the murder, a guy down south on the west coast had been taken in by the cops for some weird, random reason, and they had taken his DNA—it had matched the DNA found on Letty’s body. Like they’d hoped, it had been a random killing by a complete psycho who’d just been passing through Seattle. It didn’t really help them that much later, but it was still a relief to know for sure it wasn’t one of their own who’d done it.
But Jane had a point.
“Maybe it is,” he agreed.
-o0o—
A few hours later, after he’d left Jane at his place, he walked into the hospital room he’d found out was Violet’s. She was alone with the baby in her arms, but he assumed Mac wasn’t far away. It would surprise him if he was, and he wanted to get this off his chest as quickly as possible. He wasn’t sure he’d be able to if Mac was in the room with them.
“Hey, girl,” he said with a smile and gave her cheek a kiss. “All good?”
“Very good. I think I’m high on something,” Vi smiled with a look at the baby. “I can’t even feel any pain.”
“That’s good.” He sat down and took a deep breath. “Hey, remember the Seattle artist you told me about last time you did some ink on me?”
“What?” she asked and looked at him with a confused expression. “Oh! Trudy Evans?”
“Yeah. She was my wife.”
“I didn’t know that.” Vi stared at him with wide eyes. “I’m so sorry.”
“Thanks. She… She died when she was pregnant. Was hit by a car. Our baby girl died the next day.”
“Oh my god! I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.” She kept looking at him, and he noticed the first tear running down her cheeks. He hadn’t meant to make her cry. “That’s why you don’t…”
“Yeah. That’s why I don’t hang around for births, but I thought it was time to make a change now.”
“Why me? I mean… why now?”
“My baby girl, Lorna, would’ve been around your age. If it’s been long enough for me to possibly be a granddad, I should be able to… I don’t know. Guess I just thought it was time. A lot of things have happened—good and bad.”
“Sorry,” she said and wiped her eyes. “I’m just a blubbering mess. I have been for months.”
“I remember Trudy being like that when she was pregnant,” he said with a laugh. “Her eyes were leaking worse than our basement.”
“Basement?”
“Sorry. Seattle joke.”
“Lorna, that was her name?”
“Yes.”
“It’s a nice name.”
“It really isn’t,” he chuckled. “But thanks.”
“Do you have her name tattooed, too?” she asked, and when he looked at her, she shrugged. “Sorry. None of my business.”
“No, I don’t. I never… got around to have it done, I guess.”
“Let me know if want it. I’d be honored to do it. Just between the two of us.”
“Thanks, girl. I’ll think about it.”
She looked down at the baby in her arms. “Wanna hold him?”
He hesitated for a while. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d held a baby, and frankly wasn’t sure he’d done it since he’d held Lorna. He must’ve, at least once, but he wasn’t sure.
“Yeah,” he said and stood up. “Looks like a sturdy kid. How the hell did you manage to grow that big thing in your tiny little body?”
“Dad said the same thing, just before cracking jokes about him being bald.”
Sisco laughed and then drew a breath as he put his arm under the little body. The baby might have looked sturdy, but he didn’t weigh much. He sat back down on the chair and looked at the sleeping bundle in his arms.
He still missed Trudy and the baby girl he had never gotten to know—every single day. He knew he would until the day he died, but he’d learned to live with it. Even if there was pain, there were other things as well. Lately, the memories of her were good memories, something he enjoyed, rather than just making him feel bad. He knew he was lucky to have found someone like that; not everyone did. He’d met his perfect match, the one that was for life. It was just that her life had ended a lot earlier than his. That didn’t make it any less perfect.
He also knew he was lucky to have found another new family. In a way, he’d had three families in his life, and even if the first one had been more than a little shit, it was still something. It might not be what he’d wanted, but he knew that life had dealt him his hand, and all he could do was make the best of it.
He looked at Vi and smiled to assure her that he was more or less okay.
“So, what are you gonna call this sturdy little fella?”
THE END
-o0o—
About the author:
Lina Andersson was born and raised as far up north as you can go in Sweden. The long, dark winters were made for reading and writing, which is pretty much all she ever did. In her early twenties, she packed up her husband and son and moved to the slightly warmer climate of southern Sweden, where they still live, more than a decade later. When she’s not writing, she’s an avid gamer and film geek.
The Marauders series, books
Book One: Arrow of Time
Book Two: Perfect Collision
Book Three: Center of Gravity, not yet released
Novellas:
S-Duality
For more information: http://tfcpress.wordpress.com/
S-Duality: A Marauders Novella Page 11