Leave a Trail

by Susan Fanetti

  “Oh. My. God.” On instinct, she lifted her camera.

  “Hey, Buck. How’s it goin’?”

  A tall, deeply wrinkled old man with darkly ruddy skin and a short shock of snow-white hair looked up from behind the counter, where he was pulling something from the case. “Badger. Good to see you. It’s goin’ like it always goes.”

  “You mind if my lady takes some pictures of the store?”

  “Reckon that’s okay. Not sellin’ ‘em or nothin’, though, yeah?”

  Badger looked at Adrienne. She shook her head. She had no one to sell them to. She just wanted to remember what she was seeing.

  “No sir. She just likes the place. This is Adrienne, by the way. Adrienne Renard, Buck Malone.”

  “Hi, Buck.”

  Buck dropped his head in a courtly nod. “Young lady. Let me know if you need somethin’.”

  “I will, thanks.”

  The first thing that greeted them was an ancient soda cooler—a big, red chest with the Coca-Cola label emblazoned across the front and a bottle opener built into the side. She lifted the lid—it was operating, and cold steam wafted into the air. “There are actual bottles of soda in here!”

  Badger laughed. “Yeah. It’s a soda chest.”

  “I didn’t even know you could still get bottles like this!”

  Adrienne closed the lid and looked around. The store was dimly lit, a few bare bulbs in the ceiling augmenting the natural light from the windows across the front and along one side. The floors and walls were the same rough-hewn wood of the exterior. The other side wall was shelving from floor to ceiling, and the center of the space was taken up by rows of tables with shelving built on top. And barrels. There were barrels clustered in one front corner. Full of…nails? Wow.

  The shelves along the wall and in the center were stacked with jeans, plaid and chambray shirts, bandanas, and other kinds of fabric goods, and then canned goods and boxed foods. There were shelves of identical work boots. A topper in the center was stacked with cowboy hats and trucker caps. Another was paper—stationery, envelopes, old-fashioned ledger books, greeting cards and postcards.

  The sales counter was a long, framed-glass case, filled with brightly colored candies and cheap plastic toys—and an array of tobacco products. A man in a brown twill shirt and faded jeans, sagging in the butt, wearing a dirty and misshapen straw cowboy hat, was paying for a new bag of chewing tobacco. He handed his money to Buck, who rang the sale into an ornately cast brass cash register.

  Seriously. This place could not possibly exist in the twenty-first century. They had to have crossed through some kind of portal.

  She pulled on Badger’s arm. “How does this place stay in business?”

  Badger laughed. “Low overhead, I guess. And a lot of the stock’s been here for a while. Everybody around knows about Malone’s, though, so he does okay. I’ve never been in here when there wasn’t somebody else here, too. Look down to the back of the store.”

  She did. “Is that an ice cream counter?”

  “Yeah. Buck’s old lady, Opal, runs it. Makes the ice cream. Lotta people come for that. You want a root beer float for lunch?”

  It was all she could do to refrain from happy dancing right there in the middle of this time capsule of a shop. “That would be awesome! I want to take pictures first—and could we have our floats outside, under that tree?”

  “I don’t see why not.” He kissed her cheek. “I’m gonna go talk to Buck. You take all the pictures you want. You need to pee, right? There’s a little john back by the ice cream.”

  With a squeeze of her hand, he walked over to the sales counter and left her to play. She went back and took care of her business in a small but clean and modern-enough bathroom, and then hurried back up front.

  She took lots of photos. Her eye still trained to unsettling juxtapositions, like the old and new she’d found everywhere in Signal Bend, she saw similar kinds of connections all over the shop. Her favorite photo, though, and she knew it when she saw it through the viewfinder: Buck and Badger, leaning on opposite sides of the glass counter, talking. She caught them both looking down into the case—she didn’t think they were actually looking into the case; they were, instead, simply talking quietly. Old Buck, with his short, bright white hair and sun-darkened, deeply lined face, his chambray shirt faded around the imprint of bib overalls, and young Badger, his full beard covering his young, smooth cheeks, his long, auburn ponytail lying straight down his back, over the patch on his kutte. Standing so that she had them slightly backlit by the windows, Adrienne pulled the image in as close as she could and set only those two men in focus, most tightly on their faces.

  ~oOo~

  When she’d taken all the pictures she could, they got their root beer floats, in tall, old-fashioned soda-fountain glasses with striped paper straws and tall spoons, and took them out to the picnic table under the tree. The horse was gone; Adrienne guessed that the man buying chewing tobacco had arrived on horseback.

  They sat together on the same side of the bench, hip to hip, but they didn’t talk much. Adrienne felt sated by the day, full and content. The weather was perfect—a bright, early fall day, a light breeze and a warm sun, the leaves on the trees right at the beginning of their end, a few yellows among the greens. Birds sang, bees buzzed. And she was sitting with the one person she loved above all others. All others. She’d had made the right choice. This life—she was still trying to understand it, but she knew it was where she belonged. At Badger’s side.

  She thought about that strange moment at the tattoo shop the day before, when Red had asked if she had Badger’s ink. Did it mean something that he hadn’t asked her to take his ink? Was that something she should expect him to do, if he meant them to be really serious? Shannon didn’t have any—or, at least, none that she knew of.

  “I need to talk to you about something, babe.”

  With a shake of her head, Adrienne brought herself back to the moment she was in, sitting next to Badger. She ran his words back through her head; they chilled her.

  “What’s wrong?”

  He pushed his half-finished float away and did the same with hers, lifting it gently from her hands. Then he turned toward her and took her hands in his.

  “I love you.”

  Guarded, she smiled. “I know. I love you, too.”

  “I don’t ever want to be with anybody else. I know I couldn’t ever feel like this about anybody else.”

  Her brain leaped out ahead, trying to see where he was going. She stayed quiet, waiting for him to get there and show her. She thought of the night she’d arrived in town, seeing that girl’s head in his lap. He wasn’t telling her that stuff like that was still going on, was he?

  Looking down at their linked hands, he sighed. “Things with the club are about to get bad, I think. Maybe real bad. Like last year. Maybe even worse. So I shouldn’t ask this now. I know that. I’ve been trying not to say anything, because I know it’s not fair. But I have to. If you say no, then I understand. I really do. But Adrienne, you make me strong. You make me feel like I mean something.”

  “Badge, what?”

  He looked up. “I want to put ink on you. My ink. It doesn’t have to be my name. But I want it to be something that everybody knows means you’re mine. Before everything goes to hell, I want that.”

  Because she’d just been wondering about this very thing, and because his roundabout way of getting there had her about two steps from certifiably insane, she laughed. Relief and irony impelled the laughter, but Badger couldn’t know that, and his face went dark with hurt. He tried to pull his hands away, but she tightened her grip.

  “I’m not laughing because I think what you said is funny, Badge. I’m laughing with relief. Yes. I’ll get your ink. I don’t know what you want, and I’d like a say in what it is, but yes.”

  Grabbing her hard and laying her back, his arms supporting her, he kissed her fiercely.

  The rest of what he’d been saying finally ca
ught up and got through. She pushed his head back and looked into his eyes. “Are you saying you might get hurt again? Or worse?”

  He brought a hand forward and cupped her cheek. “Yeah. That’s what I’m saying. We’re going to push back against the guys who killed Hav—the ones who fucked up my chest.

  “What? Why? That’s nuts!”

  Badger shook his head. “I can’t tell you that, babe. It’s important. It’s necessary. We’ll keep you safe. That’s why you’ve been with Double A. But I gotta do this. We all do.”

  “Badge…”

  “This is the life, Adrienne. I can’t change that. If it’s too much, I understand. But before you wear my ink, you need to be sure. Think on it first.”

  She didn’t need to think. She’d done plenty of thinking already. She leaned in and rested her head on his chest. “I am sure. I am. I’m scared, though.”

  “Me, too. Me, too.” He folded her snugly in his strong arms.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  When Isaac came into the clubhouse the morning of their meet with Becker, Show, Len, and Badger were already waiting and ready to go. That was Isaac’s way—impatient with waiting, he liked everybody to be ready when he got there. So Badger expected that the four of them would head out within a minute or two of Isaac’s arrival.

  But he came in looking tired, the lines on his face deeper than usual, and he sat down at the bar. Badger caught Len’s eye—the SAA was surprised, too. All four men sat with their President, waiting to see what was slowing him down.

  “I should call a meeting for this, but I don’t want to get in the way of the meet with Becker. Especially not now. So I’ll tell you, we’ll go, and we’ll bring it to the rest when we get back.”

  Len nodded. “Yeah, boss. Okay.”

  “Got word from Bart. And I talked to Hoosier, too. The Scorpions are broken. The mother charter is folding—what’s left of it. Sam, Ghost, Howler, three others—all dead, the rest wounded. Old ladies, Prospects, too. Shot down in their clubhouse last night.”

  Show was first to react. “Fuckin’ Christ. Perros?”

  “Who else? Don’t know yet if this is somebody actin’ on Sam the way Santaveria wants us to act on Becker and his crew, or if this is just the cartel straight-up. I’d say the former—call it ‘gang-on-gang violence,’ keep the Perro name out of it, and nobody gives much of a shit.”

  Badger was about to give up trying to understand everything that was going on. Still, he had to ask. “But why? Sam was loyal to the cartel.”

  “He was losing control of his West Coast.” Show shook his head as if disgusted by his own words.

  Isaac nodded. “That’s what I’m thinking. We need to keep ourselves extra sharp, and we need to be careful how and where we gather as a whole. For all we know, Santaveria has the same hit out on us.”

  Len put his hand on Isaac’s arm. “Boss, just in case, you and Show can’t both go on this meet now. We need the leaders separate. I’m tellin’ you. It’s too much risk.”

  “I hear you, brother. It a big risk—you’re right. But we can’t bring all this to Becker unless the people he trusts are all there as one. You know that. He’s hearing this news, too, or he will be. He’s going to look twice at us—and he should. Santaveria wants us to take the Bulls out. What happened in Florida doesn’t change our play.”

  Len kept trying. “What if he gave Becker the same order, but for us? Boss, this is a bad idea.”

  When Isaac’s fist landed on the top of the bar, the whole thing shook. “Len, I fuckin’ hear you. We’ll go in knowing that could be true. But what if that’s exactly the fear and mistrust Santaveria is trying to breed? This is the crew for this run. The four of us.” He looked around. “Unless somebody’s backin’ out.”

  Nobody was. Not even Len hesitated, despite his reservations. The four of them left the clubhouse, headed for their bikes, not knowing what the rest of the day would hold.

  ~oOo~

  They met Becker in a small town in northeastern Oklahoma, about a hundred and fifty miles or so from Signal Bend. The Brazen Bulls had a long, steady history with the local Indian tribe, and they met the Horde on tribal lands, as safe as possible from law or other threat. They left their weapons with their bikes.

  Becker approached the meet with caution. Badger felt like he could smell the tension among the eight men arrayed in front of the low, red brick building in which they would meet—a smell like sweat and fire.

  Isaac stepped forward first, his hand extended. “Becker. Brother.”

  “Are we?” Becker was only a few inches shorter than Isaac. He was older and wearier, with thick, silver hair and light eyes that always looked exhausted. He looked like a man tired of his life. He probably was—but he was a hardass, too. Stone cold.

  Leaving his hand out, Isaac answered, “I hope so. We’ve been, a long time. Could use a brother. I think that’s true for you, too.”

  Becker waited two more beats, then shook Isaac’s hand. “We need to be straight, then. Wide open. Yeah?”

  “Agreed.”

  Becker nodded, and they all walked to the building. It was some kind of meeting hall, the space empty but for rolling racks of collapsed tables and chairs. One long table was set up, with eight metal chairs around it. As soon as they got inside, Becker turned to the group.

  “I guess you know the news out of Jacksonville. In the interest of making everybody feel secure, I’m gonna ask that we all strip down, right here. To skin. Turn out our pockets, dump our boots.”

  Isaac stared at Becker, then turned to the Horde and gave a curt nod. Becker started first, then Isaac, and then the men all began to undress. Badger’s heart thudded heavily behind his ruined chest. He had his ink now, and that felt like body armor of a sort, but no one other than family—and the men who had done it to him in the first place—had ever seen his chest.

  When they were all stripped bare, their clothes shaken out, their boots turned over, they stood there, eight scarred men. Badger knew his brothers’ scars, at least those above their waists. They sparred bare-chested in the ring. So he was not surprised by the lattice of destruction across Show’s back, or the ravages of shotgun and scalpel over Isaac’s. Len’s arms and legs were a railroad yard of raised seams.

  They were all replacing their ink to the extent that they could, and they all had new ink that in some way commemorated their struggles. Standing here in the raw, with his brutalized brothers, Badger was overwhelmed by the sudden, complete understanding of what they had been through in the past six years. Their bodies wore it all like a violent cartography. A map drawn in blood and bone.

  The four members present from the Brazen Bulls—a club that had taken its name from medieval torture—stared dumbly at the ravaged Horde. They, too, were scarred. They, too, had paid a toll in blood to the Perro Blanco cartel. But no one had paid the price the Horde had paid.

  Isaac broke the awkward silence. “Okay?”

  Becker nodded, and the men began to dress. “Thank you, brother. Peace of mind is hard to come by in these times.”

  “Let’s talk, Beck. Let’s cut though this crap and just talk.”

  Becker nodded again and gestured toward the table. The eight men sat around it and talked.

  ~oOo~

  When the Horde left tribal lands, they had reaffirmed a brotherhood and had an ally in their war. They also had the seedling of a plan. Not a surefire plan; not even a hopeful plan. A plan to go down taking as many Perros with them as they could—and one in particular. The Scorpions LA, the Brazen Bulls, the Night Horde—together, in total, they were twenty-eight men. Enough to win a battle at the Bulls’ weed pickup in Texas, but nowhere near what they’d need to win the war.

  There was one way. Isaac had seen it.

  Sitting in the tribal meeting hall, Isaac had made it clear that his primary goal was to force another face-to-face meeting with Julio Santaveria. Considering the history, he was gambling that taking down the Perros in Amarillo, with him at the vanguar
d, would do it. And then, face to face with Santaveria, he would kill the man. If he succeeded, then, with Santaveria dead, maybe the Perros would be destabilized enough that the clubs could extricate themselves from their traps and be free.

  There was no way Isaac would come out of that alive, even if he managed to kill his target, and he knew it. Everyone at the table knew it. Show had reacted so violently to the plan that he’d almost ruined the alliance they were there to strengthen.

  Badger wondered if Lilli knew Isaac’s plan. He figured not.

  But he understood. It made his stomach burn and his heart clench, but he understood. Isaac was President, their leader. He took care of his club, his family. He stood at the vanguard. It was his sacrifice to make.

  Now, after a nearly silent supper at a truck stop, they were riding solemnly home. The sun was low behind them, casting a red glow over the blacktop. Traffic was light. Riding at the speed limit, in a loose formation, Badger had let his mind go, thinking about Adrienne, what kind of ink he’d like her to have. He wanted her to have it before they took on the Perros.

  A couple of miles from their off-ramp to home, the red glow got suddenly much more vivid and rhythmic, and Badger turned his head to see the Sheriff’s department cruiser keeping pace behind them, its lights flashing. The siren popped, one brief syllable. Badger looked forward; Isaac was waving them to the side of the road.

  Before they’d even dismounted, a second cruiser pulled to the shoulder behind the first.

  “Jesus fuck,” Isaac muttered. “We’re goin’ in, boys.”

  “On what? We were riding straight.” Badger had not yet ever been arrested. He’d been pulled over and harassed, but he had not been on any of the five runs on which they’d been taken in during the past year and a half—taken in but never processed. Seaver was just fucking with them. He had backed off, though, since the day of the B&B fire. The fire they were sure he’d arranged.

  Show walked over and stood at his side. “Doesn’t matter, Badge. Keep your cool. He’ll bring us in, make us uncomfortable for a few hours, impound our bikes for a day. It’s a pain in the ass, but keep your cool, and keep your mouth shut. Clear?”