by CM Genovese
The Black Volga.
Hearing that term come from someone else, someone who didn’t know me, made my heart thunder in my chest. This bitch knew what was going on.
She said her curse. Is it her curse doing this to me? Is she the reason I keep seeing that fucking car?
“Your curse?” I asked, raising my gun and pointing it at her.
She suddenly cackled with laughter and started rattling off something in her native language.
“What is she saying?” I asked, turning the gun on the young man who cowered under its aim. “Tell me what she’s fucking saying.”
“Is everything okay back there?” Maxim called out from the bar.
“It’s fine!” I yelled, then turned my attention back to the creepy bastard translating for this old bitch.
“She said the baby’s blood would have ended it. That was the curse. All she required was the baby’s blood, but now the Black Volga is after you, and it won’t stop.”
“Get rid of the curse,” I hissed at the old woman. “Turn it off. End it. Whatever you did, undo it.”
The old woman cackled again.
“She said—” the young man started.
I pointed my gun in his face and said, “I don’t give a fuck what she said. You tell her to fix whatever she did. This isn’t my curse to be carrying around. I don’t want to see that fucking car anymore.”
The old lady continued laughing. She’d drawn the attention of everyone at the bar.
“Yo, Pipe, you need help over there?” BP asked.
“I am sure everything is okay,” Maxim said.
She kept laughing and mumbled more fucked-up words through her outburst.
“She said the curse is yours. She created it for a man a long time ago. He wanted vengeance against the man who’d wronged him. The Black Volga was coming to take the baby as payment. You took the baby. Now you owe that debt.”
“Fuck you,” I shouted at him. I turned to the old woman and shouted, “And fuck you too, you old bitch! Fuck you and your curse.”
I walked past the bar and out the door, into the cold Alaskan air, and stood in the parking lot. A minute later, BP and the others came out.
“What the hell’s wrong with you?” BP asked.
“That Russian bitch put a hex on me,” I said.
The guys all started laughing.
“Really? That’s it?” Slitz asked. “Russian bitches put hexes on me all the time. I’m pretty sure Lena’s gonna put a Polish one on me at some point too.”
It was all fun and games to my brothers, but I knew this was much more. Car lights shined into the parking lot as a car turned onto the street beside the bar, and until it passed, I thought it might be the Black Volga.
19
Tayla helped me that night. If it weren’t for her, I probably would have lost it. She sat in a hot shower with me, facing me, with water running down us both, and for the first time in a long time I was terrified I was going to fuck something up. Now that I had her, I was afraid of losing her. Half my life I’d used violence to take what I wanted. She was the only thing, the only one, who’d escaped me. She was the one who’d undo me now if she left.
There, facing each other, with water streaming down both our faces, I knew more than ever what I wanted.
“I know what Cubby said about you and the kids not staying here at the MC, but for now, I’d like you guys to stick around. I feel like it’s not safe out there for you.”
“We’re fine. John would never—”
“Tay, please. Something happened tonight. You remember that black car I mentioned. The one I keep seeing everywhere.”
“Yes, I remember.”
“Tonight, I met an old lady – a witch. Remember what I told you about my girlfriend, Holly, being murdered? There was some kind of curse put on the people she was delivering the pizza to. She, or we, got in the way. This witch, she wanted their baby.”
Tayla didn’t respond with words. Instead, she slid closer to me so that her thighs were over mine, her ass still against the tub, and she held my hands.
“I saw the baby alone, so I took it and gave it to some guy outside when I went after the two Samoan guys in the parking lot.”
“The guys you killed with the hammer.”
I nodded. “This old lady, this witch or whatever, she said the curse passed to me when I took the baby from them. I upset the balance or some shit.”
“You don’t believe her,” she said, and when I didn’t answer right away, she added, “do you?”
“I’m seeing that fucking car everywhere I go,” I said, and I hated the weakness in my voice.
I wasn’t afraid for myself. I could die tonight and be fine with it. It was Tayla and the kids I was worried about. What if the curse meant one of them would be taken from me?
“She’s full of shit, Pipe,” Tayla assured me. “None of that stuff is real. Hexes and all that. We’re not in Haiti or Jamaica or Mexico. We’re not in Russia, baby. This is America. We’re in fucking Alaska for God’s sake.”
I nodded, but her words weren’t comforting me. She hadn’t seen the nun in that apartment so many years ago, she hadn’t seen the nun scoop that kid up off the street or follow that kid down the hallway at Carla’s apartment building. She wasn’t having the nightmares where Caleb disappeared in that car.
“It’s real,” I said. “I feel it in my bones.”
“So how do we end this curse?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
“I’m with you, baby. You saved me from John. You were brave enough to face my dad. We’re going to get through this together. Maybe we need to talk to someone.”
“Like a shrink?”
She didn’t answer.
“I’m not seeing a fucking shrink.”
After a moment of silence and seeing the concern on her face, I pulled her up onto my lap.
“Come here,” I said.
I’d never cared much for sex in water. It was never as easy as it seemed on TV, but after working my way inside her, Tayla sat down on my cock and gasped a spray of water against my ear. There, under the hot stream of water, we made love.
The next day, I felt the urge to find the young man the baby had grown into. Tracking him down took a little bit of work. Cassie helped. She had quite a few connections in the system being a social worker. Through some networking and digging, she was able to find out that he’d been adopted by his aunt and uncle in Wasilla. His name was Matthew Pride, and he was a few months shy of sixteen years old. On summer break, he was already practicing for his sophomore year playing football at Wasilla High School.
It was mid-afternoon when I hopped on my bike and headed to Wasilla. Tayla refused to let me go alone, so I had company on the forty-five-minute ride.
Football practice was ending when we arrived at the field. All the boys were on one knee encircling their coaches. Having played a little ball myself, I knew there’d be talk of how they were doing good but needed to step it up a bit at tomorrow’s practice. They’d have big competition this year. For the older kids, college scouts would be watching from the stands. This was the time to iron out all the wrinkles, grease the squeaky wheels, and expel all the junk food and other bad habits they may have partaken in earlier that summer.
“I can’t even imagine going to school up here,” Tayla said. “It took me forever to get used to the long days of summer and even longer nights in winter. It must suck playing in the cold all the time.”
“It’s not that cold,” I told her. “I mean it is, but once you hit somebody out there on the field, your body warms up, and it’s all good from there. You end up sweating just like kids playing down in Nashville.”
She held onto my arm and rubbed it.
“Are you going to talk to him?” she asked as we stared at the boys through the chain link fence surrounding the practice field. “Do you even know which one he is?”
“That one,” I said, pointing at a kid who was guzzling water from a sports bo
ttle. The back of his jersey read: Pride.
“Good looking kid,” she said.
“Seems to be doing okay.”
By saving his life, you’ve put a curse on yours.
I had to wonder why it seemed to start up so recently. I’d saved this kid’s life almost sixteen years ago. I seemed to start having these nightmares about the Black Volga right around the time Beezus got shot up and almost died. I wondered if my own guilt brought it on. All the negativity I started having in my mind about his near death being my fault and me not being able to be a father to my kid… that had to be it.
I was so down on myself. Caleb was six, but it hadn’t really started to bother me until recently. Watching him grow up and play with his sister and seeing the excitement in his eyes whenever I showed up at the park… the curse came back at that time.
“You upset the balance many years ago. The price was the baby. Maybe now it will be yours.”
Maybe now it would be mine. My baby. My child.
Fuck.
“What?” she asked.
“We have to go. I want Caleb and Myra both at the clubhouse. No more debating it. For now, I need them safe.”
“That’s no life for them, Pipe. We’ve discussed this.”
“I know, but please. The curse. I think it could have something to do with my son.”
“Caleb?” her voice squeaked as she said his name.
“Yeah. We need to go get him now.”
20
We left Wasilla and I never got the chance to talk to the kid. Now that I knew where he was, I’d have to come back another day. He was better off not knowing me anyway. Aunt Jamie wasn’t thrilled about giving up the kids to us, but Tayla rather rudely reminded her whose children they were. I’d taken one of the pickup trucks to go get them, so they both sat squished between us on the way back to the clubhouse.
On the way home, we stopped by a playground in Eagle River, closer to the MC than the one in Tayla’s old neighborhood. I wanted to show her that we could still get the kids out of the house and allow them to play outdoors. Bringing them to the MC wasn’t the end of the world. If anything, they’d have a lot more friends around. Most of the guys loved kids. Especially Nugget. He was like a big kid himself.
I spun the kids on one of those carousels that practically rips your head off your neck when spun too fast. Of course, I kept it going slow enough to give them a bit of a scare but not so fast it would whip them right off. Tayla and I pushed them both on the swings. When they were tired and wanted to sit in the grass for a little while, Tayla pulled me aside.
“I need to know what you meant about the curse being put on Caleb,” she said. “Tell me my son is not in danger.”
“I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “The witch said the price was the baby and now might be mine. I didn’t get it at first but when we were out there in Wasilla, it dawned on me that she could have meant ‘mine’ as in ‘my baby.’”
“Pipe.”
“We will keep him safe. Both of them. It’s only a precaution. I can’t help them at Jamie’s house, and I can’t help them at your house.”
She nodded. “I trust you.”
Later that evening, I watched the kids adapt to their surroundings. Caleb was fascinated by the pool table. He would take all the balls out of the pockets and then one by one fling them back in. Myra sat on the floor and watched a cartoon BP put on the big screen TV for her.
“They’re going to be okay,” I told Tayla.
She smiled back at me. “They will, won’t they?”
“There’s no place safer.”
“I believe you.”
“And they’ll never be more spoiled. Watch. I bet half of these guys bring them a toy at some point. They’ll be the niece and nephew these guys never get to be around.”
As if on cue, Nugget walked into the room and handed a toy machine gun to Caleb. My son’s eyes lit up like he’d received the best gift in the world. He grabbed the gun and pulled the trigger, watching the end of it light up as it made a mechanical shooting sound. The boy didn’t say a word, and he didn’t have to because his face said it all.
“What do we say?” Tayla asked.
“Thank you… um… thank you Mr. …”
“Nugget,” his mom filled him in.
“Thank you, Mr. Nugget.”
Nugget patted him on the head and then walked over to little Myra, who was glued to the scene of clownfish Marlon dropping Nemo off at school his first day. She didn’t even notice the big biker when he sat down next to her on the floor and started watching the movie by her side. As he watched, he nonchalantly handed her a stuffed monkey. She took it and kept watching. After at least a full minute, she looked down at it and smiled. She squeezed it and its nose lit up. She giggled.
“You like it?” Nugget asked.
She nodded excitedly.
“It’s yours.”
“Tank you,” she said, unable to pronounce her “th” sound at such a young age.
This was the first night in forever that I’d seen the MC completely chill. There was no party. It was a night where everyone unwound. BP and Toni sat on the couch and watched family movies with us. Slitz even sat on the floor with his back against the couch. Lena was between his legs. Rain and Cassie turned up too.
Nobody complained about the slower pace. This hadn’t happened many times in the past and I didn’t imagine it would many times in the future, but this one night we were truly a family doing things families did all the time. BP ordered pizza for us all, Cassie and Tayla made popcorn and kettle corn. Cracker baked brownies.
Everyone fell asleep in front of the TV.
Carla wouldn’t let a bullet wound slow her down. She’d promised Paddy’s family she was going to get the place modernized, and I found out over the phone that she was checking herself out of the hospital earlier than expected so she could get back to work.
BP had everyone right back at the pub helping her out the same night she left the hospital. When I arrived there, without Tayla, Slitz was working on the damaged bar top. Oosik was back to putting Kale on his lap. Beezus was working with a friend of his to reupholster the seats that had been shot up. Two contractors were busy repairing the shattered windows. BP walked around and supervised it all. Carla sat at a high-top stool and took to-go orders while Tommy and Finn did whatever it was Tommy and Finn did. It seemed those two did little more than sip beer and talk shit to each other.
It was business as usual.
It didn’t matter to me that BP thought things had calmed down with the Russians. In my opinion, we should have shot every last one of them that night. BP wasn’t foolish enough to truly believe there’d be good relations between us and those cocksuckers, but he seemed to think all the recent mess had blown over. Still, I didn’t want Tayla anywhere near the pub.
The grand reopening was coming up in a few days. Tomorrow night, I was expected to get in the ring and fight Fetu ‘Two-Punch’ Leota. For what again? For the pride of my club? No. To prove I didn’t kill his cousin? I don’t know. To protect the pub? A pub that had already been shot up? To be honest, I wasn’t sure what I was fighting for anymore, but I knew I needed to get in that ring. To back out now would have me looking like a pussy. Slitz had agreed to fight that night too since he was always trying to get me to join him in battle. He was set to fight whoever signed up at his weight. If the guys in the crowd knew better, they’d back out and leave his 220-pound ass alone in the center of the ring.
“How are you feeling?” I asked as I approached Carla.
“Oh, you know. Just hangin’ on like a hair in a biscuit.”
“What the fuck?” I couldn’t help but laugh. I’d never heard that expression before but damn if a hair didn’t hold on to a biscuit. The last time Cracker served biscuits I’d found a hair in mine.
Carla laughed with me. “Better than I did yesterday. Not as good as I’ll feel tomorrow, I reckon.”
“I hear ya. I’m supposed to fight tomor
row and I’m just not feeling it. I haven’t even had time to train with all the bullshit that’s gone on.”
“Back out of it, Pipe,” she said. “You don’t need to prove anything.”
“You heard that asshole. He said they’d visit the pub if I didn’t.”
She put her forehead on my shoulder. “And then they hit us anyway.”
“I don’t think that was Fetu. He’s not a damn gangster. He’d probably never really hit this place, but why take the chance? If I win, I get bragging rights. If he wins, I’ll get an ass whoopin’, recover, and be back here having a Coke and a whiskey later that night.”
“How did we get here?” she asked. “It’s crazy to think I was serving food and minding my own business. Then they robbed me, and it all got crazy. I didn’t ask for that. I don’t bother anybody.”
Her eyes welled up with tears.
“Good people get hurt all the time,” I reminded her, “and the assholes go on unfazed. It’s the way this fucked-up world works. Wickedness triumphs.”
“Good wins sometimes, right?”
“God, I hope so.”
“You only need to believe in it,” she said. “I don’t care what’s done to me. I believe we’ll finish this pub, and life will go on mighty fine.”
“I wish I had your optimism.” I thought about the game I watched Caleb playing in the park. “Sometimes it kind of feels like the ground is lava.”
“Huh?” she asked.
“Like the game kids play. It sometimes feels like no matter where you step, you’re bound to get burned.”
“I think you’ll find that more often than not, it’s just solid ground,” Carla replied. With her head still resting on my shoulder, she clasped my bicep and gave it a squeeze. “You’re a good man, Pipe,” she said. “Remember that. You might do some mean things, but you’ve got a good heart.” She didn’t know about the hex on me, the curse on my son. “It’ll all work out,” she assured me.