Done Dirt Cheap

by Sarah Nicole Lemon

  “What?”

  “Give it to someone . . . ,” Virginia trailed off. She’d heard rumors about the Wardens beating a man nearly to a pulp in state prison, but on the off chance it was solely a rumor, Virginia wanted to tread carefully. If Tourmaline couldn’t get to her mom—or get things to her mom—she would need Virginia.

  Tourmaline narrowed her eyes, staring at Virginia as if trying to figure out what language was being spoken. Suddenly, her eyes widened and she gave a bitter laugh. “Shit, you think because of my dad? Oh, no. No, honey. You been watching too much television.”

  “What? No, that’s not what I meant. Your dad?” Virginia frowned, shifting and crossing her arms. Don’t blush. Don’t blush. Her face stayed clear, but her chest burned hot and panicky. “What are you talking about? Oh my God, did you think I was talking about your dad’s motorcycle gang?”

  “Yeah, um.” Tourmaline rubbed her forehead. “First of all, it’s not a gang. It’s a club.”

  “Oh. Sorry. Club.” Like there was a difference.

  “Second, my dad’s club is not a one-percenter. They don’t do prison shit.”

  Virginia blinked. “Huh?”

  “They’re not criminals.”

  Virginia snorted. “Yeah, okay.” She grinned and put the cigarette to her mouth.

  “I’m serious.”

  “I mean, I get it if this is the party line. But how dumb do I look?”

  “It’s a club with criminals, maybe, yes. But not a criminal club.” Tourmaline said it in this infuriating, deliberate way—as if explaining something to a child. “They’re a club because they really like motorcycles, and brotherhood, and riding together. They support local charities. The Network for Abused Children. That’s their whole thing.”

  Did Tourmaline really believe this? Virginia couldn’t tell. “Oh.” She tried to make it not seem sarcastic.

  “This is all public knowledge. You can tell because they don’t have the diamond patch on the front of their cut, and anything they really do is charity runs.” Tourmaline tapped her left shoulder with a manicured nail.

  Half a second later Virginia realized that by cut, Tourmaline meant the patch-covered leather vest and jacket they all wore. The one with the monster staring back at her as they disappeared around the mountain curves. “So, that’s just you with the smuggling, then, huh?” Virginia winked.

  “Just me,” Tourmaline said flatly.

  If they weren’t criminals, what on earth did Hazard want on them? He didn’t concern himself with civilians except when they were paying fifteen hundred an hour plus a three-thousand-buck retainer. Virginia clawed her hair away from her face, stomach sinking. None of this made sense. “So, you’re saying they’re a bunch of motorcycle grandmas?”

  “I’m saying whatever you’ve heard is bullshit. They aren’t criminals.” The side of Tourmaline’s cheek worked as if she were clenching and unclenching her jaw. “How’s everything going? Still doing the pageant thing?”

  Virginia exhaled. This wasn’t going well. “Yep.”

  “You won Miss Virginia last year, right?”

  “Miss Teen Virginia last year. I quit, though.” Retired was the more accurate word. Hazard had found a younger girl who could still travel around to the out-of-state pageants that brought in the money. It was unclear whether Virginia was being promoted or demoted. A shudder rolled deep in her stomach.

  “Where are you going to school, again?”

  “Not going.”

  Tourmaline looked surprised, but she hid it quickly and nodded. “Oh . . .”

  “So your dry run failed. And now you’re banned. That blows. How long?” She sucked a deep breath of the cigarette. Come on, Margarine Girl.

  “Six months? I don’t know.” Tourmaline’s eyes narrowed. “Your question about the Wardens . . . Do you have someone who can get things to your brother?”

  “I mean. Not socks.” Because who risked that much over socks? “But yeah. And I have help speeding up the process.”

  “If there’s. Um.” Tourmaline shifted. “Anything I can do. Maybe we could help each other out. If there was something I”—she paused—“could help you with.”

  “I am a little curious about the whole biker club-not-gang thing,” Virginia said lightly; like the idea was a lark she’d always wanted to try.

  Tourmaline’s expression was suddenly tight. The tail of her pink gingham shirt flapped in the breeze, but she still didn’t respond.

  “Give me your number, and if I have some time, I’ll give you a call,” Virginia said, pretending not to notice. “We’ll hang out.”

  “Do you have your phone? Or a pen?”

  “You can just tell me. I’ll remember.”

  Tourmaline’s eyebrow rose.

  No one believed Virginia could remember, which was half the reason Virginia never wrote anyone’s number down. Hazard assumed it was a trick. That she had a record of numbers hidden away and regularly consulted it. But she didn’t—once a number was in her head, it was there forever.

  “I’m good with numbers. I’ll remember,” Virginia said.

  “Don’t you have a phone?”

  Virginia shrugged. “For work.”

  Tourmaline sighed and relented. She gave the number and gathered her hair off her neck. “I work during the week, but I’m off in the evenings and weekends.”

  “Where do you work?” Virginia asked.

  “With my dad. He owns a landscaping and construction business. Waterfalls and ponds are his specialty. I mostly do the lawns.”

  “Is that where all the Wardens work?”

  Tourmaline looked at her like she was stupid. “No, most of them have regular jobs.”

  “Your nails are pretty nice for a person who works landscaping,” Virginia said dubiously.

  “You don’t believe me?”

  Virginia smiled. “Not saying that. Just wondering how much shit you’re made of.”

  A grin finally crossed Tourmaline’s face and she took a step back toward her truck. “Less shit than you, I’m sure. And I wear gloves.” Two steps away, she called back, “Call me.”

  Flower gardens? Not a gang? What the hell did Hazard want with them?

  Tourmaline wasn’t usually home from her visits to Hazelton until late, and the long line of motorcycles stretching under the leafy oaks bordering her driveway stood as silent testimony to Dad banking on her not being around. She climbed out of the truck and used the door to crack her back, taking deep breaths of the heavy valley humidity to work out the six hours of interstate stiffness and emotional spiraling.

  They were all here. Their bikes tipped on kickstands, one after another in a languid line of chrome. The amber porch lights and blue tint of moonshine slipped from one bike to the next. Country rock blared under the deeply shadowed trees, mingling with the smells of smoked meat and wood fire. All hidden behind a row of sweet bay magnolia, red cedar, and sweet summer darkness.

  All hidden, except for Big Mac stationed at the end of the driveway to watch the road, and Sauls standing under the eaves of the garage in his vest and tucked-in T-shirt, nursing a cigarette in the hazy purple shadows as he kept watch over the bikes.

  He met her eye, nodded, and looked back to his phone.

  Sighing, she slung her bag over her shoulder and texted Anna May. Party at my house. Save me. Movie? What she really wanted was to shower, cry, and inhale a package of Oreos. But there was no space for that here. She’d dump her stuff, sit in a dark movie theater with Anna May, and try not to tell her best friend and youth group student leader she’d just tried to smuggle contraband into a federal prison.

  Me and Dalton were just heading out. Pick you up?

  Ugh. It’d be easy to keep the stuff about her mom to herself with Dalton around, but if he was in the car with Anna May, she’d have to hear about how Dalton found motorcycles an unsafe, ridiculous expression of poorly formed masculinity. Please, she texted anyway. Pocketing her phone, she opened the front door of the house with an
ache in her chest she couldn’t begin to unpack.

  A strange woman looked up, blinking in surprise.

  It shouldn’t have bothered her—Tourmaline had known the second she’d seen those bikes what kind of crowd would be here—but it seemed as if the universe had put the woman there—behind the kitchen counter, having the nerve to be all domestic and shit, putting chips into a goddamn bowl—just to dig farther into her skin.

  Tourmaline let the door slam behind her.

  “Heeyyy.” Her father yanked his feet off the table and his boots thumped to the floor. “I thought you weren’t going to be back till late.”

  “I see that,” Tourmaline said, dropping her bag into a chair. The kitchen and dining room were one room, divided by a wide counter covered in picked-over food. The table stood overflowing with half-empty trays of chicken and an array of liquor. Her stomach growled. The food smelled amazing. Was it from Moe’s? Moe’s food didn’t usually smell like this. Maybe she was just really hungry.

  “How did it go?” Dad asked.

  He hadn’t told the woman to leave. Who was she? Tourmaline bit the inside of her cheek.

  The woman stood with her hands folded on the counter. Long nails. Sleek blond hair skimming her shoulders. Big silver earrings jingled softly with even the slightest of her movements, and she wore a tight Harley-Davidson T-shirt, cut deep, with rhinestones on the front. She was young. Not in her twenties, thank God. But young thirties maybe.

  Tourmaline’s stomach turned. She grabbed a chip out of a bowl and looked back to her father with a brow raised. “Can’t leave you alone for a second, huh?”

  “Thought we’d change it up for a Saturday night. I didn’t know you’d be back so soon. We’ll get outta your hair in a little bit, don’t worry.” Dad’s gaze kept steady, but in a way that screamed how much he was working to keep it there.

  She wanted to tell him she was going out. That she wanted to get away. Judging by the sheer amount of alcohol stacked in the dining room, there were probably close to fifty people outside. Twenty-five Wardens and the rest a mix of party girls and hang-arounds.

  Exactly the sort of thing Virginia wanted to see.

  “Hey, T!” Jim, a thin black man with graying hair, said as he crossed through the kitchen. He’d been the Wardens’ vice president for a long time and should have been the president after Tourmaline’s grandfather died, but he’d had to step down after a stroke. Everyone still called him the VP and treated him that way, even though he couldn’t ride anymore. “Congrats on graduating. Your daddy says you’re off to UVA.” He plucked up a roll and didn’t really wait for an answer before sailing out the door to the garden. “It’s a good school. Don’t get into trouble. Be a good girl.”

  Tourmaline waved. What Virginia and other curious outsiders didn’t get was that, in reality, this was boring. It was super weird. It was old men, motorcycle spec talk, and the strong possibility of a hairy, sweaty drunk dude doing something terrifically embarrassing, and only laughing louder about it because Tourmaline was watching. She wanted to hide in her room and turn up her music until Anna May came, not join in the fray.

  But it was her house, not the blonde’s. So Tourmaline stood there and took a slow bite of her chip. Waiting. Refusing to completely hand over the space her mother used to occupy as queen.

  “Don’t fuck with my food, Jason,” someone she didn’t know yelled over his shoulder as he came through the door. He balked at the three of them and ducked his head. “Sorry.” His boots clomped hollow on the creaking wooden floor as he skirted around them for the hall.

  “That’s the new conscript,” Dad said, pushing up his worn denim shirtsleeves.

  Tourmaline shrugged. “Can’t be that new.” Conscripts weren’t brought around families until the very end; probably no less than a year had passed since he started wearing the bottom rocker, decorated with the word conscript, on his vest. Which was after at least a year or two of being a hang-around.

  Dad rolled his eyes. He’d meant new to her. As if she’d missed the last eighteen years and didn’t know how this worked. “Do you remember Old Hawk?”

  The woman began rearranging the dip bowls, earrings tinkling and catching the light as she moved. It was impossible not to look in her direction. Which Tourmaline guessed was the point. But for Tourmaline, it was impossible to not remember her mother there instead, presiding over the food and the men alike.

  “He was an original Warden,” her dad continued. “More your grandpa’s time than mine. He would be president if he’d stayed around.”

  “Who?”

  “I just said. Old Hawk.” Dad reached for a beer, a little too casually. “They went to Sturgis together, and he bailed your grandpa out of jail. Virginia boys stick together, I guess. He was around when you were young, but you might not remember him. They moved up to northern Virginia when there was a big construction boom up there. Made good money with all those houses. Don’t you remember him? He babysat you a few times.”

  “Kinda.”

  The woman began rustling the chip bags.

  Dad kept talking, louder. “He passed away from cancer a while back. That’s his kid.”

  Tourmaline frowned. “Who? What?”

  “The new conscript.”

  “Oh.” Her father never told her this kind of thing. This smelled like avoidance.

  The silence drifted back in.

  Finally, the woman sighed. “I’m going to take these out to the boys.” Her voice was small and feminine. The way Tourmaline’s mother’s had been before her spirit had drained out and just left the edges. She picked up the bowl and walked out.

  “I’ll catch up in a second,” Tourmaline’s father called.

  The music had turned up. Jason yelled from somewhere outside.

  Tourmaline didn’t even want to think about what they would do with this house come August when she left for UVA. She checked her phone and tucked back the wisps of hair falling out of her ponytail. “I’m going out with Anna May. She’s on her way.”

  “You got a minute?” Her father stood and headed toward the hall. “I got something I need to talk to you about.”

  Something dark and heavy trailed a slow circling beat into the pit of her stomach.

  Wayne.

  Without a word, she followed him into his office. It couldn’t be Wayne. Fourteen years. He’d gotten fourteen years. It had to be something else. Anything else.

  Her father shut the door and went around the polished oak desk. The dim evening light filled the room with soft shadows. The sounds of the party were muffled. One of the framed posters on the wall yelled in bold letters over a motorcycle, KICK HER. SHE’LL KICK YOU BACK IN ALL THE RIGHT PLACES. After years of looking at it, Tourmaline still didn’t get it.

  She plopped into one of the chairs before his desk and tucked her leg nervously underneath her. “What’s up?” she asked, voice quivering despite her best intentions. If it was anything good he’d have been able to say it in the kitchen.

  Her father stretched his hands out and inspected the horned-skull ring on his index finger, the tattooed lines circling his wrists like bonds, and Semper Fi inked on his forearm. Frowning, he rubbed at some invisible spot on the ring. “I just wanted to let you know Wayne came home today.”

  Tourmaline went cold.

  “I wanted you to hear it from me and know this isn’t going to affect your life. We’ll keep you safe.”

  “How is he home already?” Tourmaline asked.

  “His sentence was only—”

  “It was fourteen years.” She didn’t need reminding. “It’s only been three.”

  “State prison. He was eligible for parole.”

  “No.” She didn’t know what else to say. Mom had at least eight more years before she was eligible for parole. Eight. Tourmaline could have a Ph.D. by then. She pulled a length of her hair through her fingers and stared unseeing at the ceiling. “What kind of shit justice is that?”

  “If you go through life expecti
ng justice to be handed to you, you’ll always be disappointed. It’s not about right. Never is. It’s about the demands of the system.”

  Tourmaline bit her lips tight, meeting the easy, clear blue of her father’s eyes. Who delivered justice, then? she wanted to ask, but the question stayed stuck in a ball in her throat.

  “I just wanted to let you know,” he said. “In case you see him around. I didn’t want you to be surprised.”

  “Maybe he doesn’t care.”

  A look of deep pity crossed her father’s face. “Maybe. But if you see him, call me. Right away. We’ll take care of him.”

  Tourmaline stared at her sneakers. There was a tiny bit of dirt on the edge of the rubber and she licked her finger and rubbed at it. What if Dad did something and got sent to jail? She’d lose two parents over the same shit. The same mistake. That couldn’t happen.

  “It will be fine,” her father said confidently. “Wayne probably has better things to do with his time now that he’s free. People fixate on one thing inside and forget about it once they get out. Just be cautious. We’ll keep you safe.”

  Tourmaline frowned at the floor, disgusted. Wayne was back. After three stupid years in state prison.

  Her phone buzzed and the screen lit in her hand with the text from Anna May.

  Almost there. Had to get gas and then Katy LimbaUGHHHH wanted to “chat.” Aka pump me for inside info about making varsity. Shoot me now.

  Autocorrect is a genius. Katy LimbaUGGGGHHH.

  She was wearing navy and black and it really got on my nerves. I don’t care who says you can wear them together, you can’t. You just can’t.

  “You okay, T?” her father asked softly.

  “I’m going out with Anna May,” she repeated absently.

  “You don’t have to go. We can get out of your hair.”

  “She’s already on her way.”

  “Oh. Just her?”

  “Her and Dalton.”

  “No one else?” He always sniffed around the topic of boys but never approached it head on.

  “No one else.” Allen was out of town with his older brother until the following day. Not that she’d ever tell her father.