BRUF

by Jessie Cooke

  “So, if you met a single mom that you really liked and she had children, you wouldn’t want to be with her?”

  “Damn it, Sabrina. You’re twisting this all around. We’re not talking about some hypothetical here. We’re talking facts. That kid has your blood running through it. You walked into a situation that could have gotten you killed looking for your blood, your brother. You’ve gone out of your way since then to have a relationship with him. Blood means a lot to you...I have a hard time believing the idea of keeping that kid hasn’t crossed your mind.”

  “I’m not going to change my mind. I have a contract.” Not that it hadn’t crossed her mind. She just knew she wouldn’t do it.

  “Contracts have been known to be broken.”

  She threw up her hands, exasperated. “I don’t know what you want from me, and I just don’t understand why it’s such a big deal to you.”

  “Because I’m not raising someone else’s kid, Sabrina.” The words were said, flatly...but firmly.

  “I never asked you to.”

  Sabrina watched him take his do-rag out of his pocket and slide it on his head. Then he slipped his sunglasses on. He was just going to leave. That easily, he was done. Maybe she had built this thing with him up in her head until it was larger than life, and in reality...it was nothing. Bruf got to fuck her – maybe that was all he ever really wanted – and this was his excuse for walking away. After all, she was Wolf’s sister. He couldn’t just not ever call her again as if she were just any other woman.

  She watched Bruf get on his bike. He looked at her for a second like there was something else he was going to say, but he didn’t. He started the Harley and she stood there and watched him ride away. For the second time since she’d met him, he was pushing her out of his life. Maybe she needed to learn how to take a hint.

  14

  The track was perfect and so Bruf opened the throttle as wide as it would go. He hit turn one at over a hundred miles an hour, nearly laying the bike down on the asphalt as he did. Turn two was a little trickier, and he actually bumped the wall with his back tire and almost spun out of control. Once he got the bike under control, he headed into turn three and took that one without a hitch. He loved speed. Other men might drown their sorrows in a bottle, or a substance of some other kind, but not Bruf. Alcohol didn’t produce adrenaline...and that was his drug of choice.

  With the adrenaline flowing freely through his bloodstream, Bruf pulled the bike into the big shop where his brother was waiting for him. “Damn, boy! Still the fastest fuck on two wheels.” Ediger held out his fist, Bruf tapped it and then pulled off his helmet.

  “I got my ass kicked, even on the best fucking bike you got.”

  “Yeah, you’re out of practice. You looked like shit in turn two, and what the fuck did you slow down for in turn three?”

  “Like you said, out of practice. Where the hell did you get this bike?” Bruf stepped off the VRXSE Screamin’ Eagle Destroyer. It was red with dark yellow and orange flames...but as nice as it looked, what made it so special was that it was Harley Davidson’s first out-of-the-box, drag racing bike, of which they’d only made a limited few. Unless a collector was in the market to sell, they were almost impossible to come by. Bruf had read about the drag bikes in the motorcycle magazines, but this was the first time he’d seen one in real life and certainly the first time he’d ever gotten to race one. They advertised it as being able to do a quarter-mile run in under 10 seconds. He hadn’t gotten there, but he knew with a little practice that he could.

  Ediger, always the showman, walked over to the bike. He was wearing a leather vest without a shirt underneath, and the giant swastika that covered his chest was big, brightly colored, and designed to intimidate. His dark hair was long and thick, and he wore it loose down his back, Like he thinks he’s fucking Jesus, Bruf thought. He kept his face clean-shaven; Bruf guessed that was because he thought it looked too good to hide. Ediger was a good-looking man, but no one knew that better than Ediger did. What really set him apart from other men, besides the sculpted body and racist tattoos, were his eyes. Ediger had blue eyes, dark blue, and they were huge. He also had long eyelashes – Like a girl, Bruf thought – but girls loved the way they framed his blue eyes, and since he was fifteen years old Ediger had rarely had to do more than focus them on a woman to get her to do whatever he wanted. Over the years Bruf began to develop a theory that those women were where Ediger got the initial financing for the land the compound sat on, and probably a lot of the money to expand and improve on it over the years.

  “Let me tell you about this girl here,” Ediger said, running a hand across the chrome handlebars. “She’s got a 1300cc Big Bore Revolution racing power train, a Stroker crankshaft, and modified engine cases. Look at these cylinder heads,” he said, squatting next to the engine, “High flow, baby and a racing valve train. See how deep that oil pan is...and look at the transmission, it’s got an MTC multi-stage lockup clutch and electric-over-air shifting, and to top it all off, a 14.0:1 compression range.”

  “Nice,” Bruf said, only really understanding about half of it. Bruf loved to ride and he loved to race, but he liked leaving the mechanical work to someone else.

  Ediger laughed. “You don’t have a clue what the fuck I even just said, do you?”

  “I get it,” Bruf said. “She’s fast. Where’d you get her?”

  Ediger shrugged. “Ahh, you know...we’ve got so many of them I forget.” That meant they stole it. Bruf didn’t know why his brother didn’t just say that. It wasn’t like he was a choirboy himself, or that he hadn’t stolen his first bike when he was only thirteen years old. A bigger-than-life influence his brother had been...just not a good one. “So, we got a race coming up in a few weeks with some Mexicans in Merced. I could use you.”

  Ediger referred to anyone that wasn’t Caucasian by their race. There were “the Mexicans,” “the Asians,” and “the Blacks.” He and the rest of his crew had much more disparaging names for each group as well, and he used those almost as often as the others.

  “You don’t need me,” Bruf said. “That kid on the Indian made that bike fly around those curves. Put him on this baby and nobody’s catching him.”

  Ediger made a face. “Yeah, he’s alright. He hasn’t really checked out yet, though.” That meant his family tree hadn’t been shaken for anyone that wasn’t “acceptable” to the Owls. Ediger had three big rules. You had to be white, your bike had to have been made in the US, and if you stuck a needle in your arm, you’d better hope you overdosed because that would be your least painful option. Ediger and his crew made their own moonshine and grew their own weed. Street drugs were to be bought from “the Mexicans” and sold to “the Blacks” but never used on the compound. “I’d rather have you. Come on, we don’t do shit as brothers anymore. This was always our thing, kid. Do it for me, for old time’s sake.”

  Bruf raised an eyebrow, His brother said “old times” like they were something to be remembered. Bruf spent years trying to forget as much of that time of his life as he could. It still haunted him, but mostly only in his sleep now. Coming back here for a day would probably set him back for a month of nightmares. Racing for his brother again...that would be like living in one. It was in that moment he realized what a mistake showing back up at the compound had been.

  “I just don’t have the time these days,” Bruf said, “but thanks for letting me hang out tonight. It was fun.”

  “You want me to talk to old Wolf for you? He and I worked pretty well together over that messy business with Mouse...”

  “No!” He hadn’t meant to say it so sharply. One of Ediger’s eyebrows shot up, but he let it go...for now. The truth was, Bruf wished Wolf didn’t know about Ediger, period. If there was a way he could erase the memories of anyone who knew about his ties to his white supremacist brother, he would...yet when things went south, here he was. He supposed that he had a lot of fucking nerve. He’d worked so hard to chew through the rope that Ediger had him te
thered to for so many years and now here he was, wrapping it around his own throat. “Nah, I don’t have any problems talking to Wolf, but you know how it is, I’ve got a job to do.”

  “My little brother, the workaholic – imagine that. I remember in the old days when getting you to stop racing or fucking long enough to do a bit of work was nothing short of a miracle.” Racing was Bruf’s escape from the time he was eleven years old...until he discovered sex. He realized when he started racing that adrenaline was his drug. Unfortunately, like any other drug, you had to keep upping the dose to get the same effect...and that was exactly what got Bruf into one scrape after another his entire life. “Come over to the house and have a beer with me before you take off. It’s the least you can do for me letting you ride my best girl. Matter of fact...got a few girls inside that you might wanna take for a spin too.” He winked at Bruf and put his arm around his shoulders. If anyone knew about Bruf’s addictions, it was his brother. Fact was, Ediger dangled fast bikes and women like a heroin dealer handing out black balloons outside a whorehouse.

  “I have time for a beer,” Bruf said.

  Ediger chuckled as they walked toward the golf cart that he used to get around the compound. “Trust me, when you see this pussy, your schedule will open up.” He suddenly stopped walking. Taking his arm off Bruf’s shoulders he gave his brother a serious look and said, “You’re not still going after that dark meat, are you?”

  Nothing was more distasteful to Ediger than an interracial relationship. One might think, from his being indoctrinated into the white supremacist lifestyle since he was ten years old, that Bruf might feel the same way. Truth was, Ediger’s hate had only served to make Bruf more curious about other races. When he was in high school he started playing football, not because he particularly liked it, but it gave him the opportunity to hang out with a variety of people without Ediger’s objecting too harshly. In his junior year Bruf became best friends with a kid named Patrick. Patrick was biracial. His father was black and his mother white. Bruf and Patrick had football practice four days a week. He told Ediger it was five day, so on Friday afternoons, he and Patrick could go into Fresno or Clovis and hang out for the day. One day Patrick invited him to his house for dinner. Bruf knew he was risking life and limb by accepting, but he did, nonetheless. Patrick’s family lived in a “real” house in a “real” neighborhood...and Bruf was impressed, even before he met Patrick’s older sister. Paulette was eighteen, a freshman in college...and hotter than hell. She had more curves than any racetrack Bruf had ever handled, and damn if he didn’t want to hug those curves.

  Bruf was sixteen when he met her, and he became a fixture in the household after that. Patrick’s parents felt sorry for the orphan kid who lived on what the town folk referred to as “that hippie commune” in the hills. They treated him like he was family and in the process, he got to know Paulette. He was seventeen when she finally let him get into her pants and by the time he was eighteen...he was in love. He was two months from graduating high school when Paulette told him that she was pregnant. Bruf had no idea how they would support a baby, or where they would live, but he loved her, and she loved him, and he was sure that would be enough. It wasn’t.

  Bruf was with Paulette when she told her parents that she was pregnant. They were disappointed, but he was surprised at how supportive they were. The hard part came next...Bruf had to tell his brother. He remembered that night vividly, probably because he’d seen it a thousand times since in his nightmares. He waited until Ediger had drunk half a pint of whiskey, and was bragging about the eighteen-year-old he’d just fucked, to approach him. He’d made another decision since they’d spoken to Paulette’s parents: he was going to join the army. He went in with what he thought were all his ducks in a row...it was that black duck that worried him.

  “I got a girl pregnant,” he’d just blurted out when Ediger asked him what was going on. His brother had raised both eyebrows and then he’d laughed. He slapped Bruf on the back and told him what a stud he was and then he said:

  “You need money for the abortion?”

  “No,” Bruf said, trying not to show his disgust at his brother’s immediately jumping to that. “We’re going to have the baby. I was thinking...I could join the army and make enough money to support us. She’s really smart and she’s going to college in August...”

  “The army?” Okay, that was another duck that had waddled out of line. Ediger had no trust in the government. Joining the army was akin to aligning with the enemy as far as his brother was concerned.

  “I just don’t really have any skills. I need to be able to support a family...”

  “Fuck that! Bring her up here. We’ll build y’all a house and I’ll teach that boy or girl of yours to live off this land God gave us.” God...Bruf doubted that God had much to do with it. Especially when he realized that he had to tell his brother about Paulette’s heritage. Her skin was dark mocha, she wore her hair in cornrows, and her eyes were the color of milk chocolate. Bruf loved the way she looked. He thought a more beautiful woman had never existed...but one look at her gave away where she came from, and no way in hell would Ediger let her live on the compound. Bruf had seen his brother banish men he thought of as brothers when it was discovered that they had a drop of African-American blood in them.

  “Ediger...there’s just one problem with that,” he’d said.

  “What’s that? She doesn’t think she’s too good for us, does she? I know how you like those fancy ladies...like that chick from Social Services you been lusting after since you were fourteen...”

  “She’s part black.” The second the words were out of his mouth, the room went deadly silent, and Bruf could see the monster in his brother’s eyes, trying to claw its way out.

  15

  “Are you coming back?” Sabrina could once again hear the tears in her friend’s voice. She loved Melanie...but the dramatics were getting old. Trying to sound patient, at least, she said:

  “Yes, I’m coming back. I’ve booked a flight for next Saturday, so I’ll be home in a week, okay? Stop worrying – you know I love you, right? I’d never, ever do anything as horrible as move away and take this baby from you and Scott.”

  “I’m sorry, you would think I was the one that was pregnant. I’m just so emotional all the time.”

  At least she sees it. Sabrina felt bad again for judging her. “It’s understandable. I know I didn’t help any by leaving, and now with the future of Devin and my relationship up in the air...well, it’s no wonder you’re anxious. I’m sorry, Melanie. I didn’t mean for any of this to happen.”

  “Is it because of him? The biker?”

  “If I’m honest with you are you going to freak out?”

  Melanie laughed, but Sabrina could tell that she was still crying. “I can promise to try not to.”

  Sabrina laughed too. “Okay, if that’s the best you can do. I guess in part it’s because of Bruf. I don’t know why I can’t get over him. I still barely know him, he’s so private...closed off, almost. I told Devin I wouldn’t cheat on him, and I meant it...but he didn’t believe me, Melanie. Devin broke up with me...and then I had sex with Bruf.” Melanie gasped. “Oh, please don’t act like I’m some kind of cheating whore. Devin and I have ninety-nine other problems besides my coming to California, Melanie. You know I love him, or at least I hope you do. But he treats me like I’m a child, too stupid to figure out what I want...”

  “In his defense, you do seem awfully confused.”

  Sabrina sighed. “You’re right. I was confused. But as soon as Devin really opened up and told me what he thought of me, deep down, I wasn’t confused any longer. He called me ghetto, implied that I was trash and that I’d make a better ‘old lady’ than the wife of a surgeon.”

  “No!”

  “Yes Melanie, he did. I’m not sure Devin’s looking for an equal partner. I think he’s looking for someone he can control, and the second he figured out that wasn’t me, he was the one that was finished. I admit
that I jumped to sleeping with Bruf way too quickly, and I’m ashamed of that. But you admitted to me that night when we talked in Haiti that you’ve felt that kind of chemistry before...with your dad’s business partner...”

  “Oh my God! You didn’t tell Devin about that, did you?” When Melanie was nineteen, she met her father’s new business partner. He was thirty-two and according to Melanie, sexy as hell. She was captivated by him and he by her. They had a passionate two-month affair and when he ended it with her to get back together with his ex-wife, as she later told Sabrina, she’d been so depressed that she contemplated suicide. She met Scott not long after and although she said he was her soulmate and she loved him more than anything in the world...she admitted that even with Scott, she’d never felt that kind of spark.

  “No, of course not. Some of us respect privacy and boundaries.”

  “Thanks. You know, the only person I ever shared anything with was Devin, and since he was your fiancé, I didn’t think you had anything to hide.”

  “I didn’t,” Sabrina said, leaving it at that. “I have to go and call my mother now. She’s going to pack up my things and Devin will have them delivered to her house before I get back.”

  “It’s that definite?”

  “Yes Melanie. Like I said, this has been coming for a while. Devin and I both just reached a place where we could admit it.”

  “Can I ask one more question?”

  “Of course.”

  “Are you going to keep seeing Bruf?”

  Sabrina sighed again. “I doubt it,” she said. “Bruf has...issues...with my being pregnant with your child.”

  “Oh, no – I’m sorry, Sabrina.”

  “Don’t be. I’m a little tired of men that think they have a right to decide what I should or shouldn’t be doing with my life...and my body. I’ll talk to you soon, okay?”