HORIZON MC

by Clara Kendrick

  “I do that all the time,” Sloan assured me. “Get on the bike to run an errand and find myself dozens of miles from where I meant to be. It’s the reason I like riding so much. It takes me out of my own head.”

  “The flowers were important,” I said, and I couldn’t understand why this was the worst I’d felt today. I’d woken up and started drinking bourbon, for God’s sake. The flowers…the flowers were smaller than that, less important, and yet I felt like I was about to burst into tears right there and then, in front of my friends. I really, really didn’t want to do that.

  “What’s going on?” Jack approached us, his helmet tucked underneath his arm. “We’re at the right place, aren’t we?”

  “Flowers,” I mumbled, closing my eyes, loathing the prickle at the back of my throat, behind my eyelids. “Forgot the flowers.” They were a small token, but it was a sign that I still remembered my sister, still thought of her, and if anyone passed by her grave, they would know that there was at least one person who had her in their heart. I didn’t think my parents had ever come down here, even after they missed the funeral.

  Jack did a strange thing he laughed. “You might’ve forgotten flowers, but there are flowers.”

  “What?”

  “Open your eyes. Look around.”

  The river ran near the cemetery. I’d forgotten that. But the river was close enough, just over a bluff, that things were greener here. It was easy enough to divert water to ensure that the graves actually had green grass covering them, like an actual cemetery. The lawn was cropped closely, carefully, but the grass outside the gates was wild, and there were actual…

  Well. There were actual wildflowers growing among the tangles of brush and long patches of grass, flowers of every color and variety, growing like they’d been planted by a talented gardener who didn’t give a shit about anything other than their success. All the seeds planted that were intended to grow, in defiance of death and decay.

  There were so many flowers. Why was I crying? There were plenty of flowers for Chelsea. They were beautiful flowers. There was no reason to be blubbering like this in front of everyone. Not when there were plenty of flowers.

  A pair of arms wrapped me up in a hug, and I couldn’t even open my eyes to see which one of the guys was holding me, propping me up against my grief. I gritted my teeth against the rising tide of emotion, trying to get myself to stop sobbing, but it was no use. The hands that gripped me clapped my back.

  “It’s fine, brother. Everything’s going to be okay.” Sloan. “We’re all here for you. We’ve got the flowers covered. You don’t have to worry about anything.” Normally, I would’ve teased him about referring to me as “brother,” since I’d done it before just because his hair was black didn’t mean that he was black like me and could call me a brother. But I couldn’t do that, now. Being here, in the cemetery, and seeing all of those impossible spring flowers in bloom had made the sun inside of me retreat behind a cloud. I couldn’t find it in me to laugh. Laughter seemed about as probable as aliens touching down in the middle of the parking lot and asking to be taken to our leader.

  My grief was a sharp thing wedged precariously inside my body. If I shifted too far in one direction, it would cut me, so I just tried to stay in the middle somehow. Staying in the middle, for me, meant trying not to think too much about Chelsea, trying not to cry if I was feeling sad, and trying to redirect my thoughts if I felt like things were getting out of control. Right now, though, all of that was proving to be impossible.

  “Look, Chuck.”

  “Yeah, check this out.”

  “This’ll work, right? I mean, there’s plenty more where these came from. We can always get more.”

  I stepped back from Sloan and pushed at my eyes as if I could hold in my tears by simply shoving them back from where they came. When my vision finally cleared enough to be able to see, an almost comical sight greeted me.

  Jack, Ace, and Brody had been gathering flowers while I’d been having my breakdown, and it was a strange look for them, indeed. Jack was fairly clean cut, but Ace had long hair and a beard, and Brody looked kind of like a handsome skinhead. To see the three of themso obviously members of a motorcycle club with armfuls of wildflowers was really something. Ace even had pollen dusted through his beard.

  The laughter I’d thought to be lost forever somehow found its way up my throat and out of my mouth, and I laughed at the three of them. There might’ve been a note of hysteria tailing my mirth, but I’d take laughing over crying any day.

  “You all should see yourselves,” I managed to guffaw, wiping my face with my shirtsleeves.

  “Oh, the entire world should see them,” Sloan agreed, taking photo after photo of the trio using his phone.

  “I’d better not see that on social media,” Brody warned, pointing a finger at Sloan. Ace sneezed, and the pollen that had been in his beard dispersed in a golden cloud into the sunset.

  “What do you think, Chuck?” Jack asked me. “Enough flowers?”

  They hadn’t just tugged up flowers at random. Each of them had different varieties of all colorsreds, yellows, purples, whites and the bouquets were surprisingly tasteful. They were, perhaps, even better than what I could’ve found at a supermarket on the way over here, and it meant more that my friends had helped me get them.

  “I think this will be fine,” I said. “Let’s get them up there before it gets dark.”

  It wasn’t a big cemetery, and Chelsea’s plot was situated on a space that was meant for my parents, beneath a tree that swayed gently in the wind that buffeted the gentle knoll. The last bouquet that I’d left was still there, dead and dried, and I reached down to collect them, wondering if I should speak to the maintenance crew for the grounds. The dried flowersand the lack of fresher ones also told me that my parents hadn’t visited since the last time I’d dragged myself out here. It wasn’t their fault. If they couldn’t even stomach the burial, there was no reason to torture themselves by seeing their daughter’s headstone. They probably kept her memory alive in other ways, even if communication between us had dwindled. I figured it was because I was a living reminder of the child they’d lost, the one who had been born at the same time as her but allowed to remain on the planet longer.

  Life wasn’t fair.

  The guys deposited their bouquets at the base of the granite stone marking Chelsea’s final resting place, and their tenderness touched me. They silently arranged the flowers until the dispersion of color was even, the blossoms blanketing the stark emptiness of the clean grave. It was like they were pulling a vibrant quilt over my sister’s slumbering form, intent on giving her comfort.

  Sloan brushed a stray bit of grass from the top of the stone. “We’ll just be in the parking lot down the hill to give you some privacy. Call us if you need anything, okay?”

  “Thanks,” I said, a little relieved. “I won’t be long.”

  “Take all the time you need,” Jack said, clapping my shoulder as he and the others headed back down the hill.

  In life, Chelsea and I had been something of a force of nature. We were, of course, fraternal twins, but our energies bounced off and complemented each other. People had a habit of gravitating toward Chelsea. It was something about her face, the way her constant smile opened it up, and I just happened to be in that same orbit. We were a hit at parties.

  I had no closer friend than my twin sister, and even though I understood my parents’ reluctance to visit her grave, I resented them. Who had lost more than me, who grew in the same warm, secret place as her, our developing limbs twining around each other? There was nothing closer than that, sharing a womb, and I felt completely unmade without my twin, almost like half of a person. That was how close we’d been.

  People had been afraid to date her because of me, in fact.

  “You have to lighten up,” she’d told me one day. I was a rookie in the local police department, and she was going to community college. She wanted to be a teacher.
Both of us wanted to protect people, even if we went about it in different ways.

  “He wasn’t good for you,” I said, referring to her man of the moment. It was true. Chelsea had been paying for everything they did together, buoyed by the income she was getting by substitute teaching and tutoring at every chance in her busy schedule.

  “You didn’t know him,” she protested. “There was a real connection there.”

  “I knew enough to see the real connection he had to your bank account,” I said, unrepentant. “You’re a good person, Chelsea, but you attract the worst people.”

  “That was the king of all backhanded compliments.”

  “It wasn’t a compliment. It was a warning.”

  “Seriously, you’re intimidating enough as it is as a black man,” she teased. “You didn’t have to go off and become a cop to frighten people even more.”

  “I prefer the intimidation factor a badge gives me than my skin,” I rebuked her, mildly, flicking at her fingers. “And if your boyfriends can’t act like a man in front of a cop, then maybe they have something to hide.”

  “Chuck. You scare them half to death. You don’t have to show up to meet them in full uniform, do you?”

  “Are you ashamed of my job?”

  “Don’t be an idiot. It’s not becoming. You purposely leave everything ongun and cuffs included when I invite you to meet guys I like.”

  “So?”

  “So you’re doing it to fuck with them.”

  I raised my eyebrows at that. “I hope you’ll forgive me for being suspicious of people who are afraid of a uniform.”

  “Cops make people uncomfortable, Chuck. That’s a given.”

  “Not the right kind of people.”

  “All kinds of people,” she said, throwing her hands in the air, exasperated. “At this rate, I’m either going to have to become a nun or just never introduce you to the men I date, and you know both of those options would break my heart. Don’t make me freeze you out.”

  “I’m sorry,” I sighed, a real thread of guilt worming its way in. “I just don’t think anyone I’ve met so far has been good enough for you.”

  Chelsea’s sigh mirrored my own. “You don’t think anyone is good enough for me.”

  “Is that such a terrible thing?”

  “It’s a sweet thing, but that doesn’t make my love life any easier.”

  “No brother ever wants to hear about his sister’s love life, for your information.”

  “Then stop butting into it,” she said, flapping her hand at me.

  But she was just as guilty as I was at it, as protective as me as I was of her, and in all honesty, maybe I should’ve been even more invasive. I could’ve handled Chelsea being angry at me, or our relationship losing some of its closeness, if it meant that she was still alive.

  The sun faded over the horizon, and I had to admit that it was a truly stunning sunset, as if someone had taken a paintbrush and made a work of art of the sky. She should’ve been able to enjoy this sunset, and all the ones that had come before it over the past three years. It wasn’t fair that she wasn’t here, and I sighed, studying her name etched in the rock.

  “Another year without you,” I said, watching the way the flowers brightened the gray of the granite headstone. “I know this isn’t where you are anymore. At least, that’s what I think. You’re not here, and it sucks for me. Sucks for everyone who loved you.”

  I felt a little silly standing here in the deepening evening, talking to a piece of rock and a couple of armfuls of flowers, but it was the gesture that counted. I couldn’t pretend to understand death. Maybe she was tied to this place somehow. I would’ve hated to imagine her stranded here without anyone visiting. My parents sure as hell weren’t going to spend any time here.

  “I miss you, Chelsea. Everyone does. I miss you every goddamn day, and it’s not fair that I have to stay here, in this place, without you.”

  My mother, who had grown up religious and raised us to attend church every Sunday, had lost her faith after Chelsea died. God had given her no comfort whatsoever, no solace in her time of need. I wondered what she thought, now, about how things were going to pan out after her death. Did she think she’d be reunited with her lost daughter? Or was there just a void waiting to accept her after she breathed her last?

  I shook myself. “Wherever you are, I hope you’re happy. Or, you know, not in any pain or fear. And I hope you know I still love you. You’re my best friend. I’ll always love you.”

  Maybe it was a cliché, but since my parents had been incapable of organizing most things for Chelsea’s funeral, it had been left to me to make the majority of arrangements. This included the engraving on her headstone. Besides her name and the dates of her birth and death, there was a single word: “Beloved.” I wished I could’ve thought of more to say, but there was too much. She was vibrant. She lit up whatever room she happened to walk into. People were drawn to her like moths to a flame. Her laugh was a catalyst, bringing other people joy. She would’ve done great things if only she had been given a chance to succeed, a chance to make her mark on this world. Countless lives would’ve benefited from having someone like her to teach them. Everyone who met her loved her, and she loved them fully, with every ounce of her being. There wasn’t a monolith big enough to list all the things Chelsea was, and all the things the world lost when she left it.

  “I’ll come back soon,” I vowed, and turned away from the flowers and the grave. As hard as it was to come here, it was always more difficult to leave.

  As I shuffled into the parking lot, no one said anything. I was grateful for that. I’d emptied myself of all words up there with Chelsea. We just strapped on our helmets, started our bikes, and roared life back into the place, a throaty affirmation as we wheeled onto the road, stars blinking on, one by one, in the purple sky.

  Rio Seco awaited us. And no one would judge me if I sanded down the edges of today with a little more booze. They’d join in, talk to distraction, and put me to bed if I got too sloppy. My friends and Horizon MC saved my life and kept me going more times than they probably realized.

  Chapter 2

  I wouldn’t say that I felt completely better the next day, but it would’ve been worse if the rest of the guys hadn’t intervened. There was the hangover to contend with, of course, but it was a relief to be back at work, in my mechanic’s shop, with tasks to distract myself.

  It wasn’t a glamorous job. I was usually so busy that I only had the energy at the end of the work day to stop by the bar for a beer or two before riding home, walking through the shower, and dropping into bed to pass out before the next full work day. Much of the time, I wondered what the use of scrubbing all the oil from my hands every day was if I was just going to coat them again the following day. I daydreamed over the sudsy, filthy sink in the shop about buying an all-black wardrobe, black furniture, and, most importantly, black bedsheets. Of course, there was the small concern of shaking hands and touching other people who probably wouldn’t be as relieved as I was that I wasn’t spending twenty minutes making sure my hands were free of oil and grease.

  So definitely not glamorous, but there was something strangely soothing about it if I was a religious man, I’d even say it was spiritual work. I understood intimately the inner workings of each engine I came across. They sang to me about their troubles and I was able to get them back in key again with just a little bit of hard work. Nothing pleased me more than to be faced with a hunk of metal and moving parts that someone didn’t think would ever work properly again. I made them run smoother than when they’d first been new.

  This kind of work was something that I had picked up along the way. I hadn’t started out wanting to be a mechanic. It was something of a hobby, something I was passionate about. I never minded to change the oil in my mom and dad’s vehicles, and I’d even made a little pocket cash by undercutting my hometown mechanic shop’s pricing plan for such procedures. I even liked to prowl through the junkyard locat
ed just beyond city limits, filled to the brim with forgotten treasures bearing the particular patina of what could have been.

  Perhaps, given all that tinkering, I should’ve started out as a mechanic instead of being a police officer, but I doubted that much would’ve changed if I’d gone that route. Being a full-time mechanic at the time of my sister’s death might have ruined me on my passion for the rest of my life, like it had done with police work. There were the small things to be thankful for, I supposed, because I would still much rather be making a living as a mechanic than a cop. There were just too many bad memories I happened to associate with the badge.

  “What are you doing, lazing around in here?”

  I turned around, dragged back to reality from my reveries, to find Jack standing out in the sun, squinting into the shaded garage at me. I checked the wall clock to see if I’d worked too long again, but blinked back at Jack in confusion. It was barely noon.

  “To what do I owe the pleasure?” I asked, wiping my hands on a rag as best I could before shading my eyes to study Jack.

  “Can’t come visit you at work?” he asked, fidgeting.

  “You’re a terrible liar.”

  “Okay, I’m a terrible liar,” Jack agreed. “I wanted to see how you were doing.”

  “Besides the hangover?”

  “Besides the hangover.”

  I shrugged. “Well enough. Lot of work to do today. Good to stay busy.”

  “That’s good.”

  I laughed at him, aware that it was more than a little terrible to be enjoying his struggle this much. “But that’s not why you’re here, either, is it?”

  Jack sighed. “No. You’re right.”

  “Then out with it. What do you need?”

  “See for yourself.” I followed Jack out to a battered pickup truck in the parking lot.

  “Pickup giving you trouble?” I asked.

  “Not yet.” He whipped a blue tarp off the bed of the truck. “This is, though.”

  Laying on its side in the bed of the pickup was a motorcycle that was, if possible, even more battered than the truck it had ridden in. It shouldn’t have been on its side like that. It was as unnatural as seeing a horse reclining for too long on its side. You were afraid it was sick, or there was something really wrong with it. But I supposed that there was nothing worse that could happen to it in that position, given the state it was in.