RIDE (A Stone Kings Motorcycle Club Romance)

by Daphne Loveling

And no one who knew me now as Levi Wolff, Sergeant at Arms of the Stone Kings MC knew my background, where I came from or what I left behind. And that’s the way I liked it. No past, no future. Only the present. No one’s laws but my own to uphold. And the laws of my club.

  We arrived in Grand Junction about two hours before the funeral was supposed to start, to make sure we got there before the Southbend people did. St. Mark’s Catholic Church was on the north side of town, a small church in a style I didn’t know the name for but that made me think of Mexico, like a lot of architecture in the area. Another chapter of the Stone Kings club, from Las Cruces, was there to meet us, too. Grey greeted the chapter president, whose name was Slayer, and the two of them took off to meet with their contact. A few minutes later, they came back, and Grey clapped a hand on Slayer’s shoulder before they separated to go over the plan with their prospective clubs.

  Grey came over to the parking lot across the street from the church where we had parked our bikes. “Slayer’s guys are going to set up a perimeter around the church in case any stray assholes decide to try to get too close or go inside,” he said, nodding back toward the church. “We’re gonna push back the protesters, make a wall of ourselves to make sure they don’t get close enough for the mourners to hear or see them. Rev our engines to drown out what they say, so no one has to listen to their bullshit. After the funeral, we’ll ride behind the procession to the cemetery and mount a guard there.”

  I nodded and turned to Trig and Repo. “Sounds good. Let’s not let these demented fucks soil this service member’s final goodbye.”

  We set up the perimeter and the blockade. Not long after cars began to arrive filled with downcast people in dark, somber clothing, a group of six middle-aged men with signs approached and began to walk toward the church. When they were about twenty feet away from us, Trigger yelled out, “That’s close enough. Stay right where you are.”

  One of the men, who held a sign that said, “Pray for more dead soldiers,” made a move as though he intended to come closer, but one step forward by Trigger stopped him. “I said, that’s as far as you’re going,” Trigger said calmly, but there was an unmistakable warning in his voice that conveyed that he expected to be obeyed.

  “Or what?” the man sneered. “How you gonna stop us? You ain’t the cops.”

  I had never wanted to hit a man so badly before, and I had hit plenty of people. I could imagine the satisfying crunch it would make when his teeth broke under my fist. Barely resisting the impulse, I walked forward until I was mere inches from the man. I had at least six inches on him, and though he probably weighed in at ten to twenty more pounds than I did, most of his weight was in the considerable paunch hanging over his belt. I saw his eyes widen as they went to the tattoos that went up and down my arms.

  I leaned in just enough so that I towered over him slightly.

  “Most of us have been to prison at one point or another,” I said through clenched teeth. “In the majority of cases, it was for assault. On the off chance that the cops don’t send us all fruit baskets for beating the life out of you bunch of miserable shits, I think I’m speaking for all my brothers when I say we would be more than happy to take the risk of getting arrested for stopping you from going any closer.”

  The fat sign-holder blanched. He threw a nervous glance at his buddies and stepped back far enough to try and gain back a little of his dignity. “I sure as hell ain’t gonna waste my time on a bunch of biker thugs,” he spat out.

  I could feel my right hand curl into a fist, but stayed where I was. As much as I wanted to escalate this, our duty was to the dead serviceman and his family right now, and that meant keeping the peace if at all possible.

  The sign-bearers moved into a shitty little cluster and talked among themselves, and a few more people began to arrive with signs of their own, until there were about twenty people there to picket, including one child, a little boy of no more than eight years old. He held a sign that said, “God bless 9/11.” I felt my gorge rise in disgust that anyone could teach such hate to such a small child. The boy looked like he hardly knew what was going on. I couldn’t help but think of myself at that age, and how confusing I must have found the world and what those around me said about how it worked.

  The picketers tried their best to disrupt things, but there were a hell of a lot more of us than there were of them, and they seemed pretty intimidated by our considerable presence. They tried to start chants from time to time, and one of them even had a bullhorn, but every time they’d start making noise, a few of the brothers would rev their engines so loud it was impossible to hear anything they were saying. After a while the bullhorn guy, a scrawny meth-head looking guy with wild eyes and shitty teeth, was the only one shouting anymore, and so Repo just kept his engine revved up until the guy got hoarse and eventually gave up trying to yell.

  After the funeral was over, we got back in formation and followed the funeral procession out to the cemetery. Someone had figured out to bring a bunch of American flags, and each of us fixed them to the backs of our bikes to fly behind us as we rode to the grave site. Just in case, we posted men at all the entrances to the cemetery and mounted a perimeter around the graveside service, but I guessed the Southbend Baptist fucks had gotten tired of being drowned out, because they didn’t show up.

  I watched from a distance as a rank of Air Force servicemen marched to the back of the hearse to serve as pallbearers for the young man they were about to bury. I watched as they carried him to his grave site, and as they folded the flag that covered the casket and presented it to a woman who had to be Evan Kramer’s mother. I listened as the priest murmured some words and prayers of comfort to the bereaved. And finally, I watched as the casket was lowered into the ground, with the friends and family watching in silence.

  A few people stepped forward and placed flowers either next to the site, or tossed a single rose in on top of the casket. A man whom I figured to be Evan’s father took his mother by the elbow and led her away as she sobbed quietly. A teenage boy and a slightly younger girl trailed behind them, looking shell-shocked. I took a deep breath and let it out, a wave of sadness washing over me. A young life was gone, leaving pain and emptiness in its wake.

  As people made their way from the graveside, Evan’s parents walked toward us, coming to a stop in front of Trigger and me. The woman lifted the veil she was wearing to look at us. She was pretty, despite her pallor and the expression of pain etched in her features. “Thank you,” she whispered, her lip trembling. “Thank you.”

  “Ma’am,” Trigger nodded. “Sir. It was an honor.”

  They turned away, then, and we watched the friends and family of Evan Kramer slowly walk back to their cars. They were mostly silent, except for an occasional low remark from one to another. From here, they would probably be going back to the church basement, to push around food on their plates that members of their congregation had prepared for them. Or maybe they’d gather at the Kramers’ house, where well-wishers would bring them casseroles and take care of cleaning up afterwards.

  I watched the cars drive away, one after the other, a solemn cortege. As terrible as it was that Evan Kramer had to die, I was glad that he had family to grieve for him.

  The ride back to Lupine gave me far too much time alone with my thoughts, and by the time we got to the clubhouse, the whole damn thing had me surly and out of sorts. I didn’t seem to be the only one. The brothers stepped off their bikes one by one, and headed inside almost as quietly as the funeral procession had left.

  A few of the men headed to the clubhouse bar to unwind after the somber afternoon. “Jesus,” Winger, our secretary, swore as he went back behind the bar and popped the top off a bottle of beer. “After all that, I need booze and pussy.”

  He took a long swig, then headed off to find one of the willing women who made it a habit of hanging around the club.

  I knew he wouldn’t need to look very far. I also knew instinctively that tonight would be a night of heavy
drinking and partying, to stave off the demons we had all glimpsed today. Myself included.

  3

  Cherish

  It took me three days to get to Lupine, Colorado.

  Three days of getting off of one bus, waiting hours for the next one to arrive, and living in a more or less constant state of panic that someone from the WFZ Ranch would find me and drag me back home.

  I knew that the leader, Harlan Radleff, would never let me go without attempting to find me and drag me back. It had happened before. People who left and never came back were bad for the interior harmony of the community. The idea that anyone would want to leave that earthly paradise would send whispers and rumors skittering around the Ranch, and Radleff and his men wanted to avoid that whenever possible. I just had to hope that the precautions I had taken to avoid being followed would be enough to keep them from figuring out where I was until eventually they just gave up.

  Only a handful of people had ever tried to leave in my memory. And when, inevitably, they were brought back, they were kept in isolation for a few days, far from curious eyes. When they finally rejoined the community again, they usually said that they had fallen ill from some malady they had picked up outside the Ranch and had to be nursed back to health. Their drawn expressions and tired eyes seemed to corroborate that explanation, but I think many knew better.

  Usually, once someone had tried to leave and failed, they didn’t try again. In fact, I could only remember one person ever getting out successfully and not returning. That person was who I had come so far to find.

  I had been wearing the same set of clothes since my escape, and hadn’t been able to bathe except by wiping myself off with wet paper towels in bus terminal restrooms. I had almost run out of the money I’d managed to bring, even as careful as I had been with it. I was exhausted from the little bits of fitful sleep I had managed on the road, having been too afraid of discovery to let myself nap in bus stations.

  On the morning I finally got to Lupine, I used most of my remaining money treating myself to a real breakfast in a diner to fortify myself. Then I spent the next few hours making inquiries about the person I had come to see. Mistakenly, I had thought that once I was in Lupine, the hard part would be over. It turned out that tracking him down was more difficult than I imagined it would be.

  In fairness, I didn’t know what I had expected. All the information I had — the sum total of all the things I had heard about him since he had disappeared — was his name and the name of the town he was said to have gone to. And that he was a biker.

  Not like a bicyclist. A motorcycle rider. And to hear my brother tell it, he was probably a rapist and an axe murderer to boot.

  Which raised the question of why in heaven’s name I was trying to find him in the first place.

  The truth was, I didn’t see that I had much choice. Maybe other people in the world were just stronger than I was. It had taken me more than a year to finally convince myself that I had to leave the Ranch — that any life on the outside would be better than the life I was condemned to there. I had spent months of planning, secreting away clothes and money that I would need to get away and start fresh somewhere else. I had spent countless nights lying awake, practically paralyzed with fear that Isaiah would find where I had hidden those things and beat me, then haul me in front of the leader and the council for my punishment.

  After all of that, I had somehow found the courage to actually leave. But the only way I was able to manage to convince myself to actually go through with it was by telling myself that there was someone out there on the other side who would help me. Who had to help me. Even if he didn’t want to. Simply because he was the only one who could.

  At the restaurant where I bought juice, eggs, and hash browns, I asked the waitress if she knew a man named Leviticus. She looked at me like I had two heads. “Leviticus?” the waitress squeaked, as though I’d said his name was Daffy Duck. “No, sorry, I don’t know anyone with a name like that.”

  My face flushed in embarrassment. I was becoming more or less used to feeling like a space alien in my interactions the past few days. I had thought that changing my clothing would be enough to help me pass as one of the “worldly” people (as the people in the community called them), but it seemed as though the things that came out of my mouth were just as strange. I didn’t think it was my appearance that was calling attention to me. Though my clothes were a little dirty by now, they didn’t seem too different from what other people were wearing around me, though perhaps a little less revealing than the clothing preferred by most of the young women my age.

  I had finally managed to cut my hair in a gas station bathroom when one of the buses I was on stopped for a break. It had never been cut in my lifetime, as women of the WFZ Ranch were told that to cut their hair was a sin in the eyes of God. My hands were shaking as I picked up the scissors to do something that no woman in the community would ever think of doing. In the end, I had been too chicken to do anything drastic, but I did manage to cut off almost a foot, and it now fell to the middle of my back, which seemed like a “normal” length that wouldn’t attract attention. I had bought a toothbrush and toothpaste at the same stop, so I didn’t think my oral hygiene was causing any negative reactions.

  I tried again with the waitress. “Well, would you know where I could find a biker? Like, a motorcycle rider?”

  If anything, the question just seemed to amuse her more. “Like, any motorcycle rider?” she asked, her darkly penciled brow cocking in what I was pretty sure was mockery.

  “The person I’m looking for is a motorcycle rider,” I explained, willing the ever-hotter flush in my cheeks to go away. “I thought, if I could find someone who knew other motorcycle riders, they might be able to tell me where he is.”

  She shrugged. “You could just go hang out downtown and wait for someone on a motorcycle to show up,” she suggested. Her eyes flicked away from me toward a table of boys about her age who were roughhousing noisily. It was clear she was getting bored with talking to me. I thanked her, and she wasted no time setting down my check and heading toward the boys’ table. I absently watched her as she flirted shamelessly with the best-looking of them, her voice growing teasing and animated.

  Taking a sip of my orange juice, I thought about my next move. Actually, the waitress’s suggestion about going downtown and trying to find a motorcycle rider wasn’t a bad one. At any rate, I couldn’t be very choosy, considering I had basically no other ideas. I reached into my pocket for my few remaining bills, paid my tab, and wandered outside.

  Downtown Lupine was about a mile and a half from where the bus had dropped me off at a combination bus depot and truck stop. I walked the distance along a dusty highway with no sidewalks, and eventually came across the area, which primarily consisted of one long main street lined with bars, restaurants, and shops of various kinds. I covered the several blocks from one end to the other, noting a smattering of motorcycles along the way. Eventually, I stopped in front of another diner, where a cluster of them were parked. These machines were larger and more imposing than the others I had seen, and some of them had leather side bags, or skull designs on the gas tank.

  Pushing down my nervousness, I decided that talking to whoever owned these motorcycles would probably be my best shot at learning where Leviticus was. There were no benches or places to sit that I could see, so I sat down awkwardly on the curb to wait.

  I’m not sure how much time passed, but eventually a group of men came out of the diner talking in loud voices. They were wearing jeans and leather vests with patches on them that said undecipherable things like “Road Capt.” and “Enforcer” and a couple of them had long, thick beards. Tattoos lined their muscled arms, and one of them immediately lit up a cigarette as soon as they were outside.

  I stood up, brushed off the backside of my jeans and took a deep breath. “Excuse me,” I called out to them.

  The one with the longest beard turned to look at me, smiling to reveal a set of straight
, very white teeth. He reminded me of the big bad wolf in the fairy tale we read to children at the Ranch. “Well, well, well, darlin’, what can we do for you?” he said in a voice that was both a challenge and an invitation.

  I took a few steps forward and tried to keep my voice from trembling. “I’m looking for someone. A motor… a biker. And I was wondering if you might know where he is. “

  Beard looked at another of the men, with razored hair about the same length as his whiskers. “If you’re lookin’ for a man, darlin’, I can help you out,” he leered suggestively.

  A wave of fright shot through me. Suddenly, I realized this might not be such a good idea. Nervously, I looked around, reassured that there were a few other people on the street who would hear me if I cried out.

  “I’m sorry, no,” I replied in a shaking voice. I didn’t want to provoke these dangerous men in any way. “It’s a particular person I’m looking for. His name is Leviticus Wolff.”

  “Leviticus Wolff?” Beard repeated in disbelief. His tone matched the one the waitress had used when I’d said Leviticus’s name, and I almost laughed at how similar this enormous bearded man sounded to the teenage girl. He laughed then, a loud bark, and turned to his friends. “Levi’s name is fuckin’ Leviticus?”

  I flinched at the curse, but otherwise didn’t react as the men burst into loud laughter. Nonetheless, my heart leapt at what he had said. They knew Leviticus! But apparently he went by Levi now. I made a mental note of it; the fact that these men didn’t know his full name might mean that he didn’t want them to, for some reason.

  I waited until their laughter had died down and repeated my question. “Do you know where Levit… where Levi is?”

  “Honey, you sure you know what you’re gettin’ into here?” a man whose head was shaved clean spoke up. His eyes raked slowly over me, lingering on my breasts, making me feel as though I was naked instead of wearing a loose-fitting T-shirt.