by Nicole Fox
Maybe a man like me ought to never get nervous, but I’m trying to move up in the ranks and a one-on-one meeting with the boss ain’t nothing to sniff at.
“You did some good work on those punks at the strip club,” he says. “I will never understand how punks like that think they’re going to get away with pulling that shit. The Devil’s Horn crossroad is ours. At least that’s what any outlaw worth half a lick of shit knows. But then you get these out-of-town punks who think they can move in and sling heroin to kids and the Thunder Riders MC is going to step aside and let it happen.”
“Punks are punks, sir. I don’t reckon thinking figures much into it for them.”
He smiles. From the back of his mouth, his silver filling glints. “That’s a truth if I’ve ever heard one. You’re doing well, Granite, damn well. You’re what—not even thirty?”
“Twenty-seven.”
“Twenty-seven. At your age you’d catch me calling my elbow my asshole, but you’re focused. I’m impressed. Tricking them like that was smart. An out-of-town deal, in the middle of the night, a shipment of heroin …” He claps his hands together. “And it all took was a rifle and some night-vision goggles. Where’d you get those things, by the way? I never asked.”
“The Internet. Let me tell you, sir, that you can get anything on the Internet these days.”
He reaches into his desk drawer and takes out an envelope packed with notes, pauses for a moment, and then takes out two more. “This is for doing the job.” He slides one envelope across: twenty grand. “And this is for doing it clean.” He slides the second: forty grand. “And this is for making my goddamn day.” Sixty grand. “We need men like you in this club, men who’re gonna think shit through, men who can plan beyond just going in there and lighting the place up. I know what you wanna hear from me, Granite. You want me to promote you to officer. I think that’d be fair. But right now we’ve got too many officers and not enough men like you who can go out there and get it done. But keep working. You’ll make the cut.”
I swallow. Apparently taking out a rival gang single-handed ain’t enough. But I’m not about to show how I feel to the boss. That’d just be stupid. “Yes, sir. Thank you.”
I leave the office and walk through the clubhouse. It’s mostly deserted at this time of the day except for a few old fellas and the pledge behind the bar. I go out into the parking lot, get on my bike, and ride. I stop at a diner on the way to the gun shop and call Ranger. The sun is shining and the diner is full of families and couples. It’s a Saturday and everyone’s got a smile on their face, even if the heat is like a furnace in places.
“’Sup?” Ranger says.
“’Sup,” I echo. “You bringing that back?”
“You call me on my busiest day of the week with that shit?”
The diner is called The Range, with two American flags drooping in the windless afternoon and a picture of a man holding a frying pan the same way other men’d hold a gun. “Look outside,” I tell him.
A moment later a skinny, teenager-lookin’ man presses his face against the glass. At first he’s scowling, but Ranger and I have known each other too long for that. He gets to smiling even if maybe he doesn’t mean to. “I can come out for a smoke break,” he says. “One single smoke break. None of your let’s-go-to-the-bar shit, Granite. None of your it’ll-only-be-for-one shit, because it’s never one. I’ve got a business to run here.”
“Don’t act like you ain’t pleased for the chance to sit in this glorious Texan sun. This is a God-gifted day.”
“Ha! When’s the last time you went to church?”
I think on it for a second. “I don’t reckon there is a last time.”
“You know, the reason I was in the club for just six months is because I like the diner life. I like frying and ordering and managing and stocking and all that stuff. I know that’s a big fuckin’ surprise to you.” He shakes his head as he makes his way through the diner toward the entrance. “I know that makes no sense to a man like you. But …” He walks outside, a mop of dark back hair curling around pointy elf ears, stuffed under a Stetson hat. He’s right; he never would’ve survived the club life for long. “Afternoon.” He tips his hat, a real cowboy cliché. “My point is this.” He drops his phone into his pocket. “If you’re here on some club business, I’m not interested.”
“You know you don’t have to give me that speech every time I come by, don’t you?”
I step from my bike and we walk to our regular smoking area, behind the diner in the shadows.
He lights up a cigarette and then offers me one. “I quit,” I tell him.
“Goddamn.” He takes a long drag. “So you invite me out here for a smoke when you don’t even smoke. That’s just fucking classic right there.”
“You love giving me shit. I get it, you mop-haired bastard. But that don’t mean you’ve gotta go on repeating yourself until the end of time.”
He laughs, the giggling I’m familiar with, the giggling that is just another reason he’d never make it in the life. “So what’s the deal?” he asks.
“Nothing,” I reply.
He goes to the rear fire door and runs his hand along the frame, which is bent and broken at the corner. He inspects it for a while the same way one of my brothers’d inspect his bike if it was giving him a hard time. “You can’t come by here in the middle of the day and tell me you haven’t got shit on your mind. You only come by here like this when you’ve got somethin’ on your mind you can’t discuss with your friends at the club. So don’t play games with me.”
“You know, for a wannabe-cowboy-scrawny-motherfucker you sure do talk tough.”
“Big men don’t need to talk tough. It’s for small men to learn how to make themselves seem bigger than they are.”
“How fucking meaningful. Where’d you hear that?”
“Round the back of my diner, when I said it just now. Come on, Granite, what’s the rub?”
“It’s not a big deal, man. I just had a meeting with the boss and I thought he was gonna make me an officer, on account of this job I did, this real big job, did it all on my own and he just pays me—pays me well, don’t get me wrong—and sends me on my way.”
“You need a woman,” Ranger says. “I don’t wanna hear about your job or anything to do with the club, because the solution is going to be the same no matter what the problem is. You need a lady, Granite, just like I’ve got a lady. Marrying Maria was the best thing that ever happened to me. I don’t want to get all soppy on you, but love, connection, all that stuff. It ain’t a lie. It really does change you. And when we have a kid … you know we’re trying … when we have a kid, I bet it’ll change me even more.”
“I don’t see how getting married will make me an officer any quicker than staying single.”
“Listen. I’m no psychologist, but I wonder if you even want to be an officer. Well, you do, sure, but why? Just ’cause being an officer is the most amazing thing that could ever happen to a person, or ’cause you want to feel like you belong? A woman you truly love’ll do that just the same.”
“Goddamn. I’m not about to grab myself a wife, quit the club, and come work here washing dishes.”
“No,” he agrees. “You could do any number of things. I’m sure you’d make a decent mechanic or a courier or a gym instructor or something like that. Anyway, don’t you ever get tired of the …” He flicks his cigarette to the ground and shrugs. He won’t say it aloud. I think he likes to believe that the darker aspects of my work don’t exist. “Doesn’t that other shit get to you? It got to me and I was never involved in it myself. I just heard about it. And it got to me plenty.”
I stuff my hands into my jacket pocket. “You would’ve learned a trick if you stayed in the club long enough, Ranger. It goes somethin’ like this: anytime you feel yourself starting to ponder those parts of the life, anytime you feel yourself getting sentimental or squeamish or whatever the fuck it is, you go and get a drink or a club girl and lose yourself in it.
Or you just close your mind to it. What good will going there do me, do any of us? We all do shit for our living we don’t enjoy. Don’t tell me you enjoy it when half your staff bails ’cause of some virus and you’ve got to wash those greasy pans yourself.”
“But those pans aren’t covered in blood,” Ranger says quietly. “It was good talking. Really. But like I said, I’ve got a business to run.”
“All right, man.”
We bump knuckles and I get on my bike, following my own rule and not letting myself think on what he said. My mind tries to stray there just the same way a bike tries to stray into the next lane, but both can be controlled if a man knows how. All it takes is some skill.
I go into the gun store, one of those places with a lone star out front. Johnny Cash plays from the office in the back and a lady stands at the counter, and damn if she isn’t the most beautiful piece in this place. She’s tall for a lady but not by much, with long brown hair styled at the front and sides but wilder at the back. It’s unique. I ain’t no hair enthusiast but it gets me looking. Her eyes are wide and green, I see when she turns at the ring of the bell above the door, and her body is tight. She wears shorts and a tank top and it gets my blood stirring. She turns back to the counter and I go into the back room to meet with my man, but not before I catch some of her conversation with the guy behind the desk.
“I don’t know what that is,” she’s saying. “I just need something to protect myself, to … just a gun. When people come in here and they’re not experienced with guns, what’s the one you recommend? I’d like to see that one, please.”
I watch her for a moment She’s more nervous than a Brit I saw in a gun shop once, fingernails scraping on the glass.
Chapter Three
Allison
“He was the handsomest man you’ve ever seen? Is that even a word?”
We sit in an air-conditioned bar on the outskirts of town, where there’s more dust than road but where the cocktails are cheaper and the bars less packed. Emma raises her eyebrow at me; her perfectly stenciled eyebrow. She’s twice my age and with that comes twice the effort in personal appearance. It must be one-thousand degrees but she’s still crammed into a pencil skirt and heels. We work together at the call center. People say she’s my adoptive mother, only half-joking.
“Yes, it’s a word.” I take a sip of my piña colada and smile at her. “He was the tallest man I’ve ever seen, number one, but he was also really, well—built. He wasn’t like those guys you see who spend all their time at the gym, though. This was something else. He was built the same way lumberjacks are built, or—”
“You spend lots of time with lumberjacks, do you?” She tilts her head in that way that makes me want to slap and hug her at the same time. She’s on the skinnier side and sometimes her expression is cutting. Her dark brown eyes only increase the effect.
“He was covered in tattoos too,” I go on, ignoring her. “Skulls and snakes and stuff like that, all over his hands and his neck. And he was wearing a jacket with a picture on the back, only it happened so quick I didn’t see the picture. His hair was short, his face was clean-shaven. He was … well, he was just handsome. His eyes were bright blue. They were really something.”
“Okay …” Emma sucks on her straw like a real lady. “I don’t see how this excuses you for buying a gun.”
“Oh, come on. The last time I checked this was still Texas.”
“Don’t ‘come on’ me!” Emma snaps. Her face is playful, but it could tip at any moment. Emma’s expressions are always ready to go one way or the other, depending on where her razor-like mood takes her. “I know we’re in Texas, miss, but that doesn’t change the fact that you’ve never fired a gun, never owned a gun, never even touched a gun as far as I know. And now what? You think you’re going to somehow use it to help your brother? How, exactly? Please explain that to me. Are you some action-movie star now? Are you going to charge in there with guns blazing? Sorry, are you going to charge in there gun blazing?”
“I have the right to buy a firearm,” I say. “I don’t see that I need to be lectured about it. I don’t want to quote the Constitution but I will.”
She rolls her eyes. “Look me in the face and tell me you’re not nervous about handling that weapon. No, don’t smile. This isn’t a joke. Look me right in the face and tell me that you feel confident you won’t harm yourself or anybody else carrying that thing around.”
“I don’t have it with me now. I don’t have a what’d ya call it …”
“A concealed carry thingy?”
“Yes, that’s precisely it. A concealed carry thingy.”
“This is so ridiculous!” she exclaims, drinking down the rest of her cocktail and waving for another. “We don’t even know the most basic terms, and you’re talking about fighting—”
“Please speak louder,” I tell her. “I don’t think the man in the moon heard you.”
“Don’t you mean the man on the moon?”
“No, the man in the moon. It’s an HG Wells book.”
“Great. Maybe you ought to throw books at them instead of bullets, then.”
“Ha, ha, ha.”
“Yes.” She turns to the waiter, a teenager with acne who looks at Emma like she might be a dangerous animal. She tends to have that effect on men south of thirty. “I’ll have a Sex on the Beach, please.” She turns back to me. “I love you, Allison, I really do, so I feel like I’ve got to tell you how crazy I think this is. You can’t just run around with a gun you just bought and don’t know how to use and expect to do anything—well, do anything productive at all! Let’s just slow down with this, okay? Let’s think it through properly. Why don’t you give me the gun and we’ll think of alternatives?”
I glance out of the window. Maybe, in a different reality, I would let her convince me if right at this moment there weren’t three bikers out there, standing near the hood of a pickup and laughing and smoking. I thought I didn’t remember the patch on the back of that man’s jacket, but these men have the same patch. A man on a motorcycle with thunder and lightning clattering behind him. The Thunder Riders. An idea formulates and takes hold. It’s crazy, but not as crazy as buying a gun when I don’t know how to use it or facing down a handlebar-mustachioed biker.
“Allison! Are you listening to me?”
“What? Um, sure. Listen.” I drain the last of my piña colada. “I have to go, Emma. It was really great talking with you and I think you’ve been a big help. But …”
I get up and leave before she can protest, at least before her protests can work their magic on me.
When I get outside I look back into the bar to see if she’s going to follow me, but luck must be on my side today. She’s on the phone, talking in that way she does with her husband: gesturing with her beringed hand, furrowing her eyebrows, over enunciating each word as though he is not keeping up with her. I walk across the sun-scorched parking lot toward the bikers, trying to look as casual as possible. They’re standing next to an ATM so I walk toward that, taking out my purse and trying my hardest to look like nothing more than a dawdling twenty-three year-old.
The first biker is a short, chubby man with gray hair growing almost exclusively from behind his ears. But despite its limited place of origin, it reaches down to his shoulders. I christen him Gray-Ear. The next biker along is taller and younger, with a sharp nose and a tattoo of a dagger just under his right eye. He is Dagger. The third holds an unlit cigarette, sitting on the hood, legs spread out. He’s the youngest of them, perhaps still shy of eighteen. I call him the Kid.
“You talk so much shit it gives me a headache,” the Kid says, flipping his unlit cigarette across his fingers. “There’s no damn way you spent a night with that Iggy Azalea or whatever her damn name is. You ain’t even seen her in concert. I bet if this big motherfucker showed up to see her in concert they’d turn him away on account of all the kids around.”
“Yeah,” Dagger agrees. “Don’t talk shit, old man.”
“Fine, fine.” Gray-Ear holds his hands up. “Maybe I didn’t fuck her, all right? But she did suck my dick!” There’s a pause, the men stare at him, and then he lowers his hands. “All right, I’ve never met her.”
“What about these Brass Skulls though, eh?” Dagger says. He stretches out like a lion, rotating his neck side to side. “What do we make of these bastards?”
“What’s to make of them?” Gray-Ear retorts. “They’re a bunch of kids who’ve gotten too big for their boots, is all. The boss’ll put ’em down.”
“Or get Granite to do it,” the Kid mutters. He doesn’t sound as carefree anymore. “Did you hear what he did to those punks at the strip joint? Goddamn, but that man’s got skill.”