~oOo~
Mo had been born in Belfast, and had lived the first twelve years of her life in that considerable city, in an apartment building, surrounded by people and bustle and noise. But she’d lived the next fifteen years of her life in the sleepy town of Shayton, Oklahoma. She was a country girl at heart now.
All the houses they viewed were city houses. Much nicer than their tiny rented bungalow, yes, but she couldn’t imagine sitting in these yards in the evening and hearing little more than the peaceful music of crickets and whippoorwills.
Brian had only one VA loan. They had to get this purchase right.
The real estate agent—a different one from the no-nonsense commercial agent who’d helped with the station purchase—huffed in obvious weary impatience as Mo shook her head at another tiny kitchen surrounded by street noise.
“Hey,” Brian warned the agent. “This is your job. If you don’t want to do it, we’ll find somebody who does.”
“I’m sorry. It’s just that my boys get home from football practice in less than an hour.” The woman checked her watch again.
Mo sighed. “There’s nothing we can afford that’s a little farther out? Not a farm, we don’t need that much room. But something with a little quiet?”
“How far out are you willing to go?”
“No more’n twenty-five, thirty miles,” Brian answered. Mo could tell he was getting just as tired of Nancy as she was of them. “I gotta get into town every day for work.”
“Well, there’s Bixby. That’s been a farming town, but it’s been changing a lot. Several new developments have been going up. I know you don’t want to be in a subdivision, but there are also a few older areas with three-bedroom ranchers that are starting to need some freshening up. Like this, but in a quieter area. A lot of those have nice property—a half-acre or so. In tiptop shape, they’re not in your price range. But I could look for a fixer there. If you’re interested in something like that, you might get a deal if you’re handy.”
“I’m handy,” Brian said. “Let’s see some of those.”
“Are you free tomorrow? I can work up some properties to see.”
Mo turned to Brian. He was working long days at the station, doing the repairs and refreshing it needed before he would open it under his own name. They had a deadline to get everything done. But Mo was doing long days, too, going back and forth between Shayton and Dewspring. They were staying with the Nielsens during this process, and she was packing up their bungalow primarily on her own.
She wanted him to take the time off and look at these places in Bixby.
Brian gave Mo a wink and turned to Nancy. “I can give you afternoon or morning, not both.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
~oOo~
It was the third house they saw in Bixby. The forty-first house they’d viewed in the Tulsa area. If Bixby could be considered the Tulsa area.
The house wasn’t anything special from the outside—a typical ranch-style, long, low, and beige, with a low, flat porch, a few indifferent shrubs, and a large, old elm in the front yard. The house rested on a low rise at the corner of a blessedly quiet street of similar houses. All the yards were roomy, and this corner lot was the roomiest. The back yard was plain and patchy and had never gotten much love, except, perhaps, by its chief resident. An ancient standard poodle stood at the patio and barked the whole time Mo and Brian toured the house.
The inside was where Mo fell in love. Nancy was right—it was a bit worn down and scuffed up, no work had been done since perhaps its very first days, but Mo could see around that to the miracle it could be. Every room was huge. The living room and dining room were connected to make one vast space, and the dining room led to the massive kitchen.
There was a fireplace. It was badly discolored by soot, but that could be cleaned. The wood floors needed refinishing, but she could imagine them smooth and gleaming. The main bedroom had its own bath! And in addition to three bedrooms, there was a room officially called an office, as well as a ‘bonus room’ off the kitchen, with a pretty window looking out on the back. She could use that as her own office, and do her class prep there. Brian and she both liked to garden, so the yard wouldn’t be so dull once they got their hands on it.
And the kitchen! Oh, lord, the kitchen. The appliances and other fittings were at least twenty-five years old and probably all needed to be replaced, but she loved it anyway. So much room to cook, and a ‘breakfast room’ connected, where she could sit with Joanna in the sunshine and drink coffee and talk about their silly men.
And the patio right off the breakfast room! She could imagine sending her children out to play and keeping an eye on them from the kitchen window or the sliding glass door. Maybe someday, when they were well settled and the children were old enough, they could put a pool in that huge back yard.
CANNONBALL! She smiled, imagining Brian playing with their children.
This was a house for a family.
It needed a lot of work—which was why they could afford it.
But Brian was handy, and Mo was creative. They could make this a home. They could fill it with family. They could build a life here.
She stood in the middle of the weary aqua kitchen, turned to find Brian, and nodded.
This was their house.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Brian studied the application the kid had handed to him. There wasn’t much on it. He was in his mid-twenties, and had no relevant work experience. In fact, what he’d listed under ‘Employment History’ was pretty sketchy all around. A lot of field work, and odd jobs, it looked like. Though he’d left the ‘race’ box blank, by name and look he was clearly Mexican, which could account for the field work; a lot of migrants worked the Oklahoma fields. But the dates didn’t jive up for how he was earning his living now.
Brian was new to this ‘boss’ gig, but he’d been in the world a while. His hunch said this kid did most of his work off the books, getting paid cash under the table, or maybe doing work darker than that. He was a huge fucker, and definitely not missing any meals, so he was earning some way. He’d make a great henchman for some of the bad players in the area, and he had a craggy, severe look like he had experience in delivering pain.
The kid had checked the ‘No’ box for the question about felony convictions, and Brian had no real reason to doubt him, but not being convicted and not committing felonies were different things. He wasn’t opposed to helping a troubled kid go straight, but he didn’t want a thief in his house.
The kid had his GED, and a shiny-new ASE certification—which was not cheap, by the way. In the ad he’d placed in the World, Brian had specified a requirement for ASE, and a preference for mechanics just getting their start, but he’d honestly expected to get people who’d been working in the business for a least a little while. Most mechanics had been getting their hands greasy long before they got certified.
That ad had gotten a lot of response. He had a stack of a few dozen applications to go through—men with much better work histories than this kid. But there was something about him Brian liked. He couldn’t say what, except the kid was standing right in front of him, like a massive brown wall, so clean and groomed he shone, and dressed with such crispness the creases in his khakis could cut glass. He clearly wanted this job.
He had an air about him, too—evident nerves, but a powerful self-possession as well. They hadn’t exchanged more than a handful of words yet, but Brian liked him. He liked that hunger, and that poise.
The pump bell chimed, and he looked up from the application and out the front windows. He smiled when he saw the shiny, late-model baby-blue Continental at the pumps, and waved when Webster and Horatia Greeley both waved from the front seat. Through the glass of the station windows and their Lincoln, he wasn’t sure they could see him, but he waved anyway.
Brian Delaney Auto Service had been open less than three weeks, but the Greeleys had already made this station and the people who worked here part of their ci
rcle. They were big deals in this little nothing of a neighborhood, so getting the Greeleys’ okay was drawing other neighbors to the business.
Which was a good thing. Brian hadn’t taken into account the history of the business before he’d owned it, and he hadn’t taken much stock of the demographics of the neighborhood, either. It was working-class, leaning toward poor, and racially mixed, leaning toward black, and tightknit. The previous owner, who’d had the place more than twenty years and had died on the job, had been black and had lived two blocks away. Lily-white Brian lived twenty miles away, and the friends he’d hired to work with him were all just as white and living just as far.
He’d been stepping into much bigger shoes than he’d realized, and he’d stepped right into dog shit.
But God bless his old lady. Mo had seen the potential problem early, while they were renovating the rundown old place, and getting looky-loos from people on the street. She’d dragged Brian to neighborhood meetings at the church down the block, and organized a big pre-grand-opening party, with free food and drink, just for their neighbors.
It was at the first neighborhood meeting Mo had homed in on the Greeleys and got them on their side. The party had done well to get everybody else on their side.
At that party, she’d made sure they met and spoke with every single person, and she’d had all their names and details about them down before they locked up for the night. Then she’d grilled him afterward until he knew everything she’d learned.
Now, when people came in, Brian greeted them by name and asked after their kids or their dogs. If said kids or dogs were along for the ride, they got a Dum Dum sucker or a Milk-Bone from the big fishbowls Mo had sat on the counter. Like the bowl of gumballs Dave had kept on his counter for the neighborhood kids.
Brian looked up at the big Mexican standing in front of him and thought of another pro to considering this guy. His thought of Mo’s community-building prowess had stuck the smile to his face, and when the kid saw him smiling, a corner of his own mouth came up in an unpracticed version of the same expression.
Brian’s smile faded when no one hurried to gas up that Conty. “CONRAD!” he shouted, loud enough to make his potentially new mechanic flinch slightly. When he didn’t get an answer, he slammed the application down on the sales desk and went to the open doorway to the bays. If that kid was loafing around in the bays … “CONRAD! DAMMIT!”
John was under the hood in the nearest bay, and Collie was down in the oil change bay. Nobody else was around. John looked over and gave a hunched-up shrug.
Right now, except for Conrad and a couple other pump jockeys, all Brian’s employees were his friends. John had worked as a mechanic all his life, and he’d been eager to join up, though Brian hadn’t at first been comfortable being his friend’s boss. Then Collie wanted to work, too. He wasn’t ASE certified, he had only one eye and one ear, but he could change oil and do other maintenance-level jobs. He was getting up toward sixty, and he wanted only part-time work, anyway.
It looked like even Dane was going to end up on the payroll. He hated farming with his old man, and he was far, far better with accounting bullshit than Brian was.
But where the fuck was Conrad? If Brian had to go pump gas right now—“CONRAD!”
“I’m here, D!” Conrad called from behind him. Brian turned and saw him in the men’s bathroom doorway, still closing his belt. “Had to drop a deuce. That fan in there is like a jet engine, but I still wouldn’t go in there for a minute.”
Brian rolled his eyes. “The Greeleys are at the pumps. That’s your job, right? For now?”
Conrad’s eyes rounded at the implicit threat, and he headed straight for the front door. “Got it!”
Brian went back to the task he was actually on. “Okay, let’s see, Fernando. I got some questions.”
“Most people just call me Nando, sir,” the kid said.
“Well, Nando. I gotta ask about your work experience. Don’t look like you’ve got much.”
“I been working every day since I was thirteen, sir.”
“You can drop the sir, kid.”
“Okay, Mr. Delaney.”
“If you’ve been workin’ so much for so long, why’s this so empty?” He waved the paper.
Nando stared at that paper and took a deep breath. Brian had the sense that he was tamping down an angry response. “Workin’ in the fields, you don’t always get paperwork, or references, or anything like that. But the work’s hard and real. I can do anything you need me to do. I’m not afraid of anything, and I’m stronger than anybody. And I’m a good mechanic. Top of my class.” Nando looked down at his massive hands. “I want real work, Mr. Delaney. I want to get somewhere in my life. The ad said you were looking for mechanics getting their start. Well, that’s me. I’ll work harder for you than anybody, and I’ll do good work.”
“This reference you listed—one of your instructors from training?”
“Yes, sir—Mr. Delaney.”
“Alright, I tell you what. That gold Delta 88 out front. You pull it into the second bay, figure it out, fix it, and show me your work, and I’ll call this guy and see what he says about you. If your work is good, and timely, and this Parmenter guy says you’re solid, we’ll get you fitted out for a uniform.” He laughed. “It’ll have to be special order, no doubt. What’s your chest measure, anyway?”
“About fifty-five inches.”
“Fucking hell, Nando. Yeah, that’s a special order. But show me what you can do first.”
The kid’s face split into a big, bright grin. “Yes sir, Mr. Delaney. Thank you, sir.”
“Around here, I’m just D, Nando. Just D.”
~oOo~
Dane finished his mug of beer and tipped his chair back. “I’m just sayin’, it’d be alright to have a place like that.”
They were in a roadside tavern just inside the Oklahoma state line, coming back from a weekend bike show in Illinois. They’d spent the night before at the Night Horde clubhouse in Signal Bend.
They’d stopped here, only a couple hours from home, because of an unexpected storm that had turned the mid-October afternoon into a frigid misery.
“We got the VFW,” Collie said. “Or Stooges. Or six other bars I can name that start fillin’ glasses soon’s we walk in.”
“Yeah, but none of those places’re ours.”
John poured out the rest of the pitcher into their empty mugs. “Stooges is, just about. Stu’s your family.”
Dane shrugged. “Not the same.”
“Anyway, ain’t we all sick of each other, after workin’ all day together?” Collie asked.
“Go to hell, old man,” Dane retorted. “You put in ten hours a week, maybe.”
“They’re ten damn fine hours, though,” Collie said, and they all laughed.
Brian laughed, too, but he was distracted. He had to admit, he had some envy for what Ike Lunden had. It wasn’t much, just about eight guys with bikes and a clubhouse, just a patch on the backs of leather or denim kuttes, but it spoke to him. Maybe it was the soldier in him. He liked that camaraderie, that shared sense of belonging, and being out in the world in a way that showed you belonged to something bigger than yourself.
The fucking peace hippies had ruined a lot of that for men like him and his friends, who’d gone to fight a bad war and come back labeled ‘baby-killers’—but they’d gone as soldiers, offering their lives for their country, and they’d had every right to be proud of their service.
Maybe it was that—having that part of his past twisted into shame. He didn’t know. But yeah, any time he spent with the Horde made him want something like it. He was too far away to join that club, and he wasn’t sure he’d want to join somebody else’s club, anyway. He wanted something of his own.
He and Dane had talked a few times about it and gone nowhere. But now Dane had it in his teeth.
Nobody at this table had the savings Brian did. His anxiety about failing had offered up one upside: he’d been afraid to spend th
e money he had. All that waiting, living so lean in that tiny house in Shayton, biding his time for just the right purchase of a business, using the VA loan to buy their house, taking out a small loan for the business upgrades, and Mo earning a solid living, too—that had left a fairly tidy sum in the bank. Enough for a down payment on that building next door. He didn’t know what they were asking for it, or if it was for sale, for that matter, but he knew it had been boarded up for more than a year. He could probably get a good deal on it.
“What if I bought the building next to the station? We could make that into something.”
“Ain’t that apartments?” John asked, surprised.
“It’s a four-family flat,” Dane said. Brian watched the idea break over his best friend’s brain. “Wouldn’t be much to convert it. Take down a few walls, pull out the extra kitchens. We could sell that stuff. There’s a big market for used cabinetry and plumbing works. And right next to the station—that’s fuckin’ perfect, brother. Like a compound.”
“You talkin’ about forming an MC?” John asked.
“I don’t know if we need to get that formal about it, but yeah,” Brian answered. “We ride motorcycles. We want a place of our own to relax in. That’s a clubhouse. That would make us a motorcycle club, wouldn’t it?”
“Yeah. That’s pretty much why we formed the Poison Cobras.”
Brian snorted. “We’d damn sure need a better name than that.”
Dane let loose a giddy stream of chuckles. “The Legless Snakes.”
“Fuck you all, I swear,” John grumbled around his own laughter.
“No, but seriously,” Brian said and straightened up. He stubbed out his smoke and got serious. “I got no interest in being one of those one-percenter clubs, all I want’s a clubhouse and a kutte, but we need a good name. Something strong and tough. The 173rd’s known as the Fire Brigade. My battalion was The Rock. We need something like that. Strong. Something that shows we’ve been through the shit and we are not men to fuck with.”
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