Doc Marshall

by Jessie Cooke

  She wasn’t stupid. She knew that undoing it wasn’t an option. She had in her possession a rental car that currently had the remnants of Doc’s Harley attached to the undercarriage. There had to be damage to the bumper and maybe the paint on the trunk. There was no way she could return the car in that condition. The more she thought about that, the harder it got to breathe. She kept driving, though, even thinking that maybe if she ended up in an accident, she’d be able to explain the damage. She got to the airport and thought about just leaving it in long-term parking, but she was still on parole. The car was in her name. They’d arrest her and take her away from her baby. With arms that were shaking so hard she could scarcely control their movements, she managed to park the car in a corner lot, way in the back, and get out to assess the damage.

  The trunk was damaged. It had a dent in it about half a foot long and the paint was scratched off. The bumper, which was plastic, was cracked and both taillights were broken. Worse yet, a big chunk of the bike was still hanging out underneath. If she’d been spotted on the way to the airport, she’d be on her way to jail already. She looked around to make sure no one was watching and then she bent down and began to try and untangle the metal of the bike from underneath the car. It took her what seemed like hours and she was sweating and panting once she finally had enough of it out that, she hoped, no one would be able to tell what she’d done. Once that was taken care of, she used her foot to move the pieces of the bike underneath the car next to her and got back into the rental car. She would just have to tell them she hit something on the freeway on the way there, and whatever it was had been heavy and bounced off the back of the car. They would investigate to make sure no one had reported an accident. Doc wouldn’t ever report anything to the cops, so she was sure there was no way to tie her into purposely running over his bike. It took her another half an hour to calm down enough to be able to drive the car over closer to the airport, get out, and go inside. She had to slip into one of the public bathrooms and wash her face. Then she took her makeup bag out of her purse and carefully reapplied it, so no one could tell she’d been so upset…she hoped. When that was all finished and she was satisfied that she didn’t look like a woman who had just run over her old man’s bike…she headed toward the rental car kiosk in the airport lobby.

  Three hours later, with an insurance claim filed with a suspicious car rental agent, Dallas finally boarded her plane. She was still shaking inside. She wondered what Doc would do when he got home and found her and Dax gone. She couldn’t continue to stay with him, not as long as he insisted on keeping his whore. She had too much self-respect for that. She hated the idea of taking Dax from his home and his father…but he was barely a year old, he needed his mother.

  Dallas fell asleep on the plane and had a nightmare about all of the things that could have gone wrong thanks to her temper. Had Doc stepped in her path, she would have run him over, and her guilty psyche turned the dream into a nightmare where Doc hadn’t moved, and Dallas saw him just as he bounced up and hit the back of the car. She woke up with a start and realized the plane had touched down at the same time she was dreaming about the impact of his body against the car. Jesus, her heart was racing. She was going to give herself a heart attack.

  When she got off the plane, she hailed a cab, but instead of going to the ranch first, she had the cab take her to the bank. Once she was there, she wrote a check for all but ten dollars in the joint account she shared with Doc. That would give her just over six thousand dollars for her and Dax to make a fresh start. Once she was set up and Doc had time to cool down, she’d get in touch with him then, to arrange for him to see the baby.

  With the cash in her bag, she got back into the cab and had him drop her at the front gates of the ranch. Her first clue that something was up was the suspicious look the prospect in the guard shack gave her and the sight of him out of the corner of his eye, picking up the phone as she walked by, carrying her suitcase. She told herself it was paranoia. He was probably calling one of the guys to bring up the golf cart to get her.

  She realized she’d been wrong about the ride after she walked half a mile. It was about a mile and a half to the shop from the front gates. Someone would have been there. Her guilty conscience and paranoid thoughts ate away at her as she walked, finally making it to the shop. She could hear the loud music and see a young kid they called Moose, out in front, buffing out the paint on one of the black vans the club owned. “Hey, Moose, is Toolie around?”

  Moose didn’t look at her suspiciously, but he was just a kid, so wouldn’t be privy to anything anyway. “No, Dallas, sorry. You need help with the bags?”

  She looked down at her bags and back at the kid. “Do you have time to run me up to Toolie’s place?” Toolie, and now Lola, had one of the smaller houses on the west side of the ranch. It would be another mile or so to walk.

  “Sure. Let me get the golf cart.”

  A few minutes later, he was delivering her to Toolie’s house. Before she was even off the cart, Toolie was on the front porch of his little house…and that was when Dallas knew for sure something was going on. She tried a smile, but for the first time since she knew him, Toolie didn’t smile back. She thanked Moose and then turned back to Toolie and said, “Hey! How’s my boy?”

  “He’s good…but Dallas, we need to talk.”

  “Doc called you?” Toolie nodded. “Well, what did he say?”

  “He said that you can’t take the baby off this ranch.”

  Dallas laughed even as the tears began to fill her eyes. She was so stupid. She should have known. Dax was only her baby as long as she was with Doc. Everything was only hers as long as she was with Doc. If she left him, she might as well be roommates with Abril. Toolie looked nervous as the tears started to roll down her cheeks.

  “I’m sorry, Dallas.”

  She wiped her tears away, squared her shoulders, and said, “No worries, Toolie. I was just going to take him home anyway. Can I see him?”

  Toolie smiled then, but he almost looked sad enough to cry. Dallas thought that the worst part about being forced to stay would always be knowing she didn’t have anyone who was strictly loyal to her. Their loyalties would always be to Doc first, and the only thing she would accomplish by trying to take Dax away…would be to bring the wrath of the entire club down upon them.

  28

  Four Years Later

  Doc watched his son, sitting at the top of the bounce house slide, looking like he was about to burst into tears. “He’s scared, Doc. Please go get him down.”

  “He’s fine. The other kids are doing it.” The “other” kids were Toolie’s and Lola’s three-year-old, who suffered from ADD, and a twelve-year-old who belonged to one of the new club girls.

  “Doc, please.” Dallas didn’t want to start a fight. Every time she questioned him about anything, it was a fight. Things changed drastically after San Antonio. When Doc got back, four days after Dallas got home, he told her she would “Sit down, shut up, and listen to him.” She did, because she still hadn’t quite figured out what she was going to do at that point. He told her then that if she didn’t want to be with him, she was free to go, anytime. She could take the money in their joint accounts and he’d send her a stipend every month for her contribution to the marijuana fields. But…in no uncertain terms, he wanted her to understand that she would never, ever take his son away from him, not even to live down the street. The Southside Skulls Ranch was Dax’s home, and as long as Dallas wanted to stay there, it would be hers too…but Dax wasn’t leaving.

  Over the years, Dallas had plenty of opportunity to take off with him. Doc didn’t always have them escorted when they went to town, and as far as she knew, she wasn’t being followed. But she didn’t run at first for fear that when they caught her, and they would, she’d never see her baby again. Then after a while, things got better again, and she remembered why she’d fallen in love with Doc. He wasn’t the easiest man in the world to live with. He was controlling, almost to th
e point of being obsessive over it. Dallas knew that was because of the way he was raised. His father hadn’t let him have control of anything when he was a kid, so he had to take control of everything as an adult. She wondered if he would ever see the irony in that as he raised his son. Sure, he was raising Dax on the ranch under the shadow of an MC, and he’d been raised in suburbia. But otherwise, things were pretty much the same. The slide in front of them was a prime example. Doc wasn’t going to tolerate his son’s being afraid of anything…even at five years old.

  “Come on, Dax. I’m right here. It’s just a slide. Look at Maddie do it, she’s only three.” Maddie had just come down on her belly, gone headfirst into the little pool of water at the bottom, and come up coughing and choking. It didn’t instill a lot of confidence in Dax, Dallas was sure. Dax shook his little blond head. His big blue eyes went to his mother’s face and she could read “Help me” in them. She was almost to the ladder that lead to the top of the slide when Doc said, “What are you doing, Dal?”

  “Maybe he just needs a little push,” she said. Doc didn’t stop her as she climbed up to the top. She sat down behind Dax and whispered, “You want me to slide with you?” He nodded. From down below Doc said:

  “No, Dal. Let him do it himself.”

  She sighed. She wanted to growl, but she didn’t want to scare Dax. It was his birthday party, for crying out loud. It was his fifth birthday and his father was trying to force him to do something that terrified him. It made her furious. “Tell you what, baby…I’ll give you a little start and then let go. Daddy will catch you at the bottom, okay?” Dax shook his head again.

  “I don’t want to.”

  “Dax!” The sound of his father’s voice caused the little boy to jump. He looked down at Doc and his bottom lip quivered. Dallas whispered:

  “Don’t cry, buddy. You’re so brave. I’m so proud of you.” Then she closed her eyes, and she pushed him. Dax’s small body shot down the slide and before he hit the pool at the bottom, Doc caught him and raised him up in the air. Dallas could hear him giggling as she climbed down the ladder. When her feet hit the ground, Doc put the boy down and said:

  “Great job. That’s a future president right there.” Dallas forced a smile and looked down at her boy. He was glaring at her.

  “You pushed me,” he said. Dallas looked up at Doc; he was laughing.

  “I just wanted you to go, so your daddy would be proud of you,” she said. Dax looked up at his father again and Dallas saw the pride in his eyes. Doc was his hero and despite the fact that sometimes he terrified the little boy, Dax worshipped him. Striking fear into her very core at that moment, her blue-eyed boy gave her another evil look and then said:

  “I would have done it on my own.” Before Dallas could respond, Doc reached down and rubbed the boy’s soft hair with his palm.

  “I know you would have,” Doc said. “You’re my son, after all.” One more look from her precious boy reminded Dallas, just in case she’d forgotten, that Doc was right. Dax was his son, and she was just some woman who warmed the big guy’s bed and dropped the little one off at kindergarten every day.

  The following Monday, Dallas dropped Dax off at school and went back to the ranch to work in the tunnels for a while. She parked her car near the fields and when she stepped out, she saw a man standing at the entrance of the greenhouse with his back to her. His hair was wrapped in elastic bands to hold it back in a long ponytail that touched the center of his back. His shoulders were broad, and he was dressed in a leather kutte and jeans. Something about him was familiar, but none of the guys in the club had hair that long, so she was confused.

  “Hello?” The man turned toward her and suddenly a big smile covered her face. He smiled back…he’d put on weight, but not in a bad way. He’d filled out, and his face and body finally matched all that manly hair he always had on his face. “Coyote!” Dallas ran toward him and he opened his arms. They embraced in a warm hug that may have lasted just a little bit too long…but she’d missed her friend like crazy. When he finally let go of her she said, “What are you doing here? Doc didn’t tell me you were coming.”

  Coyote raised a bushy eyebrow and said, “And that surprises you?”

  Dallas felt her face go hot. “Right, sorry. So, what are you doing here? You look good.”

  Coyote ran his brown eyes from her head to her toes and back up again. “You look good. How do you look that good after having a baby? My old lady is…”

  “Wait. What? You have an old lady?”

  He frowned slightly. “Yeah. I thought for sure Doc would tell you that, if he never told you anything else about me.”

  “He doesn’t talk about you at all to me,” she said. She looked around them. There was no one else in sight. “You want to sit?”

  “Sure.” They walked over to a bench the guys had carried out and put under a tree for her. She sat there and had her coffee sometimes in the morning before going in to work, and sometimes she sat there and ate her lunch. They sat, and she said:

  “So, tell me about her.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Everything,” she said with a smile. She was happy for him. He had always seemed so lonely. But strangely, there was a small part of her that felt almost…jealous. She didn’t understand it, but she was doing her best to cover it. “What’s her name?”

  “Colleen.”

  “How old is she? Where did you meet her?”

  He laughed. “She’s twenty-six…We have a kid together.”

  “Oh my goodness! Congratulations. Boy or girl?”

  “Boy.”

  “How old?”

  “He’ll be two in a couple of weeks. His name is Xavier, and he’s as hairy as me.” He chuckled. “You know, sometimes I wonder if there’s a little werewolf blood in our family history.”

  She smiled. “Wow. That’s so awesome, Coyote! I’m so happy for you. Xavier Lee. I like it.”

  His face beamed as he talked about the baby. It was funny because Dallas had never even imagined him as a father. “Yeah,” he said. “We call him Wolf.”

  She laughed at that. “A coyote and a wolf. Makes sense. So, what about Colleen?”

  “She’s a good woman. She’s a great mother. We got married, legally, when she found out she was pregnant. It was mostly to make her father happy, but it’s been good. She’s just had a little trouble taking off the weight since Wolf was born, that’s all I was gonna say. You don’t look like you ever had a kid.”

  “Well, thank you, but I’ve had three more years than her.”

  “Wow,” he said, “Dax is five already? Damn, that went by fast.” He looked like he was lost in the past for a second and then he said, “That was the day that changed everything.”

  “Are you happy out there, Coyote? Are things going okay?”

  He nodded. “Yeah, they’re smoothing out. Starting up a club isn’t easy, even when it’s just a chapter. I rode with only ten men for a while…but things are definitely looking up. I have over thirty now and we just finished building a clubhouse next to our shop. Had some trouble with a bunch of skinheads up in the hills for a while, thinking we were there to cut in on their drug trade. Once they realized I didn’t give a shit who they sold their meth to and I wasn’t opening any crack houses, they settled down too.”

  “That’s good. I miss you.”

  He smiled at her. “I miss you too, Dal. How are things here? How are things with you and Doc?”

  “They’re good,” she said. Coyote made a face and put his hand over hers.

  “You don’t look happy, Dal.”

  She sighed. “It’s not that I’m unhappy. I love Doc, you know that…he’s just…it’s just hard for him to shake off that being in charge of everything and everyone when he comes home to me and Dax. I know he hated the way his father treated him growing up, always on him about one thing or another…but he does the same thing to Dax without even realizing it. He loves him so much, and he means well…”

&
nbsp; “He does it to you too?” It was said like a question, but Coyote knew her, and he knew Doc, so there was no sense in trying to deny it.

  “Sometimes I feel like my spirit is being crushed. He doesn’t mean to do it…he actually complains that I’m not like I used to be. I know that I’m not the same girl I was when we first met. But I’m eight years older. I’ve been to prison, I’ve had a baby, and I’ve lived in a motorcycle club during that time. Of course I’m not the free spirit I used to be. But I feel like as much as he complains about that, he wants to crush what’s left. He wants me to be the image of what he has of me in his head, instead of who I am.”

  Coyote squeezed her hand. “Have you told him that?”

  “I’ve tried,” she said. “He’s hard to talk to sometimes. There’s been so much going on with the club the last couple of years and I’m always so busy with Dax…”

  “Maybe you need a vacation, just the two of you. Maybe you can go somewhere for a weekend, or a week, and start over. Leave this place behind, take a break, from everything but each other.”

  She smiled. “Why are you so sweet? Doc was so horrible to you.”

  Coyote shrugged and said, “He had every right to be. If a man in my club looked at my old lady the way I was looking at you…well, I can’t promise I wouldn’t kill him. Besides, Doc actually saved me…if it wasn’t for him, I’m not even sure I’d be alive today.”

  “When did this happen?”

  He sighed and said, “I grew up in a fifth-wheel trailer. My parents worked their butts off in the fields, picking whatever needed to be picked, shaking trees, cutting hay, rolling bales, whatever. We moved all the time, we went wherever the work was and stayed until it was finished and then moved on again. Neither of my parents ever went to school or learned how to read and write. They didn’t send me or my sister to school either. As soon as we were big enough, they put us to work. When I was twelve, my sister was fifteen and she ran off with some seventeen-year-old kid who stole his dad’s car. We never saw her again. When I was fifteen, I got up early one day for work. My parents were both still sleeping. I ate breakfast and left, expecting them out to the field in an hour or two. I was out there about an hour when I first saw the smoke…”