AJ

by Jessie Cooke

  “No, no, no! I’m positive we can give you more than a fair amount for this baby. Just give me five minutes.” Atsa nodded and once the Harley salesman had gone back inside he took out his phone and called Simone. He’d spent the night at a motel near the bar the night before. Pam had tried calling him at least a dozen times but he hadn’t taken any of the calls. He was sure she was sweating over where she’d go once she had to leave the apartment, and he wanted her to sweat.

  “AJ! How are you, love?” Simone was in her forties and she’d been married five times that AJ knew of. She loved men of all ages, shapes, and sizes. When AJ first met her she was married and by the time he met Pam, she was divorced. He knew part of her urging him to leave Pam was that she hoped there was a chance for him and her, but as much as he liked Simone, he’d never felt anything for her other than friendship.

  “I’ve been better,” he told her. “I need you to do me a favor, Simone.”

  “You name it, and it’s done.” Besides being good friends, Atsa and Simone did a lot of business together. His company had done a lot of work for her on buildings she owned in the city and he’d given her most of the materials and labor at cost. In return, Simone’s word of mouth about his business had brought him dozens of new clients.

  “I need you to rewrite the lease on my apartment.”

  “Oh, darling, don’t tease me! Did you finally kick her out?”

  He smiled. “No, I left. I’m going to have my attorney draw up a document that clearly states what assets she’s entitled to. To make it easier, I’d like you to get a gift deed started for me...”

  “Gift deed? Oh, my poor AJ! You’ve lost your mind.”

  He laughed. “No, Simone, I’m perfectly sane. I’m just not willing to walk away from this feeling badly about myself.”

  “She’ll sell it. That place was worth over two million the last time we had it assessed!”

  “It’ll be hers to do with what she likes. Maybe if she finally has her own money, she’ll stop taking advantage of men, maybe not. I don’t care. I just want to walk away from this with my self-respect intact and if I play games with her, I won’t. So please, Simone, do this for me...and if I could ask one more huge favor?”

  She sighed. “What?”

  “What happened to ‘anything’?”

  “Your insanity,” she said.

  Atsa laughed. “Call her for me and explain the gift deed to her. Tell her I’ll sign all the papers ASAP and she’ll get documents from my attorney about the rest of the assets. I really don’t want to talk to her.”

  “I’m tempted to send out the little men in white coats to evaluate you, my love, but of course I’ll do it. Can I ask...why did you finally decide to get rid of that bleached-blonde, plastic baggage?”

  He laughed at her description of Pam and said, “I decided to go looking for what sets my soul on fire, at last.”

  5

  Tempe, Arizona

  “You’re still here.” Atsa sat at the bar, the same one he’d been to the night before and the older man, Rock, was in the same spot Atsa had left him.

  Rock laughed and after the bartender took Atsa’s order Rock said, “Believe it or not, I did leave. My favor for my friend took a bit longer than I thought it would. I was going to drive home tonight, but my old lady worries too much sometimes. She insists I spend one more night at the motel and drive out in the morning. I just couldn’t stand all that quiet, though, so here I am to soak up some noise.”

  Atsa smiled. “Yeah, the quiet is getting to me too. It must be nice to have someone that worries about you like that, though.” He wondered if Pamela ever worried about him, but seriously doubted it. That left a sharp pain in the center of his chest.

  Rock nodded and with a grin he said, “Don’t tell her I admitted it, but it is nice. It’s like being wrapped up in a security blanket everywhere you go.”

  “That’s an interesting way to describe it. It’s something I’ve always craved but didn’t know how to put in words.”

  “Sometimes there just aren’t any words to describe the way we feel. Some things are better said with actions.”

  For two years, Pamela told Atsa she loved him, but he realized now that he’d been blind to those “actions,” or lack thereof. He felt another pain, this one in his gut, and changing the subject quickly he said, “I did a thing, today.”

  “Judging by that sudden smile I’d guess it was a good thing?” Rock asked.

  Atsa chuckled and said, “Well, there are a few drivers in Tempe who might say otherwise. I saw more than one middle finger. I guess I’m a bit rusty...but I bought a Harley.”

  “Good for you. Are you going to do that traveling you used to dream about, after you knock off the rust?”

  He sighed, with his thoughts back on the quandary at hand again. He picked up the beer the bartender brought, took a sip, and then said, “I’m not sure. The Harley was an impulse buy, something to soothe my wounded soul, but I have responsibilities here I can’t just run away from. I have a business and a crew to think about. It’s not as easy as quitting my job and pulling up stakes. If I leave, the business my father built will die.”

  “So, it’s important to you to keep this business alive?”

  Atsa had been thinking about that a lot. The truth was that it had been important to him at first because it was the embodiment of everything his father had worked for his entire life. His father had never asked him to take it over, but it was his legacy and Atsa hadn’t been able to simply sell it once his father was gone. Running a business was never what he wanted, but at first making it a success seemed like a tribute to his father, and then once he was with Pam, it became about making her happy and giving her the life she so badly wanted. What he had failed to realize all along was that none of it made him happy. “I’m sure I don’t want to be tethered to it any longer, I guess I never really did, but it just felt like the right thing to do. The fact that it’s a family business will make it a lot harder to just up and sell it.”

  “What do you do?”

  “I own a construction company,” he said, taking out one of his cards and laying it in front of the older man on the bar. Rock looked at it and said:

  “Basillie—you’re Navajo?”

  “Yeah, I was,” Atsa said, sadly. He wasn’t sure he still had the right to claim any Navajo status since he’d turned his back on it long ago.

  Rock looked confused and with a little chuckle he said, “You were? I wasn’t aware we could change our roots.”

  “No, we can’t. But as much as I’m ashamed to admit it, for the past few years, I’ve done everything I could to deny it. I guess by way of DNA that doesn’t make me any less Navajo, but I feel like maybe I’ve given up my rights, or my claim to it, if that makes sense?”

  Thoughtfully Rock said, “I think I understand what you’re saying. Can I ask why you denied it?”

  “Well, when I first took over the business from my father I shortened my name from Atsa Jacy...”

  “Eagle Moon. That’s a strong Navajo name.”

  AJ smiled. “Yeah, that’s what my father thought when he gave it to me. I haven’t lived up to it, for sure. I shortened my name to AJ right after I got out of college. At the time, I told myself and anyone who knew me that it was just to make it easier for people to pronounce. The truth is that I guess there’s a little part of me that thought AJ Basillie might be a name more people would trust. My fiancée confirmed that and even though I’m guilty of blaming her for a lot of the choices I’ve made, the truth was that I wanted to conform. My father is probably cursing me in the underworld as we speak. My own sister hasn’t spoken to me in almost two years.”

  “Because of the name thing?”

  AJ took another drink of his beer and thought about how to answer that. There were so many mistakes and he often hoped that wherever his parents were now, they were unaware of them. At last he said, “That’s the short version of it, I suppose. She was very unhappy with me because of that,
but it was when she tried to tell me that I was losing myself in my relationship that things got bad. I thought she just didn’t like my fiancée, and my fiancée and I had this crazy idea that she resented me somehow because I ended up with the business and she didn’t want me to be happy.”

  “But you don’t think that’s the case now?”

  “I’m not sure I ever really believed it, in my heart, but it made it easier to do what I wanted to at the time and not feel so guilty about it. I did try to send my sister and her husband money, profits from the business, from time to time, but the checks were all returned uncashed.” He sighed again and said, “I’ve been weak, for too long.”

  “Everyone defines strength differently. Holding true to what you thought was important doesn’t necessarily make you weak, even if it turned out to be a mistake. You know what else doesn’t make you weak?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Admitting you made a mistake and asking for forgiveness.”

  “From my sister?”

  Rock nodded and said, “Her too, but first you need to ask someone else.” Atsa cocked an eyebrow and Rock said, “Before you can expect anyone else to forgive you, you have to forgive yourself.”

  “I’m not sure I know how to do that. I don’t like myself much lately; the man I’ve become is so far from the man I wanted to be.”

  “I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life, the biggest of them with my son,” Rock said. “I didn’t always like myself and I wasn’t sure how to forgive myself for something I couldn’t go back and change, or fix. Then my old, wise uncle sat me down one day and asked me a question. He asked me if I knew about the power of K’e.”

  “The power of inter-relatedness and kinship,” Atsa said.

  Rock nodded. “You obviously were raised in the Diné culture.”

  “My parents tried. I wasn’t always listening.”

  Rock smiled and said, “I was raised by good, hardworking parents. But sadly my parents were a part of the Navajo Nation who thought that their children would be better served by being raised in the ‘white’ community. Not that I had a bad childhood; it was the opposite as a matter of fact. But I was cheated, in a way, out of learning about where I came from. Everything I know about the Diné culture came from either my Uncle Jeremiah or my old lady. Well, everything I knew, I should say. My son Tommy has since taught me a lot of things I was unaware of. But the most important thing I think I’ve learned so far is that kinship and forgiveness are two of the driving forces behind our Nation. K’e is an entire process and if you wish to go that route, there’s a lot of literature out there nowadays that will tell you exactly how to do it. But I think the most important thing to remember about it is that K’e is not about assigning blame, or guilt. Its primary goal is to restore relationships and build harmony in the clan, the family.”

  The two men sat there silently for a bit, sipping their beer. When Atsa got to the bottom of his mug he said, “What would you say to a traveling companion on your way back to Phoenix tomorrow?”

  “A rusty one?” Rock asked with a laugh.

  Atsa nodded. His sister and her husband owned a restaurant in Phoenix and he knew Rock was right...he wouldn’t ever be happy unless he at least tried to mend that relationship. Maybe if his sister could forgive him, that would be the push he needed to work on forgiving himself.

  6

  Phoenix, Arizona - Three Weeks Later

  “Hey, AJ! I’m going to town for sandwiches, you want anything?” AJ was on top of a house, laying roofing tiles. His shirt was soaked with sweat and it was running down into his eyes despite the bandanna he’d tied around his head, which was soaked too. He’d been up there for over three hours. It was time for a break. Some time on his Harley in the wind might do him some good, what little there would be in late summer in Phoenix.

  “Can I ride into town with you, Finn?” AJ was surprised at how happy he’d been the past three weeks. He’d ridden to Phoenix alongside Rock with every intention of finding his sister right off the bat and trying to make amends. But Rock had first introduced him to Jace, and Beck and a few of the guys that rode with the Phoenix Skulls. They got to talking about work they were doing, building houses for the brothers to live in with their own hands. They’d recently had a shop and clubhouse built by one of the local construction companies and Jace had been unhappy with a lot of the work they had done. AJ didn’t like to run down hardworking people in the same business he was in, but he had heard similar complaints about the same company before. Jace told him that their contractor was working on getting them a new construction firm now that their contract with the current one was finally up. It was taking some time however, so the club had decided to forge ahead and do what they could on their own while they waited.

  As soon as Jace finished talking, AJ heard himself offering to take a look at things and maybe offer them some professional advice. He did that before he actually thought it through. He wasn’t really in a position to offer his time to someone else when he had about a dozen irons still in his own fire. A big one was that he’d left his foreman in charge of his own business back in Tempe “temporarily” and there he was volunteering to help out an MC club with a project that could span weeks, or even months. Maybe he was having a midlife crisis, he wasn’t sure. But three weeks out, he was happy he’d opened his mouth because he was having the time of his life. None of his own problems had been addressed, still, but for the first time since college he felt young again, and free.

  “Sure thing,” Finn yelled back up. “I’m gonna go see what Beck wants and I’ll be right out.” AJ chuckled; better Finn than him. Beck was an interesting woman and when AJ first met her he’d been fascinated to hear the stories of all the things she’d already accomplished in her life. But this past week, Jace had left for California and Beck was in a foul mood. AJ was discovering things about the club and the people that were a part of it a little bit at a time. Although they had welcomed him in as a friend right away he was still an outsider as far as “club business” went and from what little he did know about MCs, that was really okay with him. He did know that Beck had recently discovered she was pregnant and because of a miscarriage she’d had in the past, they were being more careful with this one. Her Harley was off-limits and so was her participation in club runs or the trip to California with Jace. Finn told him that was what was at the root of her bad mood and he overheard Bubba say that being in the same room with her when Jace wasn’t home was like “sharing space with a rabid possum.” AJ laughed at that and once again thought, better them than him.

  He climbed down the ladder and while he waited for Finn he went over and used water from the hose to splash on his face and rinse out his sweat-soaked hair. By the time Finn came back, with wide green eyes that said everything AJ needed to know about Beck’s current mood, AJ had a fresh bandanna tied around his head and he was ready to go. The property the clubhouse sat on was between where the reservation began and the outskirts of Phoenix. Every time AJ passed the sign for the Navajo Nation, he thought about turning in that direction and checking it out. Although his father and mother both had practiced a lot of the traditional Diné culture and spoke the language, they’d never taken AJ and his sister to visit any of the reservations. His father had pictures of the one he grew up on in New Mexico and his mother grew up in Phoenix near Window Rock, which wasn’t far from where he was now. Visiting at least one of them was on his list of things to do, if he ever got around to checking any of them off. He was enjoying his time with the Skulls, but he also recognized that he was avoiding everything he’d come to Phoenix to do. He just hadn’t found the motivation to do any of them.

  The drive to the sandwich shop took them about half an hour. AJ was getting much better at maneuvering the Harley through the hills and in traffic, thanks to the help of a few of the Skulls, and Jace. He kept up with Finn and parked next to him outside the shop. Finn pulled off his skullcap and ran a hand through his hair. “I miss my hair,” he said. />
  “Where did it go?” AJ had to wonder how much Finn had of it to begin with. His hair fell down below his ears and to AJ that was long.

  Finn smiled and said, “I sacrificed it for love.” AJ had met Finn’s girlfriend a few times since he’d been in Phoenix. She was a bubbly little thing and although AJ really liked her, he wondered sometimes what attracted her and Finn to each other. They seemed so different. Finn was completely tatted up, with longish hair and a thick Irish accent. He liked to drink and when he drank he got loud and even harder to understand. He always wore his Skulls vest, a white t-shirt, and faded and often dirty blue jeans. Caitlin didn’t have a visible tattoo on her. She was quiet most of the time and only seemed to speak when she had something important to say. She dressed nicely—business casual, AJ would call it—and despite the fact that she was a pretty little thing, she didn’t seem to have a lot of self-confidence...of course when AJ met her cousin and roommate Joy, he decided that she had enough of that for the both of them. Joy was dating the club treasurer, Boots, whom AJ hadn’t met yet. He was on a “run” when AJ got there and as far as AJ knew, he hadn’t made it back yet.

  The two men went inside the crowded little shop and Finn pulled up the list on his phone of what everyone wanted. The line was long, both in front of and behind them. “Excuse me?” AJ turned at the sound of the female voice behind him. His eyes were suddenly locked into a pair of huge, dark brown ones. They reminded him of a baby deer and for a few seconds he was captivated. He became even more intrigued when he looked at the rest of her. She had red hair, the kind that normally came with blue or green eyes. He liked the contrast of the brown ones better and that explained why she was the first redhead that had ever sent signals so quickly from his brain to his recently neglected head down south. She was also tall for a woman, which he liked, and exceptionally curvy. When AJ didn’t say anything for much too long she said, “I’m sorry...do you speak English?”