Saving Axe

by Sabrina Paige

  "Of course I'm sweaty," I said. "Uncle Axe has been working like a dog all day long."

  "Because your dad made you?"

  I looked over at my dad, talking to April on the porch. "Yeah, something like that." My dad hadn't kept up with the fence around the property, and I'd spent all morning since daybreak repairing fence posts. I leaned in close to MacKenzie, and spoke to her in a stage whisper. "But don't tell anyone- I kind of like working here."

  She giggled. "Me too, Uncle Axe! Mr. Austin let me help him feed the horses!"

  "Did he now? You know, when I was a kid, I had to muck the horse stalls."

  Her brow wrinkled. "What's mucking?"

  "Mucking is where you clean all the horse poop out of the stall."

  "Eew!" she yelled. "Horse poop is gross!"

  "It is," I agreed. "Just imagine if you had to clean it out of the barn."

  "Was your dad punishing you?" she asked. "My dad wouldn't make me clean up horse poop."

  "Nope, it was just part of growing up with horses on a ranch. But you should go tell Mr. Austin he was punishing me, making me do all those chores," I said. "He'll laugh." As she scampered off to talk to my dad, I stood there and drank it all in. I was sweaty and covered in muck and grime. My shoulders ached after hours of digging holes in the hard ground, and my back kept reminding me I wasn't twenty years old anymore.

  Despite all of that, I could feel this place beginning to permeate me, eating away at all the shit from Los Angeles, the shit from the club. It had been a long time since I felt alive. More days than not over the past year, I'd felt dead.

  I watched MacKenzie tug at my dad's sleeve as he stood there, talking to April. I should feel happy, watching all of them relaxed, having fun. But I didn't. Instead, a feeling of fragility washed over me, this sense that everything could change in a moment. One extreme meant the pendulum would inevitably shift.

  Crunch caught my eye from the other side of the field, and walked over to where I stood. "Man, you look as bad as I do."

  He was right. He was covered head to toe in dirt. But he was standing there with a stupid, shit-eating grin on his face, and that made me smile.

  "You look like you're having fun," I said.

  "It ain't bad, you know? I could get used to this." He stopped and dropped the spool of barbed wire he was carrying for the fencing. "Look at Mac and April over there. I don't think Mac has been this happy in ages."

  "The country is good for kids."

  "Yeah," he said. "It's not just that, though." He kicked up a dirt clod with his boot. "It's just that- I'm grateful for what you did for us, for April and Mac."

  "Not a thing," I said. That was exactly the opposite of what it was.

  "No, I want you to know-" he stopped. "I don't know that I would have done the same as you, if the tables were turned. I probably would have shot first and then asked questions later."

  I shrugged. “Maybe, but I doubt it. You’d have done the same, I think.”

  "Sometimes I wonder if I have it in me anymore," he said. "I'm tired of all the shit, you know?"

  Did I ever know. I was exhausted.

  "Does your dad know what's going on?" he asked.

  "I told him some of it."

  "I feel bad," he said. "Putting him in danger by being here."

  "We don't know that we're even in danger."

  Crunch laughed, the sound harsh. "We're in danger. I'm sure of it."

  “We’ll get in touch with Blaze. As soon as we can.”

  “You think we can trust him? He’s the Veep,” Crunch said. “He and Mad Dog, they have to be tight, right?”

  “I know Blaze,” I said. Or I used to know Blaze. “Blaze will be with us. I know he’s not okay with this play by Mad Dog. He doesn't want this kind of life, all the cartel trouble."

  I thought about the conversation we’d had right before the cartel vote.

  ~ ~ ~

  I walked up to Blaze, sitting back behind the clubhouse in his usual place, the garage. The mechanics bench was where Blaze was at his best. The guy could tool the nastiest knucklehead back into existence. When he was with his wrenches, we usually left him alone. He preferred it that way. He’d hang out by himself when he wanted to get away from all the club chaos. Nights like this, two in the morning on a party night, we should be shithoused or buried in pussy. But lately Blaze had been more and more detached from the club.

  At first, I cut him some slack since he was all about Dani, this college student up at Stanford, and I could remember how it felt to be crazy that way about someone. Of course, my point of reference was high school, so it was hard to compare. I mean, high school hormones make you fucking batshit, right? I couldn’t imagine feeling that swept up in someone now. I was a goddamned adult. And Blaze was acting like a fucking adolescent.

  So maybe I wasn’t cutting him that much slack, actually.

  Blaze was sitting back, his head against the wall, eyes closed. I wasn't sure he was awake but when he saw me, he looked up.

  I turned a bucket over, took a seat on top of it.

  "Rough night?" Blaze asked.

  "Not bad," I said. "You just get back from seeing Dani?" All that fucking riding up to Stanford wasn't good for him. Or the club.

  He shook his head. "She's back here now, at my place. Not at Stanford. Graduated last week."

  That's right. I was a shithead, forgetting that. Had he invited me to her graduation? Fuck. I couldn't remember. Everything had been a haze lately, drugs and pussy and booze. No, I'd remember if he'd invited me. I hadn't seen him here a hell of a lot lately. Not like I used to, back when we were tight.

  "Sorry, man," I said. "I didn't realize she was back in town."

  I sat there in silence, digging the toe of my boot into the cement. Dani was a nice girl, don’t get me wrong, but when you start to get so wrapped up in a piece of ass that you forget where your priorities lie, that’s a big fucking problem. And I was worried that Blaze had forgotten his priorities.

  “You ever think about having a family?” Blaze asked, his eyes still half-closed.

  “Used to,” I said. “Not anymore.” Once, though. A long time ago. There was this girl, back then...

  “Because of the club?”

  That ship had sailed for me.

  I shrugged. "I don’t know. It’s not like you’re ever going to get the white picket fence and shit, doing this.”

  “You think you can have both?”

  “I don’t know, man,” I said. “People in the club have families, keep them separate.”

  “You think it’s possible to keep them separate?” Blaze’s eyes were open now, but he was staring off into the distance. I wasn’t comfortable with wherever the fuck this conversation was headed.

  “You having some kind of personal crisis or some shit?” I asked.

  Blaze was silent for a while, and when he spoke, I didn’t believe him. “Of course not. It’s not like I’d ever leave the club.”

  “Does Dani want you to leave?” Dani had never seemed like the type to want to be part of the MC lifestyle, even if she’d proven she had the balls to handle it. She had an air of being above all this shit.

  “No, man,” Blaze said. “She’d never ask me to do that. She knows it’s been part of me forever.”

  “Then what?”

  “I don’t know. It’s all going fine, the gig with Benicio and shit. It’s sometimes I just get to thinking about where we’re headed, what the long term plan is.”

  ~ ~ ~

  Where we were headed is that I knew there was going to be a vote on the cartel thing, but I didn't tell him. I wanted to see the look on his fucking face when he showed up for church and found out just how much he'd been missing by visiting Dani all goddamn year.

  I was pissed off at him for neglecting the club.

  It was petty, especially in light of what was happening now.

  Crunch's voice jolted me back to the present.

  “You ever think about coming back here?” he
asked.

  “I used to,” I said. Not anymore.

  “This place is a fucking trip,” he said. “Maybe because I grew up in the city or whatever, but holy shit, it’s small.”

  I laughed, wiping my palm on my jeans. “You think this is small? It’s huge now. It was an event when we got a traffic light here. The newspaper covered it.”

  Crunch laughed. “No shit?”

  “Not only did they cover it, they sent out a reporter to stand by the side of the road, interview people after they went though. Caused a traffic jam.”

  "Guess you knew everybody here, huh.”

  "Everybody knew everybody," I said.

  Crunch nodded. "You and June seemed like you knew each other pretty well."

  I groaned. Not this. I didn't want to talk about June. I didn't want to think about her.

  My dad saved me, waving at us from the porch. "I think we’re wanted up there, man,” I said.

  "So I'm not going to get the story on June, then."

  "Not on your life," I said. I glanced behind us, over toward June's house. I hadn't seen her, not even run into her, since the night I'd gotten back here. I'd drunk too much, gone over there thinking I might get lucky. Like she was a club whore or something.

  It was stupid, and I deserved worse than I got from her that night.

  We walked toward the house. "How's Mac doing with all of this, anyway?" I asked.

  “She’s an easy kid,” he said. “Been taking it in stride. She thinks it’s a big vacation.”

  “That’s good.”

  “We probably need to get them out of here.”

  I nodded. “I think it would be for the best.”

  “You think shit’s going to hit the fan out here?”

  "Not yet," I said. "You been working on getting us any intel?"

  Crunch nodded. "Seeing if I can get anything through the medical examiner's office, newspapers, that kind of thing. Doesn't look like the ME's office has anything I can hack into though. Might all be old school."

  "Can we get them back with your mother-in-law?"

  “Yeah,” he said. “That’s how we had planned it anyway. Should we get them set up?”

  "Let's wait, see what intel we can get," I said. "If they think we're dead, at least right now, we may be able to buy some time, get in touch with Blaze."

  "You think we should get in touch with Benicio?"

  "Not Benicio," I said. "Blaze might know him, but I don't."

  “If shit goes down, this isn’t the place to be,” Crunch said.

  "I don't know about that," I said. "This town's full of ranchers, armed to the teeth. But yeah, I don't want anything coming down on my old man."

  “Well, now, Joe Holder.” April put her hands on her hips. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you look as hot as you do right now. You look good enough to eat.” April’s hair was pulled back in a ponytail, an apron tied around her waist, and she brandished a whisk in her hand.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you wear an apron,” Crunch said. “Are you cooking?”

  “I’m being all domestic,” she said, a wide grin plastered across her face. “Don’t worry, I’m not burning the place down.”

  "April can’t be trusted near the stove, Stan,” Crunch said. He walked up the stairs and slid his arm around her waist. “Don’t you go burning down this nice man’s house, now.”

  April giggled as she leaned against him. “Just as long as you don’t expect any gourmet meals from me at home.”

  Crunch leaned in and kissed her neck beneath her ear. “Honey, you know I lowered my expectations when I married you.”

  “Assh - I mean, jerk,” she said, laughing as she pulled away from him and punched him on the arm.

  “I heard that!” Mac yelled from the side of the porch where she was sprawled out, looking at a book. “Mommy said a bad word!”

  “Nope, no bad words came out of mommy’s mouth,” April said. “Right, daddy?”

  “Your wife is a quick learner.” My father interrupted, standing in the doorway, oven mitts over his hands. “I’ve been showing her how to make your mother’s apple pie recipe.”

  I looked at Crunch. “My mother’s apple pies were famous. She won the West Bend Baking Contest four years in a row. Before - who was it, dad?”

  “Before Martha Barnes took the title,” my father said. “Lord, your mother was upset. I had to hear about Martha Barnes for months after that.”

  I grinned. “I remember that,” I said. “Mom was convinced she had somehow stolen her recipe. Remember? She said it was the ultimate betrayal.”

  Dad laughed. “I remember. I listened to it non-stop.”

  Mom had only been gone a few years, but it was hard talking about her, even if it was a good memory. Her death was tainted by the fact that, to the end, she thought I was someone I was not. She still thought I was a good person.

  “You two look like you made some real progress out there on the fencing,” my dad said, interrupting me before I could sink lower into my own shitty self-pity.

  “Yeah,” I said. “It should hold up for another couple years or so, as long as you can keep the elk from running through it again.”

  I wanted to ask whether he was having trouble keeping up with the place. Of course, my dad would have a coronary if I even implied he needed help. He had always been the epitome of a cowboy. Strong, silent, tough.

  My senior year in high school, just before I’d left for boot camp, my dad had a heart attack. We were at the end of a week long trip, pushing cattle. I looked at his face as we were riding back, his grey pallor unsettling. It was only when we were a couple hours away from home he admitted he'd been having having chest pain and numbness in his arm for the last half a day. When I suggested he get to the doctor, he’d told me he’d be just fine. It was my mother who’d insisted he go to the hospital when we got back. The doctor told him he was having a heart attack, and he’d told the doctor the heart attack would just have to wait.

  The fact that he didn’t die only reinforced what I’d grown up believing about my dad - that he was invincible. Part of me believed the man would never die, which was probably what made it easier to leave West Bend when I did, and the way I did. I figured there would always be time to make amends.

  "Alright, now," my father said. "I need to send someone to town for a couple things before dinner, and I'd like to take a look at your work on the fence, Cade, see if you remember your fence building skills." The edges of his mouth turned up.

  "That's funny, Pop," I said. "I think I remember how to build a fence."

  "Can I go to the store?" MacKenzie asked, throwing herself against April. "Can I get some finger paints?"

  "I don't know that there's a toy store here, baby," April said. She turned to Crunch. "Do you think we can go into town? There's a couple of things I want to get, too, actually."

  Crunch looked at me. "What do you think, Axe? You think it's safe?"

  "I think it's probably okay," I said.

  MacKenzie squealed. "He said I could get a new stuffed animal!" She spun in circles on the deck.

  "Wait, wait," April said. "No one said you could get a new anything. Uncle Axe only said we could go into town."

  "That means toys!"

  "Wait -" I said, turning toward Crunch and April. "Lie low, in and out of the store. This is just a vacation, spending time with my father. That's it."

  Crunch nodded. "Yeah, it's no problem, man." He kissed April on