by Jessie Cooke
“Okay, I’m ready.” She looked terrified. Coyote was glad it was dark because the look on her face was so funny, as she approached the bike, that he couldn’t help but smile. When she was close enough, he took the clothes out of her arms and stuffed them into one of his saddlebags.
“Okay, just lift your right leg up and throw it over the seat.”
She laughed. He liked the sound of it. “You try to ‘lift’ and ‘throw’ your leg when your belly is ready to pop and your back is killing you.”
Coyote hadn’t thought of that. How in the hell was he going to get her on the bike? “Alright, step out of the way for a minute. I’m going to drive the bike over next to the car.”
She didn’t ask any questions, she just moved out of his way.
He started the bike and drove it over to the car, pulling up as close to the trunk end of it as he could. He turned off the bike, put down the kickstand, and slipped off. “Come on over,” he told her. His plan was to put her up on the trunk on her butt and hopefully from there, there wouldn’t be much “throwing” involved. He could help her too. “I’m going to put my hands on your…hips.”
“I have hips,” she snapped.
“Sure, I see them.” He didn’t. She was just round from her breasts down to below her waist. But he wasn’t going to argue with a pregnant woman on the side of the road. “I’m going to lift you up onto the back of the car.”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously,” he said with a grin. He put his hands on her hips and with some effort, lifted her off her feet and sat her down on the car. As soon as he did, he heard the splash of water on top of his boot and he had a mini-flashback of Dallas as she climbed up into the van the day Dax was born. He looked at Sarah and saw panic in her eyes.
“That was my water,” she said, with a tremor in her voice.
Coyote willed himself not to sound as nervous as he felt when he said, “I figured. Come on, now we need to get you to town in a hurry.” He took her hands and pulled her forward until she was on the edge of the trunk. Lifting her leg with his hand, he eased her onto the bike. It tottered slightly, and she let out a little scream.
“I don’t think I can do this,” she said, suddenly doubling over, holding onto her stomach. “Oh shit! That hurts.”
“You’re having pains?”
When she pulled her head up, her eyes looked like she was possessed by demons. “What was your first clue?” she snapped again.
Coyote chuckled and said, “Pretty big talk from a woman stuck on the side of the road, about to give birth with no one but me in sight.”
“I’ve seen a few cars go by,” she said, in a nice tone. “Could you see if you can flag one down? I can’t…” She doubled forward again. Coyote’s smile was gone and he was frowning as he said:
“Another one? Aren’t they awfully close together?”
Tears streamed down her face the next time she looked up at him. “Please, help me into the car, the backseat. I need to lie down.”
Coyote didn’t argue. He picked her up as gently as he could and carried her over to the car. He opened the back door and lowered her down onto the seat. She scooted the rest of the way in and lay back with a heavy sigh. “I’ll see what I can do about waving down a car,” he said. Fear pulsed through him as he went out to the side of the road and looked for headlights. He didn’t know a fucking thing about delivering a baby. What the fuck would they do if it was born here? How the hell would he get a newborn and a woman that just gave birth to the hospital?
He stood there for at least ten minutes, hearing her soft cries and heavy breathing as he prayed to whoever was up there to send him a car…preferably one with a doctor in it.
“Motorcycle guy!” He heard her yell and realized as she did that he hadn’t given her his name. “Please! I need you!” Her voice was strained. She sounded like she was in so much pain that it almost hurt him to hear it. He didn’t want to go over there, but he willed himself not to be a coward. He took a deep breath and turned to go to her. When he got there, she was lying against the door that faced the road with one of her legs up on the back seat and the other on the floor. He could clearly see her panties…plain, white, and made for a pregnant woman…but he was still looking at a woman’s panties and for a second his cock didn’t understand. She was talking, but he didn’t hear her because he was mentally chastising his male parts.
“I’m sorry, what?”
“I said, you need to help me get these panties off and find something to catch this baby with. It’s coming, now!” She screamed that sentence at him, which didn’t help the terror he felt in his gut.
“I can’t deliver a baby.”
She gritted her teeth and said, “Fine, then go away and I’ll do it my fucking self!”
“Jesus,” he grumbled as he put his hands up around the stranger’s waist and hooked his fingers in the elastic of her panties. They were soaked from her water breaking and he tried not to make a face when he touched them. He didn’t want to insult her and bring the demons out of her eyes. He pulled her panties off and tried not to look directly at her female parts. “You got a towel or anything in the trunk?”
She was panting again, breathing like they teach them in those Lamaze classes that Dallas had told him about. Each word came out one at a time as she said, “No. But…get something out of my suitcase. Anything to wrap him in and keep him warm.”
“Keys?”
“Here!” she yelled at him again. Coyote reminded himself what she was going through, got the keys, and went to the trunk. He unlocked it and flipped it up. The brown leather suitcase was right there. He unzipped it and flipped it open and his heart almost stopped.
“Fuck,” he whispered. Right on top of her clothes was an American flag. It was folded in a triangle, the way they fold them at funerals…military funerals. He moved it over, delicately, and saw the picture underneath. A smiling young man in a naval uniform with a gold pin on his chest that said, Lieutenant Samuel P. Golden. Fuck.
“Where did you go?” she screamed at him again. Coyote grabbed a sweatshirt out of the suitcase and closed the trunk. The face of the baby’s father haunted him by the time he saw the top of the snow-white head that was peeking out between Mama’s legs. Suddenly his problems didn’t seem so big after all. Fuck.
7
“So, what’s her name?” Coyote stood at the edge of the hospital bed, looking down at Sarah and her daughter. The baby had Mom’s light skin and white-blonde hair. It was already in wispy little ringlets all over her tiny head. She was sleeping, and Coyote hadn’t seen her eyes yet. He wondered if they were as dark as Mom’s.
“Rebekah, after my mom,” Sarah said. She laughed and said, “My mom cried when I told her, and then she said I should have named her after you.” They both laughed at that.
“Did you tell her my name?” Coyote had finally told Sarah his name once he had delivered her baby, wrapped her in the sweatshirt, and laid her on Mommy’s tummy. While Sarah lay there shaking and cooing at her new baby, Coyote went back out to the highway, wiping the blood off his hands so that when he raised them to flag down a ride, they wouldn’t zoom by, thinking that he was a serial killer.
“Yep. I told her it was Coyote,” she said, with a giggle. “She was so grateful to you that she told me to name my baby Coyote.” They both laughed again. Sarah grew serious after a few minutes and said, “Seriously, though, how can I thank you? I want to pay you back for this somehow…”
“You said thank you a dozen times. That’s it, we’re good. Will your mother be here soon?” He needed to get back on the road, but he didn’t want to leave her stranded in the hospital with her family seven hours away.
Sarah nodded. “She had to wait to get a flight out. She doesn’t drive. She should be landing about four this afternoon. You’re welcome to take off whenever you need to go,” she told him. “Rebekah Lee and I will be sad to see you go.”
“Rebekah…Lee?”
She smiled. “Mom ta
lked me into it. I refused Coyote flat out, so she asked what your real name was.”
“That’s why you had the nurse come out and ask me my name this morning?” The baby had been born on the side of the road at nine-ten p.m. By the time they got to the hospital in Santa Fe it was almost midnight. Coyote had slept on the waiting room couch and the nurse had woken him up at seven a.m. to ask him what his legal name was. He thought it was strange, but he really needed a drink, and he wasn’t even sure if it was real, a dream, or a hallucination. By the time he went in to see Sarah and the baby, he’d gotten down to his bike to get his flask and brought his blood alcohol up to a manageable level.
“Yeah. I didn’t think Xander would work either…so I went with Lee. I hope you don’t mind.”
“It’s about the most flattering thing anyone has ever done for me,” he told her. “Thank you.”
She smiled up at him. “Thank you.” She looked down at the baby again and said, “I found out last month that her daddy wasn’t coming home alive. He was a Navy SEAL on a secret mission somewhere in the Gulf. His body arrived last week, or so they tell me it was his. He was killed in an explosion. No one would let me see his body. I lay awake at night and imagined they were wrong, even though I had his dog tags and all of his belongings.” She let out a little sob that he felt in his heart. “I was a mess and Mom knew it. She wanted me to come home ever since the day I found out about him. She couldn’t come to me because she takes care of my sick grandfather and didn’t have anyone to take care of him last week. My aunt was out of the country. I told her I wasn’t waiting for my aunt to come home; I was capable of driving myself out after I buried Sam. Mom was beside herself about that. She kept telling me ‘anything could happen.’” She sighed. “As usual, she was right and as usual, I didn’t listen to her. But anyway, my aunt is home now, and Mom is on her way. When Rebekah and I can travel, we’ll fly home with her. So…you can get back on your way to California now.”
“When did I tell you I was going to California?” he asked. He remembered talking a lot as he helped the baby slip out of the birth canal, but he was a nervous wreck and babbling. He could hardly remember what he said.
“Right before she finally slid out you grumbled something about wishing that you were sitting on a beach in California.”
Coyote laughed. “I’m surprised you didn’t kick me for that. I’m sorry. I was so fucking nervous, excuse my French.”
“Please,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I go through the word fuck like water…I was a marine, remember?” Coyote smiled and nodded, and she said, “So, you’re not going to Cali?”
“I am, but far from the beach. I’m going out to start a new chapter of my MC, probably in Central California if I can find a good place for the clubhouse and do some recruiting.”
“Hmm…I never knew anyone in a motorcycle club before I went into the marines. I met a few guys in boot camp who belonged to the Hell’s Angels. I was surprised at how nice they were.”
“Yeah, Hell’s Angels are pussies,” he said with a grin.
“You’re nice too,” she said.
“No fucking way. You better stop saying that out loud. You’re going to ruin my bad reputation.”
She giggled and said, “Okay, but when I write about you in my journal, I get to describe you however I want…I’m going to use the word ‘nice,’ a lot.”
Coyote smiled, bent down and kissed her on the forehead. “Keep it secret, okay?”
She smiled and nodded. “For sure, just between you, me, and little Rebekah here. Someday I’m going to give her the journal, so she can read about how she came into this world.”
“Nice, I’ll be immortalized in ink,” he said.
Sarah smiled. “That’s funny. I’m going to go to college in Phoenix and get my degree in journalism this fall, and I was looking at the pamphlets the other day. One of the programs, I don’t remember which one, but it said almost exactly that on the front of their pamphlet…‘immortalize the world with ink,’ was what it said exactly, I think.”
“That’s cool. Are you a good enough writer to make me really hot in the story?”
She giggled again and said, “Short of a shave and a haircut, I’m not sure what I could change. You’re pretty damned hot already, Coyote Lee.”
Coyote felt his face go hot. He wasn’t used to compliments on his looks. Not sincere ones, anyway. The girls that he fucked at the club said all kinds of nice things, but it was what they were trained to do by the women that came before them. “Thank you,” he said, giving her another peck on the forehead. “So are you, Sarah Golden. You take care of you and that little girl…my namesake,” he said, proudly.
“I will,” she said. “You be safe in your travels, Coyote. If you ever have the urge to visit the girl you helped bring into this world, look us up. My mom’s name is Rebekah Burke and she’s in the book in Phoenix.”
Coyote was looking at the baby while Sarah spoke. The little girl had opened her eyes and she was staring up at his face. Her eyes were light, unlike her mother’s. They were so blue they looked like a summer sky. She was going to be a looker when she grew up, like her mother. Too bad her daddy wouldn’t be around to fight off all the boys that were going to be knocking on her door, he thought. “I’d like that,” he told Sarah, bending down one more time and kissing the baby on the head too. When he straightened up he took a card out of his pocket and laid it on the bedside table. “That’s the place they towed your car. They’ll ship it to Phoenix when it’s ready and don’t worry about money, I took care of it. I also took your things out of the trunk and the nurses have your suitcase.”
She reached up with her free hand and took his and squeezed it. “Thank you. I’m going to have to write about that kind heart of yours in my journal, whether you like it or not.”
Coyote nodded and smiled again. He walked out of the room with the smile on his lips and a bounce in his step. He had left the ranch feeling sad and useless, unloved, unwanted, and unneeded. Just a few days later he was able to say that he had helped to bring new life into the world. Innocence. A clean slate. Coyote wished that adults were offered that…a clean slate. Then maybe he wouldn’t have to drink himself to sleep at night to keep from seeing his parents’ faces as the trailer house burned down around them, or Doc’s face when he realized Coyote was in love with his old lady…or worst of all, the look on Dallas’s face when he told her he was leaving. But since there was no such thing, really, as starting over, Coyote would keep himself medicated as well as he could, medicated with whiskey.
8
California, New Year’s Eve 1982
Coyote looked around the bar while he waited on the line for Amy to go find Doc and get him on the phone. He had been in California now for six months and this was the only place, besides the little apartment he rented in Fresno, where he felt comfortable. Although he had only spent seven years on the ranch in Boston, it was the only home he’d really known as an adult…and he wanted to go home, badly. He fucking hated California. The people were weird, or maybe it was him. Either way, he hated people, and he wanted to go home.
He looked up at the television over the bar. The New Year’s Eve show was on, live from New York, and they were talking about all the things that happened in 1982. Most of it Coyote didn’t really give a shit about, like Michael Jackson releasing the Thriller album. But the first CD was sold in Japan that year and that was pretty cool. Computers were getting popular although Coyote had never touched one…or even really seen one in real life. Some fool was running around lacing Tylenol capsules with cyanide and killing people, which he didn’t understand. What the fuck does someone get out of that crazy shit? Seven people dead, and for what? Wars were going on in other countries, of course, always, and apparently whales were on the endangered list. Coyote sighed. Hopefully 1983 will be more interesting.
“Coyote?” Finally, Doc came on the line. The bartender was starting to give him the stink-eye for being on the phone so long.
“Yeah, hey…how are things?”
“You know,” Doc said, “same old.” Coyote could hear the party in the background. They were ringing in the New Year. He wondered if Dallas was right there…wearing something sexy…Fuck. He shook off that thought as best he could when Doc said, “How’s it going out there?”
I fucking hate it. “It’s okay,” he lied.
“Where are you?”
“In Modesto right now. I have a meeting set up tomorrow with a few guys from Yosemite. They’re all vets and they ride, kind of an off-the-grid little club. What I was calling about tonight was the property in Fresno. Did you get a chance to have Rat run the numbers?” Coyote had taken a look at the lay of the land between Yosemite and Bakersfield. Fresno was about halfway in between the two and he had found what he thought would be a good space for a clubhouse, an auto shop, and enough room for at least a few residential plots as well. It was going to be expensive, but Doc hadn’t given him a budget…at least not yet. Coyote wasn’t even sure how the business end of this was going to work yet. When the club started earning their own keep, would they still be obligated to Doc and the Southside Skulls? It was a lot of shit that kept him up at night, and kept the bartender busy as well. He’d been hoping by now that his relationship with Doc would be better, but if anything, it seemed to be getting more strained and Doc seemed to be getting shorter with him in each conversation.
“He’s working on it,” Doc told him. “It’s going to take time to liquidate the kind of cash we’re talking about.”
“It’s gonna continue to be hard to recruit guys for a club that doesn’t have a home base, too,” Coyote snapped. Doc was silent…for a long time. Finally, he said:
“You sound like you’re giving up.” It was said almost like a challenge. Coyote wondered if that was Doc’s whole point…did he want him to give up? Was he just waiting to tell Dallas, “See, I told you he was a loser”? The idea of that pissed him off and made him want to succeed if for no other reason than to piss Doc off if that was his endgame.
