by Layla Wolfe
“Yes, he said something about delivering a puppy.”
“Yeah. Well. It’s not all saucers of hot milk and hearts. He keeps the bitches in cages one on top of the other. Most are diseased. Some never learn to walk. They never leave their cages, either.”
“Oh, no! Stop! Don’t tell me more.” I cringed at those images. I was back with Chip, sleeping next to me as if guarding me. He followed me everywhere, and not just because I sometimes snuck him snacks. He loved me more powerfully than Orson claimed to love me. A dog’s love was pure, unmotivated. Their spirits were the cleanest and most hallowed I’d ever known. “How can anyone buy from someone like him?”
“They’re lazy and cheap. He charges less than legit breeders, and if they’re in the Four Corners area, he’ll drive them to their house.”
“Oh Lord, stop! I just love dogs, Orchid.”
Her face brightened. “Then come meet Zeus! He’s our club mascot. And let’s get you a cellphone. You got any money in that suitcase you brought with you?”
I told her I had five dollars. She said we could find money downstairs. I poured myself more whiskey before we left, and Orchid had to comment.
“You keep that up, Byron’ll be on you like a windshield on a bug.”
Disregarding her warning, I took my mug with me down the stairs. “I’m sorry. It’s just an old habit. If I drink to black out, I won’t remember what my husband did to me.”
“Girl?” asked Orchid. “I do not envy your life. If we can keep Byron away from you, you won’t need to drink as much. Oh, okay. Except maybe this other—see that goombah over there? The one with the ball peen hammer and chains around his waist?”
I looked at the fellow Byron was playing pool with. From this angle, it looked like he had a giant scar bisecting his skull. It was so deep it even cast a shadow. His Mohawk seemed designed to play it up—like he was a badass, as we used to say. Along with a plug through his earlobe, he boasted many leather necklaces twined around local stones like turquoise, conichalcite, and red beryl. And, of course, the back of his cut boasted the Friends of Distinction cigar store Indian.
“That guy is maybe a bigger scrotum,” said Orchid. “Billy ‘Stomach’ Ginsburg. I’d like to kick him in the dick.”
There sure were a lot of assholes in that club. But then, there were a lot up at Cornucopia. Who was I to protest? Orchid went to a wooden box behind the bar and grabbed some money.
“Hey hey hey!” yelled the giant scrotum, “Stomach.” “No fucking bitches allowed to touch our money box!”
Orchid smirked. “Oh, kiss me where it counts. I’m the one that cooked all those burgers we sold at the last picnic.”
Stomach waved her existence away with his hand. “Ah, fuck it. You bitches are all the same.” When he leaned over the table, I could easily see a large caliber pistol stuck down his pants.
I pretended to be as casual as Orchid was. “Where’s the dog?”
“Come on.”
We found the Great Dane hanging out at, of all things, a bird store. Here was this mellow gentle giant just leaning back against the counter while birds of all colors tweeted and trilled and squawked. The store owner let us take Zeus several blocks away to buy a burner phone.
“A burner is your best bet,” said Orchid. “That way, if your lamo husband tries to find you, he’ll never get your number. Also, once we find your brother, he can be the only one who calls you. Here. Walk Zeus.”
I swelled with pride when Orchid handed me the leash. Here I was, walking the biggest dog on the face of the planet with a biker chick. I started feeling tough, some residue of pride welling up in my stomach. This wasn’t bad. Arkie might not be here, but I’d find him eventually.
We passed by another similar bar called The Drawing Board. A guy in a patched cut went inside, so I asked Orchid,
“Is this your bar also?”
“Nah. That’s our rivals, The Bare Bones. We moved here from Vegas a couple months ago. We were a brother club to them, but they felt we were moving in on their turf. We’ve had a bunch of clashes.” She shrugged. “The usual. Now we don’t speak, if we’re lucky.”
The Bare Bones. For some reason, it rang a bell. “Could Arkie belong to them?”
“Sure. Why not? We try not to know the names of those guys. Here’s the Walgreens. I’ll go inside and get you a phone while you stay here with Zeus.”
Oceans of bereavement from my past were ebbing back. Was it a letter Arkie had written ten years ago saying he had joined the Bare Bones? I remembered a letter that my parents showed me with disgust.
“I’d like to go inside that bar,” I told Orchid. “Ask if anyone knows Arkie.”
“No!” cried Orchid, grabbing my arm. “Especially not by yourself, girl! Don’t you have the tiniest bit of self-preservation? Those sweetbutts will eat you alive.”
“But what if Arkie is a member?”
“We’ll find out soon enough. Just don’t go talking to them.”
I stood with Zeus, his nose coming almost to my elbow. I realized I wanted to go into the bar in order to drink more alcohol. I wasn’t out of the woods yet. Our Church of Good Fortune had feelers spread out like arteries in the western states. And I knew that, even in outsider clothes, I stood out like a cyclops in an optometrist’s shop. I still wore the dorky shoes that made me feel like a Pilgrim.
I gasped with horror when a biker sauntered on by in loud, black boots. All he did was lift his chin in acknowledgement of me. I think I was still jumpy, after Orson and all. When he passed, I saw he was a Bare Boner, Flagstaff chapter. A cloud of cigarette smoke engulfed him, and I wondered if the Boners were meaner than the Friends of Distinction. I just couldn’t picture Arkie in either club. He’d always been a sort of propellerhead, as we called them, nerds. With his protruding nose, tumble of curls, and an overbite like a Chihuahua, he was never in danger of being arrested for drug smuggling. Maybe for jaywalking. Had I heard wrong, or misremembered? I couldn’t call Brighten to ask, even if she did have a phone.
My head was still soupy and blurred. “Come on, Zeus!” I said cheerily, and picked up the pace toward The Drawing Board. Its neon signs flickered and rearranged the neurons in my brain, and it seemed to take eternity to reach the swinging front door. I was tiptoeing on a cloud bank, a giant horse of a dog at my side.
Then the door opened out and bashed me in the nose.
“Ow!” I said. “My nose!”
“Fuck, I’m sorry!” said a young-sounding guy.
“Heaven!” cried Orchid, somewhere behind me. “Come on! I’ve got your stuff!”
She took Zeus’ leash from my hand, and I still saw flashing red bullseyes as she led me away. “We’re going to this other bar, a safe bar, where some other lambs work. When’s the last time you had a cellphone?”
I finally removed my hand from my nose. “When I was eighteen.” I sounded stuffed-up, like I had a cold. I could barely see beyond my peripheral vision, but old loyal Zeus’ head bobbed there. Something occurred to me. “You just called me Heaven.”
“Yeah. Your real name, according to Byron.”
“I know. Mormons have odd names. But should I rename myself?”
“Why? How’s your brother going to find you?”
That was a good point. It wasn’t until we were ensconced firmly inside the new bar surrounded by blathering women—an atmosphere I was pretty well accustomed to—that I remembered I had a photo of Arkie deep in the recesses of my suitcase-purse. Now I knew what a “go bag” meant. You kept it chocked with supplies so you could “go” at a moment’s notice. I sure had. I was gone, girl!
I showed the photo, yellowed and blurry with age, to the table of lambs. No one had ever seen him, not as if a photo from ten years ago would be worth anything.
“What else do you know about him?” asked a dead serious girl who looked like Alice in Wonderland on steroids. “Did he give you any clues in his last communications?”
“One thing,” I admitted. “He said he
was working at a marijuana dispensary called A Joint System.”
“Never heard of it,” said several women, all tapping away at their cellphones.
Orchid hadn’t shown me how to work mine yet, so I stared numbly at its blackness.
“We have several chapters around here,” said Alice in Wonderland, whose name was Nina. “One in Tucson, Bullhead City, Vegas—”
“Got it!” cried one lamb, holding her phone aloft. “It’s in Pure and Easy!”
“Where the heck is that?” I asked, leaning forward. Another lamb placed a bowl of nachos in front of me, and one for Orchid. I was amazed they’d found Arkie’s place of employment.
The lamb held her screen for me to see a map. Pure and Easy was pretty much due south of Flagstaff—thirty miles.
“Thirty miles!” I said. “I could do that tonight!”
“Mm-mm, no way,” said Orchid through a mouthful of corn, some chunks tumbling onto our shiny table. She didn’t wait to swallow before adding, “You’re not going anywhere until you’ve gotten a couple decent night’s sleep.” She waved away the fresh glass of beer another lamb was bringing me. But I, being taller, reached around and grabbed it from the girl. I was thirsty.
“And eat,” urged Nina. “When’s the last time you ate?”
I frowned. I’d missed that beef stroganoff dinner with Brighten and the others, so . . . “Tuesday maybe?”
“Oh, man!” Everyone burst into utterances of disgust.
“What’re you trying to do, die of anorexia?”
I lifted a chip to my mouth. “You could at least let me call A Joint System.”
“After you eat,” instructed Orchid. “Eat, eat.”
This evolved into every woman chanting “eat, eat.” Some even punched each other on the bicep, something we’d never do in Cornucopia! In many ways they were like my tribe of women there, but in many ways they were different.
After I downed most of the soggy chips with melted orange goo, Orchid showed me how to dial the phone. Sort of. Well, she mostly did it for me. At least I remembered how to hold it to my ear.
But the guy said he’d never heard of an Arkie. When I asked how long he’d been working there, he said since the dispensary first opened. He was the owner, Lytton Driving Hawk.
“Maybe he’s got a road name,” Lytton suggested.
“Arkie is the only thing I’ve ever called him,” I said morosely. “He’s got a big nose, and is sort of a dork?”
“That could be anyone.”
“Shut the front door,” I muttered.
“Wait,” said Lytton. “Are you Mormon?”
“Yes!” I cried, nearly bashing over my beer glass.
“That’s got to be Sock Monkey. He’s from St. George in Utah.”
”Yes!”
I knew it in my heart of hearts! I’d finally found my brother! I had no idea why they’d call him Sock Monkey, but it was too big of a coincidence that they’d have a worker from St. George. The women at my table cheered and I couldn’t hear what Lytton said next.
“What? What?”
“Listen, I’ve got to verify your ID first, if you know what I mean. I’ll have Sock Monkey call you back.”
He seemed to already know my phone number, so I hung up and breathed a thousand sighs of relief. Orchid squeezed me so tight, I remembered how badly my shoulder still hurt. But I was on the road to find Arkie!
By this time, I felt pretty good with my buzz. I accepted another beer from someone, and one woman said,
“That’s Bare Bones territory. Their mother chapter is in Pure and Easy.”
“Shit,” said a couple women, and the light, boisterous mood calmed down.
“Well,” said Orchid, holding my hand, “you just sit tight and wait for your brother to call you back.”
Someone invited me to play pool. I recalled doing it a couple times in high school, so I consented. Everything became a bit blurry then, but I asked one girl,
“Don’t the Bare Bones have a bar down the street?”
Her answer was noncommittal, just a shrug. I remembered Orchid telling me not to go into that Bare Bones bar. I “scratched” the felt of the pool table with the tip of my cue, and that’s when Nina came in and told me my brother was on the phone. I had to come with her down the street.
I followed her, reeling like a drunken English king. “How come he didn’t call on my phone?”
“He thought it was secure to call on our phone.”
“Isn’t that the Bare Bones bar? Where are we going?”
She quickly hustled me past The Drawing Board. When I noted Kelsey peek out from behind a storefront entrance, I recall feeling a little apprehensive. She was Byron’s woman and had stood up for his low treatment of me.
I tugged on Nina’s sleeve. “Hey, hey. Bring your phone into the lambs bar, will you?”
She whipped her head to look at me with flashing eyes. Wow. No one in Cornucopia would dare display that kind of anger. “We can’t. Listen, do you want to talk to your brother or not?”
“Of course I do, but—”
Now Kelsey took over. She exuded that phony kind of cheer, and I just wished I was back with the lambs. I trusted them. But wasn’t Nina one of them too?
Kelsey fingered the sleeve of my conservative striped button-down shirt. “Come on in,” she chirped, indicating the swinging doors of a dark store.
Being lured into a dark spot must’ve hit some brain button. Terror gripped my heart, and now I know what that means, because it was like a hand squeezing every last blood drop from my ventricles. I cried, “Why can’t you bring the phone out here? I can’t go into another dark place! No!”
This is when things became very tumultuous. Nina shoved me from behind—and at six feet tall, that wasn’t hard for her to do—while Kelsey wrenched my forearm to tug me in. I banged my head once again on the swinging wooden door. That’s when I saw Stomach’s horrifying face, utterly looming before mine. I could’ve testified that I could smell the deep indigo incision that bisected his skull. It looked like the Grand Canyon with a sandy lip and a bloody interior.
“Cumon, you cunt,” he said as he made a swipe for my other arm.
Good God in an evil world. Was this my penance for turning on God, being left with no trust or hope? I’d had my hopes crushed time after time. Why bother having them anymore?
When Byron’s figure stepped out of the darkness, flicking a Bowie knife with his thumb, I knew I’d committed the ultimate crime. I’d dared to have hope, hope that I talk to my brother once again.
I screamed like a woman in a horror movie.
Chapter Six
Townshend
“So, when all was said and done, Crybaby started crying over all the broken models.”
“Models?” I didn’t get it. I was in a biker bar talking to a guy named Fred Birdseye about a memorable rumble they’d had, joining their chapter in Flagstaff and what seemed to be Crybaby’s chapter in Pure and Easy. They’d accosted some thugs who’d ripped them off on a drug deal. They, the Bare Bones, had followed the skid marks into a toy store. That’s when the fur really flew, according to Birdseye.
“Yeah. Airplane models, you know? Some dealer took a hit and went flying backward into a display of airplane models, totally crushing them to smithereens.”
“And Crybaby cried? Over that?”
“Yeah,” said Birdseye. “Apparently he’s a big model plane fan.”
“Hang on,” I said. “I’m going to check on my ride.”
I already sounded like a biker. Why not? I had a Harley Road Glide, and my Dingo boots could pass for engineer boots. I’d spoken earlier on the phone to Crybaby. He welcomed me with the expected brothers in open arms, and told me to check in to the Drawing Board to get some relief and meet his brothers in arms.
Off-leash, Linus followed me to the door. He was still acting silly once in awhile. Losing concentration, teasing me with toys in his mouth instead of retrieving them to me. But I was in love with his dorky
smile, and he was devoted to me. You’re a little bit defective, aren’t you? Well, so am I.
However, when I pushed the swinging door out, I bopped a woman in the nose. I saw her through the sooty circular window.
“Ow! My nose!” she cried.
I apologized profoundly, but I couldn’t get the image of her angelic face out of my mind. She had that impish, upturned nose I’d always fallen for in women. I could see that if her long, tawny hair was down, it would flow around her heavy breasts, a mountain stream tunneling around immense canyon walls. I knew if she smiled it would light up the perfect, exotic features of her Cleopatra face. And she had a dog, a Great Dane, his giant triangular ears flapping as he walked.
Linus sat at my feet, barking once. Then twice. Maybe he wanted to meet the Dane.
My smashing the door on her would’ve been the perfect intro, only some blonde chick popped out of nowhere, yelling, “Heaven! Come on!”
Her name was Heaven? Nothing could’ve been a better set-up, but the sweetbutt, as biker women were known, dragged Heaven and her dog away. I was left staring at her stupendous ass like some kind of shitbird.
Fred Birdseye hadn’t seen the women so couldn’t ID them. By the time I went back out front, she was gone.
Back at the Drawing Board., I couldn’t stop talking about her.
“Maybe I’m starved for some fender fluff,” I raved, “but that woman just now would do the job utterly. She was an outstanding piece of work.”
“Listen,” said Birdseye, “you sure you don’t want a fucking beer?”
“Nah, I’m good. I told you. I quit drinking a month ago and I’m good. I’m just on the road to find my inner self.”
“How ‘bout weed?” said a guy a couple stools down, name of Dayton Navarro. “If you’re a friend of Crybaby he’s gonna be sorely disappointed if I don’t turn you onto this Magic Bus sativa blend.”
I had smoked weed a few times since giving up the drink, so I agreed to go into a side alley with Navarro. He had a tiny little glass water pipe in the inner pocket of his cut. Amazing the things they could manufacture these days. In Syria we had to make do with a metal hookah.
