by Layla Wolfe
Anson looked darkly at him. “People usually say that with respect, not disgust.”
Ormond felt brave enough to take Anson by the biceps. “It’s not with disgust that I say it. It’s with—”
“Concern, yeah, I know, I know.” Anson must have heard it a billion times. “Yes, I’ve got meds, and no, I don’t take them. Maybe I should, so I don’t have any fucking dreams.”
“Listen. That Sourdough Road is on the way to the Blythe geoglyphs. So if it’s any consolation, I think we’re on the right track.”
Rover approached them tentatively. “So Iceman’s running this dog meat ring, too. I say take him out the second you get a clean shot. He’s just vermin, leeching any decency out of this world. Some of these dogs have collars and dog tags so they’re not just wild Rez dogs. We need to get them out of here ASAP. Turk, Moog, and Hobie are coming with cages, with the dispensary truck. We haven’t formulated a plan yet, but at least some dogs can run around the dispensary truck freely and breathe, pee, eat. Maybe the Humane Society in Parker, or the one in Lake Havasu. Turk got his dog Korg from a rescue place in Havasu.”
“Call Sinquah,” Anson ordered Ormond. “I don’t care how busy he is. He needs to see this, and to help with the resolution, because they’re all Rez dogs.”
So Ormond spoke on the phone with Leroy. The Bent Zealots arrived, many more than Rover had predicted, and some associates, hang-arounds who were wannabe club members. Leroy said he’d send Animal Control over while club brothers transferred the poor, bony, dehydrated critters to their cool vehicles. Men had brought leashes, so they could walk the dogs, let them pee and shit. They had brought bowls with gallon jugs of fresh water. Some were so weak their heads needed to be lifted to drink. Ormond helped carry some who still breathed but who were too weak to walk, placing them on the back seats of cages where men had placed blankets and towels.
People, some of them the wandering hospital patients, gathered around to wordlessly watch the strange scenario. Ormond helped with the dead dogs, too. He quietly shoved them to one side of the truck. The worst part was opening the cage, separating the expired canines from the sick, the weak, and the snarly. Surprisingly, only a few were snarly after having had their face crammed into a stranger’s butt for who knew how long. Days? Ormond wore his thick riding gloves, and only really got one vicious dog that he tied to someone’s bumper with a leash.
He caught Anson emailing someone again. This time Ormond was able to peek over his shoulder and see “I hope you don’t go down the same road your mother did.” He was emailing the pregnant teen daughter Ormond had been so careful not to bring up.
Ormond said, “We can head toward the geoglyphs now. They’ve got it under control. Rover’s gonna keep squeezing the driver and the kids for more cartel info, hopefully without endangering their family members whose body parts are being held hostage.”
Anson nodded distantly, still finishing up his email. Rover approached, shaking Ormond’s hand, even giving him a thug hug.
“I want to thank you guys. You were the first on the scene. Anson might’ve nearly killed the most valuable witness, but you were a big help.”
Apparently Anson hit “send” on his email, for his eyes suddenly flickered to Rover’s as he put his phone away. “Hey. You know an old biker named Riker? Used to ride with The Bare Bones out of Pure and Easy?”
Rover’s answer came swiftly. “Sure, I know Riker. Who doesn’t? Why you need him for? He’s been scarce as a sincere fart in church lately.”
Anson shrugged, making an attempt at a smile. “I’ve got something of his. He’s going to want to see it. Any idea where he is?”
“I heard he was holing up in Jerome, calling himself Alcatraz.” Jerome was a ghost town for tourists up above Cottonwood.
“Why’s he not ride with the Bones anymore?” Anson asked.
“There was a weird story awhile back. He’s persona non grata among the Boners. I think he had something to do with molesting Ford Illuminati’s wife. Last he was seen was at a shootout at some cult’s land where a Boner was left dead.”
“Which one?”
“Ziggy, I’m pretty sure. Haven’t seen him in a coon’s age, at least. So it must’ve been Ziggy.”
“Ziggy,” Anson repeated. “Yeah, I haven’t seen him either. What the fuck. Well, thanks for the intel. So you’d say Riker is a pretty tough customer?”
“Oh, hell yeah. How’d you think he got the name Riker? He was doing Buck Rogers time at Riker’s in New York until he was made to dance on the blacktop by the wrong guy. Boom, suddenly he’s out free and running back to his old partner, Cropper Illuminati. A pretty vile, unpredictable guy. Liked to freak people out by walking around with a penis pump dangling from his dick.”
“I remember that,” said Anson. “One time, as a kid, I hitch-hiked to the Bones’ clubhouse in Pure and Easy. Just caught a glimpse of Riker, but it’s a sight that’s burned in my memory. He was stalking around wearing assless chaps and drinking wine out of some gash’s cunt.”
Rover nodded as though at the fond memories. “That sounds like Riker, for sure. Hey, looks like your Rez cops are here. You guys go track down that fucking RV.”
The partners mounted their saddles. Ormond shouted after Rover, “Don’t let those two kids get away either. I’m sure we’ll need them.”
As they rode away from the gory scene of carnage, Ormond wondered what was up with Riker. He’d heard tell of the guy, as any self-respecting biker in Arizona would have. He’d heard tell he was a smelly, nasty, vile character. Was Anson related to him?
Ormond erased that idea from his mind. It was too vile, nasty, and smelly to ponder.
CHAPTER TEN
ANSON
I saw the guy following me way before we hit Sourdough Road.
It was the guy from my dream, all right—glaring yellow eyes like two lasers under the brim of a hat. The fedora was either an ironic statement on fifties businessmen, or an ironic statement on eighties skinny-tie bands. The Navajo kid was right. He did look like Boris. The sicario—I knew instantly he was a cartel hit man—drove a red Caddy and looked like he didn’t normally venture out into the daylight. Sicarios rarely did. They liked to do their work at night, take people unawares while sleeping. Sometimes they wore masks to take people out with tear gas. Then they’d put people in their Caddy trunks, folded up like suitcases. They wore bulletproof vests. I had one, but only one, so I didn’t want to put it on in front of Ormond.
Still, I had to lose the guy. It wouldn’t do to tip him off beforehand what our plans were.
I waved Ormond to the side of the road. He was fast on the uptake, and was the first to say, “That guy following us?”
“Exactly.” I didn’t want to mention that Boris was a sicario, if Ormond didn’t already know. Boris had also pulled over, maybe sixty yards behind us. He was being bold, uncaring that we noticed him. “Let’s give him a run for his money.”
I felt almost gleeful when I lifted my chin in the direction of some old barracks. They were decrepit, trashed old things, with beams and bits of ceiling flung everywhere. It would be fun to force the sicario to follow as we weaved in and out between the debris, practicing our canyon carving skills.
“Let’s do it,” said Ormond.
I rumbled off-road, praying no one punctured a tire with a cactus thorn or nail. The way things had been going for me this month, it wouldn’t have fucking surprised me at all. Seeing those poor, abused dogs had just set me off. It was the final domino in a long line of them, shit that had been building up all month. I had nearly killed that cartel driver when really, he might’ve just been blackmailed into working for them like a lot of other people. Once they held a relative of yours, it was only a matter of time before some limbs were sent express mail. They did not fuck around.
It was my job to secure the Rez turf for The Bent Zealots, so I used the sight of those poor mangled dogs to spur me on. Anger can be constructive if it goads you to greater heights of a
ction. The trial by fire I was just now passing through would show me up in honor or dishonor to the next generation of MC brothers. This was more than a job—it was a question of honor. I had blown it with my own daughter, being an absentee father who would rather be skulking around back alleys in Baghdad. I had dutifully sent money home to her, but I had rarely been present in Sheena’s life. She hadn’t answered my pitiful email, but I knew it was too late to save her anyway. My email had just been a lame attempt to assuage my guilt.
It wasn’t too late to save Brick Mantooth. For some reason that kid had really stuck in my gut as a symbol of something constructive I could do for a youth. Maybe he reminded me of me, with his thrashed Megadeath T-shirt, his sagging jeans, his buzzhawk. He wanted to dress like a Compton teen, a South Side Chicago kid, a cholo, anything but an Anglo. He had lived the thug life in the Rez projects, and he was going nowhere fast. The cartel job might have seemed like a giant windfall at first, but after the death of his friend it was probably starting to look a little bleak in the light of day for Brick Mantooth. I imagined riding in like a savior to bury the Iceman and sweep Brick away—I hadn’t quite figured out where yet. But anything was better than the Rez, that I knew.
So we led the sicario on a wild goose chase through the old Japanese internment barracks. It looked like people had been living here not long ago. Shit like upturned cooking pots, an old disemboweled black and white TV, and wind chimes were scattered hither and yon, giving the place the look of a refugee camp. Inside some of the burned-out barracks I spied metal bed frames, even cooking stoves, so yeah, Indians had been using this as actual housing. It must have been bad enough during WWII when they’d forced the Japanese over here. I shuddered with nausea to think how depressing it was for Indians to take the buildings over.
Ol’ Boris only gave us a token chase. It wasn’t even very fun leading him around by the nose when he gave up so easily. I was smart enough to know he was like a dog with a bone and only pretending to give up. He wouldn’t lose his dignity by barreling over toaster ovens and pig skeletons. Truth was, he probably knew where we were going anyway. He probably assumed the Navajo kids at the dog truck—or someone—had squealed.
We paused, about to head back onto the highway.
“You don’t think we really lost him, do you?” Ormond yelled.
“No. But it bought us a few minutes. Got your piece ready?”
Ormond slapped his hip, nodding.
We took off in the direction of the geoglyphs.
I wondered about Ormond’s extensive sexual experience. Our last lovemaking session—well, just calling it “lovemaking” gave me a giant fucking clue right then and there. I was repeating the Farokh experience. But now it was with a fellow American, a guy I couldn’t run or hide from when the going got rough. In Iraq or Afghanistan, it was easy enough just to bang some guy, say “peace be upon you,” and split. Rarely did any of my partners try to follow or cajole more than a few bucks out of me. We called a spade a spade over there.
Here, I was treading into much more frightening territory with Ormond. Our last session had been so overwhelming, so outrageously blissful, my cells were already demanding more. Ormond was a drug I couldn’t shake. The more I had of him, the more I wanted.
But how could I ever settle with him? More importantly—why was I even asking that fucking question? Settle? With another man? Last I’d checked, I was going to get me a citizen wife. I wasn’t nearly ready to come out, even to an out and proud guy like Turk Blackburn. I was working for a fucking homosexual biker club, for God’s sake—and I couldn’t even tell them? I just couldn’t see any way to it. My quiet, introspective Navajo upbringing was just too powerful.
Then it struck me. Maybe I should use my raunchy biker father’s side to out me. With his assless chaps and penis pumps, the guy was obviously no conservative, no John Bircher. And a jailbird like Rover Florkowski knew more about him than I did.
I took the exit where a Bureau of Land Management marker told us we’d find the geoglyphs. A mile down the potholed road, the desert was so flat I could look back and see that Boris wasn’t following. It struck me that this would have been an extremely pleasant ride if it wasn’t for the fucking cartel ruining everything. We could’ve brought some sandwiches out here, walked around the rock designs, fucked our brains out on the “landing strip of the gods.”
And then it occurred to me that I was thinking of banging Ormond again, so I forced my mind back onto the mission.
I think Ormond saw the RV before I did. I was too fixated on the parking lot, where only two, three vehicles were parked, to see the glyphs. Suddenly Ormond was riding next to me, waving his arm up at a slight butte to our left. The RV was parked next to a shack of some kind, looked almost like one of those cinderblock toilet outbuildings you always see at low-budget parks. Probably built by Indians, too.
I told Ormond, “Obviously, we should park halfway up that rise.”
“I think they’ll still see or hear us coming. It’s awfully fucking quiet out here.”
He was right. Ultimately, we were only able to ride a little bit up the butte before we had to stash our bikes in a little cave-like indentation where they couldn’t be seen from the RV, and hoofed it uphill.
“Here,” I said, handing him the bulletproof vest. I had a couple grenades Dipstick had given me and I hooked them to my belt that already bristled with a hundred implements. “See here, thread these straps through—”
“I know how to do it!” Ormond seemed offended, in his attractive Spanish way. “I am just wondering why you do not take it, since you’re running point on this job.”
I didn’t want to tell him that I knew better how to defend myself, although that was fucking obvious. You didn’t compare a highly-trained private security contractor with a makeup artist. Unless Ormond was planning to lob some latex lightning bolts at the bad guys, I already had a giant edge over him.
“You’ve never shot a man before. I have. Put it on.”
Sullenly, Ormond did so.
He still sounded sullen as we started up the hill. “You are the sensitive rebel, like James Dean.”
“Really? I’ve been called a lot of things in my time, but never James Dean.”
“Yes. When I saw you whaling on that truck driver over a bunch of dogs, you reminded me of that James Dean scene where he goes, ‘You are tearing me apart!’”
I vaguely recalled which scene he meant. I recalled Dean with his face all screwed up, overacting. I knew Ormond didn’t mean it as an insult. “Well, who wouldn’t get all emotional over a sight like that?”
“It was the worst thing I’ve ever seen, bar none. Anson, fucking promise me this. Promise me you’re not going back to Afghanistan until every one of those dogs finds a home.”
Of course I didn’t answer right away. I couldn’t promise that, one way or the other. For one, I couldn’t be sure if every last dog would find a home. Some of them were probably diseased or too injured, and had to be put down. But I’d always had dogs as a kid, growing up. I often wished I could have one again, maybe get a friend to take care of him while I was overseas. “Don’t worry. I haven’t heard from my boss in days. I’m not going back anytime soon.”
This seemed to remind him of something. “And promise to take your PTSD meds.”
“Okay.”
He was quiet for a while, then said, “You are not afraid to die? What do you think when you face death? You must have a very Navajo outlook on things.”
We had to speak more quietly now. We were getting closer. “Actually, I think it’s more an American outlook, Ormond. I believe lots of Navajo shit, like don’t look at the full moon or he’ll stare back and follow you. Don’t point at a rainbow with a finger other than your thumb. And never whistle at night because it calls forth evil spirits. But seriously? Death just takes you when it’s ready. You’re going home to the other side no matter what and you have no control over it. When your times comes, it comes.”
“In
other words. You’re not afraid.”
I really wasn’t afraid, but I didn’t want to tell him that. In my experience, if you tell your fellow soldiers you don’t fear death, it whacks them out. They start thinking you’re about to walk through a minefield or a booby trap just because you think you’re invincible. So to shut him up and change the subject, I grabbed him and slammed him into a crevice in the dirt wall of the butte.
I held his jaw in my hand firmly, forcing him to look me in the eye. Pinning him to the wall with the power of my hips, I salaciously rolled my erection from side to side against the protrusion of his hip, or maybe his belt buckle. His thigh was firm and juicy between mine. I remembered his fat dick in my hand, spurting that thick arc across the dirty countertop, and a few drops of semen squirted from my slit, too. “You don’t know how hot you are,” I growled. “You’re just used to other men using you. That’s all you know. You think your only talent is your deep throat. You have no fucking idea how hot, sultry, dusky-skinned you are. You’ve got these beautiful Mediterranean eyes. Your beauty is so deep and lush, it’s like a man could get lost in it.”
Ormond looked frantically from side to side, as if unsure which part of me was telling the truth. To put a stop to that, I kissed him. I just laid a big, open-mouthed kiss onto his sweet cherub’s lips, and it was heaven.
I hadn’t kissed another man since Farokh, although I had kissed a few potential citizen wives since him. It was a lush, sensuous experience, and just riled me to greater heights of eroticism. I squirmed my tongue alongside his, his breaths coming in hot puffs against my cheek. I slid a palm down the flat plane of his belly, where it was concave beneath his belt buckle. It was easy enough to keep sliding and grab a handful of plump dick. The sensation of the whopping pecker in my hand combined with the deep, soulful kiss must have driven me some sort of apeshit, because the next thing I knew, I was on my knees gripping the colossal, drooling penis in my fist. The fingers of my other hand rubbed tiny circles almost lovingly through the silken bush at the base, right over the fatty cover of his pubic mound. The penis jutted there urgently, a long, purplish, veined limb that rarely sought any attention.
