JIGSAW

by Jessie Cooke

  He shifted his focus back to the preacher who was telling a story that Rusty heard his father tell many times throughout the years. It was a “Tale of Two Stones” and as he listened, it suddenly dawned on Rusty that he'd never really listened to the words...or the message. For some reason at that moment, maybe because he needed it, he wasn't sure...but, he not only heard the message, he felt like it was being spoken directly to him. It was Easter Sunday and their faith believed that was the day that Jesus rose from the dead. He was given a second chance at life because God believed he deserved it. As the preacher spoke the most powerful sentence in the story, Rusty began moving his lips, mouthing the words and he realized something else...he had been listening to his father all these years. “Man of sorrows, acquainted with grief, despised, rejected, crucified, died and was buried...has been raised up...and is our hope and our promise...” Rusty looked up at the stained glass ceiling over his head and he felt like someone was looking back down at him, watching over him and trying like hell to lead him in the right direction.

  5

  The party was in full-swing when Rusty was escorted by a short little stocky man that introduced himself as “Munchkin,” into the Skulls’ clubhouse. It was packed with men in leather kuttes and women in short skirts and tight t-shirts. Rusty hadn't ever been in an MC clubhouse, but this was almost exactly what he'd pictured.

  “I'll let Dax know you're here, go ahead and grab a drink. Hey Shell!” Munchkin called to the girl behind the bar. “Get this man whatever he wants. You know who he is?” The girl looked at Rusty and suddenly her face lit up.

  “Are you in that new series on CW...?”

  Munchkin rolled his eyes. “No! He was one of the greatest quarterbacks of his time Shelly. Just get him a drink and be nice to him.” Munchkin continued on through the clubhouse, past the bar and the pool tables in back that were packed with men and women, laughing and looking like they were all having a great time. Everyone was drinking and despite having ridden his bike out, Rusty was tempted to have one of his own.

  “What's your poison?” the girl behind the bar asked him. She leaned on the wooden bar with her arms folded and her big breasts pressed into them. That pushed them up and they spilled out of her t-shirt. Rusty was trying not to stare, but it was only at that moment he realized how long it had been since he'd touched a woman.

  “I'll just take a beer,” he said. “Thanks.” The girl had short, lavender hair and it was wild, sticking up in all different directions, but like it had been styled that way. Her eyes were huge, round and blue and she had a tiny little nose and lips that a straight man could probably not look at without imagining them wrapped tightly around a certain part of his anatomy. Tattoos covered both of her bare arms and the top of her chest. When she turned to pour his beer, he got a glimpse of her legs. She was short, but she had nice, thick legs that were bare underneath her short skirt, and sporting quite a few sexy tattoos of their own. He hadn't even realized until that moment how sexy he thought tattoos were. She was hot, and he found himself fantasizing about tracing the roses on her thigh with his tongue...his cock hadn't been very active lately, but watching this club girl or whatever she was, was making it do a little dance in his jeans.

  “There you go,” she said, sitting the beer down in front of him.

  “Thanks.”

  She leaned in on her arms again and his eyes went back to her chest. “You're welcome,” she said, and then lowering her voice almost seductively she said, “So, you played football, huh? I bet that means you're good with your hands.”

  Rusty smiled. “I do okay,” he told her with a wink, “but every game and every play is different. That's the key.”

  “Remembering that they're all different?”

  “Yeah...you wouldn't want to run the same plays on the team you play Monday night as the ones you'd just used on the team you played Sunday afternoon, right? They'd be old and stale by then. The key is always having new, fresh moves...that way, nobody gets bored.”

  She giggled and said, “I'm not sure if that was supposed to turn me on, but it did.”

  Rusty laughed. He liked how direct she was. In a bar in the city it would have taken him hours just to get this far. “I have to admit, knowing that turns me on a little.”

  She leaned into the counter higher and pushed her breasts together even more. He imagined that he could almost see the dark ring around one of her nipples. “If you want, I can have my friend take over and we can go take care of this...problem, we both have.”

  Shit. Rusty wanted to. He was suddenly so horny that he couldn't think straight. But...what if he wasn't supposed to fuck her? He was just a guest on the ranch...was there protocol for that? Did they consider the club girls, club “property” and was there someone he could ask to find out? He didn't want to overstep his invitation there, especially before he found out exactly what Dax planned to do with what he'd seen on that tape from the park on Monday.

  “Hey!” Munchkin startled him. “Dax said to have you come on out back and get something to eat and meet everyone.”

  Rusty gave Shelly one last, longing, lustful look and then followed the stocky little man through the bar and out the back door. There were picnic tables set up and Rusty's stomach growled when he smelled the barbecue cooking. He saw Dax standing with his arm around a gorgeous blonde who he assumed was his old lady. When he saw Rusty, he lifted his free arm and waved him over.

  “Hey! Glad you made it. Rusty Daniels, this is Angel, the queen of my castle.” Angel rolled her eyes but smiled at Rusty and said,

  “I'm glad to meet you, Rusty. I've heard some great things about you from the kids. Blue seems particularly impressed.”

  “Thanks. Glad to meet you too. She's a good kid.”

  “Yeah, she is.”

  “She tells me that you have a little damage to your bike,” Dax said. “Her great uncle is my main mechanic, we can have him take a look at it if you like.”

  “Sure, that would be great,” Rusty said. He was wondering what the cost of all these “favors” would be. In the world he'd been living in for the past ten years, nobody did anything for you for nothing, unless you were family, that was different. “Just let me know when a good time would be to bring it by.”

  “Tell you what,” Dax said. “Why don't you fix yourself a plate and after you eat you and I will walk over to the shop. Toolie's out there working. I can't get the old grease monkey to take a day off.”

  “Oh, sure, okay.” Dax showed Rusty where to get his plate and utensils and while he fixed it, Dax introduced him to a few more of the guys. Rusty had never paid much attention to the Skulls, other than a passing glance when he saw them in town. He was surprised to see how varied the ages were, and the looks. Some of the guys were clean-cut and looked like they could throw on a suit and tie and no one would have a clue they even owned a Harley. Others were your stereotypical biker with grizzly beards and beer bellies that lapped over their jeans. They were young and old and every age in between. The women were the same. On television they were always young and hot and kind of trashy, but Angel was a perfect example that even an old lady can be classy. Some of the girls looked a little worse for wear, and some of them forgot to put on some of their clothes, but like the men...they were all different.

  He took his plate to one of the tables and as soon as he sat down he heard someone call his name. It was Blue. “Hey.” She slid onto the bench across the table from him. She had an ice cream cone in her hand and there was a spot of chocolate ice cream on the tip of her nose.

  “Hey kid.”

  “I want to be a kicker.” Rusty tried not to smile. She was a strange little thing sometimes.

  “A kicker, huh? Can you kick?”

  “I can kick a soccer ball from the fifty-yard line into the goal. I mean, let's face it...Even if I made a stink about them being bigots and not letting girls on the football team, I'm way too scrawny to go up against these guys in a tackle situation. But...if you help me learn h
ow to kick a football, I could probably get the coach at our middle school to take notice of me then. His guys can't kick for shit.”

  “Should an eleven-year-old really be using the term ‘shit’ so freely?”

  She shrugged. “Angel's the only one who ever has a problem with it, and I just don't say it in front of her.”

  “What about your own parents?”

  “Mom dropped me off on the doorstep when I was a month old and Dad's been in prison since I was six...so, I don't think they'll care.”

  “Sorry.”

  She shrugged again and took another lick of her ice cream. It was melting down the side of her hand now. “It's cool. I don't really think about her too much. I get to see my pop every other visiting day, one of the guys takes me up.”

  “Still must be hard.”

  “I guess,” she said. “I miss him, but it's cool here. If I need anything I got about fifty big brothers to help me out, and way too many moms.”

  “Blue, here honey wipe your face.” One of the club girls happened to be walking by and she handed Blue a wet wipe. Blue rolled her eyes, took the wipe and looked back at Rusty.

  “See what I mean?”

  Rusty chuckled. “Well, I would guess that too many moms would be better than none. Dax is going to ask your uncle to take a look at my bike.”

  “Good. I heard them talking and Dax wants you to get it fixed just in case Isaac starts running his mouth. He's not real trustworthy.”

  Rusty cocked an eyebrow. “You heard who talking, exactly?”

  “Dax and Uncle Tool.”

  “Oh yeah, what else did they say?” She shrugged again and stood up.

  “Nothing, really. I gotta go, it's my turn to sit with Saint.”

  “Saint?”

  “Yeah, he's dying. I'll see you later.” And just like that, she took off. Rusty wondered if she was as together and well-adjusted as she pretended to be. If she was, for all she'd been through already, someone was doing a great job.

  He finished his meal then and found Dax, “Hey thanks for the lunch man, that was the best food I've had in a long time.”

  “No problem. The girls around here keep us fat and happy for sure. You ready to walk your bike out to the shop?”

  “Sure.” The two men went back through the bar and out to the parking area in front. Rusty took the kick stand off his bike, put it in neutral and began pushing it. Dax took one side after a minute and then it was a hell of a lot easier to get across the dirt and gravel that spanned out between the clubhouse and the two huge shops that sat about a quarter of a mile away. On the way there Rusty said, “I've been trying to figure something out, but I guess I should just ask you...”

  “Okay.”

  “Why are you so interested in helping me?”

  Dax smiled. “I don't know...I guess it's just that I've been watching you play ball for so long, following your career, I already felt like I knew you. I heard about your injury...and then the trouble you had for a while afterwards...”

  “The addiction, the public fights, losing my contract, rehab...?”

  Dax nodded. “Yeah. Anyways, sometimes people just get a shitty hand dealt to them. When I was younger, I didn't have a lot of family I could depend on. My mother wasn't around and my old man...Well, with Doc let's just say this club came before everything else, even family. So, there were a lot of other guys around here that picked up the slack and despite not having a close family, or even much of one at all, I had a pretty good life. So, I guess I just like to do what I can to give back, to people I think might deserve it. I know your old man, he's an awesome dude.”

  Rusty smiled. He'd never thought of his dad as a “dude,” but he thought his dad would get a kick out of it if he heard Dax call him that. “He had a lot of good things to say about you and what you do out here.”

  “He never had anything but good to say about you either...all of his kids. He used you guys as examples a lot when he was teaching the kids in his bible classes.”

  Rusty laughed out loud at that. “Was I the bad example?”

  Dax smiled. “He said you were going through some hard times. That was right before he left us. I've wondered how you were doing since and when the kids told me you were helping them out at the park...well, you know the rest of the story.” They pushed the bike in through the big, open metal doors of the shop. Rusty looked around, in awe. The ceiling was about thirty feet high and the walls were covered with tools and motorcycle parts...and of course posters of nearly naked women on motorcycles and neon bar signs. Every modern piece of mechanical equipment a person could imagine seemed to be somewhere on the garage floor along with motorcycles and cars in various states of repair...or disrepair. It was huge, and packed...and surprisingly neat despite all that.

  “Can I ask you another question?” Rusty said, figuring he should just get it all out in the air and get it over with.

  “Sure,” Dax said. “If you ever ask me one I don't want to answer, I'll tell you.”

  “You know I was...buzzed, the day I wrecked the bike at the park, and judge Gannon's kid is the one that got me started ‘helping’ the kids...it was a form of blackmail. If Gannon was to see that video of me, or even get a whiff that I'd been drinking and driving...well, let's just say he'd like nothing more than to pull my license indefinitely and maybe hand me down some jail time.”

  “So, the question was, did I know you were drunk?”

  “Buzzed,” Rusty corrected.

  Dax raised an eyebrow but didn't argue the point. “Yes, it was pretty obvious from the video I saw...before it accidentally got scrambled.”

  “You still want to help me out though?”

  “I'm thirty-four years old Rusty and haven't yet met the man that was perfect,” he said.

  “Bullshit!” An older man with a gray beard that hung down to his chest and hair that hung down his back, came out of the office. He was wearing white coveralls, and they were covered in grease. His hands looked swollen, and maybe arthritic and the nail beds were black with grease built up under his nails. He had a wad of something in his cheek and looked like he needed to spit. Rusty assumed this was Toolie. “You met me ain't you?”

  Dax laughed. “True story, Toolie. Sorry about that. Sometimes I forget you're not mortal like the rest of us. This is Rusty...”

  “Hell, I know who this boy is,” Toolie said. “I got a bone to pick with you about that Super Bowl back in 2015.”

  Rusty laughed. “Okay.”

  “Not now, but one of these days over a beer, maybe you can clarify some shit for me. Meantime, this your bike?”

  “Yeah...”

  “Nice.” Toolie walked all the way around it, seemingly expecting it all. Dax looked at Rusty and smiled and they both waited quietly. “Damn boy this bike's gotta be worth about sixty, seventy-grand.”

  Rusty nodded. “You're good. I paid sixty-eight five.”

  Toolie whistled. “Well, I'd say you at least got your money's worth with all this chrome and that nice custom paint job on the tank. You fucked that up a little there though.”

  “Yeah, will you have to sand much of the paint to fix that?” A friend of Rusty's in Pennsylvania ran a tattoo shop. He'd drawn the designs for Rusty's gas tank and Rusty got a lot of compliments on the work.

  “Maybe,” Toolie said. “But if I do, I'll have Carl take a look at it beforehand....”

  “Carl?”

  “He does our tattoos,” Dax said. “He's a hell of an artist.”

  “Okay, cool. Just let me know if you need money for parts or...”

  “Huh uh,” Dax said. “This is on the house. You mind if we leave it Tool? I was going to take Rusty up to meet Saint.”

  “Sure, I'll look at it in the morning,” Toolie said. “Rusty Daniels, it was good to meet you.”

  “You too, Toolie,” Rusty told him. “And thank you, for looking at the bike.”

  “De Nada,” the old white man said. Dax and Toolie spoke again and then he and Rusty left to
go meet this guy they called “Saint,” who was apparently dying. Rusty was curious about why Dax was so interested in the two of them meeting, but he didn't question it. It wasn't like he had a whole hell of a lot else to do...

  6

  Dax and Rusty picked up one of the vans at the clubhouse and drove a couple miles further out onto the ranch. Dax gave him what he called the five-dollar tour along the way, pointing out the teen center and a few other things. The sheer size of the ranch itself astounded Rusty. He had no idea how much they'd expanded it over the past several years. The housing section alone was nicer than most of the neighborhoods in Boston. Rusty knew some people in town referred to it as “the compound” and insinuated Dax was like one of those crazy preachers that had sex with all the women on the ranch and would ultimately talk them all into drinking the poison Kool-Aid. But Rusty didn't buy into any of that, especially because of his own father's high opinion of Dax.

  They drove up in front of a white, two-story house. It was like something you'd see in the movies. It had a wide porch on the front and small balconies that came off of two of the rooms upstairs. The downstairs windows had flower boxes in them, filled with colorful purple and yellow flowers. It was almost like being in a time-warp when Rusty considered just moments before he'd been in what appeared to be, by all accounts, a hard-core biker clubhouse and a garage filled with things that may or may not have been stolen. It was like leaving Westside Story and driving two miles into Mayberry.

  Dax parked the van and Rusty followed him up onto the porch and into the house. The living room was big, and cozy looking. The floors were polished wood with plush, colorful rugs scattered here and there. Pictures of a little girl with bright red hair covered the fireplace mantle and a dollhouse that had to be five feet tall sat against one wall. Barbie sat outside of that in her pink van, either coming or going, Rusty wasn't sure which. His head was practically spinning however by the time they stepped out onto another porch on the other side of the house. This one was enclosed with glass and filled with green plants. There was a hammock in the dead center of it and a very thin, pale man with longish light brown hair and two or three days growth of stubble on his face was lounging in it with his eyes closed. Blue was there with a book in her lap, sitting next to the hammock in a chair.