The Biker's Brother

by Peter Edwards

  Bill continues: “The Popeyes will want a big piece of the local action or else they’ll try to shut it down. They’re not going to back away from some Mickey Mouse regional club.”

  He watches my face as he says “Mickey Mouse.” Then he continues: “And if they don’t scoop up the Annihilators and absorb them, their rivals will.”

  He gestures for me to sit down in a chair near his.

  “Who would you call the Popeyes’ rivals?”

  “There’s the Outlaws. They’re international too.”

  “There’s not much of an Outlaw presence around here though, is there?”

  “No, but they might come in if they pick up the scent of money. They might want to pull in the skinny cook too.”

  “What if the rest of the Annihilators say no to joining the Popeyes?”

  Bill makes a little pistol shape with his fingers. “They don’t like the word no. Also, they’ve got to worry about the Spartans, the other club around here, right? Some of the Spartans would love to join the Popeyes. Other Spartans would love to join up with some of the Annihilators to hold off the Popeyes.”

  It’s a bit dizzying, like history class when we learned about how hostilities in the Balkans somehow led to the start of World War I. The Annihilators and the Spartans, both from London, are the two biker clubs in our area. For the most part, the Spartans seem to know their place in the biker world. I haven’t heard of them starting stupid beefs by acting tough in out-of-town bars, and they’ve had no rats that I’ve heard of. They’ve had some pretty tough members in the past, including one guy who’d supposedly tattooed the name of every police officer who ever arrested him onto his arms, to remind him to get them back someday. The Spartans have had a few conflicts with the Annihilators over the years, especially during a period some years ago when Trollop was in power. Generally, though, the Spartans and the Annihilators stay out of each other’s hair.

  “Whatever shakes out, I don’t see Trollop fitting in to the big club,” Bill continues. “No matter how much he sucks up to them.”

  “Why?”

  He pauses for a second and then says, “He’s got a knack for attracting problems. Trollop’s serving a life sentence to his own stupidity.”

  He’s obviously pretty pleased with that line. From what I’ve seen, though, it’s accurate. Bill knows things, although I’m not sure where he’s getting his information. It can’t all be from cops.

  A few minutes later, Bill’s gone for the day and I’m alone in the radio room. There’s the usual run of telephone calls.

  “Can you tell me what’s happened to Gary Carson?” a lonely sounding senior asks.

  He’s talking about a humor columnist who was popular back when I was in about grade seven and who died two or three years ago. I don’t have the heart to relay this.

  “I think he’s taking a break,” I say instead.

  “Must be nice,” the senior says.

  I’m also monitoring whether a local teenage stabbing victim is getting better or worse, which involves calls every forty-five minutes or so to the police. It could go either way in the next few hours, as I understand it. I can’t imagine what his family is going through, and I try not to.

  The phone rings again.

  “My apartment, it’s full of cockroaches,” a man who sounds middle-aged says. “I keep spraying it and they’re still here.”

  The man’s anger builds as he tells me that he’s coughing up blood and the insecticide isn’t working.

  “Can you open a window?” I suggest.

  He dismisses that like it’s crazy talk and hangs up on me.

  I wonder if these callers have any clue that I’m seventeen. Maybe it doesn’t matter. They just need someone to talk to out there in the dark.

  The calls slow down and my mind drifts back to Brenda at the party yesterday afternoon. Was she really as amazing as I remember her? Could anyone be? Around midnight, I find her on Facebook. I had looked her up before, when she was still at our school, but never had the guts to make a friend request.

  She’s online too, and before I know it I have a new Facebook friend.

  I’m at work and a little stir-crazy, I type.

  Where’s work?

  The paper. I just monitor the Internet for breaking news and other stuff.

  It’s kind of a cool job, and I’m happy to have a chance to impress her. I’m trying to act casual but I’m pretty proud of the job myself. It’s the first work I’ve done that hasn’t involved wearing a name tag; in the past I’ve been a fast-food slinger and a dishwasher and I worked in the laundry room of an old folks’ home, which was particularly nasty.

  Wow.

  I love that she typed that.

  What’s up with you?

  Not so much.

  That’s good news already. If Jamie had leveled Trent, I’d hear about it now.

  Time to relax. I’m still queasy about the Popeyes, but a weight lifts from my mind nonetheless.

  It’s hard to imagine someone as beautiful as Brenda being alone and bored at night, but here she is, chatting with me. I picture a parade of athletes and actors and rock stars and business moguls lined up outside her door, nervously holding bouquets of flowers as they vie for her smile. I try not to put bikers like Carlito in the picture too.

  I take a deep breath as I decide to up my game.

  Wish we were having this chat on a desert is land, I type. I cringe right after I hit Send.

  Anyone else on that island?

  I hold my breath and go on.

  No one close.

  Good.

  I don’t push it further but my heart is racing. Is she toying with me?

  Big smile, I type.

  She sends back a happy face emoticon.

  Tonight the moon looks like a big happy bubble. I wonder how many other people are looking up at it. Maybe she’s one of them.

  A couple of seconds later, another message beeps through. I should let you get back to work. It feels like a rejection until she adds, Talk soon?

  Sounds great. Soon.

  And with that, she’s gone.

  Chapter

  8

  I like to have breakfast at a little diner nearby after pulling a night shift. It helps me wind down, if I go easy on the coffee. Today, a gentle rain starts up as I drive past a Walmart, a McDonald’s, and lots of tired looking mom-and-pop businesses. The diner’s just a few minutes off the main highway, beside a tattoo parlor. I can’t deny that my hometown is a bit of a backwater, but I still feel comfortable here, at least most of the time.

  I replay my Facebook conversation with Brenda in my mind as I drive. She didn’t throw herself at me, but her tone definitely held some promise. Even that promise is enough to send my stomach into backflip mode. I can’t remember ever feeling like this about a girl before. And it isn’t just her looks, either. More like her aura. Some sort of spark. Much more than that, really. A force field. It’s like I already know her, instead of just imagining that I do. Just looking at us, you’d wonder why a girl like her would be interested in getting to know a guy like me, but she seems happy enough to be doing it, which is all that counts. Maybe she’s just very good at being polite, or maybe I analyze things too much and should just enjoy the moment.

  Even if things do click between the two of us, I won’t be bringing her home to meet Mom anytime soon. Mom does her best, most of the time, but I’m still not so comfortable with friends, even old friends, dropping by my place, let alone someone like Brenda. Jake’s house isn’t always spotless or super tidy, but it’s never embarrassing. At my house, there’s a good chance the place will be a mess. There’s also a chance that, no matter the time of day, Mom will have had a drink or two, and I don’t need kids at school hearing about that. Mom likes to act as if she’s had some big, interesting past, but that never really
happened, and it’s awful to see her in a conversation when her face turns sad and lost. And I definitely don’t need a girl I like having to make small talk with one of Mom’s boyfriends. I wonder what Brenda’s home life is like.

  I turn left a little ways past the larger-than-life-sized elephant statue at the side of the road. Here, more than a hundred years ago, poor Jumbo—the giant star of the Barnum & Bailey Circus—was killed by a locomotive after he broke free from the local fairgrounds. I’ve never heard of another circus coming to town, but there’s been a Jumbo statue here for as long as I can remember. We do seem to like our losers. I prefer to think of Jumbo in heroic terms: that he died making a stand, charging headlong down the tracks, nostrils flaring and tusks lowered, defiant and uncompromising and fully alive. In that instant, it didn’t matter that his plight was utterly hopeless.

  Aside from Jumbo, St. Thomas is best known as the home of a star NHL defenseman, as a former manufacturing hub for faucets, and as a stop, years ago, on the Underground Railroad. That last part, at least, is pretty cool.

  The diner’s just a few blocks past the bronze elephant. It’s clean and homey and famous for its cheeseburgers (named “Jumbos,” of course), a greasy comfort food you can order any time of the day: I don’t know why anyone would want a cheeseburger at 9:00 a.m., but apparently some folks do. Lack of a full night’s sleep has me feeling a bit dreamy, and I trick myself into imagining Brenda waiting for me at a table as I walk in. (You probably won’t be surprised to hear that I’m not so experienced with girls. I’m technically a virgin, unless you count . . . Nope, no need to go there. You’re still a virgin if no one else is involved.)

  I quickly order a Western omelet. It’s what I normally get—plenty of protein and pretty much impossible to screw up.

  The table next to me is empty when I place my order, but a couple of minutes later, two chubby preschool-aged girls arrive with a woman in her fifties or sixties. It would be easy for a cartoonist to make the girls look like little piggies: nature has helped by giving them round cheeks and upturned snout-like noses. I’m guessing the woman with them is their grandmother. She’s wearing a black sweatshirt decorated on the back with sequined silver wolves baying at the moon, and it’s unzipped to reveal a T-shirt bearing the message “Grandchildren are God’s reward for not killing your children.”

  I’ve seen her somewhere before, although I can’t quite place it.

  A couple of minutes after they sit down, the bigger of the two girls makes a grab for the can of soda across the table. The granny blocks her hand and gives her an earnest, tough-love scowl.

  “No more Coke ’till you finish your cheeseburger,” she admonishes.

  She shifts her weight so she can face me directly. “They’re my daughter’s kids,” she explains. “They won’t eat vegetables and I’ve got to feed them something.”

  It’s morning, and you’d think they’d be eating porridge or pancakes or something like that, but I’m too tired to ask. Thanks to my night shift, I’ve had enough of weird humanity.

  Granny gives me a hard look.

  “I know you from somewhere,” she says. “You a friend of Carlito’s?”

  “We’ve met,” I say. Figures, I think.

  She turns back to the kids and I scarf the rest of my omelet. It’s time to settle the bill and get out. She’s either a family friend of Carlito’s or actual family. Either way, I don’t feel like chatting. I wonder if the woman has ever met Brenda.

  The hard-eyed Nomad that I saw at the barn party yesterday is coming through the diner door as I walk out. He’s wearing a regular black leather jacket now, not the red Kevlar vest he had on then. With his rigid walk and stern expression, you’d think he’s a police sergeant or something, despite the outlaw chic. He gives me what could be a tight-faced nod, although it might just be a twitch. He doesn’t actually stop, so he can’t really want to talk. I’d hate to be alone in a confined space with him; he looks like a guy who’s fully prepared to inflict some serious damage on anyone who gets in his way. My little town is getting crowded.

  The Annihilators’ clubhouse is just a few minutes down the road from the diner, and some people in town like to joke that if its walls could talk, they’d be in a witness protection program. It’s a shack with dirty siding and a hillbilly-style front balcony on a street that looks like an alley, with no sidewalks and not enough room for two cars to pass each other in opposite directions.

  I’ve heard that clubhouses in Toronto and Montreal are built like bunkers, but the Annihilators’ place certainly doesn’t fit into that category. Trollop and his little circle of idiots have hung security cameras by the doors and installed bars over the windows, but I can’t see them ever doing much good. Since there’s almost no front lawn and no fence, it would be ridiculously easy to attack the clubhouse from the street, if anyone cared to. So far, no one has bothered to try.

  It seems to me that the Annihilators are the biker equivalent of beer league athletes. That said, there’s usually a pretty nice collection of motorcycles parked outside: Harley-Davidsons, Victorys, and Indians. With some of the guys, I get the feeling that their bike is the best thing they’ll ever own. Club rules say the bikes have to be North American made, and that members have to clock a certain number of miles between May and the Labor Day weekend, a period they grandly call the Riding Season. It might not sound like much, but it’s something they’re proud of. In that way, at least, the Annihilators are old-school in a good way. A lot of motorcycle clubs aren’t even about the bikes anymore, but our local crew is a bike club that sometimes ventures into crime, rather than a group of felons that occasionally rides motorcycles. For members like Jamie and Ripper, that’s an important distinction, although I’m sure plenty of bikers couldn’t care less.

  There’s nothing going on there today that I can see and so I keep on driving. Before I know it, I’m heading past Goldberg’s townhouse again. I’m hoping to bump into Brenda so we can have an excuse to talk. As I round the corner I see at least a half dozen police cars. That can’t be good. Then I see an ambulance and a mobile police command post. The paramedics don’t appear to be in any hurry.

  Blood rushes to my face and I can feel my heart pounding against my rib cage. I think again about the tension between Jamie and Trent and then just hope I’m worrying about nothing.

  Brenda’s standing near the roadway. There are those eyes again, those soft bunny rabbit eyes, but this time, she’s pale and trembling and scared. She looks like she’s in shock. I can see she’s been crying. A lot.

  All the action’s centered on the garage.

  A Volvo SUV with a sign reading “CORONER, Dr. Edward James” in the back window pulls up by the police command post. A man of about sixty with a shock of graying hair steps out. His glasses are perched at the end of his nose and his hair is trimmed in a brush cut, only higher.

  “Dr. James,” one of the cops says and leads him toward the garage.

  He’s calm enough. I imagine he has been to plenty of nasty crime and accident scenes. It’s time to go, before the attention shifts from him to me.

  As I press on the gas pedal, another police car pulls up and Brenda gets in the back. For an instant, she’s alongside me. I’ve thought of her almost nonstop since the party, but I’ve never once imagined the lost expression I see on her face.

  Her eyes meet mine and she mouths some words. I can make them out clearly even though I can’t hear her. They couldn’t hit me harder if she was screaming them out loud.

  “He’s dead.”

  Chapter

  9

  The police cruiser pulls away and there’s no chance to ask Brenda who’s dead.

  I never got out of my car as I drove past the townhouse, so I must have looked like just another rubbernecker. Now I drive away slowly, trying not to attract attention.

  I sweat a lot when I get panicky, and my shirt’s sticking t
o my back now. I take deep breaths to try to maintain control. I feel like I’m a little kid, lost and being chased and unable to defend myself, even though in reality I’m bigger and stronger than the average grown man. When I was younger, I was constantly on the edge of panic attacks when Mom and Dad fought. I always feared the moment when things would go really crazy and life as I knew it would end in some awful explosion of violence. It doesn’t help that I haven’t slept since my night shift and I feel a little tipsy.

  I drive slowly, so that no one notices me.

  When Brenda said, “He’s dead,” did she mean Jamie? A rush of dread washes over me. I can’t even imagine Mom’s face if someone had to give her that news. I can’t imagine my own.

  Or did she mean Trent?

  On the drive home, I play out the various scenarios in my mind, trying to decide which one is most likely. No matter how I spin it, either Jamie or Trent is lying dead at the end. As I pull up to our place, I pray I don’t bump into Mom. She’ll sense that something is wrong as soon as she sees me or hears my voice, and I don’t need a scene. I need to calm down and figure things out, not add drama.

  Eddie runs down the stairs to greet me as I walk into the house.

  “Mom?”

  No answer.

  “Mom?”

  Still nothing.

  Now Eddie is jumping around my feet. I suppose he’s hoping I’ll take off my shoes so he can run away with them. Why can’t humans be this easy to understand and satisfy?

  I don’t see Mom’s jacket or shoes by the front door. It’s a small blessing, I suppose, that she’s out, although it would be nice to know where she is.

  If Trent’s dead, is Jamie in trouble? There was obviously something going on between them at the party and the townhouse. If it’s Jamie . . .

  I can’t even think about that.

  My heart is thumping. My shirt is still stuck to my back. I need to keep my breathing under control. I have to face the possibility that my brother might be dead. Our family isn’t much as it is. If we lose him . . .