The Biker's Brother

by Peter Edwards

  I’ve lost Jamie before. There was a time, back when I was in grade five, when it seemed like Jamie dropped off the face of the earth. He didn’t come by the house for months and months. He’d been working in St. Thomas as a drywaller, but all of a sudden he was gone from town for almost the entire spring. That was when Trollop seemed to be running things in the club and Ripper was out of town working on a big construction project in Toronto. Then Jamie came back with a splash and lots of cash. He got me a baseball glove and a new bike and a skateboard, while Mom got a new washer and dryer. He also had a nice girlfriend named Melanie who talked loudly and brought me jellybeans and licorice when she and Jamie came over to the house. That was the year he gave me and Mom the Cruze as a family Christmas present.

  I didn’t know where the money came from and I’ve never asked. Besides, Mom was happy just to have him around again. The house was pretty empty when it was just me and her and Eddie.

  This little trip down memory lane makes me realize something: we’ve had our problems, but we’re still a family, and I’ve never had to deal with the death of someone in my immediate family before. I certainly don’t want to start now—which makes this one of those “please God” moments you always see in movies or read about in books. The type where the main character realizes they are on the verge of losing something that really matters and prays with everything they have to stop it from happening. Sometimes it works out in the end and sometimes it doesn’t. But right now, in real life, I can’t stand the suspense. I need to know what I’m dealing with. I need to know who’s dead.

  For a minute, I think about calling Brenda, and then remember that doesn’t make sense. If she’s with the police, she won’t be able to talk, and I need to know now.

  I’ve called the hospital before for work, following up on accident reports from the police scanners, and I even know the head nurse. Her son is a pretty good junior varsity player who actually looks up to me. I’ll call her first and take it from there.

  “Hello, Josh Williams here . . .”

  “You okay?”

  She can tell by my voice that there’s something wrong.

  “Um, I’m calling about a death on Lakeview . . .”

  “Are you at work, Josh? Someone just called from the paper.”

  “No,” I say. I’m surprised how readily my voice cracks when I’m stressed. “I need to know . . . Is there a person who died . . . ?”

  “Yes, there was a fatality there. I’m afraid I can’t tell you more. I can only tell family.”

  “But I need to know . . .”

  “I can only tell the family of the person who died,” she says again. Then she adds, gently, “I can’t tell you because you’re not related.”

  I feel a rush of relief.

  Then it hits me: if it’s not Jamie who’s dead . . .

  Brenda is out there alone, coping with the death of her only brother.

  I feel a little flash of guilt. My good news might be her bad news. And then I think of some bad news of my own.

  It would also likely mean that Jamie is a suspect.

  “Thanks,” I tell the nurse. “I really appreciate it.”

  Next, I text Brenda. She gave me her number when we chatted on Facebook.

  You okay? I ask. I imagine her alone in a room with a couple of cops. Is she crying? Getting angry at the killers? Blaming Trent’s biker buddies? Hopefully she treads lightly. She must know a few things about the meth business if she shared a home with Trent. Passing on details to the police could be dangerous.

  I’m getting way ahead of myself here. She hasn’t even answered my text yet.

  I flip the TV on to the local news but there’s nothing about any death yet. My next stop is the Sun-Sentinel’s webpage, but there’s nothing there either.

  Finally, it appears on a London news channel. “There has been a death in a known hangout of the Annihilators biker club.” The camera pans over the townhouse. There are plenty of police still around, as well as a couple of neighbors, soaking in the drama. “Sources say that the pressures of a potential biker war between different motorcycle clubs may have resulted in this violent scene,” the reporter continues. “Spotted in the area recently are members of the Popeyes, a powerful biker gang with chapters in Toronto and Montreal. The Popeyes are alleged to be involved in serious criminal activities, including the drug trade, extortion, and arson. Police haven’t yet released the name of the dead man found in the garage here. Sources say he either lived here or was a frequent visitor.

  “It’s too early to decide if this was a murder or something else—like suicide,” he concludes.

  I’m surprised to hear the word “suicide” in the report, but it is a live broadcast and also a small station, so I’m guessing there isn’t much supervision. Even with my limited experience, I know that reporters don’t like to speculate about possibly self-inflicted deaths unless they absolutely have to.

  I wander over to the fridge for a bottle of water, peeling my shirt away from my skin as I go. I’m still sweating hard but at least the thumping of my heart has settled down somewhat.

  I text Jamie. It would make life so much easier if he would just stay in touch and give me straight answers when I need them.

  A few minutes pass. Jamie is slow to get back at the best of times, I tell myself.

  Another try.

  Still no reply.

  I return to the paper’s website and click over to the crime section. At last there’s some news, under the headline “Police called to Lakeview townhouse.” The story is just a few paragraphs long. I call the Sun-Sentinel and an intern, Brooklyn Fox, picks up on the fourth ring. We know each other, although I wouldn’t say we’re friends.

  “You cover that call on Lakeview?” I ask.

  “Yup. On the phone at least. No biggie.”

  “But homicide . . .”

  She cuts me off. “Duty desk told me off the record”—I can tell she loved saying that—“it might just be a suicide.”

  “Suicide?” A long pause to gather my breath and then, “Who?”

  “Some meth cook. Urban renewal death.” The term is cop slang for the death of a person who is a burden upon society, but it always makes me cringe. Would people use that term if Jamie were killed? “Police didn’t seem to be sweating it. No biggie. Gotta run.”

  Click.

  And that’s that.

  So it is Trent who’s dead. Meth cook or not, I’m bothered by how lightly the police and our local media seem to be treating it. I saw Trent alive just a couple days ago. Arguing with Jamie. Smiling at Brenda.

  Another text to Jamie.

  Still no reply.

  Mom could come home anytime. I have to get out of the house fast: if she sees me she’ll know something’s wrong and lose it. She’ll panic if I tell her about Jamie’s argument with Trent, so that’s something I’ll have to keep to myself for now, maybe forever.

  I still haven’t slept since my night shift and I could badly use some rest, but I’m too pumped with adrenaline. I need to get the facts and process them.

  I’ll deal with Mom later.

  Chapter

  10

  I’m so sorry, I text Brenda.

  It’s early evening now and I still haven’t gotten to bed. I can get by on three or four hours of sleep, but I won’t be working out today.

  I’m not sure if she’s free to talk or if she’s still down at the police station. The last day must have been hellish for her. Her brother dies and she has to go straight to the station to face what I imagine are some pretty tough questions. It’s a murder investigation, after all, and Trent was a known associate of a biker gang.

  I wonder when exactly she learned that Trent was dead. Was it hours after we finished chatting on Facebook? Minutes?

  Thanks, she replies. The police must be finished with her at
last.

  Where are you now?

  My aunt’s.

  I’m trying to think of which aunt that might be when she continues: Can you come get me?

  I don’t hesitate: Where?

  She texts me the address. It’s not a great part of town, but we don’t have that many great parts of town. There are plenty of streets lined with one-story homes built for the factory workers our town used to have, when we had factories. There are also semis and rowhouses, like where I live. They’re okay places, but none of it’s Better Homes and Gardens stuff.

  From what I’ve heard, Trent and Brenda’s family are spread around southwestern Ontario in various industrial towns. I don’t know that much about her home life, except that she seems to bounce from place to place. I guess that’s why she didn’t have much of a circle of friends when she was at my school.

  Brenda runs out quickly when I pull up outside. She’s shaking as she gets into the car and her shoulders are curled inward, as if she’s bracing herself against something. She looks whipped.

  I must look like a mess myself. I haven’t showered in a day, but Brenda doesn’t seem to notice. This isn’t exactly a date.

  “I’m really sorry,” I say. I still can’t think of anything better.

  “Thanks.”

  She’s not so talkative now either.

  I drive around for a bit but I don’t feel like concentrating on traffic. I hit a McDonald’s drive-through and we get a couple smoothies. Neither of us feels like sitting in public. The sun is just starting to set. I park by the Thames River where couples go to neck. At least it’s quiet.

  “You okay?” I ask.

  She doesn’t answer me, but she does start crying—and keeps going for what feels like forever but is probably only a few minutes.

  “I’m sorry,” she finally says.

  “No, cry if you want to.”

  I realize how stupid that must sound. Who wants to cry? And why would she do it on command from me?

  I don’t know how to ask her about Trent. I figure she’ll talk about him when she’s ready. If it were me, I’d feel angry and ashamed and overwhelmed. I wouldn’t want to talk.

  “So . . . why did you leave school?” I finally ask, grasping for a neutral topic of conversation.

  She takes a deep breath and lowers her eyes. I thought that would be an easy question, but she looks like she is going to start crying again. “It was so stupid. There was a geography assignment. My answer wasn’t long but it was to the point. The teacher gave me a funny look when we got the assignments back. He asked me to stay after class. When everyone was gone, he looked at me and smiled and said he knew that I cheated. He barely knew my name but he figured he knew enough to accuse me of something like that. Then he asked if I knew what plagiarism was.”

  She watches the river out the window for a while before she continues. “I didn’t say anything. I was stunned. Of course I knew! But I wrote the assignment myself. It was all my work, I swear. I’m actually pretty smart, believe it or not. But what was I supposed to say? He’d made up his mind. I walked out and never came back.” She shakes her head, as if she still can’t really believe the whole thing. “How did he know he could get away with treating me like that? Was it partly because I’m a girl? Because of my family? He wouldn’t have been like that if my dad was a teacher or a lawyer or a politician. Or even a biker with a patch.” She didn’t say what her dad does now. I heard he had worked as a short-order cook for a while after losing his job at a sock factory.

  “Nobody screws with Ripper’s daughter,” she adds. “Someone tried once and . . .”

  I’ve heard that story too. Ripper’s a nice guy but you don’t want to get him mad, especially when it comes to his family. Brenda takes a deep breath and her tone changes. She doesn’t sound like she’s about to cry anymore. Now she sounds angry.

  “Did you see the news?” she says. “How they’re saying it’s suicide?”

  She’s staring off into space as if she’s sending her words out into some vast unknown. “Unreal,” she continues. “Suicide? Suicide? Since when do reporters talk about suicide?”

  “Usually only if it’s someone famous or really important,” I chime in idiotically, then wonder: Did I just insult her brother? She doesn’t seem to notice or mind. Her voice has gone flat now after the flash of temper.

  “If I tell you something will you promise . . . ?”

  I nod, not needing to hear the rest of the question. “Of course.”

  Clearly, she needs to talk. We never spoke once in the six months at school when I had a huge crush on her. And now, just a couple of days after meeting properly, she seems to want to tell me something big.

  She takes a deep breath. Her eyes are already so red. She’s not a little girl but she looks like one right now. I notice that her hair smells like strawberries.

  “My dad, he killed himself when I was a little girl.”

  I have the feeling she’s in such deep shock that she would have told anyone who’d listen, but I still feel like we have a connection. Her voice quivers midway through the word “killed” and she rushes out the rest of the sentence, then sighs. “I don’t tell anybody that.”

  I don’t know what to say, but that doesn’t seem to matter. A strange thought comes into my head as I try to figure out if there’s anything I can do to help: it’s hard to believe that Brenda and Jake live in the same world, that two people living in this little town can have such different lives. Then again, maybe it’s not so hard to believe—my life is totally different from Jake’s too; I just don’t like to think about that too often.

  “My dad broke his hip in a freak accident and had trouble sleeping,” she says. “We didn’t have medical insurance and the bills kept piling up. He cheaped out on his meds. Then he developed a blood disorder that hurt his ability to recover. It kept getting worse and worse and costing more and more. Before that, he could be . . . He used to strut around and be funny and proud and kind of a dink sometimes . . .”

  She smiles when she gets to that last part, but it’s gone in a flash. A big pause. Another deep breath. She looks to the sky and continues: “One day he drove off down a dirt road in the middle of nowhere, put a hose in the exhaust pipe, and that was that.”

  For what seems like the millionth time, I don’t know what to say.

  “I can remember everything so clearly. The hospital gave us a bag of his clothes. There was still his sweat on his shirt. I’ll never forget that. A few years later, when I was around twelve and living at my mom’s again, I stole a bottle of wine from the kitchen and I sat in a field and started drinking it and just swore at the sky . . .”

  Her voice trails off again.

  “I threw up about halfway through the bottle,” she says. For an instant, she seems to flash a smile.

  “Trent—I saw him just hanging there,” she says. “His eyes . . .”

  She goes quiet for a while. Her eyes are so big now, and so full of disbelief.

  I stay quiet too. What could I add beyond another, “I’m sorry?”

  “Trent wouldn’t have done that!” she suddenly exclaims. “And if he ever did, he wouldn’t have done it so that I would be the one to find him. He wouldn’t do that to me . . . And the bruises . . .”

  “Bruises?”

  “There were bruises . . . and a black eye.”

  My mind flashes to what I witnessed between Jamie and Trent, and I have to wrestle my thoughts back to the present to focus on what she says next: “I fight. I’m pretty good. I have my red belt in Krav Maga.”

  I’m a little thrown by the sudden change in the direction of our conversation but it must make sense to her.

  She pauses. “Israeli Army self-defense. You’d be surprised how good I am. We practice how to fight back against group attacks, knife attacks, even gun attacks. It’s ugly but . . .” Another pau
se, then: “I’ll be a black belt in a year or so. We like to call it ‘a hundred ways to boot a guy in the nads.’”

  She gives me a crazy smile, as if she knows how goofy that sounds. She giggles a little. Finally, laughter. There’s something safe there. Thank God she still has that.

  I get serious again, sort of. “Is there anything I can do? Don’t want you hoofing my nads.”

  She gives me a quick smile.

  “Dunno. But it wasn’t a suicide. Trent wouldn’t do that. He wouldn’t.” She inhales deeply, the way I would if I was trying not to cry. “He would have known how much it would hurt me.”

  There’s not much to say after that. I don’t tell her about the beef between our brothers, even though it might help replace the suicide theory. Not now. Maybe not ever.

  Sometime around 3:00 a.m. she brings up Carlito, after we’ve spent hours drifting from topic to topic—movies we both like, the best place in town to get fish and chips, and trips we’ve taken to Toronto and farther.

  “He offered me a job,” she says.

  “Job?” I wasn’t aware Carlito even worked himself. I’d heard he just hangs around a strip club in East London and acts as a bouncer from time to time. I’m pretty sure he also sells drugs, like quite a few of the younger and shadier Annihilators.

  “Yeah. Dancing.”

  She sees me frown. “Dancing” is code for stripping in my brother’s world. In front of half-drunk strangers who either ignore the girls or stare too hard. Either way, I feel sick when I imagine her doing it.

  “I turned him down, though—he’s asked again.” There’s a long pause, as if she’s waiting for me to say something. When I don’t, she continues: “He’s not all bad.”

  I could have lived without that last part.

  I’m trying hard not to get sucked into feeling jealous. I concentrate instead on her. How special she is. How lucky I am to be sitting here with her on this night in my car. The world has been waiting for billions of years for her arrival and I’m the one who gets to talk to her right now. I need to be happy with that.