by Ella Goode
Fortunately Judge’s stepdaughter comes by to mark them for us. We don’t need underage flesh getting us in trouble. People get leery just at the sight of our leathers and our bikes. And there are some who are dying to pin shit on the club to make us look bad. Judge’s son, Wrecker, got sent to the state penitentiary for three years.
An underage girl at a mash? Might as well take a bulldozer to the granary. We’d be done.
When my foot lands on the second floor, the sounds of sex in the party room travel all the way down the hall. The high-pitched wails carry over the lower grunts and shouts of encouragement.
I peek in the first room and see a woman on a low, round coffee table. Her hands are tied behind her back, her ass is high in the air and the guy fucking her has a hand on the back of her neck. The rockers on the back of his cut proclaim him to be a Stonehead Bandit. The Bandits are a crew out of Illinois that are known for moving drugs and guns along the Mississippi. He finishes with a hard grunt and steps aside. Without much more downtime, another Bandit is taking his place.
“Nice hospitality you got here,” says Thrasher. He’s the Bandits’ enforcer. Like Michigan, he’s just watching but it’s early yet. He might find a sweet butt he can’t keep away from once all his boys have bedded down.
“Can’t have a mash without a few willing women.”
“You boys care a little too much about a sweet butt’s age. Michigan’s more strict than a Chicago bar.” The toothpick in the corner of his mouth barely moves as he talks.
“We’ve got liquor and a bunch of horny guys running around. Being careful is why we’ve been here for generations.”
“Nothing like the tight hole of a virgin,” Thrasher muses. “Hear there’s a club up north specializing in that kind of treat for visiting clubs.”
“Then you should’ve rode straight up there if that’s your thing because it’s not something the Death Lords will ever have on the menu.”
“Don’t tell me now that Judge has hooked up with permanent pussy that you guys are turning into a choir group.”
The slaps of flesh on flesh are starting to bore me. Giving the room a quick perusal, it appears everyone is here willingly. There’s a Death Lords patch with a woman bouncing on his lap and a prospect the Bandits brought with them taking in the entire scene. He reminds me of Abel, one of our prospects who’s so fresh out of the Marines, he still smells like mortar and sweat. I like the looks of the prospect more than any of the other Bandits here. Pushing away from the wall I was leaning against, I grab Thrasher by the neck. He jerks in surprise but my grip is relentless. “You talk shit about Judge’s old lady like that again and one of us will reach down your throat and pull your colon out through your mouth.”
The three other Bandits in the room stand and the sex acts grind to a halt. Robot, the Death Lords patch, has his trusty ten-inch liner lock knife in his hand, blade flipped out. I give him a tiny shake and he folds the blade inside the handle.
I release Thrasher with a small shove. “You know old ladies are untouchable.”
He strokes his throat. He smiles but his eyes are burning with anger. “Yeah. ’Course. Meant no disrespect.”
Holding back my snort, I give a nod toward the occupants of the room. “This is a party. Go forth and have a fucking good time.”
Robot follows me out, dragging his sweet butt with him. “Give them ten minutes and then clear the girls out.”
“They were having a good time,” Robot says. “Everyone in there was willing.”
“Oh yeah, Tracey’s the girl on the table and the mash is all she’s been talking about all week.” A brown-haired girl with a pixie face looks up earnestly at me and then Robot. “But we’d rather be with a Death Lord, if we had the choice.”
I chuck her under the chin. “It’s early yet. Plenty of Death Lords to be had later tonight. Plus you got Robot here. Never heard of a girl complaining who had the attention of this dude.”
Robot rolls his eyes and pulls the giggly girl back into the room. At the end of the hall, I see Michigan waiting for me.
“There trouble inside?”
“Not yet. Just visitors talking trash. Judge having an old lady is a big surprise.”
Michigan rubs a hand across his chin and then heads downstairs. I follow him to the front of the granary where he pulls out a pack of cigarettes and offers me one. I shake my head. I’m pissed he’s smoking again, but I’m not his keeper. I’m his best friend.
“What do you think Pastor Bloom would do if I sat in a pew on Sunday?” I ask. He blows out a stream of smoke but doesn’t answer. I press on. “She’s a hot little thing. Just our type.”
With a grunt, he sucks the cancer stick down until it’s more ash than tobacco. Finally he throws the piece of shit on the ground and grinds it out with his boot heel. “You’re a fucking fool if you think that Annie Bloom has any interest in roughnecks like us individually or together. She’s not the type.”
“You ask her?”
He grits his teeth. “I don’t have to ask her. I know.”
“You have a thing against pastors’ daughters? They’re the dirtiest girls around,” I joke.
Michigan spins suddenly and pulls up his cut and T-shirt. His back is a mess of scars. Even when we were in, he never explained the source. “I got these because I slept with a preacher’s daughter. She was all over me, rubbing herself against me, telling me she wanted me and my friend to do her. Finally we did. My friend was an asshole and bragged about it. Word got back to her dad and she claimed we raped her. I got dragged down to Lake Superior, had my own special baptism at her daddy’s hands and then he and a few other dads took turns beating me. I was told I could join the Marines or go to prison. I joined up. The day I fuck another preacher’s daughter is the day I will have lost my fucking mind.”
Michigan
Fuck me. It’s been less than forty-eight hours and I’m already making a fool of myself over Annie Bloom. I’ve kept the story of my beating a secret for over ten years from a man who has become closer than a brother, but one argument over the preacher’s girl and I’m vomiting shit from my mouth.
“Never mind,” I sigh and drop my shirt. I light up another cigarette wishing it was something stronger.
“I had no idea.” Easy rubs a hand across his forehead.
“You like her. You fuck her.” I shrug carelessly as if the idea of Easy and Annie together without me doesn’t bother me.
His hand moves from his forehead, over the full head of hair to the back of his neck. Easy’s always liked to wear his hair long after we got out. “I’m not fucking her without you.”
“Can’t get it up without me staring at it?” I mock. “I’ll give you a picture to hang over your bed.” The muscles in his biceps tense and for a second, I wonder if he’s going to throw a punch. I brace myself because I deserve it. And because I’m a selfish masochist, I keep going. “Or are you worried you can’t satisfy a woman alone? Even a virgin like the Bloom chick might have expectations you can’t live up to.”
He eyes me while the crickets sing an entire song. When he does hit me, it’s not with his fist. “You’re not a seventeen-year-old boy alone anymore, brother.”
The verbal punch takes me by surprise so I don’t even see his hand as it comes up and slaps the cig from my mouth. He walks off and into the clubhouse. The music and lights spill out momentarily as he opens and then closes the side door of the granary.
Then I’m left with the mosquitoes, crickets and other creatures of the night. The red tip of the cig pulses a few times and then dies out.
I step on it with my heel and follow Easy into the club. My role as enforcer is one I take seriously because the club is my family and I’ve already failed to protect them once. The president’s son got sent to jail because I wasn’t fast enough to prevent a fight—a fight that led to a skinhead from up north dying and Wrecker getting sent to prison for three years.
That night I learned it was better to head off things early on
. I stopped drinking and my only vice left was the tobacco. Protecting the Death Lords MC is my sole focus. Seducing a pretty daughter of the part of Fortune that hates us would mean painting a target on our backs.
Easy’s right. I’m not seventeen. I’m not alone. But that’s all the more reason to be careful. I’ve got a lot to lose now, a helluva lot more to lose than I did at the age of seventeen when I was a foster kid without a future who couldn’t see past the end of his dick.
No matter how much Annie Bloom’s supermodel body and peach fresh face cranks my engine, it’s not worth losing my family over.
Across the room, Easy looks at me as if I’m the saddest sap alive. I respond with a glare and crossed arms.
Back when we were deployed and even when we first moved to Fortune, it was easy finding girls to fuck but at the age of twenty-nine, I’m not interested in only a single night or even a series of them. Seeing Judge with his woman and even Wrecker hooking up with his stepsister is creating a strange discontent. I want more but that’s about as useful as wishing that the Bandits would leave before midnight.
There ain’t more to be had here. Not with Easy and not with Miss Annie. Resolutely I shut down those wants. I’m fine with my hand and if I need a body there’s always one willing to open her legs for me here at the club.
My future is mapped out for me. I belong here with the Death Lords MC.
My brothers are enough.
They have to be.
Chapter Two
Annie
“Turn away from the sinful desires, say no to the temptations of the flesh, seek God’s blessings in all things. Turn to the light, say yes to spiritual unity, and the rewards of the Lord will be plentiful.” My father’s deep voice is overloud in our small dining room. His oratory is suited for a bigger space, one even larger than the Fortune Methodist Church provides.
My eyes surreptitiously take in the time. It’s half past nine. It’s half past forever, actually. This is the fourth take of Father’s Sunday sermon. By the time the morning service rolls around, I’ll have listened to it at least three more times. Usually I can recite the whole sermon myself by Saturday evening.
I wonder what normal twenty-three-year-old women are doing on Friday night. Do they hang around together and watch television? Or are they at the bars in sparkling tops and too-short skirts flirting with men covered in tattoos and leather? Or maybe they’re having sex with their boyfriends. Anyone of those scenarios is better than what I do on Friday night or Saturday for that matter.
I’m not as innocent as everyone thinks I am. I’ve not only read books but taken advantage of the filterless Internet available on a couple of the library computers. There are pictures of positions I’d never even considered possible but the ones that I kept returning to were the images of one woman pleasured by two men.
Behind my bedroom door, I fantasize about multiple hands running over my body, multiple mouths kissing my skin. I want those multiples to belong to the two bikers that saw me home after out of town strangers vandalized my boss, Pippa’s, car.
Those two acted like one unit. They communicated with long looks and jerks of their head. When I asked Pippa about it, she gave me a worried look and said that they enjoyed doing everything together. It was a broad hint and maybe she thought I wouldn't get it but I did.
“Annie!” Father’s terse tone jerks me out of my fantasy. I try hard not to flush but that’s a losing proposition. My cheeks heat up in a predictable fashion.
Frowning, he reaches over to a stack of pamphlets and pulls one out. “I want you to attend this tomorrow.”
The half sheet of blue paper announces that the Fortune Knitting Club will be meeting at the Brew Ha Ha for its weekly get together. I swallow my groan of dismay. It’s as if he read my mind and purposely chose the activity as opposite from the bikers as possible. Actually that isn’t true because if he had read my mind, he’d take his cane and lash me with it. Father is a big believer in the proverb that a saved rod is a spoilt child.
When I was younger, he spanked me with a paddle that had the scripture carved into the wood. Between getting my mouth washed out with soap and my butt burned with the paddle, I learned not to stray too far from the path my parents had set for me. Before Mom left, it had been easier but when I was around fourteen she’d had enough of being the preacher’s wife and left us. She lives in Seattle in a writer’s colony. I think she may be a lesbian although I’m not entirely sure, but Father rails about the sins of homosexuality with special fervor.
Father forbade contact. The one time I thought about disobeying him, he had a literal heart attack. The doctors told me to keep his stress down or the next one would kill him. Father told me that not taking care of him would send me to hell. There’s so much that’s going to send me to hell. My reading choices, the pervy online pictures, the men who parade themselves bare naked in my imagination.
But I still can’t find myself turning my back on Father. He’s been the one parent who stuck with me and while he’s not super affectionate, I know he loves me. I can’t abandon him and frankly I don’t have many marketable skills.
If I left him, what would I do? I know lots about the Bible, how to put together a bulletin, pay bills, play the piano and smile when I don’t really feel like it. I haven’t seen a lot of want ads that are looking for those particular skills.
At eighteen I declared I was going to move out, get a job and live on my own. A few months later I slunk back with my tail between my legs. No one would hire me in town or even in the next county. I was too inexperienced. He never once judged me after my failed bid for independence and I was too embarrassed to try again.
I’m well suited to be church secretary. I have the dowdy clothes, the lack of sex appeal and soon I’ll be a pruny old maid. Truly, how’s a knitting club going to be worse than sitting in the parish house looking for more free clip art to stick into the church bulletin?
“Sure, I’ve been thinking I could knit a shawl.”
He nods approvingly. “You should think about a blue one. It would look pretty with your eyes.”
See? Not all bad.
“Thanks, Father.” I take the bulletin and place it in my lap. I don’t really need it though. It’s not like I have such a busy schedule that I’m not going to remember that I have an appointment after dinner tomorrow at the coffeehouse. And hey, maybe there’ll be some of my high school classmates there and I can check out how the other ninety-nine percent of the world lives.
* * *
The coffeehouse is nearly empty but for the eight ladies of the knitting circle, all of whom may be older than my dad. Disappointment threatens to overwhelm me but I straighten my shoulders and smile because there isn’t any point to nursing those blue feelings. I could be home watching reruns of Duck Dynasty or the Duggars.
Learning to knit and spending time with these ladies is better than anything I’ve got going on back home.
“Hey, Mrs. Wilkins, I hope you don’t mind a beginner like me joining you,” I say cheerfully and take a seat on the sofa next to her. She’s got the start of an afghan draped over her legs.
“While I don’t mind newcomers, aren’t you a little young for our group? You should be out with my grandkids.”
“If I was out with them, then I wouldn’t learn how to knit this amazing blanket. This is beautiful. How long does it take you?”
“About forty hours, dear.” She smiles kindly. “It’s good to see you out even if it is with us old ladies.”
Mrs. Wilkins may be in her sixties, but she has that Helen Mirren quality to her. Still beautiful and still turning heads of men twenty years younger. I should sit by her every knitting session and see if some of her magic rubs off on me.
“I’d kill to look as good as you, Mrs. Wilkins.” I pull out my plastic bag of supplies. “I went over to the Walmart and picked up needles and yarn so I’m ready to learn. Teach me,” I plead.
Mrs. Wilkins shows me the basics—how to hold the needles a
nd hook the yarn around my thumb and pinkie. How to dip the ends together to form a purl or a knit stitch and soon I’m clacking along with the rest of them on my test row.
“How do you like that new librarian?” Mrs. Erickson asks. She appears to be working on something small and white. I remember then that her granddaughter is pregnant with her third kid in as many years.
“Pippa is awesome. She’s so smart and has great ideas for kids’ programs. We’re having a contest for the preschool kids to see who can read the most books before school starts. Each child who reads ten books gets a free one to take home. And we have things planned for older kids too. I’m really excited.”
“That’s wonderful,” replies Mrs. Wilkins. “Perhaps you will be able to work more hours there.”
“Oh, I don’t know. It’s just volunteer.” I asked Pippa the other day if you needed a college degree to be a librarian. She has a degree in library science and is actually going to work on her master’s degree online. I didn’t realize you had to have schooling even beyond the initial four years. Seems like you need a college degree these days to work the gas pump.
“I hear she’s seeing Judge,” interjects Mrs. C. Mrs. C is the town megaphone. Anything that goes on in her circle is blasted all over. I think it’s a clever marketing move. After all, people keep going into her town grocery to buy things that they could get at half the price at the Walmart on the edge of town. But you go to Mrs. C’s because otherwise you don’t know half of what’s happening in Fortune.
