Now They Call Me Gunner

by Thom Whalen

  * * *

  Wasp said, “Tell him, Bucks. Tell him the whole business just like it went down.”

  Bucks started talking. His voice was clear and precise but not strong. It sounded brittle. Fragile as fine crystal that could shatter into a million pieces if I touched it wrong. So I stayed silent and listened.

  “I like The Doll. Love her, would be saying it right. She don’t love me. I know that. But it’s all right. I don’t expect nothing like that from her. I’m not smart. I know that. She’s nice to me and that’s as good as I’m going to get. So I love her.

  “Billy, he came up here and he started hanging around and partying with us. He had weed. Good stuff. He wanted us to sell it. We sell some but not as much as he wanted. We got to be careful because the cops here watch us close. They search us every time they get one of us alone. We can’t carry baggies unless we’re together. They don’t mess with us if there’s more than one of us. They’re scared, then.

  “Billy wasn’t a good guy. He wanted in but we voted on him. We voted to keep him out. He only pretended to be one of us but we couldn’t trust him. We figured that he’d just a soon put a knife in our backs as smile in our faces. If he thought that he could get away with it. He wasn’t a brother.

  “The Doll partied with us but she wouldn’t party with Billy. She said that Billy was mean. He liked to hurt chicks in ways that didn’t show. That’s what she said but I’m not sure what she meant. She didn’t ever do anything with him as near as I could see. Maybe she saw how he was when he was with Betty. Or maybe Candy told her. I don’t know what girls talk about when we’re not around. I don’t understand how they think.

  “Then, one day, I found The Doll at her place all beat up. I went over there and the door was open and she was inside, lying on the floor, moaning soft like. Like she was hurt real bad. But she wasn’t. There wasn’t a mark on her face. She was bruised on the stomach and legs and arms, but that wasn’t more’n most of us get when we get rowdy. I seen Betty marked up a lot more than that. And Candy, too. And they’re both okay. Not The Doll, though. She was never okay again.

  “She was bleedin’ a bit down below. You know. Candy said that she was a bit tore up there, but that wasn’t too bad, either. It all healed up just like new.

  “Candy figured that she was mostly torn up in her mind. Psychological like. I guess that’s so. It must have been something that I couldn’t see because, like I said, The Doll was never the same again. She… I don’t know how to say it. She stopped having fun. She didn’t like being alive any more. Whatever Billy did to her, he broke all her happiness up into little pieces and she can’t put it back together again.

  “She made us promise that we’d fix it. We had a meeting and we all promised. We knew that we couldn’t make it like it was before, but we promised that we’d make it as good as we could. Justice. That was the word that everyone used. We promised that there’d be justice for The Doll.

  “Justice had to start with Billy Paul. It wasn’t just that he’d hurt The Doll. It was that The Doll was ours. She wasn’t his to break. He took what was ours and we couldn’t let that drop. Not ever. He done it deliberately. He did it to show that he didn’t respect us. He wanted to rub our faces in the dirt because we wouldn’t let him be a Road Snake.

  “He had to answer for that. No question about it. He had to answer to us. He knew it because he’d already lit out of here when I found The Doll. We went looking for him down in Utica. He had a room down there. We thought that he’d be too smart to go back to it, but he wasn’t so smart after all. He thought that he could just carry on like what he done to us was no big deal. I guess that’s what he was like. Always thought that he could do anything he wanted and that he was too special for anyone to call him to account.

  “But he learned different that day. We was laying in wait for him and we almost got him. Almost. But we made a mistake. We left our bikes on the street when we went to beat down his door. He came back at exactly the right time and saw our bikes and he beat it out of there before we could get to him. We tried. We looked all over town, but he was gone away.

  “We kept coming back down to his room every day or two, looking to see if he come back but after a month someone else moved into his room and that was that. At least until he came up for air again. Wasp said he would. Said that Billy would have to get back to dealing his weed when he needed money again.

  “We caught up with him in a campground in Wemsley. He learned that day that the Road Snakes don’t take shit from nobody. Especially not from a dirtbag like him. We taught him good.”

  Buck was finished telling his story. He stopped talking and looked at me.

  “That’s the elements that the Angels are looking for,” I said. “Solidarity. Standing by each other. Watching each other’s backs. Not letting anybody take what’s yours. Taking care of your own business. Keeping a strict code of honor. Knowing what real justice is all about. I knew that you had it and I appreciate that you laid it out so clearly. You’ve given me a lot of good stuff to report back on.”

  The Road Snakes looked satisfied.

  “There’s just a couple of things left that will improve your report from good to great. Make it a sure thing.”

  “What’s that?” Wasp asked.

  “First, there’s the final solution. Buck didn’t say exactly how you took care of your business with Billy. Is he still around to cause a problem for us?”

  “If he were it’d be our problem.”

  “If you join the Angels, then your problems become their problems. They need to know what they’re bringing into their house.”

  Wasp looked at Jimbo and nodded.