Temples, Tempests & Blood

by Andrew Allan

  Maybe he was thinking the same thing. He let that notion tumble around for a beat.

  “You can stay in the garage,” he said with a point over his shoulder.

  “Thanks, pops,” said DG.

  “Around the corner.”

  “And, if we need to go to the bathroom?”

  “That’s what the woods are for,” he said.

  Well, it was an adventure to say the least. We wandered around the house, found the garage and opened it. Looked to be about five hundred square feet in size. Only about fifty of those square feet weren’t being used, just enough for us to squeeze in.

  DG looked at the spare patch of concrete and said, “We need to sleep, we’re dumping some of this shit in the yard.”

  “This man is a hoarder,” said Ilsa.

  “Stage four,” I sat on a stack of small boxes.

  Ilsa sat cross-legged on the ground. DG leaned against the cinderblock wall. We watched the world blow by.

  I caught the old man checking us out the back window. Same bitter expression on his face.

  “Most old people, they’d welcome the company.”

  “Probably thought we were a home invasion,” said DG. “Be an easy mark.”

  “Never know. He could be a vet. Still have some fights in him.”

  “I’ll warm him up,” said Ilsa. “You two lack that charm required.”

  DG and I looked to each other. She was probably right.

  The man disappeared behind the curtain.

  “Remember a couple weeks ago when I said, Hey let’s plan a trip where I get blamed for killing cops and the Governor, go on the run, torch a shopping plaza, meet you guys on an island in the middle of a hurricane, and then get the truck stuck in the middle of Forgotten, Florida, so we could camp out in Grandpa Grouch’s garage?”

  “I don’t recall you bringing that up,” said DG.

  “Me either,” said Ilsa. “I would have made other plans.”

  All we could do now was sit and wait.

  “What have you been up to?” I said to DG. We hadn’t spoken in months.

  He shrugged. “This and that. Took a while to get the business back to proper levels.”

  “And, all is stable in the brotherhood?”

  His look said, you messing with me? “Yeah, it’s stable.”

  “Well, now that you’re back, I’m sure the criminals are feeling better about their supplier.”

  “Cute. At least my business didn’t put us in this situation.”

  “That because in your business the crooks actually play by the rules. Mine, not so much.”

  He paused. “Shows just how bad the Kith is,” he said.

  Wasn’t that the bitch of it all?

  No rules. No predicting. Harder to fight.

  Time dragged.

  “There he is again.” Ilsa gestured to the old man in the window.

  “We’re strangers.”

  “Fucker’s hiding something.” DG squinted for a better read on the man’s face.

  “He’s hiding a thousand things too many.” I gestured to the junk pile.

  DG shook his head. “No. He’s hiding something more valuable. Not this crap.”

  Ilsa and I looked at the not valuable stuff.

  “It’s either in here under this junk. Or, he’s waiting to see if we leave here and go exploring the property.”

  “That’s why he didn’t want us around from the start.”

  “That’s right,” said DG.

  “Let it alone,” said Ilsa. “It’s his house, his life.”

  DG licked his lips. “Sorry. But, curiosity has the better of me,” he said.

  “DG.…”

  “It’s cool. We’re just gonna hang, and I’m gonna look at things through a new filter,” he said.

  Ilsa and I exchanged skeptical glances.

  DG studied the junk in the garage. He sized up the ceiling.

  “Anything?” I said.

  He shook his head and kept looking. “I’ll find it.”

  “What do you think it could be?” said Ilsa.

  DG shrugged. “Who knows?”

  “It could just be his pile of junk. Valuable to him but not to us,” I said.

  “And even if it was, it’s his. Not ours to take.” Ilsa’s tone was scolding.

  “I didn’t say I was taking anything.”

  “I know what you meant.”

  He nodded, But of course.

  Time passed, maybe a half hour.

  DG said, “There.”

  “Where?” I said.

  “Look out the back window.”

  I did—the lower half of the garage window was obscured by boxes. But in the distance, about fifty yards beyond, was another shed.

  “Good job. You found his lawn mower,” I said.

  “Dude’s too old to mow,” said DG.

  “And, the lawn is overgrown,” said Ilsa. She gestured to it and she was right.

  “So?”

  “I bet he’s got something good in there.”

  Ilsa said, “You should mind your own business.”

  That wasn’t going to happen. Not if DG sensed an opportunity. His conniving biker instincts had been triggered, paying no never mind to whose feathers it ruffled. Hang around DG long enough and you pick up on these things.

  “That’s something I’m not very good at,” said DG. He glared at the house window now. As if the man’s secrecy had been an affront. DG leaned in, looking directly at the man.

  The blinds shut. The man disappeared behind him.

  “Happy now?” said Ilsa.

  “Yeah,” DG said. “I’m gonna check out that shed. Watch the window. Make sure gramps don’t sneak up on me.”

  Ilsa looked at me like Do something.

  When we looked back, we saw DG disappear around the side of the garage.

  “What do we do?” said Ilsa.

  “Nothing. He’ll check it out and come back.”

  “But, the old man.”

  “If he sees, he’ll think DG’s taking a leak.”

  The screen door on the back of the house screeched open. There was the old man at the top of the steps. The wind blew his hair to the wrong side. It hung long over his ear. He charged down the steps as aggressively as his feeble body would allow, damn it all. His hands were clutched around a shotgun.

  “Oh no,” said Ilsa.

  I had stronger words for it.

  Our host charged across the lawn. He gave us a sinister look as he passed. I held up my hands.

  “He’s going after DG,” said Ilsa.

  “I know.”

  We checked the rear window. DG was fussing with the shed lock.

  Ilsa yelled. “DG!” She did it again.

  DG didn’t acknowledge it.

  “Too windy,” I said.

  The wind gusted, emphasizing my point.

  She ran to the side of the garage and yelled again. “DG! Behind you!”

  DG was too focused, too frustrated with the lock.

  The old man staggered to a stop and raised the gun. He struggled to steady it in the wind. But, he got there and aimed at DG’s back without DG even knowing it.

  I ran into the yard. Moving fast, I was light on my feet and the wind almost picked me up. I dropped to the ground to shake loose of it. I scrambled back up, tried to find traction on the slippery grass.

  “No!” I said.

  Neither DG nor the old man paid me any attention.

  The old man fired.

  Wind muffled the sound.

  Buckshot ripped holes in the shed wood.

  DG startled. He turned and saw gramps. He ran around the shed.

  Another shot splintered the shed corner. Loose bits of wood blew off with the storm.

  I ran. I slipped. I recovered. I launched…and tackled the old man.

  He grunted. I grunted. The gun stock jabbed into my ribs.

  “Mother f—,”

  I ripped the gun from his hands, which weren’t as frail as they ap
peared. I staggered back, the wind pushed me sideways, and I fell to my knees. I held the gun on the geezer.

  The old man turned onto his side, unable to push himself up in this wind. He pointed a crooked, arthritic finger at the shed door. “You stay outta there.”

  “Not looking to cause you any trouble. My friend got curious and carried away,” I said.

  DG walked over and looked down at the old man.

  “Don’t you ever fire a gun at me again, got it?”

  “Fuck you.”

  Good for you, Gramps.

  DG almost kicked him. Instead, he pivoted and walked over to the shed, peeked in the newly blasted hole and said, “Holy shit.”

  “What is it?” I said.

  “Check it out.”

  Gramps looked resigned to the further violation of his privacy. What could he do about it now?

  Ilsa arrived at the scene. I handed her the gun. She knew what to do. I staggered through the wind over to DG. He stepped away from the hole to let me peek.

  It was a shrine to glory days past, a shrine to being a biker.

  “He’s a biker?”

  DG shook his head. “He’s a Coffin Kicker.”

  48

  SO, THERE WE were.

  The old man, whose name was Ornel Edmonds, but had gone by the handle ‘Licker’, let us into the shed for a closer look. We certainly took it.

  The bikes, all Harleys, were, according to DG, to be revered:

  A ’77 FX Low Rider.

  A ’71 FX Super Glide.

  A ’75 XL-1000.

  Each bike was in a condition so pristine, so perfect, I thought DG was going to drop to his knees and weep.

  “There are three of the greatest bikes ever, Walt.”

  Ornel shrugged and leaned against a workbench that had an array of biker souvenirs laid across it. Old and curling photos, some framed and faded, hung on the wall. All featured Ornel in his prime.

  “Coffin Kickers used to run the entire panhandle, Mobile to Jax, then down to Melbourne. Had to get past us to get out of the state,” Ornel said.

  He wasn’t like an elderly vet remembering a horrible war he had somehow come to love and miss. He was like a renegade not yet ready to put it all in the past. Ornel had edge. You could see it now and in the pictures of him astraddle the very bikes before us—at bike rallies, roaring down the highway, kneeling next to a major stash of guns and weed laid out on a serape.

  “I heard all about you guys growing up,” said DG. “My old man used to run with the Sunshine Rippers.”

  Ornel nodded, knowing the name well. “Where was he out of?”

  “West Central. Ocala.”

  Ilsa leaned against me. Her body was a warm relief. Much better than the heated massagers I had sold on television.

  “Name?”

  “Gary Gary,” said DG.

  Was he serious?

  Ornel brightened. “Ahh, old Geeg.” He pronounced it with a hard G.

  GG and DG. Wasn’t that cute?

  “You knew him?” said DG.

  “I knew a couple of mamas who had trouble walking by the time me and GG finished with ‘em.” Ornel straightened and crossed his arms, looking proud and defiant as he yanked that memory back from the dusty, forgotten past.

  DG laughed. “Bit more than I needed to know.”

  “Aww, aren’t you tender. Bet your daddy would love that.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “So, you’re his boy? All grown up and doing your own thing?”

  “Running my own club. The Plague.”

  “Really?” Ornel looked at the roof beams. “I believe I heard of them.”

  “We hold our own,” said DG, a modest brag.

  “That’s good. But, how’d you get to be here?”

  DG thumbed to me. “Ask him.”

  Ornel looked at me.

  “It’s a long story,” I said. “DG and I go back with a group that causes us a lot of trouble.”

  “Any group that caused us trouble wasn’t a group much longer,” said Ornel.

  This old, frail, son of a bitch was quickly becoming my spirit animal.

  “The guys we’re fighting aren’t just a bunch of scrubs hauling guns and drugs,” said DG.

  “We didn’t make excuses back then either. One-percenter meant one-percent. No one told us what to do,” said Ornel. “No one.”

  What the hell was on DG’s face—shame? Humility? Whatever it was revealed the side of DG that didn’t know everything. And, that was rarer than the bikes in the shed. Now, I was getting worried.

  “Doesn’t matter who they are. You take the fight to them. And, the only variable is how hard they deserve to have your fury kicked up their ass,” said Ornel. The look on his face was smoldering, like he was back in the clubhouse, rallying the troops for a yes vote to exact a deadly revenge. I liked this guy.

  “There has been too much killing,” said Ilsa. “So many dead.”

  Ornel gave her a funny look. The implication was clear: Whose old lady was this and why is she opening her yap?

  “She’s fine,” said DG.

  Ornel didn’t immediately buy it.

  “And, she’s right,” I said. “I’ve had my share of killing and don’t need any more.”

  Ornel leaned back, absorbing it.

  “Don’t tell me you play by rules, son.”

  “Not anymore. But, it doesn’t have to be that way,” I said.

  “Well then, what way’s it gonna be?”

  Ornel leaned forward, elbows on the table, eager for an answer to clear his confused mind.

  “Because right now, this sounds like a bunch of wishful jive that only guarantees more death—yours.”

  None of us responded. I didn’t know what to say. But, I was heartened by the fact that this bitter, old stranger now seemed to care about our well-being. Why else would he be fired up like this?

  “A soft touch don’t command respect,” he said.

  “We’re not gonna be soft,” said DG.

  “Oh, no?” said Ornel.

  DG shook his head. “Anything but.”

  I couldn’t get past the fact DG said “we”. Was he back in?

  “Calculated’s the word. But, it ain’t gonna be soft,” he said.

  Ornel leaned back in his chair. This time he seemed to let go of the topic. Accept the answer without actually liking it.

  “Well, it’s your business, boy. Not mine,” he said. “I’ve put my fighting days behind me.”

  “Then, what was the gun for,” said DG.

  “Age don’t take all the fight out of the biker.”

  “Why you out here by yourself?”

  Ornel crossed his arms, tilted his head back. “Who says I am?”

  We looked to each other.

  “What do you mean? You got crew around here?”

  “When you joined my club. It was for life,” he said.

  A pistol pressed against my head.

  A shotgun got racked and poked into DG’s back.

  Ornel smiled.

  The guy behind DG was wearing a cut that matched the one we’d seen Ornel wearing in the pictures in the garage.

  Coffin Kickers.

  Worst of all, these weren’t old geezers. They were younger men ready to carry on Ornel’s feisty biker tradition.

  49

  “THESE ARE MY sons, Rip and Topper.”

  Ilsa sounded ridiculous saying ‘hello’ like it wasn’t a big thing, like hey, were paying a social visit.

  DG nodded to the boys while he moved his hand, casually, to the large buck knife on his belt. “Fellas,” he said.

  “How’s it going, pop?” said the taller of the two.

  He had a wiry mustache and just a hint of a soul patch beneath his lower lip. Both were tattooed up and down the arms. What stood out were the clusters of inked coffins. If that was the club tattoo for killing, these fellas were first-rate murderers.

  Ornel said, “My boys’ll do anything for me. Even brave a s
torm like this ‘un.”

  The tall boy, Topper, put his hand on his pop’s shoulder. The other, Rip, remained poised to kill us all.

  “How ‘bout we get out of this rain?” said Ornel.

  Five minutes later, we were in the kitchen toweling off. Rip and Topper stood near the doors. It was still tense.

  Ornel continued, “Bikers have an unbreakable bond. Least when you’re part of the right tribe. When you’re part of our tribe.”

  “Same with my club,” said DG.

  Ornel nodded. “Some could say there’s a larger affiliation between all bikers and all clubs. We are all one-percenters ’til the day we goddamn die.”

  DG nodded, slow, his attention split between Ornel’s words and Ornel’s boys.

  “Don’t you think?”

  “I do,” said DG. “Unless that crew is on our territory. Cutting into our action. Breaking the established peace.”

  DG stood his ground, didn’t get excited. He knew enough of bike culture to let the pieces fall where they may. Histrionics were for scared men and showboaters. DG wasn’t acting cool; he was cool.

  “Mmm hmm,” said Ornel. He looked to his son by the door. “This one gets it.”

  The boys nodded.

  Ornel gestured to me and Ilsa. “Not sure about these two.”

  “They get it plenty,” said DG. “Where you drivin’ with this?”

  Ornel studied DG’s face, the distinct lack of fear.

  “Not driving anything,” said Ornel, his brow wedged in spite.

  There was a clear path to the living room and the front door. Ilsa could run. I could tackle Topper as he went for her and that might free DG to fight Rip. But, would that get us anywhere?

  “My boys however,” Ornel gave his boys a proud look, “I thought they could help get you on your way, back to your territory.” He gave us a smile.

  This was a pleasant turn.

  DG didn’t. We wasn’t buying it yet. “What do you mean?”

  Ornel leaned into the table. “Boy, a bike gang can’t control the panhandle down to the Atlantic Coast on Interstates and highways alone. We had to create our own routes.”

  The boys nodded.

  “How so?” said DG

  “Coffin Kickers created a spiderweb of side roads and passages and the like to move goods. Cut down on time and hassle,” said Rip.

  Ornel said, “It’s how come I ended up with a place out here. Seems like it’s in the middle of nowhere. But, it’s right in the middle of our own little bootleggin’ crossroads. My club still controls all of it.”