Ash: Devil's Crucifix MC (18 page)

I don’t know if you can call it a home anymore. There are the outlines of black foundation posts among the orange and red flames. A cement step is still visible, but the black smoke masks almost everything else. The Moundsville volunteers are running around the sides of the house, making notes but we all know this is a basement save, a complete burn down.

I put down the visor of my mask as I raise my arm and scream, “Charge it!” Within seconds, the long red hose grows with water. I start the pattern I’ve been told. Fog spray first, careful to turn too far to the right. All that training and the drills are clicking together in perfect harmony as I stare up and over the flame to where the hose is pointed.

I could sing, I’m so damn happy with myself. This is my zone, my little place of peace. In all this chaos, this is just as natural as it can be. But then I hear Jamie behind me shout my name over the blast of the hose. “Dani! Holy shit -- look!”

I glance over my shoulder for just a brief second to see what he’s hollering about when it catches my eye. A man on a stretcher with curly brown hair. He’s lying face up in the stretcher, his eyelids blackened with both ash and dirt. The paramedics have wrapped his hands in light bandages, and one is cutting frantically away at the man’s leather jacket still covered in black and white patches.

When it’s free, I see the familiar tattoos inching up the man’s muscular arm towards the sleeve of his black leather jacket. One of the EMTs exclaims to the other, “This jacket saved this guy. It’s practically melted into his skin. He’ll still need the burn ward, though. Get them on the line. We’re going to Oregon Rose!”

“Jamie…I have to…” My voice trails off as my head flips frantically back and forth from helpless, injured Ash to the fire burning before me. Two lives converging, but still so far apart. I am completely stunned in my place between the choices I have to make.

“Listen to me, Dani. He’s going to be all right. He’s in good hands. They wouldn’t let you go with him if they could. You get your head straight and focus on getting this fire out. I’m not letting you jeopardize your career for him. You got me?”

For once, Jamie is right. There is nothing I can do for Ash even if I want to. I’m not his wife or his family. Those paramedics won’t even give me his name if I ask. My place may be here fighting this fire. But my heart is with Ash as the ambulance bursts into life, the sirens echoing over the sound of the ocean and the noisy crackling of the fire as it devours the building inch by inch. I let go of the hose for one brief second, just enough time to wipe away the tear that has fallen onto my cheek.

Beep. Beep. Beep.
All these damn beeping machines! I’m going absolutely fucking nuts right now with the wires, the beeps, the alerts, the nurses. What does a guy have to do to get the hell out of here without drawing attention to himself?

When you’re the head of a notorious motorcycle club and wanted by the police for questioning, going to a place like the hospital where you’re branded and processed like a cow on a beef farm isn’t exactly an easy experience. But I’ve refused to give them my real name. I tell them it’s Anthony Carter, and I don’t have an ID on me. I forgot it at home before I went on my late night walk through my new neighborhood. I don’t have an address. I don’t have a profession either. I’m just a wanderer who got caught up in a helluva fire.

Inside me, however, is a man stark raving mad, practically glowing nuclear with rage. While I can’t say exactly what is going on to the endless line of police detectives who have come to pay me their respects, I know exactly what has happened to me. Spark -- he did this. He had to have done it. It has his name written all over it. And even worse, he didn’t act alone. What I had thought he was -- that lone wolf man wandering town with an itchy lighter – isn’t exactly true. He somehow managed to recruit Remmy to his side. Or, perhaps, Remmy has been with him from the very start, and that is an even scarier situation. The Devil’s Crucifix had yet to be infiltrated, but now, it has happened -- and on my watch.

But I can’t do a damn thing about it here in this hospital bed. Every part of me just wants to pull out the IV line dripping the sweet pain medications into my system and grab the next taxi back to headquarters. Yet I know booking out of here before my treatment is done will mean drawing some unwanted attention to myself. That’s the last thing I need when I am trying to orchestrate a massive revenge plot from the comforts of my very uncomfortable hospital bed.

Beep. Beep. Beep.
I just want some goddamn quiet. I’ve only been here for about a day, but it sure as shit feels like it’s been an eternity. Since the clock on the wall hasn’t moved a line since I got in, I’ve been estimating the time of day by the few trickles of visitors who have stopped by to see my roommate on the other side of the partition.

There’s been a few kids, maybe a younger sister or brother. All of them come in looking like they’d pay to be anywhere else but at Oregon Rose, but as soon as they slide past my bed and into their father’s section, everything changes. It’s like the monster they had imagined him to be as a sick person in a burn ward isn’t as bad as their minds make them expect. “Daddy!” They say, as if he’d just gotten off of a plane, “How are you doing? Are they giving you the good stuff in here?” Every three sentences was a joke about the hospital, the nurses, the crappy television channels.

Each person who passes through is an identical conversation with the exception of an older woman who has only left three or four times to go to the bathroom or to grab a nurse. She never changes her voice around him. It is always firm and resolute. You can tell she is used to being the strong one in their relationship, but there are cracks there where her fear shines through.

Before visiting hours ended last night, I lowered the volume of my television as I listened to her say softly to him, “It’s been twenty-two years, Jim. And now I have to go to sleep alone. Twenty-two years. How in God’s name am I ever gonna sleep again?”

I could hear the man pat his bed and her creep over to him, putting her small weight onto the single hospital bed. Together they sighed heavily, and sat in silence for a long time before the nurse’s knock caused her to quickly scrambled out of the bed and out towards my side of the room. As she pulled the screen shut, I watched her close her eyes and purse her lips as if leaving her husband behind was one of the hardest things she would ever have to do.      

Between the beeps, I can’t get that woman’s face out of my mind, the way they sighed in unison, her voice struggling to stay composed when she obviously had so much more she wanted to express. All my life, I never knew a woman could be like that. And more so, I never knew I wanted a woman like that by my bedside, refusing to leave until the last possible minute.

Being alone in a hospital room can do crazy things to a man’s mind. I feel my mind float back to Dani each and every time it manages to get a break. I don’t just want her here for my pleasure. I want her here clicking her tongue at me every time I argue with a nurse or insist on cutting off the pain meds. I want her to tell the children it will be okay, and that they should act normally around me. I want her to hate leaving me as much I as hate to see her go.

Her smell, the taste of her breath, the way her hair curls on the ends when she hasn’t had time to straighten it…it’s all so real to me. I imagine her in twenty years, thirty years, forty years, getting older but still looking fantastic. It’s not just an image; it seems like it’s real. It’s
so
real that I don’t even notice when the real thing walks through my door, her face pained and tired.

“Ash?” she whispers from the doorway, her head just peeking in. My eyes widen as hers grab hold of mine. She takes a few urgent steps forward nearing the side of my bed, but then she remembers herself and steps backwards so she’s at least two arm’s distances away from me. There’s a long hesitation, her arms sweeping around the back of her black skater dress as she says meekly, “I didn’t know where you were. The nurses said they didn’t have you, so I checked with my EMT friend and he found your record. Why did you tell them your name was Anthony?”

“Do you think they’d let me out of here if they knew who I really was? It doesn’t matter anyway. They’re going to figure it out. But I’ll be out of here before they can positively ID me.”

She studies me and my bandaged arms. The doctors tell me it could have been much worse. If the blast hadn’t knocked me down onto my face, I would have been burned in the front and unable to keep the flames from spreading up my clothing. But, by some miracle, I feel just the right way.

The doctors and nurses kept using that word.
Miracle
. But I know better. Miracles don’t happen for guys like me. My sins have caught up to me one by one. First, it was losing Dani and then it was the fire practically burning me to a crisp. My ghosts are literally coming out of the woodwork to make sure I don’t get happy ending. The miracle they were seeing was just another way for the uncaring universe to have a good laugh at my expense.

Dani being here, however, is something I can’t explain. She bites her lip as she steps forward and touches my arm slightly. Even through the bandages, I can feel the warmth of her fingers. I can even imagine the phantom, velvety touch of her pristine skin. “You look like you’re doing worse than I was. You’re not getting out of here.”

“Honey, they can’t hold me back. If I’m not out of here by tomorrow, I’m busting myself out.” I look up at the machines and flash a small smile as I add, “And I don’t care if they don’t give me back my clothes or not. I’ll run out of here, bare ass and all.”

“You need your rest, Ash.” She sits herself down onto the bed, her hand still lingering on me.

I’m flashing to the woman on the other side of the curtain. Was she holding on to her husband’s hand or arm as she sat scolding him about trying to do too much too soon? I hoist myself up in order to sit a bit higher in bed, allowing me to get a better look at her. Her short black cotton dress is just thin enough that the light spreads through the fabric. I can see the space between her thighs, the points of her nipples coming through her unpadded bra, and slight hint of the line of her panties. Even though my body is in a massive amount of pain, it somehow burns for her like never before.

“What I need,” I say as I grab hold of her wrist to pull her forward towards me, “is you in this bed making all of my pain go away.”

Dani looks at me with wide, horrified eyes and then pulls away quickly so that she’s back to standing at the foot of my bed. I should have known better, but old habits die hard. And it’s almost impossible to quench my appetite when I see a piece I want.

Her voice becomes far away and tired as she explains, “Ash, I’m not here to get back together with you. I just came here to see how you were and if anyone knew you were here.”

I look away, pissed that she can’t take a joke or at least have the decency to crack a smile. She’s holding on to the fact that we’re done like it’s a lifeline. She somehow manages to look smaller, weaker than before.

“Don’t worry about me. I’ve got my guys. They know I’m here. I sent one of the detectives in my pocket to go see them and give them the heads up. I told them not to come unless it was an absolute emergency.” I hesitate before I add quickly, “I’m fine alone. I don’t need anyone here, especially if you’re just going to pity me.”

“I’m not pitying you. I know what it feels to be in that bed, to feel trapped by the burns. I’m here because I didn’t want you to be alone either.” She pauses and looks around at the shadows of the woman on the bed with her husband and the back at the door behind her. Without waiting for me, she pulls up a brown folding chair the nurses put on my side in case I had visitors. She’s the only one to have touched it.

“Listen, Ash. I need to know for my sake if you know who started that fire at Thunder Cliff. Where you out there because you were looking for him? Did he lure you out there or something? I can’t sleep. I can’t eat. I’m constantly on the lookout for someone I don’t even know. Do you understand how that feels?” Her green eyes swell, practically glowing with tears. She’s absolutely sincere when she begs me to tell her for her peace of mind.

“Dani, if I told you…”

She whispers even softer than before as she scoots even closer to me, “Come on Ash. I understand that something happened, and I am guessing you were somehow involved. Maybe this is a revenge thing? I don’t care. I really don’t. Whatever was in the past is still in the past. It’s not going to change things.”

“Dani…” I can’t get the words out. How could she possibly understand the monster I really am when I am not with her?

“Ash!” She practically cries it out, forgetting where she is. “If you want me back, if you want me here with you and by your side, I need to know what I am dealing with.”

I bang my head back on the pillow, gritting my teeth as hard as I can. My hand slips under the covers and searches for the little black button the nurse gave to me on the first day. It sends a quick drip of painkillers through my veins. So far, I haven’t needed it to get by, but I know what I am about to tell Dani will require it.

The room grows silent as I speak lowly, my eyes focused on the wall before me so I don’t have to face her head on. “A few years back, there was this guy we called Spark because he was obsessed with matches and starting small little fires. It was just kid’s stuff like garbage fires and an occasional empty garage. We didn’t think much of it. He was this little shrimpy guy who thought he was bigger and badder than he was.

“When our club decided to break off from the Rangers, Spark thought he deserved a promotion to leading the drug transport routes, but I gave it to a more experienced guy. Spark shivved that guy right in our meeting hall in front of the entire club. We had no choice but to lock him up and then disown him from the club. The next week, the fires started, and I went hunting for him. I found him at Thunder Cliff near the old bridge.”

Dani swallows and looks away from me as I finish my story. She already knows how this is going to end.

“It was raining that night. And when he ran at me, he didn’t get a good enough shot. I managed to grab him and twist him so he was up against the rail. And I didn’t even hesitate to throw that bastard off of the bridge.”

“You killed him,” Dani interrupts, deadpan.

“Well, I
thought
I did,” I respond, not bowing to her moral judgment. "But then he came back. I wasn’t sure it was him, so I had an old detective friend, a guy who works for me, do some research on him after the fire at your apartment building. We found out that he, somehow, survived and has been hanging out this whole time. But somewhere along the way, he picked up a guy in our club and turned him against us. I trusted that fucker, and he led me right into the explosion at that house.”

“You killed him.” Dani’s eyes sink to the floor as she pulls away back in her chair.

I don’t blame her for looking as if she is about to take off any minute. “Yeah. Yeah, I killed him.” I take a deep breath as I add, “And I killed my brother and sister-in-law. That’s why I was in jail. I let them follow me on a chase with the police that ended up in them crashing their bikes while I made my escape.” I can feel my heart beat out of my chest with the sound of the monitor’s increasing beeps. Her silence says it all, and I’m forced to fill in the blanks. “I’m not a good person, Dani,” I continue, “and I never pretended to be. I’m no white knight in shining armor. And I certainly am not a saint. I’ve got a past that I’m always on the run from. And, now, I believe it’s catching up to me.”