Nomads' Fall: Burning Bastards MC (22 page)

She waited a few minutes as they enjoyed the mid-morning snack. “So tell me, are they as good as their reputations say they are?”

Jolly knew what she was talking about and figured it must have been obvious they’d done more than just stayed in the same house together. She grinned at the memories of what they’d done. “Those two are
A
-fucking-mazing. I was walking bowlegged!” Laughing at the way Gladys fanned herself, she told her about Demon splitting the two big piles of wood out back. “You’ll have enough firewood to keep the house heated for the whole winter. His hands were a bloody mess from the broken blisters, but I found some antibiotic cream and wrapped them, so he will be fine in a few days. Men are such dipshits sometimes, but at least he was a productive dipshit, right?”

The news of the split wood was welcome. She had wondered how she would get it all split into pieces small enough for her to carry in the little wheelbarrow from the woodpile to the back porch where there was a lean-to just for keeping the wood dry for her winter fires. The wood stove helped keep the gas bills down and made it a little more affordable to live out here in the cold months.

“Well, why don’t we take a tour of the campsites and cabins to make sure they got through the storms alright? Just remember to leave the two occupied cabins alone unless they ask for something. I told you about the people before and they’re very self-sufficient, but from time to time they run into a problem.” Jolly met her at the door after putting on her shoes and grabbing her phone.

Chapter
Twenty
-
One

Demon hadn’t asked where they were headed until they drove through Donnell, a small town west of Prindale. “You mind telling me where we’re going? Or do you have a surprise party planned for me? Seeing how my birthday’s a few months away, it would be a total surprise.” He frowned when Knight pulled over to the side of the road by the river and told him they needed to talk.

The big men got out of the car and Knight sat his ass down on the riverbank without saying anything until Demon joined him. That’s when he began to talk. He told him about the conversation with Charlie and why he’d called his mother.

“He kept looking at me like I should know what he was talking about when he said stuff about strong women. I didn’t even know what the fuck the old fart was saying until around four this morning. I thought about it, and ended up calling my mother. I had to call her sister to get the number, and she wasn’t happy about being woken up so early, but she gave me the number and said she was hoping I was calling to tell them that my dad was dead.” He shook his head and tossed a rock into the swiftly flowing water.

“You and your mom moved into the trailer park after my mom left, so you probably don’t remember her much unless you saw her the few times she visited me.”

He told Demon about the call he’d made to his mother, and the news he was still trying to come to grips with. “I knew he was a mean fucker, but the idea of how mean he was to her, that’s damn hard to swallow. I want to go over there and beat his head in, but he was a good father to me. The women he brought home never stayed long, you know that. I was too busy being a kid to pay attention at the time, but when I took the time to sift through the memories, I can remember my mother’s face when I got called into the house at night for supper. On those nights there was always a big home cooked meal waiting for me. She always looked like she’d been crying, and she moved like a puppet on strings. I ignored her, mostly ‘cause the old man constantly told me she didn’t want us and left to be with her boyfriends. He would say to me right in front of her that he had to force her to come and see me, so if I had anything I wanted to say to her, I should say it then because who knew when she’d come back. I remember one time she raised a pan toward his head when he said that, but she saw me watching her and put it down.

“I swear, man, she kept thanking me for calling her, and I feel like shit on a shoe for ignoring her all of these years. I could hear her crying and shit, and fuckin’ saying how she never forgot me, and prayed to talk to me again. Thanking me for crissakes.” He hurled a fist sized rock at the water and watched the splash, but it did nothing to soothe his emotions.

“Now I’m worried about Megan, I can’t imagine a woman as strong as your mom letting Wild Bill beat on her or treat her like shit, but the thought won’t go away until I see her and know for certain she’s okay. I thought about just making the old fucker disappear, but something inside me says not to.” He turned to Demon, who had sat in silence through Knight spilling his guts. “I swear, if he’s laid a hand on her, I’ll kill him where I find him. You have my word on it.”

Demon nodded his head, he already knew most of what his friend just told him. Well, he knew about Bill beating on Carla. Everyone in the trailer park knew but Knight. He didn’t know about the rest, but he’d already had one talk with his mother about the man’s temper, and she swore he must’ve changed. After hearing the rest of the story, he grew concerned himself. His mother was one of the strongest people he knew, but who knew what she’d put up with if she felt she had to. He stood, dusted the dirt off his ass, and headed for the car.

Before Knight put the Mustang in gear, he told him, “If Bill has touched my mother in any hurtful way, or is verbally abusive to her, he’s dead. He will disappear, and she’ll be moving to Prindale. As far as I know, he and your mother are still legally married, but if he has life insurance, she gets it. It won’t make up for all the years of hell she went through, but it might help her retirement. I already have mom listed as an employee in my LLC, so she has a retirement package.”

This was news to Knight, and he grilled his friend for the rest of the drive about making such arrangements for Carla. They’d been best friends and shared just about everything, but their investments and money was their own business.

*****

The small house was situated away from the sidewalk about fifty foot, and they could hear someone in the garage listening to a country and western station on the radio. The same station must have been playing in the house, because they could hear it through the open windows. Demon went to the door and Knight kept going to the garage.

He made sure he made enough noise so as not to startle his volatile father. The man had fast reflexes for an old guy, and he didn’t want to get shot for visiting. Bill was rebuilding a motor and when he saw Knight, his smile was genuine. “Hey, boy, it’s about time you come for a visit.”

He pumped some hand cleaner into the palm of one hand and rubbed the stuff in, making a nasty looking mess of his hands until he grabbed a few paper towels from the roll, and wiped them clean. Then he went to the back of the garage and brought back a couple of sodas for them.

“So what brings you all the way out here in the middle of the week? Not that I don’t like seein’ you, but you usually call before you show up.”

Knight took a swallow of his cola and looked directly at his father. “I called my mother this morning.”

Bill looked down and nodded his head, then looked back to his son. “Yeah, I should’ve said something, but I figured to leave the past dead and buried. I should’ve known it’d come back and bite me on the ass.” He shook his head and closed his eyes before pulling the bandanna off his head. There were two nasty looking lines on the side of his head that appeared to be surgical scars.

“It’s a short story with a long history. I owe that woman more than an apology, but I was sure she didn’t want me to find her, so you can tell her what I’m going to tell you. You had left boot camp for overseas before I found out I had a fucking growth on my brain. A week after you left, I went in and had surgery. They thought it was brain cancer, but it turned out to be an abnormal growth. They said it’d been there for years growing, and that I wouldn’t have noticed unless I had the same tests they used to find it. When I started getting headaches and ‘rages’ as they called them, I should’ve gone into the doctor and told him.”

He swallowed a mouthful of the liquid and his mouth worked a little before he continued, “The ‘rages’, that’s a technical term, did you know that? Anyway, I’ve had them since I was a kid, probably eighteen or nineteen years old. That’s when the doc said the tumor probably started to grow. I was like a fuckin’ grizzly bear with a sore paw. Mean as a man could be. Each year it got worse, and I got used to it, got used to being an evil sonofabitch. I met your mom when we traveled through the south. I picked her up for a date and just never found the time to take her back. You know we got shackled because you were on the way. Carla was always attractive, beautiful really. I hated it when I had to bust a couple of the brothers for trying to get her to look their way. I started taking it out on her when the Prez took me aside and warned me they were getting’ tired of my shit.

“The last time I saw your mother, let’s just say I’m glad she didn’t come back. Not because of you or her, but because I probably would have killed the woman, and she’d never done a thing except love me and you. I used you as a way to blackmail her, and I understand if you want to beat my ass now for the way I acted, but I can’t change what happened, and neither can you.

“Long history short, you and Demon weren’t around to help me learn to do a lot of things again. You boys would have laughed to see my big ass stumbling around when I had to relearn to walk. I was in rehab for almost a year, and physical therapy for even longer at home. Demon wrote and asked me to look in on Megan if I got a chance and I called her once I could speak without drooling all over my damned chin. Hell, boy, I was still pissin’ my pants and not knowing I needed to go before I felt the fuckin' piss soaking my legs. We talked a few times a week, and she came to see me when I had to have the second operation because they hadn’t gotten all the growth the first time, she moved in after I got to come home.

“Megan is a hell of a woman, and she don’t put up with any orneriness from me.” His grin made it plain that he loved her for her feisty ways, and Knight lost the budding fear for the woman that treated him as if he was one of her own. “If you get lucky and find the right woman, you better make sure you don’t fuck up your life like I did mine and hurt her so bad she leaves you. I had to almost die twice before I found another woman worth calling mine who would tolerate my ass for more than five minutes.”

Before he left, Bill took him aside and asked him to tell his mother that he was sorry for all of the hurt he’d caused. “You tell her that I can’t undo what I did to her, hell, I will pay for it for the rest of my life, because the truth is, I remember most of what happened. I ain’t the same man anymore, and I hope her life is good.”

Knight nodded and promised to return in a few weeks. Demon drove them to the hospital to see how Big D was doing, and while Knight was busy talking with Future, Demon took another elevator to see how the woman, Barbara, was doing. When he stepped off the elevator, he saw Fuller sitting with the kid and his granny talking. He hit the elevator button again and stepped back inside.
Good enough for now
. Maybe the family could finally get together, even if Fuller was doing it for economic reasons. He’d be sure to keep an eye on the situation, just in case.

Future told them Big Dog would be going home by the end of the week, and she would give him a ride. They promised to help if she needed it, but Demon decided to tackle the issue of the club’s hunting process. “Look, let me clarify something for you ‘cause you’re as stubborn as Big D. What we do is no more or less than what any private detective agency does. Someone wants someone found, and we find them. We get paid for finding them, and we check out why we’re looking for them. If a person is hiding from a dangerous situation, we don’t take the gig. We have our codes, Future, so don’t think we’re tossing innocents to the wolves. Price isn’t always the factor.” He nodded at her and left the room to meet up with Knight in the parking lot.

Demon filled Knight in on Jolly’s story on the way back to the campground. They both decided they liked William’s way of dealing with bastards like Porter and James. To Knight, the story explained a lot about Jolly’s looks and behavior when they’d first met. It also explained why she’d come back as an outgoing though slightly nervous young woman.

Knight gave a short laugh, “You do realize that my father’s name is William?”

Demon nodded, “Yeah, but somehow I can’t see William Kelly and Wild Bill measuring cocks over who gets to be called what. I love your dad like the father I never had, but if William Kelly got pissed at him, dear old dad is fucked.”

Four bikes and a pick-up towing a log splitter were parked in the lot by the main house of the campground when they pulled the Mustang to a stop. Donnie and Poppa were sitting on the porch with plates of deep fried chicken and potato salad. “You boys better hurry in there and get a plate. Mick, Show, and Larry just drove up a few minutes ago.”

Jolly was laughing at something Show was telling her, and Gladys was sitting next to them at the kitchen breakfast bar talking. Knight immediately began to feel territorial and pulled her head back to give her a warning kiss. He had to prove to them that she was his property. Show laughed and stood. “No intent, brother.” He shook his head still laughing, grabbed his plate of food, and left to find a spot on the porch with friendlier company.

Gladys took her plate and left the breakfast bar allowing the men to sit on either side of Jolly. Seeing the way they were staring at her new friend gave her a serious case of the envies. It was the way Jolly looked back at them that counted to her. The entire room could see the girl was more than smitten, she was ready to snap the lock on her heart and brain, just as the men were fastening their own shackles around her.

That’s how it should be, a man had to give his woman a reason to lock down other than sex or security. He needed to value her, just like she valued him. Gladys kept her face turned from the people in the room and set her plate in the fridge. She practically ran to her room, shut the door quietly, and threw herself on her bed, before she let her tears fall.