Big Dog (11 page)

Freakshow told her she could call him Mathew on the road. “My mother is a strict Catholic and wanted me to be a priest. My father wanted me to leave home, so I wouldn’t embarrass him because of my tats and the gauged ears.”

They talked about all kinds of things, and she worried at first that Mathew would mention her scars, but he never did. She told them they could stay at her place for a day or two if they wanted to look around the city, and even invited them to come to the bar and she would introduce them to a few ladies if they were interested. That offer got big grins from both men. They went to their room and she promised to wake them if she decided to leave early.

She might have only slept with Big Dog, actually slept with him for a few hours, but she missed the warmth and comfort of his body lying next to hers. She was sorry that he wasn’t at the club when she was ready to leave because she had plans for that body of his. Unfortunately, she was deprived of his company, and had he known it, he was deprived of her plans to have his prick in her mouth for a going away, thank you kind of gift.

At five a.m. she was ready to go. She tried watching the news, but seeing the rescue people recovering the body of a long time drug user with ties to the Burning Bastards Motorcycle Club from the trash dumpster behind City Hall, made her shudder. Krebs was a lousy excuse for a human being to begin with, to feel only relief at the death of another human being made her what? Human? Knowing there was one who deserved death even more, made her shut the news off and wake up the men.

If they pushed it, they could be at her place before ten tonight.

They got to the bar at ten thirty, and she opened the delivery door in back of the building so they could all park their bikes inside for the night. They walked through the back lot and she unlocked the gate for them to walk through her backyard to the house. The place impressed Mathew and he praised the setup.

“It’s cool. You got a great place here. It would make a cool clubhouse too.”

She laughed at his enthusiasm. “No way, you guys would drink up all my profits, and I’d be panhandling on a street corner to pay the mortgage. Not to mention, my mother is going to come live with me in a couple of weeks. She is planning to turn one of the bedrooms into her very own computer heaven.”

They’d stopped for a quick dinner on the way home, so she showed them the two spare rooms that had beds. One was a bit on the frilly side but she gave them the choice of who would bunk in where. “You two hash it out, the bathrooms across the hall between the rooms, so I think that’s probably all you might need for the night. There is frozen dinners in the freezer and soft drinks in the fridge if you get hungry or thirsty. Help yourselves.”

At midnight her phone played its silly little tune and she glanced at the number before accepting the call. His voice made her smile, even as he bitched at her for leaving without saying goodbye. “What the hell, Future, you don’t just walk away after the things we did woman. I was in court for Kevin, Butch said he didn’t think it was your business, so he didn’t tell you where I was. I figured we’d have more time to get to know each other better. I’m more than a sex object you know. I even own a home, a goat that mows the lawn at the house, and a big damn hive of yellow jackets in the backyard that I can’t get near enough to burn out yet.”

She couldn’t help it, she laughed, “You’re a regular citizen there. Tell me, what would the world think if they knew the president of the badassed bikers was a taxpaying homeowner? I heard Seth talking to Tiny about a semi truck repair shop by the way. Since I passed it at the interchange on the highway ramp, I thought the name Big Dog’s Diesel was kinda catchy. Looks legit to me.”

When he didn't laugh, instead staying silent, she sighed and continued.

“I needed to get back to the bar, Clem was having issues with personnel, and I have to deal with it tomorrow.”

“Dammit, when they told me about Krebs. I wanted to kill the fucker myself.”

Their conversation lasted through the next two hours. He told her to, “Keep it warm for me, I’ll be visiting as soon as I can get away. Oh, and if Show or Larry touched you, I'm going to kill them. I don’t share my guns, my bank account, or my woman unless I am there at the time. Remember it.”

They said their goodbyes and she laid her phone on the bedside table. A single tear slid down her cheek as she rolled to her side, grabbing the extra pillow and squeezed it tight, missing him already.

*****

She was awake by six a.m. and dragging ass around the kitchen, making coffee, and trying to figure out what she had on hand to fix for breakfast. Eggs, cheese, and some frozen sausage patties that she didn’t remember buying were in the freezer.

She was listening to the morning news when Mathew came in the room. He had a couple of sheets of drawing paper in his hand, and handed them to her as he passed by her chair on his way to the coffeepot.

At first glance, she was embarrassed that he’d remembered what her back looked like. As her eyes traveled down the first page, she could see her crude scars were being transformed into a beautiful scene.

The area under the ravaged melted wing depicted a bike, with more bikes in a progression of smaller images, until it appeared the wing covered and protected a sea of motorcycles. Above the word ‘FALLEN’, as the word ‘THE’, and the ‘AN’, was completed in ink as ‘ANGEL’. ‘FALLEN’ had a colon and an S added. For the words ‘THE FALLEN’S ANGEL’. The scene was color coded, with notations, and she knew she had to have this done. The scars were ugly, yet they could be used as a rough sketch for a good tattoo artist. Her fingers followed each line and she thought of the possibilities.

“Sorry about that, but I kept seeing that melted wing in my mind, and I’ve known about your rep for helping out the club over the years. It seemed to fit, you know?”

It choked her up. This strange man with a talent to be able to see beauty in something so ugly, amazed her. She nodded her head and did her best to listen to the idea that he started talking about to use the scars as a bare bones start.

“We can put the club’s logo between the lines on your ribs too if you want.” He took the papers, and started sketching more amazing ways to hide or play up the scars. “The effect when you move will be A-fucking awesome. If I can get it right, it will have a three dimensional appearance, and when you move it will look like the wings are folding over the bikers.”

They discussed his reasons for not showing off his talent as an artist before now, and he shrugged his shoulders. “The guys go to the place in town, and if I wanted to open an ink shop I’d have to start out with customers waiting. I used to work at the Ink Shack and did pretty good before the blow up with my old man. How many people want tattoos from an unknown artist? Not to mention, I don’t have the money to open a business like that.”

She thought about his valid reasoning, after all, opening your own business did take money, even something as small scale as he would need would take a few grand to start. She might be wasting her money, and her back might end up looking like shit, but he couldn’t mess it up worse than it already was, so she made her decision.

“I’ll give you my credit card, and my truck, and you find a place where you can purchase what you need to make these sketches into reality. You can keep the equipment when you’re finished in payment. And, if it comes out as beautiful as these drawings promise. I’ll let you take a picture to use for advertisement. Just the tattoos, not my face, or the other places with scars.”

Larry wandered in and she made them help fix breakfast when he bragged about his omelet making abilities. She gave over the keys to the truck, a spare key to the house, and her credit card. She wasn’t worried they would steal from her, if they did, they were facing a far harsher punishment than any judge would give to them. You don’t steal from a member, you can ask for, or receive help when it was needed, but you never steal.

She waited for them to leave, and took the tunnel entrance to the bar. Everything looked good from what she could see. Hearing Wanda screech out John’s name in the quiet of the place made her jump, until she realized what the screams actually were. “Fuck me harder, you fat son-of-a-bitch,” was not her idea of talking to a lover, but then she had to admit, John did have a considerable gut. The last time she’d heard the two middle-aged lovers going at it, they were having oral sex on the fake leather couch in her office. “Eat me, and swallow it all,” gave her a mental picture that had refused to go away for weeks.

This morning she envied their relationship. Enjoying sex at work was a safe way of enjoying the forbidden; after all, the probability of being discovered was low. They worked together as a team when the bar was closed. She had never let on that she knew they were using the bar as a trysting place. Wanda was married to a man who was paralyzed and lived in a nursing facility. She refused to divorce her husband of thirty years, saying she couldn’t abandon the man who’d fathered her children before his accident. John was closed mouth about his personal life to Future, she knew almost nothing about the man, other than he seemed to care about Wanda.

She went back to the house to make a shopping list. It would take Mathew a few days to do her tattoo, and she knew Larry would stick close too. One of them had better be able to cook more than eggs, or they’d be eating a lot of takeout. She had to be at the bar most nights, especially since she’d been absent these past few days.

Future texted the list to Mathew’s cell phone. He had her card and could purchase what they needed so she wouldn’t have to take the time to do it herself when they came back with her truck. Having them around would be good preparation for living with her mother ghosting around the house.

*****

The Big Dog was in a rotten mood and everyone noticed it. The morning of the attempt on Future’s life, he was stuck in court swearing that Kevin was more than welcome in his home and that he could and did provide a safe, sanitary, and secure home filled with love for Kevin’s needs. The Guardian at Litem argued that Hugh was the President of an Outlaw Motorcycle Group, and therefore suspect as a fit parent for a young impressionable mind. She further asked the court to reconsider placement of Kevin to a state approved Foster Home until the court could determine his permanent home. The Suits countered that Hugh had no criminal history, and wasn’t a suspect in any ongoing cases of a legal matter. He was also the child’s only living relative. Therefore, he should be allowed to keep Kevin as his own child.

Had he known the child advocate would be such a fucking cunt about it, he would have taken care of her before the hearing. She was an uptight spinster with her brown hair in a bun and thick glasses who wore a pencil skirt suit, and a sour expression. He was determined to either change her mind, or find a way to make her change her mind. If she disappeared now, he would be a suspect, but he wasn’t the kind of man to harm a woman, physically anyway.

The Suits had won for now, pending the investigation of Hugh’s residence and living arrangements.

He’d no more gotten back to the club when he was greeted with the news of Kreb’s screwed up attempt at assassinating Future. Charlie and Butch assured him that she was fine, with only superficial cuts on her arm, there wasn’t anything to stress about.

Butch set his mind at ease with the news that he’d sent Freakshow and Larry with her for protection. “Look, man, I had no reason to keep her here, and who wants a pissed off psychic hanging around bitching that she needed to get home to her life. I told her not to ditch the guys, or else.”

When Larry called two days later, and told Butch that they would be staying for a few more days to do some sightseeing, it caused Big Dog a few restless hours of sleep. Was she letting them fuck her? He couldn’t believe that would happen, she needed a man, not a kid, or a guy that got his jollies from seeing how far he could stretch his earlobe. No, there must be some other reason for their prolonged stay. He called her at two in the morning, she was just closing the bar and promised to call him back as soon as she got home. Her “I miss you” went a long way to reassure him that she wasn’t fucking another man, he trusted her.
Right? Yeah, he trusted her, but what about Show, he was attractive to some women, no, Show wasn’t that stupid.
His thoughts calmed down when he realized that he was acting like a jealous asshole. He didn’t own her. Yet.

When she called at three fifteen sounding exhausted, but happy to talk to him, he knew she was being straight with him. He felt a kick to his gut each time she said, “I miss you.” He needed to do something about the two of them. This long distance shit was just that, shit.

The Sheriff’s deputies came that morning to inform him that one of his members had been found in the dumpster behind City Hall, so he had to act concerned. Who would do such a heinous thing? He asked about surveillance videos and all the appropriate questions a concerned friend would ask, but it got them redirected at the gangs that had begun to crop up in small towns lately. Let them feel some heat for once. The cops were so busy watching the bikers that they’d forgotten about the city gangs. At least bikers didn’t steal old ladies purses and cut up pets to pretend they were badasses or Devil worshippers.

The old farmhouse that sat back off the road, with sixty acres and a big pole barn, was only a half a mile from the clubhouse, and Big Dog had been renovating it for over a year in his spare time. He used the place as his home address on the court papers, and knew he needed to finish up at least two of the four bedrooms in the house before that Ms. Pearson showed up to check on the living conditions at his home. He drafted Charlie and a few of the greybeards to help him since they didn’t have day jobs, and the old house was shaping up fine. As luck would have it, Ms. Pearson showed up while he was at Kevin’s school for a conference with the teacher concerning the boy’s inattention to his homework.

Charlie gave her the tour and showed her the plans that Hugh had drawn up for the property. While he was at it, he got her chatting about her life and they were talking like old friends before he was finished with the tour. She asked him about the club and he offered to take her for a ride on his bike the next day, which just happened to be Saturday, and her day off. His brand of rough charm must have worked, especially when she found out how lonely the older man was. “I don’t have a lady in my life and I never had any kids to tie me down. This group of people is my family, but it’s still lonely, if you know what I mean.” He walked her around the outside of the house once more, and took her elbow so she wouldn’t stumble on the uneven ground. She let his hand stay on her arm, even when it was no longer necessary for him to steady her. “Would it be too ignorant of me to ask if you would go for a ride with me tomorrow? I promise not to mention Hugh or Kevin, I know you are a woman with ethics, and I would never try to change your mind about something as important as a child’s safety.”