Helmet Head (6 page)

CHAPTER 13
Tape

Macy grew up in Kinney, Iowa, second child of Herbert and Rosalyn Edwards. Kinney lay seventy-five miles south and west of the Quad Cities. Herb was a Farmer’s Insurance agent. Rosalyn was a stay-at-home mom. Rosalyn was unhappy. She could never quite put her finger on it. She saw a therapist and a yoga instructor.

She had an affair with the yoga instructor. She broke it off when she became pregnant for the third time, when Macy was five.

Shane was five years Macy’s senior, the Firstborn, the golden child. He was a remarkably handsome little boy who liked to twist kitten’s tails until they squealed. When the folks weren’t looking he would wipe his boogers in Macy’s scrambled eggs or pour Tabasco into her tomato juice. He shoved other children at the playground. Macy always knew there was something wrong with him.

He turned Marcy’s childhood into a grueling ordeal. But things were going to get worse. Much worse.

She was eleven when Shane held her down and penetrated her with a vibrator he’d stolen from a house party which he’d crashed.

She was so overcome with shame that it never occurred to her to approach her parents, the police or a counselor. She had sex with those boys to see if she could, to see if it was different. Not much. It wasn’t until years later, and Wild Bill, that she achieved an orgasm with a man.

All left unsaid.

She went Goth in high school as a form of camouflage. Fagan blanched when she described her Goth Barbie dolls with their Mohawks, piercings, homemade tats, wounds and vampire fangs, but Macy didn’t notice. She built a Shane doll from a Ken and systematically amputated his limbs.

She graduated somehow and went onto Carlton School of Nursing in Wexfordshire.

“In my junior year at Carlton I worked summers at Don’s Malts, Shakes, Burgers and Dogs on Lake Nebagamon near Wexfordshire. This guy I knew took me to the drive-in to see
The Wild One
. Man, it knocked me out,” she told Fagan. “Then one day the Road Dogs roared up. Most of my regulars took off like wildlife fleeing a forest fire.

“Wild Bill just looked so beautiful to me. So young and charismatic. I was so naive. He had me on the back of his Harley within three days. My parents nearly died.

“I suppose I was looking for a father figure. My real dad and I didn’t get along.”

Her mother still prayed for her return and called her every Sunday but lately the calls had become listless as if both parties understood she was gone for good. Hooking up with Bill did little to further her career. She thought she was in love. Bill told her he ran a successful motorcycle shop and owned his own home which turned out to be a shotgun shack in Carbondale.

He made his money dealing drugs. Within six months Macy had a cocaine habit and was reduced to staying in the shotgun shack stepping on the product until Bill realized how far gone she was and took that away. Locked her in a room and made her quit cold turkey.

“He fed me cold turkey sandwiches. He thought it was funny.”

Once she cleaned up Bill sent her out to find a real job. Against overwhelming odds she got hired as a receptionist for an ad firm in Moline and was doing great until Bill showed up one day, drunk, stoned, buzzed with a bee up his ass about how she loaded the dishwasher wrong and started wanging her around the reception room.

Cops were called, Bill was arrested, charges were dropped, Macy lost her job. She declined to press charges. At least she no longer had to explain the odd bruises or dark glasses. There followed a series of unsatisfying jobs which she lost through hard luck or Bill. His record was remarkably clean for such a scumbag.

She’d been with him for four years. Like victims of the Stockholm Syndrome, she regarded his abuse as normal, even a sign of love. She was obviously ambivalent about the baby.

“How old are you?” Fagan asked.

“Twenty-six.”

“You want to think about testifying against him.”

She gave him that half-guffaw look. “Are you nuts? Do you know how vindictive he is? It’s a way of life with Bill. He’d find me and have me killed.”

“Not if you went into witness protection.”

“Oh mannnnn,” she said stopping to drain a glass of water. “Are you for real? Where are you from anyway?”

“My last job was with the Duke County Sheriff’s Department in Iowa.”

“What’dja do to end up here? Screw the captain’s wife?”

Fagan felt the color rising. He turned away and winced.

“What? Did I strike a nerve? Chainsaw broke a rib, didn’t he? You want to take your shirt off let me have a look?”

“Do you know what you’re doing?”

“Two years nursing school. Not much you can do for a cracked rib but tape it up and take pain meds.”

Fagan peeled off his jacket and shirt revealing a hairy chest with a gold Star of David dangling from a thin gold chain.

“Raise your arm.”

Macy examined the purpling bruise where Chainsaw had sunk his Size 10 Doc Marten. “Yup,” she said, poking it. Fagan winced.

“That’s gotta sting.”

“Yeah, thanks a lot.”

Macy giggled. “I’ll be right back.”

Fagan examined his surroundings. The TV hanging from a bracket above the bar was off but the bar lights were on including several strings of Christmas tree lights which cast a gay glow on the antique mahogany back bar. Fagan figured someone had put them up at Christmas years ago and never bothered to take them down.

There was a stuffed bobcat above the bar. The pine paneled walls contained a bulletin board advertising odd jobs, baby-sitting, puppies and so forth. There was a dart board at the far end of the room and a cold jukebox beneath a horizontal side window, an old sprung sofa backed into a corner against the front wall where some booths had been ripped out. The unpowered jukebox looked like an Easter Island head. Shelving high up on the south wall held a couple dozen souvenir steins, the kind with the hinged lids and intricate ceramic design. Dusseldorf. Heidelberg. Munich.

Macy returned with a bottle of rubbing alcohol and a spool of tape-backed bandage. She pulled a seat up next to Fagan who guessed that this was not the first time she’d been pressed into service as a nurse.

Of course the Road Dogs traveled with their own MD and RN but they seemed such an odd group. Doc and Curtis were quiet, self-contained with a certain inner peace that eluded the others.

Fagan grunted as Macy applied the alcohol to his ribs and to his forehead.

“Nice goose egg you have here.”

Fagan craned his neck to look at himself in the mirror behind the bar.

“What are their real names?”

“William Hedgecock,” Macy replied without looking up, intent on applying the bandages to minimize rib movement. “Chainsaw is Derek Gunderson, Mad Dog is Sam something, I never did catch that. I don’t like him. Doc is Tom Garrison and Curtis is Curtis Jones.”

“What are Doc and Curtis doing with this bunch?”

“You heard Doc. They took a pledge. They take this thing very seriously. Doc and Curtis are original Mad Dogs. They started the club along with Bill’s dad Ed back in the seventies when they got back from Nam. It all goes back to Nam.”

“Doc, Curtis and Ed Hedgecock were in Vietnam together.”

“That’s right. Ed died in a motorcycle accident when Bill was fourteen but by then the die was cast, as they say. Bill waited six years to make his move then declared himself president. Some of the other Road Dogs bitched about it but Bill whipped them into line, so to speak. Doc and Curtis didn’t give a shit. They’re not in on the drug running and so forth.”

“What are they doing here?”

“I don’t think they knew this was a drug run.”

Fagan found her proximity extremely disturbing. She wore some delicate animal scent, small high breasts tapering into a slim waist. He shifted around to hide his erection. He hadn’t had a woman in months, not since before the incident. He sucked it in until she finished taping then stood half turning away.

“Is there a shower back there I can use?”

“Sure. Through the door on the left.”

Fagan moved stiffly to take a cold shower.

***