The Brotherhood of the Wheel (5 page)

“Okay, Sinclair,” the deputy said. “You're free to go. This here bounty hunter just paid your bail; I wouldn't recommend jumping it.”

Heck looked at the big-nosed man and smiled. “You bailed me out, Roadkill? That's so sweet.… Um, where the hell were you about eight hours ago, when I was napping next to Lake Piss?”

“You're welcome,” Roadkill said. “Your gratitude is touching, Heck.” Roadkill nodded toward Tru, who was watching all this from his bunk, amused. “That the missus?” he asked.

The deputy unlocked the cell door. “C'mon, move it, Sinclair.”

“I owe you a solid, Terry,” Roadkill said to the deputy. “Thanks, Cuz.”

“Yeah, yeah, just don't make it a habit, Jethro,” the deputy replied.

Roadkill sniffed Heck, who was pulling his wet T-shirt back on. “Damn, son, you smell like you took a dip in Lake Piss. Let's get you cleaned up. We're riding for your old man today, and your mom will have my hide if you show up looking as sorry as you do now.”

Outside the Harnett County Sheriff's Department detention center, it was late morning. It was bright. Birds chirped. The blue skies and the sunshine might fool you into thinking spring had arrived on schedule, but the wind was cold and cutting. Heck groaned a little as the sunlight flashed into his eyes. He fished his sunglasses, cigarettes, and Zippo out of the pockets of his leather jacket. He had recovered it from the property counter when he was released, along with his boots and his cut—the sleeveless black leather vest that bore the colors of the Blue Jocks. The patches on the back of the cut matched the markings of Heck's tattoo. Heck put on his shades, lit a Lucky Strike, and slipped the cut on over his leather riding jacket.

“Damn,” he said, zipping up the jacket. “This wet shirt is killing me. It's cold as balls out here, man.”

“Serves you fucking right, asshole,” Roadkill said as he opened the door to his beat-up old Ford pickup. He pulled his own MC cut off the driver's seat and slid it on over his flannel. Cops frowned on sporting colors in their house. Above the right breast of Roadkill's cut was a patch that said S
ERGEANT AT
A
RMS
. “Lucky they didn't throw your drunken ass into the Custer County stir. Fucking hellhole, that is.”

“Hey,” Heck said, climbing into the cab of the truck. He eyed a Sheriff's Department cruiser as it glided into the parking lot. “What is your problem, man? You that pissed off I got a little fucked up and got in a tussle? Shit, Jethro, we've been doing that since we were both thirteen.”

Roadkill shook his head. He pulled his own sunglasses off the visor above the driver's seat. He slammed the door to the truck's cab and started the engine. “Gear is in the hospital,” he said quietly as they drove out of the parking lot and started to drive down Bain Street.

“Wha … what happened?” Heck said.

“We had a hunt last night,” Roadkill said. “That beastie that's been ripping people out of their cars on I-140 and leaving their intestines up on the Dan Cameron Bridge? We'd started calling the thing Meat Tinsel. Well, we got a lead on it, and we sent out every warm body we could get ahold of. That wasn't you, Heck. Your ass wasn't answering your phone. Again.”

They turned in silence onto West Cornelius Harnett Boulevard. Heck smoked his cigarette and stared out the open window. They were passing suburbia: Dollar General stores, Food Lion grocery store, McDonald's, Advanced Auto, KF-fucking-C. He had ridden up and down streets like this most of his life. When he had been over there, all he could think about was how much he missed all this … bullshit. Bullshit, and stuff, and normalcy. Boring things that you took for granted until they weren't there anymore. No, that was wrong. They were there, far away, a mystical place called “back in the world.” You were gone, on the moon.

For a moment, the thing in the Afghan desert was laughing in his mind, his memory. Its laugh was everywhere, and Heck was back there. He smelled the smoke—the greasy, charred pork smell of Abe's and Rich's and Javon's flesh burning; he heard them screaming. The smell of hot brass and the clatter of the M249 machine gun as the bullets passed harmlessly through the laughing, growling, living pyre. It cooked them, cooked his friends, his crew. The things the fire said to Heck in the ruins as the bodies burned … He closed his eyes behind the sunglasses. He saw his old friend Gear burning with his brothers, burning in the laughing, immortal fire. He swallowed hard.

“I was busy,” Heck finally said through a dry throat. His palms were wet. He took a long drag on the cigarette.

“Jesus Christ, Heck!” Roadkill said. “Gear was the one that kept that asshole jumper in Newark from blowing a hole in you? Remember? He took that bullet for you? Seriously! What happened to you over there that has fucked you up so bad, man!”

“Nothing,” Heck said. “I'm good. What the hell happened?”

“We were down three guys already,” Roadkill said. “Muzz, Ed, and Billie were all down in Tallahassee on that five-hundred-thousand-dollar bail skip. And since Ale passed … well, everyone was expecting you to step up and take over as president. Gear shouldn't have been on point last night, man—it should have been you.”

Heck exhaled a stream of thick smoke that was caught by the wind rushing past the car window and carried away. “Back the fuck off me, Jethro,” he said, his voice low and gravelly.

“Gear lit the thing up with that old surplus M2 flamethrower we traded Mullet's old Panhead bike to the skinheads for,” Roadkill continued. “The thing ashed pretty good, but Gear got too close, got caught by the claws—god, they were like damned hedge clippers—foot and a half long, at least. Then he was on fire, screaming. Third-degree burns over a quarter of his body, and a collapsed lung, man. So, no, fuck you—I will not back the fuck off. This MC, it's your and my family's legacy, Heck, and our future. A lot of people have bled for it, and keep on bleeding for it.”

“What do you want from me, exactly?” Heck said, flicking the butt of his cigarette out the window. “Ale is gone. We're scattering his ashes today. I'm home, but I'm clearly not the guy who needs to be running the Jocks.”

“That is bullshit,” Roadkill said as they turned left onto Lillington's North Main Street. “You are. Everyone's known it since you were, like, twelve, Hector. Hell, even you.”

“Well, everyone was wrong,” Heck said. “Clearly.”

“Since you got back you've blown off most of your friends, your family, and the club,” Roadkill said. “You stay drunk and pick fights with any mouth-breather you can provoke. You've been in the pokey twice in the last month, Heck—”

“Three times now,” Heck corrected with a grim smile.

“Look, if it's about losing Ale, I understand,” Roadkill said. “And I'm here if you need me, man. Or is this some kind of post-stress psych thing?”

“Shut up and shut up some more,” Heck said. “I'm okay.”

“Hmm,” Roadkill said. “Look, my friend, you keep that shit bottled up and it's going to blow sooner or later. You need to come to terms with it.”

Heck looked over at Roadkill, shaking his head. “What, you're Dr. Phil now? Tell me why the hell I'm being lectured on how I should live my life by a fucking werepossum.… I mean, c'mon!”

“Now, that is just straight racist,” Roadkill said. “And it's
half
werepossum on my mama's side, thank you very much, and you know that!”

“I know that you can turn yourself into a scuttling little garbage-eating vermin,” Heck said.

“You know what?” Roadkill said, lurching the truck over to the side of the road. It stopped in a cloud of dust. “You
are
an asshole, and I'm done trying. Get the fuck out of my truck. Walk.”

Heck threw the door open and climbed out. He slammed it behind him. “Okay,” he said.

“Yeah, walk,” Roadkill said again. “Run, you jerk. See if you can outrun yourself and everyone who wants to help your stubborn, stupid ass.” His voice cracked a little as he said it. “I've been making excuses for you and apologizing for you for months, man, and I'm done.”

Heck heard the hurt in Roadkill's voice. He recalled when they were both nine and he had made fun of Jethro accidentally shifting into a possum when they were playing by the creek in Heck's backyard. Heck had teased Jethro as he climbed up the hill, naked, a giant possum's tail still grown just above his butt, clutching his wet clothes like armor against the laughter. He fought against tears, claiming that his eyes got wet when he fell in the creek.

Suddenly, Ale had been there, all tall and strong with a mane of gray hair, a thick, long beard the same color, and those kind, strong, stern eyes. Odin, Zeus, the Lord Almighty, and Ale. Ale wrapped an old army blanket around Jethro and turned to Heck.

“What to do you think you're doing?” Ale said to the boy. The smile slid away from Heck's face. “You going make fun of your best friend because he's different? You need to rethink that, boy. One day it might be you who's the different one, Hector, and who's going to be there for you when everyone is pointing? We're all on the outside sometimes, Heck.”

Heck put his hand on the open window of the passenger-side door of Roadkill's truck. “I'm sorry, man,” he said. “Thanks for sticking up for me. I've been an asshole, and I'm sorry. I'll see you at the clubhouse for the ride.” He started walking. The truck crunched gravel slowly as it pulled up to accompany him.

“Well, stop being an asshole and get in,” Roadkill said. “I'll take you home to clean up. Your mom's been worried about you.”

*   *   *

They rumbled down Market Street, the throaty growl of big V-twin engines announcing their presence to the pedestrians the way a lion's roar announces its arrival to the scavengers at the water hole. Gasoline-fueled thunder pealed down the street as the Blue Jocks cruised toward the Road to Nowhere. They were forty riders strong, headed out of the Jocks' Wilmington clubhouse. They crossed the Cape Fear River on Route 76. They picked up a half-dozen more members joining the pack by the time they were opening up and hauling down U.S. 74 toward Bryson City.

At the center of the procession, Heck was driving Ale's old 1941 Harley flathead with a sidecar. In the sidecar, Heck's mother and Ale's old lady, Elizabeth Sinclair, sat like a reigning queen in black leather. Her long white hair, pulled back and tied in a ponytail, fluttered in the wind. She wore aviator-style sunglasses but refused to wear a helmet. Clutched in her arms, to her chest, was a small wooden cask. The Blue Jocks' colors were burned into the cask. It held Ale's ashes.

Heck did not wear conventional headgear. He wore a matte-black, open-faced helmet with a polished, stainless-steel face mask that was sculpted to look like a grinning Japanese demon—an Oni—with a leering, tusked smile and short, blunt horns.

They crossed over into South Carolina and picked up another dozen riders when they passed through Florence, as that city's chapter of the MC joined the ride to honor one of its founders. Thirty more riders joined them as they rode through Columbia on U.S. 20. The procession also gained other followers, bikers from other MCs who were friends of the Blue Jocks, riding respectfully at the rear of the procession.

The cities and towns gave way to lush, cool forests of tall, proud trees as they rode through the southeastern tip of Sumter National Forest, a cathedral of green. They picked up a few dozen more riders as they moved through Spartanburg and Hendersonville. They were well over a hundred strong as they headed up I-26. The Asheville chapter, fifty strong, awaited them on the final ride into the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Cool, green woods covered both sides of the road as the procession, swelled to close to two hundred riders, now approached the end of Nut Hill Road. A large sign, weatherworn and hand-painted, greeted the bikers as they approached. The sign said, W
ELCOME TO THE
R
OAD TO
N
OWHERE—A
B
ROKEN
P
ROMISE! 1943–?

During World War II, the Tennessee Valley Authority, under the auspices of the federal government, announced plans to construct a hydroelectric dam that would flood eleven thousand acres of land, much of it inhabited. In true bureaucratic fashion, the TVA purchased or seized almost sixty-eight thousand acres in Graham and Swain Counties, displacing more than thirteen hundred families in the name of the project, and progress. These families included women and children whose husbands, fathers, and sons were off fighting Fascists in distant lands. It also included elderly folk who had lived on their families' lands their entire lives. These families received no assistance from the government in relocating. Those who refused to sell their ancestral homesteads were forced off their land.

The government promised to repay the state for the loss of Highway 288, which would be flooded in the project, and to build a road and a bridge so that the families that had been driven from their lands could visit the more than twenty-eight cemeteries that would survive the flooding. Burial grounds where generations of their kin had been laid to rest were now isolated by the sweeping away of the land. Again, in true bureaucratic fashion, the promises were not entirely kept. The state received some funds to compensate for the lost highway, but the road to the grave sites was never completed. Six miles of road, a bridge, and a quarter mile of tunnel was all that came to fruition—a true road to nowhere. To the Blue Jocks, this place was hallowed ground.

A few miles down the unfinished road, the procession slowed and came to a stop at the yawning entrance to the massive tunnel. Everyone made a path, and the old Harley, with Heck and his mother riding, was allowed to move through. Heck shut off the engine and pulled off his demonic protective mask and helmet. He helped his mother out of the sidecar. He was wearing a kilt with the tartan of his and his mother's clan, the Sinclairs. Roadkill took a massive sword out of the sidecar after Elizabeth departed and slipped the strap of its sheath over his shoulder. The blade was a good two feet longer than him, so he had to angle the sheath.