Page 8 of Jingle Belle's Biker

It’s about a fifteen-minute ride to the Styx bar. The parking lot is a quarter full and mostly motorcycles. I pull up and head on in, the music vintage Rolling Stones.

I look around at the guys and gals playing pool. Some are civilians, most are bikers. I don’t recognize anyone there, but as I head to the bar, I grin.

“Gravel,” I say, clapping a hand on Gravel Burn’s cut. The guy’s long hair and beard are threaded with silver, and my old man’s friend raises his head and does a double take.

“Saint, as I live and breathe.” He motions with his beer to the stool beside him. “Sit.”

I slide onto the scuffed wooden seat. “You’re a little grayer, but you haven’t changed much since I saw you last,” I say.

He laughs. “You have. “What’s it been ten years?”

“Fifteen.”

The door opens with a crack of thunder, and two bikers come in, shaking off the rain that’s falling hard again.

“Damn,” one says, “is that you, Saint?”

“Frederick Jones.” I hold out my hands to take in the blond biker. The story of his name is one I have yet to get from him because his real name is Ben. But it’s a story I want to hear one day. “Heard you were bumming around out here.”

“Got sick of Chicago. Made an honest woman of Sin?” he asks.

Next to me, Gravel perks up. “Old lady?” He shakes his head. He’s younger than my father would be, around late forties now, but I keep forgetting being an independent, a nomad, others don’t always keep up with my life.

Which is how I like it.

“Sin is—” Frederick draws an hourglass in the air, and I half smile.

Sin would have his head for putting her down as just another babe in leather, even if she wanted to be my old lady officially. And more so, she wanted to settle down, Sin-style.

“Gonna kill you for that,” I mutter.

“How long you here for?” Gravel asks as he motions to the bartender, and she eyes me and adjusts her top, her full tits even more on display, and she hurries over.

“What’ll it be?”

“Now, settle down, Sugar,” Gravel says. “He’s got an old lady who’ll rip you to shreds. Saint, Sugar. Sugar, Saint.”

“Pity,” she says with a wink, not looking put-out even one iota. “Beer or something stronger?”

“Same as him.”

She nods and saunters off.

“My path and Sin’s have diverged,” I mutter.

After my drink arrives, we shoot shit for a while. Gravel shows me photos on his phone of his old lady and their three kids. Frederick is eyeing Sugar with a weariness that tells me he’s been around that block more than once and is willing to go around it a few more times.

Finally, Gravel leans back and glances at me as he takes a swig from his beer. “Truth be fucking told, I’d be home except Ronnie and the girls are at some ballet competition, and after last time?—”

“He got banned for thinking he was at some wrestling match.” Frederick Jones grins.

“My girls should have won. What can I say?” Then he looks at me. “You never answered. How long you here for?”

“Not sure,” I say. “There’s a job opportunity, but I’m still on the fence about it.”

“Legal?”

“Not breaking skulls or anything like that.” I take a sip of my beer. “More an enforcement kinda deal.”

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