Page 65 of Lord Have Mercy Part Four: Big Son

Aidan could see Ian weigh what he wanted to tell him. “The phone call…that was Abacus.”

“Shit.”

“They want – well, it doesn’t matter what they want, because I’m going to handle it. But I have to leave tonight.”

“Shit,” Aidan said. “Do you need me to come with you? Do you need…”

But Ian shook his head. “No, they need you here.” He smiled, pained. “You’re doing splendidly. And I – I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

Ian shook his head again. “Please be safe. Call me if you have need of the jet and I’ll send it back down.”

“Ian…” he said, feeling unmoored, and helpless. “The bank stuff…”

“You have it handled, you just lack confidence. Kingston is very good at it, ask him for help if you need it, but I think you’re doubting yourself unnecessarily.” While Aidan was still gaping at him, he said, “Be safe. I’ll call you.” He swooped in and kissed Aidan on the cheek.

Then he climbed into the back of the Jag and was gone.

Eighteen

The span of time between Felix showing up in the clearing with a Lean Dogs’ cut and Harlan’s eighteenth birthday seemed to last decades. An interminable drag during which he executed his failed attempt at hunting, and went through two stepfathers, the second of which was thankfully too drunk most of the time to hit as hard or as often as the first. But, finally, the day arrived. He turned eighteen, and he spent an hour in the bathroom styling his hair and tweaking the cuffs of his denim jacket, turning this way and that and working on his Tough Guy facial expressions.

Today was the day he was going to march right up to the front door of the clubhouse and proclaim his intention to prospect. The president – a man he’d glimpsed around town, his rank marked in the patches sewn to his cut – would be so impressed with his cool, laid-back swagger than he would hand him a cut of his own on the spot, and welcome him aboard with a hearty slap on the back. He would excel at every task he was given, more capable and hardworking than the other prospects. He would endear himself to Felix early, and become his indispensable right-hand man. It would be Felix who would put his hand up at church and recommend that the usual year-long wait be waived for Harlan. He would be invited to patch early, and earn his own road name, something like Blade or Killer, because in this fantasy, Harlan had overcome his squeamish incompetence and be a dab hand with a knife and a gun by that point.

It was a fantasy he played out cinematically in his mind while he was at school, while he was scrubbing the kitchen floor; while he was struggling to fall asleep each night, listening tothe animal grunts and groans of his stepfather having his way with Harlan’s mother through the thin walls. A fantasy that left him aching and nauseated with how badly he wanted it, interspersed, on occasion, with the fantasy of bursting through the underbrush, standing tall in the clearing, and declaring with sweet viciousness that he’d fucked Felix’s mother. In that fantasy, Colin and Tucker laughed and mocked Felix, and Felix flushed dark and stormed away, utterly humiliated.

It never occurred to Harlan that both of these fantasies were childish in the extreme.

And then the day arrived – Prospect Day – and he spent so long primping in front of the mirror, trying to perfect an aura of Don’t Give a Damn, that it was after three when he stepped out of the bathroom, the day more than half gone.

“Shit,” he said, when he caught sight of the kitchen clock, and then it hit him all at once what he was about to do, and he puked in the overgrown azaleas out front on his way out of the house.

His stepfather was passed out, so he borrowed his truck, a rattletrap old Isuzu that stalled on every hill. His hands shook on the wheel, and his foot juddered on the pedal, and though he’d mastered the thing months before, he stalled out so badly at a stop sign he thought he might have to push it off the road. It got him to within a half-mile of the clubhouse, though, where he pulled onto the shoulder and parked it, not wanting any of the Dogs to see him driving the rusted, wheezy thing.

It was a warm day, and though the sun was past its midpoint, it beat hot and throbbing against the back of his neck. Sweat was pouring down his body when he reached the chain link fence that marked the edge of the Dogs’ property. He hadn’t brought anything to drink, and he thought the black spots flickering at the edges of his vision were a combination of stress and dehydration.

He was a dripping, ragged mess by the time he reached the gates; swiped his hair off his slick forehead and tried to stand up straight and put his shoulders back.

The gates were open, to his shock and delight – a delight dampened by the way he was shaking and sweating and thought he might hurl again, all over his own boots. The driveway that led between them was short, and gravel, and fed into a broad, uneven parking lot of the same. A few trucks, vans and cars were parked off to the right, some of them pulled up into the weeds and kudzu, junkers that looked like their motors hadn’t turned over in a decade.

The bikes, though, gleamed beneath the afternoon sun, lean, wicked shapes all in black and chrome, lined up neat as dominos across the oddly-shaped building’s porch. Each was unique – different handlebars, different saddles, or bump seats, or tailpipe configurations. Some had intricate designs airbrushed along the tanks, but all were some variation on black. Each clean, shining, front wheels cocked at an angle so each sat perfectly parallel to its neighbor. It took skilled handling to get them all arranged like that, and would take more skillful handling still to back one of them out of the line without sending all of them crashing one into the next with an ugly jangling of steel on steel.

“In or out, kid.”

Mesmerized by the bikes, their beacon-like glow, Harlan hadn’t noticed a man – a Lean Dog! – approach him from the side, and he startled hard. When he jerked, his feet slid on the gravel, and his already-dizzy state nearly sent him to the ground. He floundered, arms waving wildly, and swallowed his lurching heartbeat, finally regaining his footing. But not before making a total jackass of himself.

When he’d blinked the haze of black spots from his vision, he saw that the Lean Dog now standing opposite him was ofaverage height and build, with a scraggy length of beard hanging to the middle of the Rolling Stones concert t-shirt he wore beneath his cut. He wore sunglasses, and a skull cap, and rings glittered on his fingers as he pulled a cigarette from a packet and stuck it in the corner of his mouth. Harlan scanned the patches sewn to the front of his cut, looking for some mark of rank, but found none, only little symbols that meant nothing to him.

“Kid. You deaf?” the Dog said, and Harlan startled all over again, because he’d been asked a question, and the man before him expected an answer.

If only he could remember the question.

“What?” he asked, intelligently.

With the beard and the sunglasses, it was difficult to read the man’s expression. His mouth plucked to the side around the cigarette and he produced a lighter. “You’re standing in the gate.”Dumbasswent unspoken, but heavily implied. “Are you in or out?”

For one petrified second, Harlan wanted to bolt.Out, and he would whirl, and go sprinting back down the road to his pilfered truck.

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