Page 68 of Lord Have Mercy Part Four: Big Son

Harlan didn’t realize he’d grinned like a loon until Felix grinned back.

And then, miraculously, Felixclapped him on the shoulder. Like they werefriends. “Hang in there. Bob’s just making you jump through hoops.”

“Thanks,” Harlan said, “I will.” But Felix had already turned and headed off down the hall toward the restroom.

~*~

Late that night, into the wee hours, really, when half the Dogs were passed out in the common room in various states of post-coital undress, Bob called Harlan in back, and put a shiny, black leather cut with the word PROSPECT stitched into its bottom rocker in his hands. “It takes a year,” he said, sober and wakeful despite the condition of everyone else. “Most can’t hang that long. Maybe you’ll be different, but maybe you won’t.” He left it at that, with a shrug.

That was how Harlan Boyle began his stint as a Lean Dogs MC prospect.

Nineteen

Remy was hungry. He had been for hours, now; he wasn’t sure how many.

At first, when Boyle tied him up in the back of the van the day he snatched him from school, and in the motel, just before Boyle shot the man with the greasy hair, his belly had been too full of butterflies for hunger to feel like anything more than a hollow, queasy ache that felt more like the time he’d eaten too much shrimp and woken in the middle of the night to find he’d thrown up all over his bed and himself. “Good ol’ Tennessee shrimp,” Daddy had said, chuckling, as he helped him, shivering, into the bathtub so he could peel off his soiled pajamas. “Fresh from the ocean.”

“There’s no ocean in Tennessee, Daddy,” he’d pointed out.

“My point exactly, kiddo.”

But at some point on the long drive to New Orleans, the initial panic had given way to his more usual worries. Boredom, longing for his friends, his family. Thirst. Hunger.

Which was chief among his concerns at the moment, as he dragged the end of a stick through the sand of the embankment upon which he currently sat, insects droning all around him, the occasional fly landing on the tips of his ears and nose to be batted away. He’d had a handful of dry beef jerky for breakfast, and Fallon had told him they would “eat later,” but so far that hadn’t happened.

He'd spent a whole day in the sprawling, rose-decorated house with the lavish yard with the woman Boyle had called his “Aunt Regina.” Remy didn’t believe she was his anything, much less his aunt. Mama had two brothers, one of which was younger than Remy himself, and Daddy had two half-brothers, both ofwhom looked just like him. But the blonde woman with the orange tan and the dry smoker’s laugh didn’t look like anyone he knew. She’d said she was Remy’s grandmother’s daughter, no relation to the Remy he was named for, but Remy knew all about lying, and how often people did it, especially people who didn’t like his family, so he thought of her simply as Regina, no relation.

She’d offered him food. A little. The yogurt she gave him for breakfast, before she walked him back up to the room in which he’d awakened and locked him in again. He spent a long, boring time staring out the window at the lawn below, occasionally testing the window to ensure it hadn’t come miraculously unstuck since the last time he tried. Lunchtime came and went, shadows shifting across the floor, and his stomach was growling, his head light and woozy before a knock finally sounded at the door, and a different woman brought him a sandwich on a plate. It was crunchy peanut butter, which he’d never liked, but scarfed down anyway, still ravenous afterward. At home he had breakfast, lunch, and a snack. That night there were no snacks, and no dinner, even.

The next morning, this morning, Fallon came to get him, and said, “Come on, we’re leaving.”

There had been a moment, walking from the house to the car parked in the driveway, when Remy contemplated running. Fallon’s grip on his shoulder was loose and distracted, and he knew he could duck out from under it, and dodge any attempt at a re-grab. But the property was encircled by a high, black metal fence, even across the driveway. There was a wicked gate, there, one that Fallon let them out remotely by punching a code into a panel through the rolled-down window. And so Remy climbed into the backseat, and buckled his belt, and asked about breakfast. Fallon had chucked the half-empty package of jerkyover his shoulder, and now Remy was hungry again, stomach empty and gnawing.

He dragged the stick – it was a good stick, sturdy, and straight, without any poky bits sticking off the sides – through the sand, a crosshatch tic-tac-toe board. He drew a circle in the top right square, and then an X beneath it. Another circle, another X. Tic-tac-toe. Then he swiped the stick hard, back and forth, and erased it.

He twisted around to peer over his shoulder at the hulking, green-streaked metal building in whose shade he was sitting, and saw that Fallon was still on the phone, pacing back and forth across the rickety length of deck that ran along a large, square pool that didn’t look fit for swimming.

He’d asked what this place was when they arrived, and at first Fallon didn’t answer. Just turned off the car, pocketed the keys, and climbed out. Fallon, Remy had learned, was either very scatter-brained, or now so thoroughly frightened of Boyle that he was prone to lapse into dazes, either not hearing or not understanding a question when Remy asked it.

“Where are we?” Remy asked, three times, as they walked toward the mildewed slab sides of the building. It had lots of big, gridded windows, and a small door, but Fallon turned left when they reached it, and waded through the hip-high weeds to go around to the back of the building. “Where are we? Where are we?”

When that yielded no answer, he’d said, “What is this place?”

“Shut your fucking yap,” Fallon sighed, without any heat. He paused, and turned back, one hand on his hip and the other gesturing up at the side of the building. “It’s an old defunct gator processing depot.” His lip curled, and he shuddered. “Why anyone would want to…” He trailed off, shook his head, and said, “Boyle says they built a new one, and this one’s suitable.”

“Suitable for what?”

“Nevermind.” He’d turned around and kept walking.

Behind the building, they’d found a patch of sand beach along the edge of the glittering green-black water, a rectangular, concrete-lined pool with a narrow deck above, a series of roll-top doors that let into the building, and an empty boat slip and dock, with room for dozens of boats to tie up.

When Fallon turned his back on him, and started making phone calls, Remy wandered down to the scrap of beach, and had been sitting there ever since, drawing in the hot white sand with a stick, stomach rumbling, wishing he was home and could go into the kitchen and get a packet of Swiss Cake Rolls out of the box in the pantry.

He wondered idly what his brother and sister were doing; if they missed him; if they knew what had happened to him. What about Mama and Daddy? Daddy, he knew, or one of his uncles – short hair, he recalled, and tried not to get too excited – was looking for him. Had followed Boyle and Fallon to Louisiana. He would be hard to find, out here in the wildness, but he didn’t reckon there was anyone better able to navigate the swamp than Daddy.

“Jesus Christ!” Fallon shouted, suddenly, and Remy twisted around to see that he was still on the phone, one hand clenched in the hair on top of his head, big sweat rings staining his shirt beneath his arms. “I told you – no, I told you not to bring her into this! And now look what’s happened!”

He yelled some more, but Remy tuned him out and turned back to the water.

---