Page 94 of Lord Have Mercy Part Four: Big Son

Rottie looked wounded. He leaned forward, elbows on the table, so he could look down the length of it at Walsh, and raised his voice to be heard above the argument that gained heat and volume as Albie bit back at RJ’s barbs. “Why didn’t he tell us? Did he think we couldn’tpretendhe was dead?”

He didn’t think Aidan could pretend, Walsh thought, and finally steeled himself, and turned to gauge the man himself.

Aidan’s gaze was already fixed on Walsh, and didn’t change when Walsh made eye contact. His expression was terribly vacant, the way it had been out in the parking lot, and then again in the office, the day Walsh broke the news of Ghost’s “death” to him. He knew that the others – Ghost especially – tended to discount Aidan’s mental acuity. They took flippant remarks and displays of a shallow nature at face value: they assumed Aidan didn’t think all that much, and even when he did, not deeply. But Walsh had spent too long with horses to be dismissive of withdrawal. Sometimes a horse really was dumb as a post…but not most of the time. And not Aidan. Aidan who stared at him with eyes dark and shielded, a wall thrown up between what he’d been told, and the way it was ricocheting through his brain like a bullet glancing off steel.

“Aidan,” he said, quietly.

He blinked at the sound of his name, and braced his hands on the edge of the table, pushed himself back so his shoulders pressed into the chair. “Be quiet,” he said, in a normal tone of voice, and Walsh thought at first Aidan was speaking to him. But then Aidan turned his head, and shouted, “Shut up!” to the table at large.

It was not a petulant, reactive scream, but a command, and everyone fell abruptly silent.

Aidan sat tall, hands still braced on the table, and he looked like a vice president, in tight control of himself, surveying them all disdainfully. A look that carried through in his voice, forceful and dampening. “Do any of you think there was a win here for Walsh? You all know my dad, you know how he works, how he thinks.” He gestured across the table at Michael. “He was so paranoid when Holly first showed up, he was willing to let her sickass family take her back if he thought they were a threat to the club.”

Oh shit, Walsh thought, because of all the scenarios he’d run in his mind, this hadn’t been one of them.

Aidan continued: “He sent Mercy back to NOLA when he found out he knocked Ava up. He threatened not to send her to college if Mercy didn’t leave! And then, when it suited him, he had Mercy come back to Knoxville, and tried to say they couldn’t be together!” Aidan slapped the table at the end of that sentence, and more looks were traded, these tight, wary…and full of remembrance. Brothers kept their heads down and didn’t get involved in the romantic lives of the others, but they’d all borne witness to these two dramas: Ghost’s callous ruling on Holly, his bloodless forbiddance of Mercy’s dog-loyal love for Ava.

“Maggie – his own wife,” Aidan said, “ran off to New Orleans without telling him. What does that tell you? What was Walsh supposed to do? His president gave him an order. If he disobeyed it, he would have been a disloyal vice president. But by following it, now he’s a disloyal brother. I’d love to know what any of you would have done in his position.

“What would you have done, RJ? Huh? Would you have told us all right away? Been the bigger man? And I don’t want a buncha bullshit,” Aidan said, when RJ started to respond. “’Cause you ain’t ever been in charge of anything in your life, and for good reason.

“What about you, old man?” he said, turning to Hound. “You got something real wise to say? You wanna start bitching about the good old days?”

Hound pursed his lips, and made an indignant face, but said nothing.

“Nobody at this table has ever run this club, nobody but Walsh, and my dad, who isn’t at this table, because he made a stupid fucking selfish decision not to be here…” He sighed. “Because he thought risking his own life in secret was better than all of us…” Here he faltered, teeth clicking together, throat working as he swallowed.

“He is an asshole,” he said, with a dip of his head toward Roman. “You’re right. He always has been. This is just one in a long line of asshole things he’s done.

“But don’t point the finger at Walsh. He’s following orders, and it almost killed him.” He dared someone to argue with a look, and then turned to Walsh. Beneath the impressive vice-presidential veneer of acceptance, his eyes had gone wild at the edges. “My question is, why tell us now?”

Emmie had asked the same thing, as gently as she’d asked everything else, as though she had sensed his fragility and had made an effort to handle him oh so carefully for fear he’d crack beyond repair. Ordinarily, he would have found it patronizing, but with T-minus thirty minutes before he addressed his club, he’d only wished she was there with him in person, small fingers working through the thatch of his hair to rub circles into his scalp, teasing at the tension headache there.

He'd known the answer, had felt its pressure like a boil building beneath the skin, but it hadn’t come to a head, hadn’t formed fully, coherently in his mind, until he’d told Emmie.

“Because now that the feds have backed off of us, I’m tired of sitting around here being useless. I see the wisdom in holding down the fort…but nothing about what’s been happening is wise,or normal, or even understandable. Our women and children are in London, and there’s nothing here to keep safe except a bunch of empty buildings.”

It was more than that, and they all knew it. It was their city to protect, their reputation, their legacy. But what sort of legacy was it going to be if a little boy died in New Orleans, and half the club lost their lives or their minds trying to get him back?

“I’m not really the president, and going forward, I might not be anything, depending on how the voting shakes out. So I’m not going to give orders. You can stay here if you want, or you can hand over your cut and walk away, or you can…make up your own mind. About what to do next. Ghost is in New York.” He pushed back his chair, and stood, and his legs were steadier, stronger, than he’d hoped. “I’m going to New Orleans.”

Then he turned, walked to the door, opened it, and walked through it.

His heart was beating like a high school drumline, but the steadiness persisted. He’d come to a decision, and it was the correct one. Whatever happened afterward, he was sure of his decision to go south.

He heard footfalls behind him – but not the slow, ground-covering gait he’d expected from Michael. No, these were quick, almost running.

He reached the bar, and turned.

And his face exploded with pain.

A bright, hot, numbing shock of it along the left edge of his jaw, and Walsh had time to be grateful that whoever it wasn’t hadn’t aimed for the eye, and risked knocking him out. Then the momentum of the blow carried him sideways, he tripped, knocked over a stool, and would have hit the floor if he hadn’t fetched up against the bar. He caught himself with a hand braced on the smooth wood surface, and reached to touch his struck face with the other, ready for a second hit.

But it was only the one, and as the seconds ticked by, the first cold numbness of the strike warmed, and then flared hot, and the pain crackled in electric arcs along all the affected nerves. The skin was already swelling, tight and hot to the touch, but a quick probe with his tongue proved none of his teeth were loose, and he hadn’t bitten the inside of his cheek. He was going to have one hell of a bruise, but it wasn’t too bad, all things considered.

Anyone in the chapel could have chased him out and hit him, and any of them would have been justified. But when he turned his head, he of course found Aidan standing there.

But it was an Aidan who still looked as vice-presidential as he had in the chapel, save the working and flexing of his right hand. The knuckles were red where he’d struck Walsh, and the way he flattened and then cracked them looked like it hurt.

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