Page 17 of Claimed By My Biker Daddies
Deacon stares down a generator that steals volts in the mornings and threatens it with a different kind of fire.
Isla, Cruz’s daughter, returns from school with a cutout snowflake that looks like a star exploded and tells me I am not allowed to tape it to the gun cabinet because her teacher says art should not be afraid.
At night I stand on the porch with a cigarette I do not light and a prayer I do not admit to.
I take the napkin out and put it back.
I type her name into my phone and let the letters sit there like wet ink. I do not hit send.
I am a patient man about most things.
About this, I pretend to be.
We go north on a parts run and run into a deputy who owes me a favor yet never says so.
We go south to check a truce with men who never learned how to keep their mouths closed during silence.
I sit with the old-timers who remember when our patch belonged to a larger charter and when I cut our ties with a funeral and a fire and a promise I would earn the respect we lost by walking straighter and biting harder.
They look at me like a son who brought them a coat in winter and set a stiff price on the sleeves.
They call me Saint and I let them.
The joke was old when they gave it to me. I am not a holy man. I am a man who keeps score.
A week slips into a month in a way I pretend not to notice.
On a Tuesday I take the long road to the overlook by Route 28 because the ridge keeps the cold late and I am a man who likes an empty place to put his thoughts down while he is still moving.
The air smells like stone dust and winter breath.
The valley looks clean enough to drink.
I pull off, kill the engine, and sit while the bike ticks heat.
I pull my phone without planning it and type her name into contacts.
When I saved it all those weeks ago, I put a small sugar emoji there because I am not above private jokes with myself.
My thumb hovers over the message field.
I write three words and kill them.
I write two and kill them.
I write one and decide it is too soft for my mouth.
A crow lands on the guardrail and cocks its head like a judge.
I put the phone away because I am not being tried today.
Back at the lodge the days are even and sharp.
We fix what men break.
We feed what hunger undoes.
I wash the old enamel stove with vinegar and think about her hand flying over the dough as if she had known this kitchen longer than an evening.
