Page 229 of Fury

“Baby, go inside,” Butler said to Tania.

“But—”

“Go.”

Footsteps behind me, a door closing in the distance.

“I had no idea,” Butler said. “That’s how loyal Tania is to you, to both of you. How faithful. You’re real important to her, and you know it. I know it.”

I knew that, and I didn’t resent Tania. I didn’t. I was glad Lenore had her to lean on in those terrible days. But nothing fit, nothing made sense, nothing. No words could help me, none came. The broken asphalt teetered between my legs through the blur as I struggled to catch my breath.

Butler propped himself on the curb alongside me. He leaned back on his hands, legs stretched out. The road lamp’s buzzy hum a few yards away from us seemed loud. Tree branches shuffled in the cold breeze. A car stopped at the stop sign down the street and made a right, its red taillights disappearing. The world kept turning, the world was unaffected and didn’t give a shit. Why should it?

Butler crossed his legs at his ankles. “Me and my first wife, we tried to have a kid, but it never happened, then she died. It’s too late for me and Tania now, and I got to say, a part of me is disappointed. And yeah, it sucks that you didn’t know you had a kid.”

I grit my teeth at the stab of that uninspired, lifeless nickname of my childhood being used for my daughter.

“It sucks that you didn’t get to raise her,” Butler continued. “Or be a part of her life, that she doesn’t know you’re her dad. But bro, she exists. She’s out there. You could get to know her, right? Maybe she can’t ever know you’re her real father, but you can still have her in your life in some way, a way that you’d both cherish. Me and Tania don’t get to have that. You and Lenore do. And at the end of the day, that’s a damn good place to be.”

A place to be.

That’s why Lenore had nestled herself here in the Black Hills, to be close to our daughter. To have a place. That’s why Grace and Tania had come back home. Even Butler. To have a place.

I had the wind, the road, my bikes, my fortress, my little empire. But did I have such a place? A place in someone’s life? In their heart? Where everything made sense, where you fit.

Next to me, Butler heaved a loud sigh. “Shit, I could really use a cigarette right now. Quitting sucks big time.” He recrossed his legs, glancing at me. “I’m gonna shut up now. But I’m staying right here.”

Twenty minutes later, I toreout of Meager, out of South Dakota. I rode hard.

Tania’s words from months ago drilled in my brain as the wind pounded me.“You had it all, and you both let it go.”

I’d let it go. Me. All these years I’d thought Lenore had gotten irritated with the difficulty of being together, hadn’t been able to cope in the long term, had let her fear ride her, and ultimately took the easy way out. My scorn at her wanting something normal had burned bright. Yet all this time, she’d remained true. She’d taken our broken compass and given it a new life on her body, stamping herself with the story of us, keeping us close to her always. A fairytale of dark and light. Evil and good. Ink woven memories, ink tears splattered on flesh. Her tears, blue green tears dripping down over us.

Love. All for love.

Had her love been stronger, truer than mine?

Mine was dark and mean and cruel. Bitterness had scorched my love, fueling me like a blowtorch that incinerated everything it touched.

Lenore had stayed the course of her True North. For a place. All for love, and the fruit that it had born.

My Harley plowed through the black night, the engine shuddering through me.

“Nebraska…the Good Life”

Why, why, why did we have to sacrifice love for love?

64

Iwas high on rage.

Rage had never let me down. Rage always pointed me in the right direction, and this was the direction I’d been wanting to set my dogs free in for decades. Since the beginning of time.

Fuck treaties, fuck peace. Fuck all of it.

I contacted Mishap and gave him a new assignment. My plan was met with his usual silence. He calculated. I waited.

“You sure?” he finally said.

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