Page 67 of Lord Have Mercy Part Four: Big Son

“Most people can’t cut it,” Frenchie said, like a challenge, so Harlan wiped his face, and swallowed his pride, and buffed chrome tailpipes until they blinded him in the noonday sun.

Finally Saturday, the day of judgement, arrived, and Harlan threw himself into party prep. The whole chapter would be in attendance to welcome the Tennessee vice president, someone named Ghost, who was spoken of with mixed reverence and fear. In his week of bustling around, washing windows and folding towels, he’d heard dozens of stories about the man. He was apparently a hardass, and a badass, and just an ass in general. He’d painted a vivid mental portrait of the man, steely-eyed and unforgiving, and he was more than a little nervous about his arrival. If he was scarier than Bob, Harlan didn’t want to meet him. But the party was one last chance to prove his worth, so he spit-shined the clubhouse, helped the girls – Lean Bitches, he’d learned: groupies, housekeepers, and bedwarmers, none of whom wanted a damn thing to do with him beyond his ability to schlep stuff – stock the fridge and pantry with enough food to feed an army of bikers.

By five p.m., all the Louisiana bikers were in house, drinking, shooting pool, shouting at the TV. A few were arm-wrestling, and the winner challenged Felix, who waved him off good-naturedly with a quip about not wanting to anger the man’s wife when he inevitably broke his wrist. The comment earned big laughs, and Felix’s smile was small, and pleased in a way it never had been in the clearing.

It was funny, Harlan observed from the kitchen doorway: Felixfithere in a way he never seemed to among his friends in the clearing. Colin and Tucker were the only friends he’d ever seen Felix hang around with – though, to be fair, perhaps his swamp spying wasn’t the broadest view of Felix’s life as a whole – and he didn’t seem to like either of them. At all. Just as they didn’t seem to like him. Felix had struck him as terribly lonely, when he watched him; the way he occupied the same space as the others, but the way he never smiled or laughed; the way he tucked his big shoulders, and made himself smaller – save for the times when he stood to his full, staggering height and forced Colin to take a step back.

But the Lean Dogs clearly liked him. They ribbed in a good-natured way, laughing with him, rather than at him. When they remarked on his size, it was with awe; when they asked his opinion, it was with genuine interest and respect. Even though he carried poetry books under his arm, and was homeschooled, and called a freak by his peers, he seemed perfectly at home amidst this motley crowd of outlaws.

“Take this,” one of the girls, Jessica, said behind him, and he turned to collect the tray of shots she held.

Harlan was rushed off his feet seeing to the Dogs’ needs, and didn’t have a chance to observe, let alone get close to Felix.

The Tennessee Dogs arrived around eight. The door didn’t squeak – Harlan had oiled its hinges on Tuesday – but a sudden, raucous cheer went up. Someone threw up his hands and knocked the glasses Harlan was carrying to the ground, where they shattered and sprayed bright shards out in a bomb-like radius.

Someone shouted at him – “Pick that up, you idiot, there’s glass everywhere!” – but Harlan turned toward the door, and stared.

The man who’d come through the door had the sort of trim, well-muscled physique that worked a simple white t-shirt to best effect. His cut was festooned with patches of all sorts, the most prominent those of rank above the left breast pocket:Vice President. And beneath that:Legacy. He was dark-haired, and lean-faced, with stark cheekbones and jawline, a scruff of beard on the flat planes of his cheeks. It was ameanface, Harlan thought. Harsh, sharp, his gaze dark and cold beneath his black brows. The difference between a wolf’s stare and a golden retriever’s smile.

“Ghost!” the Louisiana Dogs chorused, and the man himself reached to accept the first offered hand, before being pulled into a hearty, back-slapping hug. He grinned, and that was mean, too; Ghost was the sort of man, it seemed, whose face wasn’t softened by a smile.

Dog after Dog stepped up to greet him, the clap of hands on leather-covered backs like firecracker bursts through the room. Ghost accepted every shake, and every hug, but Harlan noted the way it was the others coming to him, the others leaning toward him, and never vice versa.

Belatedly, he saw that Ghost hadn’t come alone. A second, slighter man, hair a wind-swept tangle of golds and wheats, slunk along in Ghost’s shadow. Younger, quieter, hands jammed in his pockets. But when he scanned the room, his eyes alighted on Harlan for a brief, heart-stopping second, and they were the brightest, eeriest shade of blue Harlan had ever seen.

He shivered, and turned away, and went back to work.

~*~

As it turned out, Harlan did get the chance to speak with Felix that evening, but not in the way he’d originally hoped or expected.

By the end of the night, he was ragged with fatigue and tamped-down nerves. His adrenaline, singing at the start of the evening, had frayed and frayed until he felt like he had a hangover, head throbbing and gut shivering inward against itself. Felix had been ensconced in a corner with the two Tennessee members – he thought the blond was called “Walsh,” based on snippets of overheard conversation – for the past two hours, talking quietly with serious looks on their faces. Harlan had long since given up on having a shot at engaging with Felix, and was concentrating now on mopping up spills – some beer, some vomit – and trying not to look at the trio of girls who had traded drink duty for dancing topless on the tables. There was something…repulsive about it, to him. That sick, excited, oily churn he’d felt in his stomach when he visited Dee Lécuyer on Burgundy Street returned tenfold when he watched the first girl unlace the corset top she’d been wearing, and he’d found himself turned away, face flaming, as nauseated as he was aroused.

It wasn’t that he didn’twantwomen – he did, sometimes so acutely he woke from a dream in the middle of the night and found he’d come messily in his boxers in his sleep – but he didn’t…he supposed he didn’twantto want them. Didn’t want that biological weak spot to exist for him. He had goals, he had dreams, and a woman would only get in the way of them.

So it was with his head down, and his gaze fixed forward, that he made his way down the back hallway to the supply closet, opened the door, and attempted to stow the hand truck without paying close attention to the heavy crates of bottled beer stowed precariously on the overhead shelves. His first clue that he was about to get concussed into next week was the rattle of glass shifting against glass.

He flung his head back. “Shit–!”

And a pair of huge, tanned hands caught the crates and shoved them back into place. A broad, warm chest pressed firmagainst his back in the process, and Harlan shrank away from it, shocked, face-planting into the lower shelves and catching a mouthful of feather duster.

The hands and chest pulled back, and Harlan fumbled his way around so he faced his rescuer. He already knew who it was – the hands, scarred across the knuckles from fishhooks, the fingers long, the nails blunt and white in contrast to the copper of his skin – but he still found himself biting back a gasp when he came face to face – or, well, face-to-throat – with Felix.

“Whoa,” Felix said, hands hovering in front of him. “You alright?”

The harsh, black slashes of his brows were drawn together in concern. He didn’t seem snide, or mocking, or dictatorial, the way all the other Dogs had been with him. Harlan’s heart lurched and swelled and filled his mouth, and for a moment, he couldn’t respond.

“Hey.” Felix waved his hand back and forth in front of his face. “You good?”

“I – yeah. Yeah, I’m good.” Harlan cleared his throat and stood up straight. “Yeah. I’m good. Thanks.”

“Sure.” Felix nodded, and made to step back – but then he paused, and his frown deepened, and grew thoughtful. “Are you the guy who wants to prospect?”

Oh God. Oh hell. Felix had heard of him. He knew who he was! Again, Harlan’s pulse nearly strangled him. He swallowed it down and said, “Yeah–” His voice cracked like a pubescent boy’s – Felix’s lips twitched and stilled, in a held-back smile that made him wish the bottles had indeed crashed onto his head. He tried again. “Yeah, that’s – that’s me.”

Felix’s brow smoothed. He jammed his big hands in the back pockets of his jeans, and despite his size, and the harshness of his features, he looked boyish in a way he never had in the clearing. He looked at ease, comfortable in his own skin. It wasa good look on him; Lean Dog Felix was far more settled than Clearing Felix.

“You’ll do fine,” Felix said. “For what it’s worth, the place looks cleaner than it has in a long time. In fact.” He leaned in, tone going conspiratorial, gaze flitting over his shoulder. “The guys said Ghost is real particular about housekeeping.” His eyes got big, likeget a load of this guy. “He said the bathroom looked better than the last time he was here.”

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