Page 22 of Freak
Badge gave him a flat look—a familiar expression that meantI am surrounded by idiots and assholes, of whom you are currently the worst. “SoCal is doing a cross-country run to New York, and they’ll be coming through Missouri around the weekend of our Harvest Festival. It’s short notice, but Connor and I knocked around the idea of making that weekend a Horde rally, too. I reached out to Rhett to see if Montana’s free then. He says they got nothing big on their schedule, so he’ll put in on their table if we vote to host. That’s the business on the table now: are we down for a rally in about a month?”
A club rally was a pretty big thing to have zoned entirely out on.
Connor Elliott was president of the SoCal charter; Rhett Mackie the president of Montana, recently elected after their former president, Rust Baker, had been stabbed to death in a back-alley ambush. Both charters still worked in the one-percenter deeps, but SoCal stayed fairly close to the shore. Montana, on the other hand, swam in some choppy borderland waters—and in Mel’s opinion, Rhett was as much a shark as anything in that water, and likely to take his charter even deeper.
But Montana’s officers were Montana’s business, and their vote had been unanimous. It would be interesting to see how it all played out.
However, the topic on the table was a rally—pleasure, not business—so Mel shifted in his seat again and focused. “I never say no to a party, but ... a real rally? Can we pull that together in a month?”
“If we keep the ... women ... out of it,” Tommy mumbled, and everybody at the table chuckled. He grinned sidelong.
Tommy had had a rough summer. He’d been shot trying to look into the attack on Abigail’s place, and, after a stroke in the hospital, he was in the midst of heavy-duty outpatient rehab and had some miles to go before he reached his old self. He was back at the table, but he wasn’t riding yet, or working. An aluminum walker waited by his seat.
Still chuckling, Badger said, “The women are busy with the Harvest Festival. This is just the three Horde charters getting together. Rally’s the best word I got for it, but I’m not talking about hiring bands or planning activities. The festival’s got all that shit. All we want’s a party, so all we need is places for everybody to bed down a couple nights, and a bunch of beer, booze, and beef for the clubhouse.”
“We can’t do it without the women,” Isaac said. “And y’all know it.” He turned to Badger. “You also know the women’ll be worried about how the people who come for the festival’ll feel about so much leather wandering around. I’d be surprised if Adrienne doesn’t raise the biggest stink about it.”
Badger nodded. While he might have barked at anybody else who brought up his wife at the table, Isaac got a pass for just about everything. “Yeah, you’re probably right. I’ll talk to her—and you get Lilli on board. They don’t need to plan more shit, but ... yeah, we gotta loop ‘em in. I’ll talk to Kalina, too, and make sure there’s plenty of girls around.” He cast a glance around the table. “Hands up if you’re down for a Horde rally on Harvest Festival weekend, details TBD.”
Unsurprisingly, hands went up all around the table. Mel’s went up enthusiastically; there was little he liked better than a righteous clubhouse rager. And Montana would surely be on good behavior in Mother’s house.
Badger grinned brightly. “Alright, fellas. Let’s party!”
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~oOo~
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After the Keep, Meltook off. Technically, he still had some paperwork to finish, but it could wait. If he wanted his head on straight again, he and Abigail needed to figure their shit out, and that could not wait.
He considered letting her know he was coming, but last night she’d mentioned having several appointments today, and he didn’t want to give her a chance to tell him she was too busy. If he showed up, her country manners wouldn’t let her turn him away, no matter how busy she was. Maybe it was mildly shitty to exploit her kindness, but he was comfortable with some mild shittiness he could clean up with an apology.
He pulled through her open gate—her cats sat on opposing gateposts like fluffy gargoyles—and rode up the rise that kept her property almost entirely hidden from the road. As he topped that rise, he saw an old Toyota minivan, its red paint oxidized to pink and crusted with a thick layer of gravel dust, streaked darkly after the recent rain, parked behind Abigail’s much older truck.
The antique was in visibly better shape. Abigail’s respect for old things approached reverence; though she was the fourth generation to drive that old truck, it was in solid condition. Even the green paint looked good.
Mel also vaguely recognized the beater Toyota, but his bike was parked and he was walking behind the van before he realized whose it was. Road dirt had obscured the three bumper stickers applied haphazardly to the hatch door, but up close he could read them:My Other Car is a Broomstick, Yield to the Goddess, and, of course,Blessed Be.
That was Zaxx’s mom’s van. Brittany Bello. Dammit.
Mel drew up short and reconsidered the decisions that had brought him to this moment. Maybe it’d be better if he left and came back later.
He and Brittany had a history. It was ancient history, and really it had been only a blip on the timeline, but it was not among the proudest moments of his life.
Years ago, not too long after he’d moved to Signal Bend to take care of his grandfather, and before he’d known anybody in town very well, he’d picked Brittany up at Tuck’s—which was what everybody used to call No Place (a lot of old-timers still did). His grandfather had been in the hospital for a few nights, and Mel, with somebody else taking care of the old man for a minute, had gone out to enjoy some rare free time. A pretty redhead had taken up the stool beside his, and they’d struck up a flirtation.
They’d fucked spectacularly out in the parking lot, in his truck. He’d asked for her number after, because they’d had a good time and he wasn’t an asshole, but she’d laughed and told him she was married.
Because he wasn’t an asshole, he didn’t go at her for withholding that biographical tidbit, but he’d been damn salty about it. However, it was one night, he wasn’t the one who’d made a vow to anybody, and he didn’t know her husband, thus he hadn’t shat on a friend. He said goodbye and went on with his life.
When, though, he’d next seen Brittany at the gas station a couple months later and she’d had a little belly bump, Mel had had a real bad moment. She’d been with a skinny guy he’d assumed was the husband, and a little boy about seven or eight years old. Mel had bailed without confronting her, assuring himself that it was too big a bump for two months, and it was much more likely her husband had put the bump there. However, that meant he’d fucked a pregnant woman, so it didn’t fully improve his outlook on the situation.
As far as Mel knew, that secret was one of the best-kept the town of Signal Bend had ever managed. He himself had never uttered a single word about it to anyone. He had never heard a word of it from anyone, or even caught the kind of glance that would suggest anyone knew he had that kind of secret. These days he saw her husband, Tyler, around often enough that if Tyler knew, he’d surely have come for satisfaction of some kind. Zaxx, who’d been that little boy at the gas station and was now his Horde brother, had never indicated he knew anything about it.
Even so, Mel still got the guilts when he happened upon Brittany—or the little girl who’d resulted from that bump: Zelda Bello. Zaxx’s little sister.
Zelda was currently on the porch, slouched in Abigail’s hanging wicker chair. Her eyes were glued to her phone, and she had a buff-feathered chicken dozing in her lap.
