Page 15 of Gonzo's Grudge
But standing here now, a decade later, staring down at a coffin draped in Pop Squally’s cut laid over his earned American Flag, it didn’t look like armor anymore. It looked like a wound that would scar us all.
Pop Squally wasn’t just my president. He wasn’t just the man who sat at the head of the table and banged the gavel. He was my compass. My anchor. The son of a bitch who taught me to survive when the world was set on chewing me up.
When the wild man inside me was testing the waters of the Marines, it was Pop who sat me down and got me on the straight and narrow. When the cops shoved me face first onto the hood of my car it was Pop who showed up dragging me out of the county jail for the drunken behavior at a strip club when I was twenty-one. It was Pop who went to my court-martial hearing for getting in trouble off base when I wasn’t authorized to leave quarters. The man not only saved my career, but he honestly saved my life. And when I earned my final rocker as a Saint’s Outlaw, it was Pop Squally who sewed that patch on my cut.
And his words that day have carried me ever since. “Brotherhood ain’t blood, Gonzo. It’s bone deep. You break it, you’ll feel the pain forever.”
Now his bones were about to be in the ground separated from us forever.
The Saint’s Outlaws stood in formation around the grave. We carried him with a Marine guard escort since we weren’t using them for pallbearers. Every patch gleamed black, teal, and beige in the sunlight. Leather creaked as brothers shifted, boots heavy in the wet grass. Our bikes circled the cemetery like steel beasts, engines still warm from the ride in.
We’d thundered through Dreadnought that morning in a procession so loud windows shook and dogs barked for miles. It wasn’t just a funeral—it was a warning. This town would never forget Pop Squally’s last ride.
But for me, for us—it wasn’t just about grief. It was about rage. Because Pop didn’t die of age, or chance. He died of betrayal.
And the reason for that betrayal stood across the graveyard, dressed in a black silk dress with a veil shading her tear-streaked face.
Hampton Stanley’s wife.
As much as I wanted to choke the very life from her body and feel her last breath in my arms, it wasn’t what Pop would have wanted. She fell in love, he was in lust. They weren’t destined to be something, but she wouldn’t leave Stanley, and his pride was too much to have a whore for a wife that fucked around with a biker.
The preacher’s voice droned, but I barely heard him. The bugle piped in playing Taps before the guns fired his twenty-one gun salute. With a nod from the presentation Marine, I removed the cut from the casket, draping it over my arm. Two Marines flanked the casket at the head and foot to remove the flag. With practiced precision they fold the flag and present it to Pop’s nephew as that was his only blood family in attendance. The preacher piped back up and the ache in my chest grew tighter. His words about eternal rest and God’s plan floated like smoke, meaningless against the roar inside me. What the hell did God know about Pop Squally? About what it meant to bleed for a brother, to keep a code when the world offered you nothing but rot?
This wasn’t God’s plan.
This was Hampton Stanley’s.
And his wife had been Pop’s lover.
She thought she could hide behind her veil, crying crocodile tears, pretending like she hadn’t sold him out. Pretending like she wasn’t the rope that tied him down. Luckily she kept her distance and allowed us to grieve our president without her invading our time as a reminder of why he was gone.
The official service done, it was Saint’s time to honor our brother. I passed the cut to Tower to hold while I had the honor of the first scoop. The shovel felt heavy in my hands. The dirt was wet, sticking in clumps, weighing twice what it should. I tossed it in, each thud on the coffin like a gunshot in my chest.
Memories slammed me with every scoop.
Pop laughing so hard he fell out of his chair when I accidentally lit my sleeve on fire during a run. Pop grabbing me by the collar when I nearly shot a man who’d spat at me, growling, Save your bullets for the ones who matter, Gonzo.
He mattered.
And now he was gone.
Shanks lit the torch. The flames caught quick, leaping sky-high in the old oil barrel. One by one, the brothers dropped their flames in, fists raised high.
“For Pop!” they roared, voices shaking the earth.
“For Pop!” I bellowed, throat raw, chest hollow. I dropped the worn cut down into the barrel, allow the flames to carry the particles to the sky where Pop would be riding for eternity.
The fire reflected in their eyes, but all I saw was smoke. Smoke and betrayal.
I didn’t wait. I walked straight for her. She stiffened, clutching her purse like it was a shield.
“Mrs. Stanley,” I said, my voice low and sharp.
She tried to steady herself. “I only came to pay my respects. He was a good man.”
“Don’t.” I stepped closer. “Don’t you dare pretend like you respected him.”
Her lips trembled. “That’s not fair?—”
