Page 7 of Volt
“All right, I appreciate the faith you’re all putting in me,” Doc says. “I don’t take this lightly in any way. I’ll be the sort of president you all can be proud of. The kind of president Prophet would be proud of.”
His words are met with applause and everybody rapping their bottles on the tables. Everything suddenly feels so surreal. I mean, I know Prophet is gone. That he’s not coming back. Ever. But even knowing that, I’m still trying to process it all. Still trying to come to grips with what I saw in that warehouse. Still trying to wrap my mind around the fact that I watched Prophet die right in front of me.
Trying to banish it from my mind is pointless. I know it’s something that’s going to be with me until the day I die—just as the deaths of my friends over in the shit are still with me. I never forget. It’s both a blessing and a curse.
“All right, guys. First things first,” Doc intones. “Let’s go and get our fallen brothers. Let’s bring them home.”
Everybody in the clubhouse gets to their feet, their reaction as unanimous as the vote that put him into the big chair to begin with. It’s a good start—a good start to closing a horribly difficult chapter for the club and everybody in it.
***
I sit on one of the park benches near the western wall of the compound. I drain the last of my bottle and toss it into the trash can then pull another out of the cooler beside me and crack it open. Shaken by my announcement, most of the guys have already gone to deal with the emotional fallout in their own way. We’ll eventually come back together to deal with it as a club but at least, for the moment, we need to get our own heads back on straight.
It’s a task that’s easier said than done. I take a long swallow of beer and try to shut out the images of Prophet taking a bullet through the head out of my mind. I can’t stop the echo of the shot or the wet meaty sound of his fucking brain splattering on the concrete behind him from rattling around in my head. It’s playing on a goddamn constant loop running through my mind.
I see Spyder walking toward me so I take another swallow of beer and try to fight off the tears that are threatening to spill over. I sniff loudly and look away as Spyder takes a seat on the top of the table next to me, the cooler between us. He pulled out a beer and popped the top then took a long swallow. We sit in silence for a while, and he was kind enough not to say anything about me sitting over here crying. I’m appreciative of the fact that Spyder isn’t pushing and is giving me the time to gather myself.
“You all right?” he asks.
I shrug. “Not really,” I say. “He shouldn’t be dead. It should be me—”
He shook his head. “You’re not the one who killed Zavala’s brother. You didn’t owe Emiliano a blood debt, man.”
I shake my head, grief squeezing my heart tight. “I didn’t do anything, man. I didn’t say anything,” I spit, my voice filled with self-loathing. “I just sat there like a bitch and didn’t try to stop it.”
“And if you had, you’d be just as dead as Prophet, Axle, and Beaker,” he said. “You’d be lying on that concrete floor in a puddle of your own piss and blood same as them. And who would that serve? Certainly not you.”
“But maybe—”
“You need to get that out of your head right now,” he said. “There is nothing you could have said or done that would have changed a damn thing that happened out at that warehouse, man. Nothing. Do you understand me?”
I hear his words, but they don’t connect with me. There isn’t anything he can say that is going to lift the weight of guilt I feel on my shoulders. He nudges me with his elbow, making me look over at him.
“Do you hear me?”
“Yeah, I hear you,” I say.
“Then say it back to me.”
“Dude, I’m not—”
“Say it. Now,” he says, his voice firm.
I let out a long, frustrated breath. “There’s nothing I could have said or done that would have changed anything that happened out there.”
He takes a drink of his beer and nods. “That’s good. Now you need to believe it because that shit’s true.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not sure the rest of the guys feel the same way. I caught a few looks in there,” I say. “Some of them blame me for what happened.”
“That’s bullshit. That’s all in your head, bro. There ain’t a man in there who blames you for what happened.”
“I wish I could believe that.”
“You better believe it because it’s true.”
We lapse into a tense silence as we drink our beers. I appreciate what he’s trying to do but it’s not as easy as he seems to think it is. It’s not something I can just let go and be done with. This is something that’s going to stick with me for a while. Maybe forever. The bottom line is that Prophet, Beaker, and Axle are dead and I’m not. How am I supposed to justify that? How am I supposed to rationalize that away? The fact is, I can’t. And he can try to absolve me of my guilt all he wants but it’s not going to ease the burden pressing down on me.
“I know it’s not going to be easy but you need to find a way to put this behind you,” he says, his tone gentler. “You need to get your head right because the fight’s coming and we’re going to need you at your best, brother. We need you.”
