Frozen Rain: Royal Bastards MC Anchorage Chapter Page 6

  “If you’re not safe here, Nia, I can get you some help.”

  “If you truly want to help, find out what’s going on with the girls.”

  Arnie returned and Nia sat up straight.

  “Arnie,” I said. “Will you two please come with us? We can get you into a shelter tonight and see how it all plays out tomorrow. You’re too young to be out here like this.”

  “You can’t drink in the shelter,” Arnie replied. “And I’m sorry, but Nia and vodka are about the only things keeping me from going insane right now.”

  “Please,” I replied, touching Nia’s knee. “Come to the shelter. We can talk.”

  “He’s right,” Nia said. “I don’t like the rules of the shelter. We don’t have much out here, but we have each other.”

  “Besides,” Arnie added, “We’ve already had our tent ransacked once when we tried the shelter. People think you leave, and they take whatever you have. They even took our tent.”

  “It was bad,” Nia admitted.

  “We can’t go through that again,” Arnie said. “We’re fine, lady. Really.”

  “If you won’t come with me, would it be okay if I come back to visit again?” I asked.

  “Whatever,” Arnie said.

  Nia smiled. “I’d like that.”

  When she smiled, she shined, and I wanted so badly to pull her away from the sickening state in which they were living. She had to have a mother and a father or at least a sister or a brother out there wondering how she was doing.

  As I walked away that day, I wiped a tear away for Nia and Arnie. They were two young kids who’d lost faith in the system and who’d found comfort in each other when they couldn’t find it elsewhere.

  You definitely have your work cut out for you.

  6

  Rain

  “I can’t wait for this fuckin’ snow to melt, brother,” Pipeline, my best friend in the club, said as he tapped a finger against the frosty window of the airplane hangar we called home.

  Our MC was in Eagle River, about fifteen miles or so away from downtown Anchorage. Located off the beaten path, a little closer to Eagle Bay than the town’s main shopping district, we weren’t in an area people stumbled upon by accident. If you didn’t know the location of our clubhouse, you’d never find it. We liked it that way. Thursday nights, being ladies’ night at most of the Anchorage bars, were always calm at the MC. The weekends were fucking nuts, but Thursdays were always quiet.

  “Sometimes I like snow,” Pipeline, who we often called Pipe, added. “But sometimes I’m just not in the mood for it, you know?”

  One of the club whores, the nickname slapped on all MC groupies, sashayed her gorgeous ass over to us in tight leather pants and a Grateful Dead T-shirt tied into a knot at her stomach. She had a soft belly that jiggled ever so slightly along to the beat of ‘Crazy Bitch’ by Buckcherry. Her name was Molly and the bitch knew how to move.

  The music was low, how Pipe and I both preferred it. Sometimes, some of the brothers cranked it up so loud we could never have a conversation.

  You’re getting old, Rain. Soon you’ll want the music off and you’ll be screaming at the club whores, “Get off my lawn!”

  “What are you guys up to tonight?” Molly asked as she sat down reverse cowgirl on Pipe’s lap.

  He’d fucked her a few times. He once told me she was the only chick in the place who’d known it when he was reciting Bukowski. Apparently, and I had no idea why he did this, he had a habit of sitting at the foot of the bed and reciting Let It Enfold You. “Is that Charles Bukowski?” Molly had asked him the moment he let it slip from his mouth post-fuck. It had touched him so much he immediately crawled back to her and went for round two.

  “I don’t know,” Pipe told her, “right now I’m sittin’ here bitchin’ about the snow again.”

  “Cold?” she asked. “’Cause you know I can keep you warm, baby?”

  “Maybe later,” he said.

  She pouted. “Fine. I’ll be around if and when you need me.”

  Molly left us alone at our table and walked over to where most of the other guys were playing pool and passing a bong around. She cuddled her friend, Pinky, a tattooed girl with pink hair that hung down to her tits, from behind and tucked her hands into the front pockets of Pinky’s cut-off shorts while looking back at Pipe and smiling.

  “Fucking hell,” Pipe said. “She’s a wild one.”

  The club whores weren’t actual whores. They didn’t get paid. Some didn’t even fuck anybody. They were around to keep us company. If and when one of us found a chick we wanted to look at more often, one who would understand the lifestyle and be cool with having a place to party whenever they wanted, we’d bring them to the MC and see how it went. Some of them had been hanging around for years. Molly was one who’d been around a while. She’d fucked a few of the brothers in that time but nobody was willing to make her his ol’ lady. Not after she’d fucked other brothers. That was the sad but harsh reality.

  “You boys not workin’ tonight?” Cracker, an old, frail man who wore blue jean overalls all the time, asked.

  He was like a second father to all of us. A glass jar on top of the fridge was stuffed with the cash bets from all of us guessing at his age. It was a complete mystery to us all. He kept the trucks in order, made sure our bikes and snowmobiles were always gassed up and ready, and helped with general upkeep. We loved that old man. He wasn’t a Royal Bastard, but he was family just the same.

  “Not tonight, Cracker,” I said.

  As a kid, because he was around that long ago, I used to laugh every time someone addressed him. It seemed like a derogatory name. It turned out, he’d lived in New York City a long time ago and loved to tell stories about how he was once a driver for some of the famous musicians who made their homes in Harlem. Anytime anybody called out to him, they’d say, “Hey, Cracka!” At some point, it stuck. To this day, he would only answer to Cracker.

  Next door to this hangar was another full of tow trucks. That was our legit business. It was how we made money most often, but there were a few side gigs going down all the time. Drugs and guns mostly. The specifics weren’t important, but we had our hands in a lot of dirty shit. Some of the guys were out right now handling our shit. Having our own hidden dock out on the bay made it easy to send and receive shipments, especially in the summertime.

  Thank God you don’t have to be out there tonight.

  Pipe didn’t have to remind me how much snow sucked. I often wondered why I’d chosen to stick around Anchorage. I couldn’t even imagine the life Blayze had down in LA or even Playboy in Sacramento or Nycto in Tampa. Blayze and Playboy didn’t have to worry about anything but earthquakes shaking their bikes. Nycto might run into a hurricane or two, but no fucking blizzard was keeping him on four wheels. We had to trade in our bikes for pickup trucks and other four-wheel vehicles every damn winter. What I wouldn’t give to hop on my Harley anytime I chose and zip off down the fucking highway.

  So why don’t you leave then? You know you could go nomad, or maybe get in with one of the other chapters. You’ve served your time up here. Hell, you fucking died up here. If they didn’t sew your throat up so quickly you’d still be dead.

  Flatlining was part of the job it seemed. I knew BP, Pipeline, and the rest of the boys appreciated what I’d gone through for the club, but they didn’t truly know what it felt like to feel your life draining out on a prison floor. I really thought that was the end of me. All that talk about life flashing before your eyes? Nothing flashed before mine. Absolutely fucking nothing. It all went black, and all I felt was extreme cold and pain.

  I tried not to think about it because it would serve no purpose. It would either cause me to do something stupid out of rage or to do something stupid out of fear.

  Anybody who’s had their throat slit and tells you they ain’t afraid is a motherfuckin’ liar.

  Before that day, I’d thought I was indestructible. Now, I knew it wasn’t true. It was like some
body had removed my bulletproof vest. Every bullet could be the one now. Every blade could be the last one to bite my flesh.

  That cowboy at the bar could have been the one to end it. Nah, you’d never let a cowboy best you.

  “Yep, this snow is for the motherfuckin’ birds, man!” Pipe shouted and slammed both of his palms down on the table between us. “Want a beer?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  He got up and went for the beers while I sat and watched everyone else having a good time at the club. Molly put her chin on Pinky’s shoulder and smiled my way. She’d tried to sway me a few times, but as far as I was concerned, she was Pipe’s for now. Pinky, on the other hand, was open game, and nobody had claimed her yet.

  For some reason, my mind went to the gorgeous brunette, kind of redhead, at the bar the other night, the one the cowboy had been harassing. She’d had an attitude, but damn I wanted to grab her by the throat and bring her to my mouth. She wasn’t MC material though. She was too damn cute for her own good. It took a certain type of… I don’t know… spunk to be able to hang with Molly and Pinky and the others. With a woman like that one, I’d have to change my ways and shit. I’d have to play nice. Thinking about her made me think about leaving Alaska again. She definitely wasn’t from around here. That much was clear.

  “Here you go,” Pipe said, tearing me from my thoughts.

  I nodded and accepted the beer. He knew I didn’t like to talk much. I wondered if he ever considered leaving The Last Frontier. BP was pushing sixty and I didn’t doubt the thought crossed his mind with Toni down in Seattle. Either he’d end up down there someday or he’d drag her ass up here. Frostbite, our VP, was at the higher end of forty and had been divorced twice already. He’d come to Anchorage to escape his past.

  Pipeline was single though and was nearer to the upper end of his thirties. He was a good-looking guy, had a solid head on his shoulders, and seemed to spend more time alone in his room reading books than he did out perusing the revolving door of club whores.

  “You happy, man?” I finally manned up and asked him.

  None of us talked much about our sensitive side. Some of us didn’t have one as far as I knew. But I thought Pipe was different. Maybe it was the reason I leaned on him most often. We were a lot alike in many ways. We both stopped to appreciate the Northern Lights whenever they swept the sky, we both admired the way a mama moose cared for its calf, and we hated seeing women abused… at least physically.

  Mental abuse was hard to define nowadays. Where one woman might feel offended, belittled, and downright sickened by a man’s words or behaviors, another might see the same actions and hear the same words and think they were a hot alpha male’s way of showing his dominance. His claim on her. At least half the women I’d met seemed to fall into the latter category. Molly was like that. Probably Pinky too. Not that pretty chick at the VFW.

  Pipe glanced over at me and I saw doubt in that quick shift of his gaze before he returned his eyes to Molly and the others.

  “The fuck’s wrong with you?” he asked me.

  “Lots of thoughts is all.”

  “Doubts?”

  “Not about the club. About life in general sometimes. Maybe I’m going soft.”

  “Aww fuck, I knew it,” he said. “That blonde at the bar, huh? She got your mind all twisted up?”

  I laughed. It wasn’t Maggie, the blonde bartender, at all. Sure, I’d fucked her the other night, but it was one of those drunken heated frenzies. Not even a minute after I’d pulled out of her she was already saying how it was a mistake and that I better not expect a relationship out of it. That she had standards. But she had needs too and I’d fit those needs for the moment. It wouldn’t happen again.

  It was like the aftermath of hooking up with someone who had multiple personality disorder. During the fucking, it was all, “Yes! Yes! Put it in my ass!” After, it was all, “No! Never again! You’re an asshole!”

  Surprisingly, it didn’t bother me at all, and I knew right away my pursuit of her had only been the conquest itself. It was like that with a lot of women. The more they turned me down and the less they seemed interested, the more I wanted to have them howling my name. Maggie had yelled it once or twice in the throes of passion. Then she’d cursed it as she’d picked up her clothes and left that morning.

  “No, brother,” I finally replied. “Fuck that ho. I don’t want that one and, even if I did, she’s too fuckin’ stubborn to put up with day in and day out. Let her fall in love with some frat boy from UAA.”

  “Tell me you hit it though.”

  “Yeah, I hit it.”

  “That’s Cubby’s stepdaughter I heard,” Pipe said.

  “Yeah.”

  “His other daughter, his blood daughter. That’s the prize right there. Married to that asshole in the Air Force. It’s a damn shame.”

  The way Pipe stared into his beer bottle was odd. Cubby’s daughter was beautiful, but she was off limits. Hell, she already had two kids with her husband. He either had some kind of ridiculous crush on her or there was more to the story. It wasn’t my business and I knew he’d tell me if he wanted to, so I let it go.

  “So, you’re happy then,” I said. “It was a dumb question.”

  Pipe laughed and said, “I’m as happy as can be, I guess. Got me a damn good crew of brothers, got me a room at the clubhouse, and got me a shelf full of books. If and when I need it, there’s always a supply of booze and women at my disposal. What more could a guy ask for?”

  His words were shallow. I knew better. I’d seen him whenever Kathy brought her kids into the MC. She oversaw things for us. She ran the books alongside our treasurer, Carousel, who we were all pretty sure she was fucking, too. Carousel never let his wife come near the club. He went home to her at night, but he spent his days locked in a room with Kathy. Whenever she brought her son, Anvil, and her daughter, Calista, to the clubhouse, Pipe spoiled them rotten.

  I tagged along once when he took the rug rats to see a movie. We must have looked a sight. Two mean looking bikers with popcorn and sodas leading children through the door to see Disney’s fuckin’ Frozen. For two full weeks following that movie, Pipe’s answer to pretty much any situation was, “Hey, man. Let it go.”

  The cold had never bothered him anyway.

  “Hey,” Pipe suddenly said as he stood and swigged the last of his beer. He smacked his lips and added, “You wanna get outta here? Go grab some grub?”

  As much as I didn’t feel like stepping out into the cold, I could use some fresh air. If I knew Pipe, we’d be headed to Koot’s. No matter the kind of music you liked, that place had something for you, and he loved their pizza. It was usually full of young military members, many of whom were cocky punks, but they were usually smart enough not to fuck with us once they saw our kuttes. The skull with crooked crown was feared by most and respected by all. Anyone who didn’t get it damn sure would when the fight was over.

  The ride back into the city was a quiet one other than Pipe strumming his fingers on the steering wheel to Red Rider’s ‘Lunatic Fringe.’ I wasn’t one for small talk. Not since my throat was given a permanent smile, so I appreciated his willingness to crank up the music. This wasn’t one of those songs you sang along to. It didn’t have a catchy hook. It was more of a chill, spout out a few words here and there but for the most part sit back and enjoy it at high volume, kind of songs.

  “I want a burger,” Pipe finally said as he turned toward our favorite late-night diner.

  “No Koot’s?” I asked.

  “Maybe after. First, food.”

  In Anchorage, there wasn’t much to do late at night but drink in bars, go to strip clubs, or swing by Paddy’s. Old man Paddy was long since dead, but his sons did a great job of keeping his name alive in green neon above the door.

  As we pulled into the parking lot, I saw a homeless man standing on the corner wearing a thick blue jacket, a wool cap, and tattered earmuffs. He held the traditional, unoriginal “will work for food�
� sign, which made no sense at eleven o’clock at night.

  God bless him but he ain’t plannin’ on doing any work tonight.

  “If this ain’t a fucked-up place to be homeless…” Pipe said, letting his words trail off. He didn’t need to finish. I’d always wondered how these people did it. Some of them slept in tents at camps, some crowded into old campers that had long since run out of gas and battery power, some frequented the shelters for their nightly bowl of warm soup and a cot, but the others? I had no fucking clue where they went at the end of the day. Winters in Alaska were no joke. It was dark almost all the time.

  “Carla,” Pipe said with a wave to the night waitress as we walked in and he headed for the bathroom.

  Carla was the only one at the front of the house this late at night. It would seem dangerous if you didn’t know the family history of Paddy’s. Nobody fucked with these people. Paddy himself was said to have shoved a shotgun under some dumb asshole’s chin and pulled the trigger. Left his face looking like an ice cream scooper had been taken to it and his brains decorating the ceiling. After that, nobody tried to rob Paddy’s. It was seen as bad luck in Anchorage’s underworld.

  “Pipe,” she said with a wink and a wave in return.

  I swear. Every woman in this city wants a piece of that man. That was me before… this…

  Running a finger gently over my own scar, I remembered how the women used to flock to me. It wasn’t hard for me to find a woman for the night, but usually, once they got to know me, they didn’t like me. Some of the brothers said the club whores were freaked out by me. That I didn’t talk enough. That I always seemed angry. Truth of the matter was, I wasn’t. I’d stared into the mirror many times and tried to figure out what I was doing that made me look mad all the time. I didn’t see it. But everyone else did.

  “Rain, how you been, hun?” Carla asked, turning her attention toward me as she wiped down the counter.

  Glancing through the window and out at the homeless guy again, I said, “I’ll take my usual double bacon burger. Pipe will have the same. Fries for both.”