Chapter 36
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
C hainsaw…
The hearse pulled up outside of Landry’s, and we stood to either side, all the guys, to let it pass between us. When it came to a stop, Saint was the one to open the back of the hearse’s door.
Cypress’s sleek black casket with silver and chrome embellishments was so him . A giant mound of crimson roses adorning it, with sprays of white baby’s breath peeking out between the blossoms, and deep green foliage was a classy and elegant touch.
The cops wouldn’t give us back his cut. It was evidence, they said, and we’d fought the good fight, but we’d lost. We had a new one made up with all the patches that Cy had earned throughout his time with the brotherhood.
He wore it under the shiny black carapace of his casket as we lined up, LaCroix, Hex, and Saint on one side.
Bennie, Axe, and I, on the other to carry Cy into his last party and final send-off with the club.
It didn’t feel right, not doing it at the club, but at the same time, it was perfect doing things here at Landry’s.
We carried his casket into the building through the front door, and put it up on the stand the funeral home had supplied and set up on the stage at one end of the dance floor for us.
A smaller, temporary stage had been set up on the other end, tables and chairs moved out so that the live zydeco band could play.
It’s what Cypress had wanted. Good food, good beer, his favorite live music from his homies back in the swamp. A good time. Some real live, laugh, love shit, the sentimental bastard.
It was a closed casket. It needed to be. There wasn’t enough left of his face for anyone to look at.
We got him set, we backed off, and LaCroix, as our president, was supposed to say some words. We stood, all of us silent and at a loss for words ourselves, waiting… but nothing came.
Just that awful silence and pervasive sense of deep loss that we would feel for the rest of our fucking lives.
Someone coughed, and it seemed to rouse our pres out of whatever deep thoughts he’d been lost in.
“I ain’t got shit to say,” LaCroix said finally, putting his hand against the casket.
He looked to Hex, who did the same, just put his hand against the casket, and shook his head.
I stepped up and put my hand on it, eyes misting and growing wet.
Saint came next, tears tracking down his cheeks.
Bennie sniffed and laid his hand against the wood.
He wasn’t spilling over like Saint, but he wasn’t exactly dry-eyed either.
Axe put his hand against the casket last, after Collier, and I looked to him.
His face was as stoic and closed down as I had ever seen it, but then again?
He didn’t feel like the rest of us, and by “us” I meant the rest of humanity.
While he didn’t carry any official diagnosis, something sure wasn’t right with him, but none of us cared.
He was one of us. Reliable, dependable, and good for anything. We wouldn’t have him any other way.
I closed my eyes and bowed my head and felt a hand at the back of my shoulder as Genesis came up behind me, to comfort me. In an echo of us, the women of the club touched their men the way we laid our hands on the box that held our brother, and it did something.
It was as though some magic spell was cast, and it bound all of us. Ever tighter, ever closer, and while I didn’t know where she’d come from, or who she was, a slight woman stood behind Axe, her hand on his shoulder, the way Genesis’s hand was on me.
“Somebody play some fuckin’ music or something, and get this party started,” LaCroix ordered, and a cheer went up among all present, which was a fair few. Not only were we here as Cypress’s club and brothers, we’d opened up the wake to everyone in Cy’s life, and everyone had shown up.
I turned, letting my hand drop last from his casket, and wrapped Genesis up in my arms as she wrapped her arms around me.
We stood in the midst of the partygoers, friends, family, cousins and sisters, as well as club brothers and his brothers in the Cajun Navy.
Fellow gator fishers and the staff at Landry’s, who were all here even though the majority of them had been given the day off.
The place was packed, the food was going out onto the banquet table that’d been set up, and already there were a couple of couples on the dance floor, cuttin’ up to the band’s lively music.
Cypress would have been proud.
I towed Genesis in her little back dress that was somewhere between funeral appropriate and Jesus Christ, she gave me a boner, over to the line of buffet to get her something to eat. I guided her in front of me, with a hand to her lower back, and put a plate in her hands.
Bennie fell in behind me, with Sandy behind him, and asked me, “Axe have a lady?”
I scanned the room and found my friend with the little lady in his lap, his arms loose around her slender waist as she pressed her forehead to his and cupped his face. She was murmuring something, and Axe looked… at peace, and content. His eyes closed as he soaked up every word she spoke.
“Looks like it,” I said.
“Did you know?” Bennie asked, and I frowned and lifted a shoulder in a shrug.
“Axe doesn’t tell me everything , man. To answer your question, no, I didn’t know, and yeah, it bothers me a little bit that I didn’t.”
But it was Axeman, and out of all of us, he held his secrets close to his vest and was the most private.
He’d been quieter than usual the last several months about his activities outside the club, but I hadn’t really thought anything of it.
Axe always tended to get quiet when the shit was getting deep.
Still, if he was with a girl, maybe it was the smarter play, keeping her outside all of this shit.
I looked to Genesis, who was softly smiling, but in a sad way, quietly contemplative as she picked at the offerings and loaded up her plate with enough that it would likely keep me from fussing at her.
I felt like, in that moment, I had let her down by bringing her into the fold as fast as I had. That I’d taken for granted her previous exposure to the life, and had handed her too much all at once, you know?
She caught me looking and smiled up at me, putting her hand over mine on the edge of my plate and giving it a reassuring squeeze before leaving me to go a few more steps down the line.
I homed in on loading my plate with some crawfish etouffee and a couple boudin balls, before moving on.
She ended up going to the empty side of the booth across from Axeman and this new girl. She was a petite thing, and beautiful, with long, long hair and wide crystal eyes. She was young , like holy shit , young. To the point that if I didn’t know Axe as well as I did, I would say underage .
I looked to my closest friend, and he read the alarm in my eyes and gave me a look like he was unimpressed with my shit.
“She’s twenty-one,” he said flatly.
“Almost twenty-two,” she said, and her voice was soft, lyrical, and sweet. Still, that was quite the age gap when it came to a guy who was just a year or so from pushing forty. I raised my eyebrows.
“Got a name, sweetheart?” I asked her.
“Paris,” she answered simply. Axe looked at her proudly and with stars in his eyes.
“So, uh, how long have you guys been seeing each other?” Genesis asked politely, and I loved her for being so in tune with me that she would ask the burning questions that I would want to know.
“Almost a year,” she said softly, and I felt my eyebrows really go up. Axe’s arms tightened around her imperceptibly, and I saw it in his eyes… later.
I could respect that, and I got my shit together. I smiled at Paris and said, “I wish we could have met under better circumstances, honey, but welcome.”
She smiled, and it was something intriguing to watch. I wouldn’t call it sad or whimsical, although both of those things came to mind. It was rather a Mona Lisa smile that I couldn’t explain, that held nothing and everything all at once.
“I couldn’t let him go through another funeral alone,” she said, and she peered down at Axe, and I suddenly had to question everything I’d thought about him just moments before. About how he didn’t ever seem to feel like the rest of us. Maybe I was wrong.
It was a confusing time to be me, and Axe nodded carefully in my direction, a silent acknowledgment that he understood I had questions… but time and place.
Genesis led the charge and asked all the normal conversational small-talk questions you would ask, trying to get to know somebody.
What do you do? Where do you live? What’re your favorite things to do around town? That kind of shit. Paris seemed more than willing and eager to make new friends and to talk about all that kind of stuff, but Axe would slow her down or caution her with a light jiggle.
It made me and Gen exchange some glances, but I let it go… for now.
Time and place… you know?
Genesis and I finished our food and went to the end of the bar where a tall decanter of ice-cold water sat, sweating. It was used for only one thing, and that was in the making of a good fuckin’ absinthe.
I didn’t know who’d been lookin’ out for me. Absinthe was a little high-end for Landry’s, and not something they typically had around, but someone had, and I appreciated it.
I took two glasses from the tray beside the decanter, held one up, and asked Genesis, “You wanna take a ride with me?”
She smiled at me and nodded. “I think I can handle that,” she said.
“Doctor side of you isn’t going to run down how inherently dangerous that absinthe is?” I asked.
“Absinthe in America isn’t like the shit with the real wormwood in it,” she countered.
“Touché,” I said. “Would you ever try the real shit?”
She thought about it for a heartbeat or two, and I do mean really put some thought into it before answering truthfully, “I don’t know.”
“Fair enough,” I said. “I’ll be sure to ask if the opportunity ever arises again.”
“Again?” she asked, catching on to that one little word.