EXILE
Baton Rouge wasn’t my hometown. I grew up surrounded by cornfields and long stretches of beautiful nothing in South Dakota. I felt trapped back then. The only way to escape that life was to join the military.
As my club returned to Baton Rouge, I recalled how my mom cried when I told her I had enlisted. Laverne claimed I’d never come back home.
“I’ll lose you forever,” was how she put words to her feelings.
Laverne had been right about losing me. I never visited Bixby while on leave. I stayed away for the same reason I left in the first place. In South Dakota, I would never be anyone except my father’s son.
Danny Shaw was a rowdy kid. That was how everyone described him, as if his rowdiness had been a warning of what was to come.
The only time I returned to Bixby was to bury Laverne when her third husband crashed their car when he tried speeding around a slow semi on the grassy side of the highway.
I wasn’t surprised to learn Laverne had died thanks to a man.
Her life had never truly been her own. Like a lot of women, my mom believed she could only be truly whole with a ring on her finger, even if the man who put it on her was a moron.
My kid sister, Nova, followed in Laverne’s footsteps by marrying a dumb guy who made her laugh. She swore Chris would treat her right. I hadn’t come to their wedding, figuring I wouldn’t like the guy and might cause trouble for my happy sister.
When I had flown into South Dakota from Baton Rouge to bury Laverne, I drove straight to Nova’s little house. I hadn’t wanted to get out of my car. I couldn’t believe Nova was happy living trapped in the middle of nowhere.
I hated South Dakota. The beautiful land disguised the state’s ugly underbelly.
My father had spilled innocent blood in this place.
I’d been beaten half to death by angry men more than once while surrounded by gorgeous views.
My mom died here because her latest man had no patience. The place felt cursed.
When Nova answered the door, she was hiding a black eye under too much makeup.
I nearly didn’t recognize my sister. The brunette was somehow too thin despite being six months pregnant with her second daughter.
In our childhood, Nova had been a ray of sunshine.
She smiled all the time, and her blue eyes shone.
When she opened the door for me that day, Nova looked like a stranger without a hope in the world.
I still felt great pride in how I restrained myself from killing Chris when he showed up at home. I hadn’t laid a single finger on him. I just got through the funeral before renting a truck for Nova’s shit.
“You’re leaving Chris and coming to live with me,” was what I told my sister.
“Okay,” she had replied as if she’d been waiting for me to offer. “I’m a good cook, and I keep a clean house.”
That was four years ago. Nova was no longer sickly thin or dulled out.
She smiled easily. My nieces were goofballs like their mom, enjoying life in a way they wouldn’t have if they remained in South Dakota.
The girls never asked about their dad, who died years ago when he decided Nova had been gone long enough.
I dropped his battered corpse in the Mississippi River. Chris might have been a funny guy with plenty of friends, but no one ever came looking for him.
Life in Baton Rouge wasn’t always easy, but the city suited me better than small-town life ever did.
My house was located in a quaint neighborhood far from the club’s tawdry clubhouse.
I bought the fixer-upper when I moved my sister and niece to Baton Rouge to start over.
Though I had wanted something move-in ready, my sister insisted on a house in need of help.
“I’m starting over,” Nova said back then as we stood in the unloved house. “I’m rebuilding my life. No, scratch that. I’m rebuilding myself. This house is a project, just like me. If you deny me this, you’re saying I should remain a drunkard’s doormat.”
I should have shot down her argument. Nova was heavily pregnant. Her daughter viewed the world as her playground. I would be busy with the club. Renovating this house was a huge mistake for us.
Nova got her way, as she was prone to do when dealing with me. I just couldn’t tell my little sister no whenever she stared at me with her big, blue eyes.
That was also why I never moved out of the three-bedroom house, even after Nova and the girls got settled.
I sensed my sister didn’t feel safe living alone.
Whenever I mentioned finding an apartment, Nova leveled her gaze on me and stared until I backed down.
The woman really knew how to push my buttons.
I always figured her power came from being my baby sister. As I sat on my silent hog in the garage, I realized someone else owned the ability to make me submit.
Lula Reed.
I could still feel her gaze on me. My mind replayed every word she said. The woman’s beauty burned a need into my core. I couldn’t shake how I felt when we shared a room.
After returning to Baton Rouge, my club held a meeting at our clubhouse, DTF Roadhouse. Zodiac talked about the Void turning its attention to the Black Rainbow.
“We fucked up their plans. Now, they might want a little payback,” he explained while the men yawned and tried to focus after a long night on the road.
“Keep your people safe. Lock down your homes. Message all your snitches around town to be on the lookout. If the Void comes for us, we want to stick their revenge plans straight up their asses. Get me?”
Back when Wrecker ran things, life seemed simpler. We ignored problems, choosing to clean up messes rather than avoid them. Zodiac believed we were at war with the Void. When Wrecker refused to see that truth, he got shoved aside.
Our club was different now. The older guys were gone, except for Stamp, who understood what Zodiac wanted to build.
Most of our current members were in their thirties and early forties.
We had a few babies in the mix, like Stamp’s two sons.
Otherwise, everyone had been recruited into the club by Zodiac.
After our meeting, I crashed on Zodiac’s couch in his apartment above the clubhouse. I dreamed of gunfire and moving vans. Lula was always out of reach. I could hear her voice. I smelled her expensive perfume. I knew she was close enough to touch, but I couldn’t find her.
Waking up after ten, I slipped out of the apartment and grabbed a quick breakfast sandwich on my way home. A little part of me feared facing Nova, as if she’d see through my calm exterior to the man on fire inside.
I was reluctant to enter the house, despite nothing good coming from me moping in the garage. Lula was with her people. I was home with mine. The only thing to do was let go of this need for a stranger and get to living my life.
Inside the three-bedroom house, I dropped my keys in the ceramic bowl at the front door.
Below several key fobs, a paper cutout of actor Eddie Murphy’s face stared up at me.
I smiled at my sister’s habit of leaving small paper faces of the actor around the house for me to find.
Sometimes, they’d be tucked away in my bagged lunch.
Last week, I found one waiting for me in my back pocket.
I followed Nova’s voice to the backyard, where she often spent time with the girls. Four-year-old Skylar was a little rabblerouser and perpetually grumpy. Her favorite things were wearing sunglasses, avoiding a hairbrush, and watching “Barney & Friends.”
“I like purple. I like dinos. I like singing,” she muttered at Zodiac when he asked why she watched garbage TV. “Get it? They made this show for me.”
Skylar didn’t hide her dislike of my president. He pissed her off with the Barney complaints, and she wasn’t the forgiving type.
Three-year-old Lyric thought Zodiac was great.
She liked all the guys—the louder, the better.
She had the entire club wrapped around her little finger.
When she had invited them to her third birthday party, my niece warned that she would cry if they didn’t show up.
Not one guy dared blow off her invitation.
The girls were different in a lot of ways, but they remained inseparable. I thought about those sisters injured in Lula’s abduction. I’d studied the bios of every Crimson Guard member. Cher and Stevie were goofballs, just like my nieces.
Why couldn’t I put yesterday behind me? Rather than focus on my life, I fought the incredible urge to see Lula’s eyes again.
“What’s wrong?” Nova asked as she painted the trellis a different shade of white.
“Why are you painting again?”
“I’ve run out of things to fix. I’ll probably paint the girls’ room a different color soon.”
I glanced at my nieces playing in their pink plastic house. They found my gaze and shook their little heads dismissively.
I scratched at my chest, agitated over the distance between Lula and me. Was she safe with her people? They hadn’t protected her yesterday. I felt like I was the only one capable of ensuring Lula’s safety.
“You ran out of here fast,” Nova said and set aside the paint. Her thick brown hair was tied back with a pink-and-blue bandana. Studying me, she frowned. “Why do you look like your best friend died when we can both see I’m alive and well?”
Exhaling gruffly, I didn’t know how to explain my state of mind. Nova studied me and then looked around as if adjusting to a strange world where I was the one at a loss for the answers.
“Did one of the guys get hurt?” she asked, circling me. When I shook my head, Nova stopped in front of me. “Where did you go in such a hurry?”
“The Crimson Guard’s lawyer was taken by the assholes we’re worried about. We decided to help find her.”
“Did she die? Is that why you’re on edge?”
“No, she was only banged up. She's back home in Little Memphis now.”