5.
Bear
“H e’s fucked up again,” a voice said.
“Grab him under the arms,” another voice spoke, closer to me this time.
I wanted to lift my head and say something, but I couldn’t even open my eyes.
One beer had turned into two, which had turned into many more. Shots and more beers until I had run out of money and I had given Larry the owner my watch to pay for my next round of drinks.
It was like watching someone else’s life story flashing before my eyes. I didn’t recognize myself in the memories that wormed their way through my mind. I had always been the calm one in the club. The one people could rely on. The one that rarely lost his temper. That knew when to slow down drinking. He was always clean, his clothing washed and ironed because his mom had always told him that appearances mattered. But the man in my mind was the opposite. He was a different version. He was moody and cruel. He was a drunk who drank until he passed out. He was covered in sweat and puke and he didn’t care about his appearance or what anyone thought of him.
“He’s cut off, you hear me, fuckface? I find him in here one more time and I’ll burn this shit hole you call a bar to the ground. There ain’t no more warnings on this.”
I recognized that voice and tried to say something, but all that came out was a weird, garbled mess of words that made no sense.
“Business is business, I thought the club would understand that,” the reply came.
“Understand this.” There was the sound of glass smashing and people yelling and then another voice spoke. “And gimme his fuckin’ watch before I cut off your damn hand.”
Then I was moving. I could feel my body swaying as I was carried somewhere, but I still couldn’t open my eyes. Cool air hit my face and for a split second I felt better, the fresh air filling my lungs and bringing me back round to semi-consciousness. But it didn’t last long before I was heaving and puking again. It seemed like that was all I ever did these days.
Drink, pass out, wake up, puke, and drink all over again.
I was pathetic.
“Fuck,” two voices called out, and then my body hit the ground.
The air left my lungs, and I groaned and rolled to one side as liquid left me. I retched over and over while I tried everything and anything to hold on to what little dignity I had left.
Finally, I stopped retching, and I let my cheek rest against the cold concrete while I tried to catch my breath, puke soaking into my clothes.
“He’s covered in it,” one of the voices said again.
“Give him a minute and then pick him up and put him in the van.” Someone barked the order.
“He fuckin’ stinks though.”
“Do I look like I care?”
“I don’t want to get it on me.”
“This ain’t up for discussion. You either do as you’re told, Asshole 1, or you go back home to your fucking mom. Understood?”
“Yeah.”
All of the voices were sliding into one, and I wasn’t sure which voice was which anymore.
He was right though—I did stink. The stench was possibly what was making me feel even worse. A rancid scent of dirt and sweat and self-pity.
“Sorry,” I slurred, “fuckin’ sorry.”
I wasn’t sure who I was saying sorry to anymore. Her. My club. Myself. Did it even matter anymore? Everyone deserved my apology. I was a mess and I knew it, and yet I was already thinking about where I would be able to go drinking if I couldn’t go back to the Laughing Moose. Larry would be stupid to cut me off, and yet there was also no way he would risk pissing off the club.
“Yeah yeah, I know,” a voice replied.
I was moving again, and I opened my eyes, watching the blackened starlit sky above me.
“Fuckin’ love stars,” I slurred. “Feels like she’s watchin’ me.”
I was inside a truck again, lying across the back seats like several hours earlier, but it wasn’t the Confessor’s this time. His always smelled like leather and spilled oil. This truck was clean and fresh. That could only mean that it was Gods’.
“That’s just fuckin’ sad,” someone said as the door was slammed shut.
“Did I ask for your opinion?”
“No, sorry—”
“Shut the fuck up. I’ll tell you when you can talk, and it ain’t fuckin’ now, all right?”
“All right, sorry.”
“Get back to the clubhouse, and you keep this shit to yourself or I’ll bury you myself. Ya hear me?”
I rolled on to myself, the tears coming before I even knew what was happening. My brothers. My club. My family. They were still trying to protect me even though I was pressing the self-destruct button. I didn’t deserve any of this.
A door opened and closed, and for a second nothing happened. There was just the sound of my heavy crying. I rubbed my eyes with the heels of my hands, trying to stem the tears from coming, but it was no use. The more I tried to stop them, the more they came.
“It’s all right, brother,” Gods’ deep voice came from the front seat.
“No…it’s not,” I replied. “I’m sorry. I’m a fuckup.”
“Yeah, you are, but it’s gonna be okay.”
I sniffled and rubbed at my eyes again. My body was shaking with the need for something other than alcohol, and yet all I wanted was more whiskey, more beer, more of anything, because when I was drinking I wasn’t thinking about what a mess I was and what a mess I had made of everything.
“Need you to sober up,” Gods said. “Shit’s gone down and you need to get your head screwed on for it.”
“JD?” I asked.
“He’s fine,” he replied. “Taking you back to my place. Sleep, shower, sober up, and we’ll talk tomorrow. It’s going to be a long motherfucking day.”
I nodded but he probably didn’t see it, and I didn’t have it in me to speak again. Instead, I let the gentle motion of the truck lull me back to sleep.
At some point we must have arrived at Gods’ house and he either carried me or he helped me stagger inside, because I woke up several hours later in his spare bedroom. I had been stripped down to my boxers and there was a fan blowing across the room, circulating the air. The window was cracked open, a small breeze coming in through it. I groaned and blinked slowly, the world coming back into view. This was always the worse part of it.
I didn’t care about the passing out. I didn’t care about the expense. Or the memory loss. I didn’t care what a fool I might make of myself. Even the puking wasn’t so bad. But waking up feeling like someone was drilling the inside of my skull—that was the worst part of it.
Slowly, I pulled myself up to sitting. I rested my head against the cool wall behind me and took a couple of long, deep breaths, grounding myself in the moment. My head was already banging, my throat rough and raw, though from what I wasn’t sure. I had a vague recollection of fighting someone, and at this thought I reached down and pressed a hand to my aching ribs, feeling the tender flesh and bone.
“Shit,” I grumbled to myself.
There were two large glasses of water beside me, and I picked up the first one with shaking hands and drank it down in several large gulps. Nausea gripped me and my stomach twisted like it wanted to throw the water back up, but there would be no walking away from it this time; Gods would have me on my hands and knees cleaning it up.
Gods was a clean freak, which we all took the piss out of him for. But he kept the clubhouse as clean as he could—though it was a tough job for anyone considering most of my brothers were filthy bastards. Gods’ own home was even cleaner, and though he had a cleaner come in twice a week to keep on top of things, he could often be found scrubbing out a cupboard or resealing the tiles in his bathroom so that it was pure white. He was six feet three inches and roughly a hundred and eighty-five pounds of pure muscle, with a shaved head showing off his skull-and-crossbones tattoos on the back of it. He wore a bull ring through his nose, and he cleaned better than anyone I had ever known. He was a walking, talking oxymoron.
I checked my wrist to see what time it was, and frowned when I saw my watch wasn’t there. I almost never took that thing off, and panic started to overwhelm me at the thought that I might have lost it, or worse, pawned it. It had been my dad’s, his final gift to me before he had left twenty years earlier, never to be seen again.
Stumbling out of bed, I groaned as I twisted too quickly, my ribs screaming out in pain. I stumbled across the room, dizziness making my head spin. I grabbed the door handle and turned it, throwing the door wide open before swaying out of the room in only my three-day old boxers.
The house was almost silent, so I followed my nose and the smell of food cooking, finding Gods in the pristine kitchen frying bacon. He looked up as I came into the room, automatically taking the pan off the stove and grabbing his gun from the counter in one quick movement.
“What happened?” he asked.
“My watch,” I replied with a gasp of anger and panic.
His hard expression quickly changed, and he placed the gun back down and slid the pan of bacon back over the heat.
“Over on the table,” he said, gesturing with his head in the direction of the round dining table. “Had me worried then, asshole.”
I staggered to the table, picking my watch up and clipping it back on my wrist. “Yeah, well, if it’s any consolation I had myself worried too.”
He didn’t reply and I pulled out a chair and sat down on it, not giving a shit that I was wearing almost nothing and the smell coming off me was bad enough that Gods—now finished cooking—opened the back door.
He went back to the counter and plated the bacon up, poured us both a coffee from some noisy fucking machine in the corner, and came to sit at the table with me. He slid the plate of food over and I grimaced but picked up a slice before taking a bite.
“Eat and then shower,” he said, sipping on his coffee, “then we’re heading to the clubhouse. JD needs to see you.”
I finished the piece of bacon and picked up a second piece, finishing that off in two bites. The food was actually making me feel better, but I wasn’t sure I could handle a third piece. I was a big guy, but I could see that I had lost weight. These past few months had been hard and I had been living on a liquid diet for most of it. My stomach was bloated and a little round, my six-pack near gone.
“How bad is it?” I asked, not wanting to assess the state of myself any longer. It was fucking depressing.
“Go shower. We can talk then.” Gods picked up a piece of bacon and ate it in almost one bite.
“Can you just—”
“No. You fucking stink. My house stinks. My room stinks. The bed sheets, along with your clothes, are going to have to be burned, not to mention that my truck stinks because you pissed yourself.” He glared at me, yet despite his tone and his accusations, he didn’t seem even a little bit angry. “Just go fucking shower so I can stand to be in the same room as you without having to open a goddamn door, brother. I’ll tell you everything then.”