Chapter 7
Humbug
Snow softens the garage, making the steel look merciful. It isn’t. Steel is honest. It does what it was born to do, hold or hurt. Steel and I have a lot in common. I roll that thought around like a bad tooth while the heater coughs and the Shovelhead ticks itself awake under my hands.
There’s blood dried in the webbing of my knuckles. Hers, mine, the world’s, hard to tell anymore. I don’t wash it yet. Consequences should sting.
My brother Frost shoulders in from the cold, jacket dusted in white, breath smoking. The Executioners make Lucas Winter my brother, but the fact that our no-good fathers were first cousins makes our blood even thicker. He kind of smirks at my hands, but his eyes don't show it.
“Word’s out,” he says. “Sno-Globes was a rodeo. You ride all three clowns or just the loud one?”
“Two fell on their own,” I say, tightening the primary.
“Mm.” He toes a milk crate and sits. “Sheriff’s sniffin’. Wants names.”
“He can want.”
Frost nods like I passed a test. “Girl all right?”
I keep my face flat. “She’s not my business.”
He arches a brow. “News to the boys who saw you carry her down the hall like you paid for that pussy.”
“Go polish your piece,” I tell him. “I’m busy.”
“Young thing like that, you probably still pickin’ baked beans out of your teeth.”
“What the hell are you talkin’ about, man?”
“Bushes. Baked beans. Young tail don’t shave anymore. Girl down at the candy shop has hairy pits and all.”
“I didn’t notice. It was dark,” I lie. Don’t tell him Carol’s bush is shaved into a damn Christmas tree. “You hittin’ that?” I ask about Holly Sugar. Her sister Ivy works with Carol at Sno-Globes.
They call her Sugar Plum. Sugar’s no stranger to the Executioner’s clubhouse. Holly, on the other hand, ain’t the kind to mix with outlaws.
Frost doesn’t say a word. Tellin’.
“You know that girl wants to be mayor.”
He laughs and leaves.
They’ll keep talking. Brothers always do.
We survive by curiosity and cruelty in equal parts.
The “robbery girl” is already a story, sugar-glazed or ugly depending on who’s telling it.
I shut off the heater and listen to the motor’s slow heart.
Carol’s name moves through my head like a prayer I don’t deserve to say.
Heavy steps in the hall. Not Frost. This weight is familiar in the way a reoccurring nightmare is, predictable, stale, mean.
Trina appears in the doorway wrapped in a black parka with a fur collar, lipstick too red for morning, rage already lit behind her eyes.
“We’re closed.” I don’t ask how she got past the gate. She still knows where the bone’s buried in the fence.
“You didn’t come home,” she says, like the words can make me.
I go back to the bike. “Storm closed the roads.”
“Storm didn’t close your phone.”
“Didn’t have anything to say.”
“That’s new.” She steps in, snow crackling off her boots, shakes her head slow. “What’s her name?”
I tighten a bolt that doesn’t need it. “Don’t start.”
Trina’s laugh is a blade. “I can smell it, Jack. Pussy. Did you even shower?”
I did.
“You were with someone.”
“You mean one of the whores called you, gossipin’. What I was with was trouble,” I say, which is the closest thing to truth I can live with. “Bar got hit. I stepped in.”
Her mouth flattens. She knows the shape of my lies. We built them together once. “Sure. You stepped in. At Sno-Globes? Titty bar. And then you stepped into some chick. With your dick.”
I set the wrench down before it jumps. “You wanna fight or you wanna leave?”
“Both,” she says, and peels off her gloves. Gold rings wink under the fluorescents, the gifts I bought her back when we mistook shiny for sorry. “You think I don’t keep count? All the little ways you’re gone even when you’re home?”
“I’ve been gone a long time,” I say. “You left first.”
That lands. I see it hit, then she shakes it off, mean and light. “I went where I was wanted. You don’t want me.”
“So, you admit you’re a whore. I’ll live where my brothers are.”
She scoffs. “Your brothers haven’t warmed your bed for the last five years. Your brothers didn’t make you dinner and clean your toilets.”
“Domestic martyr doesn’t suit you, Trina. Don’t worry. You can have the damn house.”
“No,” she says, mouth curving. “I don’t want your shit.”
She paces the narrow strip between toolboxes, eyes on the bike like she might scratch it just to watch me bleed. Doesn’t. We both remember the last time she tried to hurt what I love.
“We’re still married, Jack.”
“And…”
“I didn’t come to beg,” she says finally. “I came to say I’m done.”
“You were done two Christmases ago.”
“I’m done fighting. This time I’m sober when I say it.”
That actually pulls a laugh out of me, small and ugly. “You want a medal?”
“You want a divorce?” She fishes a folded paper from her pocket and taps it on the tank. “I say no. I’ll drag it out. Make you dance.”
“Why?” I ask. “So, we can pay lawyers to tell us what we already know?”
Her chin lifts. “So, you’ll have to admit what you are. Out loud. In front of someone who gets paid to care.”
“I’m a bastard,” I say. “Satisfied?”
“No.” She steps closer, breath smoke-sweet. “Tell me about the new girl.”
“There isn’t one,” I say automatically.
Trina smiles without teeth. “Then why do you look like there is? You’ve got that old shine in your eyes. You only get that when you give a damn about something... Because just last week you were talking about coming home.”
The words hit like a slow bullet. I had been. Call it cold feet after sending divorce papers. But not now. Now, I’m not going back like I always do. I pick up the wrench again, because men like me need something to hold when the room tilts.
“Maybe I’ll sign… I get my name back,” she says. “You get to crawl into whatever fresh hell you found last night and call it love.”
“Don’t use that word.”
“What, love? You act like it’s a plague.”
“It is.”