Chapter 5 Catfish
CATFISH
I’m not a proficient chef. Like, I don’t believe the whole mumbo jumbo that food cooked with love tastes better.
But there’s something slightly meditative about making dinner in a quiet room with dim lights and listening to the tippy-tap of Wren’s fingers flying over their laptop. I can see their reflection in the window as I stand facing it, my back to them.
As I dice the carrots, I occasionally look up. Sometimes they’re playing with the ends of their thick green-and-black hair. Other times, they are worrying their lower lip as they study something on the screen.
This time when I look up, they’ve flattened their hands on the top of their head, and I wonder when I, a self-proclaimed tits and ass man, suddenly stopped worrying about their flat chest.
The chicken hisses and spits as I brown it in a pan with some butter.
“How did you become an Outlaw?” Wren asks suddenly.
I glance over my shoulder to them. “You want the short story or the long one?”
They link their fingers and rest their chin on their knuckles. “The long one.”
“Mom always said there was nothing in this world that couldn’t be put right with butter and sugar.
When I was younger, I’d get the crap kicked out of me at school.
Some of it was because of the homemade tie-die T-shirts she loved making.
Some of it was the homemade soups and granola bars wrapped in parchment paper she insisted on sending me for lunch. ”
“I bet you were a cute little kid.”
I flip the chicken in the pan, then turn to face them. “I was the fucking cutest. Came second in the Gerber Baby of the Year competition.”
“You did not.”
I nod. “I did. Should have fuckin’ won too.”
Wren smiles, and their whole face changes. “So, how did you go from baby-food-worthy to this?” They gesture up and down my body with mock disdain.
I run my hand down my T-shirt. “Hey, I’ll have you know what’s under here is still model worthy.”
At that, Wren laughs. And I find myself wanting to keep making them laugh. Keep them happy. Because it’s so different to the nervous shaking wreck they were this morning. “I’m sure it is. But spill. How did you become a biker?”
“One day, when I was twelve years old, I was getting the shit kicked out of me at the side of the road, and a bike pulled up by the ditch. One of the biggest human beings I’d ever seen in my scrawny-ass life climbed off it.
And he threw those boys off me like they weighed nothing.
It was like one of those video games where a big creature like King Kong starts picking up and tossing humans.
And when he got to me, he grabbed the back of my shirt, stood my ass up, and dusted me off. ”
“I like this person already.”
“His patch said he was the enforcer of the Iron Outlaws Motorcycle Club. And he got down on one knee in front of me and asked why these kids were beating on me. Things like, had I done anything wrong, called anyone names. Basically, had I started shit. And I pointed to the parchment paper and my broken-up granola bar and said they were making fun of my food.” I didn’t tell him that they’d caught me looking at one of the older members of the school track team as he changed shirts and that’s what led to them making fun of me and my food.
I shake my head at the memory and can remember how sad I felt that I wouldn’t get to eat it. It was my favorite. It had little chips of chocolate and raisins that had been soaked in orange juice.
“Oh, that’s awful.”
I shrug. “It was what it was. But this man, he stood and gave those boys a dressing down that scared them to death, because they never bothered me again. And I knew right then and there that I wanted to be just like him. Become a biker and, hopefully, grow to his size. Be the kind of man who wasn’t scared of anything or anyone but chose to stick up for a kid. ”
“Who was the biker?”
“It was Grudge’s father. His road name was Hammer.
He asked me who my folks were, and I told him who my mom was and where I lived.
I told him my dad had left two months earlier, a year after Mom’s accident that left her paralyzed and reliant on a wheelchair.
Told him how money was tight and how Mom was doing her best to feed us.
The following weekend, he showed up with some other guys from the club.
They did some yard work and other jobs on the outside of the property.
They put a ramp in, which we’d never been able to afford.
And ripped out the bathtub to install a wet room Mom could wheel in and out of.
A couple of old ladies showed up with a car full of groceries.
Without the club, I don’t know how we would have kept our heads above water. ”
“Wow. There’s a lot to process in that story,” Wren says. “I’m sorry to hear about your mom’s accident.”
“T-boned at high speed. Dad stuck it out for the months Mom was in hospital, but I think he checked out mentally from the moment he saw her on that hospital bed. But Willa, Mom, and I figured it out. My grandpa was still alive back then. Took a community, though, to keep us whole and together.”
Wren is thoughtful, for a moment. “That’s an impressive endorsement for joining a motorcycle club.”
I shrug. “We’re a bit different than the New Jersey guys. Hung out with them plenty at Sturgis. They’re close knit. Tight. I guess we’re all still a bit…”
“Uptight?” Wren offers.
I raise an eyebrow. “No.”
“Insular?”
I don’t drop my eyebrow.
“Typically closed-off guys.”
I huff. “Thought you would have been the first to avoid gender stereotyping.”
Wren laughs at that, and I’m taken again by just how cute they look when they smile. “Relax, big guy. I get stereotyped and misgendered and deadnamed about a billion times a year. You can take the generalization of being a closed-off guy.”
I grab the celery from its packet. “When you put it like that, it’s fair. I don’t know what it is that stops us quite coming together like they do. Was King mad about the money going missing?”
I start chopping, trying to hide the fact I’m holding my breath, nervous about the answer.
“Not really. I mean, he’s pissed it happened, but he didn’t seem to blame the club, from what I could tell.
I think he’s also got bigger things on his mind.
Personal things. His wife, Rae, is having a hard time with her pregnancy.
Has this thing where she throws up all the way through it.
She’s taking it in stride, but King? I swear to God, that man would burn down the world for her.
He even paid for a consult with the same doctor who treated the future queen of England. ”
I take the chicken out of the pot and throw in the celery, carrots, and onions to let them simmer down. “Willa, my sister, threw up a lot with the twins. Her ex-husband never even brought her a glass of water. Let that be a lesson in picking the right husband. Partner. Whatever.”
While the veggies simmer, I open a bottle of wine. White. I don’t drink it, but I messaged Ember, who runs a bar, to ask her what wine would work best with my mom’s chicken and dumplings recipe.
“You want a glass?”
Wren toggles quickly between screens, the colors reflected onto their skin and hoodie as they change.
“What?” Wren asks, looking up suddenly.
I offer them the glass. “Wine. Would you like some?”
“Oh. Yes, please.”
I try not to pay too much attention to how their lips part around the rim of the glass as they take a first sip. When Wren’s eyes meet mine again, I’m glad to see some of the tension I noticed in them earlier is ebbing away.
“How did you get your road name? Is it because you like fishing or something?” Wren asks as I grab myself a beer.
“It’s a wild story.” I move back to the counter and add the other ingredients to the pot before leaving it to simmer. When I turn around, Wren is looking at me.
“You can’t tell me it’s a wild story, and then not tell me the wild story!”
I grab my beer and move to the other side of the kitchen island to sit on the stool next to them.
“When I was about eighteen, I was officially prospecting with the club. I’d been decent at school, and Hammer had said I could only officially prospect when it looked like formal education had run its course for me.”
Wren shakes their head. “Wait. Why are all these bikers being so reasonable and sensible? What happened to gun running and drug dealing and killing each other at wild parties?”
I can’t help laughing. “We do plenty of that too. But Hammer felt I was…what did he call me…one of the quiet ones. He said any kid who appreciated his mom’s homemade granola bars should probably wait until he was legally old enough to join.
And it pissed me off because Grudge was already elbows deep in club shit.
Hammer had introduced us, and we’d become friends.
We worked out together, and I hated that he had a leather cut, and I didn’t. ”
Wren tilts their head and looks at me. “Was Hammer right to not let you?”
“Yeah. He was. I wanted to be in the club, but waiting until I was older and showed good aptitude for math meant that no sooner did I prospect and get patched in, than I was assigned to work with Gristle, who kept our books. A paid job from day one.”
I get up to stir the pot and begin the process of making the dumplings.
“The name,” Wren reminds me. “You never got to why you are called Catfish.”
“Right. Yeah. So, I’m behind the bar one day—it was one of the things I was expected to do as a prospect, serve the drinks and shit—and a guy on the gate calls up to the clubhouse and tells me my girlfriend is looking for me. Wild thing is, I didn’t have a girlfriend.”
Wren claps their hands. “Oh, plot twist.”
“I’d been working out at the gym with some of the bigger brothers. Hammer had taught me how to lift properly, and I’d grown. I was no longer scrawny and knew I was a good-looking fucker. I’d gotten ink. So, I was making these social media videos of my body building gains and shit.”