Chapter 1 #2
She looks wild. That's the best part about Savannah, no matter the age. She's never been one of 'them'. She's always been one of 'us'.
"You're late," younger me says.
But at the same moment, she blurts, "Oh, my god! Family! They act like they own me, or somethin'."
They both laugh, as she explains the new horse.
"Eleanor sold my fuckin' pony while I was away at school," she announces suddenly, accent thickening with anger.
"Can you believe her? Nine years I had that pony, and she just—" She makes a slashing motion with her hand.
"Gone. Didn't even tell me 'til I got home. "
"Fucking bullshit," younger me agrees.
But then something shifts in her expression.
The anger bleeds out, replaced by a reluctant smile.
"But then she brought me to the south paddock, and.
.." She turns toward her new horse, pride straightening her spine.
"I was gettin' too big for Patches anyway.
And now I have a real horse! Not some quarter horse built for barrels.
A thoroughbred. Seventeen hands. Eleanor hired a private trainer from Billings to teach me jumpin'. "
The boy walks over to the new horse, runs a hand down its neck. He doesn't know shit about horses—not really.
But Savannah made him ride with her. That first summer when she was twelve and I was fourteen, she had the pony. I was already too big for that thing—hell, she was probably too big for that thing. But Savannah said it could hold us both because I was skinny.
That skinny burned me, I remember. Probably why I didn’t mind the feed store work.
This thought makes me laugh. The things teenage boys do for girls. But it worked. Because this year, that year, back when I was fifteen, Savannah looked at me different and she hadn’t called me skinny in a while.
"This is what you meant in your note?" he asks. "About me against your back?"
"Thought we could ride double," she says, suddenly shy. "If ya want."
If I want, I think in my grown-up mind. That offer is a fantasy come true.
Back in time, my smile widens. "Great minds," he says, gesturing toward the dirt bike parked in the tall grass. "Got my own ride now."
Her eyes widen then. "Holy shit, Legion! When and how?" She knew how poor we were. She knew.
"Saved up," he tells her. "Three jobs this past year. Bought it from a guy over in Glendive. Not new, but it runs good."
They stand there grinnin’ at each other, both burstin’ with the same idea.
"Makoshika," they say together. The nearby state park filled with secret trails, and a gift shop where I bought her a handmade leather bracelet that summer, and secret canyons with sandy ground that feels good under your toes.
We went all over that fucking place that summer. To this day, there isn't a chance in hell I'd get lost in Makoshika. You could drop me off anywhere and I'd find my way out.
We hiked every trail, we saw every canyon, we even found a little spring. In the dead of fuckin' summer, we found water in the badlands. The gift shop people even called us by name because I bought Savannah an orange soda every mornin’ when we arrived.
Thinking back now, it was a good way to spend my fifteenth year. I was poor, my family was fucked and about to get fucked harder, and I knew this was all bad for my future.
But she didn't care. Before Savannah Ashby was my woman, she was my best friend.
I wouldn't trade it for anythin’.
"You on your horse, me on my bike," fifteen-year-old me says, bringing me out of the other memory.
"Or both on the horse," she counters.
"Or both on the bike," he says, voice dropping a little.
The way she looked at me that day—eyes bright, cheeks flushed—it was all there. Already there. The love.
That's one thing I never doubted—Savannah Ashby loves me.
"This is our summer," I tell her.
It comes from my mouth.
Right in the here and now.
And it was our summer.
But that summer was something else too.
It was the beginning of my demons.
Because my first contact with Badlands MC happened that fall, and once I knew what a MC really was, it was the only reasonable future I had.
The memory shifts, the silo dissolving around me. Suddenly I'm crouched in the brush at Makoshika, late September chill creeping through my worn jacket. My breath forms small clouds in the morning air as I clutch the secondhand shotgun.
I wasn't legal to carry that shotgun—the second thing I bought with my own money after the dirt bike. But who needs rules when your stepdad's a drunk and your mom's practically incapacitated with postpartum depression?
I left before dawn that day, determined to get us a turkey for dinner. We were dead broke. Deacon, the piece-of-shit asshole who called himself my stepfather, found my money stash under the trailer two weeks earlier and took it.
All of it.
There was nothing in our fridge but a sack of potatoes about to go bad, some butter, and some milk.
My mama opened the fridge that morning looking for solace after being up a whole night with fussy, colicky, newborn Destiny and said something like… if we only had a turkey, I'd make us a nice dinner.
Now, my mama had not made me a fuckin' dinner in years at this point. It was frozen mac and cheese or frozen burritos. Never nothin’ homemade. She had been depressed after Destiny was born because Deacon took less notice of her, not more.
I pictured that dinner in my head and decided I was gonna go bag a turkey and hold her to it.
I did get that turkey, and she did make dinner. It was a turnin’ point, actually. She recovered a bit after that. Got through her depression.
That was also the year I learned how Deacon worked. If he was flush with money, he was somewhere that was not our trailer.
He took my money—all that money I saved up—and left. Didn’t come back for weeks.
That’s how I learned I could pay him to stay away.
To leave us the fuck alone.
Anyway, the most important thing about that day wasn't the turkey or my mama, it was Brick.
I was crouchin’ in the fuckin’ shrubs, waitin’ on turkeys. It was a good spot overlooking a small clearing where I figured they'd come to feed. I settled in to wait, back against a tree trunk, shotgun across my knees. But no turkeys showed. Not a damn one.
Instead, I heard engines. Motorcycles, three of them. Then trucks—two—rolling in from the access road about a quarter mile below my position.
Men in black leather jackets covered in worn patches climbed off the bikes as the others exited from the trucks.
They moved through this little clearing like they owned the place, like they’d been here a million times.
There were eight of them. They didn’t talk loud or bullshit around. Just short sentences to get a job done.
I wasn't hiding. I… wasn't doing anything but sittin', waiting on my turkey. So I didn't move. Just stayed real still as they worked.
They started unloading crates from the back of one truck. Then duffel bags from the other. The bags sagged heavy in the middle, guns, I figured.
If that's what they were, it was a lot of weapons. Like these men were preparing for a war or somethin’.
They worked quickly, easily. Transferring everything from the trucks to some kind of bunker built into the hillside that I hadn’t even noticed before they moved some brush and fallen logs out of the way.
As I watched, it hit me hard. I just saw something very fuckin' secret. Somethin’ those men would kill over.
That’s when one of them finally noticed me.
He walked straight over, aiming his piece at my head.
I held my breath, but I didn't move. I didn't stand up, I didn't explain, and I didn't run.
I just looked him in the eyes.
It was Brick. He was younger then. Tall, lean, with a full beard just starting to show silver. He looked down at me with cold, assessing eyes. "Mornin'," he said, voice quiet as he pressed his gun against my temple.
The metal was cold, his hand did not shake.
"I don't know what you think you just saw, so I'm gonna tell you what you just saw to make sure we're clear.
You saw a gun deal, boy. You saw our hidey hole.
You saw something you should not have. So you've got two choices, little friend.
One—I'm a liar and that's not what you saw at all.
Or two—they find your body out here when the snow melts in the spring. "
I said, didn't even hesitate, either, "I got no idea what you're talkin' about, mister. I'm here huntin' turkeys and haven't seen shit all day."
He smiled at me. Then he holstered his weapon, pointed off to my left, and said, "Saw some turkeys over that ridge as we came in."
And then he turned and walked back to the group. Said something that made them all look my way, but nobody moved toward me. Brick went back to work like nothing happened.
The next thing I knew, trucks started, bikes fired up, and they were gone.
I bagged two turkeys that day because of Brick.
He fed me and gave me a reason to live all in the span of three minutes and he never even knew it.
Because something changed in me that day.
For the first time in my life, I had a yearnin’. Not the kind of yearnin’ I would have for Savannah, that came later. But a yearnin’ for power.
That kind of power. Real power. Not the kind Deacon had—the power to hurt people smaller than him, to steal from his own family. But the kind that came from a sort of brotherhood where a man's word—my word—was worth something.
Brick didn't know me. He had no reason to believe me.
But he did.
And I appreciated it.
I wanted in. Wanted to be one of them. After havin’ saved enough money to buy a dirt bike and a shotgun. And after havin’ saved enough money to have my stepfather steal it from me and stay away for weeks to spend it, I was wiser than I was smart.
Smart men don't join up with outlaw MC's.
But… wise men do.
I bagged those two turkeys, secured them to my pack, and spent the whole ride back picturing myself with those men.
As one of them.
Badlands.
It was everythin’ to me.
When I got home, I cleaned the turkeys and then held Destiny in my arms for the first time as Mama made dinner.
She started getting better after that. Started smiling again. Turning back into her old self.
But I was someone else entirely.
I would never speak of that day to anyone.
Not even Brick when I finally met him for real three years later.