Bones by the Wood (30 page)

“It’s okay.  It was kinda fun makin’ Val’s face go all funny like that.  If any of my teachers ask, I’ll just tell ‘em the same thing.”

“That’d be good.  And, bud, you should probably hold off mentionin’ about Scooby and Shaggy and the rest as well.”  She made herself look at him while she spoke.

“Well, yeah.  If I’ve been pukin’ all weekend I shouldn’t have been playin’ computer games, right?”

“True, but it’s not just that.  Your teachers don’t know them.”  Thea sighed.  It was going to be hard to explain this to her boy.  Prejudice was something she wished he didn’t have to know about.  “They don’t know that they’re good people.  They hear the loud bikes and they see that they’re big and they see the tattoos and they automatically think they’re bad people.”

“But they’re not.”  Josh seemed completely perplexed.

“No, they’re not.  But your teachers will think that they are, and they’ll think it’s not safe for you to hang out with them.”

“But you have tattoos.”  He wasn’t any less confused.

“Yeah, and some people think that makes me a bad mama.  The same people who will think I’m a bad mama for takin’ you to the clubhouse and lettin’ you hang out with the guys.”

“What?!  But those people don’t know nothin’ about you, or me, or them!  His confusion had given way to outrage now.

“No, but they’ll judge me anyway. Just like they’ll judge Shaggy and Scooby and Dizzy and the rest.  So we need just to not speak about it.  You don’t need to lie, well, apart from the thing about bein’ sick, just don’t talk about it.  If you don’t tell ‘em, they won’t know.”

“What about Billy?  Can I tell him?  I wanna tell him about Shaggy takin’ me on his bike and stuff, and the garage was way cool.”

“It’d be best not to, bud.  Billy will probably think it’s way cool, too.  But I’m not sure his mama will.”  Billy’s mother had always been friendly to Thea, but she was a Soccer Mom, as much as someone could be in Ravensbridge.  She wore the Mom Jeans and everything.  Thea thought even six degrees of separation from an MC might be more than she could bear.  And yeah, that was her judging, too, but she was basing her assumption on experience.  Ravensbridge was a small town, and there had been an MC calling it home for years.  Thea knew what people said about the bikers that inhabited this town, and not much of it was good, not much at all.

Josh was silent for a long while.  He just kept mopping out the cabinet he was working on, one of the corner units.  Eventually, Thea heard from deep inside it, “That sucks.”

“Yeah, bud.  It does.  But that’s the way it goes sometimes.  When you’re older, you’ll be big enough to do what you like and not care what anyone thinks, but for now, we have to pay them some heed.”

Josh emerged from the cupboard to look at her.  “Because they might put me in a home?  Kenny Wilkes, in my class, they put him in a home ‘cause they said his mama didn’t look after him right.”

Thea had been aware of that case, it had been the subject of a lot of gossip in the community, so she’d overheard much of it in the laundromat and as people chatted as they shopped in the store.  “Yeah, well that’s ‘cause Kenny’s mama was drunk when she wasn’t cranked outta her mind and she didn’t look after him at all.”

“But you don’t do drugs.  And Dizzy and Shaggy and the others don’t.”

Thea decide not to split hairs about pot; she was pretty certain Dizzy wouldn’t stand for the others doing anything else, anything harder. She would be out of there in a cloud of dust if they did, but she had seen zero evidence of that.  “Some people think stickin’ a needle in your arm and hangin’ out with bikers is the same thing, as bad as each other.  So we’ll just keep quiet, yeah?”

“Yeah.”  Josh was sullen.  “Still sucks though.” 

“Yes.  Yes it does.”

She’d cooked them a quick supper and then left Josh under the watchful eye of Clarice, who was obviously dying to ask some questions about their disappearance, but politely kept them to herself when Thea didn’t offer any information.  Her hunk of junk car seemed even more recalcitrant than usual and only made it to the store on a wing and a prayer.  Thea thought about asking Dizzy to take a look at it, but she felt weirdly awkward about that for no discernible reason, so she shelved the thought for the time being.

Dwight, the store manager, was coming off the shift before her. If he’d been snippy on the phone that morning he was outright hostile now.  He was rail thin and no taller than 5’ 5”, and more than a couple of inches of that height were courtesy of the heels of his boots.  What he lacked in stature, he made up for in attitude.  Puffed full of his own importance, he reminded her more than once that she needed the job more than he needed a flake employee.  That was fucking rich.  It was the first time that she’d called in sick in years. And now he was holding it over her.  That was just great.

She had her high school diploma, but it was over a decade old.  Now all she had was plenty of experience working in the store.  There was a chance she could get a job waiting tables in town if she lost this job, but she’d bet her last paycheck that Dwight would badmouth her if he sacked her.  She was sure she’d struggle to get work if she lost this job.  Fuck.  She hated that he was right.  She was going to have to be a model employee for the foreseeable future.  She hoped that would be enough.

Apart from the drama with Dwight, it was as tedious as Monday shifts usually were.  Since it was quiet, and she was bored, she decided to earn some space in Dwight’s good books by cleaning the store.  She mopped the floors and wiped the shelves down and didn’t see one customer the entire time.  By the time she was done she didn’t think she’d ever be able to get the smell of fake pine trees out of her nose.

Unfortunately, all that time with nothing much to keep her occupied gave her way too much opportunity to overthink things, specifically things concerning her and Dizzy.  There was a real attraction there, the man was sex on a stick for a start, considerate and kind, and he paid attention to Josh.  Thea could see from the respect and affinity that the other patches had for their President that he was a good man.  Not once during the entire weekend, even though one of their number had died doing whatever it was they’d done, had she heard anyone say a bad word about Dizzy.  She’d kept her ears open and all she’d heard was friendship, and that his presence was missed in Louisiana, and pride at the progress he was making here in Texas.

But she started worrying that she’d just been caught up in the frenzy of the lockdown.  Now that she was a couple of steps back from the situation, she wondered if she’d let things move too fast.  Maybe she should have thought things through more, taken more care.  She should have held back, considered Josh more through all of it.  It was too late now, though.  Dizzy was not the kind of man who was just going to hand the reins over to her.  The sense of authority that surrounded him, his power, his command, it was all as alluring as it was terrifying.  Not only did she have someone else in her life to consider when she made decisions now, but she knew she would not be calling all the shots.

She was disturbed from her anxious train of thoughts when she heard the rumble of a bike approaching, and then silence, but no one came into the store.  It wasn’t unusual to hear the roar of the engines about town, so she just got on with closing up for the night.  She double checked everything.  She didn’t want to give Dwight an inch.

She was a little late when she started her way across the lot to her car, and she was fumbling in her bag for her keys.  The day was catching up with her, she was beginning to feel bone tired, so she didn’t see the bike parked next to her car at first.

“Heya, sweetheart.”

Thea let out a little squeaky shriek and dropped her keys.  Dizzy threw his head back and laughed at her shocked reaction.

“What the fuck?!  I nearly had a heart attack!”  She dropped to the tarmac and scrabbled for her keys, trying to breathe her heart back down her throat and into her chest.

“No drama, sweetheart.  Just wanted to make sure you made it home okay.”

“I don’t call sufferin’ a coronary event okay.  Anyway, I thought we were okay, that we didn’t need to worry too much?”  She caught her errant keys and straightened, but made no further move towards her car.

“You don’t.  Just tryin’ to be nice over here.  If anythin’, I’m more concerned the engine is gonna drop out of that death trap, or the brakes are gonna fail.”

“Yeah, well, it’s done okay so far.”  Thea wasn’t sure why she was offended on her car’s behalf. It sure didn’t deserve her defending it.

Dizzy cast a skeptical eye at the dented hunk of metal.  “It was doin’ okay ten years ago.  It’s on its last wheels now.”

“So you’re sittin’ here at this time to scare me half to death and insult my ride?”

Dizzy shrugged.  “Guess so.”

It was late, or early, whichever way you wanted to look at it, Thea did not want to spend hours standing in a parking lot.  She stalked to her car door, but as she aimed the key in the lock, Dizzy caught her arm.  “I’m sorry I scared you.  I don’t warrant a kiss ‘hello’, though?”

All Thea’s overthinking began to fade into the background.  He was so close and so warm.  And he was right about the state of her car.  And he’d apologized.  Still, she wanted to get home and get into bed, so she tried to get away with a quick peck, but Dizzy wasn’t having any of that.  As soon as her lips met his, before she could pull back, his fingers were threading their way into her hair, over her scalp, behind the elastic tie battling with the weight of her hair.  He kept her steady and the kiss built into something more than just a ‘hello, how’re you doin’?’  It built into a lot more than that.  By the time he let her go, Thea was flushed and wondering about the logistics of leaving her car in the lot and straddling Dizzy’s bike behind him, or maybe in front of him.

“M’I okay to see you home, then?”

“Huh?  Yeah.” 

He laughed again when she fumbled her keys, trying to unlock the car door.  She muttered a quick prayer once she was safely inside that she didn’t reverse over him, because her mind was not on the task at hand at all.

She was surprised, but not displeased, when Dizzy parked his bike behind her car on the street and dismounted.  He shook out his wind-tousled hair as they walked up to the door to the building.  Thea didn’t say anything, but she was wondering whether he was just planning to see her to her own front door.  He’d been that far before, on Friday, when he’d stood guard as he waited for her to pack things for her and Josh and their vacation at Casa del Priests.

He waited silently while she fumbled the key for that door, too.  She was unnerved by his presence, not knowing what it meant, but not as much as she was just plain distracted by his proximity.  She took a deep gulp of air to try and retain a little decorum, knowing that Clarice would be waiting up for her.

Sure enough, when she gently pushed the door open, Clarice was standing behind it, a tapestry bag full of yarn and knitting needles in her hand.

“Hi, Thea.”  She paused a beat.  “And hi, Thea’s friend.”

Thea caught the movement of Dizzy’s nod out of the corner of her eye.  “Mornin’ Ma’am.”

“Oh, call me Clarice, please.”

Thea nearly fell over.  She’d brought a leather-clad biker home, and he’d turned the charm on, making his voice syrup smooth over those two words, to the point that her pensioner neighbor was now all aflutter.

Clarice was actually a little red in the cheeks.  “If you’ll excuse me, Thea, I’ll get out of your way.”  Thea moved dumbly to one side as Clarice passed her and headed across the hall to her own doorway.  “Josh has been a delight, as always.  He’s fast asleep.”  Jesus God, did Clarice just wink at her?

“Er, okay.  Thanks Clarice.”

That was definitely a wink, and then Clarice had shut her door behind her.  When Thea looked up, Dizzy was sporting a wide grin.  She waved him through the door, since he didn’t seem to be of a mind to leave.

“That should amuse you.  I think you’ve got a fan there.”

He shrugged as he walked into her home.  “It amuses me ‘cause it’s obvious you don’t do this a lot.”