10

Mick

When he first heard the bike he tried to tell himself it couldn’t be, but he didn’t believe it. He’d heard bikes go by before, but something about this one sounded familiar. The odds were against it, but he’d found a place where he felt comfortable, had people he cared about—he was happy, goddammit—so of course it had to be. When the doorway literally filled up with biker, he knew it could only be one person. He’d never seen anyone even as big as Chuck, and that appeared to be a few pounds ago. Which worked out to Mick’s advantage because new, heavier Chuck couldn’t run anywhere near fast enough to catch him.

When Mick’s heart leaped back up off the floor and into his chest, when it started beating again, he raced out of the shack and had the Bug started before the driver door was all the way closed. He ducked and felt enough shame to just about kill him as he punched it off the lot.

He knew someone would come after him eventually, but never once thought it would be Chuck.

Stupid.

Chuck was one of Keith’s best friends, so even though he was basically a good-natured guy, he also had the most reason to want to bring Mick back to face the music. Or maybe just to punish him for fucking the whole thing up and leaving Keith to rot in prison, alone.

The Chuck he’d known his whole life wouldn’t do anything to Scotty, though, and that was the important thing. Even if Mick had been man enough to stick around and give Chuck a chance to do what he’d come all that way to do, it was better to leave. Safe money said Scotty wouldn’t stand by and watch as anyone took Mick apart, even with his own body still battered and bruised. Even if the guy stood taller and wider, and looked meaner, than anyone he’d ever seen before.

Running was the only sane thing to do. Running was the only way to be sure Scotty would be safe.

Running worked. Until it didn’t. The Bug quit on a dinky two-lane highway in central Washington and no amount of wrenching or swearing got her back on the road. Mick wasn’t even sure how he’d gotten there. Maybe it was a stroke of genius to avoid I-5, or maybe he’d just postponed the inevitable, ensured Chuck would find him on the side of the road, alone for miles in every direction.

Two hours after nightfall Mick pushed the Bug into the parking lot of an ancient roadside motel. The sun had beat down on his back for hours as he sweated and pushed, but as long as he didn’t hear a Harley racing up behind him, it wasn’t worth complaining about.

Mick pushed her into the parking space on the end and rented the room she faced. While he’d stuffed every nook and cranny of the Bug with cash, he’d laughed at himself. He’d thought it was stupid at best and paranoid at worst that he didn’t feel safe until he’d stashed a month’s pay behind, under and inside every inch of the Bug. The memory of creating some of those stashes with Keith—not to hold money—stabbed at his heart so he pushed it away and enjoyed a tepid, low-pressure shower. The plan had been to find something to eat and the location of the nearest wrecking yard, but instead he collapsed across the musty bed and tossed and turned until the sun came up.

In the morning Mick dragged himself to the nearest dive for breakfast. The angry guy behind the counter at the motel suggested he start walking east, and it wasn’t long before Mick sat staring at a greasy plate of breakfast, trying to work up the desire to eat it. His stomach didn’t see what the problem was, but his heart didn’t see the point.

Mick ate most of the food, washing it down with bitter coffee that felt like hot knives in his throat, and left too large a tip for the blonde waitress. She looked as angry and bored as the guy at the motel, and gave crappy service, but Mick felt a little guilty for not staring at her tits.

He walked back to the motel, cursing himself silently for not heading south in the first place. Why didn’t he go to LA or San Diego? Mexico didn’t sound like a bad idea either. But he wasn’t going anywhere until he fixed the Bug.

“Yeah?” Bored and Angry growled at Mick from his seat behind the counter. He watched a small television sitting on a bookshelf that seemed to be filled with equal parts books and Hustler mags. A battered recliner barely fit back there, and the guy barely squeezed into it. He watched a slasher flick at nine in the morning—it seemed to come with an extra shot of misogyny to go with the ear-piercing screams.

Mick didn’t remember going inside the office. “Can you tell me where the wrecking yard is?”

The guy scowled and tossed a beat-up edition of the Yellow Pages onto the counter. Mick thanked him and stood at the counter to search through it.

Of course. This must be the only town in the world without a yard.

He wrote down the address and phone number of the only auto parts store within fifty miles and shuffled back to his room. It didn’t take long to confirm the local shop didn’t have much of anything for a ’72 Bug, let alone anything like the distributor cap he should’ve replaced weeks ago. But they did offer to make a few calls to check the yards for him.

He opened the engine compartment and just looked inside for a while, giving himself the ration of shit he deserved for putting off necessary repairs. And then some. It was stupid, even if he had been allowed the luxury of staying on at Bell’s. Mick’s knees wobbled at the thought of never seeing Bell’s again—Walt and Tom…Scotty… He sat on the narrow sidewalk in front of his room and stared into space until he could get a handle on what he was feeling. It took the better part of the day before he moved, and it was more like he gave up, putting all those feelings in a box and locking them away rather than getting a handle on them.

What now?

Mick checked his phone and wondered if it would’ve been easier to find no messages at all. He felt like he’d been sucker punched. Five messages: two from Scotty, two from Mercy and one from Walt. Scotty and Walt asked him to call and let them know when he’d be back—in very different ways and with wildly different levels of menace. Mercy’s were the hardest to listen to. She begged him to take her with him.

Before he could fully appreciate how monumentally stupid it was, he called Mercy back.

She answered with, “Where are you?”

“Mercy, I can’t take you with me.” I want to, but I can’t.

“Is that why you called? To tell me I’m shit outta luck again? Because if it is you can come back and tell me to my face.”

“No. I… It wouldn’t be fair to you.”

She snorted, and maybe she meant it to sound like derisive laughter, but it didn’t quite make it. “Getting far away from here would be fair to me.”

She doesn’t sound convinced, but that’s not my business.

“If you came back to get me, or to let me and Scotty convince you to stay, that would be fair to me.”

“Is Scotty okay?”

“What kind of a question is that? No, he’s not okay.”

“What? What did Ch—what happened to him?”

Mick listened to Mercy breathe as she slowly calmed down. Mostly. “You left, that’s what happened to him. You’re coming back, right?”

“I can’t. Now that— I just can’t. Will you tell him—”

“Tell him yourself. You think I’m happy about this? You do, don’t you?”

“I don’t…”

“Well, I’m not, asshole. And I’m not happy about how you kept pushing me away either.”

Mick closed his eyes—they burned from hours of walking in the sun the day before, lack of sleep and all the nervous sweat that kept rolling into them. He was close to falling asleep right out there in the parking lot when he jerked awake. He considered chucking the phone out onto the asphalt—onto the highway if he could throw it that far.

“Mick?”

“Yeah.”

“Why? Just tell me why you won’t go back to Bell’s. Please.”

“I did something and don’t want to have to pay the price.”

“Fine. If you don’t want to tell me I guess there’s nothing I can do. Just tell me where you are?”

Mick apologized and closed the connection.

The next morning the local parts store called. A wrecking yard in Wenatchee found a distributor cap down in Portland and gave him the number, but he didn’t call. Even if his phone hadn’t died before he could say thanks he wouldn’t have called. If he was going to call Bell’s, it wouldn’t be about a fucking distributor cap.

Almost two weeks went by in a blur of futile attempts to jury-rig the Bug and get the hell farther away from the only place he wanted to be. Between the motel and the restaurant where the blonde waitress gave him increasingly poor service, stood a pay phone. It had probably been standing there since the ’70s, that phone cage with the rusted metal frame and cracked glass, tagged in layers of black and blue spray paint. It looked like something out of an old movie. Road Warrior, or Escape from New York.

It looked like Mick felt.

Mick walked back toward the motel after another greasy breakfast, stopped on the sidewalk and stared at the pay phone. Maybe it didn’t even work. He should’ve had to go farther to find a public phone, but there it stood, mocking him because the Bug couldn’t charge his cell if it wasn’t running. The charger that plugged into a wall broke a few days after he’d gotten the wild hair up his ass and headed north in the first place and he hadn’t even tried to replace it.

Stupid.

Mick’s chest tightened as he dialed. His knees weakened when Scotty answered, “Bell’s Auto Wrecking.”

“Scotty?” The line stayed silent so long Mick started to think it was dead. “Scotty, you there?”

“I’m here. Right where you left me.”

Given the choice, Mick would’ve taken a punch in the face. “Is the white Bug still there?”

“Yeah.”

“Could you send me the distributor cap? I’ll wire you the money.”

Scotty broke another long silence by asking for the address where Mick was staying. He hung up in the middle of the zip code.

Three days later it was Monday, and Mick sat on a grungy motel chair staring out the window. Another couple of hours and the mail would arrive. Maybe the distributor cap would come, maybe it wouldn’t. He decided to give it another day and then try to find one online.

Maybe two days.

The window looked out on a tiny industrial district. By turns it soothed and tormented Mick with its random familiarity. A place out in the middle of nowhere in Washington shouldn’t look so much like places he’d called home in two other states. When someone knocked he took a moment to figure out whether he was paid up before dragging his ass out of the chair and to the door. He opened it and his heart twisted in his chest.

“Scotty?”

“You didn’t get very far.” Scotty stepped over the threshold and gave Mick a solid pop in the nose.

Mick coughed and sputtered as he stumbled a few steps deeper into the room. He caught his balance and swiped at the blood dripping from his nose. He looked down into Scotty’s face, flushed with anger, the shadows of bruises still showing under his eye and on his jaw. Mick grabbed Scotty’s upper arms and dragged him into a kiss. He crushed his mouth against Scotty’s, the sweet taste he’d missed so desperately mingling with the coppery tang of blood. When the blood started to overpower the taste of Scotty, Mick wrapped both arms around him and pulled him close, pinning his arms to his sides while Mick wiped his face on the sleeve of his black T-shirt. Scotty reached back and grabbed Mick’s ass, pulling their bodies even closer.

“Thanks for not breaking it.”

“I like the way your nose looks unbroken. But you deserved that.”

“Yeah.” Mick looked past the open door into the little strip of parking lot between the motel and the highway. “You drove the tow truck up here?”

Scotty struggled, and even though it was against his better judgment Mick let him go. Scotty didn’t go far, only far enough to turn those light green eyes up and capture Mick’s last free brain cell. “You and the VW are coming back home where you belong. Unless you need more convincing first.”

Mick didn’t have to look to know Scotty’s hands were balled into fists. He almost told him to go ahead. He deserved worse than Scotty would be willing to dish out.

“That’s not the greatest idea.”

“And why not? Give me one good reason.”

“Because I’m a coward.”

“That’s not a good reason. It wouldn’t be even if it was true. You sound like we just met and you think I’ll believe any stupid thing that shoots out of your mouth. I know better.”

Mick carefully stepped back, away from Scotty, even though every cell of his body ached to be close to him. He went back to the chair, but didn’t sit. “I’m the reason my brother is in prison, because I was a coward and didn’t help him. I don’t want to do the same to you and Walt. The best I can do is stay gone.”

Scotty closed the door, plunging the room into semidarkness. He strode across the shag carpeting and sat in the chair Mick had just left. Mick glanced down at him—Scotty stared out the window, his eyes glazed over. He was waiting.

Mick stood beside Scotty and looked out the window. For a long time the words wouldn’t come. He’d never talked about it with anyone, except Keith. It felt…not disloyal exactly, but close, to tell Scotty. But he didn’t really have a choice. Scotty had come all that way because he thought he’d be getting a decent guy and he deserved to know the truth. Scotty would feel differently once he heard, once he knew for a fact what a terrible person Mick was, and then he’d go back to Bell’s. Alone.

“We, my brother and me, we were broke. About to be evicted. No jobs and no prospects. Keith knew this guy…he wanted someone to burn down a property he owned, an old hotel he was fixing up until he ran out of money or some shit like that. It sounded like a bad idea, but the money would keep us under a roof for another few months at least, and save us from selling the Bug or Keith’s bike. I tried, but I couldn’t talk him out of it.

“We borrowed a truck to take everything with us, to keep the Bug out of it. I choked. Couldn’t get out. Didn’t do my job.”

Mick’s throat closed off as he remembered that night. He could still smell the fresh wood and the gas fumes, a hint of smoke already in the air from a brush fire nearby. Could still hear Keith’s voice: Nobody will ever know.

“What was your job?” Scotty gripped the arms of the ratty chair and stared out the window. Mick ached to touch him but felt as unable to move as he had the night he let Keith down.

I don’t deserve to touch him.

Mick cleared his throat and forced himself to go on. He owed Scotty the truth and he wouldn’t let him down, even knowing the truth would drive him away.

“The only thing he couldn’t do himself—search the building, the site, to be sure nobody was there. There wasn’t much time between when the security guard left to get breakfast and when the crew would start punching in for work. He did the best he could, but I let him down.

“Someone had pried up the back fence. He was sleeping there when the— A man died in the fire because I couldn’t get my stupid ass out of the fucking truck. Keith didn’t have time to search the whole site himself, but he was the one whose fingerprints they pulled off the truck. A week later he was pulled over for a busted taillight and arrested. They sent him to prison for second-degree murder. Refused to take a deal. He could’ve said I was there and taken a deal for manslaughter, but he didn’t. And I never told anyone a goddamn word of it. Not even to save him from twenty-five to life.”

The room sank into silence, and Mick was reduced to a bone-chilling fear similar to what he’d felt the morning his mother left, or the day of Keith’s sentencing. And then Scotty stood and wrapped a hand around his forearm. When Mick didn’t turn to him, Scotty shook him by that arm.

“You’re not a bad person for trying to stop your brother from burning down an old hotel. Now come on, we’re going home.”

Mick didn’t move so Scotty didn’t get far.

“Do you have any idea how hard it is to find someone who knows what they’re doing and won’t rip us off? Why do you think Walt paid you so well? Because you’re worth it. Because he wants you to stay. We need you.” Scotty moved to face Mick, so close their toes were side by side, beyond touching. “I need you, Mick. If you would’ve said goodbye before you left, I would’ve said all this two hundred and fifty miles ago.”

Scotty’s amazing eyes shone with fear and Mick hated that he was the one who’d put it there. As he gazed into them, he came to realize Scotty wasn’t afraid because he had to bare his soul to get through Mick’s thick skull. He was afraid it wouldn’t work, that even though Mick wanted nothing more than to return to the little apartment over the office and wake up to cat hair in his coffee every morning, he would leave it all behind.

“You’ll take me back? You and Walt?”

“That’s what home means, Mick. You get to go back even after you fuck up. Now get your shit together while I hoist the VW onto the flatbed.”

“Wait. The guy who came to the yard, he’s a friend of my brother’s. He might come back.”

“Yeah. He probably will.” Scotty’s eyes had already been a little bloodshot, but they got red and full. “Chuck’s not after you. It was just luck he found the yard.”

“What?” That’s a strange definition of luck you have there, was something he would not be saying out loud. At least not while his nose still throbbed. Scotty probably wouldn’t pop him again, but Mick owed Scotty a lot more than just keeping a few of his smartass comments to himself.

“He told me what happened. About Keith not coming out when you went to visit him. That’s fucked up. But he’s not mad at you. Not Chuck and not Keith.”

Mick turned his face back toward the window, but he wasn’t seeing the dusty glass or anything in Washington State. He’d done a bang-up job not thinking about why he’d fled, not thinking about how many times Keith had told—begged—him not to visit, not to draw any attention to himself. Not to say anything to anyone about that night.

I can’t protect you in here, man, were almost the last words he’d heard from his brother. And it wasn’t the first time he’d said them, not by a long shot.

Mick had visited twice a month, which was the best he could manage, and not nearly enough. Every time, he’d sat on the other side of the greasy-smudged plexiglass, trying to ignore the orange jumpsuit. Trying to figure out a way to make things better, to erase the mistake he’d regret his whole life. To fix things, like a life was the same as a broke-down bike on the side of the road. They’d gone over it again and again, but Mick never found the answer.

“I have to—” Mick had said, for the last time, even though he didn’t know it then.

“You have to shut up.” Keith had sounded ticked, but Mick heard the fear underneath it and squeezed the little counter in front of him with both hands so nobody would see him shaking. “And you don’t say anything to anyone.”

“But they said they’d reduce—”

“What did I just tell you, Mickey? Fucking shut up. That’s bullshit. They look at my record and they see a dumb motherfucker who can’t even torch a building right, not some organized shit. They’re just fishing.” He’d pointed a dirty finger. If the plexiglass hadn’t been there, he would’ve been shaking Mick by the shoulders or holding the front of his T-shirt in both fists. “I can’t protect you in here, man.”

“That’s no reason to—”

“That’s the only reason that matters now. You wouldn’t listen before, but you’ll listen now. If you say anything to anyone—a single fucking word—I’ll kill you myself.”

Mick had studied the grease stains on the back of his hands until Keith knocked on the glass. Mick looked up, even though he didn’t want to see Keith’s face right then. Tough older brother or not, he was afraid. Almost as afraid to go back to his cell as Mick was to let him go alone. To be the one left behind again. Keith stuck around the longest, but that didn’t matter as much as it should have once he was gone.

“Nobody will ever know,” Keith said.

He’d said the same thing on the drive to the hotel, and then again while they watched the news report about the guy who died.

Before Mick could lose the last bit of his shit, Scotty grabbed his denim jacket, pulled him outside and stuffed him into the passenger seat of the tow truck. Mick cracked into little tiny pieces as Scotty locked up the VW and secured it. Scotty climbed into the driver’s seat, tossed Mick’s bag into the backseat on top of the toolbox and gave his shoulder a squeeze before firing up the tow truck and driving them home.