AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I can’t say the reputation a lot of bikers have isn’t well earned. There are a lot of bad apples in the trees, and I’ll never try to say otherwise. A lot of guys embrace that outlaw lifestyle and try to embody it. They fight, they kill. A lot of them get into some pretty horrible stuff. I’m not saying I’m an angel or that I haven’t done my fair share of sketchy, violent shit, but I’m not like some of those other punks. I will never get involved with trafficking women or children. And neither will the Kings as long as I’m alive.
I embrace the outlaw lifestyle not because it’s a status symbol or because I want people to think I’m cool like some of these posers. I embrace it because it’s just who I am. Who I’ve always been. I’ve always had a healthy disdain for authority and have had a hard time following the rules. Mostly because I’ve found the people in positions of power and authority are idiots and the rules they set down are stupid and arbitrary. With the Kings, I’m free to be me and to do what I want, when I want. We have our own rules, and yeah, sometimes they seem stupid to me, but at least I have a say in shit with the club. I’ve got a voice.
I walk in and take a seat in a booth near the back of the diner that puts my back to a wall and gives me an unobstructed view of the place. Call me paranoid, but I don’t like having my back exposed. I’ve definitely earned a few enemies over the years. I know there are some pricks out there who’d like nothing more than to walk up and shoot me in the back of the head, who think they’d be justified in doing so. And maybe they would. But I’m smarter than that. I don’t intend to ever give them the chance. If somebody’s going to come at me, I’m going to see them coming and give them one hell of a fight. If they’re going to kill me, they’re going to have to fuckin’ earn it.
Come to think of it, some of those enemies are exactly why I’m headed down to Phoenix in the first place. A while back, Reaper’s dad Old Grim made allies with the Howlers. We’ve been doing business with them to make sure other clubs in the area stay out of our shit. Most especially the Desert Deviants, who are lower than scum. The shit I’ve heard about them makes my stomach turn. Hammerhead promised he’d take care of them in return for regular cash payouts, but Reaper’s warning is still ringing in my ears.
“Mornin’, hon. Coffee?”
I look up and nod. “Yes, please.”
The waitress, Linda according to her nametag, pours me a cup from the pot she’s carrying. She’s a middle-aged woman with hair that’s a little too red to be natural, blue eyes, and a thin frame. She’s got some miles on her tires but she’s still a pretty woman. I imagine back in her heyday she was a knockout.
“Thank you,” I tell her.
“Wow. Please and thank you,” she notes, sounding impressed. “Most guys who roll through here wearing cuts don’t seem to know those words.”
I shrug. “Most guys in cuts don’t know how to be respectful.”
“So, you’re a different kind o’ biker, are you?”
“Nah. Not really. I just know how to show proper respect,” I reply. “You’re workin’ hard and are feedin’ hungry people. I think that deserves respect.”
She nods like she’s surprised but gives me a smile. “Well, I appreciate that,” she says. “What can I get you?”
I take a quick glance at the menu as she sets the coffee pot down on the table and pulls an order pad and pen out of her apron pocket. I decide quickly then slip the menu back into the holder behind the napkin dispenser.
“Steak and eggs. I’d like the steak bloody, eggs over easy,” I tell her. “Hash browns, sourdough toast. And keep the coffee coming, please.”
She smiles. “Long road, huh?”
“Long road after a longer night.”
“Yeah, I’ve been there too,” she says with a chuckle. “I’ll have your order out in a few.”
“Thanks, Linda.”
I sit back in the booth and sip my coffee as I look around. It’s filled with mostly truckers and other working men. There is one family sitting in a booth though. Mom and Dad are sitting with a little boy and girl, both probably only about four or five years old. The boy has one finger jammed completely up his nose and the girl is tapping her silverware incessantly on the table. What’s funny is that even though the parents look completely exhausted, they also look so… happy. They're making silly faces and joking around with the kids. I’m pretty sure if I go out into the parking lot, I’ll find a minivan with four little family stick figures in the back window.
I’m sure they’re just passing through on their way back to suburbia, back to their home with the white picket fence, expertly manicured lawn, and the fresh, updated exterior paint and the tire swing in the tree out front. I’m sure they just had the perfect vacation and are heading back to their perfect lives, living in their perfect neighborhood, surrounded by their perfect neighbors, their whole existence just perfect.
I look away from them, knowing I’m being an asshole. They didn’t do anything to earn my scorn other than be what looks like a nice, normal family. A good family. The kids are cute. They’ll probably turn out to go to good schools, get good grades, and be well-adjusted, high functioning members of society.
They’re everything I’m not and will never be. Their seemingly perfect lives are everything I never had, and maybe I’m a little jealous. Even still, all these years later, maybe I envy those kids. Stability and even love were things not known in the Richards household when I was growing up. The second-best thing my old man ever did for me was die. The best thing he did was give me my first bike. My first taste of freedom. While I still hate the man with everything in me, I have to thank him for that at least.
It was my fourteenth birthday, and my old man came home with a pile of metal and parts. He dumped them out onto a tarp on the garage floor, muttered out “happy birthday,” then went inside and crawled into a bottle. I knew fuck-all about motorcycles or engine repair. But I learned. I read every repair manual I could get my hands on, annoyed every mechanic I could find, then begged for, borrowed, or stole everything I needed to put my bike together.
By the time I was done, I could have taken it apart and put it back together again blindfolded. I won’t say that I’m a prodigy, but I am a great fucking mechanic. There’s almost nothing I can’t diagnose and then fix. Before that, I never knew I was mechanically inclined or how good I was with my hands. That bike turned out to be a good lesson for me in a lot of different ways. Not that he meant for it to be a life lesson learning project… it was just an added bonus for me.
It took me the better part of a year to get it done, but when I finished, it was the proudest moment of my life. That first ride was nerve-wracking. I was terrified that my bike, held together with pretty much nothing more than bubble gum and chicken wire, was going to fall apart and send me skidding along the blacktop, tearing off every layer of skin I had. At the same time though, it was the most exhilarating feeling in the world. I felt liberated. Free. Tearing down those roads with the wind in my hair and the world flying by me was the most incredible feeling I’d ever had in my life—and still is. It’s better than any drug I’ve taken. It’s almost better than sex. Almost.
That was the one and only good thing my father ever did for me. He gave me my first taste of freedom. When he died, that bike was the one reason I had him cremated and scattered his ashes rather than just leaving him to rot where he fell. I figured I owed him one kindness for the one he did for me.
The only thing keeping me home anymore was my sister Trixie. I took a job at a local garage for a couple years to help pay the bills, and the second she turned eighteen we both high-tailed it out of that place and moved across the country to Vegas—that’s how desperate I was to get out of that fucking house. When I got there, I looked up Reaper, and I’ve been riding with the Kings ever since.
“You all set here, hon?”
I nod. “I am. Everything was great. Thanks, Linda.”
