Bones by the Wood (35 page)

“Say again?”

Dwight apparently had no sense of self preservation.

“Whore....fuckin’... opens...  her legs... for anyone.... with a bike... but I... can’t get some.”

Experience was tapping quite insistently on Dizzy’s shoulder now.  Dizzy was about ready to take his gun out and shoot the little fucker, but his life had been saved many times by listening to the nagging little fuck, so listen he did.  Yeah, he could kill Dwight, but that’d be counterproductive if he ended up in prison.  Dizzy looked around.  They were hidden from the road by dumpsters and the store itself.  Scooby and Shaggy maybe not so much; it was probably possible to see those two massive bastards from space.

“Hold him up brothers,” Dizzy instructed coldly.

“Wait....wait!” Dwight pleaded.

“For what?  So you can insult my old lady some more?  Boy, you ain’t got the sense you were born with.”

“I’ll give... you whatever.... you want.  Just....don’t.... hurt me....please.”

Dizzy couldn’t believe the stupidity, and the lack of stones on this fuck.  “Dwight, you have insulted my old lady, and now you’ve just insulted the fuck outta me.  You are not one of God’s smart people, Dwight.  Since you ain’t able to stop talkin’ bullshit, I’m gonna help you with that.”

Scooby and Shaggy pulled the man’s arms out straighter and harder.  They held him in a two-handed grip and hefted Dwight so that his toes barely touched the ground.

Dizzy went to work.

It was less effective than working the heavy bag in the club gym, because Dwight, soft, skinny shit that he was, just didn’t have the resistance to be an effective workout.  But there were compensations, there were bones in the human body, which made it a more interesting exercise, made a person have to consider carefully where to land each punch.  Quite a few of Dwight’s bones were fractured by the time Dizzy had finished.

Dizzy shook the blood off his fingers, and then wiped what he couldn’t shake off on the tails of Dwight’s shirt that had come loose from his, now soiled, pants.

Shaggy and Scooby dropped the bleeding and bruised man in a mewling heap in between two of the dumpsters.

Dizzy was pleased that he wasn’t too out of breath.  He wasn’t doing too badly considering he wasn’t a young gun anymore.  He turned to his VP.

“Cage, there’s a room, marked ‘Manager’s Office,’ off the corridor through that door.  There’s an old VHS set up for the security feed.”

“On it, Pres.”

Cage disappeared through the door.  He was back within minutes, brandishing the tape. “Got it.  The twinkie out front ain’t any the wiser either.”

“Good.”  Dizzy nodded.

“Thea and Josh settlin’ in okay, boss?”  Fitz asked.

“Yeah.  She didn’t need this shit, but yeah.”  Dizzy wasn’t going to tell them about the nightmares, or about Josh.   The knowledge he had about Josh was a confidence he wouldn’t break.  If Thea wanted the others to know about the dreams, she would tell them herself, but he doubted she’d want them to know at all.

“Does she know she’s stayin’ permanently yet?” Cage asked with a raised eyebrow, eliciting chuckles from the other men.  Dizzy hadn’t said anything, but he knew that they’d all made their minds up that now that Thea was in his house, she wouldn’t be leaving.  He couldn’t say they were wrong.

“Yeah, yeah. Yuk it up.  Anyway, you shitheads are gonna have to learn to behave.  I asked Thea to take over the office shit for the garage.”  He might as well tell them now.

“Oh thank fuck!” Scooby and Shaggy called in unison.

“Ferret might actually sing the Hallelujah Chorus,” commented Cage.

“Huh.” Scooby and Shaggy both looked completely nonplussed.

Cage shook his head in despair as he translated.  “He’ll be really, really fuckin’ happy.”

“Come on, boss.”  Fitz hitched his thumb over his shoulder towards the still whining heap that was what was left of Dwight Rodgers.  “Let’s leave this piece of shit to rot.”

“Yeah, it’s time to go home, boys.”

Dizzy called Ferret to let him know that he and Easy could stand down, as they all walked to their bikes.  Ferret voiced his and Easy’s opinion that they were happy that the punishment had been meted out without a hitch, but disappointed that they’d missed the event.  Everyone was on a high from the adrenaline and the violence.  Shaggy and Scooby were making plans to hit the gym for a workout, maybe a spar.  Dizzy figured the club girls were in for a lively night.

Some short time later, he parked his bike outside his house.  He paused on the porch.  Even from this side of the closed door, the aromas leaking out told him that Thea was cooking, and it smelled delicious.  He could hear Josh shouting giddily at the TV.  A feeling of complete and utter peace fell over him.  This was all he needed, to be able to return to his family at the end of a day.  His rage had been sated, his need for vengeance exhausted. 

He opened the door and walked in.  His Stetson was still on the side table, right where he’d left it when he’d come home, responding to Shaggy’s call.  The big man had been concerned that Thea looked even paler than usual, and that he’d heard the shower running for what seemed like forever, not good signs in his book.  He’d been right.

Josh was playing a Sonic game.  The TV pinged as the blue hedgehog jumped and rolled through the lines of golden rings.

“Hey, Dizzy.”  Josh didn’t take his eyes from the screen.  “Mama!  Dizzy’s home!”

“Hey, Dizz.”  Thea called from the kitchen corner.  He heard the clank of pans and the splash of something landing in the sink.  “I’m cookin’ chili.  It’ll be ready soon if you wanna clean up.”

It was so normal, so domestic, so right.

The blanket of peace balled up and lodged itself firmly in the center of Dizzy’s chest.  Whether they knew they were or not, this was his family.  He wasn’t going to let them go anywhere.

He could wait.  If it took forever, he could wait until they realized it, too.

He headed to the bathroom to scrub the blood from his hands.  It had turned out to be a pretty good day.

Thea snagged the piece of paper that was rolling out of the printer.  It was still warm.  She double checked the information on it, folded it carefully, and put it into the slot in the rack with the rest of the invoices that were waiting for the owners that were due to come and collect their vehicles.

She had only been working at the garage for a couple of days and was still learning the ropes, but she was confident she could do it.  She hadn’t spent years working behind a convenience store counter because she was unintelligent, only because it was, well, convenient.

Ferret had spent Monday showing her around the computer systems.  Thea wasn’t completely computer illiterate, she’d used the terminals in the public library occasionally, she just hadn’t had the opportunity to practice much.  It had turned out to be simpler than she had feared.  Ferret had said that her brain worked along the same logical path, which Shaggy had scoffed at.  But Ferret had seemed impressed, which had done Thea’s bruised ego some good. 

It was unnerving, doing all the learning with the guys right there, being all proficient at fixing stuff, but she’d just tried to tune their presence out.  Except for Dizzy; she’d really struggled to tune his presence out.  Apparently that was a little obvious, and it had made Ferret laugh out loud more than once when he’d been explaining something to her, only to find that she’d been staring across the bays, watching his boss. 

Dizzy had taken to working in the bay furthest away from the ‘office’ as the corner dedicated to the desk and filing cabinet was laughably known.  Thea wondered if it had something to with the time on Monday morning when he’d dropped a hefty wrench on his foot and it had taken Ferret a full thirty minutes to stop laughing.  He hadn’t seemed to want to be near Ferret since then, not at work, anyway.

On the Monday afternoon, as they were closing the garage, Annelle had driven up.  Thea still wasn’t sure who’d called her; no one would admit to it.  Annelle had
heard
that Thea had a new job and had apparently decided that, like it or not, she needed a new wardrobe to go with it.  They had a date to go to the mall in Westerton on Saturday.  Thea was a little nervous.  It had been a long time since she’d bought anything that hadn’t been from Goodwill.  But Annelle had refused to take ‘no’ for an answer and Thea hadn’t found any support from any of the men.

Even in the few days that she and Josh had been living with Dizzy, she could tell that the other members of the Priests were visiting the house more than they ever had before.  But Dizzy didn’t seem to mind.  There was generally a lively, chaotically cozy atmosphere most evenings and Thea was thoroughly enjoying it.  Even Dizzy seemed to be relaxed about the impromptu house invasions.

Scooby and Shaggy had designated themselves as Josh’s official chauffeurs
cum
bodyguards after he’d told them about the fight he’d gotten into at school.  Shaggy had emphatically repeated his promise to teach Josh how to throw a punch.  Thea couldn’t say that she was disappointed, not when her boy was so happy.  Self-defense was hardly a bad skill for him to know, and if anyone would teach him about moderating when and where to use violence, it was a group of men who were well-versed in evading the reach of the law, so she doubted that Josh would be punching every kid in the lunch line just because he could.  Plus, she’d brought him up better than that.

Shaggy and Scooby had decided that they would take turns to meet Josh at school and then follow the school bus until Josh got off at the stop nearest Dizzy’s house.  Since Dizzy lived out in the sticks, they had decided that Josh should catch a lift on their bikes rather than let him walk.  At first, Thea had been a little disquieted that they had apparently decided this plan without seeking her input or approval.  Dizzy had said that he’d speak to them about getting carried away with themselves as far as Josh was concerned, but he’d made Thea see that it really was a practical plan, that would probably end up safer for Josh over all.  It allowed her to keep working until closing time, and Josh was, in Dizzy’s words, ‘fucking ecstatic’ about it, so she’d given way... this time.

She was, however, closing the garage early today, and had done the day before.  The boys were on a run.  Dizzy had explained only that it entailed the entire club being away for a day or two, and that they would be heading down to the Mexican border, and then back up and over to Louisiana to meet the mother charter.  He’d asked if she needed to know more than that.  Thea had replied that ‘no’, she didn’t. She knew where he was, roughly; that was enough.  What he was doing there was entirely up to him, as long as he told her how to access the bail fund.  Dizzy had laughed at that, and then told her how to access the bail fund, which Thea hadn’t found as amusing.  She’d been joking, kind of.

The advantage of the club being away and the garage being officially closed for two days was that Thea had been able to spend some quality time with the computer, and she’d taken the chance to arrange and tidy the corner that was now her workspace.  She had badly needed to organize the desk and filing cabinet into a system that she could work with.  There had been invoices, order forms, delivery mandates and a whole slew of other important paperwork that had been thrown haphazardly onto the desk until it had mounded into precarious piles that had been threatening to tip over the edge of the desk in an administrative avalanche.

She wasn’t short, but Thea had to jump to snag the bottom edge of the roller shutter door to be able to yank it down with its ear-splitting clatter.  The others were already shut and locked and had been since the garage had been closed the night before the boys had left. 

Thea checked her phone on the way to her truck.  Ferret had taken personal offense at the age of her old one and had declared it an ancient relic.  He’d taken it off her and refused to return it, but he’d presented her with a more modern one that had internet access, and everyone’s numbers already programmed into it.  There were no new messages, which wasn’t surprising, since she’d only checked it ten minutes previously.  They’d only been gone two days, just one night, but checking her phone for updates had become a bit of an obsessive compulsive habit already.  Dizzy had texted her a few times and had called her the night before from the Louisiana clubhouse.  They’d set off before dawn the day before, had stayed the night, and were due back this afternoon.  They were on the road at the moment.  But she checked her phone again anyway.

Thea tucked her uncooperative phone into the inside pocket of her leather jacket, climbed into the driver’s seat of her truck and set off for the school to get her boy.  What was the title of that song ‘What a Difference a Day Makes’?  Well, maybe not a day, but nearly a week had made a hell of a difference to Josh, and to her.  Josh had really started to come out of his shell.  He was eating normally again.  He had color in his cheeks and a bounce in his step again. 

Thea was feeling more like her old self.  She’d had one more nightmare since the first night they’d slept at Dizzy’s house.  Josh had had nightmares during the first three nights, but he hadn’t wet the bed since the first night.  Thea still felt powerless to help her son, but she thought he was making progress on his own, and that made her proud as hell.  She had a feeling that it had a lot to do with his new surroundings.  Having Dizzy around, having his friends nearby.  She’d worried the night before that he’d regress without Dizzy in the house at night, but Josh had slept through.  Thea had been amazed, and tired, because she’d lain awake all night listening for screams that never came.

She was actually starting to think about Christmas with more than mounting dread.  It was a little over a week away, so she didn’t have much time to plan anything. She’d stuck her head firmly in the sand about the coming holiday, particularly after Thanksgiving, but now she was wondering if the club had any plans.  She hadn’t heard of any.  As far as she knew, all the boys, except Ferret, were single.  She wanted to speak to Dizzy about an idea that she’d had.

She parked up near the school, checked her phone again, and settled in to wait for Josh.  She nearly jumped out of her skin when there was a tap at the window.  Her heart sank to the floor so fast she felt nauseous.  It was the Principal.  Instead of only winding the window down, she got out of the truck.

“Good afternoon, Ms. Colby.  Would you join me in my office for five minutes, please?”

“Afternoon, Principal Schneider.  What’s happened?”

“My office, please, Ms. Colby.  Its much more...” he looked up and down the teeming sidewalk, “comfortable.”

Fuck.

Thea trailed after the Principal wondering what the fuck had happened and if she’d allowed her hopes to get too high.  Was the cosmos about to kick her in the guts?  This week had been amazing, awesome, wonderful, blissful. There weren’t words to describe how good this week had been.  She’d thought they had a chance of getting themselves back.  This couldn’t be the day they took Josh from her, it just couldn’t, it couldn’t.

By the time she entered the Principal’s office and accepted his invitation to take a seat she was ready to cry.

Principal Schneider started to speak almost before she’d finished lowering herself into the chair.

“Thank you, Ms. Colby.  Look, I don’t know what’s happening, what has happened to Josh and yourself, but there has been a remarkable change in Josh this week.  It’s been really quite startling.  And it hasn’t gone unnoticed that the change might have had something to do with those bikers.”

Thea couldn’t make her brain work.  They were going to take Josh away from her.  They’d pegged her as a tattooed biker whore and they were going to take her son. 

“Principal Schneider ...”

He held up a hand and interrupted her.  “Ms Colby.  I did not call you in here to judge.  I cannot begin to fathom what resulted in a decline as drastic as Josh’s or the miracle that halted and reversed it so suddenly.  But it is in reverse and he is almost back to his old self.  I called you in here to tell you to keep doing whatever it is that you’re doing.”

Oh. Oh. Oh.  She hadn’t been expecting that.  She hadn’t been expecting kindness.  She stared at the Principal.  A benevolent smile transformed the face that she’d previously thought of as gnomish.  She felt the first tear fall down her cheek.

“Here, Ms. Colby.”  He tugged a tissue from a pastel-patterned box on the corner of his desk and reached over to hand it to her.  Thea took it gratefully, wiped the tear away and pressed the tissue into the corners of her eyes to stem the threatening flood.

When she thought she could speak again, she looked up.  “Thank you, Principal Schneider.”

“My pleasure, Ms. Colby.  Josh will be waiting outside.”

She nodded, not trusting herself to speak again, rose and walked out of the office.  Josh was sitting on the same hard plastic orange chair that he’d been sitting on the last time she’d been called in about him.  He was looking at her expectantly and nervously.  He thought he was in trouble.

“Come on, bud.  Let’s go home.”

Home.

She’d automatically started referring to Dizzy’s house as their home.

“I didn’t do anything, Mama.  I swear.  What did he say I did?”

“Come on, bud.”  Thea put her arm out, and Josh rose.  She ushered him in front of her and out of the school.  She didn’t say anything until they were in the crisp December air. 

“You’re not in trouble, bud.  He just wanted to tell me that you were gettin’ back to yourself, and that he was happy about that.”

“Oh.”  Josh paused as he got into the truck.  “That’s good, right?”

“Yeah, that’s very good.”  Thea agreed as she turned the ignition and pulled out into the street.

Josh turned the radio on and watched the passing scenery as she drove.

‘... keep doing whatever it is that you’re doing
.’  The Principal’s voice kept repeating in Thea’s head.

What she was doing was letting Josh get drawn back into the family of the MC.  She was letting herself get drawn back in.  And it didn’t seem to be a bad thing.  She knew it wasn’t always unicorns and rainbows.  Fuck, after all was said and done she had seen the worst, short of death, that could happen as result of them being associated with the club.  But now she was seeing the best side of that association.

And it was there for the taking, for them to keep, if they wanted it.  If she wanted it.  If she hadn’t pushed Dizzy too far away.