From the Chrysalis (39 page)

“So that’s that,” she repeated, taking a deep breath and trying to relax. “They’ll leave you alone now.”

“Maybe. I doubt it though. That’s not the way it works. Uh Liza, you aren’t helping here, you’ve got to let me in,” he said when he finally brushed her elevated sex. She was moist, but not quite enough. “And no more crying, for God’s sake,” he said, inserting two fingers inside her before seeking out her tiny bud again. “You gotta stop it.”

“Okay,” she gasped, grabbing his shoulders and arching both her neck and her back. “Sweet Jesus, that feels good. Don’t stop, don’t stop, don’t stop. Yes, right
there.
Ooh. Maybe,” she said, trying not to pant, “we should just run away. We could be at the Niagara Falls Peace Bridge before daylight and cross in the dark.”

“It’s too late now. They’re watching us. They’ve been watching all summer. You know that.”

“Wait. What’s that noise?” She tried to lift her head and chest in the small clearing they had churned in the grass, but her hair looked like it had rooted to the ground. “I hear bikes. What the hell are bikes doing out here?”

“Shh,” he said, also lifting his head and listening to the noise only Harleys make. “Sounds like the guys.”

“I thought they arrested all the bikers,” she said, laying back down with him still between her legs.
 

“Not all of us. It’s okay. They’re probably just here to say goodbye, show the faith.”

“But you’re not going anywhere! You’re going to beat this rap.”
 

“Depends who’s the judge.”

“Can’t you give him a little something?”

Almost deflating but not quite, he lowered his face until his forehead touched hers. He spoke slowly and distinctly through gritted teeth. “What, Liza? What should I give him? Some pot? Or maybe one of my bros, for Christ’s sake? Or how about the title to the farm, my father’s place? I can’t just rat somebody out. What kind of life would I have after that …
if
I could live with myself?”

“I wish you hadn’t taken up with them.”
 

“Baby, how many times do I have to tell you? It makes me see red when people tell me what to do. Even you. It always has. I’m a man.”

“You’re a man,” she agreed meekly, wrapping her legs around his hips. “You’re not going to run off with your biking brothers tonight, are you?”

He lowered his face to her breasts, digging his hands into her rear. “No. Not as long as you’re good. The way I feel right now, I don’t want to party. Yeah, it’s true. I’ve kind of gotten used to hanging out with my old man and waiting for you to call. Have a little faith, girl. Everything’s going to be all right.”

“I’d like to believe you,” she said, sliding out from under him and rolling onto her stomach.

“You know it pisses me off when you doubt my word. Get the hell back here or I’ll …”
 

“Or you’ll what?” she teased. “Wait. What’s that?” She glanced back over her shoulder, into the woods. “Did you hear that? That snap, that crunch in the brush? Oh Dace, I think I see eyes! What if somebody’s sneaking up on us?”

“It’s just an animal,” he said, stretching out and lightly touching her back. “A little fox like you. There now. You’ve scared him away.”

“Darling, you’re crying.” She reached back a hand, looking at him through her hair.

He flicked her bottom several times with the back of his hand. “I’m not crying! Why the hell would a grown man cry? Enough of this,” he said, grabbing her waist and positioning himself across her reddened backside. “You’re being a really bad girl tonight. Open up and let me in,” he insisted. “You’re ready, aren’t you?” He prodded two fingers inside, checking. “Ah, I thought so,” he said, then rammed his penis between her quivering buttocks and into her vagina, full force.
 

She raised herself on her forearms, wishing her hair weren’t in her face. “Wait. I don’t like …” she started to say, feeling a little too full, even though she had opened up almost all the way.

“But you will,” he said, ripping the leather thong from his own hair and securing most of hers back in a ponytail. “Just wait.”

Her eyes scanned the forest the moment she could see. The tips of her aching breasts brushed the ground. She squeezed them with her own hands. Who was there? Who was watching? What if somebody were behind them? Her rear was way up in the air. She had never felt so naked or exposed. Even so, she hoped he would keep slamming her hard.

“No, I … I don’t want things to end. I mean, I don’t want to come yet. I …”
 

“Yes, you do,” he said, reaching around and stroking her clitoris with a finger at the same time as he plunged. She looked back over her shoulder, just once. He was wide-eyed, upright on his knees, all the protection she had against whatever hid in the trees. “Everything, my darling. Everything’s going to be all right,” he repeated, thrusting into her as if he wanted to go deeper than he’d ever gone before. The walls of her vagina clamped down over and over, determined to hold him in. Her hands and knees shook, but she didn’t want him to stop, no matter what she said.

“No,” she cried, overwhelmed. “No!” even as they both came.

Much later he wrapped her in his soft blue shirt and held her the rest of the night, although neither one of them really slept. Liza watched the night eyes in the forest and made wishes on falling stars. Dace was the air around her, his warm breath a breeze on her neck. He couldn’t make love again, although she wanted to, wanted to see his face above her once more. She wasn’t worried, though, not then. They were safe as long as all they had to worry about was the night. In the dark they were safer than they had ever been in the light.
 

* * *

It was a trumped up charge, but it might do. Dace had been there, that was all, but the
Maitland Spectator
called him a full-patch member. The reporters were so thrilled they might as well have gotten high. D’Arcy Devereux was about as bad as a Maitland boy got. Hell, the
Spectator
had called him worse over the years, Dace confessed to her during the final hours of his freedom. Come court time, his attitude didn’t sit too well with long time resident Judge Silverton. This desperado, this infamous defendant, was a probationary member of society, and a man well known to the police.

“He’s a vicious thug now and he was a vicious punk then,”
Judge Silverton took the liberty of volunteering off the record later. He hadn’t said a word in court. No sirree, Liza thought. Silverton was much too smart. Probably figured he could do more good sitting on the Bench than sitting in some dusty office trying to get reinstated. Like maybe he could keep Maitland streets clean.
Juvenile records were supposed to be sealed anyway, and he liked to keep law and order, though he didn’t necessarily agree in this particular case.
 

Later he was happy to tell anyone who would listen that men like D’Arcy Devereux always got too many chances, but in 1972 there had been no telling what he might do or say. Why, an ex-con from Maitland Penitentiary had only recently published a book which had said plenty about nasty foster parents, police brutality and the whole goddamn legal system.

Judge Silverton rolled off the phrase “a man well known to police”
several times more, hoping the press might be clever enough to remember D’Arcy Devereux had gone bad long before he was put away in 1966, but they weren’t.

They also weren’t clever enough to figure out that Dace knew the Judge. A lot of things might be forgotten, but a first time experience hardly ever is. Dace would never forget this man. The grey-haired man on the bench had helped seal Dace’s juvenile fate.

It wasn’t just the name he’d recognized though, he told Liza a little later. It was the shape of his mouth. Judge Silverton had the same thin lips as his nephew Father Danby.
Just my luck,
other people might have thought, but Dace didn’t think that way. Only fools believed in luck. Besides, professional people were nearly always related. Especially if they had lived in the same small towns.

“If you aren’t going to listen,” Judge Silverton shook his mane of grey hair, affecting rock bottom sorrow. Dace observed that his lips were the grim lines of a man who had hoped to mitigate the testimony of a ten-year-old child. And while the child wasn’t exactly believed, he had still been instrumental in the disgrace and expulsion of Silverton’s beloved nephew to a northern residential school.

Liza could only guess what Silverton was thinking. In the courtroom, for one brief moment, she saw Dace through his cold blue eyes. Jesus, the man had been Outside
for less than six months and by violating his parole and associating with losers, he had risked re-incarceration and ended up right back here. Why had he abdicated so much control? What had they talked about all summer? How many times had she pleaded with him to stay away from the Clubhouse? How many times had she waited until he was gentle with love?

Too many times, because they had been observed by Jon Anson, the O.P.P. specialist from the Biking Unit on numerous occasions. Anson had gone undercover, passing for a biker most of the time, and had been partially successful in infiltrating a rival biking club, although he couldn’t be a full-patched member unless he was linked to a crime.

The court relied on him to corroborate the evidence against Dace. Anson was only too happy to inform the court that D’Arcy Devereux was a loose cannon. He said his fellow bikers feared for their women’s reputations when he was around. Even the men were afraid of Dace, mindful that he had tortured to death two of his own men in the Maitland Penitentiary Riot the year before.

Dace’s expression never betrayed his feelings, but Liza’s did. This biker wannabe, Jon Anson, was a twisted, pathological liar, even if that bit about the women was true. Fortunately, nobody was looking at her. D’Arcy Devereux was the man of the hour; they were waiting for his reaction.

“Strike that last bit,” Judge Silverton hastily interjected before Dace’s defence could object. “He hasn’t been convicted of those murders.”

Or even charged,
Liza mouthed.
 

Then Jon Anson said something about the accused having a sexual relationship with his own cousin, a university co-ed with no record. He made the word “co-ed” sound especially salacious, but nobody was listening this time except Uncle Norm who already knew, and Joe Accardo who turned around, winked at her and mewed.

Maybe if he co-operated
and fed the redneck judge some tidbits about gang
behaviour. Maybe if he lied
, Liza prayed. She sat on the hard, wooden bench in the Maitland courthouse, a supposedly educated person, the only person who had chosen to know her cousin inside and out.
 

On the third day, Dace turned around and looked at her from his fixed position at his lawyer’s side. She sat on the bench just behind him, in enemy territory, on the right side of the law.

 
Stand by me,
he telegraphed.
You know I had no choice.
 

Yes, you did,
she thought sadly.
Why do you care about those people when there’s you and me? For God’s sake, give Silverton something. Anything. Anybody. A name.

Dace tried smiling. Reassuring her that in spite of his crippling dependency on trouble and excitement, he would make good and be normal someday. Whatever the hell
normal
was. That was all dependent, of course, on if he ever found his way.

So what if there were other women, so what if the informant was right?
she raged. She was the only one he loved. She didn’t give a fuck about the other women. She could almost understand why Dace had to have them, to prove over and over to himself that he was valued and loved and to fill his immense craving. It wasn’t that they meant anything to him. Sure, his promiscuity might be a problem someday, but not now. She was so worried about Dace going back to jail she just didn’t care.

Judge Silverton caught Dace’s smile and graciously returned it. Liza had been unable to stomach a spoonful of her Campbell’s Vegetable Soup in the courthouse cafeteria, whereas the old man had come back after a lunch of steak and kidney pie looking positively gleeful. A couple of Scotches had probably helped. Silverton rambled in his closing remarks until he finally appeared to recall the reason he was there. In sober tones, he announced he was putting several bikers, D’Arcy Devereux included, back behind bars.
Especially considering the weapons charges.