1.
Pike was in jail. Murder in public, angrily pulling a revolver and gunning another biker down, after which, Pike hopped on his chopper and rode away, with police arriving at his home just as he was packing to ride much farther. They booked him in his boots, and a blood stained white shirt.
My father was quite okay with this, and took up residence in Katherine’s bed shortly after Pike was thoroughly incarcerated. This seemed reasonable to me at the time, as my father always needed a woman and bed to be in, between the hours he was at the bar, between the hours he was sweating in the sun.
I did not visit often, though Katherine very much wanted me to. In her back yard there was a 60’s Mercedes conceding past decades of beauty into overgrown straw, clinging vines and southern oblivion. It was still graceful underneath all the weight, with silver curves, and blue leather. I wondered why she kept it there. That September Katherine gave me a leather motorcycle jacket as a gift. It smelled of oil, tobacco and was broken in. My father watched as I put it on. I looked in the mirror. “Good, it fits you. It was too small for me.” He said.
On Sundays pops would be lounging on the couch as if he were on the beach, eating ham and mustard sandwiches, the boxy television airing sport coverage, a variety of rhythms and tones as he switched the channels; the quiet hangover pleasant sounds of golf, or the hair of the dog roaring pulse of football. He smelled of cologne and turned oranges, faintly sweating out the drinks of the night before.
Those Sunday mornings he was not busy, but we didn’t need to talk. Being in his vicinity was enough to feel a warmth that was less like the sun, and more like a radiator, that cold people huddled up to in drafty frame houses. When we did talk it was about what he was doing, and how he had figured out something that had eluded everyone else that had attempted it, or how he had solved some sort of problem for someone who desperately needed it solved, and perhaps after he had quite a few drinks, the failings of his brothers, or my mother.
October was unusually cold, deep southern summers tended to linger, but not that year. I had just begun community college, and broke it off with my girlfriend from high school, and Leigh had taken it in the way that meant we were not going to have to talk about it again. I took up working in a machine shop sweeping the floors, and boxing the shipments and spent a few weeks ridding my new small apartment of lice. It was pleasant to be on my own.
Fall was teasing everyone, even the leaves. In the evenings sitting by the open window, I’d slowly inhale a smoke, a box fan wafting it out into the damp night, embers glowing in the breeze. Later, laying in bed awake in the dark listening to the trees rustle, leaves clinging on, I would think first about Leigh, and sometimes, if I awoke from unpleasant dreams; my Mother. As the month wore on, my hands began to come home with cuts and freckles from bits of metal shavings and burns. At night they felt heavy and hot, with the rest of my body shivering in the cold, the mattress on the wooden floor. By month’s end the cold made me sleep with all my clothes, and jacket on heavy and stiff at first but I could feel it’s weight becoming softer in the chill as it warmed with me. And I felt safe.
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