“Another tool of the trade?”
“You pick up things here and there,” he says.
I can see why Dad wanted me to bring Michigan. I pull on the gloves and Michigan hefts a Magnum 45 and points it at Ellerby’s head. “Don’t run off, boy,” he says. “I don’t feel like chasing you.”
Ellerby’s hand falls away from the door.
“Don’t scare him too bad,” I warn. “I don’t want to be cleaning piss off my floors.”
“You need to carry plastic. Helps in the cleanup.”
“Fuck you two,” Ellerby spits out but he doesn’t move.
I hop out and grab my kit of supplies that I threw together. One spike, a length of rope, a sledgehammer and some zip ties. I stick the zip ties in my back pocket. Michigan is out, lighting up a cigarette.
“Those things will kill you.”
He blows out a stream of smoke. “You assume I’m trying to avoid that.”
Okay then.
I yank open the car door and Ellerby inches back, as if he thinks we’re going to leave him in the truck while Michigan smokes and I scratch my ass.
“Don’t make this harder on yourself. Get out here.”
“If you kill me, you’ll be going back to prison for a long time. It’s not self-defense now, is it?”
“Who’s going to care if you’re gone?”
“My ma and sister. Although I don’t have to fuck them to get them to care about me.”
Thanks to Michigan’s early warning, I don’t dive into the backseat and pummel Ellerby as is my first inclination. But hearing his statements voiced out loud makes me furious. This is everything that is keeping me and Chels apart and I want to punish him for everyone else’s narrow-mindedness.
I glance at Michigan but his face is closed down tighter than Fort Knox. If he disapproves, he wouldn’t say a word in front of someone who ain’t part of the club. After though? He might give me a piece of his mind and he might start treating Chels differently.
“I’m not going to kill you, Ellerby. I promise you’ll be walking out of here on your own. We need to renegotiate the terms of your deal with Chels, is all.”
He studies me and then capitulates because he’s killed all but one functioning brain cell. When he’s on his feet, I zip-tie his hands and then lead him into the blackness of the woods.
“You think you’re going to scare me?” he scoffs. “I’ve watched children’s movies that are more frightening than you.”
I say nothing and haul him about twelve feet deeper into the woods and throw him against the trunk of a thick tree. He struggles and yells at me the whole way, cursing my mother, my father and all our ancestors.
“So, you sick fuck, you thought you could terrorize Chelsea and get away with it?”
“I’m the sick fuck?” he screams at me. “I’m not the one boning my sister. You’re the fucking perversion.”
“Who I sleep with isn’t any of your business. Who Chelsea sleeps with isn’t any of your business.” I bend down and take out the spike. “And I’m going to teach you that lesson tonight.”
I jam the spike about seven feet off the ground into the tree trunk and then pick up the sledgehammer. He starts blubbering. “Fine, fine. I won’t say anything about you and Chelsea.”
“And you’ll give the money back?”
“Yes,” he cries. “Whatever you want.”
The weight of the sledgehammer is satisfying in my hands. Real good. “You know why I killed that asshole outside Rowdy’s? It wasn’t just because he was a racist skinhead. Can’t kill everyone for that. It’s because he said something about Chels. No one gets to say things about Chels and go away unpunished. I’m not going to kill you, Ellerby, because you need to spread the word. She’s untouchable.” I lift the hammer and raise it above my head. “You don’t speak of her.” I swing. He screams. “You don’t touch her.” The hammer hits home. “You don’t even think about her.” I swing again.
The ringing of metal against metal is a gratifying sound. Not as great as hearing the crunch of his skull against the steel mallet would be, but good enough. I look down and Ellerby is crumpled into a ball, a slobbering whimpering mess. The scent of urine rises up. He’s pissed himself. Unsurprising.
“This happen a lot?” I ask Michigan, pointing toward Ellerby’s piss-stained pants.
“Now and then. Depends on who you’re dealing with. That’s why I mentioned the plastic.”
I reach into the bag for my rope and swiftly tie it around Ellerby’s wrists. I loop the rope over the spike I’ve driven into the tree and start winching Ellerby up. Because I’m a nice guy, I turn his body so he’s facing the trunk, otherwise the position would rip his arms out of his sockets. “I’ll get a roll from the hardware store next time I’m in.”
“You’re pretty good with the hammer,” Michigan observes.
“Thanks.”
Once Ellerby’s toes are just touching the ground, I stop and tie off the rope. “You can try to get down but I doubt you’ll be able to. I’m showing you a great deal of mercy here. Someone will show up in six or seven hours to start work and they’ll find you and let you down. If you’re smart, you’ll spend that time giving your arms a rest by climbing the tree with your legs. In the meantime, enjoy having the ants, bugs, spiders and possibly snakes crawl all over you tonight.”
“You’re not going to hit me with that?” Ellerby’s head tips toward the hammer.
I slap it against my hand. “Not tonight. But if I even see you standing within ten feet of my girl, next time I swing this, your head will be on the other end instead of the spike.”
I gather my bag and nod to Michigan. We walk out leaving Ellerby hollering at us to let him go.
“So you and Chelsea,” Michigan muses on
our way home.
“Got a problem with that?”
He’s quiet for a moment and I want to turn around and hang him from a tree.
“No,” he says finally. “Not everyone’s going to be okay with it. A lot of folks probably see you as brother and sister and forget that Judge isn’t her bio dad, so there’ll be censure and judgment. What’s Judge’s take on it?”
“Haven’t talked to him about it. Chels is reluctant.”
Everything depends on Judge. If he places his blessing on it, the club will back him up. If not, then Chels is probably right. I’m going to have to leave the club and home. Just when I returned.
Michigan claps me on the shoulder. “If you two are okay with it, then fuck the rest of the world.”
I drop Michigan off at the bar so he can pick up his bike. The house is dark when I get home. Dad’s sitting at the table waiting for me.
“You get everything taken care of?”
“Yup.”
“Will there be blowback?”
“As in will he run off to Chief Schmidt? I don’t think so. We went down to the gravel pit. That’s outside of Schmidt’s jurisdiction.”
“What about the other thing?” He tips his head toward Chels’s closed bedroom door.
“It’s not drugs, Dad.”
He looks relieved. “Then what is it?”
“I…I’ll tell you in the morning. I need to talk to Chels.” Halfway out of the kitchen, I turn back. “Why’d you hook up with Gwen?”
I’d never asked him that. When he brought Chels’s mom home with him after hooking up with her for several years at the meet up down in Missouri hosted by a one percenter national club, I figured he wanted some convenient pussy instead of banging different club sweet butt. Since I was sixteen and nearly out of the house, it was none of my business.
The real shock was how much I enjoyed having Chelsea around and then how my feelings transformed from friendly interest to lust to some stronger emotion. Gwen took off soon after and Chelsea stayed which I figured was the right trade-off.
“She was a shit mother,” Dad admitted. “A good lay but a shit mother. She’d bring Chelsea to these meets which were adults only and leave her to sleep in the car. Part of me wonders if I started banging Gwen to be able to keep an eye on Chels and make sure no one touched her. Gwen started making noise that Chels was getting to the age where she could find a man of her own at the meet up. I knew that I couldn’t leave that sweet girl alone so I brought Gwen home with me. Figured she wouldn’t last long but she left us Chels like I’d hoped.”