His to Own: 50 Loving States, Arkansas Read online

  Stupid, stupid kid.

  And now here he is, years later, trying to figure out how to get a GED prep book to June. It wasn’t like the SFK compound was the type of place you wanted to be sending books from. Especially ones addressed to nig—

  Jesus, he can’t bring himself to call her that. Not even in his head. But the main point is, it ain’t safe. To buy this book for her, or send it. None of it is safe. Just like calling her wasn’t safe. Or sending her that one postcard from West Virginia. Or the other one when he got back to Tennessee.

  Mason knows all this, but still pulls out his wallet to pay for the book. Asks the girl, “Mall got some kind of mailing store? UPS or whatnot? Anyplace will do, so long as they take cash.”

  This time Bored Girl actually spares him a short glance, but only so she can huff, “Do I look like a mall directory to you?”

  “I think you need to check your tone when you’re talking to this one, girl!” a voice says behind Mason.

  Well, shit.

  The clerk finally looks up from her comic book. But this time her mouth falls open when she sees the wall of leather and denim standing before her. Mason is flanked by two shorter, but by no means small, SFKs on both sides. Bonner and Dietson. The bikers who’d insisted on coming with him to get an interim bike to replace the one that had been “stolen” back in Arkansas. Apparently, the men had gotten tired of waiting for him outside.

  Dietson’s statement accomplishes what basic courtesy couldn’t. Suddenly, the young woman isn’t nearly as belligerent. In fact, she looks like she’s fixing to shit her black skinny jeans when she registers the significance of the patches on their leather vests.

  “S-s-sorry!” she blurts, before meekly ringing Mason up.

  Mason tells Bonner and Diets to wait outside for him. Again. And when they’ve left, he slips the clerk the GED book along with two twenties and a post-it bearing the address of his secret house in Arkansas. “June” it says simply at the top, because he still don’t know her last name. Fuck, what is he doing?!?!

  But that doesn’t stop him from intimidating the fuck out of the entitled college girl behind the counter. Telling her he’ll be back if that package don’t get delivered exactly as he asks.

  Yeah, he feels like shit for a number of reasons when he leaves the store.

  “S-s-sorry!” Bonner mimics Bored Girl with an exaggerated wide-eye look as they leave the mall and head back to the dealership. “Did you see the look on her face when she saw our patches?”

  These men are his brothers, Mason reminds himself. Guys who’d grown up in the compound, same as him. Well, a little worse than him. Because their dads weren’t on the board, so they had no pull within the club. And these days, the board was almost completely hereditary. So Bonner and Diet had the SFK equivalent of dead-end jobs.

  Which explains why they are just trying to get in good with a board member. Mason understands. He really does. And it’s not like he can’t do with a couple of trustworthy suck ups to help out with the gun runs after that near as fuck miss with the Hijos. So why does he want to punch both of them in the teeth right now?

  “Bet the bike still won’t be ready for us when we get back,” says Bonner. “Goddamn service ain’t worth shit these days.”

  “Specially out here in the city,” Diets agrees, spitting at the concrete. “So you got a girl now?” he suddenly asks out the blue.

  Mason doesn’t answer, but he must look consternated because Diets responds to his unspoken question with, “No offense, but you don’t exactly look like the GED type.”

  Again Mason doesn’t respond, but Diets and Bonner don’t let it go.

  “You pick somebody up in Arkansas?” Bonner asks, like a gossipy old lady. “Wait, is it the same girl who did your new tats?”

  Mason grits his teeth, and Diets says, “Oh shit, you gonna bring her back to the clubhouse? I could use some quality art. Been thinking of getting a wolf-head or something…right here.” He points in the general direction of his left shoulder which sends him and Bonner off into a discussion about the artwork they ain’t never going to get from Mason’s girlfriend. First of all, because the woman living in his house in Arkansas isn’t his girlfriend. Second of all, because he’d never let either of these assholes get close enough to June to receive so much as prick from her tattoo gun.

  A memory of lying in her bed at the cabin while she installed the first tattoo comes back to him. The sunlight in her hair. The joy in her eyes as she worked…

  One of his phones ring inside his vest, yanking him out of the memory.

  “Dad,” he says, after checking the caller ID.

  “You’re late,” Fred answers, voice still strong, and laced with violence despite his advanced years. Or maybe because of them.

  Yes, it’s true. He’s late for yet another bullshit board meeting. Or, should he say, “bored” meeting. That shit had become damn near intolerable ever since D disappeared. Without D around to keep the meetings organized and on topic, it was nothing more than a coven of old white men talking about their glory days, and wishing for stuff that would probably never happen. Especially without D there to lead them.

  “Figured you didn’t need me there for the vote,” Mason answers. “I do whatever gets decided. You know that.”

  “Yeah, and I also know ever since Dixon pulled his disappearing act, the board’s been a little jumpy. And tonight we’re deciding what to do if you don’t find him on your next trip to West Virginia. So humor me, Son. Get back here. Now.”

  Humor him.

  More like feel a sudden murderous rage towards him. One for which Mason had no explanation, since he’d supposedly stopped feeling much of anything a real long time ago. And yeah, Fred was a shit dad who cared more about the club than he did about his own family. But hadn’t he always been?

  Still, Mason hadn’t lied about his good soldier status, so he replies, “Copy that.”

  “Club’s calling,” he tells the other two. “Handle the rest of it with the bike.”

  He tosses them a roll of large faces and doesn’t wait for an answer. They know and he knows what he’s done to others with his serrated bowie knife and his gun. Knows he’s the kind of crazy motherfucker who will do the same to them if they fuck him in any way on this deal. They know and he knows he’s a natural born killer, and that gives Mason the confidence to walk away without fear of them not following his instructions to the letter and bringing back his change on top of it.

  No one ever fucks with Mason Fairgood and lives to tell the tale. Well, no one except…

  Another vision of June pops into his head. This time, she’s standing in front of his gun. Eyes wide and terrified, but her gunless stance is braver than anything he’s ever seen.

  Terri.

  He grabs on to the name like a lifeline. New SFK groupie. Raised right. Thick hips and large breasts she’s not afraid to show off under crop tops and low-ride jeans. No butt to speak of, but if he closes his eyes, maybe he can…

  With a shake of his head, Mason climbs into the delivery van. Revs the engine just because he can. The point is, Terri has made it clear every time he’s stepped foot into the clubhouse that she’d like to audition for the part of his old lady. And tonight he’s going to let her do just that.

  He can’t have June. He knows this. Can’t see her again. He knows this, too. So tonight, he’s finally going to start acting like it. Stop turning down the pussy women have been throwing at him left and right. Fuck Terri until he doesn’t have any more visions of that damn black girl with the sad eyes. Until June is so far gone from his memory, he remembers who he is again. Who she is. And why they can’t ever be together.

  It’s a plan. A good one Mason has every intention of following to the letter.

  But he doesn’t.

  Because that night he gets a call from The New Rebels about D’s whereabouts. And as it turns out, this call will change his life forever.

  Chapter 8

  June

 
Three months later

  “June! Hey, June! Need to talk with you before you go. Wait a minute, please!”

  June pauses in the middle of unlocking her bike. Considers pretending she doesn’t hear her supervisor, Mr. Patel, calling out to her even though she clocked out at work ten minutes ago. But then she figures with only a month left until the GED test Cal-Mart so generously paid for, she’d better not risk pissing off her boss. Lord knows when and where she’d find another decent paying job with her limited social skills and lack of high school credentials.

  So she turns around with her best version of a polite-but-in-a-hurry face.

  However, Mr. Patel doesn’t seem nearly as adept at reading her expressions as Mason.

  “Hi, June. How did your shift go today?” he asks, sticking his hands in his khaki pockets. As if he’s settling in for a long gab.

  “Fine,” she answers.

  “Noticed you’re getting pretty speedy with the price gun out on the floor!” He tilts his head to the side and crinkles his eyes. And June, who’s never seen Mr. Patel read anything but bright-covered self-help books on his breaks, gets the feeling he might have read that positioning his head in this way makes people feel more relaxed when talking with you. “We might have to try you out on the register next.”

  June doesn’t respond. Doesn’t say what a bad idea this would be. Because while she’s just about reached the point where she can tell parents with screaming toddlers where the booze aisle is located, the thought of having to deliver the sunny type of customer service required to work on a register gives her hives.

  “How did you end up in our GED program again?” Mr. Patel asks, tilting his head the other way, threatening the imminent collapse of his aggressively gelled comb-over.

  “I applied,” June answers. “You said I could. So I did.”

  “Yes, yes, of course. That’s great,” he says, stroking his Cal-Mart shift supervisor lanyard like it’s a cat. “You know, I just got word from headquarters that our CEO, Mr. Holt Calson himself, has tasked me with recommending one associate from our store for a new online marketing initiative. I haven’t decided who it’s going to be yet, but, ah…”

  He finally un-tilts his head, crinkling his light brown eyes just like the book probably said to do. “Maybe we can talk about it over dinner at my house? Say, tonight around 8:00 PM?”

  It takes June a split second to realize her boss is coming on to her. It’s completely out of the blue, but not entirely unexpected. One of the other stock clerks warned June that their middle-aged supervisor had a habit of coming on to the new girls.

  “I can’t,” June answers, eyes dropping away from the conversation. For once, she doesn’t have any trouble whatsoever coming up with the right set of words.

  However, Mr. Patel mistakes her dropped gaze for an indication of obstacles. And you know what every self-help book says about obstacles, right?

  “If you lack proper transportation, I can come by your house and pick you up,” he offers. Then, as if having second thoughts, adds, “Provided it’s in a safe neighborhood.”

  Wow. Neighborhood assumptions aside, she could think of at least a thousand things she’d rather do than spend even a minute of her unpaid time with Mr. Patel: study for her GED, work on her tattoo portfolio, clip her toenails—seriously, the list stretches on for days.

  But in the end, June decides to pull her ace card, the one that a few of her single-mom colleagues grumble works best when it comes to turning off men. “Sorry, but I don’t have a babysitter,” she tells him.

  “Oh!” he says, the aggressively kind expression falling right off his face. “You have a child?”

  “I do,” she replies, hating that she has to use so many words to extract herself from his poorly disguised, pervy come on.

  “I just…well, you look so young and you never mentioned a child.”

  No, she hadn’t. Because when you’re only twenty-four, you get worried about what might happen if someone starts asking too many questions about the ten-year-old boy you’re claiming as your own.

  “Can I go?” she asks, feeling nervous about discussing her guardianship of Jordan. She glances pointedly at her watch. “I need to meet his school bus.”

  “Yes, yes, of course,” Mr. Patel says, shifting from foot to foot in a way that almost makes her feel sorry for him.

  Almost. She is so over men who abuse their power to get women into bed.

  When you get that itch, you come find me. Only me.

  But that’s not the only reason she turned Mr. Patel down. June shakes yet another stray thought of Mason out of her head as she bikes away from the store. Telling herself again that his declaration means nothing. She never itches like that. Probably she’s incapable of itching like that after those miserable six years with Razo. Besides…

  You probely wont be seeing me agin, but wantd you to know Im in WV.

  That postcard with a pretty forest and mountain scene on the front arrived just a week after their first and only phone conversation. A few days later, another postcard with a Tennessee farm on the front and, “dont know why Im bothern with this shit, but im bac in Tennessee.” Then the arrival of the GED book a couple weeks later.

  Really, it was the GED book that threw her for a loop, and continued to do so over the long summer. Because the day before it arrived, June had given into the demons in her head. Until then, she’d spent her birthday month going back and forth in her head. She needs a GED to be taken seriously for a possible tattoo apprenticeship. She knows this is the first step towards making her dreams come true. But…

  Razo spent the last six years telling her how dumb she is. Calling her retarded, joking to his men that she was lucky she was so fine, because fucking and gang tats was all she was good for.

  And he obviously believed it. He beat her because he thought she was worthless. Sold her to the first guy who came along with an offer. Not caring about Mason’s patches, or what he might do to her or Jordan.

  So yeah, after six years of that, it was hard for June to believe in herself. Hard to believe anyone, outside Cal-Mart, would give her a job. And what seemed so clear a few weeks ago at the start of her stay in Mason’s house, suddenly became murky. Making it hard for her to imagine she could ever start down the path to the dream she came up with while working on Mason’s sleeve.

  June asked for a GED application on her third day at Cal-Mart, only to ball it up and throw it away by her third week. She should feel lucky she could even get a job. Call it a day, focus on raising Jordan now that they finally had a safe place to live…and a declaration from Mason that he won’t be coming back. The balled up application had just hit the rim of the kitchen waste basket when a brown-and-yellow carrier truck pulled into her dirt driveway.

  And despite her doubts, when she saw who sent the package and what it contained, something fired up inside her. Propelled her forward as she went into work the next day and asked for another application. This time, she filled it out during her lunch break, and turned it in to Mr. Patel before she could second-guess herself again. Mason believed in her, so she believed in her, too. And this carried her through her studies for the rest of the summer.

  But other than a few more postcards—one from Los Angeles, and another from Seattle, both bearing similar poorly written messages: Howz it? Still dont get the fuckn point these things. But fuckit here you go—June hasn’t heard from the man responsible for her current frame of mind.

  And she has no idea if or when he’ll ever be back. Not that I want him to come back, she reminds herself as she bikes home down I-62 West.

  There was that incident in L.A. soon after she got the GED book. The one that made the news, and had Jordan calling her over to their shared laptop to take a look. She’d been surprised but, you know, not surprised to see a picture of Mason brawling with a man who turned out to be his cousin with the headline RACIST PENTHOUSE SHOWDOWN plastered above the torrid, gossipy-sounding news article.

  Even Jordan had
trouble believing Mason was a good guy after reading a handful of the reports.

  Not that he let it stop him from liking him, however. Instead, Jordan simply stopped visiting internet news sites and watching TV gossip shows for a while.

  So yes, it was unequivocally a good thing Mason Fairgood wouldn’t be coming back. June doesn’t want him to return. Obviously. But for some reason, this doesn’t stop her from thinking about him. Like, all the time.

  Ravens and skulls. She thinks about their days at the cabin. The heavy, but somehow gentle, weight of his stare as he watches her install his sleeve. Nails and gravel. Sometimes she dreams about being back in the cabin with him. Filling up his other arm in all that quiet, with nothing but cricket song to let them know when the day is done.

  Apparently, Jordan still thinks about him, too.

  “You think he coming back this week?” Jordan asks as they walk home from the school bus stop. She’s pushing her bike, he’s using his knees and feet to keep his soccer ball aloft, with occasional breaks in his never-ending dialogue to run after it when he misses.

  Most kids would balk at having a parent or guardian pick them up from a bus stop in a small town where most kids walk home. But Jordan isn’t most kids. If June isn’t out there right when he gets off the bus, he usually sticks around and waits for her so they can walk home together.

  Like her, he’s having trouble taking this new life for granted. Like her, he knows all too well what not having a safe place to go after school feels like. And unlike the other kids who insist they aren’t babies and don’t need to be picked up by a parent, any kind of parental figure is a sort of treasure for Jordan. He appreciates June. And she appreciates him right back.

  Which is why she doesn’t pretend not to know who he is talking about when he asks about Mason’s possible reappearance in their lives. And why she doesn’t bother to sugarcoat her answer. “Probably not.”