“I’m not sane, not in the slightest. None of us are for being in a goddamn MC. But I’m not so insane as to think Lane would sabotage his father’s club. That boy admired his father way too much. We all did, but him and Cole...”
Axle couldn’t finish his words. He didn’t need to. We all admired Roger Carter, even someone like me, who had limited interaction with him. And yet, our admiration meant nothing compared to what Lane—and yes, Cole—must have felt for him.
“Don’t get me wrong, I still think Lane needs to grow a bigger pair of balls, but he’s not suicidal or stupid.”
“Makes sense,” I said, an understated way of admitting I had acted an idiot. “I guess... I guess you could say everything that’s going through my head, all the memories of what happened in Iraq... fucking hell, man.”
I took a long sip of my beer and stared straight ahead. I was afraid of how I might react if I wound up looking straight into Axle’s eyes. Even if they were the eyes of a steeled, hard-headed man, there was no reason those eyes couldn’t also convey compassion. And if anyone in the group could actually understand what I was going through, it was him.
Which just made it all the more important that I not tell the whole story. Axle would know how I had fucked up. Axle would recognize my failures. Worst of all, Axle might have his own memories that he struggled with that he didn’t need to try and confront because of me.
“I get it,” Axle said. “Some things are too dark for us to go back to. Otherwise, we wind up like this. I don’t want your story, and I’m not going to give you mine. You don’t want them.”
No, I did not. I could tell by the heaviness in Axle’s voice that he had stories just as gruesome and tragic as mine. Us soldiers didn’t get into dick measurement contests over who had the worst war story because all bad stories were awful. We’d see who could do a keg stand the longest or who could slam the most cans down, but not a soul ever wanted to revisit the worst we’d experienced.
“However,” Axle said. “I do want to see you get better because we fucking need you in the club.”
Finally, I looked at Axle. He wasn’t looking at me, but there was no mistaking that his attention was on me.
“I have friends who...”
He couldn’t finish his words. Axle was nowhere near tears, but he took such deep breaths that I could hear them over the restaurant music.
“They will never get better.”
I understood what he meant.
“But you’re still here, Patriot. You’re still a man who cares. For all that you’ve suffered, you still put other people first, you still care about others, and you still do well for the club. You can still make things right.”
“Sure, but how?” I said.
I really hope Axle didn’t suddenly turn this into a therapy session. I didn’t need a lesson on how to find God or how to psychoanalyze my soul to discover the truth. I wasn’t sure what I wanted, really.
“Just forgive yourself and let go, brother,” Axle said.
Finally, eye contact was made. It was brief and short, but right then, I could see that Axle wasn’t just speaking to me. He was speaking to himself.
“Goes without saying we can’t change the past,” he said. “That’s more etched in stone than stone writing itself. But you can make a difference right now, you know what I mean?”
Now, Axle made harder eye contact. Now, he was getting back into his comfort zone.
“Right now, our club is getting fucking torn apart at the seams,” he said. “There’s a fucking rat. Lane is still learning how to be a leader. Cole has disappeared somewhere, and we can’t fucking count on a miraculous second appearance. Father Marcellus is there, Butch is there, Red Raven is there, but one of them is probably the rat. They are all old shits anyways that’ll need to be out of the club at some point in the future. I’m...”
Axle shook his head, like a dog trying to shake off some fleas on him.
“You’re the best we got, brother. You’re the calm one. You’re the one that can most easily interact with the outside world. Hell, just look at that girl, the nurse. You know how quickly she told me to fuck off? I don’t know how to do that shit.”
He put a firm hand on my shoulder—one of the firmest I had ever felt—and squeezed.
“You, brother, are the voice of reason for Lane right now,” he said. “Both of you may lose your minds, but even today, even after you knocked him up good, you’re still the only person in the club that he really trusts. If you want to make sure things keep going smoothly, then you need to make sure you’re there for him. You got it?”
It hadn’t sunk fully in yet. The feelings that caused me to start a fight in the first place, the feelings that had driven me all the way down here to San Diego, the feelings that had made me question my own sanity and Lane’s loyalties to the club still lingered.
But like soil desperate for moisture, Axle’s words were the nourishment for my rational side that I absorbed.
I got enough of it for right now. I got what I needed when I came here—some clarity of the mind. I finished my drink, slapped a bill on the table, and stood up.
“Enough so,” I said. “Come on, man. Let’s go home.”
