Steele
The Black Reapers MC, the group formerly known as the Bernard Boys, liked to consider ourselves a family. We drank, laughed, fought, cussed, and partied together. To an outsider, we shared everything within and nothing outside.
But there were some secrets in the Harrison family that the Black Reapers MC didn’t know. There were some secrets that even Brock only had an idea of.
And as I drove underneath the Sunday afternoon sky, relishing the sun’s rays tanning my forearms and the vibrations of the engine providing a sort of massage for my legs, I had to prepare myself to confront one of the uglier parts of my family.
The drive to my mother’s house, about twenty minutes north of Santa Maria, in a part of New Mexico even less dense in population, was perhaps the only drive I ever took where I deliberately either respected the speed limit or even went under it. If I couldn’t control what would happen when I stepped foot in that house, then I sure as hell would make sure I managed everything outside of it, including going slow when I had to.
Which, naturally, meant when I finally got free of that house, I sped like the open road was part of the Indy 500 race.
But before I got to escape to the heaven of a limitless Freedom Alley, I had to first descend into the hell that was my mother’s home.
I arrived at a house that had not had any of its plants or vegetation cut in what looked like two months. Plants had branched out past the ability to support their own weight, vines had crept up the house’s exterior, and the house itself looked like no one had come out to care for it in ages. My mother did not get out much, but to see it dissolve to this level was…
Well, it would have sucked for some. For my mother, tough shit.
I killed the bike and approached the front door. She was already yelling at me as if I somehow had the ability to hear through walls.
“…bike’s too damn loud, Steele! Hurry and get inside, you’ll melt out there!”
I unlocked the house, ignored the rancid scent of clutter and unmoved trash from my mother’s hoarding, and grimaced as I turned the corner.
“Where the hell have you been, boy? You always come by and get my groceries and medication at four on Sundays! It’s five o’clock!”
“You’ll live,” I said flippantly.
But when I turned the corner and saw her, I never knew how much longer such dismissive words would hold true. Every time I saw her, even though only a week had typically passed, she looked like she had aged an extra year. And today was no different.
My mother had only recently just turned sixty, but years of bad health habits had made sure that whatever remained of her future wasn’t much. Smoking, drinking, eating, poor hygiene, just not giving a fuck…I was over trying to help her. I’d tried to get her to be healthier for a few years.
I could only take so much cussing and yelling about how I wouldn’t measure up to Stan that I just did the bare minimum to not feel like I’d murdered my mother. I could live with her dissolving in front of my eyes as long as I could say I’d given her what she needed to get through the next day. There wasn’t anything I could do to make her not have a shit attitude.
It was a place in which I had no control.
“Damnit, Stan, I—”
“Stan’s not around anymore,” I said.
“As if I need the fucking reminder!”
Nice to see you too, Mom.
“Are you going to go to the grocery store or not?” she said.
She tried to stand up, but obesity, arthritis, and God knew what else had made it difficult for her to even walk from the recliner chair to the couch. She would pant as if she had run an ultra-marathon right after.
I suppose I should have had some sympathy, but when she regularly confused me for other members of our family and then belittled me for correcting her, well, let’s just say that I would have really liked to change my last name from Harrison to Black Reaper, or even fucking Bernard.
“I can go,” I said with a sigh. “What do you want?”
“Why were you late?”
God, she can never let this shit go, can she?
“I was taking care of some stuff for a friend—”
“Over your mother?”
