1
Dean
Mornings started the same, a pale strip of Los Alamos sun, sliced clean through vinyl blinds, bisected my face and the bed like a surgeon’s cut. The light always found the old dog tags first, where they pooled cold against the hollow of my throat. I traced them—habit, not sentiment—feeling the hard emboss of my father’s initials, the ghost of his discipline pressing into my pulse. The bedroom’s air was sour with last night’s sweat and the barest whiff of machine oil, as if my body had been leaking all night.
The clock on my phone shivered at 06:03. I sat up slowly, the mattress protesting, and looked blurry-eyed around the room at the sheets twisted, club paperwork fannedacross the dresser, and yesterday’s half-folded Bloody Scythes cut slung over a cracked kitchen chair. I wore the club colors even alone, even in sleep, as if something might break in the dark and need killing. Most things did.
I stood, inventorying the aches—the torn meniscus, the hairline rib—while my hands rolled a cigarette with automatic precision. My father’s hands had been huge, the kind that could palm a toddler’s skull. Mine were only broad, the knuckles worn soft from wrenching handlebars and shoving faces into asphalt. I lit up, held the smoke, and looked at the ledgers. Neat, precise columns. Names I both respected and would one day bury. Some nights, I dreamed the ink bled.
The apartment was two rooms and a kitchen, a shoebox for grown men who liked their lives tight and efficient. I ran the coffee pot, rinsed out a chipped mug from some county fair, and lined up today’s to-do list: collect the club’s receipts, meet with Damron, check in on Ma. The last always took the most psychic effort. I did it for her because the club never made room for weakness, and she’d lost enough already.
Above the folding table that served as my desk were three photos. My father, in his Army greens, unsmiling and sunburnt, in front of some desert blast wall; my mother, hair done up and eyes too bright, at the base graduation; andthe two of them with me, age six, sulking at a minor league game. The rest of our past was boxed up in her trailer out by the mesa.
Coffee and a cigarette in hand, I sat in front of the ledgers, thumbing the calculator, letting the numbers run. Every tenth entry, I’d find myself thumbing the dog tags again. I kept them out, visible, even though the sound of metal tapping against my sternum sometimes made me want to scream. The tags caught the sun again as I bent over the paperwork, painting my wrist with a stripe of white.
The phone vibrated, a sharp, insistent rattle against the battered Formica. Ma’s name flashed up—old habit, she always called instead of texting, as if to prove she was still alive. I cleared my throat, stubbed out the cigarette, and answered.
“Hey, Ma.”
A yawn on the line, then her voice, lighter than the air in the room: “You awake, Dean?”
“Been up a while.”
She sniffed, could probably hear the coffee sloshing. “Don’t burn out before noon. Are you still coming with me to the shelter? They open at ten. I don’t want to miss the good dogs.”
I imagined her, small and sharp as a cactus, pacing her tiny living room, prepping her lines for whatever volunteer college kid worked the front desk today. “Yeah, I’ll be there. Just gotta swing by the clubhouse first, clear up some numbers.”
She went quiet for a second. “The numbers keep you up, or is it something else?”
“Nothing keeps me up, Ma,” I lied, because that’s what she needed. I fingered the dog tags again, rolling the edge along my thumb. “You want a shepherd, or what?”
“I want a dog that’ll bark when strangers walk by, but not eat my neighbors.” There was a smile in her voice, a joke stretched thin, but alive.
“I’ll screen for sociopaths,” I said.
A cough, then, “Don’t talk like that.”
I grinned. “You get the heater fixed?”
“They sent a guy, but he didn’t do anything but drink my tea and stare at the walls. I’ll call the office again.”
“Tell them if it’s not fixed by Friday, I’ll come down and kick the landlord’s ass.”
“I don’t need you getting in trouble.” Her voice tightened, old anxieties bunching up. “Just be careful, Dean. That’s all I ever ask.”
“Always am, Ma.” I said it soft, meant it. Then: “See you at ten.”
She hung up first, a power move she’d mastered since he died. I listened to the empty line for a beat, then set the phone down and drained the mug. The tags clinked as I stood. I shrugged on the cut, the Bloody Scythes insignia creased and familiar as my own face, and checked the knife at my belt and the day’s other armor, piece by piece.
Outside, the sun was up and sharp. The world waited—dangerous, dull, beautiful, and, for now, mine to handle.
The bike was where I’d left it, at the curb below my window. Matte black and low-slung, a 2003 Night Train rebuilt twice from the frame up—salvage, like most of my life. I ran my hands along the seat, checking the tension on the throttle, the slick patch where my thigh had worn through the vinyl, all before I even unlocked the disc brake. Ritual, maybe. You didn’t ride unless you were ready for the road to murder you, and the road out here had a mean streak.
I pulled on the helmet and slid on the fingerless gloves. The air was clean, cold, edged with mountain sage and the faint copper tang of coming rain. I kick-started the bike and let the idle settle, a rhythmic thump that settled in my gut and built the day’s focus.
The ride across Los Alamos was a short one, half the town still in bed. I cut down Central, engine echoing offstuccoed storefronts, past the blinking gas station and the boarded-up liquor store. A couple of high school kids crossed at the light, eyes wide as I rolled through, club colors displayed. I caught my reflection in a pawn shop window—mirrored visor, patched cut, jawline bruised from an old dispute—looked every inch the bastard my father’s friends swore I’d become. I tried to care less about that, and failed.
The Bloody Scythes clubhouse sat at the far edge of the railyard, behind a chainlink and an iron gate that someone had welded a bike sprocket to for a crest. The sign was hand-painted, chipped, barely legible unless you already knew to look. I parked in the row, next to five bikes with identical scars and histories, and shut the engine down. The silence after was full of dogs barking in distant backyards, trains grinding against the curve, the metallic snap of a flag in the wind.
