Page 12 of Road Refugees

Chapter Five

Heaven

People were screaming.

A woman screamed at a man.

A woman screamed at a man?

This was such an unusual thing to hear, I sat bolt upright. I regretted it, because my back door throbbed something fierce. A slicing pain seared my gash. I still wore the nurse’s costume, but it was in disarray. I slid my hand between my legs and fingered slickness all over. Familiar with this, I knew some man had taken me while I was blacked out.

And where in heaven was I? At that point, I didn’t know Byron had lifted me out of the road. I remembered weaving, wobbling, the solid white line between my feet. Now I was in a darkened room, only able to make out some implements . . . a mop, a broom, a weed whacker.

I was in a tool shed?

“You don’t just fucking take a drive to Dildoland and come back with a whore!” bellowed some woman.

“I can do whatever I want!” shouted some man, who I later identified as Byron Riddlesberger. “You have no say over what men in this club do!”

A new woman shrieked. “We have say if we withhold sex and cooking from you, don’t we? You’re not gonna handcuff us to the stove.”

“Oh yeah, Orchid?” Byron shot back. “We’ll see about that, with your attitude!”

At the time, I assumed I was in some other polyg community. Had I somehow made it to Avalanche? I didn’t recognize any of the voices, and Byron had called it a “club.” I tried to stand, grabbing onto a broom handle for support, and nearly collapsed again when a stabbing pain shot up my leg. This in turn reminded me of my poor shoulder, wrenched in some type of “nursing” accident.

The original woman kept screaming. “You’re not stopping me from opening that damned closet! I know you’ve got some poor chick in there—”

“Kelsey, no!” bellowed Byron. There was some shuffling and groaning from the other side of the door, so I helped Kelsey out. I found the doorknob and turned it.

Byron nearly closed the door again when he shoved Kelsey against it. I staggered my way out, though, with the help of the second woman, Orchid. I was now unfettered in a free world—or so I thought. I clung to Orchid out of habit, assuming her to be the new Brighten of my new town.

“Let…me…go!” growled Kelsey, shoving back hard against the biker.

For that’s what Byron was, a member of a biker gang. I could tell by his black leather vest, a cut they called it. The top rocker of his three-piece back patch told me his club was called The Friends of Distinction, defined by the profile of a cigar store Indian. The bottom rocker told me we were currently in Flagstaff, Arizona. I later found out the 1% diamond patch meant they were the one percent of motorcyclists who did not abide by laws, making them outlaws.

I knew my brother Arkie had joined a gang in Arizona, and that Flagstaff was in Arizona, so I cried out, “Do you know Arkie?”

That seemed to shut everyone up. Orchid released me, holding me at arm’s length. She was a fine woman with pencil-straight platinum hair and an enviable pointed nose. The only item that would mark her as a club whore was her dog collar. I was used to that sort of marking, so I held onto her forearms.

“Who’s Arkie?”

Byron butted in then. “That’s her brother,” he shouted, tearing my hand from Orchid’s arm and gripping me tight. “Right?”

“Right. Arkie Larimore.”

“I know him. He’s a hang-around here in Flag. That’s why I was keeping you safeguarded in that room until we found him.” Okay, if that’s what he wanted to call it, “safeguarded.”

Orchid said, “Yeah, but . . . are you a nurse? Did you take too many of your own drugs?”

“I told you,” bellowed Byron, “I picked her up from the highway where she was passed out, after I delivered that puppy. She’s from that whacked-out polyg community in the mountains up there.”

Byron was a freaky character. His eyes were puffy slits, his ratty hair combed over his ears. His moustache was thin as the soup made by boiling the shadow of a pigeon that had starved to death—as Brighten used to say about me when I didn’t eat.

I dared to ask, “You guys aren’t polyg?”

All three of them looked shocked, probably for different reasons. They stumbled over each other to protest my labeling them.

Byron overrode the women to blurt, “Hell no! Kelsey here’s my property. This other bitch is just a club whore.”