Page 103 of Stoker's Serenity
She was moving slowly, but determinedly, her body still healing from the accident, and it was really taking a toll on her spirits. The fragile and brittle happiness she had with me seemed thinner, more fragile than usual, even. I knew part of it was the fact we’d had to leave her greenhouse behind and she just didn’t feel right without her plants, her own space to hide in.
I loved my lovely creature but she was a creature of habit and I was afraid she was way overwhelmed by all of this newness. So, I enlisted some of the guys – both club and bandmates – to help me the very first chance I got. Now, we were headed in a pair of pickups back to old lady Sedgwick’s to break down her greenhouse and bring it home.
Meanwhile, back at base, she was clueless, as she was being inundated by the rest of the club’s ol’ ladies and Hossler, who were trying to blitz the house and get it up to her exacting standards. Truth be told, I needed those standards. I’d let the place go in my bachelordom.
“What are we going to do with the plants?” Rory asked.
“That’s what Galahad’s station wagon is for. Put them in the cargo bay and he’s gonna rush them to Serenity and we’re gonna hope we don’t fuck anything up.”
“You kill it, you know she’s gonna kill you,” Marlin grated, cig dangling from his lips. Cutter laughed.
“Don’t remind me,” I said with an intrepid sigh.
We worked hard, sweating our balls off and lucky us, between moving the plants and disassembling shit, it only took us a couple of hours to get everything locked and loaded.
Galahad had taken off way ahead of us once the plants were safe in his Subaru, and I would be lying if I said I wasn’t worried about them. I didn’t know if they could go into shock or whatever. I just knew the faster they got to Serenity, the better chances they would have, so I’d told him to get gone, if he wouldn’t mind.
“Lemme ask you something,” the captain said after we loaded the last board of the greenhouse’s frame into the back of my truck.
“Shoot.”
“What’s the rush on this?” he asked.
I sighed and stared at the pile of boards and some of the windows in the bed, before lifting the tailgate into place and latching it.
“Serenity is upset that I have every intention of dealing with the assclown that hit her.”
“And…?”
“And I’m hoping to bury her misgivings in a mountain of the good shit we do.”
“She’ll never know, y’know… That we deal with him, or how.”
“I know, and I don’t ever want her to think about him again.”
He nodded slowly.
“Let’s roll, then. Give her the distraction.”
“Let’s roll,” I agreed, relieved he was picking up exactly what I was putting down.
I went and said goodbye to Mrs. Sedgwick and we got in our trucks and on our bikes and headed back to Ft. Royal. Serenity was waiting at the curb for me to pull in the driveway. Galahad had the side gate open leading into my backyard and she was calling something back to him.
“There you are!” she called, and she looked like she was at war with herself on whether she wanted to nut-punch me or kiss me.
“Uh-oh,” I called out as she strode my direction. “I did this wrong, didn’t I?”
“Yes and no,” she said. “Are you really going to put the whole thing back together tonight?” she asked.
“Well, yeah. Gotta have some place for your plants to go, they can’t live in the back of his cage forever.”
“You’re certifiable!” she cried, but she was smiling again.
“Guilty,” I quipped, but I’d already dropped the tailgate and was passing off boards to the next guy and we sort of just fell in, old-school bucket-brigade style, passing things on down the line efficiently so it was all out back and ready for us to rock out my big master plan.
Some of the boys were standing around looking at the decrepit, half-rusting, old corrugated metal garden shed that my gramps had up in the back corner of the yard, which also happened to be one of the sunniest corners that this yard happened to get.
“Well, what’re you waitin’ for?” Cutter demanded from behind me.
