“Oh god,” I whispered.
Myles sighed. “Don’t start the ‘oh gods’ just yet. That was just the beginning.” Another pause. “Tania didn’t die right away.”
Crow was silent for a long time. “She was pregnant.”
“Oh Jesus,” Lexie gasped. “No. No way.”
Crow nodded. “Four months. Hadn’t been planned, but we were excited. We had support from the club, Mama Mahalia, Mama Yank.”
I felt my eyes start to well up. “Crow.”
He shook his head. “Took a round to the chest and another to the stomach. Went septic, lung collapsed, lost the baby…they couldn’t do shit. I sat in the waiting room at the hospital for three fuckin’ days. Wouldn’t let me see her, ’cause we weren’t married and I wasn’t actual family. Got violent about seein’ her, until they called the cops. If I wanted to see her, I had to quiet my ass down, so I quieted my ass down. I was just some tattooed Indian thug to those racist fucking backwoods fuckin’ rednecks.” A pause. “Didn’t get to see her. She died. I sat in that fuckin’ waiting room for three days, not eating, not sleeping, unable to see the woman I loved, the mother of my unborn child. And she fuckin’ died.”
“Crow, my god. I’m so,sosorry.” I couldn’t help crying.
He reached across and brushed my cheek with his thumb, a glimmering hint of the soft, kind Crow I’d known only hours ago reappearing, however briefly. “That was ten years ago. It still hurts, but I’m as over as I’ll ever be. No point in you cryin’ over it.”
“Well…too bad. Because I’m going to. You shouldn’t have had to go through that.”
“But I did.”
Myles was gazing into the middle distance, lost in the memory. “Crow eventually showed up at the club compound looking…fuckinghaggard. And angrier than any human being I’d ever seen in my life. He grabbed a pair of knuckle dusters and tore off on his bike. Looking for the president of that club, the Scorpions.”
Crow laughed. “He knew he’d fucked up—hadn’t been there for the hit, the pussy. He ghosted. Ran to Seattle or some shit. Never found him.”
“Crow looked for three days. Not sleeping, hadn’t eaten, drinking like a fish. Ended up in a bar outside Tucson, hammered off his ass and full of hate.” He sighed. “He’d been up for almost a week at that point. Skin and bones, surviving on liquor and hatred.”
“Don’t remember much of that week. I remember the hospital waiting room. Remember the doctor, accompanied by six security guards, telling me Tania had died and so had the baby. Remember it took all six guards and two tasers to get me off him. I remember combing most of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, going to every biker bar I knew of between Tucson and El Paso. You said it was three days—it was longer than that. She died on a Thursday, and I regained consciousness, in handcuffs, in the back of an ambulance the following Wednesday.
“All I remember after the doctor and the tasers is being on my bike, on the highway, going ninety or a hundred, reckless, not giving a shit if I wrecked. Bar after bar, every little place I’d ever been. I would drink at every bar, shot after shot after shot. Probably should’ve died of alcohol poisoning—not sure how I didn’t. Barely ate, maybe a burger once or twice. I think I fell asleep standing up at a urinal in a rest stop bathroom.”
A pause.
Crow continued. “Don’t remember how it started, or who I killed. Nothing. I was blackout. Conscious and operating, but I don’t remember jack shit about it. As far as I know, some asshole picked a fight with me and I snapped. Him and his buddies beat the shit out of me, but not before I smashed the poor fucker’s head in. They fuckin’…they nearly killed me. I remember wishing they had. Spent a week in the hospital under armed guard. Then I got transferred to county lockup and got arraigned, tried for manslaughter, convicted, even though I didn’t remember shit. I’d done it, so I was still liable whether I remembered it or not. The club hired a good defense attorney, and got me a reduced sentence seeing as my blood alcohol level was inhumanly high, and I’d just lost my girlfriend and a baby. Mitigating circumstances or some shit. Even so, I still got two years at a maximum-security pen, because of how violent the fight was. I mean, it was ugly as fuck, apparently.”
“You said you don’t remember it?” I asked.
He took a swig of liquor. Swallowed, hissed. Refused to look at me. “Want the truth? I wish I could forget. It’s like watching a movie. I had absolutely no control. His face is nothing but a blur. Some big asshole, and six of his big asshole friends. Seems like the guy’s face was familiar, but shit, I don’t fuckin’ know. The memory I have is vague and just flashes and fragments. Some assholes talking shit, calling me little Indian boy. Just picking a fight. I don’t know. I just know I remember seeing…black. Black rage. Berserk, uncontrollable rage. Like all the hate and evil and pain in all of hell was inside me, and…that dumb asshole triggered it.”
“He wasn’t himself. There was no Crow in him left.” Myles stared at his friend. “I saw him in the hospital, and he was just…gone. Someone else. Nothing. His eyes were dead and unfocused. He wanted to die.”
“Tried. But they made sure I couldn’t.” Crow bit the words out.
I swallowed. Ached. “Crow…”
“Those two years in the pen saved me,” Crow said. “My cellmate saved me. Not gonna say much about my time in the pen, but it was boredom and exercise, reading, working in the shop. Talking to my cellmate. He got me to the point that I understood I was responsible for what I had done, that the life I’d chosen was how I’d gotten where I was. He’d found Jesus, my cellmate. Tried to convert me, but I couldn’t get there. Got to the point that I understood my culpability in all the shit that had gone down. Mark, my cellmate, told me the day I got let out that I had a chance to start over. Make different choices.”
Myles moved to sit beside Crow. They shared the bottle, passing it between them, swig after swig in an old, easy pattern. They finished the bottle. “You got out, and Tran sent Yank to get you. You told Yank you wanted him to bring you to me.” A look between them, speaking of years of brotherhood. “You showed up at my apartment at two in the afternoon, in the same bloodstained clothes they’d arrested you in. Told me you couldn’t go back to the club. Wanted to go on the road with me.”
“You made it seem like I was doingyoua favor,” Crow said.
“You were!” Myles said, laughing. “I’d done precisely dick in the two years you were locked up. Local shows in the Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Arizona bar circuit. Same as my dad, same as Gramps. I was drinking my proceeds, had no music, was stuck doing covers and the same dozen or songs you and I had written together before you got locked up.”
“That was your grind, man,” Crow said. “Your ten thousand hours. Learning to tour, to play, to perform. You weren’t doing dick, you were learning.”
“But I got nowhere without you. You showed up that day, and we wrote, what, fifty songs together in the next two months? We wrote about everything. You poured your soul into those songs. All the shit you’d been through.
“You took over managing me, got me bigger gigs, better pay. Kept me from drinking all the profits so we had some money to put into better gear, and a van to travel in. Then we played in that bar, opened for that act that later blew up. Got seen by some exec, recorded a demo, and off we went.”
