t
A Short Story
by
M. Matheson
Copyright 2016 Michael Matheson
ISBN:9781311949752
This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. Persons described in this story are fictional. Any similarities to the living or dead are entirely coincidental. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please download or purchase an additional copy for each recipient. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the author.
Moonlight
ONE
Ancient oak trees arched over Third Avenue a ragged ribbon of asphalt separating the good old bullets-flying 'hood' from the more comfortable Victorian homes to the north. Fourth Ave to the south was usually avoided, and no one went lower than Fifth without a gun in their waistband.
Regardless of locale, urban blight preys like barnacles on the hull of a scuttled ship; the farther south you go, the shakier it becomes. No different here. Everywhere below Third Avenue gauntlets of young and old men sit idly perched on the crumbling steps of early twentieth-century houses.
A rust and graffiti encrusted playground set sits wasted amidst Fourth Avenue Park. Children are shooed away by the clusters of men smoking weed, sipping from sacks of beer, and slinging dice in games of Craps. The air is filled with the raucous chatter of smack talk. Yet, in the midst of this, here at the beginning of the twenty-first century, brave young professionals are taking a chance on the lower-priced older houses, creating a slow gentrification of the shaky neighborhood.
Higher priced restaurants and art galleries are setting up shop. Builders are turning empty lots once overrun by brush and weeds into loft apartments, fancy row homes, and trendy retail stores. The infamous old guard is slowly being squeezed out by rising rent and home prices.
During the Roaring Twenties, Oak Park was the most fashionable place to live and be in Sacramento.
Highway 99, completed during the Volatile Sixties, cut Oak Park off from the rest of Sacramento turning its streets into a hardboiled stew of drugs, crime, and violence. Since then, every ten years or so, the neighborhood sees a resurgence of prosperity which lasts only until the next recession or world war.
While other cities in America have clear lines of racial demarcation, Oak Park, and Sacramento as a whole stubbornly refuses to draw its map along racial or ethnic lines. No matter its level of prosperity at the time Oak Park remained a colorful mix of ethnic groups, predominately African American, with a sprinkling of Asians and a thriving menagerie of street and motorcycle gangs.
The most infamous motorcycle club in the world, the Breakers, kept their clubhouse in Oak Park.
TWO
Aidan and Margie Hilles, both born in Oak Park's early heydays, were as much a part of the neighborhood as the rusting streetlights. They knew every dirty little secret the neighborhood had to tell and then some. In their seventies, they are raising a grandson as their own. Aaron is a good kid earning decent grades in his Junior Year at Sacramento High School.
Aidan remains tough as an old leather belt. As an Army Ranger deployed in the first Long Range Reconnaissance Patrols in Vietnam, he'd seen more than a lifetime’s worth of death and destruction making the violence at home seem minor. Thin lines mapped out long years on his rough, darkly tanned, and permanently scowled face. His blonde bristled crew cut stood at constant attention. His mind was sharp as a razor, and Aidan was still fit enough to take down any man thirty years his younger.
Margie, with her requisite flowered apron and a halo of curly gray hair, fit snugly into the image of Saturday Evening Post grandma. Her cherubic face beamed bright enough to soften Aidan's sandpaper exterior. Once as shapely as a Playboy centerfold, these days Margie carried a plump round body. Aidan loved her no less than the day he first set eyes on her.
Troy Bittles, Aidan's closest friend, was twenty years his junior but looked ten older. If life had been rough for Aidan, it had been rougher on the retired outlaw. Equally noble hearts and unwavering ideals formed their deep-rooted bond. Their profession was their common ground: killing men, inflicting violence, breaking things, and getting their way.
Aidan's military reputation had won him work in the late Nineties training soldiers for Blackwater Security, a mercenary job shop. Five years later he retired with enough money to see Margie and him comfortably through their remaining years and set their descendants up for life if they handled it right.
From birth, it seemed, or at least as long as he could remember, Troy was given to the purest ideals of being an outlaw and one-percenter (99% of motorcyclists are law-abiding citizens). Troy wore the patch of the Breakers MC; a smiling white skull being cleaved down its forehead by a medieval ax. The same was tattooed on his chest and forearms.
The Breakers MC had been unwitting originators of an entire subculture. Harley Davidson’s style, popularity, and stock price were directly linked to the Breakers early chopper modifications, manner of dress, swagger, and tattoos. They were emulated around the world by so-called Sunday riders that rode on their days off, and only when the weather was favorable. Troy had ridden in sleet, snow, hail, and rain.
Troy was a fundamentalist outlaw given wholly to what he was.
Now, he was three years into retirement which meant he continued on as a full member but inactive and uninvolved in day to day club business. Yet, he could be called back to active duty any time club leaders decided they needed a little extra muscle.
Troy held the position of Enforcer for twenty years. Much as the position on a hockey team, Troy might be called on to take an opposing team member off the ice; or in his case, put them on ice. Too often it was one of their own who violated the club’s rules, and the Enforcer or his emissary would set them straight or bury the offender.
Nicknamed Red Dog, Troy gained worldwide notoriety for his ferocity and exploits. His father, George ‘Little Bit’ Bittles held the same position until being gunned down in a war with rivals who, who later became staunch allies. This business continued on in a deadly game of musical chairs, enemies and friends often rushed to switch seats.
The Enforcer was required by necessity to have a time-tested ruthlessness, unwavering bravery, the utter lack of a conscious or sentiment, and above all, a rabid loyalty to the club. Those personal traits had passed from father to son, but offices and titles were never handed down according to bloodline. NEVER.
THREE
Aidan and Margie heard Troy coming when he was still two blocks away. They met him at the curb before the ‘65 Panhead coughed a last chugging breath. Troy eased the bikes 700 pounds onto its side stand at the curb in front of the Hilles’ immaculate Craftsman home.
The faces of Troy's friends were pinched and strained.
Tears welled in Margie’s eyes and she dabbed at them with a tissue as she elbowed Aidan. Whispering through clenched teeth, she said, “I told you to call him earlier.” Aidan remained quiet and circled his strong arm firmly around his wife's plump waist.
Their broken hearts were on their sleeves, and Troy was prepared to kill whoever had brought this hurt to his usually happy friends. Troy counted on them to bring the only mirth and semblance of joy there was to his life these days.
He flashed fondly back to the encounter that had brought them together: Margie was loading groceries into the trunk of her Lexus when two twenty-something punks in sagging pants began taunting her. They didn't get far. Troy had just come from the pharmacy when he heard her protests. Margie was no soft touch, but Troy remembered thinking, two twenties against a seventy don't work.
The punks saw Troy, stood up to him for all of two seconds. He busted one in the jaw and broke the other’s nose. If Aidan had been there, the thugs might have needed an ambulance
maybe a mortician. Their feet flapped like windmills as they ran away each with one hand holding up their pants and the other massaging their wounds. Margie laughed at them as they cast back empty threats. She was Troy's kind of people. After several more unexpected run-ins with the old couple, Troy finally accepted their dinner invitation.
The pink glow had vanished from Margie’s face, and Aidan’s stiff countenance sagged like a sack of sand. They’d grown desperate, left with nowhere to turn. Aidan finally gave way and called Troy.
Aidan read his friend’s face and held his palms up to settle him. “Calm down Troy. It’s not what you think. Aaron’s run off. To Los Angeles the best we can tell.”
“Why didn’t you call me earlier Aidan?” Troy's face was stern. His voice cold and gravelly.
“I guess... I hoped... he’d come back on his own,” Aidan looked to Margie, who pinched her lips and wrung her apron.
“This is not like him at all, Troy,” said Margie.
They had raised Aaron since he was six, but lately, he'd started running with teenagers who thought that death and dead things were something to be trifled with. His grandparents wrote it off to the angst of a teenager, and expected it to pass, but now he was gone.
Troy scanned his computer history and it was obvious he had taken some time and forethought planning his little run to LA. There was no sign he planned