Desperate Times (12 page)

“I agree,” said Jimmy. “I totally agree.”

“I thought you would. But we’ve got to be
together on this—all of us. I’m going to propose that we guard this
place like a prison. I want to cut down some trees and build a wall
around the yard. It’ll be a lot of work, but I’ve got chainsaws and
there are plenty of hands here to get it done.”

Jimmy nodded. Ken had obviously given this a
lot of thought. A wall was a good idea. It’d be just like in the
old west. That was when it really hit him: they were going to build
a fort right here, and they were going to start on it today.

Footsteps sounded from overhead and the
stairs began to creak. People were starting to get out of bed. A
new day had dawned and they were rising to greet it. From the other
side of the kitchen, the toilet flushed. Jimmy laced up his boots
and refilled his cup. The Kwapik family entered the kitchen. The
parents were a few years older than Jimmy and he knew them the way
you know people in a small town. They exchanged morning greetings
and Jimmy excused himself. He opened the back door of the kitchen
and walked out, closing it behind him. He walked down the three
stairs that led to the back door, let himself out and carefully
closed the door behind him. He fished out a Camel from his pants
pocket, straightened it out and lit it up.

The back yard was an array of colorful tents.
A smoldering fire was still glowing in the ring under the big maple
tree. Singing birds filled the air and robins hopped across the
lawn. The sun was now over the tops of the trees and the sky was
clear and flawlessly blue. The air had a slight chill, but Jimmy
knew that would soon pass. He took a drag off his cigarette and
inhaled deeply. He turned and looked up at the big white house with
its dormers and green-trimmed windows and smiled. The house was
like an old friend. In Jimmy’s lifetime, it’d always been there and
had never changed. He felt good. He felt like he belonged. He
sipped his coffee, smoked his cigarette and wondered what this new
day would bring.

He snubbed out his cigarette and walked to
the outhouse.

Barry King hadn’t heard his first name in
nearly three months, and King was glad for it. He’d always thought
Barry had sounded weak and unbefitting for a man in his position.
Inside the Devil’s Motorcycle Club he’d always been known as King.
On the inside of Stillwater Maximum Security Prison the screws had
never let him forget that his given name was Barry. The drug rap
had been trumped up and he’d paid bitterly for that. Then he’d
gotten into some trouble on the inside and served a full year
longer than his five-year sentence. He learned a lot about himself
during that last painful year and swore he’d never go back to
prison. He’d been careful after his release, but he couldn’t afford
to be careful any longer. Everything had changed so quickly, so
dramatically
,
that King was still trying to figure it all
out. Now, just when he thought things couldn’t get any crazier,
Grease was dead and now it was up to him to lead the club. One day
and so much had changed.

He rode at the front of the bus, arms crossed
at his chest, dressed in his leathers and wearing his best frown.
He’d just turned fifty and the lines had grown deeper on his
weathered face. King was wide in the shoulders and narrow in the
hips. He shaved his head each day and wore a drooping moustache,
which he now colored once a week. A jagged white scar ran across
his forehead and down his cheek. He was an imposing figure and he
knew it.

While King had only been running things for a
few hours, he’d taken control in no uncertain terms. He’d stopped
the bus twice and forcibly ejected three of the girls who’d caught
some lead at the rest area; one had even been the wife of a Club
member. They’d left her crying and clutching her bloody stomach on
the cold shoulder of the highway. Their incessant wailing had
quickly given him a headache. What was he supposed to do with them?
He’d made a statement that he was in charge. The new leader of the
Club needed to show his strength; it was expected of him. King
thought he’d never been happier in his entire life.

The fact that they were heading up to the Ely
was something beyond his wildest dreams. Grease had come up with
the idea. They had a debt to settle and a house to claim. The
Devils had kept a clubhouse there for many years, long before he
and Grease had joined up with them. The clubhouse had been taken
from them in the bust.

When things started to fall apart in
Minneapolis, Grease had called an emergency meeting. Grease
proposed they return to Ely and reclaim what was rightly theirs.
King had been as surprised as anyone. There had been no arguments
and they’d quickly cut out of town. The bungled heist had been
foolish, thought King; Grease and the Prospect had gotten what
they’d deserved. The guys wanted to retaliate, but King had held
them back. There would be many more battles in the coming days and
they would need to be more careful. There was also the fact that
the lucky punk and his friends had done him a huge favor. King
never forgot a favor.

King had no idea of what to expect once they
got to Ely. The little town was populated with armed outdoorsmen
who wouldn’t back down when it came to a fight. King knew this
because of past confrontations. He thought they’d have to fight
them on their own level. His plan was to move in slowly and take a
little bit of the town at a time. He doubted that many would have
the stomach to fight against them because he planned on unleashing
holy hell.

And that’s what Devils did best.

The bus rumbled ever north, accompanied by
the growling Harleys in their motorcade. A familiar road sign
informed them that they were just ten miles from Ely. King was
growing more apprehensive with each passing mile. They would need
to stop soon. He watched as Meatball navigated the twisting corners
with all the skill of a racecar driver. Meatball had stolen the bus
from the school district that had employed him, leaving fifty
children waiting on the sidewalk at the elementary school. King
liked the chubby man despite the fact that he never seemed to
bathe. Meatball was somewhere in his mid-thirties and weighed close
to four hundred pounds. His shaggy beard hung to the middle of his
chest and sleeve tattoos covered his beefy arms.

“Look,” Meatball said, turning to King and
pointing ahead to a glowing fire in the distance.

King thought it was the first light he’d seen
in nearly an hour. This was good, an answer to his prayers. Whoever
was out there would probably have food, beer, and who knew what
else. Maybe they’d have some good-looking women. After a moment’s
thought, King nodded to himself and spoke: “That’s where we’re
headed,” he said. “Are you up for a little party crashing,
man?”

“Damn right. I’m starting to get hungry,” the
bus hit a pothole and Meatball returned his attention to the road.
There was a moan from deep in the back of the bus. King quickly
turned his head and scowled and the moaning stopped.

The Little Chapel in the Woods had been
located outside of Ely for as long as anyone could remember. The
building had changed over the years as had the denomination of its
members. The church was indeed inside the woods, a quarter mile
trek down a rutted gravel road, far from the beaten path. The
little brick structure served its congregation’s needs for shelter
and privacy. A fine cottage had been constructed on the site to
accommodate its pastor. For the past two years, a woman by the name
of Margaret Bask had been living in that cottage. A year prior to
that, she had been the church secretary, a job that consumed about
ten hours a week of her time. Bask had taken over for Pastor Dan
Schmidt after discovering some embarrassing discrepancies in his
bookkeeping. She now went by Sister Margaret.

Bask had been attending church nearly every
Sunday of her life, preparing for the day when God would grant her
wishes and give her a church of her own. As a young girl growing up
in rural Wisconsin, Bask watched the way the congregations adored
their leaders, and she’d always longed for that type of affection.
When the opportunity had presented itself, she saw nothing wrong
with blackmailing Pastor Dan. She merely reasoned that it was the
Lord working in his own mysterious ways. Pastor Dan had stolen two
thousand dollars and she had the receipts to prove it. Bask gave
Pastor Dan an out: publicly hand over the church to her and leave
town the same week. Reluctantly, Pastor Dan had agreed and he
quietly left town. Bask had taken the pulpit by storm, delivering
fire and brimstone sermons that drove away a good many of her
congregation, but at the same time creating a fanatical base of
worshipers who lived their lives to serve her and the small church.
And while she wasn’t growing rich off of the collection plate, she
lived quite comfortably and had no intentions of giving up the life
she’d created for herself.

Bask was a large woman in her mid-forties,
wide in the hips and thick in the shoulders. Her dark hair was long
and frazzled, as if she were constantly trying to brush out a perm
gone bad. Bask possessed a photographic memory and could quote the
Bible from back to front, which was exactly what she did. She
immersed her congregation in Leviticus and readings from the Book
of Revelations. Her interpretations of those passages were quite
different from those of your typical Christian church. That chasm
had only widened with the passing of time. She also read the daily
papers online and watched as much television news as humanly
possible. Doing so, Sister Margaret was able to weave the news of
the day into her sermons, twisting the facts, pointing to obvious
signs and fulfilled prophecies. She’d used the current recession as
her hammer and she drove it into the pulpit with fierce conviction,
convincing her little flock that the end was near and that the
rapture would soon be upon them.

Those who remained in the congregation began
to question the direction she was taking them in. They were just
regular folks who had grown tired of her gloomy prophecies. There
was nothing in the Bible against giving an uplifting sermon, was
there? And just as they were about to send her out of town on the
next Greyhound bus, the economy fell flat on its face.

By six o’clock that evening that same group
could be found on their knees in the chapel, begging Sister
Margaret and the Lord Our God for forgiveness. She had specifically
warned them that this was how the beginning of the end would start.
She would never know how close she had come to losing control. The
Chapel was brightly lit with candles and after thoroughly
chastising her congregation, Sister Margaret returned to her
cottage to bake a frozen pizza. While she had no electricity to run
her freezer, she still had LP gas in the tank and she didn’t want
to waste what perishables she had. She slipped a supreme pizza into
her oven and returned next door to her people.

Bask entered the chapel by the back door into
her office and selected a bright red scapular to go over the black
kimono. She could hear men talking from beyond the door as she
wrestled with the garment. Although she couldn’t hear their words,
she didn’t like their tone. They sounded afraid and she couldn’t
lead a frightened army. She herself in the mirror and made some
minor adjustments. She ran her fingers through her mat of tangled
hair and walked out to the pulpit.

Conversation stopped like the needle being
lifted from an old LP. Bask stood at the pulpit, gathering her
thoughts and stifling a belch. There was nearly two hundred of her
flock gathered in front of her, half of whom were standing shoulder
to shoulder in the back. “My children,” she began, holding her
hands cupped in front of her as if she were holding their souls in
them. “You are the selected ones. God has chosen you to join me
here to wait for the coming rapture. We’ve got to prepare for what
lies ahead. We’re going to have to lock out the sinners from our
little Shangri-La. So I have to ask: are you ready to fight the
good fight with me? Can I hear an
Amen
?”

After a thunderous response, Bask’s mind
slipped into second gear. “They will arrive with guns, very soon,
are we ready to stand against them in God’s name?”

“Amen!” roared the congregation.

Sister Margaret Bask was nearly overwhelmed
by the sight of all that blue steel inside the little chapel. The
men, and quite a few of the women, were brandishing their weapons
with considerable pride. She beamed back at them, thinking that she
just might get that nap in yet.

She continued, shifting into high gear and
launching into a sermon that would’ve made the Pope fall to his
knees. Bask had never felt so powerful, and she became a little
drunk because of it. She quickly forgot about the nap as she became
enthralled with the way her followers hung on every word she spoke.
What she’d only intended to be a ten-minute oration had lasted well
over an hour.

The spell was lifted as people began to lift
their noses and sniff the air. By that time it was too late to save
the ruined pizza or the flaming cottage.

Sister Margaret, certain that this was the
devil’s work, became enraged by this sudden turn of events. She’d
loved her cozy little home, and now it was a burning torch in the
night sky. Nearly everything she owned was now as crisp as the
pizza, darkening her mood even further.