The Dust and the Roar Read online

  I held his intense gaze. He hadn’t said my or mine. No, Dig had said our.

  * * *

  After the meeting, I cornered Dig. “I’ve never pushed you about it. Now I’m pushing. Tell me what happened to you.”

  He told me.

  “You’re the kid who survived that home invasion in Denver. I remember that. I was in Colorado when that happened. I saw it on the news. It got a lot of airplay because of how vicious—you were the only survivor.”

  Dig’s stony eyes filled with water and just as quickly the water receded. “That’s not me anymore. I’m not that boy who witnessed his family’s murder.” He said it, not glibly or easily, but as if years of training had strained the emotion from those images, that memory, those words he’d need to use to communicate the tragedy to someone else. “I erased that past. I’m me. Me, right now.”

  I cuffed his neck, and his light-brown eyes lit with sparks. It explained his tenacity, his will to reinvent himself, to drive forward and onward on that road to somewhere else. There would always be a somewhere else for Dig. “That’s right,” I said. “You’re not that boy. You’re the man you want to be. No past, no future, only right the fuck now making your own way.”

  He clasped my arm. “Right the fuck now, making my own way.”

  “That’s all any of us can do.”

  His fingertips dug into my arm. “Me and Boner were good with wandering, rolling. Seeing what came up, making do. Then you came along and took a chance on us. Showed us what possibility meant. And I thank you.”

  Underneath all that swagger and wild was a good heart and a wise soul. Dig was his own man now. “I only want you to consider that you should save some of that money for yourself. You’re young. One day, you might have a wife and kids, and you’re going to need money for your own house, for—

  He laughed hard. “Oh, geez…”

  “I sound like an old man already?”

  “Yeah, you do.”

  “Dig, Isi came along and changed everything for me. If you get that chance, to be with someone you really love, who you really jive with, you got to take it, no matter what, and make a life with her. I think your parents would have wanted that for you. I want that for you.”

  He embraced me, and I held him fast and hard. “It’s up to you,” I whispered roughly. “You make your life happen. I’m watching you do it, and it makes me proud.”

  “Fine. I’ll hold onto some of it.” Dig thumped me on the back. “No more fucking tragedies, man. What we got, we’re going to hold onto. It’s too good.”

  Chapter Sixty-One

  “Wreck, there’s something you got to see.”

  We’d been cleaning out the go-kart factory to get a hold on the layout and how we wanted to fix it up. Steady work was keeping me running, hard, physical, steady work.

  I followed Boner to the main office of the factory. The old desk and filing cabinets had been taken outside, and the walls were being scraped and taped to be painted. Along one wall was a set of built in cabinets that Willy was refinishing, and along the other, a closet whose warped doors had been taken off their hinges.

  “What am I looking at?” I said.

  “This,” said Mick, holding up a thick rectangular bar wrapped in black plastic and tape.

  “Coke? Heroin?” I asked.

  “I don’t think so.” He handed me the packet. It had to be cash.

  He gestured at the deep closet which was lined with wood paneling. “There’s a small section of the wall by the ceiling that has this button type thing you turn with a screwdriver. I only got it open a few inches before and found that. Let’s try this again.” Climbing up a ladder in the closet, he reached up against a part of the wall that wasn’t visible from outside the closet. He shoved and pushed, and wood scraped as he let out a small grunt. “There we go. Got it. It’s a dummy section of that part of the wall and the ceiling, and it’s hollow.”

  “They used it instead of a safe?” I said.

  “Would be less obvious than some safe hidden behind a frame over a wall or a freestanding one.” Mick pulled out identical thick black plastic wrapped rectangular bars and tossed them down to Willy. “Holy shit. Stacks of it!”

  “It has to be Leo’s money,” I said. “From the robbery, and maybe his drug money.”

  Willy peeled open a thick package to reveal a perfectly organized stack of ten dollar bills. Mick kept tossing down packets. Jump got out a garbage can to contain them all. Boner and Dig started opening them and organizing the stacks according to value. Stacks of ones, fives, tens, twenties, fifties.

  “Lock the fucking door,” Mick said.

  Jump got the two prospects at the front gate on alert, locked the front door, and we all got down on the floor and counted the bills, making more stacks. And more stacks. We counted again.

  Thirty-three thousand dollars.

  “I say we go to Vegas.” Jump crowed loudly, and everyone laughed. “Or Daytona!”

  “We need to fix this place up before we go anywhere,” said Mick. “This is fucking sweet—”

  “It’s not ours,” said Boner.

  Everyone stilled, staring at him.

  “Why the fuck not?” Jump practically growled. “No one knows about it. If Leo kept it stashed here—”

  “The Dillons should have it,” I said.

  “Dude,” said Jump. “You going to go to Officer Ryan and hand him all this cash made from drug deals and a robbery that his own cousin did? Then it’s gonna sit on an evidence shelf until some other cop steals it. Are you shitting me—”

  I met his gaze. “Ryan is not who I’m giving it to.”

  * * *

  I went over to the General Store before closing the next night.

  “Hi, Wreck.”

  “Hey, Georgia.”

  “Hello,” said Ivy, a cute, tiny, blond version of Georgia. She must have been about six now.

  “Hey there, Ivy,”

  “Hello, Mr. Wreck. You’re very tall.”

  “We were about to close up actually,” said Georgia striding toward us as she wiped her hands down her jeans. A teenager with brown hair and brown eyes which were the same shape and tone of brown as Isi’s came up behind her mom.

  “Hi, Wreck.” She blushed. Georgia’s eldest daughter was a shy one.

  “Hi, Erica,” I said. “Where’s your boy?”

  “He’s at his Grandma’s. We’re having a girl’s day at work,” said Georgia.

  “You have lots of holes in your jeans today, Wreck,” said Ivy.

  Erica rolled her eyes. “Ivy! Geez.”

  “Yes, I do, Ivy, you’re right. These are my work clothes for today. It’s been a messy day.”

  “Ohhhh.” Ivy nodded. “Gotcha.”

  “I have something for you, Georgia, if you got a moment,” I said.

  “For me?”

  “Yeah. Could you come out back, I parked my truck right by the door.”

  “Sure.”

  “Can I come too?” Ivy piped up.

  “You and your sister sweep the floor, why don’t you?” said Georgia. “That way, when I come back, we can go over to the cafe and see what your Aunt Janice has for dinner.”

  “Fine,” said Ivy. Erica grabbed the broom.

  Georgia led me through the store to the back door. “This is mysterious,” she murmured as I pulled out the box in my truck. I lifted the lid and showed her a small pile of the cash that we’d bound back up into bundles.

  “We found this in a secret hiding place at the factory.”

  “Oh my God!” she said on a gasp, a hand to her mouth.

  “Shh.” I scanned the area. We were alone. “Be cool.”

  “How much is in there?” she whispered.

  “Thirty thousand plus.”

  “Holy cow. Wreck, I don’t understand.”

  “Leo must have stashed it there, and I’m giving it to you, Georgia.”

  “Me? What? Why?”

  “This is Dillon family money. It belongs to
the family.”

  Her lips pursed, and she burst into laughter.

  “What the hell is so funny?” I asked.

  “My father and my uncle used to say that Leo would never amount to anything, would never contribute in any way to the family. Who has the last laugh now?” She crossed her arms, letting out a deep breath. “But what am I supposed to do with it? I feel bad … it’s from the liquor store robbery, isn’t it? His drug deals? I don’t know…”

  “Don’t feel bad, Georgia. Because of that heist Leo pulled off, Claw got sent to jail, and Isi got her divorce. And rich old men lost their poker money, which they were willing to lose anyhow.”

  “The richest men in town were at that poker game that night, I’ll have you know. All of them suckered by Leo Dillon.”

  “Leo did real good for himself, and now you can do good with what he earned. Isi had told me you two had plans for the five and dime. Now you can do that. Sock some away for your girls. Pay off your uncle’s Hildebrand loan. Is it enough to cover that debt?”

  “More than enough,” she breathed. “Oh my God, more than enough.” She laughed to herself, her eyes shutting for a moment. She was probably thinking what I was thinking. If only Isi were here to enjoy this moment. She would have been running up and down the aisles of the goddamn store, hands in the air, singing at the top of her lungs. But it was only me and Georgia whispering out back.

  I closed up the box again. “Isn’t doing something good with all this cash better than it sitting in a dusty, dark, hiding place never seeing the light of day, losing its value. Worthless paper.”

  She licked at her lip. “Oh, I’d say so.”

  “You got a place we could keep it, that no one would find it or—”

  Her eyes flared. “I do, in fact. Grandad had a secret little stash spot built-in the ceiling of the office here too, just like the one at the factory.”

  “Jesus, really?”

  “Prohibition lasted a long, long time in South Dakota. It made people extremely resourceful. Grandad’s grandparents were from Tennessee after all. There was no way the Dillons were going to go dry. No bourbon and whiskey? No fucking way was his motto.”

  I chuckled. “I think I would’ve liked your Grandad.”

  “I’ll bet you would have.” She put a hand to my arm. “Wreck, thank you. I know you didn’t have to do this. Maybe this has put you in a tough spot with your club now. You all could’ve kept it, said nothing, but that’s not the kind of man you are, is it? Because you’re the man my Isi fell in love with.” She reached up and planted a kiss on my cheek, and clearing her throat, turned away from me, moving to the door. “Bring the box inside. I’ll show you the hiding place.”

  “Georgia Dillon—“

  “Yeah?” She lifted her face, smoothing away tears with her fingers.

  “Do good with it.”

  She smiled. “I promise, Wreck. I will.”

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  Miller became everyone’s little brother.

  He started school, stayed in school. Dig threw a football around with him in the yard of the clubhouse and showed him a few moves. Within a couple of months, Miller tried out for the football team and made it.

  I found myself paying constant attention to what was in my fridge. Miller had an enormous appetite on him, and a full fridge never ceased to fascinate him. I didn’t want to think about the hunger he’d probably endured at the reservation. I kept the kitchen stocked at all times, which meant that Dig and Boner were over all the time too.

  Boner hung with me in getting the repair shop up and running at the club. We advertised it all over the Black Hills with flyers and ads in local papers. I had a sign made with the business’s name in bright red letters on a white background. I liked that. Nothing fancy, just me. Our first customer showed up one morning—Bill, whose car I used to tune at Steve’s. He brought me an old Nova he’d bought at some car auction in Sioux Falls. I checked out the engine.

  He stared up at the shop sign. “That supposed to be funny?”

  “Huh?” I lifted my head from the hood.

  Bill pointed at the sign. “Wreck’s Repair?”

  “That’s my name, man.” I went back to the Nova’s dirty engine. “Take it or leave it.”

  * * *

  We all worked together to gut the old factory. Kicker and Willy, who worked construction, set their plan in motion for renovating. Separating the larger spaces into separate rooms, bedrooms, offices, a main central space for hanging. Boner and his new prospect, a kid with thin dreadlocks who we’d nicknamed “Dready” and who had a thing for security alarms and electronic devices, set up the fencing around the property and video cameras and an alarm system. Willy built a long curved bar out of wood that he’d polished real fine and detailed with chrome accents, of course. Judge brought in a stereo system and hooked up the speakers. And we got ourselves an inventory of booze and sodas and coffee. Eventually we’d get to making a kitchen and outfitting it with a few appliances, but for now, the big refrigerator plugged into the future kitchen / now empty room was good enough.

  “We need to have a party,” said Mick as he swept the vast floor with a wide broom.

  “We definitely do,” said Dig, tying up a garbage bag.

  “We need to have an official party,” I said.

  Dig opened two beer bottles and handed me one.

  “What does that mean?” asked Jump as he tacked yet another biker bikini girl poster on the wall alongside Terry’s classic Farrah Fawcett poster that we’d since had framed.

  “Invite Scout and the Denver Jacks,” I said. “Show them how their new charter has shaped up. It’s the right thing to do and the smart thing.”

  “Got a good point there,” said Willy, taking a gulp from his icy beer bottle. “Also shows our Seed neighbors and the Flames of Hell that we’re solid.”

  “Let’s be all neighborly to our neighbors,” Jump got down from the ladder. “The One-Eyed Jacks are solid and here to stay.”

  “Here to stay,” I said.

  Dig raised his beer bottle in the air. “Here to stay.”

  * * *

  Right before closing one afternoon, Dig and Miller showed up in the Repair’s tow truck hauling a car in the bed.

  “This is not the Monte Carlo I sent you to pick up.”

  “This is definitely not the Monte Carlo.”

  It was a dirty, rusty along a few edges, black—

  “It’s a 1968 Camaro,” Dig said.

  “He bought it, Wreck! Dig bought it!” Miller bounded toward me.

  “Bought it?”

  Miller squawked with laughter, his hair shaking over his shoulders.

  Dig planted himself in the yard, his hands on his waist. “Look at her. Sweet as sunshine. Black as night.”

  “Crapped out as hell,” I said.

  “Aw come on, don’t be a fucking Scrooge,” said Dig, smoothing a hand down the car’s side. “You’re gonna hurt her feelings. I already got a name for her.”

  “The Raven,” said Miller. “Cool, huh?”

  “Where the fuck is the Buick?” I said.

  “Don’t worry about the Buick. We’ll go back and pick it up. But this … oh man this … bite of paradise.”

  “So we get out of the truck,” said Miller. “And there she is up the driveway. Dig was like—shocked, frozen, right?”

  “I was,” said Dig.

  “Total love at first sight,” continued Miller.

  “Exactly,” said Dig. “I went right up to her and, that was it, man, I was a goner.”

  “Jesus,” I said.

  “Man was willing to sell. I made an offer.”

  “Did you look her over first? There could be a zillion and one problems with her. Does she even run? When was the last time he took her out?”

  “Don’t worry, Mom,” said Dig. “She started right up. I listened to the engine like you’ve been teaching me.”

  “Glad to hear it.”

  “We acted all cool, rig
ht Dig?” said Miller. “So he wouldn’t ask him for the big bucks.”

  “Well. I tried,” said Dig. “It cost me, but I don’t fucking care. I got the cash this month. I mean, this baby is the dream. She’ll be all slick and dark, maybe some dark blue detailing, fix up the upholstery—”

  “Get a hot babe in the front seat,” added Miller.

  “You got that right.” Dig and Miller high-fived, laughing. He slung an arm around Miller’s neck, the two of them grinning at me. “When we’re done with her—”

  “We, huh?” I said.

  “Yeah, we. I still got plenty to learn, and we can work on her together, and I’ll learn. Little bro”—he gestured at Miller—“could use a workshop in basic repair and restoration skills. Am I right? This car is a showpiece and a wet dream all in one.”

  Miller guffawed.

  Dig’s gaze was riveted to the car, to what she could be. “I know she looks like junk now, but…”

  “She’s not junk,” I said. “She’s beautiful. You spotted her and believed in your vision. That’s good. Pull her in the back.”

  Their eyes lit up, and the two of them scrambled back into the truck.

  “And when you’re done, go get me the goddamn Buick! I got a business to run here.”

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  We went to Wyoming on a first run of spring with a couple of other clubs. “Run to the Mountains,” was held every year. We never missed it. Miller was at home. He had football practice, an English test to study for, a history paper to write.

  “No friends or girls over here while I’m gone. I don’t want people in my shit. They’re real curious about us, and you can’t be too careful.”

  “I know, don’t worry. No problem.”

  Dee, Judge’s old lady, was kind enough to bring over a pan of lasagna, brownies, and a gallon of ice cream.

  “Whoa.” Miller grinned as he peeled open the aluminum foil on the brownie pan. “All right…” He shoved a big square of brownie in his mouth.