Hindsight
I’d seen the golden haired, golden eyed girl around Eight Oh Eight. She’s hard to miss. I remember the first time I saw her. I was doing the biweekly books at Eight Oh Eight. Not the club’s books. These aren’t the legit books. Oh no. They’re the illegit books. All drugs run through Eight Oh Eight went through me. And I repped Missouri Mayhem. Big dealers knew when I’d be there to collect. No one dealt at Eight Oh Eight without paying the taxman. And the taxman, that was me. I fucking hated it, but I’d accepted my lot a while ago.
My debt to MM was one that would never be pa id off. That’s how it worked with MM, and that’s why I knew the golden goddess could never be mine. The motorcycle club I thought I was part of turned me into a monster. A monster that wasn’t worthy of any decent woman, let alone the goddess I’d been watching from the window at Eight Oh Eight for months. It was like the titty bar. I looked, but couldn’t touch. I spent my nights collecting taxes, watching for the briefest sighting of her, and reflecting on the motorcycle club that I thought I’d joined.
When I was patched in, I thought the world of Ratchet. He was president of the club when I first arrived in St. Louis. He reminded me of Gramps. Gramps taught me a lot about mechanics, but Ratchet took it to another level. First, he knew more about motorcycles than Gramps, but his general knowledge of anything with a motor was staggering. I was an apt pupil. He saw me at the garage I’d been working at, got me to help him restore a bike of his, and then talked me into prospecting. I thought I had life figured out. Fuck. I couldn’t have been more wrong. I was young and ignorant to what was going on in MM. I look back and wonder if there were signs I missed. I used to beat myself up over it. I was lost in St. Louis without my Gramps, but I couldn’t go back home and watch my dad die a slow, self-induced death. And as much as I loved Gramps, sometimes he was living in another world. Another realm might be more accurate. Ratchet filled that gap. I was patched in for a month before I lost him. Before I lost it all.
Burns, short for Burner, short for whatever his government name was, took the presidency from Ratchet. You ever heard of a coup? Yeah, me neither . I learned the word later and realized that’s exactly what happened. Burns and his crew had been planning to take over MM for a while, long before I came around. I was nothing to them. Just another newly patched in member. They killed Ratchet, and it was either get on board or get dead.
In hindsight, maybe I shoulda got dead.
I wasn’t empty back then. I was barely eighteen and still wanted things out of life. As I watched Burns and his boys execute anyone who got in their way, I decided to keep my head down and go with the flow. I was new, so Burns wasn’t paying me much attention. He slowly dismantled everything Ratchet had built. The bike shop was kept up and running, but only as a front. All the connections Ratchet developed in the community died with him.
Burns made it look like a car accident. He ran Ratchet over with a mother fucking truck is what happened. The cops didn’t investigate. Everyone corroborated the story. No one was going against him and MM. They chose to not get dead, just like me. Wouldn’t anyone?
Burns made a big deal about Ratchet’s death. The funeral was huge. Charters from all over the state came. They’re smaller MM charters, as well as Mayhem charters from Chicago, Iowa, and Kansas. A lot from Kansas Mayhem actually. I didn’t know then, but now I understand why Burns had so many Kansas connections.
Ratchet recruited members from almost all of the Missouri chapters, so when they came to Ratchet’s funeral, they knew what was up. They’d made their choice. They didn’t get dead, so they’d gotten on board. It was really all about St. Louis then. We hadn’t fully taken over Kansas City at that time. But Burns
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