No Man Left Behind: A Veteran Inspired Charity Anthology by Elizabeth Knox (black authors fiction TXT) 📕

Kade - 2006

Walking into that dingy bar was the best thing I ever did. I was lost and alone with no sense of the brotherhood I depended on in the service. Smokey and Bullet sensed something in me. When I pulled up to the storage facility to get my bike, it was Bullet waiting for me. Turned out the MC owned the long-term storage facility, and they had admired my bike when they cranked it up as part of their service.

I sat down with him in the small office, drinking a cup of coffee as he explained about club life and how they always looked out for each other. It sounded too good to be true, but when I arrived at the clubhouse; I found my new home. I began prospecting for the Death Hounds MC and today was the day I finally got my patch.

I’ve spent the last year doing scut-work for them, along with a younger prospect named Skid. We cleaned their bikes, patrolled the property, kept the coolers filled during meetings, church, and the frequent barbeques, and took advantage of the club sluts that always seemed to hang around. Through every action, I gained respect from the brothers and earned my place inside the club. The brotherhood I was looking for found me when I needed it the most.

The party started hours ago, and after getting a blowjob from one of the newer sluts, their word not mine. I was sitting in the chair; the needle jabbing ink into my skin as Needles tattooed the club’s colors onto my chest. Skid was in the chair next to me, another brother working on him as the party raged on.

He has had a permanent smile on his face since they handed our patches to us inside church earlier today. We were watching the bikes while they had a meeting inside the clubhouse. I knew something was up since the hang-arounds and club sluts were nowhere to be seen. Skid seemed nervous until they called us into the clubhouse, presenting us with our member patches.

They popped beers, showering us in the cold foam, and the music kicked off, starting the party. Hours later, most everyone is drunk, high, or both, and the women lost most of their clothes, walking around half or completely naked, enjoying the attention from visiting brothers from other chapters.

Skid took a swig of whiskey straight from the bottle and handed it to me. “Fuck, man. It feels good to finally get the patch,” he said, his words unusually clear considering the amount of alcohol and weed he ingested.

The guy inking his back wiped down his back before rubbing ointment on it and covering it with cling-film. He leaned back in the chair as Needles finished my ink and the two artists rejoined the party, leaving Skid and I alone for the first time since this morning.

I turned to Skid and took another swig of the whiskey, feeling the burn down my throat. I didn’t drink much, but tonight I wanted to celebrate. “Best decision ever,” I replied to his statement and handed the bottle back to him.

“Better than the Army, Gunner?” His question wasn’t without merit. I loved my time in the service, but the rules of the military were stifling compared to the freedom of the Death Hounds.

I was still getting used to my club name, but hearing someone call me Kade was even stranger. Gunner was the new me. The man who saw war, killed the enemy, and was dumped back on American soil with a limp, a paycheck, and a shitload of anger. Gunner fit where Kade no longer did.

“Yeah, man,” I replied. Leaning forward, I rested my forearms across my lap and let my head hang for a moment. Hearing him move, I glanced up to find him studying me like he does. He seemed to know what was rattling around in someone’s head before they did.

“The Army gave me a chance to break the cycle my pops found himself in. Working himself to death to barely make ends meet. The club gave me purpose. I still don’t know exactly what it is, but I’ll be ready when the club needs me.”

He clasped my arm and nodded before grasping his head and swaying side to side slightly, the whiskey and all-day partying finally catching up with him. Skid prospected with the Hounds on his eighteenth birthday and from what he told me countless times; it was the best decision of his life. He turned twenty a few months ago and hit the minimum age for membership into the Death Hounds.

Countless times I listened to him tell me about his drug addict mother and all the bullshit he endured to protect not only himself, but his older sister and younger brother from her neglect. I never met them, but I felt like I knew them as much as he talked about them.

To him, loyalty and family were the most important markers of being a man. My twenty-fifth birthday was last month, and the club threw me a hell of a party, showing me they welcomed even the newest member like family. There were a few aspects of club life that I wasn’t completely comfortable with, and for that reason, Smokey and Bullet put me in the gun store to work.

Illegal activities kept the Death Hounds coffers full, but legal businesses kept us under the feds’ radar. Local cops in the cities we had chapters in looked the other way, realizing our presence alone drove out the drug dealers, wanna-be gangsters, and most importantly, kept the cartels away. Growing and selling weed was legal in half the country, and no one cared that we were the supplier for most of the state. The club paid taxes on our grow operation, or at least the amount we showed them.

The Portstill chapter wasn’t the biggest, but we had a large section of the state that we patrolled, worked, and lived. From Rockhampton to Pierce Bluff, we