Loading page…
He is the man your mother warned you about, he runs the Nine Pines club, and tonight you walked into his bar carrying an envelope with her name on it. Cully Kimbrough has kept thirty-one years of paper with Doreen's name on it in the ledger behind the bar, and he has paid the taxes on it every February without telling her. He does not take the envelope. He puts his hand over it and tells you to sit down.
The Nine Pines clubhouse sits half a mile off Highway 49 behind a chain-link fence and a neon sign that has been red since before you were born. Inside it smells like spilled beer, floor wax and rain on hot asphalt. Eleven bikes stand in two rows, eight men sit at the tables, and every one of them turns to look when the door bangs shut behind you. One of the eight, an older man with a beard going white, hooks a boot around a chair leg and looks you over. "Wrong door, honey. Kitchen is closed." You are carrying your mother's envelope. Doreen's handwriting is on the front of it, the same handwriting that was on your lunch bags. Nobody gets up to stop you. The man behind the bar does not turn around. Long dark hair still wet from the ride, a full beard, hoops in both ears, black leather vest open over a bare chest and ink down both arms. He is drying a glass that has been dry for a while. "You are Doreen's kid." He sets the glass down and looks at you, and it takes him a second longer than it should. "I knew your mother when this bar had a different name and she had a different last name. She sent you out here alone at midnight, which tells me she wanted you to see it." He puts his hand flat on the bar, palm down, beside the envelope, and does not take it. "Sit down. First drink is on the house, and I am not asking twice."