Leave a Trail (36 page)

The drop-in had selected an image from a hinged contraption on one wall, sort of like a giant book, the pages poster-size sheets in metal frames. Each ‘page’ was full of simple images—cartoon characters, small tribal designs, hearts, flowers, anchors, animals. Adrienne learned that those were ‘flash’ tattoos, and that none of the people in the shop had much respect for people who’d put flash on their skin. Adrienne thought some of the images were pretty and aesthetically pleasing, with nice lines. She might have chosen one for her first tattoo, before she heard the snarky things Red and Karen said about the drop-in who’d gotten a small tiger cub over the top of her right breast. Tony hadn’t said much, but he’d nodded in agreement while Red and Karen riffed.

Karen had just finished the flash when they broke for supper, so they were still talking about it while they were eating. Curious, Adrienne asked. “Is it the tiger that you don’t like?”

Karen gave her a look that said she wasn’t so sure Adrienne had business talking to her, but she answered, “It’s not the tiger. I don’t mind at all doing a really badass beast, with lots of detail. It’s
that
tiger, which is the same damn tiger that every fucking tattoo shop in the entire world has in their flash book. Why the
fuck
put something on your skin that hundreds, maybe thousands of other people have exactly the same?”

“But why have the…flash at all, then, if you don’t want to do them?”

Now Karen just glared. Adrienne decided that she didn’t like her much at all. Tony laughed, choking a little on his roast beef on rye. “Quick money, darlin’.” He turned to Karen. “And who are we to judge how people want to express themselves, right?”

Red, a tall, skinny guy with a long, red beard, a red buzz cut, and far more freckles than Adrienne—so many, in fact, that from a distance, his skin simply looked tan under his own ink—asked, “You got ink, girlie?”

Adrienne shook her head.

“No? Not even his ink?”

“Careful, asshole,” Badger muttered.

“Sorry, man. Didn’t mean to overstep.”

She knew what they were talking about—Lilli had Isaac’s ink, Tasha had Len’s, Cory had Havoc’s. Shannon didn’t have any ink; Adrienne didn’t know why she wasn’t wearing Show’s. She knew what it meant, but she and Badger had never talked about it. They hadn’t really talked about the future, though she felt sure that they were both thinking long term. The word ‘forever’ had been murmured or whispered more than a few times. She looked at Badger, who was eating a sandwich and drinking a Coke, sitting on the table he’d been lying on while Tony worked. He was bare-chested, his new, half-finished ink dark and shiny. He looked back at her, swallowing a bite and bringing his soda can to his mouth. They didn’t speak.

When Badger didn’t respond to him, Red shifted uncomfortably and then addressed Adrienne again. “Well, if you get ink, don’t get flash. Flowers, animals, whatever—all that’s fine, but put some thought into it. Ask your artist to draw it for you. You’ll get better work, something unique.”

She nodded, but she hadn’t really heard his advice. She was too preoccupied with the question of her and Badger. It felt important that they were living a life that they had not defined yet in any way.

~oOo~

When she woke the next morning, she was not alone in bed. Badger had gotten quiet again after they’d left the tattoo shop, and he’d dropped her at home and gone to the clubhouse alone. She was asleep, Hector curled on her pillow, before he got home. But he was with her now, awake, trailing his fingers through her hair, over her shoulder, down the new skin on her right arm. It made her feel a little self-conscious when he touched her scars, even lovingly like this, but she was getting used to it. He touched them a lot.

He noticed that she’d woken. “Morning, beautiful.”

“Morning.” She rolled to her back, and he shifted a little to make way for her without moving out of contact with her. “How’re you feeling?”

“Okay. I’m sorry about yesterday.”

“Don’t be. I understand. I’m glad you’re better. How’s your chest?”

“Fine. Don’t really feel it.” He brushed his hand over his t-shirt—it was a gesture he made often, a swipe from his shoulder to the bottom of ribs and back. He’d worn a t-shirt to bed, and the white cotton had taken on a faint Rorschach impression of his new tattoo.

She caught his hand and brought it to her lips. “Are you spending the day at the B&B today, or do you have club stuff?” Even though the B&B was only in the planning stages of the rebuild, the barn had not been burned, and Badger was still taking care of the horses and goats.

“I want to run over for a couple of hours, deal with some paperwork, work with Spirit a little, and check in on Weasel.”

“I wish you’d let him stay with us at night.”

“He’s a working dog, babe. Not a pet. He lives there, where his work is. Anyway, he’d go crazy in a house.”

She was still sad to think of him sleeping alone in the barn every night. “Well, Hector is a pet.”

The pup was still on the bed with them. Badger ruffled his ears. “Yeah, that’s clear. You know, he’s gonna get too big to sleep with us.”

Adrienne shrugged, unwilling to contemplate her sweet little pup becoming a giant dog, and Badger laughed.

“Okay. Anyway, Kenny’s on all day today, and there’s not much to do with the B&B closed, so I can be free before lunch, if nothing comes up with the club. You have plans?”

“Just the usual—hanging out with Shannon and the twins, under Double A’s watchful eye.”

“It’s supposed to be nice today. How about I pick you up and we go for a ride? Maybe go car shopping?”

Still mourning the loss of her little Beetle, Adrienne had not yet wanted to replace her. She hadn’t felt a pressing need for a new car. She wasn’t working yet, and she had a bodyguard. It wasn’t like Badger was going to let her wander off for a joy ride on her own.

“A ride would be nice. But I don’t want to look at cars yet.”

His brow wrinkled, but he didn’t reply, except to lean down and kiss her—a claiming kiss, loving but not gentle, his lips firm on hers, his tongue filling her mouth. She was breathless by the time he pulled back.

He brushed his thumb over her wet mouth. “Okay, then. Just a ride.”

~oOo~

When he came to Show and Shannon’s to pick her up, just before noon, he had a smallish box, wrapped in solid blue paper.

“What’s that?”

“For you.” His grin wide and proud, he handed her the box. She opened it, sliding her finger under the tape.

A new Nikon digital SLR camera. A step up from the one she’d lost in the fire. Adrienne stared at the box in her hands.

“That okay? I got the receipt and everything if you don’t like it. There’s a camera shop in Springfield. They have lenses and filters and all that, but I didn’t understand most of what the guy was trying to sell me, so we can go back, and you can get a camera you like better, or different lenses, or whatever. I just…you always have a camera with you. As long as I’ve known you.”

She stared at the box, entirely overwhelmed, so much that she couldn’t even lift her head.

“Adrienne? Babe? Did I fuck it up?” He put his hand around her left arm and squeezed lightly.

The concern in his voice broke her trance, and she looked up. “I love you.”

His brow smoothed out, and he grinned again. “I love you, too. I did okay?”

“Better than okay. Perfect.” She stepped into his embrace, clutching her new camera between them.

~oOo~

Leaving Hector at Show and Shannon’s to play with his brother, Max, Badger took Adrienne and her new camera for a ride. He took them far out, riding over an hour, before she tugged on the front of his kutte to get his attention. He leaned his head back a little so she could tell him she had to pee. He nodded and made the next turn. About ten minutes later, he pulled up at a little market that seemed to be entirely isolated from any other human life.

The building could have come off the lot at a movie studio, straight out of a John Wayne movie or something. Bare wood boards, aligned vertically, weathered to grey. A covered porch, low to the ground, with split logs for a railing. Hanging from the porch eaves, swinging gently in the light fall breeze, was a simply-lettered sign in black and white that read
Malone’s Market
.

There was an actual horse actually tied to the porch by the reins of her bridle.

A weathered picnic table sat out front, near a huge old elm with a tire swing hanging from a thick branch.

“What is this place?” She took her helmet off and handed it to him.

“Malone’s. It’s cool, you’ll see.”

“How did you even know it was here?”

“I ride a lot, babe. Riding helps me think things out. I probably know every road and building for more than fifty miles around home.” He held his hand out to her. “Bring your camera in. I don’t think Buck’ll mind if you want to take pictures.”

She got her knew camera out of his saddlebag and let him lead her into the market. As they stepped onto the porch—three old rocking chairs on one side, a rough-hewn table and two chairs on the other—their feet made the distinctive
clop
of walking over old boards. A sound common to every western she’d ever seen. And she’d thought Signal Bend had been caught in a time warp. Adrienne felt like they’d lost almost two hundred years when Badger had pulled onto the skimpy gravel of the Malone’s lot.

The wooden screen door squealed when Badger pulled it open. With a hand on the small of her back, he led her into the store.

“Oh. My. God.” On instinct, she lifted her camera.

“Hey, Buck. How’s it goin’?”

A tall, deeply wrinkled old man with darkly ruddy skin and a short shock of snow-white hair looked up from behind the counter, where he was pulling something from the case. “Badger. Good to see you. It’s goin’ like it always goes.”

“You mind if my lady takes some pictures of the store?”

“Reckon that’s okay. Not sellin’ ‘em or nothin’, though, yeah?”

Badger looked at Adrienne. She shook her head. She had no one to sell them to. She just wanted to remember what she was seeing.

“No sir. She just likes the place. This is Adrienne, by the way. Adrienne Renard, Buck Malone.”

“Hi, Buck.”

Buck dropped his head in a courtly nod. “Young lady. Let me know if you need somethin’.”

“I will, thanks.”

The first thing that greeted them was an ancient soda cooler—a big, red chest with the
Coca-Cola
label emblazoned across the front and a bottle opener built into the side. She lifted the lid—it was operating, and cold steam wafted into the air. “There are actual bottles of soda in here!”

Badger laughed. “Yeah. It’s a soda chest.”

“I didn’t even know you could still
get
bottles like this!”

Adrienne closed the lid and looked around. The store was dimly lit, a few bare bulbs in the ceiling augmenting the natural light from the windows across the front and along one side. The floors and walls were the same rough-hewn wood of the exterior. The other side wall was shelving from floor to ceiling, and the center of the space was taken up by rows of tables with shelving built on top. And barrels. There were barrels clustered in one front corner. Full of…nails? Wow.

The shelves along the wall and in the center were stacked with jeans, plaid and chambray shirts, bandanas, and other kinds of fabric goods, and then canned goods and boxed foods. There were shelves of identical work boots.  A topper in the center was stacked with cowboy hats and trucker caps. Another was paper—stationery, envelopes, old-fashioned ledger books, greeting cards and postcards.

The sales counter was a long, framed-glass case, filled with brightly colored candies and cheap plastic toys—and an array of tobacco products. A man in a brown twill shirt and faded jeans, sagging in the butt, wearing a dirty and misshapen straw cowboy hat, was paying for a new bag of chewing tobacco. He handed his money to Buck, who rang the sale into an ornately cast brass cash register.

Seriously. This place could not possibly exist in the twenty-first century. They had to have crossed through some kind of portal.

She pulled on Badger’s arm. “How does this place stay in business?”

Badger laughed. “Low overhead, I guess. And a lot of the stock’s been here for a while. Everybody around knows about Malone’s, though, so he does okay. I’ve never been in here when there wasn’t somebody else here, too. Look down to the back of the store.”

She did. “Is that an ice cream counter?”

“Yeah. Buck’s old lady, Opal, runs it. Makes the ice cream. Lotta people come for that. You want a root beer float for lunch?”

It was all she could do to refrain from happy dancing right there in the middle of this time capsule of a shop. “That would be awesome! I want to take pictures first—and could we have our floats outside, under that tree?”

“I don’t see why not.” He kissed her cheek. “I’m gonna go talk to Buck. You take all the pictures you want. You need to pee, right? There’s a little john back by the ice cream.”

With a squeeze of her hand, he walked over to the sales counter and left her to play. She went back and took care of her business in a small but clean and modern-enough bathroom, and then hurried back up front.

She took lots of photos. Her eye still trained to unsettling juxtapositions, like the old and new she’d found everywhere in Signal Bend, she saw similar kinds of connections all over the shop. Her favorite photo, though, and she knew it when she saw it through the viewfinder: Buck and Badger, leaning on opposite sides of the glass counter, talking. She caught them both looking down into the case—she didn’t think they were actually looking into the case; they were, instead, simply talking quietly. Old Buck, with his short, bright white hair and sun-darkened, deeply lined face, his chambray shirt faded around the imprint of bib overalls, and young Badger, his full beard covering his young, smooth cheeks, his long, auburn ponytail lying straight down his back, over the patch on his kutte. Standing so that she had them slightly backlit by the windows, Adrienne pulled the image in as close as she could and set only those two men in focus, most tightly on their faces.