Where You Find It
by Jay Ferrari
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The dog died again. This time for real. The first time he was lost a couple days and we figured he'd gone off or got splattered by a truck or whatever. But then he turned up on the edge of the junk pile, huge gashes across his head and bites in his gut. We were able to get him pretty patched up, but he lost a back leg - which I thought was kind of cool, to have a three-legged dog with his lip part torn away and big scars on his head. Tough fucker. Extra mean. But this time he died for real trying to scramble across the quarry road right when a grader was coming by. Nothing but a big red furry smear on the dirt about ten feet long. It was my fault because I called him and I should have told him to stay put, but when he started gimping across I thought he would make it. He was smart too. He would have stayed if I had said stay.

So I need a new dog. A barker who can raise a racket so I know if people are sneaking around. It's been such a bitch working because I gotta drink coffee nonstop and can't afford to doze even a second. Every little noise outside and I bolt up with the shotgun. Sometimes I think about trying the stuff, but I know what Urbie says about never touching the merchandise. You make sure nobody fucks with the goods, he says, and never and I mean never try it yourself.

He told us how he had to slash up a guy's face pretty good, the dude who guarded the lab before me. I guess this guy figured the dog would do a good enough job, so he would have over those fat strippers from the casino. The old day guy, Temoc, he said he knew he was using because when he'd show up in the morning, this guy was buggy as hell, laughing and saying everything was super cool super cool super cool, then he'd bum a couple smokes, get on his bike and be gone, leaving all these wine bottles for Temoc to clean up.

So one time about four in the morning Urbie does a surprise visit. The dog is asleep because one of the girls thought it would be funny to fill the water bowl with Wild Irish Rose, so Urbie walks in pissed already and the place is a total fucking mess. Beer cans everywhere, this huge stripper sleeping bare-assed on the couch, and in the back room the guy is zonked in just a t-shirt and socks, another fat-ass stripper passed out with her head in his lap. Urbie goes ape-fucking-shit. Pulls out his straightrazor, leaps on the guy and starts carving him up. Slices both his cheeks open then grabs a handful of the guy's prick and balls and pulls down like he's popping a gate latch. Says he's gonna cut the works right off. Urbie's squeezing this guys balls so hard that the guy starts to throw up. Some puke gets on Urbie's arm, he lets go and basically backhands the guy out the bedroom door. The guy tears out screaming holy hell, holding his face with blood pouring thick between his fingers, wearing socks and a t-shirt and that's it.

A pair of county boys picked him up a few miles down Bullet Ridge Road just as the sun was coming up, his face all clotted and his balls the size of oranges. He wouldn't say shit or shineola. Said he got in a fight with a bear.

Urbie laughed when he told me and Temoc, but stopped at the end and waited and looked me in the eye for a good couple seconds. Get the fucking message he was saying without saying anything. Then he gave Temoc a kick in the gut for not catching on quicker so good that he pissed blood for two days.

So with no dog around, I gotta stay the fuck awake. It's not so tough. Lots of coffee and we have satellite. If Urbie stops in, all he'll find is me cleaning gunbarrels and watching shark shows or something. I even shit with the bathroom door open and a gun across my lap so he knows I'm a good case.

My favorite way of keeping awake is by figuring my pay. It works out good, considering no taxes and all cash. Me and Temoc trade twelve-hour shifts Monday through Thursday, for which Urbie gives us a straight hundred bucks per each. Urbie and his hardcore buddies are here Friday and Saturday and Sunday watching the kids who cook the stuff up and handling distribution. He'll drop in during the week to get stash and make sure we're on point. Basically I clear four hundred bucks to stay up and check out whatever makes the dog bark.

Urbie did get a little pissed that I let the last dog get killed, but when I explained what happened - leaving out the part about me calling the dog by mistake - he cooled off. He said he'd bring me a new dog by next week but was too busy right now so tough shit soldier, you'll just have to stay up.

Fair enough.

All things being even, it's a pretty soft way to make ends. After the plant closed, most of us were fucked out for work ideas. Some dudes took jobs at the casino scrubbing shitters or parking cars. A couple got choice jobs as dealers, and one's even a bartender, but for the rest of us there was nothing worth nothing. I mean, I just can't bring myself to scrub out an Indian shitter.

I figured I was just gonna wait it out in my uncle's basement and make beer money delivering parts and peddling ditch weed to the highschool kids. Then Urbie caught up with me. My buddy Wingnut rides with him sometimes because he's a Loco Diablo probey - which is another line of shit in and of itself but I would never say that to Wingnut and absolutely never fucking say that to Urbie. But anyway, Nut's gotta do all this bullshit for a full complete year before he can be officially in the gang. Run and get beer at a minute's notice. Pick up other dudes' old ladies and bring em back to the clubhouse. Even hand over his bike if a full-tilt's conks out on him.

Nut called me once from the gas station way out on Gaines Road asking if I could come and get him because some king-shit had tacoed his front tire. So I had to get my truck, pick him and the goddamn bike up and bring him back to the LD clubhouse where he had to fix it by the time the rest of the crew got back from the run.

It took us all night because not only was the tire trashed but the fork as well, and I kept asking Nut why he wanted to eat so much shit just to be in some second-rate bike club. He told me to shut the fuck up and almost took a swing at me - I guess he was actually supposed to break my nose or something, part of their dumb-shit code or whatever, but he relaxed and told me there were serious advantages to being a full-tilt Loco D. Besides booze and good reefer and pussy, there was serious cash to be made running crank up and down the Interstate. They have this network from Joline to Cedarburg hooking up truckers and other bikers and even a couple state cops. Troopers, Nut says, they never sleep.

A few nights later, I'm having beers at the Gato Borracho and Urbie himself comes up to me, slaps me on the back and tells me it was right white of me to help out Wingnut like I did. And he says it was too bad I didn't have a bike or I might make a fine Loco D myself. He sits down, buys me a beer and then says that because Wingnut says I'm all right would I be interested in becoming a social affiliate of the Reyes County Loco Diablos Motorcycle Club. Before I answer, he goes on, would I be further interested in making in the neighborhood of five hundred dollars a week cash for doing just about zero.

Now let it be known that Urbie is not the kind of dude you take lightly. He goes about two fifty easy and most of it solid. Big prison hands all cut up and knotted. Two raw gray slabs. And even when he just gives you a swat on the back he kind of knocks the wind out of you.

I'm just hunched down and trying to keep my eyes under my cap and going uh huh uh huh sounds interesting. He reaches across me, peels my hat off my head with one hand and grabs my shoulder to turn me to face him with the other.

Now look at me when I'm making a nice offer he says, that's the polite thing to do. I try to sit up, but his big ham hand is still on my shoulder, pressing me down. He's smiling this real goofball grin, then winks at me. I say it sounds like the best offer I've heard in a while, and he says then you start day after tomorrow. Here's a little advance, which turns out to be a fifty dollar bill he tucks in the front pocket of my shirt. Nut will take you where I want you and we'll proceed from there. Pro-ceed he says, like a tv lawyer.

Two days later, Nut rides me down the valley road about five miles out of town, cutting off onto the old quarry access road to where it tapers and runs behind all these pines. That's where the whole operation is set up. There's the old house, a couple of sheds, a burned-out flatbed camper for the dog, and a gutted schoolbus that has the lab in it. There's boxes of iodine crystals that they get from the Feeds & Needs, and drums of ammonia and all kinds of Frankenstein science-lab shit everywhere. Urbie has some dropout from the state college who knows chemicals, and him and a couple buddies do the brewing. Same rule though. Don't even think about trying the stuff yourself. After work, all the beer and joints you want, but if Urbie or one of his boys spots you around town looking even halfway toward tweaked, they'll put a boot in your ass.

So it's been close to a month now since I started, and aside from the dog and a few kids looking for a place to party, there's been no trouble. I was able to rent a room above the panaderia, a nice trade-up from my uncle's basement. I have some folding money to blow at the casino and the Gato but I try to save at least one day's worth every week. I figure it won't be long til I have enough to buy a decent second-hand bike and maybe become a Loco D myself, though Nut says it's best to wait for the formal invite.

I don't see much of the old plant crew on account of working overnights, though sometimes I catch a couple of boys at the Gato if I'm having coffee before going in. They're always bent out of shape about working at the casino, about scrubbing shitters and having Indian bosses and busloads of cripples coming in from nursing homes. One guy, he had a sweet setup dealing blackjack but got fired for fixing cards and now can't even get goddamn day labor. I guess I got lucky.