Award Winning Writer and Photographer

It was the second Sunday of May 2015 and Chance Wilder was celebrating his 66th birthday. It wasn’t exactly his birthday, though. As near as anyone could figure he was born on May 8th, 1949—Mother’s Day that year. His first foster mother found that ironic and decided to celebrate his subsequent birthdays on Mother’s Day so they could party together. That worked for Chance and as life went on, he continued the tradition on his own.

    He never knew his biological mom. She left him in a trash can, umbilical cord still attached. It was by chance that a homeless guy looking for a meal discovered him. Hence his name—Chance.

    Maurice “Mudflap” Morrison stopped by to help him celebrate. Mudflap was already collecting those Social Security checks and on Medicare. He wasn’t a member of AARP, though. A criminal had to draw the line somewhere.

    Mudflap was upset with him.

    “You’re not the man you used to be,” he said. “Fucking artist’s life has ruined you. Either that or you’re just too old for the action.”

    Chance Wilder didn’t take offense at the insult. He understood Mudflap was pissed at him because he wasn’t up for ripping off the Devil’s Deacons motorcycle club. Mudflap wore the gang’s colors to this celebration at Chance’s farmhouse studio. He wasn’t talking about his initiation, but they were full colors, he’d only recently earned the patch to fill the void between the rockers—a branding iron leaving a smoking double D brand. Now he was talking about taking the club’s money—serious money, drug buying cash money.

    Did the outlaw bikers even realize what an outlaw they’d let in?

    Maybe he’s right. Maybe the life of an artist has made me soft. Maybe I have grown too old for this crap.

    “We’re both too old,” Chance said. “The war ended forty-five years ago. I’m thinking it’s time to retire. You should consider it, too.

    Chance had mixed emotions about turning down Mudflap’s plan. Part of him wanted in, wanted a new adventure, but at the same time he was genuinely enjoying his life of creativity, and had become comfortable in what he had assumed was his retirement from the outlaw life.

    Mudflap had brought along his latest squeeze, Ella. Her handbag thudded when she set it on the floor. That told Chance she was carrying Mudflap’s handgun for him. She was … fortyish, stick thin, wearing a long-sleeved jersey to hide her arms. She couldn’t hide those pinpoint pupils, though.

Junkie, for sure.

    Ella wandered around the studio, looking at the photo displays. She stopped in front of the one he called “winter white.” It started with a close-up of freshly fallen snow, a macro shot that showed the geometry of some individual flakes. It was followed by another shot of snow; this one marred by tiny tracks. The series ended with a disturbance in the snow bracketed by the wing prints of an owl.

    A haiku in images – the words were printed in a small panel beneath the series.

                                                                 lace of mouse track

                                                    stitched in new fallen snow ends

                                                                      in wing prints

    “Where’d you come up with her?” Chance asked when Ella went off to the bathroom, probably to shoot up.

    “She was riding bitch on a brother’s bike,” Mudflap said. “He treated her rough. She got tired of being bruised, thought I would be a good alternative, thinks I can protect her.”

    “How does your bro feel about that?”

    “I’m still waiting,” Mudflap said. “Roy’s a big guy, Sergeant-at-arms for the club. He can’t quite figure out why I’m not scared of him, so he’s being a little timid about it, pretending he doesn’t care, but he’ll make his move when he thinks the time is right. In the meantime, I’m having fun.”

    Chance suspected a large part of the “fun” was waiting for Roy to make that move, the anticipation. Mudflap liked riding the edge. Nowadays he was riding it on a Harley Fat Boy.

    Chance and Mudflap had met on the edge—the edge of civilization. Way back in Vietnam, serving in the same infantry unit, just a couple ground pounders. Chance had found real appreciation for the man during an ambush firefight. He’d been sitting there bleeding, trying to figure out who and where he was, stunned by the mortar detonation that got him his second purple heart, when Mudflap grabbed him up and ran until Chance recovered enough to join in what became a two-kilometer running firefight.

     He’d tried to thank the man.

    “If it wasn’t for you, I’d be taking up residence in some tiger pit,” he’d said.

    Mudflap had brushed off the thanks.

    “There were a lot of bullets coming our way,” he’d said. “I just hung y’all on my back to protect myself.”

    That was the start of a lifelong friendship and an off and on criminal partnership. The criminal part started when they figured out why their unit wasn’t getting the material and ordnance it needed and decided to do something about it. Then the First Sergeant who had made a killing on the black market had found a sudden shitty death when a fragmentation grenade came rolling in under the outhouse door. And Chance and Mudflap had liberated a footlocker full of cash.

    It was the first of many such operations to separate criminals from their money over the intervening years. Now Mudflap was proposing yet another, trying to talk Chance into it.

    “The Double Ds do a regular meth buy from another club, call themselves Satan’s Savages,” he said. “It’s good money. Big money. And these guys are so paranoid about each other and the narcs they aren’t even looking out for any normal criminals like us.”

    Chance didn’t like it. He knew Mudflap probably needed a big score. He’d had more than his share in the years since they’d left ‘Nam, but he had a way of going through cash quickly, which had him always looking for the next opportunity.

    “You need a loan, buddy?” he said. “All you gotta do is ask, ya know.”

    “I don’t need your cash,” Mudflap said, clearly offended by the offer. “I want to take it from these assholes.”

    Chance had two criteria for a “mission.” The victims had to be criminals and the money had to be significant enough to justify the risk. And it helped if he felt the need for revenge. He felt that revenge should be financially rewarding as well as emotionally satisfying. That desire for revenge wasn’t here for him with this one. And he was quite comfortable financially, probably too comfortable, at least in Mudflap’s eyes.

    So, he said “no.” Which pissed off Mudflap, who told Ella: “we’re outta here” as soon as she wobbled back from the bathroom.

    “Don’t even need you for this,” he said, walking away. “Was just being generous.”

    Turned out those were the last words he would ever say to Chance.

 A month later it was Ella at the door. Chance looked past her, out in the yard and to the driveway beyond, but there was no motorcycle, no sign of Mudflap.

    “What’s up?” he asked Ella.

    “Your friend is dead,” she said.

    Wow. For a skinny little woman, she could throw a wicked verbal punch. Chance took it in the gut. It knocked the wind out of his sails, staggered him, bruised his psyche. Chance was left trying to imagine his world without Mudflap, his close friend and criminal partner. It felt empty. That emptiness was seeping inside him. He steeled himself against it.

    “Come on in,” he said, backing away from the open door.

    “I don’t suppose there’s any kind of estate …?” she said.

    “Tell me what happened,” Chance replied.

    “What’s to tell? He’s just gone. Not coming back.”

    “Where’s his body?”

    “Damned if I know. They buried it somewhere.”

    “Who are they?”

    She went silent.

Some kind of estate … looking for a payday …

    He flashed all his cash, a little more than seven hundred, bait to coax the full story from her. He rolled the rubber band off the roll of bills he pulled from his pocket. He flattened the stack, folded it in half, lengthwise to keep it from curling, Benjamins on top for show—gave it a little ruffle. She reached for it. But he didn’t let go, wasn’t going to give it to her until she told him what there was to tell.

    “Who are they?” he said again.

    “I don’t know anything firsthand,” she said. “But Roy, my former old man, was sure happy to tell me how Hammerhead used his big fucking framing hammer to bust up Mudflap piece by piece until he was supposedly begging for that final shot to the head.”

    “And who the fuck is Hammerhead?”

    “He’s the Prez of the Double Ds.”

    She pulled on the stack of bills. He tightened his grip.

    “Why’d he do this?”

    “The club found out he planned to rip them off.”

    “How’d they find out?”

    “Dunno.”

    Chance couldn’t help but wonder if maybe Ella had something to do with that.

    “Where do I find this Hammerhead?”

    “You don’t want to find him. He’s one nasty motherfucker. Stay away from him, old timer. You ain’t up to this, believe me.”

    Another tug on the bills. A little less tentative this time. Chance still didn’t let go.

    “Where is he at, Ella?”

    “He ain’t hard to find. Got his own junkyard. Named it after hisself. The place is full of bikers, guns, and junkyard dogs. You should stay away from there. Seriously. It’s not a healthy place for a senior citizen.”

    “Are you sure you don’t know where they buried Mudflap?”

    “Someone said something about a landfill, but I don’t know where.”

    “Ella …”

    “Yeah?”

    “You’d be smart to use this cash to get out of here for a while.”

    Her eyes got big when he let go of the money, but he could tell she was thinking about the next big high, not a getaway.

    Chance watched her walk to her car, a bounce in her step. His fists were clenched so hard his hands hurt. Life had just gotten lonelier. He was pissed at the bikers and pissed at himself, too. He’d abandoned his friend. He felt responsible for this loss. He needed to do something about it.

Guess I’m going on a mission after all.

He left the bagman’s bodyguard behind, gagged, and handcuffed, busy hugging a tree. The bagman lay on the back seat, bound with duct tape, unconscious from a close encounter with Thumper, Chance Wilder’s leather-jacketed, lead-weighted blackjack. The money sat in a heavy duty, plain brown shopping bag on the front passenger seat. The bag smelled like Egg Fu Yung—recycled from Chinese take-out. Good choice, Chinese food is heavy; so is a bag full of bundled Benjamins, a hundred bills in each ten-thousand-dollar bundle.

    “We’re in it now, Mudflap,” Chance Wilder said, talking to his absent friend, missing for a couple months now, rotting in a hidden grave somewhere. He’d been talking to his dead friend a lot lately. It only seemed appropriate. The rip-off was Mudflap’s idea, one Chance had initially rejected. He’d actually pulled it off.

    “Not bad work for an old guy,” he bragged aloud.

     The celebration was premature. He smelled danger, spotted the roadblock up ahead, still in the process of being assembled. His breathing quickened. He shook his head, but there was no denying it. Things were about to become intense. The planned escape route was cut off. He’d have to improvise. He barked a laugh.

    “It’s gonna get interesting, Mudflap,” he said.

    He’d taken the bagman’s Chevy Blazer along with the money and the bagman, all part of the plan. He shifted the Blazer into four-wheel drive on the fly, time to see if it could blaze its own trail. Instead of slowing down for the roadblock, he flattened the gas pedal, automatically accelerating before he even decided what to do. There was no stopping now. He discarded the idea of smashing through the roadblock and started looking for the best off-road route as the hijacked ride fishtailed, spitting sprays of gravel from the narrow country lane.

    Ambush! As if goosing the Blazer was the signal they had been waiting for, two men stepped out of the woods alongside the road firing handguns. One walked out onto the road ahead to take serious aim. The bikers must have known something was up, some prearranged signal maybe, the lack of phone call or something like that. Something he hadn’t anticipated.

    He yanked Ottomatic, his .45 cal. semi-auto, from the chest rig holster. No need to roll the window down. It disappeared in a cascade of crumbles as a barrage of bullets struck the Blazer broadside, punching and puckering sheet metal, shattering glass. Chance steered left-handed, used his right to raise Ottomatic cross-body, firing instinctively. 

    The pistol bucked in his hand. The Blazer filled with the smell of gun smoke. Hot brass tinked off the steering wheel, dash and windshield with each loud round expended and ejected. In his peripheral vision he saw a roadside gunman go down, maybe hit, maybe ducking, seeking cover. The man in the road was fleeing the oncoming Blazer, still firing at it. The windshield starred from multiple shots. Ray Charles, slow and sweet and in the middle of “Georgia,” went silent, the radio taking a hit. There was a satisfying thump as Chance swerved onto the brushy road shoulder and that shooter disappeared under the Blazer.

    The roadblock was looming, coming up fast—a collection of vehicles—car, van, and a couple motorcycles—more waiting gunmen. It was now or never. Chance saw his opening, steered through the barbed wire fence, and bounced out into a pasture, cross country now, fence posts popping out of the ground, wires trailing, finally breaking. He could hear the roar of motorcycles starting. Good luck with that. Those were street bikes, choppers. They weren’t up to what he saw ahead. Of course, he wasn’t certain the Blazer was either. He glanced at the dash—no ruby warning lights, nothing sparking, maybe the radio was the only casualty.

    He’d scouted the area before committing himself to this. There was an old logging road not too far through those woods at the bottom of the pasture. First, he had to get through this broad wetland area seeping its way into a farm pond. The Blazer spewed up rooster tails of mud, grass, and cattails as it slued and slithered through, bikes bogging down behind, some veering off, searching for parallel paths.

    Chance picked an opening between trees and slid through, hoping for the best. The beastly Blazer ricocheted off one substantial tree, mowed down several smaller ones before breaking through onto an old skidder trail covered with slash from some past logging operation. He wrestled the wheel to get the Blazer on track, and plowed through brush and slash, desperate not to get hung up on a stump. The passenger side mirror was gone now, the right front fender crumpled, rubbing on the tire. The engine’s sudden roar told him he’d lost the exhaust system. He had no idea where his pursuers were, just that they weren’t in sight anymore.

The woods will slow them down.

    The Blazer sprang from the skidder trail onto an old, abandoned dirt road. It was an obstacle course of fallen and leaning trees. One struck the windshield, partially caving it in, spider-webbing it, making it even more difficult to see. A beaver pond flooded the road ahead.

That’ll stop the pursuit.

    He needed to keep the Blazer on the track of the road hidden beneath the water. Chance set sight on the spot where the road exited the shallow pond into the woods again. Dead sticks of drowned trees became roadside markers as he aimed for that opening. Water started sliding over the hood. The Blazer’s engine coughed a couple times before catching again, sputtering from water that found its way into the air intake as it rose free of the pond, struggled up a short hill into the cover of thick woods, and bucked its way back up to speed.

    He smelled new danger just before an unexpected blow caught him on the right ear. Holes appeared in his vison. The captive in the back seat had come to. Duct-taped, he’d still managed to jackknife and position his body to deliver a two-booted kick to Chance’s head. Chance struggled to ward off the blackness that was closing in, fireflies swimming in his vision. He lost control and ran into a tree head-on, just enough off-center that the Blazer jumped around to the left as it came to a sudden stop. He took a solid whack from the exploding airbag. The door popped open. He fell out onto the ground.

    Groaning, he rolled onto hands and knees, recovering his bearings. Blood splattered the ground, dribbling from his mouth and nose. He rose to his feet and wrenched the back door open, looked in at the man crumpled up in the foot well. The captive moaned, as much from fear as pain, and tried kicking him away. Chance grabbed his legs, dragged him out, let him fall to the ground, and kicked him in the ribs. He pressed the button to eject Ottomatic’s empty clip, caught it in his left hand and stuffed it in his pocket. He replaced it with a full clip, eight new rounds—slapped it in and jacked the slide to chamber one of the fat bullets. He aimed at the man who’d caused him to crash. Taking him had been a mistake. Time to rectify that.

    “Don’t, no, please,” the man was pleading.

    His value as a hostage was gone. The man was just dead weight now, no longer useful. He’d just slow Chance down. Chance leaned in close.

    “Follow me and you’ll die,” he said.

    He let Ottomatic’s hammer down, used the heavy pistol to slap his captive unconscious again. His chest ached. It was from that airbag, he told himself.

    “It’s not a heart attack,” he said aloud.

Denial?

    He leaned into the Blazer and dropped the pistol into the bag of money, lifted and hugged the bag to his chest and took off running down the old logging road, the arthritis in his knees flaring. The woods road would lead him to Spot, his hardtop jeep, stashed about a half a mile away.

    His means of escape—unless the Devil’s Deacons caught up with him before he made it there. He was breathing hard. His chest was burning. Shit.

I’m too old for this.

    “It’s not a fucking heart attack,” he muttered, panting.