Chapter 4

It seemed to Kevin like the week dragged. He couldn't have said why. Every other week had moved along at its usual speed, but this one just would not move on. Each day in the bakery things moved as fast as they ever did. He baked, and at the end of his shift broke out the standard items for the next day – French bread, Italian bread, bolillos, hard rolls, kaisers, and croissants. He'd never heard of bolillos till he started working for Wal-Mart, but the rolls were popular in New Mexico. All that bread would sit in the cooler overnight, thawing but not rising much, so that it would be ready for the next day. It was only items which the bakery needed differing amounts of each day that he broke out the same day as he baked them.

But even with all the activity things went slowly. He'd look at his watch and realize that another shift had passed quickly, but the days themselves seemed to hang around forever. Somehow he'd gotten a Monday through Friday schedule, and he was glad of it, for his weekends were free, but on Monday it seemed like Friday would never arrive, and on Friday it seemed that it had been forever since the week began.

There'd been a big special order for Friday afternoon that had come in sometime after Kevin had left Thursday, and he had to break out the dough, thaw it on the floor, proof it extra long to be sure it rose properly since it couldn't spend the night in the cooler, and then bake it off. And while he was baking another order came in for Saturday, so that he had extra to break out for Charlie Gutierrez to bake. On top of all that, he was getting low on some items and had to make a list for the lead to order. The bakery lead was a step above the ordinary "peons" but underneath the manager, who handled the deli too, and sometimes had a bit to do with produce. The lead's name was Leah Roberts, and she knew what she was doing – she could bake, decorate cakes, do donuts, or stock the floor, as well as order and keep people at their jobs. She was a supervisor, Kevin figured, though he'd seldom worked in places which had any sort of hierarchy other than the owner and the guys he hired. Like, 'I'm Joe, an' this is Bob an' Harry – they work for me.' That was about par for Kevin's course until he'd started working for Wal-Mart.

He got out late that afternoon, happy for the overtime pay but eager for the light of the sun. It was strange about that, really. Though he'd always wanted to be out on his bike, in the air, at the same time he'd spent so much of his life as a night owl, partying after dark and crashing out just about the time the sun came up. Why is it, he wondered, that all that stuff happens after dark? Don't none o' these people ever party during the daytime? But he knew they didn't – he hadn't. Something about human nature sent that kind of thing into the night. Well, he was done with that. He hadn't been drunk since becoming a Christian, and he'd given up drugs even before that, when he started working for Wal-Mart, and it had all created a revolution in his habits. He wasn't a night owl any longer – the sun was what he craved.

As he thought these thoughts, walking from the time clock toward the front door and the fresh air, a verse he'd read recently came to mind. "So after receiving the morsel he went out immediately; and it was night." He couldn't remember where it was – he was still learning the books, never mind the chapters and verses – or who it was about, or anything, but it sounded right for something wicked. That was a word he'd learned – "wicked." I've been wicked, he thought. I never knew it, and never thought about it, but all that dope and women and sh ... and stuff was wicked. He mentally kicked himself. All those words were wicked too. For some reason they'd tried to come back on him ever since he'd spoken with Karin at the newcomer's lunch. It had happened before, not that there was a lot of "before" in his Christianity. He'd get past it eventually.

Back at his apartment, he tried to remember where he'd seen the verse, but had no luck. Hunting around in the Bible merely convinced him that he didn't know the book well enough to find much of anything in it. By now the curiosity was consuming him, and he grabbed the bulletin from the last Sunday and dialed the number on the front. The church's secretary answered, and he asked his question.

"Don't you have a concordance?" she asked.

"What's a concordance?"

"Well, I guess you don't. It's a book where you can look up any word in the Bible. Hey, I'll see if we can get you one – they're fantastic help for new Christians. But let me find that verse for you real quick." He waited while she looked. It was just a moment and she was back. "It's John 13:30."

"Okay, thanks, man. I 'preciate it."

He got his Bible and turned to the verse, with the help of the table of contents. It turned out the one who'd gone out into the night was Judas Iscariot, and everyone else thought he was on some legitimate mission for Jesus. But in fact he was going out to betray Jesus to the authorities, who would crucify Him. No wonder it was night. Of course it would be night when the ba ... the guy did something like that. He grabbed a pad of PostIts – something else that he'd never had occasion to use until recently – and scribbled a note on it in his painful handwriting: Stop cussing!!!! He tacked it to the wall – the stickum didn't work well on the textured paint – where he could see it, along with a few other notes he used as reminders of what Christians were supposed to be like. He nodded and sat back down.

Judas betrayed Jesus at night. Kevin seemed to recall that the actual act of betrayal was at night too. When he got a concordance – he'd have to remember that word – he'd use it to look that up too. Meanwhile, he thought, it might be good to make a run and get some air in his nose. He carried his Bible downstairs and tucked it into its saddlebag, and then took off, the bike rumbling down the road, the sound echoing off the apartment buildings and across the school, where the kids looked up and stared in awe at the black and chrome monster as it rolled past.

He drove east on Candelaria, and turned north on San Pedro. He was slowly, bit by bit, exploring the city he'd decided to call home. He rumbled north, taking it easy, not quite at the speed limit. He'd seen young kids on their modern aerodynamic bikes, screeching along the streets at high speed. That wasn't how bikers did things. The purpose of a chopper wasn't to break the speed limit, but to impress – and it's most impressive when you see and hear it go by slowly. A chopper – a classic chopper, anyway – is like the guitar riff in "Iron Man." That Black Sabbath song was classic because it, as well as any, epitomized the grinding, dirge-like guitar of Tony Iommi, a sound that matched very well with the deep voice of a Hog. 'Course they ain't gonna play "Iron Man" in church, Kevin thought with a grin.

San Pedro dead ended at Osuna, and on impulse Kevin turned left. He never planned these excursions, just went out and rode. On his right there was a golf course of some sort – he didn't care at all about golf, and didn't know anything about the city's courses – and on the left were houses that cost money. He figured the streets that branched off from Osuna would be twisty and shady, with lots of BMWs and Cadillac Escalades and other SUVs, and those pickup trucks that nobody ever even thought of carrying actual work in. He grunted. A pickup you couldn't throw a load of cement block into wasn't worth the price. Though he'd mostly been a bike mechanic, Kevin had worked a bit of construction over the years, just day labor, and knew the real purpose of a pickup truck.

Osuna crossed San Mateo and ended at a one way frontage road, with I-25 just the other side. Kevin had a choice – he could turn around and go back, or turn right on the frontage road. At the intersection there was a "show club," New Mexico's euphemism for a strip bar, on the right, and a storage place on the left. Just before the self-storage there was a place called Cliff's Amusement Park. On a whim Kevin wheeled his bike around, needing the whole intersection with that long front fork, and pulled into the Cliff's parking lot. I ain't been in one o' these places since I was a kid, he thought as he put the Hog into an empty parking space. Maybe I can sit down and eat a hot dog if nothin' else. That actually didn't sound like a bad plan. He pulled his chain drive wallet from his pocket, the leather greasy from years of handling by oily fingers, and pulled out the admission price. He seemed to be the only adult by himself – certainly the only adult by himself with gray in his hair. That didn't bother Kevin a bit. Wherever a Skull goes, that's Skull turf. It was one of the unofficial mottoes of the club – they'd never had an official one, and for that matter didn't think in terms of mottoes – and he chuckled as he thought of how he and other members might have proved the proposition in the past. He remembered a time when he and three other Skulls had taken over some college kids' party in ... where was it? Yeah, it was Bakersfield. They'd made a run down there, picked up some crank, got some women. The next night they'd found this bar where the kids were partying, and the Skulls just muscled in and took over, and when a couple of the big football kids protested they'd gone out the door. When the owner had protested they'd put him out the door too – and then decided that the cops would probably come next, so they got on their bikes and headed back to Fresno.