Breaking Spade by Harley Stone

Author:Harley Stone
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harley Stone
Published: 2019-08-09T07:41:10+00:00

I bought a deck of cards from the hospital gift shop, and Uncle Jaime and I spent the morning playing Blackjack and flicking each other shit. His comebacks were a little slower than normal, and some of his blinks lasted a little too long. I chalked it up to recovery until he closed his eyes in the middle of a play with his hand outstretched and holding a card. I’d never seen anything like it, and if I didn’t know better, I’d think he was narcoleptic.

“You okay, Tio?” I asked.

“Just resting my eyes a minute.” He opened them and glared at me. “When did you get so damn impatient?”

My impatience had nothing on my concern. I watched him, but the stubborn old bastard didn’t give anything away. After lunch, his nurse gave me a pointed look and told Uncle Jaime he needed his rest. I took the hint and got the hell out of there to run some errands, promising him I’d be back.

“Take your time. I don’t need no goddamn wet nurse coddlin’ me,” he grumbled.

The nurse fought a smile while she replaced his IV bag.

An uber took me back to my uncle’s apartment where I fought with my bike until the piece of shit finally decided to idle properly. Swearing, I revved the engine and gave it a minute, gaining me a dirty look from an old lady watering flowers in front of the building. I flashed her my best apologetic smile and it took her a second, but her expression softened, and she waved me off.

I was about to put the bike in reverse when a man who looked somewhere between seventy and a hundred came over and started flapping his jaws at me. I couldn’t hear him over the roar of the engine, and my parents had taught me better than to ignore my elders, so I turned off the key and engaged in the conversation.

“What was that?” I asked. “I couldn’t hear you.”

“I owned a bike, once. Bought it back in fifty-nine? Or was it sixty-two? It was a real beaut, a 1955 Panhead.”

I didn’t know shit about sleds until I joined the Dead Presidents, and the limited knowledge I’d picked up came from repairing and tuning my piece of shit Road King. “Bet it was more reliable than this ol’ ride.”

“Oh, she was a great bike. Yellow, black, and so much power I could barely contain her. Drew the ladies like bees to flowers, that bike did. Met my first wife while I was on that bike.” He frowned and gazed off into the distance. “She was a beaut, too. Cancer got her in eighty-nine.”

I had no idea how to escape from this conversation, but I desperately needed to get shit done and get back to the hospital. “Sorry to hear that.”

He had a second wife, five children between his marriages, twelve grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren. I must have stood there, listening, for at least a half hour, trying to find a respectful way to bail before he talked my ear off.

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