Chapter 6 : Word Travels
[Teller-Morrow Automotive — February 22, 2008, 11:00 AM]
The morning passed in uncomfortable silence.
Half-Sack kept glancing at me like I might explode. Lowell found reasons to work on cars at the opposite end of the garage. Even Gemma seemed to be avoiding the lot, visible through the office window but not emerging.
I focused on the Harley in front of me—a Road King with a carburetor issue. The engine purred when I got the mixture right. Small satisfaction.
Footsteps crunched on gravel behind me. Heavy. Deliberate.
"You're Cole."
I turned. Clay Morrow stood five feet away, hands in his pockets, studying me like a specimen. The President patch caught the light. His eyes didn't match his casual posture—cold, calculating.
"That's right."
"Bobby told me about yesterday." He stepped closer. I caught a whiff of cigar smoke and leather. "Said you handled two Nords like it was nothing."
"They started it. I finished it."
Clay smiled. Not warmth—something else. Recognition. "That's a useful attitude."
I said nothing.
"Where'd you learn to fight like that?"
In another life. In a body that's buried somewhere on I-5.
"Here and there. Military background."
"Which branch?"
"Army. Few years."
He nodded slowly. "We've got a lot of veterans around here. Men who know how things work." He paused. "How violence works."
"I'm just a mechanic."
"Sure you are." His smile widened. "Gemma says you keep your head down, do good work, don't ask questions. I appreciate that. But men who can handle themselves—those are rare. Worth paying attention to."
"I'm not looking for attention."
"No?" He tilted his head. "Then why walk into a fight you could have avoided?"
Good question. The honest answer was complicated—protecting Lowell wasn't just kindness, it was strategy. But Clay didn't need to know that.
"Didn't like the odds. Two on one against a guy who couldn't defend himself."
"Noble." The word was flat. "But nobility's expensive in this world."
"So's looking the other way."
Clay laughed—short, sharp. "I like you, Cole. That might be dangerous for both of us."
He clapped my shoulder, grip tight enough to leave fingerprints, then walked toward the clubhouse without looking back.
---
[TM Office — 1:30 PM]
Gemma found me during lunch break.
I was eating a sandwich behind the garage—turkey on wheat from the diner down the street, better than the brown bag special from the gas station. She appeared without warning, cigarette in hand, expression unreadable.
"Got a minute?"
I set down the sandwich. "Sure."
She leaned against the wall, took a drag, exhaled smoke toward the sky.
"Clay's interested in you."
"He mentioned."
"That's dangerous." She turned to face me. "My husband collects useful people. He uses them, builds them up, and when they're not useful anymore..." She let the sentence hang.
"Why are you telling me this?"
"Because you're either an asset or a problem. I haven't decided which." Her eyes locked onto mine. "The men in this club, they follow Clay because he's strong. Because he gets things done. But strength without control is just chaos."
"And you provide the control?"
A flicker of something—surprise? Approval?—crossed her face. "Smart. Dangerous smart."
"I'm just trying to work."
"No you're not." She dropped the cigarette, ground it under her heel. "Men who just want to work don't break Nords in half without thinking. They don't size up a room like they're counting exits. They don't watch my son like they know something about him."
My stomach tightened. Too observant. Gemma missed nothing.
"I watch everyone. Habit."
"From your Army days?"
"Something like that."
She stared at me for a long moment. Whatever she was looking for, she didn't find it—or maybe she found exactly what she expected.
"There's a party tonight. Clubhouse. Nothing big, just the guys blowing off steam." She started walking away. "Jax might invite you. Might not. Either way, you should come."
"Why?"
She paused at the corner. "Because if you're going to be part of this world, you need to understand what you're getting into. And if you're not..." She shrugged. "At least we'll know where we stand."
She disappeared around the corner.
I looked down at my sandwich. The appetite was gone.
---
[TM Garage — 5:15 PM]
End of shift. The mechanics drifted out. Half-Sack swept the lot—punishment duty for something, probably—and gave me a wave as I cleaned up my station.
The clubhouse windows were already lit. Music drifting across the lot. Laughter.
I grabbed my jacket, headed for the exit.
"Hey, Cole."
Jax Teller stood near the clubhouse entrance, beer in hand, watching me. He wore the VP patch like a second skin—comfortable, inevitable.
"You heading out?"
"Just finished."
"Got plans tonight?"
"Not really."
He took a pull from his beer. "We're having a thing. Low-key. Bobby's playing some Elvis covers, Tig's probably gonna say something inappropriate, and there's cold beer with nobody's name on it."
An invitation. The first one that mattered.
"I don't want to intrude."
"You're not." He smiled—genuine, or good enough to pass. "You impressed some people yesterday. That counts for something around here."
"Just did what needed doing."
"That's kind of the point." He gestured toward the clubhouse door. "Come on. One beer. Meet some folks. See what we're all about."
This is it. The first real step inside.
"Sure. Let me clean up first."
"Take your time." He pushed off the wall. "Door's open."
He walked back into the clubhouse. The music swelled as the door opened, faded when it closed.
I stood alone in the parking lot.
---
[Cole's Apartment — 6:30 PM]
The shirt cost fifteen dollars at the thrift store on Main Street. Blue flannel, clean, no holes. Better than the grease-stained work clothes I'd been wearing.
I stood in front of the bathroom mirror, buttoning it up.
Army vet. Drifter. Mechanic. That's the cover.
The face looking back was calm. Younger than I felt. Ready—or at least good at faking it.
My knuckles had bruised overnight, purple spreading across the joints. I flexed them. Sore but functional.
What are you really doing here?
The question came unbidden. I could walk away. Get on the bike, ride until Charming was a memory, find some other town where nobody knew me.
But then Donna Winston would die in three months. Half-Sack in eighteen. Opie would spiral. Jax would become what he feared most. The tragedy would unfold exactly as written.
Can't walk away from that.
I grabbed my jacket and headed for the door.
---
[SAMCRO Clubhouse — 7:15 PM]
The reaper on the wall loomed larger up close. SONS OF ANARCHY in bold letters. The death's head grinning beneath.
I pushed through the door.
The clubhouse was exactly what I expected—wood paneling, bar along one wall, pool tables, leather couches worn soft from decades of use. The air smelled like beer, cigarettes, and something underneath that might have been gun oil.
Music pumped from speakers in the corner. Lynyrd Skynyrd. Classic.
Half-Sack spotted me first. "Cole! Hey, you made it!" He bounded over, handed me a beer from nowhere. "Come on, I'll introduce you around."
The room was maybe thirty people. Patched members, hangarounds, women I didn't recognize. Bobby was at the bar, working on a guitar. Chibs played pool with a woman in a tight dress. Tig was doing something in the corner that I deliberately didn't look at.
And at the center of it all, holding court at a table near the back—Clay Morrow, flanked by lieutenants, watching everything.
"Half-Sack." Clay's voice carried across the noise. "Bring the new guy over."
Half-Sack's face went serious. "Yeah. Sure. Come on."
We weaved through the crowd. I felt eyes tracking me—curious, measuring. The new face getting sized up.
Clay gestured at an empty chair. "Sit."
I sat.
Jax was there, and Bobby, and a few others I recognized from the lot. They watched me with varying degrees of interest.
"So." Clay leaned back. "Bobby says you broke some Nord's wrist. Tig says the kid was crying all the way to his bike. Half-Sack says you barely broke a sweat."
"They exaggerate."
"Do they?" Clay smiled. "See, I've been doing this a long time. Running this club, managing problems, handling people who cause trouble. And in all those years, you know what I've learned?"
I waited.
"Men lie. Actions don't." He spread his hands. "You could have walked away from those Nords. Let them push Lowell around, take whatever they wanted. Nobody would have blamed you—you're just a mechanic, right?"
"Right."
"But you didn't walk away. You put two grown men on the ground in under a minute." He leaned forward. "That's not just Army training. That's instinct."
"Or stupidity."
"Sometimes they're the same thing." He lifted his beer. "To stupid brave men."
The others raised their drinks. I raised mine. We drank.
Clay set down his glass. "I don't know your story, Cole. Don't particularly care. What I care about is what you do here, in Charming, with us. You keep working hard, handle problems when they come up, and keep your mouth shut about business? You'll do fine."
"And if problems come up that are bigger than two Nords?"
A gleam in his eye. "Then we'll talk."
He waved me away—dismissed, but not diminished. Half-Sack practically dragged me toward the bar, grinning.
"Dude, that was incredible. Clay never talks to new guys like that."
"Is that good or bad?"
"I have no idea." Half-Sack laughed. "But you're definitely on the radar now."
Bobby's Elvis cover started from the corner. Someone cheered. The party found its rhythm around us.
I sipped my beer and watched the room.
Jax was talking to a woman with dark hair—Tara Knowles, maybe, though I couldn't be sure at this distance. Chibs won his pool game and collected cash from the loser. Tig emerged from whatever dark corner he'd been in, smirking.
And Clay, at his table, watched me watching them.
The pieces are moving. I'm on the board now.
The music swelled. Someone handed me another beer. Half-Sack introduced me to people whose names I immediately forgot.
The reaper on the wall grinned down at all of us.
I grinned back.
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