Glory

Tabitha

I laid in my bed and rubbed my hand lazily over my bare stomach as I waited.

It’s eleven-thirty and the house is mostly silent. There’s the occasional creak and rattle when the wind picks up, but mostly, it’s a deep silence.

Probably because our house is in the middle of nowhere.

There are no city sounds. No traffic noises. And this deep into winter, there’s not much wildlife that moves in the bone deep cold this late at night.

Around our house is miles and miles of farmland. Corn. Soybeans. Strawberries. Onions. Potatoes.

We don’t farm. We just own the land. Well, my dad owns the land. We lease it to the farmers.

My dad isn’t a farmer.

He’s a biker.

Once upon a time, he was a soldier. A good one. Then when he took shrapnel in his back, they gave him a bunch of medals and forced him to retire.

My mom died when I was eight. That was fourteen years ago.

Two years ago, my dad remarried a woman named Summer Jean. Summer Jean has a son from a previous marriage named Joel. Joel is now ten and kind of a dick.

Not that any of that is really important. What is important is that in the last year, Summer Jean has basically become a barely functioning alcoholic. Joel has been suspended from school three times already and it’s not even winter break yet.

I take online classes at the community college and help out at my dad’s MC. Not with anything complicated. I just help keep their books straight. Sometimes, I help clean up after parties at the compound.

This is important because this is where my problem started.

Okay, so honestly, my problem probably started years ago and I am not qualified to look into the back end psychology of it all, but recently, about eight months ago, is when I became aware of the problem.

Or not ‘problem’ per se, but maybe… issue?

Yeah, issue.

That sounds better.

One of the bike bunnies was telling another bike bunny that there’s a place some of the MC guys go… when they want a discrete hookup… a hookup their old lady won’t find out about. It’s totally anonymous.

It’s a public bathroom, at a local state park. White cement building. Single bulb over the small room. The men’s side and the women’s side share a single wall in the center and if you go into the handicap stall in either bathroom you’ll find… a hole.

My fingers drift lower, tracing the waistband band of my leggings as I stare up at the ceiling.

A hole in the wall.

It took me a minute to figure out what they were talking about.

Then the second bike bunny said it.

Glory Hole.

They had laughed in this way that said they were amused but also… that they knew exactly what it was all about.

A hole in the wall.

Of course I had to look it up. Twenty-two years old, working part time at an MC clubhouse but I was still oddly innocent of a lot of things. I knew that about myself. About all the sexual innuendos and jokes that went right over my head.

I know I seem ditzy and simple.

I can’t help that.

The knowledge of the public bathroom and the hole and the fact that married members were using it as some anonymous method to cheat on their spouses had fascinated me in this weird, warped way.

It took me two more months to figure out that I had been hearing about it the whole time. That’s the thing about being twenty-two, ditzy, and a familiar face in the MC since I was ten years old. The guys there stopped seeing me as a person and started seeing me as background noise. A hand that lowers a new beer on a table. A maid that empties ash trays and mops floors. I’m just Dean Stockton’s kid, Tabitha.

So I crept between the poker tables and behind the bar and through the main annex’s party hub with my head down, my cleaning rag clutched in my hand, and my ears wide open.

Several of the guys were using the hole. There was never a guarantee that a bike bunny would be there. There seemed to be a schedule. A secret way they all communicated their intention to use it and when. That I had not figured out.

But once I knew that there was an order to it– I started to pay attention.

And that’s when my problem legitimately started.

Because every Thursday night at exactly 11:45 the third step that leads up to my dad and Summer Jean’s room creaks. The back door will open and close as quietly as my dad can manage and he’ll walk the half mile to the garage shed for his old Harley that Summer Jean thinks doesn’t work anymore. He’ll walk it to the road, start it and ride out.

And the only reason I can fathom that he does this is because he’s going there. To the Glory Hole.

Once I figured that out… I started to have all kinds of wrong thoughts about it.

I wasn’t upset my dad was cheating on Summer Jean. I honestly couldn’t stand my step-mother. Or her son.

No, I was conflicted that some stranger was on the other side from him.

Then I was conflicted about the fact that my dad was so unhappy with his life that he was going to this place in the middle of the night.

And then I started to imagine what the entire situation must be like for him.

The final result?

I got tipsy alone in my room two months ago, started to think about all this fucked up stuff, and then realized that I really… really… wanted to be on the other side of that hole…

The stair creaks. My fingers go still on my stomach.

The back door clicks shut softly. I sit up.

Then I count to a hundred and get out of bed. I slip on my shoes, my leather jacket, a heavy scarf, gloves, and creep out of my room.

I’m silent as I leave out the back door. It barely makes any noise as I take the brake off my scooter and begin walking it down our long driveway. It’s much quieter to turn on than the Harley, less noticeable than my beater sedan. In the distance I hear my dad’s bike roar to life. I start my scooter, turning off the front light. The clouds break and the moon illuminates the dirt road ahead of me. I shoot off into the dark, the icy wind rushing across my face and cutting through the knit weave of my scarf. This is why I drive a car in the winter time, I grumble to myself. I clear the dirt and hit asphalt, turning right and not pushing my speed. I can’t catch up to him. I have to stay far enough behind to maintain my anonymity.

But I’m committed now. I have to see this through. I’ve been obsessing over it for months now and I know it’s wrong. I know it’s fucked up on a thousand different levels but if he’s going where I think he’s going then I have to know.

I slow my scooter as I round the bend in the road where the turn-off for the state park is. The headlight is still off on my scooter, my fingers are frozen stiff around my handlebars, and the moon is still out, still shining on the dirt road.

Then I pass the old wooden sign declaring entry into the park and don't look back.