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May 2009
I never saw Knight again after I moved in with Ken. He’d still called once in a while though. He’d said he was happy for me when I got married. He’d sounded sincere. He’d said he was still getting in a lot of bar fights, which didn’t surprise me. He’d said he wouldn’t live to see thirty.
He was right.
The news portrayed Ronald McKnight as a heroic veteran trying to break up a fight at a biker rally. They said he was shot during the altercation and died en route to the hospital. They showed a picture of him on the evening news, looking like an upstanding citizen in his military dress blues.
I didn’t believe a word of it.
The Knight I knew wasn’t a savior; he was a reckless, tattooed renegade with an explosive rage problem and a bad case of PTSD. He didn’t break up fights. He started them. And, once he started them, I could see it taking a bullet to put him down.
But maybe that was just what I wanted to believe. Maybe it was easier for me to sleep at night, thinking Knight had brought his fate upon himself. Maybe the idea of him surviving two tours in Iraq just to be gunned down in the streets of the country he’d risked his life to serve was a tragedy I simply couldn’t bear.
The pictures from my first ultrasound were still warm in my pocket as I walked into the Ivy and Sons funeral home. The place was packed wall-to-wall with greasy-looking bikers, the smell of cigarette smoke and gas fumes wafting from their leather cuts with every hug and back slap they gave one another. Girls with tattoos and torn black T-shirts wiped their heavily lined eyes as they watched a slide show on the far wall. Most of the pictures were of Knight on his chopper, Knight flipping off the camera, Knight petting one of his several rescued pit bulls while flipping off the camera. But one of them showed Knight posing with his arms around the necks of his club brothers, smiling.
I didn’t recognize a single person in the photos—or in the room for that matter. No one from our high school had come, but why would they? Knight had pushed them all away, physically in most cases. His real dad was dead. His stepdad had a restraining order against him, and his mom…the last time I’d seen her, she had a pistol pointed at his face. Knight might not have found salvation or inner peace or even a reason to live, but as I looked around the room, it was obvious that he had finally found a family. And they’d loved him very much.
There was no formal service. No minister directing us in prayer. Just a gathering room full of bikers…
And one very open casket.
I noticed it as I turned to leave, over on the far side of the room. No one seemed to be paying any attention to it. Knight’s MC buddies were all comforting each other and passing flasks around and reminiscing about old times. While Knight just lay there, being ignored at his own party.
I couldn’t leave without at least saying hello.
Or, in this case, goodbye.
My pulse sped up with every step I took closer until it felt like it was going to pound its way right out of my chest. I’d spent almost half my life fearing Ronald McKnight, and suddenly, I was standing right next to him, trying to convince my body that it was safe.
I scanned his face, instinctively looking for those intense pale blue eyes, those laser-scope pupils that always burned right through my soul, but they were gone, snuffed out forever by two thin, veiny flaps of flesh. Without a whisper of pigment in his eyebrows, eyelashes, or slicked-back hair, Knight’s leveling zombie eyes used to be the only pop of color on his otherwise pallid face. With them closed, his appearance was that of a man wearing a flaccid, flesh-toned rubber mask.
That was all he was, I guess. All any of us are. Just souls wearing masks.
But there was no one behind Knight’s mask anymore. I could feel it. He was gone.
He’s gone.
I’m safe.
He’s gone.
I’m safe.
It was the mantra I used to repeat whenever I felt that sliver of fear slide down my spine. Whenever I felt those icy-blue eyes watching me from the shadows. But I would never feel that fear again.
I was free.
And so was Knight.
As my heart rate returned to normal, I realized that I had one hand in my jacket pocket, clutching the corner of my sonogram, and the other in my purse, clutching my can of pepper spray.
I pulled it out and stared at the leather pouch, tattered and worn, my thumb grazing the embossed letters. Unhooking it from my key ring, I took a deep breath and tucked it into the front of Knight’s cut.
Patting the bulge beneath his leather vest, I whispered, “Bye, Knight,” as my eyes welled with tears.
There was so much more I wanted to say, but my throat was too swollen with emotion to speak. So, I gave Knight one last look, committing every freckle and frown line to memory, and said it with my heart.
As I stepped outside, wishing like hell that I could drink or smoke or take something to make the pain in my chest go away, I caught the unmistakable scent of a menthol cigarette on the breeze. I inhaled deeply and followed my nose to a frail blonde woman sitting on the curb, smoking a skinny, six-inch-long Virginia Slim.
