Wind Therapy - A.J. Downey Page 0,1

was the camp doctor and the one who held the purse strings.

She was a formidable old lady for sure. We considered her the camp matriarch. The queen of them all, she was respected enough, revered enough, that whatever she said went. I couldn’t help but think that she ruled this place and its people with a modicum of fear because while the respect was there, so too was something else. An inability or unwillingness for some of them to look at her directly, which was sort of a riot.

She couldn’t be more than five foot. Obese, probably with diabetes herself, she was by far not exactly the healthiest among them. Yet even the strongest of the fieldworkers bowed to her will. They called her Abuela, or grandmother, and I got the impression she was just that. Some sort of grandmother to them all, a strange dichotomy of good will – willing to feed everyone and giving the occasional sweet to the kids, while simultaneously containing a hardcore iron will. A woman who shouldn’t be trifled with and who held a ruthlessness to her unmatched by any man here.

That included me and my guys, in her eyes – but if she only knew. Still, she held the purse strings and hadn’t crossed us yet. So, we let her illusion live and thrive that she had any kind of clout over us. No reason to destroy a perfectly good symbiotic relationship over what would end up tantamount to a dick-measuring contest.

After we’d ironed out the mess that Rebel and the majority of his crew had made of things with these people, we’d been good to go since, and now it’d grown apparent exactly how much fuckery that Rebel and the officers of his chapter had been up to. Some of the members, too. It was only a few of them that’d tried to reach out from behind bars or who were still out and hadn’t let themselves be swept up in his bullshit.

It was giving me headaches. Headaches I didn’t need, but that were on my mind being the closest chapter with the wherewithal to deal with it. Idaho was no help, even though their territory bordered on Eastern Washington’s. They were a smaller outfit than even mine and were fending off an encroaching club from Montana. Idaho was holding their own with that just fine but didn’t have it in them to stretch themselves any thinner and I understood how that went.

So, it was up to me and mine. Eastern Oregon was doing what it could to alleviate things from the southern border, but the truth of the matter was, there wasn’t enough chapter left in Eastern Washington and there weren’t enough members outside of cabinet members in the rest of the Pacific Northwest territories’ chapters to make migration enough of a thing to bulk or recreate Eastern Washington on even a temporary basis until shit could get sorted out.

Eastern Washington was on the verge of collapse and truth be told; Western Washington was ready for that eventuality. We were ready to absorb what members were left in good standing and to make this taking up of the slack a permanent thing if need be. We’d just have to see how the proverbial cookie out here continued to crumble.

Besides, it wasn’t up to me. It was up to the mother chapter. Hence, why the upcoming Lake Eversong Run was a run the remaining chapters of the Pacific Northwest territory were all going to make. We just had to hold out for a couple more weeks now. Labor Day weekend was the traditional date and this year was no exception. Now it was just a matter of figuring out who all was able to make it versus who would stay behind. We didn’t all need to go, but that was for church in the next week – no decisions needed to be made right now.

Right now, it was what had become business as usual. I cut the motor to my bike and the rest of my guys did likewise.

“Welcome.” Abuela sat in an aluminum framed folding lawn chair up on her little front deck, to the side of her open front door. To the other side was one of the only reasons I enjoyed coming here. Her granddaughter was a sight for sore and road-weary eyes.

Slender yet still shapely, she had long straight hair, black as a crow’s wing and falling to her slim waist. She wasn’t always shy about showing that