Introducing Zeke...

Building Zeke for the story after Carli kills Grady...this is Chapter 5 AKA: "Word Spreads Like Buttah"

Cantina Madriza opened for business at 6pm. The first hour was usually fairy quiet, so Rhonda would make sure all the tables and booths were clean and the pool equipment in place while Zeke checked stock and went online to put in orders for whatever was getting low. Big, bad, boss Dax was insistent about maintaining a certain level of stock, especially in beer. Hell, they had almost enough for a brewery, even though the only place they had to store it was in a cave directly under the bar. Of course, that was accessible by a trap door and a very steep ladder...unless one chose to take a half-mile trek to a very narrow passageway that led from the cave to between the rocks. While climbing with one leg wasn't exactly his strong suit, neither was walking long distances, so as much of a pain as it was, Zeke always used the ladder.

When he first started working there, he'd asked about putting a cooler behind the bar, but Dax wasn't in the mood.

"Damn joint barely breaks even," he'd snarled, "an' I'm gonna add cost to it? Fuck that."

Zeke had just shaken his head and backed off. It was Dax's joint, and he was living rent-free in the trailer, so complaints were not on the table. He just kept shifting the beer and wine down into the cave and used shelves under and behind the bar to hold plenty of the hard stuff. An apartment refrigerator behind the cash register held the mixers, and a small ice maker sat atop it. Fortunately, ice was not much in demand since the brews were the big draw, and it would be sacrilege to ruin even crap beer with ice. A microwave was at the other end of the bar.

The one truly modern aspect of the Cantina was...it had kick-ass WiFi thanks to a satellite dish, so when it was a dead night or he couldn't sleep, Zeke could fire up video games on his cell phone. His desktop was also connected to it, giving him access to all sorts of streaming stations. Heaving crates of beer up and down the ladder was a small price to pay for that. Dax also let kids from an Apache community down the road come in to use it for their homework. Oren, the guy who did the Monday-Tuesday cleaning, would let them in those days; Zeke did the rest of the week. Tables in the left extension were set up specifically for them. But they had to be done by seven, because that was when things would really pick up, and you didn't want kids around that.

Zeke actually enjoyed seeing them working at their tables. They ranged in age from six and sixteen, murmuring encouragement to each other, tossing suggestions about and tacking along on their laptops till suddenly they would notice the Cantina's witching hour was close at hand and have to scurry to get done and out the door. Where their parents waited, unwilling to even chance mingling with the bikers or college kids...and usually too poor to get caught up in the love of whiskey that so many had fallen prey to. All money was needed elsewhere.

He totally understood how that went.

Now, it wasn't like Zeke was born poor. That he knew of. It's just that he had been adopted by the Reverend and Mrs. Lindstrom in Chapel Hill, Minnesota when he was five months old, so had no idea who his mother or father were, or what his family line was. They had always refused to discuss it. All he knew for sure? The Lindstroms were both very blond and Nordic in their looks while he had skin that tanned even in the most overcast of winter days, thick brown hair that loved to go wild in humidity, and eyes that fluctuated between brown and hazel, depending on wardrobe and emotional state. He also knew they were of Swedish lineage, thanks to Mrs. Lindstrom's having a slight lilt to her voice.

Zeke had asked about it, at the age of seven, and in a rare moment of sharing, she had told him, "I was born in Stockholm but the mister was born in St. Paul. It was his parents born in Upsala, both."

"So where was I born?" he'd asked.

"Close here," was all she said.

Of course, he had known from an earlier age that he wasn't their biological child, but it didn't matter. By the age of eight he had decided that the Lindstroms being his legal parents made him a Viking.

Well...they had not liked that attitude and had tried for years to crush it. Vikings were heathens and vicious beasts and thieves who ransacked monasteries and poor little villages and on and on. Not only had their lectures not worked, they had made Zeke even more certain he was one of them. Finally, after the umpteenth lecture on the evil of the Vikings, he had responded with, "I gotta be something, and you won't tell me who I am so I'm them."

That had brought him a night without supper and a week of holy silence from them both, then the lectures turned to how he was an ungrateful child. How he'd been brought away from an orphanage (which one they never would say), and how they given him a warm home, food, clothing and a chance at a good life.

The thought that hit his brain was, they were actually trying to buy their way into heaven by taking care of him. Fortunately, by that point he was smart enough to keep the thought to himself.

He also understood the Lindstroms had brought him into a finer existence than he would have had, elsewhere. Granted, they were strict Lutherans well into their thirties who had been childless, and in truth they had treated him well-enough. So in response, Zeke had given them little to be angry about...aside from the Viking thing. He'd done well in school. Played on the football, basketball and baseball teams as well as ice hockey. Treated them with respect. Helped around the house. Had friends they actually approved of. Even dated girls they liked. Attended Sunday services at Mr. Lindstrom's church.

But never were they mom and dad; always Mister and Missus Lindstrom. Like they were his babysitters. The leash they kept him on was tight and the emotional support minimal. Never one word of praise or affection from them. At times he felt more like a pet dog than a child.

None of his friends were close enough to really talk to, about this, nor were any of the girls he was interested in. They all seemed to be part of some high school play he'd been cast in and liked to be done as soon as the curtain fell at the end of a game or class or date. No chat, please; we're non-Vikings. Still, a couple of them did remark that it looked as if he was being trained as some perfect manifestation of a human being. Like a robot. And it struck them as weird. Because even they could see the cold austerity of his existence, both physical and emotional, was absolute. This had built in him a cool sense of worthlessness that finally exploded when he was sixteen.

He had never been given much spending money. And he wasn't allowed to work after school, but instead had to focus on his studies when not at practice...or church. But being an observant young man, he realized one way of making money without appearing to hold a job was by having...shall we say, recreational drugs available for purchase. Pot, mainly, then some Ex and, later, GHB. He worked out, a senior linebacker was the main connection for most of the kids who were into that sort of fun. So Zeke saw to it they became buddies, which the Lindstroms approved of even though he was Catholic; after all, he was on the football team. That excused a great many sins. So when the guy graduated and went on to Notre Dame, Zeke took over his clients.

Then in his first outward sign of rebellion, he'd used his initial profits to pay for a lovely tattoo of a Viking face and helmet on his left calf. Knowing Mr. and Mrs. Lindstron had long insisted tattoos were signs of the devil, he'd worn nothing but long pants and jeans for months after.

Well, eventually Mrs. Lindstrom did catch a glimpse of it, and informed Mr. Lindstrom, and he'd demanded Zeke remove it.

Which was met with a blank refusal. Zeke had just turned eighteen and was under no legal obligation to do what the man said.

Things had deteriorated rapidly, from there. In fact, he was fairly certain Mr. Lindstrom had worked out he was selling drugs, and had narc'd on him. The cops convinced another sort-of-friend to buy some pot from him, and he was arrested and sentenced to ten years in prison. Fortunately, the judge had given him the option to join the marines, to get out of it...and he had.

He had neither seen nor spoken with the Lindstroms, since. And he was not sorry.

But now that ink was gone, along with his lower leg. He'd been riding in a Hummer in Helmand Province when he was hit. Two other grunts had died, and they damn near lost him, twice before they got him to the medical unit. Then came waking to find he was no longer whole, after which was months and months of painful physical therapy.

Every moment of it scarred into his psyche.

If the Lindstroms had been informed of this, he never heard anything from them about it. But he was sure they would have felt more than a bit of self-satisfaction at how their claim the tattoo was the mark of Satan had been proven true.