A pillar of fire, hot and fierce, speared up toward the star-studded sky from the crude platform of sticks and assorted garbage erected on the dusty patch of ground. Not far away was a small town, the ramshackle houses mostly derelict, dark and silent, and beyond was the sea, the surf faintly murmuring.
Joe Moore remembered growing up in the town with his big brother, Harvey. Remembered being ten years old, standing on the front porch and waving goodbye to Harv and promising to follow him into the army one day, and be strong and proud. And Joe remembered when Harv came just a few days before he was due to ship out to boot camp. The term 'dishonourable discharge' was bandied about, but the sneers of cowards meant nothing to Joe; Harv had always been there, taught him strength.
Now Joe looked into the flames at the three coffins burning within. One of them contained all that was left of his brother; the other two held those who had been closest to Harv in his gang - Bubba Zanetti and Johnny the Boy. All three killed by the same man. Joe glanced to the left at Mudguts and Cundalini, the only members of Harv's gang to attend the funeral. They had barely known him as Harvey Moore. To them, he had only one name...the Toecutter. Fierce, noble, proud, a warrior prince of the road.
At Joe's right stood Judith, with little Christopher cradled in her arms. She hadn't wanted to come to this funeral; she feared the world that Harv had made his own, the men he had ridden with. To her Harv had been a punk, a lawless animal leading a pack of animals. She could never understand. But Joe knew how to get what he wanted, and so his wife had come here tonight. A few minures went by, sparks from the pyre flew by in the night wind, and then he heard her whisper to him "Joe, I want to leave now."
His voice was deep and dark, weighed down with emotions too distant and shadowy for her to ever understand, as he replied "Wait in the car if you want. I won't walk away from my brother just yet." He watched as she walked, quietly and carefully, out of the firelight towards the nearby vehicle, then went back to gazing into the flames. Eventually the coffins and what they contained were reduced to ash and blackened shards of wood.
"When you're done with the army," Cundalini said to Joe, "You should look us up. We'll follow you. Toecutter would want it, I reckon."
"Yeah, man, we'll waste the Bronze," Mudguts added. The Bronze...Joe had seen the news broadcasts. He knew the face of the MFP officer who killed Harv, and knew he was still out there somewhere, no one knew precisely where. Joe would gladly kill him if he ever found him. Only...
"War calls me, boys," he said. "Got people depending on me. But one day my duty to them will be done, and I'll come back to properly honour the Toecutter's memory."
