LHM: Some More Faves

The following post contains spoilers for Lord Have Mercy Part Four: Big Son, which you can grab here:

Kindle/Paperback

Nook

Kobo

You can also snag the complete novel, all four installments compiled, for Kindle.

Lord Have Mercy: The Complete Novel

In Friday's debrief post, I talked about my favorite scenes, but there were many that were truly inspired and that I enjoyed reading as a spectator during the various editing stages. While I was writing, I kept thinking "why is this taking so long?" And now that I'm finished, I keep asking "why do I feel so mentally drained?" And I think that's because every single scene in this monster of a book felt necessary. Each one furthered the tension of the overall narrative. Each was a building block, and a puzzle piece, and was balanced on a knife-edge. Each one kept me in that make-or-break headspace that ends up being so exhausting. 

The result is that I have very-favorite scenes, which I mentioned Friday, but I also have lots of general favorites. Lots of lines that proved immensely satisfying to put to paper. 

In no particular order, some highlights (for me) are: 

As quoted in the graphic above, the scene where Boyle and Mercy meet in Mercy's old kitchen. It's always gratifying to write Mercy from an outsider POV, and see the monster come to the forefront.

Harlan couldn’t get his throat to work this time, an aborted swallow that jacked his throat and turned his voice hoarse. He was vibrating, and he couldn’t decide if he was excited or petrified, or a combination of the two. “What would be stupid,” he said, “is not letting me walk out of here. Because if I don’t make the rendezvous point in an hour, my men have orders to kill the boy.”

Mercy nodded, gave a little shrug with his mouth. “Sounds about right.”

Harlan was starting to get the feeling that he might actually get to leave under his own power, and it intensified that jackrabbit-heartbeat, giddy feeling in his chest. “The same rule applies every time I go anywhere alone. Your wife tried to shoot me yesterday. What if she’d succeeded? You need to keep a tighter leash on your woman.”

A grin split Mercy’s face, and his eyes sparked, a twisted delight and amusement, like Harlan had said something hilarious, and was about to get decked for it. “Oh, mon cher. You really don’t understand my old lady, do you? She’s the one who holds the leash. And she doesn’t pull on it very often.”

Harlan’s mind flashed to the letters he’d found bundled and banded in the bottom of Ava Lécuyer’s dresser drawer. Fillette. That was what he called her, what he’d always called her. He thought of those rumpled, dusty skin mags under his childhood bed, and then thought of the letters, all those letters, bleeding a religious-like devotion.

Again, Harlan was struck by the piercing, squirmy notion that he’d made a huge mistake. That he should have killed the wife instead of taking the boy, the fastest way to cut the man off at the knees – no, at the heart. Because against all odds, by some strange miracle, the beast was capable of love.

I had a dark chuckle over Tenny and Reese's exchange in the boat.

“You’re bleeding out!”

“I’m not.” He glanced toward Reese. “I’m not, right?”

“No. But it was close.”

But before that, I liked Tenny's belated epiphany (because the boy loves denial) that he does, in fact, love his club family.

They’re your family, he imagined Reese saying. You love them.

That’s what Reese always said, because Reese was a good person, a sweet person, and he loved these people.

Tenny didn’t.

Or, well, he’d told himself he didn’t. But the moment Remy’s hand didn’t touch his, he realized just how much he cared. That he – damn it, that he loved. He’d thought of that emotion as a stupid weakness for so long. And then along had come Reese, and he’d learned to love, yes. But he loved beyond that, too, in a different way. He could call Devin “old man” all he liked, but he loved him, too, in some ways because he’d been such a pragmatic father.

And then there were the brothers who hadn’t needed to take him in, but who had. Walsh chief among them, always stern, or sour, but whose wife had set up a comfortable place where Tenny and Reese could live, and who had agreed to pay for the horse that Tenny called his own.

And amongst his club brothers, Mercy had been a constant cheerleader, always encouraging, and finding uses for him.

So, yes. He loved these people. Despite all his intentions, they were his family. And when he failed – yes, failed – to take hold of Remy, his stomach sank.

That was a member of his family, and he’d failed him.

He knew a moment’s grief. 

Alex being the only brother with a good and typical mother.

“Alexandre Bonfils! Are you smoking?”

He was, and he threw his cigarette out into the rain as his mother approached beneath a cheery red umbrella.

“Alexandre Bonfils, are you littering?”

“Fuck,” Alex muttered, and ducked out to grab the steaming butt and toss it in the trash. When he got back beneath the porte-cochere, Tina snapped her umbrella shut with a shower of cold droplets, and gave it a shake for good measure. Then she looked up at him, and smiled the same soft, sweet smile she’d given him when he was a little boy who’d had a nightmare, and said, “How you doin’, baby?”

“Well, I’m smoking and littering, so take a guess.”

Tango stepping up!

Tango said, “I don’t think anyone but you could have turned the club into what it is now. Made it bigger, and stronger. I know nobody else could have kept it together. The club – you – just knocked off the biggest threat in the underground. That’s huge. Nobody’s better at protecting the club. You make the hard calls.

“But you suck at the personal shit.”

His bluntness surprised a snort out of Ghost.

Tango turned his head, and shook it, but Ghost glimpsed a sliver of a grin. “Sometimes I hate you,” he said, ruefully, and that shut Ghost up real quick. “Sometimes all of us do. But we love you, too. And I think most of us made our peace a long time ago with the fact that you were an excellent president who was always gonna piss us off as a brother and a friend. And a father. I don’t know if you can apologize to Aidan in a way he’ll accept. But I know you need to apologize to the club, too. As our president. Because this time, you were a shit dad and a shit leader.”

Ghost felt like he’d been struck. In a good way.

He nodded. “I know. I know that. Thanks.”

Tango nodded, too. “Stand up.”

And here came the real hit. If he felt like swinging, Ghost was going to let him.

He stood.

Tango stepped in – and put his arms around him. The breath that rushed past Ghost’s ear was shaky. “Glad you’re not dead.”

Ghost hugged him back. “Me, too.”

The two last scenes of the book, Mercy and Alex graveside, and Ava with the kids in the car, were deeply pleasing to write. Short, sweet, but impactful. I love Mercy's exchange with Alex.

The sun was winking off the corner of a marble colosseum when he heard someone sigh behind him, letting himself be known.

His brother, Felix, said, “He was a good man.”

Alex watched the backhoe’s bucket dump the next load of red earth on the coffin, and then turned toward Mercy.

He looked good. His skin glowing, his jaw clean-shaven. Well-fed, his clothes clean. He had his long hair tied back in a braid that Alex knew Ava had plaited for him.

There was nothing to be done about the surge of affection and relief that swelled in his belly.

Mercy said, “You’re a good man, too.”

Alex blinked, throat suddenly tight. “I try to be.”

Mercy angled his body back, revealing the black Harley waiting on the cemetery drive. “You want to try somewhere else?”

Alex thought.

And thought.

And loosened his tie.

And I love that the final moment, Ava in the truck, and the two bikes roaring up on either side of her, and meeting ahead of her in the middle, mirrors Aidan and Tango doing the same thing in the very first scene of Fearless. I do so love symmetry. 

“Daddy!” Millie crowed.

And then Remy said, “Is that Uncle Alex?”

“Yes,” she said, and her grin hurt her face. “Everybody’s come home.”