Page 39 of Not So Goode

“Nicknames, babe. My brothers from the club.”

“Club?”

He reached over one shoulder and patted his back. “The MC. Keep up, shorty.”

I shook my head again. “I’m a very sheltered upper middle-class white girl from Connecticut.”

He laughed. “Well that explains a hell of a lot. MC means motorcycle club.” He turned so I could see the patch: “AzTex” in one semicircle on top, “Texas” in a semicircle underneath, with a serpent in a recognizably Aztec style in the middle.

“Aztecs?” I read. “You’re in a motorcycle club?”

God, can I please stop acting so boneheadedly stupid? Please? I’m faster on the uptake than this, usually, I swear.

“Founding member, sort of.” He fiddled with the guitar. “My pa and uncle were founding members, ma was an old lady, aunt was an old lady. Cousins and I were all raised in it.”

“Old lady,” I repeated.

He snickered. “Don’t take offense. It’s the just the term.”

“So who’s your old lady?”

He frowned at me. “Don’t have one, never had one. And I’m more or less retired. You don’t really ever retire from an MC, but being that Pa and Uncle Snake were the founders, I get special dispensation to sort of do what I want.”

“Uncle Snake.” I laughed. “And your friends are Panther, Zoom, Crutchy, and Clint. And you’re Crow.”

He nodded, and set the guitar in the case. “Yup.”

“Anyone with a normal name?”

“Well, sure. They all had normal names. Mo was really Morris, Panther was…Mike, I think. Zoom was Ezekiel, so not normal, but normal-ish. Crutchy was…well, he was old as dirt and older than the hills when I was a little tyke, so I don’t know his real name—not sure even Pa or Snake did, matter of fact—and Clint was just Clint.”

“What was your dad’s name?” Why was I so curious?

“Coyote.” He said it with a decided accent—coy-OH-tee.“Coyote Crow.”

I blinked. “Wait, that means Crow is your last name?”

He shrugged. “It’s complicated.”

“Your name?”

“Yup. I’m half Apache, half Comanche. My family had traditional Western Apache names, a few generations back, but somewhere around the turn of the century one of my grandfathers decided to…whiten…our names, in a weird way. To fit in off-rez better, I guess, I don’t know. I’ve been called nothin’ but Crow since I was in diapers.”

“I see. But you do have another name.”

He looked at me then, dead-on, eyes not really humorous anymore, and I shivered. “Not tellin’, Charlie. Nothin’ personal, just not into sharing my full name.”

“Okay, sorry.” I swallowed. “Hope I didn’t offend you.”

“Names have power,” he said. “You people go around giving out your whole name to everyone. Not our way.”

I thought about that. “Yeah, you’re right.”

He grinned, that easy humor back as fast as it left. “Myles find your sister?”

I leaned backward, glancing into the dim interior of the trailer—now that the show was over the lights were lit and the backstage area illuminated, but it was still shadowy inside that trailer. I saw something moving, writhing, and I looked away.

“Yeah, I’d say he did.”