Page 72 of Not So Goode
“His name is Yakowski, or something along those lines. But his build? Folks just call him the Yak.”
“Well, he makes me wanna yack.”
The bartender laughed. “Beers are on the house, because I’ve wanted to see someone take that dickhead down to size for years. The fact that it was a gorgeous woman is just fuckin’ gravy on the roast, man.”
“Thank you,” I said. “You didn’t have to do that.”
He shrugged. “Just…do me a favor. Eat, have some drinks, and skedaddle. Don’t want to see you get hurt.”
“Thanks for the warning, but I can handle whatever comes our way.” Crow said this with no sense of boasting, just calm confidence.
Having seen him in action, I knew it was no idle brag.
“Been around enough to know you ain’t lyin’, just lookin’ at you, man. But Yak has a lot of friends, and he ain’t the biggest or the meanest of ‘em. So just watch it.”
He went back to the other end of the bar to take an order, and Crow and I drank our beer in silence.
“You worried, Charlie?” Crow asked.
I shook my head. “I remember very well how you handled those guys at the concert. I just don’t want to be the cause of any more trouble. Especially not for you.”
He rolled a shoulder. “Eh. Been in trouble my whole life. Shit, I’vebeenthe trouble. A little bar fight with some big drunk bikers? I’ll be right at home.”
I frowned at that. “I guess I’m a little confused at the timeline of your life.”
He laughed. “Me, too.” A sip of beer, and then our food came, and we dug in; he started talking around a mouthful. “So, when my parents died when I was eleven. That time period is a blur, so I don’t remember exactly. Maybe that’s weird, I don’t know. You’d think I’d know the exact day, you know? But I don’t. I wasn’t with them at the time. River Dog and Mammy were down in Mexico somewhere, off the grid as they always were. Mom, Dad, Uncle Snake, and a big portion of the MC was gone, and I was left alone at the compound with Crutchy and his old lady, Delilah, and a few other kids. All’s I remember is I was doing schoolwork. Delilah had been a grade school teacher before hitting the road with Crutchy, and she was, I guess you’d call it homeschooling me, along with the others. Then, we heard the bikes. You always know when the crew is back, you know? But there weren’t enough bikes. Tran, Boots, Brady, Slovac…Yank, and…Queer.” He scrubbed the back of his neck. “They’re the only ones who came back, out of the twenty who had left that morning.”
“Queer? Really?” I half laughed at this, around bites of burger. Which was, surprisingly, very good.
He snickered. “It was a joke. He was as straight as anyone else, but he was just weird as fuck. So Tran used to say he was just queer, in the old, original sense of the word, like weird. Teasin’ him. And, as shit like that goes, it stuck.”
I shook my head. “You boys have the weirdest nicknames.” I cocked an eyebrow at him. “Except you.”
He laughed. “Angling for the full name again, huh?”
“I’m curious. Can you blame me?”
He laughed, shrugged. “Nah. Guess not.” Sobered. “So yeah. Mom, Dad, Uncle Snake, everyone I knew best and loved most was dead. I was never close to the guys who did come back except Tran––they weren’t my parents’ part of the crew. You don’t care about those old inter-crew politics. Point is, I was eleven and suddenly an orphan. No one knew where River Dog and Mammy were. Dad may have, because he seemed to always justknowwhere they’d be, probably because they’d been making the circuit from Mexico to California through the four corners into Texas and back down again since Dad was a kid.”
“How did they make a living, just out of curiosity?”
“Who? My parents, or my grandparents?”
I shrugged. “Both, I guess.”
He sighed. “Full of tricky questions tonight, ain’t’cha? Mom and Dad got their living from the club. Which, to be honest, operated largely in gray areas of the law, or on the other side of it. That’s how the shootout happened that killed ‘em all—a deal gone wrong. The risk you run, livin’ that way, I guess.” He shrugged. “What exactly my parents did for the club, I’ve never known. Didn’t know as a kid—and I knew better than to ask—and then I didn’t wanna know later. River Dog and Mammy? They were artisans. Mammy made jewelry, small fine leather goods, stuff like that. Not cheap roadside shit, either. She sold it to museum gift shops and the fancy tourist stores in places like Sedona. Expensive shit, real quality artistry. May have seen my antler-handle knife—she made it. River Dog was a luthier.”
I frowned. “I’ve heard the term, but can’t remember what it is.”
“He made guitars.” His voice was quiet. Distant. “Best guitars you’ll ever hear. Taught me to play, taught me to make ‘em, too, but I haven’t tried my hand at that in years.”
I blinked. “You canmakea guitar?”
He nodded. “Yeah. I’ve got a storage unit in Dallas full of River Dog’s old tools, and some of his guitars, their truck and Airstream.” A long pause. “Including the one he was working on when he passed. Been thinkin’ I’d finish it, one of these days, if I ever get the hankering to quit being a nomad.”
“Wow.” I shook my head. “You are a complicated man, Crow.”
He made a face somewhere between a frown of puzzlement and a shy, complimented grin. “What? Why?”