Nolan: Return to Signal Bend (Signal Bend)(3)
“Okay!” Loki said and slipped Thor a sausage patty while their mom’s attention was on Nolan.
“You’re working this morning? Saturday? Club stuff?”
“Yeah. Just a little protection run to Eureka. Squeaky clean.”
Though they ran little jobs here or there that might not have been completely legit, the Missouri Horde hadn’t been truly outlaw in a long time. These days, besides still being the de facto law in town, they worked construction and mechanical repair, they owned a few Signal Bend businesses, and they did some guarding and protection work—like the job he had this morning, riding with Tommy, escorting a shipment of completely legal inventory to its warehouse destination. The dirtiest thing about the job was the forged concealed-carry permit for the piece in his holster.
Most days, Nolan worked with one of the Horde’s companies, Signal Bend Construction. On those jobs, he was just a grunt, swinging a hammer. He liked club work better, even if it was only being visible around town, keeping their kind of order. In the club, he was the Sergeant at Arms. Not a role with the kind of punch it had had when Len had worn that flash, back in the days when the Horde had gone everywhere armed, but one that still carried some weight.
The last time there had been real danger around the Night Horde Missouri or Signal Bend had been the first time David Vega’s name had come up. Vega had been instrumental in the trouble then, when the mother charter had almost been destroyed. Vega himself had killed Nolan and Loki’s father. Brutally. And Vega had risen from the supposed dead and been involved this summer, when SoCal had almost gone down. When Bart’s wife, Riley, and the SoCal president, Hoosier, had been killed. More people Nolan cared about.
Vega had disappeared again. Nolan felt like that * was just lurking in the background somewhere, waiting for another opportunity to f*ck things up for the Horde.
With a blink, he pushed that restless feeling off to the side. He gave his mom his reassuring smile. “It’s all good, Mom.”
His mom frowned but didn’t say more. He bent down and kissed her cheek. “I’ll be back by one or so. You going to Valhalla this afternoon?”
“Yeah. Jackie’s closing, but I need to be there through the after-supper rush. I’ll pick up a couple of pizzas at Tuck’s on my way home.”
“Sounds good. Love you.”
“Love you, Nolan. Be careful.”
“I always am. And you always worry too much.”
oOo
On Sunday afternoon, Loki swiped angrily at his face and threw the book. “That’s stupid! That’s so stupid! Billy is stupid!” His voice broke, and he sobbed for a second, then punched his leg and got some control. “What a stupid book,” he said through his tears and stopped-up nose. “I hate that book. I hate Billy, and I hate those stupid dogs for going after a mountain lion. Why did the guy write a book about dogs dying? Why did I have to read it? It’s so stupid!”
“I felt the same way, guy. But Billy loved his pups, and they loved him.”
Feeling emotional himself, Nolan hooked his arm around his brother’s shoulders, but Loki shook him off. “It’s stupid,” he muttered again.
“You want to take some time before we talk about what it’s about and figure out your project?”
“It’s about a stupid boy who let his stupid dog get eaten by a stupid lion,” Loki grumbled, picking at a hole in his sock.
For Nolan, the worst part this time was Little Ann, the other pup, lying on her brother’s grave and dying of starvation—or, really, of a broken heart. “Yeah, let’s take some time. You want to play Mario for a while?”
“No.” Loki lay down on his bed and put his back to Nolan.
“Okay, guy. I’ll be around. Let me know when you’re ready.”
“I hate school,” Loki snarled as Nolan left his room.
Nolan closed the door and went to the kitchen for a beer. He took it to the living room and plopped down on the sofa, not bothering to turn on the television. Their mom had gone off to run errands and wasn’t back yet. Thor shuffled in and collapsed on the floor at Nolan’s feet.
The house felt thick with quiet. Nolan took a long pull on his beer, then leaned his head back and closed his eyes.
Fifth grade was about the same time that school had started getting unmanageable for Nolan, too. He was smart, and Loki was as well. Too smart for school. None of the actual subjects had been hard for Nolan, and Loki had been doing well until this year. It was being required to do stupid shit for no discernible reason that had gotten Nolan hung up, and being ignored when he’d had legitimate questions and disciplined when he wanted to think about things in different ways. From that point on, school had been, at best, a waste of time, and at worst, traumatic.
Reading a book like Where the Red Fern Grows and doing nothing with it but assigning some stupid shoebox diorama for a project? How f*cked up was that? Why not talk about how the prize money from the hunting competition made everything worth it to everybody but Billy and what that meant about how f*cked up their lives were? Better yet, why not talk about how a book could break your heart, how some made-up story could remind you of things about your own life and make you think about those things differently? Why not just talk about why it was so f*cking sad? Why assign a book that made you feel so much and not give kids a way to understand all those feelings? It was so f*cked up.