All the Sky (Signal Bend Series) Page 7

She looked tired, but she swept that off her face with a toss of her brassy red hair and smiled saucily at him. She knew her place, and she knew the score. This was the kind of chick he fucked. Not one up to her neck in troubles—no matter how hot she was, how blue her eyes, how sweet her voice. He did not need that kind of bullshit.

  “You got somethin’ for me, Hav?”

  “Indeed I do.” He turned Gwen around and pushed her back down the hall toward his room.

  CHAPTER SIX

  “Why don’t you wander around for awhile, get the lay of the place. See if there’s anything cool for later.” Cory gave Nolan a gentle push, away from the card table she had set up on what amounted to the fairway at the Signal Bend Midsummer Fair.

  Nolan looked around, and then nodded and headed off into the crowd, his shoulders slumped and his head down—his usual posture. He’d been doing much, much better since they’d moved out of Lindsay and Alex’s house, but it would be a stretch to say he was a happier kid. Much less angry, but not much happier. Cory wasn’t sure what to do about it.

  She lost sight of him quickly; there were a lot of people wandering this fallow field not far from the middle of town. The town had all but closed down for this fair, so everybody was here. She and Nolan hadn’t been around much more than a month, but she was getting to recognize the townspeople, at least those who, for one reason or another, had become recognizable—Marie and Dave Bakke from the diner, manning a pie booth. Tuck and Rose Olsen from the town bar. Mayor Fosse. Evelyn Sweet, who owned a candy shop. Shannon Ryan, the manager of the bed and breakfast, and her husband, Showdown, who was one of the Horde.

  And Isaac and Lilli Lunden. Lilli ran the town library and owned the B&B. Isaac was the Horde President, and, from what Cory could gather, something like the police chief and town leader, too. Whenever anybody talked about a problem somebody was having (and the people around here talked a lot), somebody else would ask what Isaac had said or done about the situation.

  The first time she’d seen him, she’d felt a little intimidated. He was humungous, and he’d been walking down the Main Street sidewalk with Showdown, no shrimp himself. They were both huge and broad-shouldered, with beards and long hair, ink and scars. They looked like the kind of men a woman should cross the street to avoid crossing their path. But when she did cross their path, they’d both smiled warmly and nodded.

  Today, Showdown was working across the fairway, at the barbeque booth the Horde had set up—a big, black roaster and about a metric ton of red meat. A couple of other Horde were working the booth as well. She didn’t know them, but they were recognizable by the leather vests they wore. Havoc wasn’t around, from what she could see.

  Isaac was standing on the fairway side of that booth, with Lilli and their kids. Lilli was holding the hand of a pretty little girl about three years old, who was yanking on her mother’s arm like a hyperactive terrier; Isaac was holding a quiet, pudgy little boy a little less than a year old, give or take.

  As Cory watched, the little girl slipped her mother’s hand and dashed across the fairway, dark ponytail swinging, right to Cory’s table. Lilli yelled, “Gia!” as soon as the girl—Gia—got loose. She came for her, but Gia had time to run straight into Cory’s card table.

  “Those are pretty. I like the blue one. Can I have the blue one?” Gia picked up a blue beaded bracelet that Cory had displayed at the edge of the table. She didn’t stress; there was a reason she put the cheap stuff right up front—it wasn’t just little kids who had grabby fingers.

  And Lilli was right there, anyway. “Sorry!”

  “It’s okay—no harm done.” Cory smiled, and Lilli returned it.

  Lilli squatted at Gia’s side. “No, Gia. That’s not yours. You ask before you touch someone else’s things, remember?”

  Gia stuck her lip out and threw the bracelet on the table. Lilli sighed. “Okay, young lady. No blue pretty for you now. Apologize to the nice lady”—she looked up at Cory—“is it Cory?”

  “Yep.”

  “Apologize to Miss Cory for being rough with her nice things.”

  Gia stuck her lip out farther and crossed her arms, an exemplar of preschool temper.

  “Gia. Apologize now, or zero stories at bedtime.”

  Mother and child stared at each other, and then Gia turned to Cory. Her lip still out, she mumbled, “I’m sorry about the blue pretty.”

  “Thank you for your apology, Gia. You’re forgiven.”

  Lilli smiled up at her and then lifted Gia into her arms, headed down the fairway with a glance back at the rest of her family. Gia was still pouting, but compliant.

  Isaac, who’d been watching from the Horde booth, crossed then, holding his son and pushing an empty double stroller.

  “Hey. I’m Isaac.” He held out his free hand.

  Cory shook—wow, it was a big hand. “Hi. Cory.”

  “I know. You tend at Valhalla. That goin’ okay?”

  Of course he’d know her. He was kind of her boss, though she’d never seen him at Valhalla. “Yeah. I like it.”

  “Good. What’s all this?”

  ‘All this’ was something that Cory had been doing on and off since she’d learned to do it at camp, when she was about seven or eight. Jewelry—beaded, wired, and/or macraméd. She’d done it a little when Matt was with them, putting up a table like this at local carnivals and fairs, and selling it to friends and friends of friends. It had been something pretty cheap to make, and she could top off their income enough to keep the bills mostly paid. She hadn’t been doing it much lately, because, as cheap as it was, she hadn’t had enough money to spare on supplies.

  And then, a couple of weeks ago, Bonnie had come back to the RV and asked if she had any use for a bunch of ‘crafty shit’ she’d found cleaning out her aunt’s shed. It had been a cornucopia of supplies. So Cory was making jewelry again. One thing she used to do is offer to cage stones people had handpicked, but she didn’t have the money for semi-precious stones. What she was offering here at the fair was simple jewelry, beaded mostly with glass and metal beads, and some jute and leather macramé. Mostly jute. The piece that Gia had fixated on was a stretchy bracelet made of glass beads in various shades of ocean blue.

  “Just some stuff I do in my spare time.”

  The boy in Isaac’s arms suddenly fussed and kicked, reaching over Isaac’s shoulder. Isaac turned around. A couple was walking a huge, shaggy black dog—it looked like a bear—down the fairway. The little boy stretched and cooed. The couple with the dog smiled and stopped so the boy could see.

  “Easy, Bo. Here. Sit down.” He set his son in one seat of the stroller. Bo immediately leaned forward, and the dog went over and licked him from his chin to his dark hair, making it stand up in front like a cowlick—or dog lick. Bo squealed with delight, his eyes shut tight.

  With his son entertained, Isaac turned his attention to Cory’s table. He picked up the bracelet Gia had liked. “How much for this?”

  Cory couldn’t help but smile at the idea of this daddy coming up behind his misbehaving daughter and giving her the thing she wanted. Maybe if she were Lilli, she wouldn’t think it was so cute, but from her vantage point, it really was.

  She was selling the bracelet for ten dollars, because the glass beads were decent quality, but all the supplies had been free from Bonnie’s trove. “For Gia? You can have it—actually, I have a smaller one that would fit her wrist better.” She picked up a clear plastic bag from under the table and sorted through until she found a very similar bracelet with a smaller circumference.

  When she held it out to him, he didn’t take it. “How much? Not taking your work without paying for it.”

  The way he said it, it sounded almost like a threat, which was odd. But it made her know that she shouldn’t insist. “Four dollars.”

  He lifted a very expressive eyebrow at her, but pulled his wallet out of his pocket. He handed her four singles, and took the bracelet out of her hand. As he was putting his wallet back, he smiled down
at Bo, who was still being well bathed by a giant dog tongue and giggling madly. The kid was going to be chafed.

  Isaac’s glance then seemed to fix on her table again, and he picked up a piece near her side—where she kept the unique, expensive pieces. What she had out today were things she’d made a while ago and had never had a chance to sell. Isaac picked up the most expensive piece, of macraméd black leather and sterling silver wire, with an open, oval silver medallion in the center. The knotwork in that piece was elaborate, and the materials had cost more than fifty dollars. She had not been not planning to sell it, because people didn’t drop that kind of cash on jewelry that was displayed on a folding card table in the middle of a field. She’d set out her more expensive things mainly to advertise what she could do.

  “How much?”

  Her heart skittering nervously, she did some quick calculating in her head. To anyone else, she’d have said one-fifty and worked from there—it had taken a long time to knot that wire, and it had been murder on her hands. But Isaac scared her a little, even though he was being perfectly nice. He was just so gigantic, and he was dressed all in black, with a heavy, dark beard and a big scar across one side of his face. He looked like he should be sailing the high seas.

  Finally, she steeled herself and said, “one-thirty.”

  “A hundred even.”

  “One-twenty-five. That’s sterling silver and calfskin leather.”

  He grinned. It climbed up one side of his face, and the impression of rakish pirate was complete. “One-twenty.”

  “Sold.” Holy shit. She’d be able to get Nolan some new clothes when school started in a few weeks. Now her heart was skittering with excitement.

  He got his wallet back out, still grinning. When he handed her the cash and took the bracelet, he winked. “Maybe I won’t get in so much trouble for the little blue one if I give her mamma this one first.”

  Cory laughed, deciding right then that she liked Isaac Lunden, big scary biker, a whole lot.

  ~oOo~

  The Midsummer Fair, which apparently was a thing the town used to do every year and had just revived this year, had drawn a big crowd from the region. It was nothing more than a simple one-day country fair, with a few small rides that had been driven onto the field on flatbed trailers, the little fairway, with games, food, and wares, and a small stage for live music and a few other acts. Cory had a spot on the stage near twilight. And the evening would end with fireworks.

  She had a good day at her table, and packed up everything around five in the afternoon, when the stock she had left was leaving the table too bare to be interesting. She’d made almost five hundred dollars. That meant she could get Nolan everything he needed for school, and she could start looking for a place. It was a great day, and she was in a great mood.

  After she and Nolan packed all her stuff up in the Beast, they wandered through the fair. She’d been seeing bikers all day—not just Horde, but guys in plain vests or vests that said ‘Harley Davidson’ on the back, all of whom seemed friendly with the Horde. But she hadn’t seen Havoc. She wasn’t sure why she’d even been looking.

  He’d been confusing her the past few days. She’d been sure she had him figured out—sure that he wasn’t that hard to figure out: bad boy sexist jerk who thought women were only good for serving men, period. Not exactly a deep, philosophical soul.

  But since last week, when he’d had that drink with her, he was different. Just a little, and nothing she could quite put her finger on. Well, one thing—he said ‘hi’ and ‘bye’ now. Or something in that general family. It had bugged her a lot that he’d never done that before, like people were so below his notice that he couldn’t even muster common courtesy.

  Except for Nolan. He talked a lot to her boy. About games and electronics, mostly. She’d heard them talking motorcycles, too. Nolan seemed more interested in that topic than she liked. But he was interested in anything that had moving parts, anything he could take apart and understand.

  She didn’t think Havoc was anything like a good role model for her son. He had no respect for women—or most people, it seemed. He was a biker with a reputation for real violence—which showed on his person, in fact, in his broad hands and scarred knuckles, and the big rings he wore. And also in the bruises he came to the bar with. Maybe there was a decent guy center, but the shell was hard, thick, and pure asshole.

  On the other hand, he talked to Nolan like Nolan had something interesting to say. He didn’t try to lecture or judge. He didn’t try to be buddy-buddy. He just talked to him. Far more than he talked to her.

  They finally came across him at the far end of the fair, where there was a little petting zoo set up. He was standing outside a small makeshift paddock, next to another of the Horde—a slightly older guy with a shaved head and face, heavily tattooed—very heavily, all the way up to his jaw, and down his arms all the way to his fingers. She didn’t know his name, but she’d seen him around. He was hard to miss. In the paddock was a really pretty Appaloosa mare, white with black spots, and a little black and white pinto foal. Kids were lining up around the fencing to see the baby. Havoc and the other biker were keeping them from climbing on the fence.

  Havoc moved, and Cory saw that there was a petite blonde on his other side. She was pretty and smiling at Havoc. He smiled back, and Cory saw real affection between them. She’d never seen him look at any woman like that before. And she felt a little jealous. Well, that was stupid.

  But then Havoc saw her and Nolan, and the smile stayed. With a step toward them, he said, “Hey!”

  Nolan responded first, walking ahead of her. “Hey, Hav.”

  “You havin’ a good time, kid?” Havoc put his hand on Nolan’s neck and led him forward, turning away from Cory. Ah, okay. She got it. And why did she care again? She didn’t like the guy even a little. He pissed her off pretty much daily.

  “Yeah, it’s okay. Food’s good.”

  “You get anything from the Horde booth? There’s some prime cuts grillin’ over there.”

  “Not yet.”

  Cory walked up and stood next to Nolan, all of them lined up along the fence.

  “This is Len,” Havoc gestured at the tattooed biker. “And this is Sophie, my sister,” he nodded to the blonde. Sister. Huh.

  Havoc didn’t bother to give their names, so Cory did. To them both at the same time, swiveling her head between them, she said, “I’m Cory, and this is Nolan.”

  They stood and watched the horses and the kids trying to see the horses. Listening to Havoc talk to Nolan, Cory learned that the mare was Mabel, and her baby was Spirit.

  After a while, they said their goodbyes and headed back down the fairway, in search of supper. They got burgers and Cheetos and found an empty plastic picnic bench among the dozens that had been set up as a dining area.

  As he chewed, Nolan looked around at the trampled, already dying grass under and around their table. “There’s trash everywhere. I hate the way people just dump their stuff wherever.”

  “Me, too. But I bet there’s some kind of cleanup crew that’ll come around tomorrow and put everything right.”

  He looked at her. “You think I could do that?”

  “You want to clean up trash from the fair?”

  He shrugged. “I guess. Is that stupid?”

  “No, kiddo. It’s not stupid. It’s awesome. But why?”

  Again, he shrugged, and Cory wondered if there was some correlation between the adolescent hormone surge and the constant need to pull one’s shoulders up to one’s ears. “It’s pretty here. I don’t like it looking like a ghetto or something.”

  “You like it here, don’t you?”

  No shrug this time. “Yeah. It’s pretty cool.”

  High praise, that.

  “Well, you know…we sold enough today that, with what we’ve saved, we’ve got what we need for a place. You want me to see if there’s anything around here? Maybe that trailer at the end of Bonnie’s street?”

  Her beauti
ful, sad boy grinned, happiness splitting his face in two. “Yeah. That’d be cool.”

  “It’d be a long, early bus ride to school every day. I think the high school is like thirty miles away.”

  “That’s okay. I’ll bring a book. So, do you think I should just show up in the morning to help clean up?”

  “I don’t know, Nolan. Not sure who’s in charge of this thing or who you should talk to.”

  “You could talk to me.” Havoc walked up and stood at the end of their table. “Not much goes on in town the Horde’s not in on. One of our guys is leading cleanup tomorrow. He won’t start until about ten or so—we got a party in the clubhouse after fireworks tonight. Hey—you guys should come.”

  Cory blurted out a laugh that was half gasp. The idea of taking her son into the Horde clubhouse was some distance past insane. “Thanks, but I think we’ll pass.”

  Havoc shrugged. “Suit yourself. You’re missin’ out, though—most of the town moves over there. It’s more a town party than a club thing. For a while, anyway. Hey—can I get you beers”—he looked at Nolan—“or, I guess, a soda?”

  Confused and a bit overwhelmed, Cory stuttered, “Um, uh, sure. A beer and a soda.”

  He turned to Nolan. “What’s your poison, kid?”

  “Orange. Or just Coke.”

  “You got it.” He walked around their table and over to the drink booth. Cory watched, bemused.

  Before she could turn back around, Nolan said, “Please, Mom! Please let’s go to the clubhouse after. Please?”

  “Nolan, no. That’s not a place for a kid.” She had not changed her opinion about the idea of taking her son into that place. It was more than insane.

  “I’m not a kid!”

  “Yeah, you are. And you’re definitely acting like it now.”

  He tried a different tack and modulated his voice. “But he said it was a town party, not a club party.”

  “Nolan, come on. I don’t say no often. This is no.”

  He pushed his burger away in a snit. She let him; she was not budging on this point. Her parenting style was pretty lax; for the most part, she let Nolan tell her what he needed, and she tried to be there to help him through the brambles without just hacking the brambles away. She picked her battles. And here was a place to take a stand. He was a sensitive, shy, inexperienced kid, and she knew full well—or she thought she had a decent idea—what went on in that clubhouse. Even if the whole town was invited.