Page 18 of Jacob

“Tex.” Jacob smirked into the phone and shifted on the seat of his bike, getting comfortable. He’d tried to call his father by his road name when he’d gotten patched in hopes his brothers would take him more seriously. “To what do I owe the pleasure? Checking up on me?”

“Seeing as your babysitter left you unsupervised…” His father slurped something on the other end. “I thought it’d be a good idea.”

Jacob rolled his eyes. “You do remember you voted me in, right?”

His father laughed on the other end of the phone.

“Everything’s fine.” He glanced around, surveying the mostly empty lot. A series of trailers and recreational vehicles were covered in tarps and parked in a back corner.

“Hmmm.” The older man hummed. “Still a mess?”

“Yeah.” He nodded. “Why doesn’t Monty just take it? I mean, they wouldn’t put up much of a fight. We could send them all to Nástrond and just be done with it.”

Silence on the other end.

He took out his pack of cigarettes, waiting for his father to comment. Pulling a Marlboro Red from the pack, he rested it on his lip. “They’re all whacked out of their mind,” he added, hoping to legitimize his suggestion. Talking made the butt bob while he flicked his lighter to life. “Such a waste of a good territory,” he continued when it seemed his father wasn’t going to comment.

“That’s what you would do?” his father challenged.

Jacob paused, holding the flame at the end of the cigarette. He inhaled a few times, but the feeling he’d said something wrong danced up his spine. Taking a deep drag, he held the smoke in his lungs, considering his response.

“’Cause I think it’s disrespectful as fuck to march into another club’s territory and take your dick out.” His father’s thick Texas accent got stronger the more pissed he got. “And Odin’s Fury values respect. If we don’t got respect, then what is the point of the patch? How can we do business if we piss on everyone we do business with when things get tough? What kind of reputation are we going to have?”

Jacob swung his leg over his bike, exhaled the smoke, and dismounted. He hated when his father lit into him like that. Holding the cigarette between his two fingers, he stepped farther away from the office, just so no one could hear his half of the conversation. “I know, but—”

“No, that’s the thing. You don’t know. You don’t fucking think. You just wanna be a badass. You just wanna march in and use force. Well, it isn’t always about throwing down. Sometimes, you gotta use your damn head. Think once in a while. You gotta stop and think about how others are gonna see what you’re doing. How is it gonna look to them if you do it to someone else? Monty’s nottakingOhio ’cause it looks better if theygiveit to him.”

The young biker hung his head. He felt like he was fifteen again, getting in trouble for picking fights and talking trash. His father told him then it wasn’t a guarantee that he’d get in the club. He had to be smart. He had to prove he was worth it. He had to earn his patch.

“Start thinking some. Stop being so damn impulsive.”

Muffled voices on the other end caught Jacob’s attention.

“What? No. I’m talking.”

More muffled noises.

“You can talk when he gets home, Nancy. Stop.”

There was definitely a scuffle on the other end.

“Ooooofffffff.”

There’s a distinct noise when a man takes a hit to the the nuts. It’s universal. Every man knows it. Every man’s felt it. Every man has used it. The sound came through the phone and Jacob held his balls in sympathy.

“Baby?” His mother’s high-pitched voice came through the phone.

“Hey,” he said, unable to hide his smile, knowing she’d just swatted his father’s sack to talk to him.

Jacob bit back a laugh at the string of curses on the other end of the phone. “Shut up, I’m on the phone. Go get yourself some ice if it’s so bad,” his mother said to someone he assumed was his father. “I was talking to the recruiter the other day, and he said you can still sign up for any branch you want. You aren’t too old.” The hope in her voice shattered him. “If you want to be in the army like your dad, you can. The marines too, you can join them if you want to be fancier. I really like those uniforms. But if you want to fly, you know, like in that movie,Top Gun, like Tom Cruise, you can still do that, too.”

He groaned and looked up to the cloudy sky. A small brown bird flew by and he wondered for a brief moment if it was a sparrow. He didn’t know what sparrows looked like and made a mental note to google that later. “Mom,” he tried to stop her from listing all the branches of the military. “I’m not joining any branch of the military.”

They’d had this discussion when he was sixteen. And seventeen. And eighteen. He wasn’t cut out for the military. Waking up before dawn, doing pushups, bad haircuts, and marching while singing? Nope. He’d seenFull Metal Jacket. That shit wasn’t for him. He’d thought he’d put that to bed with her the day he’d started to prospect.

He’d nearly tripped over his own bike dismounting when his foot got caught. Stumbling, trying to prevent himself from getting a face full of the lawn he was supposed to cut three days ago, he caught his balance just before he collided with the hedges. He trotted up the path and yanked open the front door. The energy surging through him couldn’t be contained. The urge to run laps around the block had his calves tingling. If it wouldn’t ruin the image he wanted to convey, he’d run to the damn clubhouse.

“Jacob? Is that you?” his mother called from the kitchen.

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