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August 2025
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“Again, Unc! Again again again!” Tildy yanked on Duncan’s left hand.
From his right hand, twenty-one-month-old Ethan grabbed his sister’s arm and said, “NO, Tiddy! Too scawy!”
Tildy stopped shouting and trying to drag them all back to the line for the little teacup ride. She let Duncan’s hand go and set her hands on her little brother’s shoulders. In the sparkling rainbow tutu and matching wings, the butterfly facepaint, and the pink tiara with the bejeweled ‘4’ in the center, she was a both birthday sprite and her brother’s good fairy.
Tildy had needed some convincing to see that a little brother was a good thing, but she’d been fully convinced the day Ethan first laughed when she’d tried to be funny for him. Now Ethan had a short, loud, bossy but surprisingly gentle and ferociously protective guardian.
Several of them, in fact. They also had a pack of six vigilant dogs at their back. Not to mention a whole MC.
“You were scared?” Tildy asked her brother.
Ethan nodded with dramatic solemnity. “Too scawy.”
“Oh.” She looked around. “Let’s do something else. What do you want to do?”
Suddenly empowered with the freedom of choice, Ethan looked around as well, his eyes wide so he could take in all possible options.
In addition to Tildy’s fourth birthday, this weekend was the fiftieth anniversary of the Brazen Bulls MC. Since 1975, the club had sat right here, an anchor to a community that had changed with the times but remained solid and steady as well. In some cases, the club had friendships with neighboring families that went three generations deep.
To celebrate such a momentous anniversary, they were throwing a party for the whole weekend. They’d gotten a festival permit and closed off two blocks to turn their sliver of South Tulsa into a wonderland. They’d rented five rides (including teacups) from one of those parking-lot carnival places. They had games booths, food booths, booze booths, face-painting clowns and juggling clowns. They had live music, a four-act bill for this evening, with the Lowdowners, Marcella’s band, headlining.
They’d set up a little track on the clubhouse lot and had pedal-bike races for the littles. And the folks of Ragamuffin Ranch—that was Phoebe, Duncan, Margot and her boyfriend Taylor, and Vin—had hauled the trailer up with some of their current residents for a small petting zoo at the back of the lot: Puff the sheep, Klaxon the burro, and Ricky and Fred, two Nubian goats who were the ranch’s newest rescues.
Phoebe was sticking close to the petting zoo. They’d brought up the animals who were best with people and most patient with getting tugged on, and several of the older club kids were on hand as minders, but she was keeping an eye on things anyway.
Duncan wanted to get back and check on her soon. She wasn’t feeling so well today.
“How about the goats?” he suggested with a grin. “Want to see the goats again, Ethan?”
“Puff and Klaxon, too, Unca,” Tildy reminded him. “They’re not goats.”
“That’s right. Sheep and a burro, too. Wanna go cuddle?”
Though these two got lots of cuddle time whenever they visited the ranch, there was apparently no limit to the attraction of a petting zoo. Ethan grinned hugely and slapped his hands together. “GOATS! I want GOATS!”
“Okay!” Duncan started to turn around and head back to the clubhouse, but Ethan yanked on his hand.
“Cawy, Unca! I want cawy!” He threw his hands up and slammed his little body into Duncan’s legs.
“You got it, pal.” Duncan dipped down, ready to swing the boy into his arms and carry him.
“Me too, Unc!” Tildy cried, putting herself between Duncan and Ethan. “I want carried!”
Chuckling with weary affection, Duncan nodded and crouched lower. “Climb up, monkey legs,” he said, and Tildy clambered onto his back and immediately clamped arms and legs around him so tightly he could probably be shot like a rocket into space and she’d still be attached. Then he grabbed Ethan and stood, settling the boy in his arms so he had a kid’s head on each shoulder.
He’d figured out this method with a lot of trial and error.
Strolling down the middle of their anniversary fair, Duncan grinned and offered a wave, a nod, or a snarky riposte to friends and family either working or playing—Jay was at the Gertrude’s stand, playing barback while Petra served beer, wine, and simple cocktails from their rainbow-striped tent. Gunner sat in his fancy motorized wheelchair and played carnival barker at the ring-toss tent, while his kids, Aidan and Larissa, worked the game.
Duncan’s sister, Hannah, and Mason (their newest patch) and Anne (one of Aunt Sage’s twins) worked the candy tent. Mason and Anne had been a couple since last Christmas; Duncan thought it was both a little bit strange and pretty cool that brothers Sam and Mason had fallen for girls they’d called cousins right up until they’d started making out. Talk about keeping it in the family.
Hannah was running the cotton candy machine, and Duncan laughed at the massive globs of pastel floss his little sister was handing out on flimsy paper cones. Each one was planet-sized. She saw him laughing and flipped him off with panache.
Hannah had finally won their father over. She’d started working in the convenience mart last summer—and she was immediately such a pesky, nosy presence in the bays that Dex had eventually handed her a wrench and told her if she was going to be in his way she’d better be productive while she was there.
