Naming Day.

Wolf grimaces thinking about his mother, who he hasn’t seen since he was sixteen years old: the Quails were already local-famous for being weird and crazy, those kinds of people who came and went but who knew things and who could help you out if you didn’t mind putting your religion aside for the day, and they had these strange names on top of it all: his mother was Tambourine Quail, daughter of Big Bad Dollarbill Quail and That Run-Off Bitch With No Name.

When Wolf was ten Tambourine drove her sons to a field in east Kansas, meeting over fifty others of her line there and presenting her sons in front of a bonfire, her eyes shining like she was high in a way Wolf never forgot. I brought them, she shouted, and named ‘em Werewolf Kerosene Quail and Truthful Shade Quail. Their dad was Bread Man Went And Died and he wasn’t bad to me at all.