The Reckless Oath We Made

by Bryn Greenwood

  It was a good thing we weren’t just relying on my childhood memories, because once we left the main highway, there were no landmarks I recognized. When we reached the place where Google Maps said we were supposed to be, there was nothing there except a pile of junk. Old tires, a rusted-out washing machine, and a mountain of old beer and oil cans.

  We drove on until a muddy creek crossed the road at the bottom of a ravine. On the other side, there was a cattle gate with a NO TRESPASSING sign. If there hadn’t been tire ruts leading through the gate, we would have turned back.

  “I’ll get the gate,” I said.

  “Nay, my lady.”

  Gentry put the truck in park and got out, looking back the way we had come. Then he unhooked the gate and swung it open, riding it with his foot on the lowest bar. After we pulled through, he got back out and closed the gate. I wondered if we should leave it open in case we needed to make a quick getaway, because I kept thinking about Uncle Alva saying, Don’t call me again. I focused on why I was there. Find LaReigne. Get Marcus back.

  Further on, the woods thinned, and we passed a trailer, a metal shed, and a few more piles of junk before I saw the house. Like everything else, time hadn’t done it any favors. I remembered it as a Victorian mansion. A big, white house with lots of candy-colored trim and a long screened-in veranda. Whatever the house had been, it wasn’t a Victorian mansion, and it hadn’t been white in a long time. The porch had sagged and half the screens were torn out. The only thing that jibed with my memory was that under the eaves, I could still see where the shingled siding on the second floor had been purple, green, and pink.

  There wasn’t anything to indicate what was driveway and what was yard, except the circle of gravel a dog had scoured with his chain. When Gentry pulled the truck in, the dog ran to the end of his tether and barked at us in a hoarse voice. I thought that might make Gentry hesitate, but he reached for his door handle. I tried to stop him, because I figured my uncle probably wouldn’t shoot me for trespassing, but Gentry wasn’t about to let me go alone. We walked up to the house side by side, with the dog barking, Gentry clenching his hand, and me testing out different versions of reintroducing myself.

  Before we could set foot on the porch, the door opened and Uncle Alva stepped out. As he came down the stairs, I saw he had one of those .410 revolvers on his belt.

  “Well, goddamn, girl. If you ain’t a sight for sore eyes,” he said. Instead of getting run off the place, I got a hug that smelled like old-man sweat, bourbon, and cigarettes. He pulled back and held me by the shoulders to look at me. “I didn’t have no idea how much you turned out looking like your grandpappy.”

  I laughed, because Mom always said I didn’t look like anybody in our family. As for Uncle Alva, he looked as run-down as the house. He was missing all four of his bottom front teeth.

  “I’m sorry to just show up here, but you didn’t give me a chance to tell you I was coming when I called,” I said. He laughed. Either he believed me, or he appreciated a good lie.

  “Whyever you come, it’s good to clap eyes on you. This your man?”

  “This is Gentry Frank. This is my uncle, Alva Trego.”

  They shook hands in that super serious way Gentry had. Physical contact required all of his attention. I was glad he didn’t say anything, because as soon as he opened his mouth it would produce about ten other questions I hadn’t come all the way to southern Missouri to answer.

  “You’re sure welcome here,” Uncle Alva said. “Come on in.”

  We followed him up the steps and into the kitchen, where I braced myself for chaos. The piles of junk outside weren’t a warning, though, because the inside of the house was neat. It could have used a good scrubbing and a few coats of paint, but the counters were bare, and the kitchen sink was empty. The linoleum was stained and worn out, but swept. If the marshals had come to search this house, it wouldn’t have taken long.

  “Sit down here and let me get you a tonic.”

  We were sitting at the kitchen table drinking cans of store-brand pop when the screen door swung open, and a tall, skinny guy in camo pants and no shirt walked in.

  “You see you got company?” he said. Then he looked at Gentry and me sitting at the table.

  “You’re about as useful as a Mason jar full of toenail clippings,” Uncle Alva said. “This is your cousin Zhorzha and her man—I forgot your name already, son.”

  “Gentry Frank, sir,” he said, before I could answer for him.

  “This is your cousin Dirk, who you won’t recognize, I imagine. He wasn’t but about four years old last time you saw him.”

  “Well, holy shit,” Dirk said. “You come all the way from Kansas? What’re you doing in these parts?”

  “I came to see Uncle Alva,” I said.

  A minute later, my other cousin, Dane, came up to the house. Him I knew, because he was only a year older than me. Nine to my eight when our fathers went to prison. He was even taller than Uncle Alva or my dad, and he had a little blue teardrop tattooed next to his right eye.

  “Goddamn, I’d recognize that hair anywhere,” he said. “This is a helluva surprise.”

  “For a couple reasons, I guess.” I stood up, and he came around the table to hug me.

  “What does that mean?” he said.

  “You never mind these boys,” Uncle Alva said. “They don’t keep up on the news. Unless it has to do with baseball or boxing.”

  “There something going on?” Dirk said.

  “Let’s don’t talk about it right now,” Uncle Alva said. “How about some supper? You come to stay a bit, ain’t you?”

  “If you don’t mind,” I said.

  Dane went into town and came back with stuff to cook out: bratwurst and hamburgers. Since I was female, they put me in charge of the coleslaw and potato salad, but Gentry was the one who sharpened the old knives, sliced all the vegetables, and peeled the eggs. Dane and Dirk tromped in and out, like cooking on the grill was some manly chore.

  “Well, shit, you’re a regular hand in the kitchen. Bet you make a mean cake, too,” Dirk said to Gentry, trying to stir up some shit, but Gentry was off in his own world.

  I hoped he could stay there, but as soon as we sat down to dinner, Dane said, “So, what do you do, Gentry?”

  Gentry finished chewing and swallowed, before he said, “I build flying machines.”

  “Flying machines? Like airplanes?”

  “Yea.” I willed him to leave it at that, but he didn’t. “For the Duke of Bombardier. At present, ’tis my duty to rivet wings upon Learjets.”

  “Are you fucking with me?” Dane said.

  “No, seriously. He builds planes for a living,” I said.

  “Well, he also talks like a goddamn weirdo.” Dirk waited to see if Gentry would rise to that, but he took another bite of his dinner.

  “So what does bring you all the way out here?” Dane said.

  “She’s here cuz she needs her family at a time like this,” Uncle Alva said.

  “A time like this?”

  “LaReigne’s been kidnapped.” It was the first time I’d said it like that, and it felt so stupidly melodramatic. “And Mom’s having some kind of a nervous breakdown or a temper tantrum. She won’t talk to me.”

  “Damn. I’m sorry to hear that,” Uncle Alva said. “I don’t reckon things been easy for her these years.”

  “What do you mean by kidnapped?” Dirk said.

  “She was volunteering with a prison ministry at El Dorado, and they had two inmates—”

  “Oh, holy shit! I heard about that, about the prison break. LaReigne’s one of the hostages? Shit, I woulda paid more attention to that on the radio if I’d known it was my cousin.”

  “Those are the guys tried to blow up that Moslem church a couple years back, right?” Dane said. I nodded and he snorted. “She’s prolly fine. They’re
good old boys, I bet you.”

  “Yeah, good old boys who just, you know, already killed their other hostage,” I said. I hadn’t had much appetite to begin with, but sitting there with half my dinner left on my plate, thinking about Molly Verbansky, I couldn’t swallow another bite.

  “Oh, you know what I mean. They ain’t likely to kill her. Unlike you with that hair, looking like you got a poodle in the woodpile, LaReigne looks like good Aryan blood. And with our granddaddy being in the Klan, she’s practically a KKK princess.”

  Dirk thought his brother’s joke was pretty funny, because they both laughed. I didn’t say anything. Molly was a white woman, too, for all the good it did her.

  “Ain’t the only danger a woman’s in,” Uncle Alva said in a low voice. “So Zhorzha needs her family.”

  After we finished eating, Dirk and Dane went out on the porch to smoke, like they’d never heard of washing dishes. Uncle Alva stuck around to help Gentry and me clear the table. Maybe they didn’t usually sit down to family dinners, because the only dishes in the drying rack were a single plate and a fork.

  “Why don’t you two go out on the porch and I’ll take care of the dishes,” I said. I was used to doing that when I was a guest, but I also needed to get Gentry out of the habit while we were there. He didn’t care if Dane and Dirk sniped at him doing women’s work, but them sizing him up made me uneasy. Since I’d brought him there, I needed to make a place for him that Dane and Dirk would respect.

  “Go on,” I said again, because Gentry was there at my elbow, like he was trying to cut in on a dance. “Go. I’ll bring you a beer when I’m done.”

  He tilted his head to the right. Whoever he was listening to must have given him the same advice, because he nodded and went outside. Then it was just Uncle Alva and me. He sat down at the table, so I dried my hands and turned around to look at him.

  “I came because I need to talk to you,” I said. “I need your help.”

  “I figured as much when you called. I’m sorry I was so short with you, but you never can be sure who’s listening.”

  “I know. I’m sorry I didn’t think about that, but I need you to help me find out where LaReigne is.”

  “Girl, it don’t work like that,” he said. “I can’t just pick up the phone and call the KKK.”

  “I think it works like this—if anybody knows anything, it’s Craig Van Eck, because Barnwell and Ligett were part of his gang. And you know Craig Van Eck, because you and Dad were in his bullshit white brotherhood gang, too. White Circle, whatever it’s called.”

  Uncle Alva laid his hand on his forearm and smoothed out his shirtsleeve, so I knew he had the same tattoo as Dad. The same as Tague Barnwell.

  “Lord, yes,” Uncle Alva said. “I know Van Eck. I wish I could answer otherwise, but I was part of his gang when I was inside. Wasn’t much choice about it, if you wanted to serve your time without taking a knife in your side or a dick up your ass. That’s how it works. They tell you they’re protecting you from other inmates, but it’s like any other protection racket. All they’re selling you is protection from them. You don’t join, you’re fair game. But that’s all done. Van Eck hasn’t heard nothing of the Trego boys since your daddy died. I don’t owe Van Eck nothing, and he don’t owe me nothing.”

  “That was only six years ago. You’re telling me you don’t know anybody who’s gotten out since then who knows somebody who knows somebody who might know where Barnwell and Ligett would go to hide out? Nobody?” It all came gushing out, because I was tired and frustrated.

  “You trying to get me killed? You don’t think they’d come after me if I was passing information to the cops?”

  “Oh my god, Uncle Alva. Do you think I’d go to the cops? I know we haven’t seen each other in a long time, but you think I’m that crazy?”

  “What the hell you planning on doing if I can find out where LaReigne is?” he said.

  “I’m gonna go get her.”

  “Just go in there guns a’blazin’?”

  “If I have to,” I said. It was total bullshit, except that I’d brought a gun with me. Still, I had no clue what I would do. I was hoping Uncle Alva might have an idea.

  “Girl, I can’t be part of that.”

  “You don’t have to be part of it. I just—”

  “We can’t talk about this tonight.” Uncle Alva got up and went to look out the screen door. “I’d ruther not talk about it at all, but we’d best wait til tomorrow, when we can have some privacy.”

  I nodded, even though he couldn’t see me, because I was grateful he hadn’t refused outright. I finished washing up the dishes, and while I was drying the cookie sheet the bratwursts had been brought in on, Uncle Alva said, “I hope that son of a bitch ain’t about to bite him.”

  I went to the screen door to see what he was talking about. Out in the yard, Gentry was making his approach to the dog. He walked slowly, with his hands held out in front. The dog got up from where he was lying and trotted to the end of his chain. Gentry stopped a few feet away.

  “Is he a biter?” I said.

  “What dog ain’t?”

  I reached past Uncle Alva, pushed the screen door open, and stepped out on the porch, where Dirk and Dane were watching Gentry and the dog, too.

  “What’s the dog’s name?” I said. What I really wanted to ask was Can you call him off? I knew Gentry just well enough to be nervous about what he might do.

  “Don’t have a name,” Dane said. “Dirk bought him for fifty bucks offa this nigger over by Rolla. Used to be a fighting dog, I guess, but—”

  “He’s a good guard dog, because he don’t like nobody,” Dirk said.

  “Oh, good. You got a guard dog you can’t call off. What happens if he decides to eat some Jehovah’s Witnesses?” I said.

  “I guess I’d have to shoot’m.” Dirk grinned at Dane.

  I went down the steps and started across the yard to where Gentry was squatted in front of the dog. When I came up behind him, I could hear him doing the medieval version of Who’s a good boy.

  “Thou art a noble beast. ’Tis right thou shouldst bristle, for thou knowest me not. But I bring thee meat that we might make amity twixt us.”

  “Be careful,” I said. He had one of the leftover bratwursts from dinner in his hand, and he nodded before he tossed a piece to the dog. For a couple seconds, the dog went on standing at full alert, before he lowered his head and sniffed the meat. He looked at Gentry and me, growling the whole time. Then he picked it up and ate it.

  “Yea, I hear thee. A bit of meat maketh not fast friends,” Gentry said. “How do they call him?”

  “Dog. They bought him from some guy, and I guess they don’t know his name.”

  For once I could read Gentry’s facial expression pretty clearly. He wasn’t impressed. He threw another piece of meat, and that time the dog gave it one quick sniff before he gulped it down. Up close, I could see how skinny he was. Whatever they were feeding him, it wasn’t happening often enough. He was some kind of pit bull, big, but stripped down to muscle and bone. Gray or dingy white, with brindle on his neck and back legs. He had a ropey pink scar on his left shoulder and a limp on that leg. His head was about the size of a microwave and somebody had cut his ears off down to his skull. He was a sad, ugly dog.

  “’Tis wrong he hath no name,” Gentry said. “And to see his chain so short liketh me not.”

  “I’m not a fan of it, either, but don’t get any ideas about making friends with him. My cousin says he used to be a fighting dog.”

  “He is a noble beast all the same.” Gentry tossed out some more bratwurst, and then he gave me a piece. I didn’t want to be a part of the whole thing, but I threw the meat to the dog.

  “You’re not very pretty, are you?” I said. “But you’re a good boy, right?”

  “Ah, the beast would be tamed to a lady’s hand.
” Gentry smiled. “He waggeth his tail for thee. Not for me.”

  The dog had so little of a tail nub left, I don’t know how Gentry could tell, but I didn’t take the next piece of meat he held out to me.

  “Just try not to get bit, okay?”

  He nodded, so I left him to it and walked back across the yard. The whole situation was making me agitated. All I wanted was a chance to talk to Uncle Alva and, for whatever reason, he expected me to wait until tomorrow.

  He was sitting on an old steel rocking chair on the porch, and I sat down on one end of an empty double glider. Dirk stood at the top of the steps, leaning against a pillar, watching Gentry. I could tell he didn’t like seeing the dog practically eating out of Gentry’s hand, but I guessed that dog was ready to give his loyalty to the first person who was nice to him. Whose fault was that?

  After he’d given the dog the last piece of sausage, Gentry came back to the house. When he reached the top of the porch steps, I thought Dirk was going to say something to him, but instead he stuck his foot out to trip Gentry. Gentry pitched forward, but caught himself pretty easily on his hands and pushed himself back up.

  “Oops.” Dirk grinned.

  Back on his feet, Gentry turned to Dirk, looked him up and down, and cocked his head to the right, listening. Who was on his right?

  “Nay, Master Dirk. If thou wouldst put a man upon the ground, ’tis done thusly.”

  Dirk laughed, about two seconds away from a smart-ass remark he wouldn’t get to make. Gentry swung his leg, caught Dirk behind the knees, and cleared his legs right out from under him. From the opposite direction, he swung his arm and checked Dirk across the chest. Dirk hit the porch floor flat on his back, hard enough to rattle the kitchen windows.

  “Like so,” Gentry said.

  Dane had been about to light a cigarette, but when Dirk landed, Dane’s mouth dropped open and the cigarette fell out. In the total silence that followed, Uncle Alva started coughing. Gentry walked across the porch and sat down next to me on the glider.