The Reckless Oath We Made

by Bryn Greenwood

  “Are you kidding me? Did I or did I not just drive down to Arkansas and get people killed, trying to ransom my sister? I’m just like you all.”

  I laughed, which wasn’t the kindest thing I coulda done, but it did tickle me.

  “Shit, girl. I was trying to cheer you up. I didn’t want you driving all that way home alone, feeling like you made a huge mistake.”

  “I did make a huge mistake.” She crunched the beer can in her fist and leaned her head against the doorframe like it was too heavy to hold up.

  “That’s the way of the world. If there ain’t nobody in the world you care enough about to do something crazy for, that’s gotta be an empty feeling. What I did for Tess, it was dumb as hell, but it come from how much I loved her.”

  “And you think that makes it okay that LaReigne abandoned her family for that bastard. That she helped them, and those prison guards got killed?”

  “No,” I said. “But it means something that you love your sister so much you done what you done.”

  CHAPTER 46

  Zee

  When I’d parked the truck the day before, the dog had walked out to the end of his chain to look at me. On Monday morning, after I said goodbye to Uncle Alva, the dog was standing in the exact same spot, waiting. As close to the truck as he could get. When I opened the door to get in, he took a step closer, so that his chain was stretched tight. I put out my hand the way Gentry had, and the dog sniffed it.

  “Are you hungry? Did anybody feed you while Dirk was gone?”

  When I touched his scabby head, he squinted his eyes but didn’t move. Before I could change my mind, I took ahold of the hook on his collar and thumbed it open. The chain hitting the ground spooked him enough that he tucked his flanks and rolled his eyes at me. I jerked my hand back, but the dog didn’t do anything except scuttle a few feet away from the chain. Then he trotted straight to the truck and hopped up in the cab.

  I headed back up to the house, leaving the truck door open. When I walked into the kitchen, Uncle Alva was sitting at the table with his glasses up on his head and his eyes closed.

  “Tell Dirk I’m taking his dog,” I said. “And tell him not to get another dog if all he’s going to do is chain it up out there.”

  “I been thinking about getting me another beagle. You know, them Snoopy dogs. We used to have one. You remember?”

  “Yeah. Beelzebub. You told us you stole him from the devil.”

  “That wasn’t no story, girl. They’re good little guard dogs.”

  “Well, you can get you one now.” I unzipped my backpack and took a stack of cash out of the envelope. I laid a few bills on the table. “This is for Dirk, so I’m not stealing his dog. Plus, he needs new boots because we tossed his.”

  “So you didn’t lose the money?” he said.

  “Do you want it back?”

  “Lord, no. Ain’t no good to me. Only thing I ever wanted it for was your aunt, and she’s long gone. Besides, you’ll need it. Lawyers ain’t cheap.”

  I nodded, but I slid the rest of that bundle of bills across the table to him. That left me with eighty-four thousand dollars.

  “You should keep this, just in case,” I said.

  “I’ll hang on to it for you. Or for LaReigne’s little boy.” He didn’t pick it up, though. I wondered if I’d ever get to a place where I could be that indifferent to ten thousand dollars.

  “Okay. Thank you. And I’m sorry.” It was what I’d said when I left five minutes before. Thank you. I’m sorry about how things turned out.

  “Take care, girl,” he said, just like he had before, but as I was walking out the door the second time, he added something else: “Don’t be a stranger.”

  The dog was still in the truck cab, standing in the seat. On the drive through town, he hung his head out the window. When I pulled onto the highway, though, I rolled up the window, and the dog settled down in the passenger seat.

  I drove all the way through to Parsons without stopping, but I figured the rest area on the other side of town was as good a place as any to let the dog out to pee. He stuck with me, even came inside when I went to the bathroom. It surprised me, because I hadn’t exactly made friends with him, but maybe he figured if I was driving Gentry’s truck that made us friends by association. We walked up and down a little so I could stretch out my hip, and I stopped to look at the historical plaque about the Bloody Benders. Nice to know there was at least one family in Kansas that was more fucked-up than mine.

  While we’d been walking around, another car had pulled in, and as we headed back to the truck, I saw they had a dog, too. Some kind of bulldog, I thought, right as Dirk’s damn dog went running toward it snarling and snapping. The woman screamed, “Oh my god! Oh my god!” Sounded just like LaReigne.

  If the woman had been alone, I think it would have ended pretty badly, but her husband picked up their dog, and then Dirk’s dog stood in front of them growling. The whole time I was trying to get there, but I couldn’t go very fast, let alone run.

  “That dog needs to be on a leash!” the woman screamed at me.

  “You can’t just have a dog like that running loose!” the man said.

  “You need to get your dog under control!”

  I got ahold of the dog’s collar and, when I pulled on it, he yelped and tucked his tail end.

  “I’m sorry. I just bought him from this guy who had him out on a chain. I didn’t even think about not having a leash for him. I’m sorry. I didn’t know he would do that.” When I pulled on the dog’s collar, he came with me, all hunkered down and trembling. Big scary dog shaking like a leaf. As soon as I opened the truck door, he jumped in the cab, looking happy again.

  I got in the truck, but before I could start it, the guy with the bulldog came jogging over. He’d left his dog with his wife, but I figured he was coming to lecture me some more. Unless I was going to ignore him, I had to roll down the window.

  “Hey, I wasn’t sure how much further you had to go, but since you just rescued him, it’d be a shame if anything happened. We’ve got an extra leash, if you want.” He held it up to show me. “You’re welcome to it. That way you can get him home safe.”

  “Thank you.” I reached out the window and he put the leash in my hand. “I never had a dog before, so this is kind of new for me.”

  “What are you calling him?”

  “Oh, uh. Leon.” It was lying there on the dashboard, where it had been for the trip to Arkansas and back. Yvain, the Knight with the Lion.

  “Leon. That’s a great name. Good luck with him.”

  The guy walked back to his car, and waved at me as they drove away.

  I sat there, wondering why a random stranger had given me a dog leash.

  “Who even does that?” I said to Leon. He really was the saddest, ugliest dog. It was a stupid thing to cry about, but I was tired, and LaReigne was in jail, and Gentry was in jail, and Edrard was dead, and I missed Marcus, so I cried. After twenty minutes of watching me cry, Leon must have gotten bored, because he laid down in the seat. Not on the passenger side like before, but right next to me, with his giant head on my leg.

  Even though my foot fell asleep about twenty miles down the road, I didn’t make him move his head, and we drove the rest of the way to Wichita like that.

  * * *

  —

  I DIDN’T KNOW who else to call, so I called Julia from the restaurant, since they were closed on Mondays. Once I offered to pay her, she agreed to meet me at the Franks’ house, so I could drop off Gentry’s truck.

  I parked it in the street, hoping not to be noticed. I’d wanted to do it under cover of darkness, but I knew that would look suspicious. I moved my stuff first: my purse and backpack. Then I put the leash on Leon. He looked at me, but didn’t move.

  “Come on.” I pulled on the leash, and he walked across the seat and jumped down. When I op
ened the back door of Julia’s car for him, though, he just looked at me.

  “Oh, you weren’t kidding about the dog,” she said. “He doesn’t have fleas, does he?”

  “No.” I had no idea.

  “Get in,” I said to Leon. I was starting to feel like I’d made a terrible mistake. I’d brought him all the way from Missouri, and maybe he’d only come with me because I was driving Gentry’s truck. I tried to nudge him into the car, but he wouldn’t go.

  “Hold on,” I said to Julia. I closed the door and walked across the street to the Franks’ house, with Leon following me on the leash. I rang the doorbell, feeling sick with something right in between fear and shame.

  Charlene’s sister, Bernice, answered the door, so I could guess what had happened after I called Carlees. He would have called the sheriff in Little River, and then he would have called his parents. They would have asked Bernice to babysit, while they drove to Arkansas to take care of Gentry. To clean up the mess I made.

  “Zee?” she said, and kind of squinted at me.

  “I brought Gentry’s truck back.” I held out the keys, but she was looking at Leon.

  “Is Gentry with you?” She looked at me, then out at Gentry’s truck, then at Leon again.

  “No. I just brought his truck back,” I said.

  As soon as I passed the keys to her, I turned around and walked to Julia’s car. I opened the back door and got in. That worked, because Leon jumped in after me. As Julia pulled away, Bernice was standing on the front porch with her cellphone pressed to her ear.

  At Mom’s house, I had Julia pull in behind my car. She stared at the disaster in Mom’s front yard, but I pretended like it wasn’t even there. I took out the half ounce of weed and the hundred dollars I’d promised her and passed them over the front seat to her.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “No problem. You know, after all this dies down, I’m sure Lance will be okay with you coming back to the restaurant.”

  “That’s okay. I don’t think I’m coming back.”

  I walked Leon over to my car and, while I was unlocking the door, I thought about how Gentry and I had stood next to it, and how I’d been a coward or a weakling. If I’d been braver or stronger, when he asked if I wanted to go alone, I would have said “Yes” instead of dragging him with me.

  I opened the front passenger door for Leon, and he got in without any fuss. When I drove away, Julia was still parked there, staring at the mess in Mom’s front yard.

  I went down Broadway until I came to one of those run-down motels with a sign that said PET FRIENDLY. Leon had been happy enough riding around in the car, but to get him into the motel room, I had to drag him by the collar. He acted like he’d never been inside before. I ordered a pizza, and while I waited for it to be delivered, I put Leon in the tub and washed him with motel soap. He didn’t fight me, but he stood under the running water with his head down, not even looking at me. Once he was toweled off, he ran out to the room and hid between the bed and the wall, like he was worried I had something worse planned for him. After the pizza came, though, he jumped up on the bed without even waiting for me to invite him. I split the pizza with him, right down the middle.

  Then I knew why I’d brought Leon with me. Because he needed to be taken care of, and I needed someone to take care of.

  CHAPTER 47

  Deputy Evangelista

  Three to the morgue, two to the hospital, and two to jail. A pretty typical headcount for a meth deal gone bad, except there was no meth lab. The only thing in the barn was a stolen SUV with half of a new paint job. We found a little weed in the house, but not enough for three men to end up dead over. We weren’t going to be able to question the two injured until they came out of surgery, and the woman wouldn’t say anything except, “I want a lawyer.”

  The kid with the sword was an interesting possibility, though. We were thinking PCP at first, because he was wacked out, sitting in the interrogation room, covered in blood, talking to himself a mile a minute.

  “I hear thee! I hear thee! What boon is it to me? Thou art as good to me as a bucket of water to a drowning man. Yea, I defied thee. ’Tis on my head. I hear! Yea, I pray thou art right, for if I am to go to hell, I shall not spend eternity in thy company.”

  It went on like that for two hours. Zelker and I watched him, thinking eventually he’d wind down. Off and on the whole time, the kid kept clenching his shoulders up around his ears and cracking his neck. He’d do that for ten minutes, and then bang his head on the table. After the fifth or sixth time, I started to worry he was going to give himself a concussion.

  Then he started saying, “Nay, it itcheth not,” and a lot of crazy stuff I couldn’t really understand.

  “Seriously, what do you think he’s on?” Zelker said.

  By then we knew we had those two escaped convicts from Kansas, one dead, and one in the county hospital trying to die. We were working on identifying everybody else, so we decided to take a run at this kid. Fingerprint him, swab his hands for GSR, take a blood sample, see if we could get a statement.

  Once we were inside with him, I started with a trade-off.

  “You got an itch you need scratched?” I said.

  “Nay, it itcheth not,” he said. He was staring at the wall, with his jaw clenched.

  “You sure? We could undo those cuffs, if you tell us your name.”

  “I am called Gentry Frank.”

  “There. Easy enough.” I unlocked the cuffs, planning to give him his right hand free.

  “I pray thee, my lord, my left hand,” he said.

  So I kept his right hand cuffed to the table. For a second, he rested his left hand flat on the top of his head. Then he brought it down to the back of his neck and started scratching. Ten solid minutes he scratched his neck.

  “That can’t be good,” Zelker said, but the kid actually looked more relaxed the longer he scratched. He’d spent two hours shouting at himself and banging his head on the table, but after ten minutes of scratching, he was calm.

  “Okay, Gentry Frank. I’m Deputy Evangelista and this is Deputy Zelker. Do you want to tell me what happened tonight?”

  He took a deep breath and started in like he was reciting something.

  “Sir Edrard and I gone there this night to rescue the lady LaReigne from the knaves that kidnapped her. He armed with his bow, I armed with my sword, we came upon them unawares, but ere we could make away with their captive, they would fight us. We fought and tho Sir Edrard be valiant, he was sore wounded.”

  I looked at Zelker like Are you hearing this shit?

  “That is one crazy-ass story,” Zelker said.

  “’Tis no lie.” Most people tried to sell their lies with eye contact, but the whole time we’d been in with him, Gentry Frank never looked us in the eye. Like he couldn’t.

  “Maybe we could try it again from the beginning,” I said. “Only this time in regular English?”

  An hour later, it was pretty clear we weren’t going to get that. If he was lying, it wasn’t to protect himself, because he admitted that he’d stabbed two men with the sword we had in evidence. He couldn’t or wouldn’t tell us about how anybody else had ended up dead.

  “What about this guy with an arrow in his leg, an arrow in his shoulder, and a bullet in his head?” Zelker slid the picture across the table to Gentry. The look on the kid’s face never changed, but he kept squeezing his right hand into a fist.

  “I know not. I was not there when he was slain.”

  “What about this guy? Conrad Ligett. Two bullets in him. Were you there when he was slain?” I said.

  “Nay. I know not how he was slain, but Barnwell, I slew him, and another man.”

  “Well, Barnwell isn’t dead,” Zelker said.

  “He yet lives?”

  I figured the kid would look disappointed or something but he kept
his poker face.

  “Yep. So, you know who Barnwell is? And Ligett?” I said.

  “Yea. I saw them upon the news. They aren knaves and men of murderous intent. ’Tis no great harm that they should be slain.”

  Zelker laughed, and I shook my head at him.

  “And that’s what you went there to do?” I said. “To kill them? That was your plan?”

  “Nay. ’Twas my intent to negotiate for the lady LaReigne’s freedom. ’Twas not I who struck the first blow.”

  That was all we could get out of Gentry Frank, and after he’d given us the same version three times, he asked for some water. Zelker got up to get it, but he stopped at the door and looked back at Gentry with a frown on his face.

  “Where did all that blood come from?” he said.

  I got up and went around the table, where I could see there was a puddle of blood under Gentry’s chair. I’d thought all the blood on him was from his friend, but that would have long since dried up. The blood on the floor was fresh.

  So I recuffed him, loaded him in a patrol car, and drove him over to the county hospital. They put him in one of the back cubicles, where I cuffed him to the bed. Not that I thought he was going to cause trouble, because he seemed pretty calm. Not much like the kid who’d been banging his head on the table. Once the doctor cut his pant leg open and started messing around with his leg, Gentry went back to scratching his neck and talking to himself.

  “I know well thou art wroth for I defied thee, but speak.” Then he turned right around and said, “Wilt thou not cease plaguing me? I have prayed. I will pray, but I would hear the Witch.”

  “What is that?” I said, when the doctor tossed a big bloody wad into the basin.

  “Tampon.”

  “He stuck a tampon in his leg?”

  “Good wound packing in a pinch,” the doctor said.