The Reckless Oath We Made

by Bryn Greenwood

“I know,” I said. “But I don’t know why you’re selling his land.”

  “Well, it’s a simple matter of economies. I cosigned the loan for Gentry, because he was only nineteen, but he has been solely responsible for the mortgage and the taxes. We’ve been doing that out of his savings, but that’s about to come to an end. We can’t afford to keep paying it without his income. He understands it has to be sold.”

  “I can pay it,” I said.

  “Oh, the shit is getting deep in there.” Charlene slammed a cabinet in the kitchen and something metal fell on the floor.

  “I think that’s a very noble gesture,” Bill said, “but the property taxes come due on December first, and it’s quite a bit of money that has to be paid all at once.”

  “I can pay it.”

  Charlene came stomping into the dining room and tossed two things onto the table in front of me. An envelope from the tax assessor in Chautauqua County and a loan payment book.

  “Sure, you go on ahead and pay it,” she said.

  Bill didn’t say anything, so I looked at the tax bill first. Almost four thousand dollars, which wasn’t as bad as I’d expected. The next coupon in the payment book was for November first, in a week. Five hundred and eighty dollars. I rounded up and did the math in my head. The mortgage and taxes were about eleven thousand dollars a year.

  Rosalinda’s phone had been practice for the idea of giving away money. The fifty thousand for LaReigne would go to Marcus. I wouldn’t touch that. But I had thirty-four thousand dollars for me in the safety deposit box. That would almost pay off my medical bills, but it would also pay three years of the mortgage and taxes on Gentry’s land. And I could add to that. I could pick up a few more shifts, or if worse came to worst, I could do the run for Toby. I just had to keep everything afloat until Gentry got on his feet again. I put the tax bill back in the envelope and stuffed the coupon book in there, too.

  “I promise I’ll pay it,” I said. It was all I’d come there for, so I pushed my chair back from the table and stood up. “Just, please, don’t tell Gentry. You can tell him whatever you want, but don’t tell him I’m paying it.”

  “You’re sure?” Bill said.

  I nodded and said, “Thanks.”

  I didn’t wait for them to walk me to the front door. I knew where it was.

  When I got to the foyer, I heard Charlene say, “She’s never going to pay that.”

  “We’ll see, I guess,” Bill said.

  As I went down the sidewalk, the front door opened behind me and Trang called my name. I waved at him over my shoulder, but kept walking. He came after me, crunching through the leaves, all the way to the car.

  “I’m glad to see you,” he said. “Gentry asked me to give you this, but I didn’t know where to send it.”

  He held out an envelope that had my name written on it. Lady Zhorzha Trego. I didn’t want it. Some of the worst anxiety I’d had in the last six months was about someday seeing Gentry or hearing from him. I could pay the mortgage and the taxes on Bryn Carreg, as long as I never had to open that envelope and read that letter, but Trang was holding it out, so I took it.

  “It’s a visitation form. So you can be on the list to go visit him. He wanted to mail it to you, but we didn’t have your address.”

  “Why would he want to see me?” I said, even though I could think of a few reasons, and they were none of them good. The way I felt about seeing LaReigne, I figured that was how Gentry would feel about seeing me. He’d stopped seeing Miranda and her kids because they’d been rude, and I’d done a lot worse. I could never live up to Gentry’s standards.

  “You’re kidding, right?” Trang laughed. “He’s your champion. You’re his lady. You respect him for what he’s good at.”

  “I still don’t think—”

  “My mother threw his sword out. The big one over his bed. She took it and got rid of it. I know she’s upset, but she doesn’t care at all about chivalry or his knighthood. You do, and that matters to him. So yeah, he wants to see you.”

  “Okay,” I said, even though I didn’t mean it. I just wanted to escape without crying.

  Trang stuck out his hand, so I took it. Except instead of shaking my hand, he bent over it, like Gentry would have.

  “Fare thee well, Lady Zhorzha. We shall meet again.”

  “Thank you, Sir Trang.”

  He laughed and shook his head.

  “Not yet, but one of these days.” He let go of my hand and waved at me as he jogged back up to the house.

  I was such a coward, it took me two days to open that envelope. Like Trang had said, it was a visitation application form for Arkansas Department of Corrections Inmate No. 1489736, housed at the Ouachita River Unit at Malvern, Arkansas. In the middle of the form was a section for me to fill out. Name, address, phone, driver’s license, and a bunch of security questions. I knew how it worked. I would fill out the form, send it back, and the Arkansas DOC would run a background check on me. Assuming they decided I was okay, I would be added to Gentry’s visitors list.

  I came home every day for a week and looked at the form on the kitchen counter but didn’t mail it, because according to the instructions, I was supposed to mail it back to Gentry. Could I stick it in an envelope and send it by itself? Or did I have to send a letter with it? I couldn’t think of anything to write. Hey, sorry I totally fucked up your life. XO, Zee.

  When I was a kid, Mom made us write letters to my dad every week. Just tell him about what you’re doing, she always said, but it felt awful to send him a letter full of things he couldn’t be there for. This was worse than that, because at least it wasn’t my fault my father had gone to prison.

  Maybe I never would have mailed it, but I kept thinking about Gentry’s sword, about his mother throwing it out. Because I knew she loved him, and I knew she didn’t want to hurt him, but she’d taken something he cared about and thrown it away. Every day for a week, I looked at that visitation form, and I thought, I’m not much, but I’m not nothing. I could do at least as good a job of caring about him as anybody else. If I could pay his mortgage and taxes, I could go visit him.

  CHAPTER 59

  Marcus

  Aunt Zee got a dog. She said he was Sir Gentry’s dog, but he could be my dog, too. Leon lived at her house and slept in her bed, but when I threw his ball out in the backyard, he brought it back to me. I had my own room at Aunt Zee’s house, but if I got up in the middle of the night, I could crawl into Aunt Zee’s bed, and sleep with her and Leon.

  I wished I could live with Aunt Zee all the time. She didn’t get mad if I made a mess or if I was noisy, and we had fun. But I only got to visit her every other weekend. Sometimes we went to a movie or skating or to the playground, but sometimes we stayed in our pajamas on Saturday and played Go Fish and ate donuts and petted Leon.

  Then one Saturday we drove a long way, at least two hours. I kept asking Aunt Zee where we were going, but she wouldn’t say.

  “It’s a surprise,” she said, but it wasn’t a good surprise.

  “I don’t want to go to prison.” I didn’t want to cry like a baby, either, but I did. Why did she want to take me there?

  “You’re not going to prison. We’re here to see your mom.”

  “I don’t want to,” I said.

  “Why not? Don’t you miss her?”

  “Yes, but she’s bad!”

  “She’s not bad. Who told you she was bad?”

  “Grandy and Grammy. Grandy says Mommy is bad bad bad. Daddy said a bad word I’m not allowed to say, but Grandy says that Mommy killed people.”

  “Oh, bullshit!” Aunt Zee yelled so loud it scared me, and hit the steering wheel with her hand. “What does Grandy say about your dad? Did Grandy tell you that your dad killed somebody?”

  “No, he didn’t! He made a bad decision. That’s what Grammy said.”

  “Your m
om made a bad decision, too. Your dad’s bad decision got somebody killed. And your mom . . .”

  “What about Mommy?” I said.

  “Well, your mom’s bad decision got people killed, too. She was trying to help someone, only that person was a liar and killed some people. Which is a bad thing, but she didn’t know that would happen. She isn’t any worse than your dad. They both did bad things.”

  “You take it back,” I said, because it made me sad. If Mommy and Daddy were that bad, maybe they would never get to come home. Grandpa Leroy never got to come home.

  “I’m sorry, buddy. It’s a really hard, complicated grown-up thing. Come on, blow your nose.”

  Aunt Zee got a tissue out of her purse and put it up to my nose, so I hit her arm.

  “I’m not a baby!” I said.

  “If you’re not a baby, you know it’s not nice to hit people.”

  “I’m sorry.” I was sort of. She gave me the tissue, so I wiped my own nose. Then I cried some more, because I was scared to go to prison. Grandy and Grammy never took me to visit Daddy, because it was a bad environment. We only talked to Daddy on the phone.

  “You know, sometimes good people do stupid things and go to prison,” Aunt Zee said. “Not everybody in prison is bad.”

  “Like who?”

  I thought she would say Mommy, and I would know she was a liar, but she said, “Sir Gentry.”

  “Sir Gentry is in prison?” I didn’t know knights could go to prison, but it made me sad, because I liked him.

  “Yeah, that’s why Leon is our dog, because Sir Gentry is in prison. But he’s still a really good person.”

  “Did he do something bad?”

  “Yes and no. He broke the law, but he was trying to do something good. It just didn’t turn out right.”

  That scared me, because what if sometime I tried to do something good, but it didn’t turn out right, and I had to go to prison?

  That first time, we didn’t go see Mommy. Instead we drove home, took Leon for a long walk, and ate pizza.

  I thought maybe we wouldn’t have to go again, but my next Saturday with Aunt Zee, we went to Topeka again. I yelled at her, and even though I didn’t want to cry, I did. She gave me like ten tissues out of her purse, because I snotted a bunch.

  “Did you get it all cried out?” Aunt Zee said, when we got to Mommy’s prison.

  “I don’t wanna go.”

  She was quiet for a long time, and I hoped she would start the car like last time, but she put the car keys in her purse.

  “Ten minutes,” she said. “We’ll go in and sit with your mom for ten minutes. You don’t have to talk to her or anything else, but I want you to spend ten minutes. After that, we can go to the rain forest, okay?”

  “What rain forest?” I said. Because there aren’t any rain forests in Kansas. Those are only in South America.

  “The Topeka Zoo has a rain forest. The website says they have toucans and snakes and giant bats. If you’ll go see your mom for ten minutes, we can spend the rest of the day at the zoo.”

  “Okay.”

  She said ten minutes, but we walked through all the chain-link fences, and down sidewalks and hallways. There were policemen and police ladies, and Aunt Zee had to give them paperwork, and we walked through a big machine that scanned us, and then we waited in a hallway for a long time. None of that counted for our ten minutes.

  Finally, one of the police ladies said, “Visitors for LaReigne Trego-Gill,” and that meant we could go into a room that looked like the cafeteria at school. Aunt Zee took my hand and we walked across the room to a table, where there was a lady in a gray sweatshirt with short brown hair. She was crying and Aunt Zee hugged her, but I didn’t know why until the lady said, “Marcus, baby. I’m so glad to see you.” It was Mommy, but she looked different. Not just because her hair wasn’t blond, but because her face looked fatter.

  “Come give me a hug,” she said, but I hid behind Aunt Zee.

  At the other tables, there were more ladies in gray sweatshirts talking to people. There were other kids, too, and I wondered why their moms were in prison.

  “Just give him a minute,” Aunt Zee said. After she sat down, I stood next to her so she would put her arm around me.

  “How’s school?” Mommy said.

  “Okay.”

  “Just okay?”

  I nodded.

  “Mom says you got a dog, Zee.”

  “His name is Leon,” I said.

  “What kind of dog is he?”

  “Big and ugly.”

  “He’s a pit bull,” Aunt Zee said and rolled her eyes at me.

  “But you always say he’s big and ugly.”

  “Yeah, but that’s not what kind of dog he is. That’s how he is.”

  “I don’t care if he’s big and ugly. He’s a good dog.”

  “Yes, he is,” Aunt Zee said.

  “He’s part my dog, too. And part Sir Gentry’s dog.”

  Mommy glared at Aunt Zee. Then she said, “Did you bring some money for the vending machines?”

  “Do you want something?” Aunt Zee said.

  “I thought Marcus might want a pop.”

  “Can I, Aunt Zee?”

  “Sure.” She got out her change purse and dumped a bunch of coins on the table. Then she leaned over and whispered to me, “Will you ask your mom if she wants something?”

  “Do you want something out of the vending machine?” I didn’t look at her when I said it, though.

  “No, baby. All I want is a hug.”

  I didn’t answer her.

  Aunt Zee slid the coins off the table into my hand and said, “Get whatever you want.”

  I walked all by myself to the other side of the room where the vending machines were. I could have run there—I was a fast runner—but I walked as slow as I could. Heel, toe, heel, toe. I put the coins in as slow as I could, too, using up all the nickels first, because the longer I took, the quicker the ten minutes could be over.

  CHAPTER 60

  Zee

  When I was recuperating from my motorcycle wreck LaReigne had given me this book about Mount Everest. I guess it was supposed to be motivational. People rising above difficulties and challenging themselves to climb the highest mountain. All I remember about Mount Everest is that the altitude is so high, there’s not enough oxygen, and it’s like one hundred degrees below zero. It’s so dangerous that when people die on Mount Everest, they leave them there. There’s one body they call Green Boots, and he’s right on the main route to the top of the mountain. Everybody has to walk past his frozen, mummified corpse that’s been there for two decades. How’s that for motivational?

  I thought it was a pretty good description of how relationships are. Everywhere you go, you leave behind the corpses of your failed relationships. If you’re lucky you can shove the body down into a crevasse, so you don’t have to look at it, but some bodies you can’t get rid of. You have to walk past them all the time. I doubt that’s what I was supposed to get out of the book, but there it is.

  That’s what I thought about bringing Marcus to visit LaReigne. He would be twenty-six years old before she was eligible for parole. I didn’t want her to be a corpse he had to walk past for the next twenty years, but I didn’t know what the answer was. I thought about how I had promised him we would all be together again, and there was no way to keep that promise. I didn’t agree with Mom that it was my duty to make sure LaReigne had a relationship with Marcus, but I did think he needed to have a relationship with her. I just thought it should be on his terms, which was why she was pissing me off so much.

  As soon as he was on his way to the vending machines, LaReigne said, “I don’t see why he can’t give me a hug when I haven’t seen him in so long.”

  “Do you have amnesia?” I said.

  “What’s that suppo
sed to mean?”

  “Do you not remember how hard this was when we were kids? Because I remember being terrified, and you’re acting like he’s supposed to be thrilled to see you.” I was trying not to lose my temper with her, but she wasn’t helping me.

  “And what’s this nonsense about Sir Gentry’s dog? Isn’t Gentry in prison?”

  “Marcus knows Gentry’s in prison. Just like his mommy and daddy.”

  “If it weren’t for me, his Aunt Zee would be, too,” LaReigne said.

  “Yeah, and I’m the only one who’s ever going to bring Marcus to see you, so stop wasting your breath threatening me.”

  For a minute, we looked at each other, and then LaReigne blinked and smiled like everything was fine. I’d seen her swallow her feelings like that a hundred times with Loudon. I didn’t know what to think about her doing it with me.

  “I was starting to think you were never bringing him to see me. Mom says you’ve had visitation for three months.”

  “Did she tell you I only get him every other weekend?” I said.

  “That’s six times he could have come to see me.” She was still smiling, but it was fake.

  “I tried to bring him two weekends ago, but he cried so much I felt like shit, so I didn’t make him come inside. He cried this time, too. Seriously, do you not remember that?”

  “I was older than you,” LaReigne said.

  “He’s almost the same age I was.”

  “How’s money? I know Mom’s phone bill is a lot, but it’s hard to get her off the phone once she gets started.”

  Like that was all on Mom. She only accepted the charges when LaReigne called. I was trying to think of a way to suggest maybe she didn’t need to call Mom so often, when Marcus came back to the table with three cans of pop hugged against his chest. A can of orange, a can of Coke for me, and a can of Diet Coke. That was what LaReigne always drank. When he slid it across the table to her, she didn’t even thank him. If it wasn’t some grand gesture, she didn’t know what love looked like.

  “Thanks, buddy,” I said. Even though I didn’t really want the Coke, I opened it and took a drink.