The Reckless Oath We Made

by Bryn Greenwood

  I was feeling the first unraveled edge of panic, when Dirk let out a low wheezy breath. He wasn’t dead.

  “Well, that was educational,” Dane said. He picked up his cigarette, put it between his lips, and lit it.

  “At least one of you boys learned something,” Uncle Alva said, and I realized that in the middle of his coughing, he was laughing.

  Dirk groaned and mumbled, “I think maybe I broke something.”

  “Serve you right if you did, you goddamn jackass,” Uncle Alva said.

  “Would you like a beer?” I said to Gentry.

  “Yea, my lady.”

  I wouldn’t have been offended if he’d slapped my ass when I got up. I’d been worried about him establishing his place, and after what he’d done to Dirk, did he need anything besides a woman fetching him a beer?

  When I came out with the can of beer, Dirk had managed to sit up, propped against the porch railing. At least his back wasn’t broken.

  “I don’t suppose you learned anything from that,” Uncle Alva was saying to him.

  “Like what?”

  “I like to think there’s two lessons what a half-smart man could take away from this.”

  “Oh, now you’re gonna hear it,” Dane said.

  “My thanks,” Gentry said, when I handed him the beer. He had his head down, so I wasn’t sure if he was paying attention to my uncle and my cousins.

  “First of all,” Uncle Alva said. “You’d do well to remember that a man has a sacred obligation to his guests. Same as he has a duty to his host. You see how them things go together.”

  Dane rolled his eyes, but Gentry nodded. Uncle Alva was speaking his language. Dirk was still checking to see if all his limbs worked. He must have bitten his tongue, because he had blood on his lips.

  “What’s the other lesson?” Dane said.

  “Don’t think just cuz a man’s a head shorter than you that you can whoop him. Boy’s built like a brick shithouse. He ain’t afraid of that dog, and he ain’t afraid of you. If you’d bothered to take his measure, you wouldn’ta tangled with him. You was so busy yukking it up, you didn’t see him taking your measure. He didn’t come at you til he’d looked to see whether you could be took.”

  “Nay,” Gentry said. “’Twas to assure myself a fair fight, but I mistook thy son for my equal. I repent if I wounded him.”

  Uncle Alva crowed laughing while Gentry took a drink of his beer.

  I figured Dirk would try to brush it off, but he seemed to be genuinely hurting. After he’d sat on the porch floor for twenty minutes, Gentry offered him a hand up. I dragged another rocking chair down the porch for Dirk, and then I suggested what was pretty much my go-to icebreaker: “Do you all wanna get high?”

  I got the weed out of my backpack, but the pipe had gone missing, probably down by the fire ring at Mud Manor. I used Gentry’s knife to turn an empty beer can into a pipe, which we all passed around. Gentry and Uncle Alva only took a few puffs, but Dirk hit it hard. We made peace without too much more trouble.

  After we were all a little buzzed, Dane went in and opened one of the windows in the front parlor so he could listen to the Royals game on the radio.

  Dirk started a long, rambling story about somebody Dane played football with in high school committing suicide. Dane took up the rest of the story, about the dead guy’s sister borrowing five hundred bucks from him. It turned into a rant about users, and if I was reading between the lines, it had to do with the dead guy’s sister dating a black guy instead of Dane.

  “That’s where the dog come from,” Dirk said. “I bought him off her nigger boyfriend for fifty bucks.”

  “Yeah, and I’m still out five hundred bucks and you got a nigger dog don’t even like you,” Dane said.

  “’Tis not my wish to offend ye who aren my hosts, but I will not bear that word,” Gentry said. He wasn’t looking at Dane or Dirk, but he had a serious expression on his face. I felt like shit, because I’d been listening to them talk that way and never said a word. I’d spent too much time around people like that. People like Toby and Asher.

  “You got a problem with me saying nigger?” Dane said.

  “Don’t be an asshole,” I said.

  “My mother is a lady of color, and I will not hear a word that impugns her or her people.”

  “Yeah? Or what?”

  “Say it again and I shall meet thee on the field of battle,” Gentry said.

  “I don’t recommend that,” Dirk said to Dane.

  “Mind your mouth,” Uncle Alva said. “This is my house, and I won’t have you insulting my guests.” I’d thought he was asleep in his chair.

  “Your guests.” Dane snorted, but he didn’t say it again. After the baseball game was over, he went inside and switched to a country music station.

  “So for real? Your mama’s a colored lady?” Dirk looked at Gentry like that changed everything Gentry had said and done.

  “Yea. And she is worthy of all esteem.” I don’t think it occurred to Gentry to explain that she was his adoptive mother.

  “Well, shit. No offense, man. I didn’t know.” Dirk looked embarrassed, and after a minute, he said, “Come on, Zee. Get up and dance with me.”

  He was stoned, I could barely two-step, and then he started getting overly friendly.

  “Don’t put your hand on my ass, your pervert,” I said.

  “Or what? Is your boyfriend gonna knock me down again?”

  “Okay, first of all, I’m your cousin. So gross. And two, yeah, if I tell him to, he will.”

  “He take orders from you?” Dirk took a step back from me and looked at Gentry. “You take orders from her?”

  “Yea. I am the lady’s champion. ’Tis my honor to do her bidding.” He wasn’t drunk or stoned, but he looked relaxed, leaning back on the glider with his sword hand closed around a can of beer. I went to sit next to him.

  “Boy, you pussy-whipped, ain’t you?” Dane said. “Between her and your mama. Pussy. Whipped.”

  “I know it not,” Gentry said.

  “You don’t know what that means? Means you letting a girl boss you around. Cuz you afraid of her. Afraid of her pussy.”

  “I’m pretty sure it’s the opposite,” I said. “I bet you’re the only one here afraid of a cunt. I know Gentry’s not.”

  Dirk laughed, which pissed off Dane even more.

  “Lord, girl, you got a mouth on you,” Uncle Alva said. “Now, these boys is up to all hours, but I need to get some shut-eye. Let me make up the guest room for you two.”

  Gentry shifted on the glider and turned his head toward me. Were we having a moment?

  “Oh, you don’t need to do that,” I said. “We have a tent. We can set it up in the yard.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Dane said. “You’d better sleep in the house. We got all kinda critters out here.”

  “I am well-armed,” Gentry said.

  “I ain’t saying you ain’t, just that you might get more than you bargained for.”

  “What? Do you have bears? Mountain lions? Isn’t that what the guard dog is for?” I said, but Uncle Alva cleared his throat.

  “No. Dane’s right enough. You’d best stay in the house.”

  It felt like they were talking in code, but unless I was willing to keep pushing, we were sleeping in the house. I followed Uncle Alva upstairs, and he brought out some sheets from the linen cupboard in the hall. They were musty like they’d been in the closet for years, but there weren’t any bugs or mouse shit in them. Same for the mattress in the guest room. It was probably older than me, but I didn’t see any bugs in the seams as I made it up.

  A few minutes later, Gentry came in carrying his big rucksack and a sleeping bag. I wondered what weapons he had in the rucksack, and whether he was planning to sleep alone in the bag.

  “
Now, I’m just downstairs in the back room, if you need anything. The boys got their own trailer, so they don’t sleep up here. You’ll have it to yourself,” Uncle Alva said and, after he went downstairs, Gentry and I were alone.

  On a scale of one to ten, with the old amusement park being about a seven, Uncle Alva’s house was maybe a four on the horror movie scale. When I went to brush my teeth, I wasn’t bracing myself for a ghost to look back at me from the old mirror over the sink, but it wouldn’t have surprised me. I wondered how long it had been since anybody had slept up there. On the way back from the bathroom, I peeked into the bedroom that had belonged to Aunt Tess and Uncle Alva, and my grandparents before that. A layer of dust covered everything. I didn’t imagine Uncle Alva had slept there since Aunt Tess died. I wondered if her clothes were still hanging in the closet, but that was strictly ghost territory, so I went back to the guest room lickety-split. At some point that evening, Uncle Alva must have given the guest room a sweeping and dusting, because it wasn’t that bad.

  Gentry was sharpening a knife, so at least he was prepared for horror movie developments, but he came back from his turn in the bathroom smelling like toothpaste and soap and looking freshly shaved. That explained the knife sharpening.

  He looked at his phone and sighed. Then he said, “I must call my mother.”

  “Do you want some privacy?”

  “Nay.” I still thought maybe I should leave, but his end of the conversation was a lot of Yea, my lady and Nay, my lady. He told her we were staying with Lady Zhorzha’s kin. “Yea, all is well. My lady’s uncle, Sir Alva, hath made us welcome.” That was kind of true.

  There wasn’t anybody for me to call, so I laid back on the double bed and looked at stuff on my phone until he hung up. Then we were alone, together, in that creepy, drafty heap of a house. With just the one bed. Uncle Alva only put us together because he thought Gentry was my man, so I considered offering to make up one of the other beds, but he had his sleeping bag, and I didn’t want to be alone when the ghosts showed up.

  Plus his T-shirt and his boxers were a little too tight around his thighs and his arms, and that made sharing a bed more interesting. I got up and turned off the overhead light, so the only light left was his little camping lantern. Then I curled up on the bed with my legs uncovered. For a minute, Gentry stood with his back to me, looking at my reflection in the mirror over the dresser. Then he turned around and came across the room to stand next to the bed. Left hand on top of his head. Right hand clenched. Relaxed. Clenched.

  “Come to bed,” I said.

  “Nay, I shall sleep there and keep the watch.” He pointed to where he’d unrolled his sleeping bag near the door.

  “Well, you can sleep on the floor, but I wasn’t really talking about sleeping. What stories haven’t you told me?” When I scooted over, he sat down on the edge of the bed.

  “A great many, but I would hear a tale of thine,” he said.

  “I don’t know any stories.”

  “Tell me how thou wast wounded.”

  “You wanna hear about my wreck? It’s not very interesting.” In addition to being boring, it was kind of awful, so I told it like a fairy tale. Like Melusine.

  “Once upon a time, there was this girl. Her mother was a dragon. Stop me if you’ve heard this one. One day a prince, the Prince of Merriam, came around and acted like he wanted to make her a princess. She wasn’t interested in being a princess, but she figured it might be better than being a scullery wench. So she went back to his castle with him, and for a year and a day—” That was something LaReigne had taught me. A Wiccan thing that was like marriage. Handfasting. As soon as I thought about LaReigne, I got this nervous hitch in my stomach. LaReigne was out there alone. Worse than alone. With some piece of shit who’d taken advantage of her.

  “My lady,” Gentry said. He’d been sitting on the edge of the bed, but he laid down next to me. “Art thou—”

  “So for a year and a day, they were together. Then the dragon’s daughter found out she was going to have a baby, and the prince got pissed off and acted like the dragon’s daughter was trying to trick him into making her a princess. Except she never wanted to be a princess, and she thought the prince was acting like a royal shitbag. In fact, she thought maybe she should just ditch the prince and keep the baby. For the record, babies are nice. Princes, not so much.

  “So the prince and the dragon’s daughter had a big fight, and the prince took her . . . carriage keys away to keep her from leaving. So she hopped on the prince’s horse and rode away, and he came after her in the carriage. He rode up on her ass so close that when some other asshole swerved his carriage into her lane, she couldn’t slow down fast enough, and she got her front tire clipped and wrecked the . . . horse. Then the prince got what he wanted, because she didn’t have the baby, and he got to go home to his mommy and daddy. The dragon girl’s sister came to rescue her, and later she met a knight at physical therapy, and you know what happened next. The end.”

  “But she was ne a dragon ne a princess,” Gentry said. “She was a phoenix.”

  For a second I got teary-eyed, because that was exactly why I’d got the tattoo. To cover up my surgical scars and the massive stretch of road rash down my leg, but also to remind myself that I was going to rise from the ashes. I never told anybody that, and the fact that he got it seemed like the nicest thing.

  “Yeah, it turned out she was a fire bird instead of a fire lizard, and she went and flew around the shitty prince’s castle and cursed him, and she was never seen there again.”

  He laughed, which made me laugh. We laid there for a while not talking, until I said, “Can I touch you?”

  “Yea, my lady.”

  He was lying on his back, so I looked him over, trying to choose where. I picked the two scars under his chin and ran my thumb over them. Then I brought my hand back to my own space.

  “That’s a dog bite, too?” I said.

  “Yea.”

  “So, Miranda didn’t get rid of her dogs, even after that happened?

  “Nay, they weren not her dogs. She was but fifteen years old. They weren the dogs of her stepfather,” he said.

  “She was only fifteen when she had you?”

  “Nay, she was but twelve when I was born. I was three when the dog bit me, and she had no power to make her stepfather give up the dogs.”

  “Oh my god. She was twelve?” I took back some of the horrible things I’d thought about Miranda, because that would fuck you up, having a baby when you were twelve. “Who’s your father?”

  “I know not,” he said. If it bothered him to talk about it, I couldn’t tell.

  “Okay, just be honest. Why did you take me to Miranda’s house that night? It was because you thought I was too white trash to take to your real house, wasn’t it? You didn’t want Charlene to meet me, did you?”

  “My lady, nay. In truth, I took thee thither for the same reason I first wished to know Miranda. It granted me more freedom. If I said to my lady mother, I go out, she would say, Where will you go? Who will you see? What will you do? When will you return?

  “If I said to her, I go to see Miranda, she dared not question me, for she felt it was not her place to query my right to see the woman that gave birth to me. The night I took thee to Miranda, ’twas with the same desire. That I be not questioned. That thou be not questioned. How do you know Gentry? How did you meet Gentry?

  “Above all, I desired my mother not take thee aside to tell thee I am autistic. To tell thee of my voices. I longed for thee to know me ere thou heard such things.”

  “Yeah, she did do that,” I said. “But I kinda get why she thinks she needs to.”

  “Lady Charlene meaneth always to care for me, in the way she thinketh best.”

  “So what’s up with your other family now? Is Brand in prison yet?” I meant it as a joke, but Gentry didn’t laugh.


  “I know not. I saw them not after that night,” he said.

  “Wait. What? You haven’t seen them since that night?”

  “I could not bear it. They cared not for me, and they shamed me before thee. Thou wert wroth with me.”

  “I was not ever mad at you. Things were just complicated,” I said. I held out my hand like I was going to touch him, but I waited until he nodded, before I touched the bite scars on his shoulder.

  “And you’re not afraid of dogs, even though that happened?”

  “Nay. I was a child and knew naught of dogs. Now I ken I must earn their respect.”

  “Was that the plan tonight?” I said.

  “’Twas only to make amity with the dog. And methinks him hungry.”

  “Yeah, I don’t think they feed him enough. Probably some stupid bullshit about making him tougher. I wish people wouldn’t get an animal if they’re not going to take care of it.”

  “’Tis why I have no dog, tho I would. I am not worthy yet.” He rolled onto his side and looked at me. My face, my mouth. I wondered if he was going to kiss me.

  “What do you mean by worthy?” I said.

  “Once a man earneth a dog’s devotion, ’tis nigh impossible to undo. A dog giveth his loyalty even to a man that beateth him and starveth him. I must be worthy ere I accept a dog’s trust.” He said it with a level of sincerity I didn’t think I’d ever managed about anything.

  “Well, if you’re not worthy of a dog, I definitely am not worthy of a champion,” I said.

  “’Tis not for thee to be worthy. ’Twas for me to become worthy. When I was a boy of fourteen, the Witch told me I would be given the honor of protecting a lady. For eight years, I waited.”

  “But why me? Seriously, I have never done anything to deserve a champion.”

  “When first I saw thee, thou wore a blouse of green,” he said. “Thy leg was braced and thy physic had caused thee great pain. The Witch said, There is she.”

  “I think the Witch might be a little daffy. Like what if she just randomly picked me?”