The Reckless Oath We Made

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.