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.

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.