The only channel that worked was a show from a long time ago about a family from the frontier who drove in wagons and raised cows. The women looked like nuns and had big dresses and the men were always shooting things and getting into fights before drinking beer at the end on the front porch of their house, in chairs that rocked back and forth.
I had just started falling asleep in front of the settlers on TV when I heard footsteps coming from Uncle Richard’s room down the hall.
“What are you doing in here?” Uncle Richard asked. “Shouldn’t you be sleeping in your room?”
I pretended to snore and not hear him. He said he saw me move a few seconds ago and that he knew what fake snoring sounded like.
He pointed at the TV. “I can’t believe this is the best we can do.”
On the TV, the settlers were in Church. Uncle Richard went over to the TV and moved the antennas around. He was very used to the antennas. Uncle Richard did not work very much, since he had hurt his leg after getting hit crossing the street by a postal truck. They gave him a lot of money after and he bought the house and opened a bar for a while, until it closed from the people working there cheating him out of money.
The TV got fuzzier and he changed the channel to sports, which hadn’t worked when I first turned the TV on. He moved my feet out of the way and we started watching boxing.
“I think I know how this one ends,” I said.
“Well, don’t spoil it for me.”
One of the fighters was a lot better at first. I already saw the end of the fight and knew that the fighter who looked crappier ended up winning by knocking his opponent out three times in a row, very fast.
Uncle Richard scratched his chest and said he was going to get a beer. “Do you want anything?”
“No thank you,” I said.
He came back and sat down. We continued watching and somehow while the fighters punched each other, Uncle Richard had put his arm around me and was touching my shoulder with his fingers. I could feel him drawing something with his pointer. Then I recognized the shape. It was a letter Z. I started to wiggle, and he asked me what was wrong.
“You need to lighten up or you’ll end up like your brother,” he said, and I did not like that and wanted to yell at him, but I also did not want to get Gert in trouble. Gert and I had made a pinky swear, which was like a Viking pact, only then I did not know that I was a Viking and did not call it that. I did not learn I was a Viking until Gert gave me Kepple’s Guide to the Vikings for Christmas. Gert and Uncle Richard were always fighting about something, ever since Gert got bigger than him. Uncle Richard used to slap Gert and call him “boy” and say that if he lived under Uncle Richard’s roof, then he would live under Uncle Richard’s rules too.
Even though we were related by blood, we were not the same tribe because of how he treated Gert.
While sitting on the couch, I tried to watch the television and prayed that Uncle Richard would not hear Gert.
Some sex noises came from the bedroom and to hide them I made a coughing noise and said that I was starting to get a cold.
“It’s going around,” Uncle Richard said. He told me to wait right there while he got some brandy. “An old family remedy,” he said, coming back with the small bottle that smelled sweet but also very strong.
He poured a little bit into the cap that he took off the bottle and handed it to me. “When we were sick as kids, me and your mom, we used to take a nip of this and it would heat us right up.” I told him it smelled bad, and he said that was sort of the point. “Trust me,” he said. “Just make it all go down in one gulp.”
I did what he said and the brandy went into my stomach, where it did warm it up. I made a face.
“It doesn’t taste very good,” I said.
“Yeah, but it feels good. Right?” Uncle Richard smiled, showing his teeth, which he had gotten whitened so that they were not so yellow anymore from the coffee and the cigarettes.
He put his arm around me again, and this time I felt his finger go from my shoulder to my arm and then his hand was between my arm and my body. Gert sometimes put his arm around his girlfriends like that. Then I felt his hand touch my chest, and I froze.
The sex noises got louder from Gert’s and my room, and this time I forgot to cough. The fingers stopped. Uncle Richard had heard them.
“Motherfucker,” he said, and got up to go to Gert’s room. I tried to hold him back and he pushed me down. “Not the time to be fucking around,” he said.
I threw off my blanket and ran and tried to stand in front of the door.
“Move,” he said.
“No,” I said, and like Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings said, “YOU SHALL NOT PASS.”
Uncle Richard pushed open the door. The lights were off in the bedroom but the light from the living room made everything bright. Gert stood behind Charlene, who had her arms on the chair at Gert’s desk. They were both naked.
Her face turned away and she ran to the bed and Gert asked what the fuck was going on.
“Get out of here, you little whore,” Uncle Richard said, throwing clothes at Charlene. “Your mother would be ashamed of you.”
There was a lot of shouting and Charlene started putting on her shirt. Gert stood up to Uncle Richard, who was wearing clothes while Gert had no clothes on.
“What’s the matter with you?” he said, and Uncle Richard slapped him across the face.
Charlene screamed and ran by me in her underwear, holding the rest of her clothes.
“You’re a piece of white trash, just like your father,” Uncle Richard said.
When Uncle Richard said that about our father, Gert punched him. It was the first time Gert had ever hit Uncle Richard, while Uncle Richard had hit Gert a lot. They started wrestling and I didn’t know what to do to make them stop. They knocked into the desk and knocked over a light. Uncle Richard’s leg bent in a weird way, and for the first time, Uncle Richard could not be more powerful than Gert.
So I started shouting, as loud as I could, until they stopped wrestling. Uncle Richard pushed himself off of Gert and stood between us, breathing fast and hard.
“Stop it,” he said.
Gert wiped blood off of his mouth. “Don’t yell at her,” he said.
And Uncle Richard threw up his hands and walked out of the room, saying that he regretted the day he ever took us in. Once he was gone I stopped screaming. Gert put on his underwear and sat on the bed, holding a T-shirt to his face to stop the blood.
“Fuck,” he said, hitting his knees. “Now everyone at school is going to hear about this. Why did you tell him?”
“I didn’t tell,” I said. “He heard you being loud.”
“Fuck,” Gert repeated, and threw the shirt on the ground and grabbed a sock to stop the bleeding.
We sat together on the bed.
“We need to get out of here,” Gert said, turning the sock inside out so that he could use the clean inside part to wipe his nose again. “By any fucking means necessary.”
chapter seven
The next morning, the morning of the Midterm Exam, I meant to wake Gert up and make him a powerful breakfast before his test, even though I was pissed at him for drinking and having sex all night with someone not AK47.
But he was gone and so was the girl. His door was locked and his shoes weren’t there, and the house was silent. Outside the day was getting loud with cars and people going to work.