The Steep and Thorny Way

by Cat Winters

  “I’m upstairs,” she called. Her footsteps hurried across the floorboards above. “Hello!”

  She emerged at the top of the stairs and scampered down the steps with a copy of Motion Picture magazine tucked beneath her left arm, the white lace of her hem swishing against the curves of her legs, a smile brightening her eyes, which were as blue as her brother’s. She was one of those blondes so fair that even her eyebrows and lashes looked as yellow as morning sunshine, and she was prettier than all the motion-picture stars in the magazine she carried—all of them combined.

  “Hanalee . . .” Her smile faded, and she slowed to a stop on the last step. “Why do you look so upset? Did the boys say something to you out there?”

  “Would your mother mind if I stayed here tonight?”

  “What did they say?”

  I peeked over my shoulder at the empty driveway. “Are we able to talk privately without anyone overhearing?”

  “Mama’s in the dining room with Deputy Fortaine.”

  “She is? Why?”

  “He ate Sunday dinner with us. She invited him. Come here.” Fleur backed down the hallway next to the stairs and beckoned with a wiggle of her right index finger. “I’ll show you, so you can see what you think of this little tête-à-tête.”

  I lowered my valise to the floor, and we tiptoed past Mrs. Paulissen’s framed needlepoint meadowlarks and chickadees, which were hung on flowery red and yellow wallpaper that also reminded me of Christmas. At the far end of the hall hung a photograph of my family and theirs picnicking in the woods, back when we children hadn’t yet grown old enough to start at the schoolhouse on the edge of town. My father held us girls on his lap, and Laurence sat between our mothers, wearing a crown of leaves I’d made for him. Mr. Paulissen had taken the picture with his Kodak camera.

  Fleur nudged open the dining room door with the tips of her fingers. “Hanalee’s here,” she called inside.

  I poked my head around the corner and saw Deputy Fortaine, dressed in his Sunday-best suit and a smart striped tie, sitting at the oval table with Mrs. Paulissen. He was the most handsome law enforcer we had around—Hollywood handsome, to be honest. Yet his dark eyes and wavy coal-black hair made everyone whisper that he hid a secret life as a Jew or an Italian Catholic. Some people claimed his real last name was Fishstein.

  “Hello, Hanalee,” said Mrs. Paulissen, tucking a golden-blond curl behind her ear. She crossed her legs beneath the lace tablecloth, swinging the right one over the left. “How are your mother and Dr. Koning?”

  “They’re well, thank you.”

  “We’re planning to listen to some records, if that’s all right,” said Fleur.

  “That sounds fine, darling.” Mrs. Paulissen caressed the stem of her water goblet with a flirty little finger, as though she imagined the crystal to be Deputy Fortaine’s neck.

  “You two girls have a swell time,” said the deputy with his motion-picture-star smile.

  I bit my bottom lip to avoid laughing. Fleur shut the door, and we skedaddled back down the hallway to the living room.

  “You see? Those two lovebirds won’t pay any attention to us.” Fleur slipped a shiny black record out of a paper sleeve that crinkled in her hands. “And the music will muffle our conversation.” She placed the record on the Victrola and wound the crank on the side of the machine until Henry Burr’s sentimental “Faded Love Letters” drifted out of the horn-shaped speaker.

  I glanced at the window behind me, half expecting to find Joe Adder standing on the other side of the glass.

  “Come down here.” On the braided blue rug, Fleur laid open her copy of Motion Picture and flipped the pages to an article titled “The Vogue of Valentino.”

  “Look”—she turned another page—“an eminent psychologist claims that women have fallen passionately in love with Rudolph Valentino because American businessmen aren’t meeting their needs as lovers. Isn’t that a hoot?” She giggled in her rich, Fleur way that always quelled the worries inside my brain.

  I crouched down beside her, my knees digging into the braided rug, and I leveled my head next to hers. Henry Burr’s voice filled the room with music, and Valentino’s suave Italian face and figure arrested our eyes. I couldn’t even watch motion pictures. The next town over had a nickelodeon theater, but the manager had posted a sign on the door that said, NO NEGROES, JEWS, CATHOLICS, CHINESE, OR JAPANESE.

  “I saw Joe,” I said.

  Fleur’s face sobered. “And . . . ? Is everything all right?”

  “Well, I didn’t kill him, if that’s what you’re wondering.” My glance flitted toward the hallway. “Are you sure Deputy Fortaine can’t hear us? Uncle Clyde is chummy with him . . .”

  “The music is loud, and he and Mama are too busy holding hands under the table. I think she’s worried that Deputy Fortaine will find out what Laurie is doing for money. He doesn’t look the other way as much as Sheriff Rinky-Dink does.”

  “You sure Laurence is a bootlegger?”

  “Shh.” Fleur held a finger to her lips. “Don’t say that word. But, yes. Have you seen the nighttime sky? It positively glows with the fire of all the moonshine distilleries in these woods. Local restaurants—the Dry Dock and Ginger’s—and Portland establishments, they’re all paying good money for home-brewed hooch, and Laurence has Daddy’s truck to deliver it to them.”

  “I thought the Dry Dock was genuinely dry.”

  Fleur rolled her eyes. “They claim to be, so the good people of Elston will dine there, but the owners keep bottles on hand for certain patrons with money.”

  “Is that where Laurence was going with those Witten boys just now? Out delivering?”

  Fleur nodded with loose locks of her hair swaying against her face.

  “And Joe Adder?” I pushed myself up higher on my elbows. “Is he going with them, too?”

  “I don’t think so. He can’t risk jail again. He’s just hiding out until he figures out what to do with his life.”

  “Fleur . . .”

  “Hmm?”

  I scratched my left arm. “Robbie just told me Joe’s not right in the head. Do you know anything about that?”

  She shrugged. “I’m sure prison doesn’t make a person very sane. It’s certainly not going to make people believe you’re upright and sweet.”

  “Why is Laurence letting him hide in the shed, then? I didn’t even know they were friends. Didn’t they once get into a fistfight when they were younger?”

  She shrugged again. “Laurence doesn’t talk to me about much of anything anymore. He just mutters about taking the ‘moral high road in life’ all the time.” She stroked a photograph of Valentino dressed in some sort of exotic costume with a vest and long white pants. “Maybe Laurie sees Joe as a charity opportunity. A chance to repent for his sin of bootlegging. Church has become important to him.”

  “Hmm . . .” I readjusted my weight on my knees, unconvinced that God would forgive Laurence of anything just because he snuck a few slices of bread out to the likes of Joe Adder. “Why’d you go see Joe in the shed in the first place?”

  “I’m sorry.” She nestled her shoulder against mine. “I knew it would upset you, but Laurence told me Joe cut up his legs pretty badly when he hopped a fence to steal eggs. I made him a poultice and brewed him some tea. But I wasn’t nice to him at all—I swear.”

  I leaned away so that her shoulder no longer touched mine.

  She lowered her head. “Maybe I shouldn’t have told you about him, but there was something in his eyes that made me feel his message was important. I thought he might want to make peace with you.”

  I pressed a hand over my forehead and drew a long breath through my nose. “He didn’t make peace with me at all, Fleur.”

  “Then what did he say?”

  “He told me Uncle Clyde killed my father.”

  The record stopped. Fleur jumped up, the scent of lilacs breezing away with her, and set the phonograph needle back to the beginning of the song. The fanfare of trumpet
s recommenced, and Henry Burr again warbled “Faded Love Letters.” Fleur crouched back down beside me, hanging her head next to mine over a new article, one that explored the shape of ten film stars’ noses in relationship to their personalities. Good Lord, I thought, I sure hope my nose doesn’t reveal what’s going on inside me.

  “He didn’t really say that, did he?” asked Fleur.

  “He claimed that Daddy’s arm and leg hurt badly after he crashed into him with that damned Model T but that Daddy didn’t seem like a man about to die. After Uncle Clyde went in to see my father, however . . .” I cleared my throat, experiencing an ache that felt like the stab of a fork into my tonsils. “That’s . . . that’s when Daddy suddenly died, ‘as if someone had just shot a poisonous dose of morphine through his veins,’ Joe told me.”

  “And you believe Joe?”

  I clenched my teeth and stared at the “backward dip” of Mary Pickford’s right nostril, which supposedly demonstrated her “great affection and sympathy.”

  Fleur nudged me with her arm. “Do you believe him?”

  “No. Of course not. I think I would know if I were living under the same roof as my father’s murderer. If Clyde Koning hates Negroes, I’d be long gone, too, wouldn’t I?”

  “Hanalee!” Fleur grabbed my hand. “Dr. Koning does not hate Negroes. Did Joe try to convince you he did?”

  “He hinted that Uncle Clyde’s involved with the Klan.”

  At that, Fleur sputtered a laugh. “This isn’t the old South. Do you know what the Oregon KKK is like?”

  “I know, I know—they’re pushing to fix roads and improve public education.”

  “And they have ridiculous names for their ranks. ‘Imperial Wizard,’ ‘Exalted Cyclops,’ ‘Great Titan.’”

  I shuddered, not liking such names. “How do you know?”

  “Mama once received an invitation to join the Women of the Ku Klux Klan in Bentley, and they included all sorts of pamphlets.” Fleur flipped the magazine to an advertisement for Mulsified Cocoanut Oil Shampoo. “But she didn’t join them. She heard that the organization’s mainly a big business venture out to collect money from people still scared of immigrants from the war years.”

  I held my forehead in my hand and sighed from deep within my lungs.

  “Hanalee . . .” Fleur squeezed my right shoulder. “You’re safe here in Elston, despite a few prejudiced folks out there who might imply otherwise. And you’re safe in your house with Dr. Koning. You’ve told me yourself that he saved your mother when she was sick with grief and drugging herself with nerve pills. How could a kind man like that commit murder?”

  “He did marry her awfully quickly—just thirteen short months after we put my poor father in the ground.”

  “Hanalee, don’t—”

  “Uncle Clyde was always friendly with her”—I picked at one of the magazine’s curled-up corners—“even before Daddy died. They’ve known each other as long as your mama has known her, since childhood.”

  “Your mother’s a likable person.”

  “She is. She’d be worth killing for, wouldn’t she?”

  “Stop it, Hanalee.”

  “Especially if your target was a man with no rights and no respect—only a pretty white wife who wasn’t even considered his legal spouse within this state. Oh, Jesus, Fleur”—I gave a start, for the music came to an abrupt halt again—“I hate that I’m tempted to believe that jailbird. I hate that he planted these sickening seeds inside my brain.”

  “Shh.” She cupped her warm fingers over my hand. “Stop thinking about him tonight. Stay here with me, have a calming cup of tea, and push all your worries off to another time. I’ll take care of you, Hana-Honey.” She kissed my cheek with lips butterfly soft. “Like always.”

  WE LISTENED TO FIVE MORE PHONOGRAPH RECORDS and skimmed at least ten additional Motion Picture articles. After those diversions failed to assuage me, Fleur brewed a pot of tea in the kitchen, and then we trooped upstairs to her bedroom with our beverages and my bag.

  I fetched my drawing pad from the valise, sank onto Fleur’s bed, and rested my back against the rosebud-papered walls of her bedroom with a charcoal pencil in hand. A teacup steamed by my side, smelling of chamomile.

  I sketched a portrait of Fleur, who sat across the way in her window seat, half hidden behind the tendrils of two creeping Charlies that dangled from pots hanging above her. Fleur’s favorite grandmother had died when Fleur was ten and bequeathed to her a stack of Gertrude Jekyll gardening books and a journal of handwritten herbal folk remedies. So Fleur lived in the Garden of Eden and served as mother to dozens of potted children.

  “You always sketch when you’re nervous,” she said from behind those lanky vines that brushed at her right shoulder, for she sat half-turned toward the window.

  “What are you talking about?” I lowered my left knee and, with it, the pad of paper. “I sketch whenever I feel like sketching.”

  “But you always seem to be pulling out a pad of paper whenever something’s troubling you.”

  “Hmm. Well”—I adjusted the arch of her eyebrows on the paper to mimic her worried expression—“at least it’s not as bad as you biting your stubby little nails whenever you’re nervous.”

  She peeked over the brim of her teacup, her eyes smiling. “Just drink your tea.”

  “Yes, dahling,” I said in a poor imitation of a British-born woman named Mrs. Hathaway, who attended our church—a woman who liked to ask Mama if she’d consider bleaching my skin. “Quite right.”

  I set my paper aside and took a sip of my chamomile tea, fragranced with a hint of lavender, tempered with a splash of hot milk. Warmth spread through my insides.

  Downstairs, Deputy Fortaine’s muffled voice still accompanied Mrs. Paulissen’s titters. I cradled the cup against my chest and wondered if I could trust the deputy enough to tell him Joe’s story.

  Fleur pulled her pale pink curtains open, inviting the moonlight inside with us. “You see it out there?” she asked.

  I craned my neck forward. “See what? The moon?”

  “The brightness from all the whiskey stills lighting up.”

  “No.” I shook my head. “I don’t see anything but stars and evergreens.”

  “It’s an orange glow that hovers over the trees. I overheard Laurence tell Robbie it’s even brighter in Oregon’s eastern outback, where the land is flat and you don’t have pines and firs hiding everything.”

  I took another sip and let the heat travel down to my toes. “I’m afraid to look out my window at night.”

  Fleur turned her face toward mine, her eyebrows raised. “Why?”

  “You’ve heard the stories”—another sip, more of a gulp—“about his ghost.”

  “Oh.” She nodded. “Well, but . . . wouldn’t you want to see him, though, if he were out there?”

  “No. He’d be a ghost, not my father. That’s not the same at all.”

  She squirmed on the window seat and tucked her legs beneath her in the nest of pillows.

  “Mildred Marks claims she saw him in her house last night,” I decided to add, even though the thought of Mildred and her devil’s moonshine made the tea taste sour. “She said Daddy wouldn’t speak to her, but she told me if I drank some concoction she brewed up, I’d be able to talk to him. ‘Necromancer’s Nectar,’ I think she called it.”

  “Hmm.” Fleur frowned. “It sounds like something that might make you hallucinate.”

  “Do you know of any local plants that would allow a person to speak with the dead?”

  “Not at all.”

  “That’s what I thought.” I clanked my cup onto the ivory saucer sitting on the bedside table and grabbed my sketch pad again. “I just wish people would keep those ghost stories to themselves.”

  Fleur’s face crumpled, as though she might cry. She shifted back toward the window and squeaked the tips of her right fingers down the glass.

  “What’s all that about?” I asked. “You look like you’re about to
burst into tears.”

  She sniffed.

  “Oh.” I shrank back against the wall and remembered Mr. Paulissen, killed overseas in the war, just like Mildred’s father. “I’m sorry no one ever talks about your father still existing somewhere out there. But, honestly, Fleur, it’s for the best.”

  “I think I saw him, too.”

  I shuddered. “You saw . . . who?”

  “Your father.” She ran her fingertips down the windowpane again. “Just last night. After I helped Joe with his scrapes from that fence, Laurence took Mama and me to the Dry Dock to celebrate Mama’s birthday. On the way back home in the truck, just for a fleeting moment”—she pushed aside one of the vines and met my gaze—“I saw your father in the moonlight, walking down the road, toward our houses.”

  The tip of my pencil quivered against the paper and made an ugly, dark smudge. I couldn’t formulate a single word in response.

  Fleur twisted a clump of her hair between her fingers. “I’m sorry, Hanalee. Maybe telling you about it only makes things worse . . .”

  “Well, there’s nothing we can do about it.” I scratched out my drawing, disappointed with the results. “I’d have to be a fool to wander out on the road at night, all alone, looking for him, so there’s no use dwelling on ghost stories. I’m sure you just saw moonlight and shadows.”

  She nodded, and we closed that chapter for the night, sitting in silence for a good long while before unpinning our hair, changing into nightclothes, and climbing beneath the covers of her bed.

  I squirmed around under the blankets for about a minute or so, digging my shoulder blades into the mattress, bumping into Fleur, until I formed a nice groove that fit the shape of my spine. With my eyes closed, I heaved a sigh that came out as a wheeze.

  “Are you all right?” asked Fleur from the darkness beside me.

  “You talked about Joe hiding out until he figures out what to do with his life, but what about us?”

  “What do you mean?”

  I shifted about again. “What are we supposed to do with our lives? Should we even bother starting the eleventh grade in September if we’re to be trapped here in Elston until we’re old and dead?”