The Steep and Thorny Way

by Cat Winters

  He backed away with his bag and the basket and lantern bumping against his sides. “I used to think my calling was to play baseball like Babe Ruth. I planned to sign to the Major Leagues by the age of nineteen, just like he did.”

  “Oh . . .” I lifted my eyebrows. “Well . . .”

  Joe shrugged and kept trekking backward. “Yeah . . . ‘Oh, well’ just about sums it up.”

  “That’s not what I meant.” I swallowed down a tight spot in my throat. “Just so you know . . .”

  He slowed his pace a little.

  I shoved my hands into my skirt pockets. “I didn’t knock that card house down on purpose yesterday. I was just looking at it too closely. Admiring it. It reminded me of a honeycomb.”

  His lips quirked into a small smile.

  “That’s all I wanted to say,” I said. “I like honeycombs.”

  He chuckled and swung himself around in the opposite direction, and I turned and cringed over those last words.

  I like honeycombs.

  After all we’d endured together over the past twelve hours. I like blasted honeycombs.

  His footsteps trailed off into the distance behind me. I shuddered at the absence of his company but told myself it was simply a chill from the shadows.

  CHAPTER 13

  THE PRIMROSE PATH

  ON THE DIRT DRIVE IN FRONT OF our house stood two empty black automobiles with glass windows and wheels with wooden spokes. They resembled two watchmen, parked at severe angles, facing me, staring me down with unblinking headlights for eyes. I staggered across the yard toward the house, my gaze fixed upon the vehicles. One was a Washington County patrol car; the other, the Adders’ Ford Model T—the same car that Joe had crashed into my father on Christmas Eve 1921. The Adders had fixed the dent in the hood and replaced the left headlight even before the county put Joe on trial. I remembered seeing it parked in front of the county courthouse, mended and freshly repainted.

  My stomach groaned. If I had eaten any breakfast that morning, I’d probably have thrown it up in the lavender bushes sweetening the air below our back kitchen steps. I tripped on those steps on my climb up them, and I clung to the rail with clammy hands.

  Once inside the house, I heard a cacophony of adult voices crashing together in the front living room, including the squeaky tones of Sheriff Rink, who said something about checking the local ponds and lakes.

  “Where else can you search?” asked Mama in an octave almost as high as the sheriff’s. “For God’s sake, it’s been over twelve hours now.”

  A floorboard creaked beneath my right shoe, and the sound reverberated through the house like a peal of thunder. The living room fell silent.

  “Hanalee?” asked Mama. “Is that you?”

  I wedged my teeth into my bottom lip, sidled around the corner, and came face-to-face with an unsettling tableau: Mama, Uncle Clyde, Reverend and Mrs. Adder, and Sheriff Rink, all gawking at me from our living room furniture. Cups and saucers teetered on their laps, and the smell of coffee filled the air. Everyone blinked and trembled as though their bodies buzzed with caffeine.

  “Hanalee!” Mama sprang out of her chair and lunged toward me, her face a red tempest, her hair a tornado of golden tangles. Before I could even think to back away, she grabbed me by my shoulders and shook me with a violence I’d never before experienced from her. My neck popped and cracked, and the room went blurry.

  “How could you do that to me?” she cried. “What were you thinking? Where did you go?”

  “Let me go.”

  “Where were you?”

  “How could you do that to your mother?” said Uncle Clyde, suddenly next to my mother, his spectacles jumping about before my jostled eyes. “You made her sick with worry.”

  “Stop shaking me and I’ll tell you!”

  Mama loosened her grip, but she refused to take her hands off me.

  Beyond her, Reverend and Mrs. Adder, their faces pinched and worried, set their cups aside and stood up from our sofa. Mrs. Adder’s graying brown curls quivered around her ears, and Reverend Adder—a man taller and much older than his son, with white windswept clouds for hair—wrapped an arm around his wife.

  I lifted my face and stood as high as my neck would stretch. “Joe and I were plotting to elope to Washington,” I said. “That’s why I’ve been acting so peculiarly lately. That’s why I ran off.”

  No one responded at first. They just stared at me with their eyebrows puckered and their lips parted, as if I’d just uttered, I’ve decided to become a Martian.

  Sheriff Rinky-Dink’s mouth stretched into a grin that turned his cheeks into round dumplings. “Are you sure you’re talking about Joe Adder?”

  “Yes.” I straightened my posture even farther. “We fell in love and planned to find a place to marry us. But . . . this morning . . . I s-s-started feeling guilty. I decided to return to Mama. And to apologize for my behavior.”

  The gaping and blinking continued.

  “But”—Mama whipped her face toward my stepfather—“last night, you swore to me, Clyde. You said Joe doesn’t like . . . that he wouldn’t want . . . that he’s a . . .”

  “You and Joe . . .” Uncle Clyde placed his hands on his hips. “Y-y-you both fell in love with each other? Mutually?”

  “Maybe he’s changed.” The reverend stepped forward with clasped hands. “Maybe all that time contemplating his sins in prison has put him on the path to righteousness.”

  “You sure they didn’t operate on him in there?” asked the sheriff with a little less squeak, a little more growl. “Did they . . . subdue him already?”

  I winced and hunched my shoulders at such questions.

  “‘Subdue him?’” asked Mama, her voice rising to the sheriff’s pitch again. “Dear Lord, is that something that’s done?” Her eyes met mine, and I swore I caught a flash of understanding. Of sympathy.

  The telephone rang, and we all collectively jumped.

  “Maybe that’s Joe,” said Mrs. Adder, her eyes wide.

  My mother arched her eyebrows at me, as if I would know the answer, and I shook my head.

  “Excuse me while I answer it.” Mama strode out of the room, her thick heels echoing across the walls and the ceiling. Around the corner, in the main hall, she picked up the receiver and offered a curt “Hello.”

  I smoothed down the right side of my skirt, which now felt flat and limp after I’d tucked the holster back inside the oilcloth in the log before my reluctant return to the house. Everyone else stood about and picked at their buttons and their hair and the wrinkles in their clothes, while loitering in front of Daddy’s fine line drawings mounted on the ivory and yellow wallpaper. We all eavesdropped on my mother’s telephone conversation, which primarily consisted of phrases such as “I see” and “Thank you. Thank you for telling me.”

  She clicked the receiver back onto the telephone’s candlestick base and returned to the rest of us. “That was Mr. Witten.”

  I stiffened.

  She wrung her hands together and refused to look at me. “The twins saw Hanalee and Joe on their property this morning and were told the same story about the elopement. He said the boys came upon them . . .” She closed her eyes and swallowed with a pained expression that made me feel bad, as though I were the thing scraping away at the inside of her throat. “They found them wrapped in a blanket together, sleeping on the forest floor near the Wittens’ section of Engle Creek.”

  “So, he has changed,” murmured the reverend under his breath. “Merciful God, thank you. Thank you for guiding him to the path of male and female unions.”

  “I beg your pardon?” Mama’s eyes flew open. “I don’t mean to speak disrespectfully, Reverend Adder, but if your son stole my daughter’s virtue—”

  “He didn’t,” I snapped.

  “Your son is feeding Hanalee lies about Clyde killing Hank,” she continued. “He’s luring her out into the woods in the dark—”

  “Let’s focus on this accusation of murder,” squea
ked the sheriff with a nervous little laugh, “before we even begin to think about the possibility of an interracial, premarital union. Good heavens.” He pulled at his collar. “One crime at a time, please.”

  Mama, a woman well versed in interracial unions, stepped back at the word crime.

  “Hanalee”—the sheriff beckoned to me with an index finger—“come here and have a seat on the sofa. We need to have a little talk about the type of information our young Joe has been telling you.”

  Mrs. Adder pressed her forehead against her husband’s chest. The reverend cupped a large hand around the back of her curls, and both members of the couple wilted against each other.

  “Come along, Hanalee.” The sheriff waved me over to our sofa.

  “Go on.” Mama nudged me toward him with a little too hard of a push. I tripped over my own feet and proceeded forward, my shoes feeling as ungainly as when I strapped on snowshoes. I stood a mere inch shorter than the sheriff, and I hoped my height intimidated him as I followed him to the sofa.

  I noticed that Babbitt still sat on the floor next to the armchair—the same spot where I had put it when replacing it with the Bible. I saw my copy of Noted Negro Women still parked on the end table next to the sofa from when I’d read about Charlotte E. Ray two nights earlier. I perched on the edge of the sofa and brought Noted Negro Women onto my lap.

  Sheriff Rink squinted down at the title. “Why did you just grab a book?”

  “This is the key that’s opened the entire world to me, Sheriff Rink.” I laid my right palm across the clothbound cover. “It’s taught me that people like me can become lawyers and represent the unprotected.”

  The sheriff grinned. “A lawyer?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You ever even been to a trial?” he asked.

  “Of course I have. I sat in the courthouse and watched as two lawyers jabbered on about a boy who’d driven around with gin in his bloodstream.” I tilted my head to the right. “But that boy was never allowed to testify. Was he?”

  At those words, as if to bulldoze straight over my statement, Uncle Clyde said to the rest of the adults, “Everyone, please, sit down. No need to stand and be uncomfortable. We’ve all been through enough.”

  Like a flock of starlings settling over the yard, Joe’s parents and my parents descended upon the furniture around me. Mama sidled up beside me on the couch; Uncle Clyde parked himself beside her; Mrs. Adder took the rocking chair; and the reverend stood behind her with his hand propped on the back of the chair, like a man posing for a formal photograph with his wife.

  The sheriff plopped his wide backside down in Daddy’s armchair.

  I fought off the urge to pitch Noted Negro Women at his forehead for sitting in that particular chair.

  “If Joe were to have testified”—the sheriff clasped his hands together between his knees—“what do you think he would have said?”

  I wiggled myself to a more upright position. “What do you think he would have said?”

  “Hanalee, no.” Mama sucked in her breath, her teeth bared. “Don’t turn the questions back around on other people, as you did yesterday with Deputy Fortaine.”

  The sheriff shifted in his seat toward Mama. “Ben’s already questioned the girl?”

  “He, um . . .” Uncle Clyde coughed into his right fist. “Deputy Fortaine came over for coffee yesterday morning. He asked Hanalee if she knew of Joe’s whereabouts.”

  I noted the sheriff’s tension concerning the deputy. “Where’s Deputy Fortaine now?” I asked.

  The sheriff swiveled back in my direction with a whoosh of his rump against the maroon satin. “He’s out looking for you and Joe.”

  “Oh.” I tried not to gulp, but the reaction occurred as an involuntary swallow.

  “Where is Joe, Hanalee?” asked the sheriff.

  “Heading up to Washington without me.”

  The sheriff’s small gray eyes scrutinized me. “Are you certain about that?”

  “Yes. No one wants him here in Oregon.”

  “That’s not true,” said Mrs. Adder with a break in her voice. “We want him home and safe.”

  “You want him sterilized—castrated,” I said, and the bluntness of my voice smacked against the walls with a thud.

  Another hush fell over the room, a silence cold and savage that made everyone’s eyes glisten and their lips shiver.

  “Hanalee,” said Mama in a near whisper. “What did you just say?”

  Uncle Clyde ran a hand through his hair and leaned his elbows on his thighs. “She’s referring to the eugenics movement.”

  “We just . . .” The reverend’s fingers slipped off the rocking chair. “We just want the boy to make the right choices. None of this has been easy for any of us.”

  I sank my head into my hands and swallowed down a bitter taste. The weight and shape of a missing person impressed itself upon the room. Instead of my mother, I wished Fleur sat beside me. Or Joe. Or my father. All the wrong people were gathered around me.

  “Are you all right, Hanalee?” wheezed the sheriff.

  “I’m not feeling well right now. I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

  No one responded at first, so I stared through my fingers at my black-trimmed Keds. Mud streaked the white canvas. Leaves in the shape of dead moths caked the sides.

  “Dr. Koning told me,” said the sheriff, “he worries that you and Joe have gotten the wrong idea about him. He fears Joe might want to hurt him.”

  “Does he want to hurt me, Hanalee?” asked Uncle Clyde. “Is Joe armed?”

  My head remained lowered, and I lied through clenched teeth. “Joe is on his way to Washington. He doesn’t want to be here anymore. Just let him go—please. Leave him alone.”

  “What do you think we should do about her?” asked Mama. “I can’t determine if she’s telling the truth.”

  “Bring her to the Fourth of July picnic this afternoon,” said the sheriff. “Let’s see if Joe decides to show up.”

  Mama squeezed my right leg. “I don’t want her running off again.”

  “She won’t run off,” said Uncle Clyde. “Will you, Hanalee?”

  I bit down on my bottom lip until all I could feel was the spiked pressure of teeth stabbing my flesh.

  “Hanalee?” asked my stepfather again.

  I lifted my face to my right and met Uncle Clyde’s bespectacled eyes for the first time since he’d chased me out to the woods.

  My stepfather held his jaw and his shoulders stiff. “It’s sweet of you to continue to mourn your father, but it’s time to put his death in the past.”

  The reverend piped up: “That’s wise advice, Hanalee. His death was simply a tragic accident. Nothing more. Allow your father to rest in peace.”

  I released my lip from my teeth and felt my throat thicken, the muscles in my back tighten. “Well, that’s precisely the problem.” I swallowed. “My father isn’t resting in peace.”

  CHAPTER 14

  CAST THY NIGHTED COLOR OFF

  WHEN A PERSON SPEAKS OF HER father’s ghost, I discovered that other people in the room tend to agree that she might, indeed, require an end to her interrogation. Sheriff Rink released me from the questioning, and Mama allowed me to disappear upstairs to my room with a glass of water and a slice of raspberry strudel, although she refused to look at me when she handed me my food and my glass, and her fingers quivered.

  “We’ll talk more later” was all that she said.

  As I made my way upstairs, the gathering of adults in the living room ceased talking, but once I closed my bedroom door, their voices rose and fell with incoherent rumblings down below the soles of my feet. I sat on my bed and devoured the strudel, and I downed the water so quickly, I choked. Then I felt guilty. I wondered if Joe had anything to eat inside that picnic basket that I’d lugged around the woods. I also fretted over the idea of Fleur sitting at her kitchen table with her mother and brother, picking at her breakfast with her fork, not knowing whether I’d b
een found.

  The discussions rumbled on downstairs. I set the dish and the cup down on the floor and heard the crinkling of the Klan pamphlet tucked inside my pocket. I pulled out the crumpled piece of paper and read the penciled notes again.

  Konklave, July 2, 1923. New members needed. White, Protestant boys aged twelve to eighteen.

  Initiation planned. Necktie party?

  The problem of Joe Adder. Moral degenerate.

  Pancake breakfast set for Saturday at the Dry Dock. Money raised will repair potholes on Main Street.

  A headache erupted between my eyes. I massaged the bridge of my nose and chewed upon the idea of the Junior Order of Klansmen meeting only two days earlier, right after Joe showed up back in Elston. Young local Klan members, aged twelve to eighteen, had discussed the “problem” of Joe’s presence the same night I had wandered down the unlit highway with Necromancer’s Nectar burning through my veins. The car that had passed me after I dove onto my belly may have very well contained Klan members—young men and their adult supervisors, driving home from talks of initiations and pancake breakfasts and the reverend’s wayward son.

  My eyes strayed down to the last lines of the notes:

  Pancake breakfast set for Saturday at the Dry Dock. Money raised will repair potholes on Main Street.

  The nape of my neck tingled. Something didn’t feel right about those lines, even though the sentences appeared to be the most benevolent of them all. I reread the sentences, my heart rate doubling, and then I saw it—the word that unsettled me.

  Dock.

  I shook my head. “No, that wouldn’t make sense.” I closed my eyes and rubbed my temples and tried to think back to Joe’s account of my father’s last words to him. My mind went blank, but I knew the word doc—or Dock—was involved. I dropped to my knees on the floor, slid the basket of toys out from beneath my bed, and yanked out the newsprint containing my note.

  I put full blame on the doc.

  Or, perhaps I should have written . . .

  I put full blame on the Dock.