The Steep and Thorny Way

by Cat Winters

  “What parts?”

  “The part about Deputy Fortaine letting you drive off with just a warning. Why didn’t you tell me he helped you?”

  Joe squished his lips together and scratched at his knee through a hole in his trousers. “He didn’t help me. He still ended up blabbing about what he saw to Sheriff Rink. The sheriff came marching up to my holding cell the next morning and called me a . . .” He winced as though the sheriff had just struck him. “He called me every vicious word he knew. And he talked the judge into raising my bail. I couldn’t go home before my trial because of them. I just sat there in that cell with local drunks and thieves who liked to run their fingers through my hair.”

  I sank against the wall and remembered what Mildred had said about telling the sheriff about Joe and the boy from the party. I even opened my mouth to say it wasn’t the deputy who’d blabbed, but I soon closed it, not wanting any more hate passing between people.

  Joe tilted his face toward the ceiling, his jaw tight. His outstretched throat looked vulnerable and pale in the light of the flame, and I experienced the terrible image of a knife slicing across it.

  “People hurt you, didn’t they?” I asked. “You’ve got those scars above your eye and on your lip . . . and those bruises on your ribs.”

  “I haven’t been touched by kind hands since I was with that boy on Christmas Eve 1921—let’s put it that way.” He lowered his eyelids. “I’m just glad they let me out on good behavior before anyone in that prison got wise to how I am.”

  “Did you know anyone who went through the”—I softened my voice—“procedure?”

  Joe nodded. “A fellow not as young as me, but still pretty young for a prisoner. A college student. They put him in jail specifically because he got caught with another man in a Portland hotel.” Joe opened his eyes and blinked in the direction of the ceiling. “The guards and a doctor took him out of his cell one day. They promised to relieve him of his urges. They spoke of eugenics saving the country from all its problems. ‘Sterilization for the good of all,’ they said. ‘The purification of America.’” Joe rubbed a knuckle against the inner corner of his right eye. “Then they brought him back in pain . . . all the life in him, gone. Just”—he shook his head—“gone.”

  I slid my hand across the dusty floorboards that divided us. “I’m sorry.”

  Joe cleared his throat and pushed himself up higher against the wall. “That’s when I straightened up and made sure I didn’t make a peep of complaint or get pushed into any fights. People beat on me and humiliated me, but I just let them—I just took it—because I wanted to get the hell out of that place before anyone took a scalpel to me.”

  “And then you came home to your father calling you terrible words . . . and me, shooting a bullet past your ear.”

  “I probably would have shot at me, too, if I were in your shoes.” He turned his face toward mine. “We’ve got to be very, very careful about putting you in situations like that, though—ones that could get you arrested. They’re operating on women, too, and the fact that your skin is dark will only make them want to stop you from having children all the more.”

  I drew my knees to my chest and sank my chin against my right wrist. “People are really doing that sort of thing? Stopping other races from procreating?”

  “There’s rumors that’s a major part of eugenics. Cleansing the country of anyone who isn’t white, middle- or upper-class, and fit enough to perpetuate the ‘master race.’”

  “Are you sure?”

  His voice dropped to a frightened whisper. “Yes. I’m sorry, but . . . yes.”

  I tucked my chin against my chest and shivered. “I don’t want my life to end in tragedy, Joe.”

  “I don’t want it to end that way for you, either.”

  “And I don’t think it should.”

  “No, it shouldn’t.”

  “What’s wrong with people out there,” I asked, “deciding who gets to have children and who has to be stopped from living the type of life that feels right to them? What’s wrong with them?”

  “Hanalee . . .”

  I glanced his way when he didn’t continue, realizing he wanted me to look him in the eye. “What?”

  “Have you ever gotten the chance to love someone?”

  My face warmed, and my hair burned white-hot again, despite its shorn length. “H-h-how do you mean?”

  “Have you had the chance to experience what it’s like, despite all the obstacles against you?”

  I squirmed and felt my mouth go dry, but I didn’t avert my face from his.

  “I don’t know.” My voice sounded small and naked in that empty horse stall. “A boy and I used to kiss when we were younger. A white boy, of course. I’ve never even seen a black boy my own age in Elston.”

  “Who’d you kiss?”

  I turned away.

  He snickered. “Oh, come on—tell me. You’re not going to find me running out and gossiping.”

  I sighed against my wrist and warmed my flesh with my breath. “It doesn’t even matter. We were just kids playing fairy-tale games. It didn’t mean anything.”

  I heard a piece of wood creak and I jumped, but I quickly realized the sound came from Joe leaning his head farther back against the wall.

  “Do you hope to get married someday?” he asked.

  “As long as I don’t fall in love with a man the wrong color.”

  He exhaled a steady stream of air through his nostrils. “I think love and wrong are two deeply unrelated words that should never be thrown into the same sentence together. Like dessert and broccoli.”

  I laughed.

  Joe moved the lamp to the other side of himself and scooted toward me. The sides of our arms and legs bumped against each other.

  “No matter what happened the night your father died, Hanalee,” he said, “you need to go to a place that will treat you better.”

  “I know.”

  “Elston’s got nothing to offer you.”

  “I can’t go anywhere before I know the full truth about my father. I don’t care if I get hurt in the process. I’ve got to find out what happened and learn who was there with him. Otherwise . . . I know he’ll keep wandering that road.” I relaxed my shoulders against the wall. “I’ll keep wandering.”

  Joe closed his mouth and nodded. “All right. I’m still not entirely convinced Dr. Koning doesn’t own the largest share of responsibility, though. I don’t trust him in the slightest.”

  “We can’t kill him, Joe. Not until I find out what happened at the Dry Dock.”

  “I know.” He picked at the hole in the knee of his trousers. “What am I supposed to do, then? Just sit here and pretend to be dead?”

  “I’ll see if I can get my mother to take me to the restaurant tomorrow morning. I know she doesn’t want to let me out of her sight, so I’ll see if she’ll help me. And then I’ll find you and tell you what I learned. Where do you think you’ll be late tomorrow morning?”

  “Here, maybe.” His eyes shifted toward the shadows surrounding the front door. “Or at the pond.”

  “Bathing again?”

  “I just can’t seem to get the stink of that prison off me,” he said with a chuckle that carried a weight to it.

  I pushed my arm close against his. “You don’t smell like prison. You smell of these woods. You smell nice.”

  He lifted his face to mine with a startled look in his eyes, and I worried I’d accidentally just sounded as though I loved him.

  “I like honeycombs,” I said with a wiggle of my feet, and a second later I burst out laughing.

  “What?” he asked with a smile that seemed confused.

  I shook my head. “Nothing. Just proving that it might not be my skin color alone that’s a hindrance to relationships.” My face sobered. I stretched out my legs in front of me and let his arm warm mine.

  We both turned our gazes toward the empty stable in front of us, and we just sat there, side by side, until the oil burned out and the
lamplight died without even a sigh of warning. The sudden darkness made a small knot tighten in my lower back. I couldn’t see my own hands and legs in front of me.

  “I’ll bring you some oil and food tomorrow,” I said, scooting up to a kneeling position, my knees slipping on hay. “Stay as hidden as you can. I don’t want anyone finding and hurting you.”

  He nodded. I couldn’t see him in the slightest, but something about the way he breathed showed me the movement of his head.

  I reached my hands into the blackness and found the sturdy slope of his shoulders, and then his neck and the line of his jaw.

  “What are you doing?” he asked with a nervous snicker, pulling away a little. “You’re tickling me.”

  I leaned forward and kissed his forehead, grazing part of an eyebrow with my lips.

  His snickering stopped. He went still below me. I let my mouth linger a moment longer before I pulled away and sat back on my heels.

  “What was that for?” he asked in a whisper.

  “Christmas Eve 1921 is far too long a time to go without a kind touch, Joe.” I cupped his cheek in my hand, and then I slipped away into the darkness and found my way home.

  CHAPTER 20

  BE EVEN AND DIRECT WITH ME

  MAMA WOKE ME UP THE NEXT MORNING by shaking my right shoulder.

  “What’s this?” she asked.

  I opened my eyes to find her dangling one of the clipped locks of my hair in front of my face.

  “When and why did you cut off your hair, Hanalee?”

  I shrugged. “I just . . . I got too warm last night.”

  “Hanalee Denney!” She squeezed her fist around the curl. “Every night it’s some new cause for alarm with you.”

  “I spent most of yesterday thinking Joe Adder had been murdered. What do you expect from me?”

  “Stop worrying about Joe Adder.”

  “Everyone in this town who’s different seems to die.”

  “Joe’s not dead. Reverend Adder called this morning to tell us the body wasn’t his. The authorities in St. Johns now believe it was the body of a young rumrunner who fell off a boat.”

  I pushed myself up to a seated position and didn’t make a peep about spending time with Joe in the shed the night before. “Well . . . I’m relieved it wasn’t him.”

  “I know you must be”—she sat down on the edge of my bed—“confused about how you’re supposed to feel about Joe.”

  “I’m just worried about him. A shocking number of people seem so passionate about wanting to hurt him.”

  “After all that talk of an elopement, though . . . I don’t want you to get your heart broken.”

  I picked at the edge of my quilted bedspread.

  She stretched my brown curl across the width of her right thigh. “I know how it feels to be told you’re not supposed to love a certain person.”

  I swallowed down a thickness in my throat and changed the subject. “Why didn’t you ever tell me Daddy was a bootlegger?”

  She lifted her head. “What?”

  “You heard me.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Mildred said Daddy picked up a crate of whiskey from their house that Christmas Eve.”

  She swiveled to her right and faced me directly. “Why must we keep dwelling on that night, Hanalee? It was just a terrible, tragic accident, for heaven’s sake.”

  “But some parts about it still don’t feel right.” I wrapped my hand around her left wrist. “Be honest with me, Mama. Was Daddy a bootlegger?”

  She clenched her teeth, and then she nodded. “We had trouble making ends meet after the war. Europe didn’t need our crops anymore. Prices fell.”

  “And that’s what he was doing Christmas Eve?”

  “Yes.” Mama closed her eyes. “He received a telephone call for a moonshine delivery, right before we were to head out to church. He was already dressed and ready to go with us, but he insisted he needed to make that delivery because the money would be good. It would pay for Christmas.”

  I lowered my head. “He risked his life, just to make sure we celebrated a nice Christmas?”

  “That’s how your father was. I never met a man with a bigger heart. That’s why I loved him so dearly.”

  “Who called him?” I asked.

  “He wouldn’t say.” Mama’s shoulders fell. “He wouldn’t tell me where he was going. He simply said he’d earn us a nice bit of money and be home by the time we returned from church.”

  “Have you ever wondered”—I scooted closer to her across the mattress—“if something happened to him during that delivery that would have made him stumble into the road in front of Joe’s car?”

  “No, not at all.” She pulled her wrist out of my fingers. “Fate simply didn’t work in the favor of Joe and your father that night. No matter what Joe might have told you, Daddy’s death was nothing more than a matter of terrible timing and the mistakes people make when it comes to liquor.”

  “Then why does Uncle Clyde feel guilty about Joe’s imprisonment?”

  Mama’s face hardened. “Your stepfather does not feel guilty, Hanalee. Stop saying such things.”

  “Uncle Clyde told me he wants to send Joe to work with a colleague up in Seattle who would be kind to Joe—to appease his own guilt over what happened that night. He called Joe a ‘sacrifice.’ A sacrifice he made to protect me.”

  My mother leaned away from me, and her mouth twisted into that difficult-to-watch grimace people make before they’re about to either scream or cry—but she did neither. She simply stared at me with that about-to-explode expression, her lips trembling, her eyes crinkled and bloodshot. “When did he tell you that?”

  “Yesterday, when he spoke with me in private on the front porch.” I glanced toward my open doorway. “Where is Uncle Clyde?”

  “He went to work early. Joe’s potential drowning troubled him, so he didn’t sleep much last night, and he wanted to—”

  “You see what I mean?” I leaned forward. “Joe makes him feel guilty.”

  Mama stood up from my bed and pressed a hand to her stomach. “No. I will not let you lead me down this road of suspicion again.”

  “Do you think Daddy went to the Dry Dock on Christmas Eve?”

  She blinked as if startled. “The Dock?”

  I nodded. “Do you think the owners were the ones who made the request for moonshine?”

  “I already told you, the Franklins haven’t sold alcohol since Oregon first banned the sale of liquor, back when you were just a child.”

  “Fleur says they have a sign on the door that reads ‘We reserve the right to serve whom we please.’ Do you know anything about that?”

  “I’m aware of that sign.” She brushed hair out of her eyes. “That’s why I avoid the restaurant.”

  “In case they order me to leave?”

  She rubbed her right arm, the same way Mildred scratched at her elbow when avoiding prickly subjects. “Hanalee, it’s true, some people around here have a problem with your skin color. I’m not going to deny that fact. It wouldn’t be fair to you if I pretended otherwise.”

  “Like the ladies from church who urge you to bleach my skin.”

  “Those older ladies are harmless and don’t know any better. Just ignore them. For the most part”—she stopped rubbing—“people embrace you. It’s only an obnoxious few spreading words of hate and bigotry.”

  I crossed my legs in front of me and pulled at the edges of my quilt again. “Doesn’t it seem awfully strange, though, that a mysterious someone telephoned Daddy, and just a short while later he stumbled in front of Joe’s car in the dark . . . and then suddenly died from a busted leg and a sore arm? After the crate had been delivered?”

  Mama clamped her arms around herself and gave a shudder. “I don’t even want to imagine people in this town deliberately hurting your father.”

  “I don’t, either, but I would like to go to that restaurant and see what the Franklins have to say.”

  “No,
absolutely not. You are not going to the Dry Dock when they have that sign hanging on their door.”

  “Do you know them?”

  “The Franklins are a couple from the church in Bentley. I’ve never actually met them.”

  I raked my hands through my short hair, digging at my scalp, knowing what difficult question would need to be asked next. “Do you believe in ghosts, Mama?”

  She frowned and stiffened. “Don’t you dare mention that again.”

  “Not only have I seen Daddy during the past few nights, but I’ve spoken to him.”

  She stepped back.

  “He looked me in the eye,” I said, “and he told me—”

  “You did not see your father.”

  “He said, ‘I put full blame on the Dock’—meaning the Dry Dock. And then he told me, ‘If I’d just stayed away from that place that night, if I’d been a stronger man, I’d still be alive today.’”

  “No,” said Mama. “Your father did not speak to you.”

  “Yes, he did, Mama.” I rose to my feet. “I’m going to that restaurant this morning. I don’t know what I’m looking for exactly, but I’ve got to head there, or I won’t rest.”

  Mama’s face shifted from me to my window, as if she could see the restaurant from two miles away, beyond all the trees and the farms. “You can’t go to the Dry Dock on your own.”

  “Then come with me.”

  Her throat rippled with a swallow.

  “Please, come with me.” I held out my hand to her, my fingers shaking. “I’m never going to be able to sleep another night until I learn what happened to Daddy before he and Joe crossed paths on that road. And I don’t think Daddy will rest until then, either. Please. Come.”

  She hesitated. I watched as gooseflesh dotted her arms, and her chest rose and fell with breaths that looked labored. But then she straightened her back and reached behind her.

  She grabbed hold of my hand and held it as fiercely as if she were saving me from drowning.

  POURING WHISKEY INTO A SEWER, PROHIBITION-ERA UNITED STATES.