The Steep and Thorny Way (10 page)

“He's my
step
father, Mama.”

Uncle Clyde lowered his face toward his mug, and his knuckles whitened.

The deputy drummed his long fingers on the tabletop. “We need to know where the boy is, Hanalee.”

“Why?” I asked.

“He's made far too many enemies in Elston, and some people aren't taking kindly to the idea of his returning.”

I squeezed my lips together and remembered everything Joe had said about himself—his claim that people wanted to hurt him and get rid of him, his fear of surgeons in prison cutting him up and changing him.

I grabbed the sides of my chair. “Did Joe even kill my father?”

The deputy shifted his weight and exchanged a brief look of concern with my stepfather—a look I didn't care for in the slightest.

“Why do you ask that?” he said.

“Because people shut him up before and during his trial.”

The deputy didn't blink.

“
How
did they shut him up?” I asked.

“Hanalee!” Mama grabbed my hand. “You're not the one who's supposed to be asking questions.”

“How did they shut him up, Deputy Fortaine?” I asked again, shaking Mama's fingers off mine by flapping my wrist up and down. “Did you beat him?”

“No, I did not beat Joe Adder.”

“Did Sheriff Rink?”

The deputy breathed a weighty sigh. “Joe was . . . caught in the act of another crime before he crashed into your father. His own actions were used against him. He knew that testifying on that witness stand wouldn't have done him any good.”

“What other crime?” I asked.

The deputy grabbed the handle of his mug. “That's not for me to discuss.”

“But—”

“I don't want that information slipping out into the public and triggering more trouble than it's already caused.” The deputy took another sip, and I swore his hands shook.

“What trouble?” I asked.

“Hanalee,” urged Mama, “stop badgering the deputy with questions.”

Deputy Fortaine swallowed. “We need to know where he is, Hanalee. I have my suspicions that Joe intends to harm someone around here. I also believe that some people around here might hurt him—badly—even kill him, if they find him first.”

I eyed the adults' silent stares and drawn faces. “What would you do with him if you found him?”

“What is he offering you, Hanalee?” asked Uncle Clyde. “I can tell by the way you're talking that he's communicated with you.”

“How are you benefiting from helping him hide?” The deputy jabbed the tip of his right index finger against the table, as if he wanted me to lay my answer down on the white cloth before him. “Why would someone like you trust a person like him?”

I nudged my glass of orange juice away, for I couldn't stand to breathe its tangy scent a second longer.

“Hanalee,” said Mama. “Answer the deputy. Why are you helping Joe hide?”

“I'm not. I don't even care if someone hurts him, and I wish everyone would stop looking to me for answers.” I sprang out of my chair with a slam of my shoes on the floor.

“Where are you going?” asked Mama.

“Out for a walk.” I pushed in my chair.

“You're not done speaking with Deputy Fortaine.”

“I feel sick inside this house. I need fresh air.”

Mama stood. “Sit back down, and tell the deputy—”

“Joe left town days ago,” I said—an outright lie, but one uttered out of necessity. “Stop questioning me, and stop treating me like I'm the criminal, when all I've done is lose my father.”

“Hanalee . . . ,” said Mama, but I tore out of the room before anyone could say another word. I yanked open the front door to the blinding glare of daylight and ran eastward on the highway as fast as my legs could carry me.

CHAPTER 8

THE PLAY'S THE THING

I SLOWED MY PACE AT THE ELM-LINED
driveway that led to Fleur's house, yet I pressed onward in a northeasterly direction, glancing over my shoulder every few moments to make sure Deputy Fortaine didn't follow me in his patrol car. The sun shone hot against my neck. I wished I'd remembered to grab a hat before flying out the door.

Overhead, a red-tailed hawk circled with outstretched wings in the bright blue sky. He cried out for his mate, a beautiful and haunting sound, and I found my eyes tearing up because of it. All around me, rolling fields of golden wheat smelled sweet and crisp and teased of a childhood long gone.

Fleur, Laurence, and I used to wander that same road on summer days past—careless days, aimless days—with our arms linked together. A blond-brunette-blond row of heads. Our fathers fought overseas in the war—in different regiments, due to the color of my father's skin—and our mamas hired workers to help with the farms. We grew crops for starving families thousands of miles away in Europe, and the government paid us kindly for our patriotism.

When we children were even younger, we'd play hide-and-seek in the middle of the woods. We'd also pretend we were characters in a fairy-tale forest, and I always got to play Snow White, on account of my hair color being only a few shades shy of “black as ebony.” Both Fleur and Laurence would lean over and kiss my cheeks as I lay on the grass beneath the boughs of fir trees singing in the wind, and they'd try to see who could rouse me from my sleep of death. One time Laurence surprised me by kissing me on the lips, and when my eyes burst open, he grinned and said, “I won! I woke her in the fastest time of all.”

After that day, he kissed my lips a few more times, always while playing amid the trees in our kingdom of pretend.

Until he outgrew such games.

Until he moved on to girls as white as snow.

I SNUCK INTO THE WOODS A BACK WAY, A HALF MILE
or so north of Fleur's family's property. Goose pimples washed over my skin from the sprawling shadows of sky-high firs, despite the July heat cooking the rest of the world outside the forest. An entire choir of birds chattered in the web of branches surrounding
me; a woodpecker jackhammered one of the trunks to my right. A squirrel scampered across moss-covered boughs, rattling leaves overhead, giving me a start.

For breakfast I grazed on wild blackberries, and then I washed my face in the creek and made a quick detour to the stretch of the forest behind my house to check on my pistol, which I still needed to sneak back into my house. The weapon remained concealed inside the oilcloth beneath the leaf pile, untouched, loaded, minus the bullet that had whistled past Joe's ear. I left it there for the time being and trekked back into the heart of the woods, careful to keep my footsteps silent. The creek babbled and bubbled below the rocks that I crossed with my arms outstretched, and loose soil from the embankment made my climb to the clearing feel like stepping up a ladder I had to carve with my own two feet. At the top of the slope, the little white shed came into sight. I knelt down in the tall stalks of horsetail grasses and listened for anyone following me.

“Just a couple more nights,” said a voice up ahead.

I lifted my chin.

Laurence stepped out the front door of Joe's makeshift house with a red-and-white-checked napkin balled in his hand. His blond hair shone as brightly as fool's gold in the streaks of sunlight slicing through the trees. “I can't keep sneaking you food out here,” he said, and he crammed the napkin into a back trouser pocket. “You're going to get me killed if anyone finds you here.”

Joe exited the shed behind him and grabbed up a stick as long as one of his legs. “I don't plan to be here much longer.”

“Another day at most,” Laurence warned.

“Sure.” Joe leaned over and picked up a pinecone, which he rolled around in his left hand.

Laurence shifted my way and scanned the woods, his blue eyes squinting into the sun. I ducked farther down in the grasses.

“You're lucky I'm a goddamned saint in this community, Joe,” he said. “No one thinks to look for you back here, because I'm a pillar of respectability.”

“Is that right?” asked Joe with a laugh.

“I'm dead serious. You're going to need to go soon. Real soon.”

“Jesus Christ”—Joe tossed the pinecone into the air and whacked it with the stick, sending it whizzing over my head—“stop saying that, Laurie. I'll go as soon as I'm able. I've just got some business to finish.”

“What business?”

“Never you mind. It's private.”

Laurence's mouth tightened. He scanned the woods again, and the hardness of his face made him nearly unrecognizable to me. His chin jutted outward at an odd angle. Without another word, he marched into the thicket of firs, away from Joe and the shed.

I held my breath and stayed low to the ground. A black-and-yellow-striped honeybee landed on a knuckle of my right hand, and its little brown stinger bobbed up and down. I stilled my muscles and willed the thing away by blinking at it.

Joe kept his face directed toward the trees through which Laurence had disappeared. When he must have been assured that Laurence wasn't coming back, he hurriedly unbuttoned his gray cotton shirt and stripped down to his waist.

I aimed to stand up and say,
Joe! Wait!
Before I could spring
upright, however, he unbuttoned his trousers and pulled both the pants and his drawers down his legs. I closed my eyes and turned my head, but not before catching sight of his naked white backside, as muscular as his arms but much paler than his top half. My stomach gave an odd squeeze.

I heard his legs brushing through the rushes and the ferns and couldn't help but wonder if the foliage tickled his bare flesh. I cracked my right eye open a sliver and couldn't see him any longer. I just crouched there in the grasses, an accidental Peeping Tom, not knowing what to do. The bee soared away, thank the Lord. At least I wouldn't make the situation worse by hollering from a sting.

A plunking sound and some splashes let me know that Joe had entered the pond. I debated whether I should leave him be while he bathed, yet no other obligation seemed as pressing as talking to him about Deputy Fortaine and what the hell we should do next.

I stood up and crept to the side of the shed, not yet seeing the pond beyond the trees.

“Hey, Joe,” I called.

The splashes stopped. “Yeah?”

“I need to talk to you.”

“Do you have a gun?”

“No. Stop worrying about that. I'm not going to shoot you.”

“All right . . . I just . . .” He made a swishing sound in the water, as though turning away from me. “I'll be there soon. Just . . . go into the shed and wait. I want some privacy for a moment.”

“Isn't that water awfully cold for bathing?”

“Go wait in the shed, Hanalee. I don't need you spying on me.”

“I'm not . . .” I stood up straight; my face burned. “I'm not spying on you. I have no desire to see your”—I sidled back around the shed—“pale and naked fanny.” With a nimble leap, I darted over his clothing and promptly made a loud to-do about shutting the shed door behind me, so he'd know I wasn't watching him.

The shed smelled terrible. Stale. Old. Fishy. Trace scents of ashes from the potbelly stove tried to break through the stench, but the fish stink proved too powerful. I leaned against the boards of the leftmost wall, across from the cot, and spotted a new playing-card structure built on the ground—a circular building with a flat roof positioned atop it. I tiptoed forward and knelt down in front of the construction with my mouth sealed closed, careful not to breathe wrong and topple the entire enterprise. The symmetry—the intricate complexity of all those perfectly angled cards—reminded me of a honeycomb.

Joe's footsteps padded toward the shed.

I jumped to my feet—and knocked over the structure.

“Oh . . . damn,” I whispered, and I backed against the opposite wall, banging my right shoulder blade against it.