The Steep and Thorny Way (11 page)

Joe hummed something outside the shed, perhaps to warn me of his approach. He gave two fake-sounding coughs outside the door, and I could see the shadows of his feet moving around beyond the space at the bottom. He hopped about a bit and slid his trousers back on, and I couldn't help but think of his naked backside again. Two firm loaves of uncooked dough.

He opened the door, still missing his shirt.

“Oh, Christ, Hanalee.” He glared at the collapsed pile of cards. “Did you knock down my tower?”

“What criminal act did they catch you in before you hit my father with the Ford?” I asked.

He froze, his hand still on the doorknob.

“Well?” I said.

“Who told you I got caught for something else?”

“Deputy Fortaine.”

Joe let go of the knob and sauntered into the shed, his gray shirt clutched in his right hand. The sleeves dangled down to his knees, like an upside-down person stretching toward the floor.

“Put your shirt on.” I inched toward the door. “I'm not standing in a shed with a half-naked boy.”

“Why did you talk to Deputy Fortaine?”

“Put your shirt on.”

He raised his voice. “Why did you talk to Deputy Fortaine?”

“Dr. Koning brought him to our house this morning. They sat me down like I was a criminal on trial and questioned me about your whereabouts.”

Joe rubbed his shirt over his wet hair, and I smelled the pond water all over him again. He reminded me of a river otter, drenched and slick and wild. His hair dripped rivulets of water down his bare shoulders. Old yellowed bruises marred the skin above his left ribs, as though someone had beat him up in recent weeks.

“If you committed another crime,” I said, turning my eyes instead toward the wreckage of the card tower, “how in the world am I supposed to trust a word you said about your innocence?”

Joe plopped himself down on the cot and wiped his forehead with a shirtsleeve. “The deputy . . .” He sighed and leaned forward, his elbows digging into his thighs, the shirt hanging between his
legs. “He caught me with another boy. Someone I met at a party that Christmas Eve.”

I stood up straight.

“That sort of thing's illegal,” he added, his voice quiet.

“I wondered if it might be.” I glanced away from him again. “Now, put your shirt back on. I don't like talking to you like this.”

“Well”—he tugged his right sleeve over his arm—“in any case, now you know why my father, the esteemed Reverend Ezekiel Joseph Adder, banned me from his house. I showed up at his door on the day I got back to town, scars on my face, tears of repentance in my eyes, and he called me—” His voice cracked. He shoved his left arm through the other sleeve. “My pop called me an abomination. I'm never setting eyes on that high-and-mighty son of a bitch ever again.”

“He called you”—I swallowed down an ugly taste—“an ‘abomination'?”

Joe nodded. “He told me he believed that surgically removing a part of my body would do me good.”

My arms went cold. “What are you even talking about? What body parts are people in prisons removing?”

Joe bit down on his pink bottom lip until the skin turned white. “Castration.” He shot me a stare that pierced straight through my heart. “Do you know what that is?”

“Yes.” I nodded, my chest tightening. “I've lived in farm country all my life. I know what they do to bulls to tame them and keep them from mating with the cows.”

“The government is taking it upon itself to do the same thing to certain inmates. ‘Eugenics,' they're calling it. Forced sterilization.”

“Why?”

“To cleanse America of sexual deviants, madmen, and the feeble-minded.” He buttoned up his shirt, starting from the bottom, his fingers shaking as he went.

“I'm sorry,” I said, and I truly meant it.

Joe finished with his shirt and leaned back on his hands. He sat with his legs flopped open, and he kept the top button of his shirt unfastened, exposing part of his chest.

“Does Laurence know what you're like?” I asked.

“I . . . I don't think so.”

“Well, be careful of him.” I smirked. “He is a ‘pillar of respectability.'”

Joe snickered under his breath. “Did you hear him say that about himself?”

I nodded and swallowed. “I actually hate what he's become.”

“Don't worry about him. He's all talk.” Joe pushed himself off the cot and wandered the three steps it took to reach me on the other side of the shed. He leaned a hand against the wall near the left side of my head, and the wood creaked from the pressure. “Let's talk about what's important now.”

I eyed the closed door. “They could be looking for me—Uncle Clyde and Deputy Fortaine. I left the house in a huff and ran away.”

Our eyes met at that so-close distance, just a foot or so apart, and I could see a ring of gold encircling his pupils, right before the brown began.

“Are you sure killing him is our only option?” I asked.

“Aren't you furious at him, Hanalee? Don't you want justice for all the pain? A murderer and perjurer is walking free out there”—he
gestured with his thumb toward the door—“while we're suffering from his crimes and stuck with
nothing
.”

“But . . .”

“But what?”

I gritted my teeth. “I need more proof. I can't just poison a man without being one hundred percent certain of his guilt.”

“You got proof last night.”

“A ghost?” I asked. “A hallucination? You said yourself I looked doped up.”

“You were convinced last night. You were certain you spoke with your father.”

“It's daytime now, and—”

“And what?”

I backed away, sliding my hand across splinters in the wall, for my knees weakened. “I don't know what to believe.”

“You swore that he told you he blamed your stepfather.”

“I need air. I can't breathe.” I yanked open the door and tripped over the threshold, stumbling into sunlight that made my eyes sting.

Joe grabbed my left elbow from behind. “Think of everything you told me last night. Remember what it felt like to see him. What was he wearing?”

I pulled away, but my legs toppled like Joe's card house, and my knees slammed against dirt. The air thinned. A crow laughed from the roof of the shed. I knelt in the grasses and covered my face while remembering every small detail of my father's clothing from the night before—his crimson bow tie, the black derby, the ebony trousers and coat with gleaming glass buttons.

“Swear to God, Joe,” I said. “Swear you're not lying to me.”

“Hanalee”—one of his knees dropped to the ground beside me—“they threw me in the pen not because of your father, but because they wanted to arrest a boy like me without shaming my father and the town.” He laid a hand on my back, right below my left shoulder, and I flinched at first, but then he spoke in a voice that reached deep into my insecurities. “Help me to set things right,” he said, “and then we'll free ourselves of this godforsaken place. There's got to be somewhere better out there.”

His hand felt warm against me, and I closed my eyes behind my fingers. I relaxed my muscles and rolled back my shoulders.

“Your father's dying words were a request to keep you safe,” he said in a voice just a hair above a whisper, “and I intend to honor his wishes. I'm not the depraved sinner people around here make me out to be. I just want a murderer and a liar to get what he deserves—to pay for what he did to me. What he did to you.”

I opened my eyes to the grasses rippling in a breeze. All around me, the wind whispered and murmured through the trees. A black garter snake slithered through the undergrowth no more than two feet away, and I didn't even wince. Joe stroked my back, and I arched my spine and leaned into his touch like a Siamese cat.

“I want to test him,” I said.

“How?”

“I'll tell him a story that mirrors what we think might have happened. Observe his reactions.” I rose to my feet and turned to face Joe, my left arm still slack from the comfort of his hand.

Joe scowled and stood up. “I'm not going to wait around while you tell your stepdaddy a damn bedtime story. Didn't you hear Laurence? He wants me out of here.”

“I've got it.” I straightened my posture. “David's murder of Uriah, to marry Bathsheba.”

Joe squeezed his hands into fists by his sides. “I'm not going to wait while you read Bible passages, either.”

“I need more proof before I do anything else, Joe. I'll test him tonight.”

He wrapped his arms around his ribs and glanced at the wind rattling through the trees.

“Just give me tonight,” I said, “and I'll have my decision by tomorrow. If he fails this test, I'll believe in that vision of my father. I'll believe you.” I walked two steps toward him and lowered my voice to ensure no one else would hear. “I'll help you get revenge.”

CHAPTER 9

SEE WHAT I SEE

MAMA FROWNED AT ME OVER A
sheet of rolled-out dough when she caught me stealing in through the back kitchen door. Flour covered her hands and apron and made the air taste dry.

“Where were you?” she asked, setting down the rolling pin. “You had me worried sick when you ran off angry after talking about Joe.”

“Is Deputy Fortaine gone?”

“He left shortly after you ran away. Where were you?”

“Just out for fresh air.” I hustled across the kitchen and toward the main hallway.

“Hanalee,” said Mama, stopping me dead in my tracks. Her
tone carried a strange calmness that worried me more than if she had shouted. “I know . . .” She tucked her chin against her chest and cleared her throat. “I know I've never told you this, but before you came along, your father and I tried for several years to conceive a baby, without success. We even lost two infants, just a few months into the pregnancies.”

My mouth fell open. “Y-y-you did?”

She brushed flour off her palms and leaned the small of her back against the edge of the wooden countertop. “People around me, even well-meaning ones, hinted there might be something unnatural about your father and me having children together.”

I pressed my lips closed.

“But,” she continued, “instead of listening to prejudice and superstition, I educated myself about conception and birth. In fact, Uncle Clyde himself counseled your father and me on this matter. He even provided me with medical textbooks.”

“I don't see what any of this—”

“I became well versed in the subject, you see.” She wiped her hands on her apron, leaving behind streaks of white. “Science taught me that sometimes—no matter who might make up the members of a couple—it takes a while for a woman to become in the family way. Other times, it happens the moment a woman first lies with a man.”

“Why are you telling me all of this right now?” I asked.

She walked over to the kitchen table and picked up my sketch pad. “I found this drawing in your room.” She turned the pad toward me and showed me the picture I'd drawn of Joe, standing in an indistinct body of water as high as his hip bones.

I stepped back, fear prickling across my skin.

“It's Joe Adder, isn't it?” asked Mama. “Naked.”

My face flushed. “It's just . . .”

Mama cocked an eyebrow and swung the sketch pad by the tips of her fingers. Flour snowed off her hands and speckled the empty white sky above Joe's head.

“It's just an imaginary young man,” I said. “I made him up.”

“He looks an awful lot like the way I remember Joe looking. Aside from the lack of clothing.”

I put my hands on my hips. “Why were you snooping around in my room?”

“Were you with Joe just now?” Mama straightened her neck.

“I . . .” I couldn't look her in the face. My ears pulsed with a loudening beat.

“Why would you want to spend time with him?” she asked, her voice strained with hurt. “I don't understand why you're doing this, Hanalee.”

“It's not . . .” I pulled at my collar. “You don't understand.”

“You're no longer allowed to leave this house on your own.”

“What?” I burst out laughing. “Oh, if you only knew how ridiculous you're being.”

“Do you hear me?” she asked. “You've upset both your father and me by letting that boy whisper his lies into your ear and do God knows what else to you.”

“Joe hasn't touched me.”

“I want you to go sit in a hot bath.”

I gasped. “Why?”

“Because I believe he has touched you, and I've always read that hot baths can impede a pregnancy.”

“I'm not carrying Joe Adder's baby! That's the most absurd claim that anyone could—”

“Go!” She pointed to the hallway. “Draw yourself a bath.”