The Steep and Thorny Way (20 page)

“Hanalee?” asked Mama. “Are you sure you're all right?”

The lingering dew on the grass bled through both the blanket and my skirt, moistening my knees. I sat there for a moment and wondered how the universe had seen fit to throw me together with a person I was supposed to hate. A person who wouldn't ever
want to be with me, even if my skin was whiter than his. I imagined someone from up above—certainly not God, I hoped—devising all the various stumbling blocks he could place in front of me, all the barriers to love and freedom and simple happiness, just to see how I'd react. Just for a laugh.

Before I could answer my mother, someone called my name. I raised my head and found Mildred Marks plodding toward me, dodging through a three-legged race that was claiming more victims than victors. She wore her usual fedora and filthy brown boots and looked like a cross between a gangster and a farmhand—a furious one at that, with her hands balled into fists by her sides. She plowed straight toward me, her mouth clamped shut in an ugly scowl.

“I . . .” I jumped to my feet from our blanket. “I think I might need to step away for a spell and talk to Mildred.”

Mama stopped pulling dishes out of the picnic basket and raised her head. “I don't want you stepping too far away from us.”

“Joe's not going to come anywhere near the church grounds, Greta,” said Uncle Clyde, leaning back on his hands. “I can guarantee he won't show up within a mile of this crowd.”

“I need to speak to you, Hanalee.” Mildred stopped right in front of me, smelling a little tangy and pungent, like the grains distilling inside that back room in her house. “Do you have a moment to spare?”

I glanced down at Mama, who then glanced at Uncle Clyde.

“Just as long as you stay on church property,” said my stepfather. “No wandering out of sight.”

“It'll only take a moment.” Mildred grabbed me by an elbow
and yanked me through the maze of picnickers until we reached a row of birches on the edge of the church grounds. She then threw my arm back at me as if it were a stick.

“He's still coming to our house,” she said with a hiss. “Why in hell aren't you using the Necromancer's Nectar?”

“But I did.”

“When?”

I counted in my head. “Two nights ago. I did exactly what you said—the spoonful, the crossroads, the circle on the ground—and I spoke to him.”

“Well, he's still barging through our front door, still looking lost and desperate, giving us all a fright. Even Mama saw him last night. She's planning to hire a Spiritualist to exorcise him.”

“No!” I waved my hands in her face. “Don't do anything to hurt him. Please.”

She swatted my fingers away. “We don't want him in our house.”

“I'll speak to him again. I'll see what he wants. I'll . . .” I turned my head and looked beyond the other townsfolk, spotting Mama and Uncle Clyde nestled together on the blanket, their heads tipped close together, their arms touching. “I'll do whatever it takes to set things right.”

“I hope you do.”

“I'll speak to him tonight, in fact. Just”—I rubbed the back of my neck—“please, don't do anything that might cause him any harm. Don't send him away just yet.”

“All right.” She pushed her hat farther down on her head, shadowing her face with the short brim. “I'll tell my mother you're taking care of him tonight, but if he—”

“Wait a minute.” I dropped my hand to my side. “Tell me again why you think my father is heading to your particular house all the time, looking so upset.”

“We're sensitive, that's why.”

My jaw hardened.

Mildred stepped back on her left foot. “What's that look for?”

“Are you sure there's no other reason?”

“Cheese and crust, Hanalee. Why are you glaring like you suspect me of murder?”

“There's a troubling undercurrent rumbling beneath the surface of this town,” I said. “I don't trust much of anyone these days.”

“I'm prone to seeing ghosts. That's all. And I find myself overcome with premonitory sensations whenever something awful is about to happen.” She tipped her fedora out of her eyes. “In fact, I experienced one of those sensations that Christmas Eve, right after your father left our house.”

My head jerked back.
“What?”

“I . . .” She inched backward. “What? I just said—”

“Why on earth was my father at your house that Christmas Eve?”

Mildred scratched at her elbow, and her lips sputtered as if she didn't know what to say.

I edged toward her. “Don't you dare tell me my father was seeing your mama.”

“No! That's not it at all. He was picking up whiskey for a bootlegging run.”

“He . . . No!” I darted a quick peek in Mama's direction again. “My father was most certainly not a bootlegger.”

“Yes, he was. He hadn't been doing it long, and he seemed nervous about it.”

“No, my father simply wasn't feeling well that night. We believe he decided to walk to the Christmas Eve service after he felt better, and—”

“Bootlegging is nothing to be ashamed about, Hanalee,” said Mildred, and her eyes softened. “We all know the farms have been suffering since the war ended. He came by that night and picked up a crate of hooch, and directly afterward I trembled with one of my premonitions so violently, I dropped to my knees on the floor.”

I grabbed hold of a nearby tree trunk and found it difficult to stand without doubling over.

“I tried to help him, though, I swear.” Mildred also braced a hand against the birch. “After I found the strength to get to my feet, I hopped onto my bicycle and rode after him. I tried my best to stop him from going any farther with that crate, but he must have been walking through the trees and the fields instead of the road.”

“Where was he taking the whiskey?”

“I don't remember him saying.”

“The Dry Dock?”

She shrugged. “I honestly don't remember. So much happened that night.”

“Did Joe hit him when he was carrying that crate, then?”

“Joe wasn't driving back to his house just yet.”

“How do you know?”

She scratched at her elbow again and rocked a little from side to side.

I nudged her left arm. “How do you know Joe wasn't driving home just yet, Mildred? Tell me.”

“B-b-because . . .” Her eyes shifted about. “When I was riding my bicycle in the dark, I saw a car pulling off the side of the road up ahead of me. By the time I pedaled farther, I heard”—she blinked—“
sounds
. . . coming from behind the trees on the drive to that old abandoned vineyard. Not the Paulissens' vineyard; that other one that's been closed and overgrown for years.”

I furrowed my brow. “What types of sounds?”

Her face reddened, to the point where the blush blended in with her freckles and rendered the spots invisible. “Love sounds,” she said, and she grimaced.

“Oh.” I swallowed.

“I know I shouldn't have stopped—I should have kept bicycling after your father.” She removed her fedora and fanned her face. “But I did stop. I parked my bicycle on the road and crept through the bushes, and I saw the reverend's Model T—I knew it was his, because the first three numbers of the license plate are one-three-zero, like my father's birthday, January thirtieth.”

“And Joe was . . .” I cleared my throat. “He was in the car?”

“I didn't know who was in there at first, but then the deputy's car came driving around the bend—he must have seen my bicycle sitting there and worried. His headlights shone against the Model T, and I saw Joe's head pop up from the driver's side. The next thing I knew, some other fellow was jumping out of the car, pulling
up his pants, and running off into the trees, while the deputy was yelling at Joe to get out of the vehicle.”

“All right, all right.” I readjusted my own hat on my head with a crinkle of the straw. “That's all I need to know about that.”

“I've felt guilty about Joe ever since.” She pursed her lips and sniffed.

I squinted at her. “Why do you feel guilty about him?”

Again, she braced herself against the trunk of the birch. “I watched as he stumbled out of the car while buttoning up his own trousers. He dropped to his knees and begged Deputy Fortaine to keep quiet about what he saw, for the sake of his father. ‘He's a man of the cloth,' he kept saying over and over with tears rolling down his cheeks. ‘People will run him out of town for raising a boy like me.'”

“But the deputy didn't care,” I huffed. “Did he?”

“Oh, but he did.” Mildred nodded. “He took pity on Joe and let him go. He said he was going to pretend he didn't see anything there, and he told Joe to drive straight home.”

“Even though Joe had been drinking?”

“I don't know if he'd been drinking. He sure sounded sober when he was caught in those headlights and was begging for his freedom.”

I squeezed my head between my hands, pressing the heels of my palms against the bones of my temples. “Then . . . then how did other people find out about Joe? Joe said he thinks he was put in jail mainly because of what he was caught doing with that boy, not because of my father's death.”

Mildred flopped her fedora back over her head.

“Did they find the boy he was with?” I asked. “The boy from the party?”

“I blabbed about Joe,” she said, ignoring my question, her eyes cast downward. “Sheriff Rink was over at our house the next day and told us about Joe running the car into your father.”

“You told Sheriff Rink what you saw?”

She nodded. “I always enjoyed Joe's good looks, but what I found him doing . . .” She shook her head, as if she still didn't understand what she'd witnessed that Christmas Eve. “And then the idea of him killing your father . . . I blurted out, ‘I hope Deputy Fortaine told you he found Joe and some other fellow with their pants down together.'”

She wrapped her arms around herself and fell silent with an abruptness that made me again aware of the band and the picnic. All the Fourth of July noises rushed back into my ears.

“I bet they treated Joe worse than they treat most people arrested for manslaughter,” said Mildred. “He was just sixteen at the time of his arrest, I think, and I probably made his life hell.”

I slid my hands down my face to my cheeks, and a damp chill rose to the surface of my skin. I thought of the bruises I'd seen on Joe's ribs, and the scar near his eye, the healed wound on his lip.

“Maybe . . .” She sniffed again, her eyes rimmed in red. “Maybe I should have just kept riding my bicycle after your father. Maybe it's my fault that he died. I got so distracted with Joe, I didn't warn your father about that terrible, premonitory pain. And if Joe would have just stayed with that boy without my bicycle attracting the deputy . . . Maybe that's why your father's storming into my house these past few nights. Maybe it is because of me, not you.”

I struggled to find my voice. “H-h-how long did it take you to recover from that premonition pain before you hopped onto your bicycle?”

“I don't remember,” she said. “A little while.”

“Do you think my father made his delivery before he encountered Joe?”

“Why does that even matter, Hanalee? Who cares about that delivery?”

“I just want to fill in all the missing pieces. There's talk of a doc being involved, and I don't know if my father means ‘Dr. Koning' or ‘the Dry Dock.'”

“
Ask
your father.”

I nodded. “I will. Tonight.”

“If he's not gone by tomorrow, I swear, Mama will summon that Spiritualist—”

“I said, I'll ask him tonight,” I said with a sting to my voice.

“Good. See as you do.” Mildred wiped her eyes with the tips of her fingers and staggered back over to the festivities.

CHAPTER 16

NOBLE DUST

UP AHEAD, TO THE RIGHT OF THE
church, stood the wrought-iron archway that marked the entrance to the cemetery in which we'd buried my father two days after Christmas 1921. Joe had sat behind bars in the local jail while his father presided over the memorial service with a voice that cracked with emotion. Uncle Clyde and Fleur's mama, both friends with my mother since they were all children, had to revive my mother when she fainted by the graveside, and I remembered Uncle Clyde lifting Mama's head, whisking smelling salts beneath her nose, and murmuring, “I'm here, Greta. I'm here. You're not alone.”

I peeked again across the grassy grounds, toward my mother and stepfather's picnic spot. I found them chatting with other members of our congregation. Mama glanced once my way, but then she returned to her socializing, neatening a lock of hair that had fallen out of her chignon.