The Steep and Thorny Way (21 page)

I wandered into the graveyard with the horns and the drums of “The Yankee Doodle Boy” ringing in my ears and vibrating up the bones and muscles in my calves. The grounds grew cooler. Or, at least, the chill of silent graves spooked me into imagining a drop in the temperature.

We treated our dead in grand style in Elston, with polished gray obelisks and thick marble headstones marking the names of the deceased, from our Oregon Trail pioneers to those who died in recent years from the Spanish flu and other calamities. The conjoined graves of our former reverend and his wife lay to my right, no more than ten feet beyond the iron archway. I saw their surname, Y
ORK
, carved in block letters that felt smooth and solid beneath my hand, as well as the matching date of their deaths: October 8, 1918. The flu had snatched them both in the middle of the night when the pandemic ambushed Elston. Those two gentle souls—people who could have counseled and comforted me at the moment—had turned to dust, while the physician who couldn't save them still roamed the earth.

Tears burned in my eyes, for I remembered Mrs. York pulling my parents aside after church one Sunday morning during my second year at the schoolhouse. Her face was lined in soft wrinkles, and she had kind blue-green eyes shaded by a homespun bonnet.
She stood no more than four foot ten, and yet she possessed a sturdiness to her voice that made her appear six feet tall.

“I've heard about Hanalee's troubles in school,” she had said to my parents. “I know Mrs. Corning ignores her whenever she raises her hand.”

My parents couldn't disagree, so Mrs. York wrapped her arm around my bony shoulders and told them, “Bring Hanalee to our house one afternoon each week. I used to be employed as a schoolteacher myself. I'll ensure she's as least as smart as the other children in that school, if not smarter.”

The Yorks' names on the gravestone blurred from view. I tucked my chin against my chest and allowed myself to cry—a good, shoulder-shaking bawl that other people might have heard if the brass band wasn't now blasting “The Star-Spangled Banner” across the church grounds. I couldn't even bring myself to venture farther inside the cemetery and visit Daddy's grave. I just stood there and sobbed, tears dripping to my chest, and I missed everyone with all my heart: the Yorks, my father, my mother, Laurence, Joe, Fleur, even me—the former me who never would have lingered in a church cemetery, pondering if she should dare put Clyde Koning into one of those graves.

“Hanalee?” said a voice I knew to be Fleur's.

I raised my head and found my friend standing at the entrance of the graveyard, dressed all in white. A breeze played with the airy sleeves below her shoulders, making the fabric flutter up and down. Red geraniums encircled the crown of her straw hat, and I knew she would smell as sweet as the petals.

“You're back,” she said, stepping toward me.

I wiped my eyes with a knuckle. “Yeah, I'm back.” I gave a sharp cough and cleared my throat with grunts that resembled the thumps of Mildred's whiskey still.

Fleur crossed her arms over her chest and walked toward me through the grass in her white Mary Janes. “Why'd you run off with Joe like that? Why'd you tell everyone you were eloping?”

“Uncle Clyde . . .” I took a breath, unsure where to begin. “We had a terrible falling out. I took off toward the woods, and I kept on running . . . with Joe.”

She stopped in front of me and laced her fingers through mine. I, indeed, smelled the perfume of geraniums.

“I need to tell you something,” she said, her voice small.

I swallowed. “What is it?”

“Laurence . . . he warned me that if you . . . if you came back . . .” She sighed and looked up toward the sky, stretching her eyes wide, which I knew to be her way of stopping herself from crying.

I squeezed her hand. “What did Laurence say?”

“He told me . . . I could never . . .” She blinked. “I could never see you again.”

“What?”

“He said, you and Joe . . . what you did was so wrong. A boy—a boy like him . . .” She held my hand tighter. “A girl like you . . . together.” She puckered her lips, as though her words tasted sour. “The Wittens came over this morning and told him they found you two together, sleeping on their property, and—”

“It was only sleeping, Fleur. Uncle Clyde got mad because
I insinuated that he killed my father. I ran off with Joe so Clyde wouldn't hurt either of us.”

She rubbed the inner corner of her right eye and looked up at the sky again. “They want to kill him so badly now. Robbie hates himself for not hurting Joe this morning when they found you. He said that if either of you came back . . .” She cupped a hand around her chin to keep it from quivering. “Laurence grabbed me so hard and made me swear I wouldn't see you again. He left bruises on my arm.”

“Where?”

She lifted the butterfly wings of her sleeves and showed me purple marks the size of two thumbs, one per arm.

“Oh, Fleur!” I took hold of her elbows with the softest touch I could muster.

“I'm so scared of losing you, Hanalee.” She tipped her forehead against mine. “You're the only person here who's worried about what will happen to me, and I'm terrified of what's going to happen to you.”

I pulled her close and held her against my chest, my arms locked around her back. Boisterous slides of trombones and the loud belches of tubas ricocheted over the headstones around us, but I squeezed my eyes shut and pushed the picnic away.

“I think something unspeakable happened to my father that Christmas Eve,” I said against her shoulder. “Something more damaging than Joe's car. Something related to the boys' desire to hunt down Joe.” I lifted my head so that we stood face-to-face again. “Have you ever heard anything about the Dry Dock being dangerous for nonwhites?”

She knitted her sunshine-blond eyebrows. “I don't think so.”

“Have you heard anything about the owners' ties to the Klan?”

“I . . .” She grimaced. “Well . . . they do have that sign out front.”

“What sign?”

“Do you ever eat at the Dry Dock?”

“No.” I shook my head. “We tend to avoid it, but I've always thought it's because Mama doesn't like their food.”

She rubbed her lips together. “Well, they have a sign on the door that says, ‘We reserve the right to serve whom we please,' but I always thought it was a nice sign. I thought they were saying they didn't want their customers making a fuss over any of their clientele.”

My stomach tightened. “I'm not so sure that's a nice sign, Fleur.”

“Fleur!” called a male voice to my right. “What're you doing with her?”

I turned my head and found Laurence standing just outside the cemetery entrance, hand in hand with Opal Rickert, a brunette with bobbed hair and a red dress that showed off her skinny knees.

“You stay away from my sister, Hanalee Denney.” He let go of Opal and ran toward me.

I took my hands off Fleur and shuffled backward, tripping over my feet.

Laurence grabbed hold of both my arms, and the next thing I knew, my back slammed against an obelisk, and Laurence shoved his face into mine.

“Why'd you have to go and run off with Joe?” He squeezed my arms by my sides and shook me against the stone. “That was the stupidest thing you could have done.”

“What are you doing, Laurence?” asked Opal from behind him
with a lift of her plucked and painted eyebrows. “Picking a fight with a girl?”

“Go back to the picnic,” he called over his shoulder. “Take Fleur with you.”

“Let go of her,” said Fleur, running her hands through her hair, and I again saw the bruises beneath her sleeves.

“Go back to the picnic!” he shouted. “Go! Before I hurt her. I swear, I'll hurt her if you don't leave immediately.”

The girls retreated, for Laurence's tone carried a rage that chilled me to my core and would have sent me running, too, if he didn't have me pinned against a dead man's marker.

He returned his blue eyes to me and spoke so close to my face, his hot breath blew into my mouth. “You two should have just kept running. Why'd you come back?”

“Joe . . .” My teeth chattered; it took all the courage I possessed to find my voice. “He didn't want . . . we didn't have . . .”

“I want you both gone and far from here. Do you hear me?” He shook me again. “Get out of this state, and take him with you. You're going to get yourselves killed. We're planning a necktie party for him. Do you know what that is?”

“No.”

“It's when a person gets raised by a rope from the branch of a tree—not long enough to die, but enough to get scared into running out of town for good.”

I froze. “W-w-what do you mean ‘we,' Laurence? What are you a part of?”

He loosened his grip and stepped back a foot. The sun shone down on his golden hair and skin, brightening the soft smattering
of freckles on the bridge of his nose, just as the rays used to set his skin and his eyelashes aglow whenever we climbed stacks of hay in my parents' field.

“Why do you hate me so much, Laurence?” I asked.

“My family comes first.” He placed his hands on his hips, looking tall and sturdy and strong—or at least like a boy pretending to be all those things. “To keep us all safe, we can't afford to associate with a mulatto any longer.”

I sank back against the stone and felt my vertebrae become no stronger than blades of river grass.

Don't ever let them hurt you, Hanalee
, Laurence had told me himself when he held his arms around me and taught me to shoot his father's gun.
Don't ever let them make you feel small
.

I stepped forward and spat in his face—right beneath his right eye, with those sun-streaked lashes I used to want to kiss—and I walked away from the cemetery.

CHAPTER 17

THE WEEPING BROOK

SOMETHING HAD CHANGED IN THE
air by the time I came around the side of the church and rejoined the Fourth of July picnic. The music had stopped, and an unnatural stillness hung over the grounds. Everyone shaded their eyes with their hands and faced the main highway, where Sheriff Rink's black patrol car reflected the afternoon sun.

In front of the vehicle stood the sheriff, tightly holding the belt surrounding his thick waist. He spoke with Reverend Adder, who stooped as if carrying a great weight on his upper back. Mrs. Adder clung to her husband's right arm and, without warning, howled like an injured dog—the wail of a woman in the throes of early grief. I knew that sound all too well from the night my father died.

My stomach dropped to my toes. I ran toward Mama through the other picnickers, who turned into streaks of red and white clothing.

“What's happening?” I called out. “What happened?”

Mama turned to me with a worried brow. “I don't know. There are murmurings of a death.”

Uncle Clyde sauntered our way from the highway, his face wan, his mouth drawn. His arms hung by his sides.

“They found . . .” He slowed to a stop in front of our blanket and tugged a handkerchief out of the breast pocket of his coat. “This afternoon, in St. Johns, along the northernmost stretch of the Willamette River, the body of a young man . . . a young man meeting Joe's description . . . washed ashore.”

I dropped down to a crouched position on the grass. No air entered my lungs; I completely forgot how to inhale.

“Breathe, Hanalee.” Mama knelt beside me and patted my back. “Come on—take a deep breath.”

I dug my fingers into Mama's arm. The world around me turned bright and blurry and distorted, and all I could do was squeeze my mother's flesh and wonder how a boy—a boy alive in our woods just that morning—could have ended up in a body of water miles and miles over the forested hills.

Uncle Clyde took off his coat and flapped the garment in front of my face, which at first caused me more panic, but somehow the air blowing into my nose reminded me how to take a breath. My lungs expanded, and after more gasping and coat-flapping and clinging to Mama, I lay back on our blanket with my knees bent and breathed in a shallow rhythm.

Uncle Clyde rubbed my arms and asked if I could hear him, but he looked so strange and far away, with the glare of the sun shining against the lenses of his spectacles. My brain flitted to an image of him sitting beside my father on a bed, a needle full of morphine at the ready.

“How f-f-far is the r-r-river from our house?” I somehow managed to ask, still seeing the world as shiny and fuzzy, still imagining Uncle Clyde positioned beside my father in Joe's bedroom on a Christmas Eve.

Uncle Clyde made responses I only half heard: “At least sixteen miles . . . Tualatin Mountains . . . he could have gotten a ride . . .” I closed my eyes and pushed his voice into the distance and let the world slip away into darkness.