The Steep and Thorny Way (29 page)

“I don't engage in hanky-panky with other boys. I'm not some goddamned fairy.”

“You mean you don't get
caught
engaging in hanky-panky with boys,” said Joe, “but you sure were eager to . . .” Joe stepped back and rubbed the back of his arm across his mouth, as if wiping away a remembered kiss. “I kept my mouth shut when the sheriff questioned me, Laurie. I protect the people I love. I don't throw them to the wolves.”

My arm vibrated from the force of Laurence shaking on the other side of my gun.

“I don't love boys, Joe,” he said. “That's disgusting.”

Joe lifted his chin and swallowed, and his eyes filmed over with tears. “You sure didn't act like it was disgusting when you kissed me.”

Before I knew what was coming, Laurence shoved me aside. He lunged toward Joe and punched him in the face with a sickening crack that sent birds scattering out of the trees. Joe fell back and slammed to the ground. Laurence groaned and bent over at his waist, his right fist cradled in his left hand. I gasped and stepped closer and found a shock of bright red blood pouring from Joe's nose. He covered his face with his fingers and rolled onto his side with his eyes squeezed shut. Both boys moaned in pain.

“Go home, Laurence.” I nodded in the direction of the Paulissens' house. “Go soak your hand and calm down.”

“He's a dead man.” Laurence backed away, still bent over with his fist tucked against his chest. “I was trying to help you, Joe, but you're a dead man now.”

“Stop threatening him, and don't you dare bruise Fleur's arms ever again.” I clasped the derringer firmly in my right hand and aimed the barrel toward his brown shoes, debating if I should raise it toward his head again. “Do you hear me, Laurence?”

Laurence attempted to stand up straight. Strands of his blond hair hung down over his eyes, and the hand he cradled swelled and purpled.

“Go!” I cocked the hammer.

Laurence skidded backward through the ferns. “You're crazy, Hanalee.”

“Go!”

He turned and hightailed it off into the trees.

CHAPTER 25

A VERY PALPABLE HIT

JOE REMAINED ON HIS SIDE WITH HIS
hands clamped over his nose, blood streaming through his fingers. He groaned some more and brought his knees to his stomach.

I uncocked the derringer—my hands shaking, my heart racing—careful not to fire and draw more attention. “We've got to get you back to the stable.” I stuffed the pistol back into the holster on my thigh. “We've got to hide you.”

“Christ.” Joe winced and sucked air through his teeth. “I think he broke my nose.” He lifted his hands away from his face.

I cringed at the bleeding purple lump that used to be the bridge of his nose. More blood leaked from his nostrils and ran across his lips and his teeth. Every part of his head seemed to bleed.

“Oh, Joe,” I said.

“Is it bad?”

“If you can just get up and walk for a little while, I'll make you comfortable in the stable.” I knelt down, wrapped my arm around his back, and brought him partway up to a sitting position. Drops of scarlet rained down on his partially buttoned blue shirt, but I ignored the gore and kept nudging him to stand. “Come on.” I gripped both his arms, lifting, hoisting. “It's just a short walk.”

He helped lever himself off the ground, and we got him to his feet with his left arm dangling around my shoulders and his weight pressed against my right side. I stiffened my muscles and trudged forward, which inspired him to do the same.

We shuffled through the pine needles and fallen leaves with a swooshing racket. My eyes darted about the trees. I didn't know if I was hearing just our footsteps alone or if Laurence and the other boys also crept across the forest floor. No animals seemed to stir. No birds or buzzing insects. It was simply Joe and me against other human beings.

We made it across the clearing in front of the shed and stood on the precipice of the slope to the creek.

“We've got to head down this embankment,” I said. “Do you think you can do it without falling?”

Joe tried to nod, but he ended up coughing up blood that spattered his shirt. “Oh, God!” he said when he saw the mess on his clothing.

“It's probably just because your nose is bleeding. You're swallowing your own blood.” I edged us both forward. “Come on.”

He fought to keep his balance and grew sturdier the closer we
got to the bottom. My own feet slid on damp soil, but I quickly righted myself to keep from toppling both of us.

“I'm all right,” he said at the edge of the creek. He took his arm off me. “I can cross on my own.”

I held on to his back to check if he wobbled. “Are you sure?”

He nodded. “My legs are fine. The pain's in my face.”

“Let me go before you so I can help.” I stepped onto the first boulder and held out my hand for him.

He clasped my fingers and followed me across the path of rocks, while the water trickled and bubbled below our feet.

“You would have shot him, wouldn't you?” he asked when we reached the other side. “If I didn't tell you where he was that night, you would have killed him.”

I pulled hard on Joe's hand and sped us past the deer trail leading to the Paulissens' house. “It terrifies me to think how much I wanted to shoot him.”

“I think you made him piss his pants.”

“I did?”

Joe half snickered, half groaned. “I think so.”

“Well, let's hope so. If he's hurrying to change his underwear, that'll give us time to get out of these woods.”

We broke into a trot, for the thought of Laurence gathering up his friends infused my legs with power. I kept my pace slow enough for Joe yet fast enough to stay safe.

I squeezed down on his hand. “We're almost there.”

Sunlight from beyond the woods shone across the pinecones and needles scattered on the trail ahead of us. The air warmed. Home awaited just a short way ahead.

“We've got to stay behind the tree line and head to the other end of the yard,” I said. “My mother's cleaning out the basement, as far as I know. I don't want her peeking out a window and catching us.”

Joe nodded, his teeth clenched against the pain.

We made it through the section of woods that bordered the property behind our open land. I forced us to stop and listen for footsteps, and then we knelt down and darted through the rows of berry bushes to the stable waiting to our left.

Once inside the small outbuilding, I found Joe's belongings stashed beneath his blanket in a dark corner.

“Here, let's get you comfortable.” I spread the brown cloth across a pile of hay and helped ease him down to the ground.

The makeshift mattress crunched beneath his back. His head lay at an uncomfortable-looking angle with no pillow behind it, and he closed his eyes and struggled to catch his breath. Blood stained his nose, his lips, his chin, his shirt . . .

“I know this probably isn't helping you feel a whole lot better”—I plumped up the hay under his head—“but I'll fetch you a pillow . . . and some oil for the lantern. I'll take good care of you.”

“No.” He took hold of my left wrist and opened his eyes. “Go back to the house. Don't come out here again.”

I sank back on my heels. “I beg your pardon?”

“Someone will see you. I don't want anyone to know I'm here. I don't want anyone trailing you and hurting you.”

“You need ice and bandages. I could get Dr. Koning—”

“No!” He squeezed my wrist. “I still don't trust him, Hanalee.”

“Joe . . .” I wrapped my free hand around his cold fingers. “I have to tell you something.”

“What?”

“That oak tree at the Dry Dock . . .” My eyes burned. “The one they used . . . for . . .”

Joe nodded in understanding.

“Someone carves the names of certain people on it,” I said. “People who don't quite belong. And they seem to cross off the names once a person leaves town. Like Mrs. Downs.” I pressed my fingers tighter around him. “And my father.”

“Is your name on that tree?” he asked, his voice deep, protective.

“Mine. Mama's. Yours. Deputy Fortaine's.” I swallowed. “And Clyde Koning's.”

He slipped his fingers out of mine and lowered his hand to his chest.

I dug through the carpetbag and tugged out a white undershirt. “This morning Uncle Clyde admitted to me that he, indeed, lied in court.” I dabbed the shirt against Joe's red nostrils with the softest touch I could manage. “When he was in your room with my father, Daddy told him about the near lynching.”

Joe maneuvered himself up to a sitting position with his shoulders curled forward. “Here, let me do that,” he said, and he took the shirt and swabbed his bloody nose on his own. His eyelids fluttered at each brush of the cloth against his skin.

“I should fetch you ice,” I said.

“What did Dr. Koning do with that information?” he asked, still wincing from the dabbing. “How did he go from hearing about a near lynching to accusing me of manslaughter, without one mention of the Ku Klux Klan, in court?”

“Uncle Clyde said he went straight to Sheriff Rink and told him what he saw on my father . . . the marks . . . the marks on his . . .” I held the sides of my throat and crossed my legs beneath me. My mouth refused to utter another syllable, for the words I'd planned to say contained edges sharp and jagged. I closed my eyes and rested my head in the palms of my hands.

Joe stayed beside me without saying a word. He just waited, breathing in a gentle rhythm while he wiped the blood from his lips and chin. A warm breeze nosed through the rafters above our heads.

“Uncle Clyde”—I sniffed—“told the sheriff about the marks from the noose. He reported everything that my father said.” I lowered my hands to my lap and watched my fingers hang like unnecessary appendages off the edges of my shins. “It sounds to me as though the Junior Order of Klansmen met at the Dry Dock on Christmas Eve, and, possibly with the help of a few adult leaders, they terrorized my father at that tree, as part of their initiation. They put too much strain on his heart, to the point where it stopped beating entirely in your bedroom.” I dragged my thumb across a damp patch of skin that itched below my right eye. “They trapped him into heading to the Dry Dock with the promise that they'd pay him good money for bootlegging.”

“And Dr. Koning got paid to keep quiet about the truth.”

“No.” I wiped both cheeks with the palms of my hands. “People threatened to hurt me if he spoke the truth.”

Joe drew his right knee to his chest and leaned his elbow on it, sinking his nose into the undershirt. “You're positive Dr. Koning's telling the God's honest truth?”

“I spoke with the owner of the Dry Dock this morning. He verified
that they used that tree to torture my father. He seemed proud of it, as a matter of fact.”

“Christ.” Joe closed his eyes. “It's even worse than I imagined. So much worse.” He pursed his dark brows. “They've won.”

“No.” I folded my hands in my lap. “I won't let them win.”

“Then what do you propose we do?”

I sat up tall. “We survive.”

He looked at me from above his swollen nose, and I saw some fight burning in his eyes, too.

“We're still alive,” I said. “Still in one piece. Let's stay that way. Let's go make something of ourselves and show them how much we're thriving.”

He breathed a small laugh. “You make it sound simple.”

“I didn't say that, but let's do it. Let's become better educated than them—make more money than them—love people more fiercely than they could ever dream of loving.”

A smile awakened at the corners of his mouth. His nose had stopped leaking, but it continued to swell and purple. Half circles the same color as his bruises rimmed the skin beneath his eyes.

“But, for now,” I said, “I'm going to make sure you get help.” I peeked over my shoulder at the closed stable door. “Let me go see if Uncle Clyde came home yet.”

“No!”

“You need medical help, Joe.”

“I'll rest here for a while.” He scooted back down to the ground and propped himself up on his right elbow. “Gather my strength. Eat the last traces of food in that basket. And then I'll sneak out after dark.”

“And go where?”

“I'll jump a train.”

“Uncle Clyde offered to help you find a job. Let us help you.”

He shook his head. “If he knows I'm hiding out in here—”

“I think we can trust him.”

“Go back to the house—please. Keep yourself safe. I'll get myself feeling better, and then I'll leave.”

I raised the hem of my skirt and opened the flap of the holster. “Let me at least leave you my pistol.”

“No, don't do that.”