The Steep and Thorny Way (35 page)
Read The Steep and Thorny Way Online
Authors: Cat Winters
JOE DROVE US PAST THAT FALLEN OAK AGAIN AND
steered us through the sites of both his accident with Daddy and mine with Sheriff Rink. We didn't say one word to each other; we just blasted through the ghosts of the wreckage.
He and Uncle Clyde helped carry me back into the house and parked me on the sofa with my half-drawn pencil sketch still waiting for me.
Joe leaned down and kissed the top of my head. “I'll see you in Seattle.”
I grabbed his hand. “Stay true to yourself, Joe. Always. No matter what happens. Please, promise me that.”
He opened his mouth, as though about to say something in response, but then he nodded and stood upright.
He left our house, and an empty hollow spread throughout my chest, even though, deep down, I knew I'd see him again. Our tale did not end in tragedy.
TWO WEEKS LATER, MAMA AND UNCLE CLYDE PACKED
as many of our belongings as possible in the Buick, and we locked up Mama's family's beautiful yellow house. Uncle Clyde would be back in less than a week to arrange for the transportation of the furniture, as well as to try to rent out the place so we wouldn't need to sell it just yetâin case the laws changed and the Klan died down in the near future. No burning crosses sprang up in our yard, and no one bothered us in the middle of the night, but at church we heard rumors of continued Klan congregations.
I sat in the backseat of the car, crammed between the heat of the traveling bags and the bulk of our bedding, with my cast sticking out at an awkward angle over pillows and blankets. In the front seat, Mama held a crate of kitchen supplies in her lap, with other dishes and toiletries rattling around her ankles. After cranking the engine to a start, Uncle Clyde wedged himself in, beside a pile of
winter coats, in front of the steering wheel. He drove us down the driveway, past leaves the shade of banned Paulissen wine.
Over my shoulder, the house's canary-colored siding and my bedroom window disappeared behind the trees. I no longer saw the porch where I had lounged on the swing and the rails and sipped lemonade with Laurence and Fleur in the afterglow of our adventures. My throat thickened.
“Can we please hurry to Fleur's?” I asked Uncle Clyde before he turned onto the highway. “Just to see for sure?”
“I telephoned her mother once more last night,” said Mama over the hum of the engine. “Polly still wasn't sure she wanted Fleur heading up there.”
“I don't want her stuck in this place if Elston doesn't get any better. Please”âI grabbed hold of the seat in front of meâ“let's at least stop by to check. I didn't even get a chance to say good-bye.”
Uncle Clyde steered us up the drive to Fleur's house, and this time we didn't see any gangs of armed and glowering boys huddled around the old Ford truck. My stepfather pulled the sedan beside the parked and empty vehicle, and we all turned our faces toward the house.
“I'll get out and talk to Polly,” said Mama, shifting toward her door.
“No”âUncle Clyde grabbed her armâ“wait.”
A second later, Laurence pushed open the screen door and blew out to the porch with the metal thwacking shut behind him. He leaned his elbows against the porch rail and rubbed his chin against his left shoulder, as though his face itched. He didn't look any one of us in the eye.
I shook my head, confused. Fear shot though my gut. Paranoia of another Klan ambush turned my breathing shallow.
A moment later, the screen door whisked open again, and Fleur traipsed outside, lugging two canvas suitcases and a bouquet of flowers the pale pink of spun sugar. I sat up straight and watched her skip down the steps of the porch with a cherry-red cloche covering her yellow hair.
Her mama came out behind her and called out, “Just through August, and then you're to come back home.”
“Yes, Mama, of course.” Fleur smiled and hustled up to the car door on the opposite side of the seat from me. “Is there room for me in here?”
“We'll make room,” said Uncle Clyde, and he and Mama got out to rearrange our belongings, while Fleur squeezed into the backseat beside me.
She scooted over and tucked herself right next to me, minding my cast, and my parents crammed her bags and our bags between her and the door. She smelled of lilacs again, and she slipped one of her hands into one of my hands.
“I brought flowering almonds for you,” she said, and she handed me the flowers, which she had wrapped in a white handkerchief and secured with a ribbon the same pink as the petals.
“Are these for luck, too,” I asked, “like the alfalfa?”
“No, for hope.” She squeezed my hand. “An entire bouquet full of hope.”
My parents climbed back into the winter coats and the pots and the pans up front, and Uncle Clyde maneuvered the car around in the opposite direction and steered us out of the Paulissens' driveway.
Just as I had watched our house disappear from view behind me, I peeked over my shoulder and observed the trees swallowing up Laurence's blond hair, his blue eyes, his lanky figureâhis sorrowâuntil all that I saw were leaves and branches and sparrows flitting across the boughs.
Yet Fleur remained, sitting right there beside me, with her fingers laced through mine and the pink bouquet spread across both of our laps.
Uncle Clyde drove us past the sweet-smelling fields and rolling hills of northwestern Oregon, and we traveled through the growing metropolis of Portland until the bridge crossing the Columbia River to Washington rose into view. We left the state of my birth behind and entered a new world, with different laws, different adventures and challenges; a state in which I'd taste even more of love and heartbreak, hate and triumphs; where I'd dance with Joe in jazz clubs, grow into a woman with Fleur, sharpen my brain, start a career, and meet people with skin colors similar to mine. A state in which I would eventually marry and give birth to children with their own beautiful colors.
For me, the rest was not silence.
It was loud and powerful and melodic.
PORTLAND CHAPTER OF THE NAACP, 50
TH
ANNIVERSARY, 1964.
POST-1923 CHANGES TO OREGON LAWS
1925:
The Supreme Court overturned the Ku Klux Klanâsponsored 1922 Compulsory Education Act, which would have required children in Oregon between the ages of eight and sixteen to attend public schoolsâand
only
public schools. The KKK had pushed for the law in an attempt to close down private Catholic schools. The overturning of the act came at a time when internal struggles and public opinion against the organization ended the KKK's brief control over Oregon and its politics.
1926:
Oregonians voted to repeal the “exclusion laws” from the state constitution. The laws, first enacted in 1844 and written into the original 1857 state constitution, were aimed at preventing African Americans from settling in Oregon. Though not rigorously enforced, the laws deterred African Americans from entering the state in the latter half of the nineteenth century and kept the state predominantly white.
1927:
Oregonians removed a clause in the state constitution that denied African Americans the right to vote. They also removed restrictions that discriminated against African American and Chinese American voters.
1951:
The federal government repealed all legislation banning interracial marriages in Oregon. In 1967, the United States government lifted the nationwide ban on interracial marriages, after the landmark case of
Loving v. Virginia
.
1953:
Governor Paul L. Patterson signed Oregon's Civil Rights Bill, outlawing “any distinction, discrimination, or restriction on account of race, religion, color, or national origin” in public places.
1972:
Oregon repealed laws that criminalized same-sex sexual activity.
1983:
Legislation abolished the Oregon State Board of Eugenics, called at that time the Oregon State Board of Social Protection, responsible for 2,648 forced sterilizations on children, teens, and adults from 1923 to 1981. Nineteen years later, in 2002, Governor John Kitzhaber issued a formal apology for Oregon's use of eugenics. Between 1900 and 1925, thirty-two other states enacted eugenics laws in an effort to prevent the birth of “unfit” Americans.
2002:
Oregon removed racist language from the state constitution.
2014:
A U.S. federal district court legalized same-sex marriages in Oregon. In 2015, the Supreme Court of the United States lifted a nationwide ban on same-sex marriages.
2015:
Oregon became the third state to ban “conversion therapy” on minors. The practice was used in an attempt to change sexual orientation or gender identity.
AUTHOR'S NOTE
LIKE MOST OF MY NOVELS,
THE STEEP AND THORNY Way
grew out of a series of different story ideas that one day, without warning, exploded into a full-fledged book plot that gripped me by the shoulders and refused to let me go. In fact, I had to put this particular novel aside to write another contracted book, but the story called out to me the entire time and begged for me not to forget it.
Inspired by the HBO TV series
Boardwalk Empire
and my interest in World War I history, I at first thought about writing a novel focused on female bootleggers trying to survive with their war-widowed mothers in the 1920s. I also envisioned a completely separate novel involving a teen boy who's hiding the fact that he's
gay in early-twentieth-century America. Those two threads eventually worked their way into the fabric of
The Steep and Thorny Way
in the forms of the Paulissens, the Markses, and Joe Adder.
The central plot of the bookâHanalee's storyâemerged after I researched Oregon's nineteenth- and twentieth-century interracial marriage laws for one of my other novels. When I dug deeper into the history of the state's prejudices and restrictions, I unearthed the troubling exclusion laws and unofficial “sundown laws,” the latter of which kept African Americans from passing through certain towns after dark. I also discovered the widespread use of eugenics in Oregon and the Ku Klux Klan's takeover of the state in the early 1920sâincluding the KKK's control over the 1922 gubernatorial election. As a lifelong resident of the typically open-minded West Coast, and a resident of Oregon itself since 2006, the lesser-known histories of the area shocked and saddened me. Whenever I experience a passionate reaction to a controversial piece of history, I find myself compelled to write a book about itânot to dig up old wounds and tarnish a region's reputation, but to pay tribute to those who endured and overcame the forgotten injustices of the past. I've always been in awe of fighters and survivors.
For some reason, the idea of using
Hamlet
as the template for such a book entered my head in the summer of 2013, and that's when the entire plot of this novel burst into life. I don't remember the exact moment the
Hamlet
concept possessed me, but I do remember telling my daughter about my early thoughts for the book as we walked between aisles of novels at Powell's Books in downtown Portland, Oregon. She said, “Mom, your eyes look so excited!”