The Steep and Thorny Way(15)
Later that night, I lay in my bed, tucked beneath my sheet and my quilt, still in my brown day dress but with my feet bare and my hair unpinned for the night. On the bedside table a candle flickered. Beeswax wept down the yellowish sides and pooled onto the pewter rim of the candlestick, and the air smelled of fire and honey. I reached out and touched the hot puddle, just to experience a sensation aside from the sting of distrust. A soft sizzle met my ears. My fingertip smarted. I blew on the skin until it cooled, but my chest continued to burn.
“People shut me up at my trial,” Joe had told me at the pond. “No one, not even my own lawyer, let me speak, as if they’d all gotten paid to keep me quiet.”
I fetched my sketch pad and pencil from the floor below my bed, and without even thinking much about it, I drew a picture of Joe standing in a body of water with his chest exposed and his dark hair hanging over his right eye. His mouth emerged from the tip of my pencil as two parted lips, poised to tell me his tale of my stepfather.
SOMETIME AFTER ELEVEN O’CLOCK, MAMA’S AND Uncle Clyde’s footsteps and muffled voices traveled upstairs and to their bedroom, down the hallway from mine. Their door shut, and I winced, trying not to imagine them together, naked. Uncle Clyde’s voice rumbled through the walls, and Mama’s softer tones replied to whatever he said.
A gust of wind blew through my window, snuffing out the candle’s flame. Darkness engulfed the room and turned all my furniture into shadows. I rolled onto my side and struck another match, lighting the wick, smelling sulfur in the air.
I could have used the lamp sitting on my chest of drawers to light my room, but I chose not to. Uncle Clyde had brought electricity to our house after his marriage to Mama last January, but I felt that electric light—that unnatural burst of blinding energy—possessed no heart. No passion. No joy. Candlelight cast such a delicate beauty. It flickered with emotions and warmed one’s skin and soul.
Beyond the foot of my bed, the window beckoned. I slid my bare feet out from under the sheet and padded over to the half-shut pane. Fleur was right. A golden glow hovered in the sky above the treetops. I raised the sash to its full height, and a breeze fingered its way through my hair, carrying with it the odor of burning wood—the smell of all the illegal stills, perhaps. Or the scent of the stove in the Paulissens’ old shed. Or even the flames of hell, waiting for me, should I choose to scheme with Joe Adder. I could see a stretch of the main highway to my left, through a cluster of trees with summer leaves the deep purplish-red of forbidden wine. I poked my head out the window and strained my ears for the sound of restless feet shuffling down the road toward our house.
Nothing.
Not even a single dog barked from any of the nearby farmhouses.
Next to my window, on top of the writing desk that Daddy had built and painted bright strawberry-red when I was five, sat two framed photographs of my father. The first was of my parents’ wedding day, back in September 1901. They had to cross the Columbia River to Washington to find a preacher who would marry them, and it took them five tries before they found a man of the cloth willing to conduct the ceremony. Mama wore a high-collared white dress and a veil with a crown of plump rosettes. Daddy was as handsome as ever in his bow tie and suit, with a rose blossom pinned to the lapel of his coat. He had smiling brown eyes and a nose that was narrow on top and broad on the bottom, just like mine.
According to Mama, Fleur’s father took the second photograph, a portrait of Mama, Daddy, and me, back when I was about two or three years old. Mama had put me in a dress with frills and lace that swallowed me whole, and a white hair bow devoured the top of my head of chin-length ringlets. I sat on our porch rail, and Daddy held me from behind, while Mama held on to him, all three of us interconnected.
I turned my head away from the photographs and cast my glance to the drawer of my bedside table. The bottle of Necromancer’s Nectar was hidden within, as well as a teaspoon I had snuck upstairs earlier that evening, after cleaning up the supper dishes with my mother.
I crept across the room, and, without a sound, holding my breath, I slid open the drawer. The items lay before me.
A spoon and a brown bottle covered in symbols.
A spoon and a bottle and hope.
After a few swift twists, the cap came off in my fingers. My hands shook, but I managed to pour a spoonful of a liquid the color of rust and bitter in smell.
“Oh, dear Lord.” I took a breath and eyed the potion sloshing about in the bowl of the spoon. “Please don’t let this puddle of rust water kill me.”
I slid the cold metal into my mouth and winced at the burn of fire and sin on my tongue. The tonic scorched my throat and sweated straight through my skin. My eyes watered; my hair thickened into a blanket made of wool that scratched at my neck and smothered my back. Perspiration trickled down my cheeks, my chest, my spine . . . I unfastened the top button of my bodice to keep from burning alive.
I shoved my feet into my shoes and left my bedroom, in search of cool air and answers. After every three steps, time seemed to hiccup forward, and I found myself five feet farther ahead than I expected to be.
The landing of the staircase.
The middle of the steps.
Halfway across the entry hall.
The front door.
The front yard.
Confidence surged through my blood, along with the flames of the potion. Before long I found myself marching up the highway, toward Reverend Adder’s house, where Daddy had died almost nineteen months earlier. The light of the whiskey stills lingered in the air, practically begging to be discovered by federal agents, and the moon, waning in its last quarter, cocked a half smile in the black July sky.