The Steep and Thorny Way(23)

“Put your shirt on.” I inched toward the door. “I’m not standing in a shed with a half-naked boy.”

“Why did you talk to Deputy Fortaine?”

“Put your shirt on.”

He raised his voice. “Why did you talk to Deputy Fortaine?”

“Dr. Koning brought him to our house this morning. They sat me down like I was a criminal on trial and questioned me about your whereabouts.”

Joe rubbed his shirt over his wet hair, and I smelled the pond water all over him again. He reminded me of a river otter, drenched and slick and wild. His hair dripped rivulets of water down his bare shoulders. Old yellowed bruises marred the skin above his left ribs, as though someone had beat him up in recent weeks.

“If you committed another crime,” I said, turning my eyes instead toward the wreckage of the card tower, “how in the world am I supposed to trust a word you said about your innocence?”

Joe plopped himself down on the cot and wiped his forehead with a shirtsleeve. “The deputy . . .” He sighed and leaned forward, his elbows digging into his thighs, the shirt hanging between his legs. “He caught me with another boy. Someone I met at a party that Christmas Eve.”

I stood up straight.

“That sort of thing’s illegal,” he added, his voice quiet.

“I wondered if it might be.” I glanced away from him again. “Now, put your shirt back on. I don’t like talking to you like this.”

“Well”—he tugged his right sleeve over his arm—“in any case, now you know why my father, the esteemed Reverend Ezekiel Joseph Adder, banned me from his house. I showed up at his door on the day I got back to town, scars on my face, tears of repentance in my eyes, and he called me—” His voice cracked. He shoved his left arm through the other sleeve. “My pop called me an abomination. I’m never setting eyes on that high-and-mighty son of a bitch ever again.”

“He called you”—I swallowed down an ugly taste—“an ‘abomination’?”

Joe nodded. “He told me he believed that surgically removing a part of my body would do me good.”

My arms went cold. “What are you even talking about? What body parts are people in prisons removing?”

Joe bit down on his pink bottom lip until the skin turned white. “Castration.” He shot me a stare that pierced straight through my heart. “Do you know what that is?”

“Yes.” I nodded, my chest tightening. “I’ve lived in farm country all my life. I know what they do to bulls to tame them and keep them from mating with the cows.”

“The government is taking it upon itself to do the same thing to certain inmates. ‘Eugenics,’ they’re calling it. Forced sterilization.”

“Why?”

“To cleanse America of sexual deviants, madmen, and the feeble-minded.” He buttoned up his shirt, starting from the bottom, his fingers shaking as he went.

“I’m sorry,” I said, and I truly meant it.

Joe finished with his shirt and leaned back on his hands. He sat with his legs flopped open, and he kept the top button of his shirt unfastened, exposing part of his chest.

“Does Laurence know what you’re like?” I asked.

“I . . . I don’t think so.”

“Well, be careful of him.” I smirked. “He is a ‘pillar of respectability.’”

Joe snickered under his breath. “Did you hear him say that about himself?”

I nodded and swallowed. “I actually hate what he’s become.”

“Don’t worry about him. He’s all talk.” Joe pushed himself off the cot and wandered the three steps it took to reach me on the other side of the shed. He leaned a hand against the wall near the left side of my head, and the wood creaked from the pressure. “Let’s talk about what’s important now.”

I eyed the closed door. “They could be looking for me—Uncle Clyde and Deputy Fortaine. I left the house in a huff and ran away.”

Our eyes met at that so-close distance, just a foot or so apart, and I could see a ring of gold encircling his pupils, right before the brown began.

“Are you sure killing him is our only option?” I asked.

“Aren’t you furious at him, Hanalee? Don’t you want justice for all the pain? A murderer and perjurer is walking free out there”—he gestured with his thumb toward the door—“while we’re suffering from his crimes and stuck with nothing.”

“But . . .”

“But what?”

I gritted my teeth. “I need more proof. I can’t just poison a man without being one hundred percent certain of his guilt.”

“You got proof last night.”

“A ghost?” I asked. “A hallucination? You said yourself I looked doped up.”

“You were convinced last night. You were certain you spoke with your father.”

“It’s daytime now, and—”

“And what?”

I backed away, sliding my hand across splinters in the wall, for my knees weakened. “I don’t know what to believe.”

“You swore that he told you he blamed your stepfather.”

“I need air. I can’t breathe.” I yanked open the door and tripped over the threshold, stumbling into sunlight that made my eyes sting.