The Steep and Thorny Way(32)

“Evidence of what?” he asked. “My future beatings? My murder?”

“I don’t know, but”—I grabbed the pamphlet and crumpled it down into one of my dress pockets—“I’m keeping it.”

“This place makes me sick.” He kicked aside a cigarette butt and stumbled out of the cabin with the light from the lantern skittering across the walls.

I followed, and everything outside in the dark—the breeze in the branches, the splash of an animal in the creek, even the damn croaking frogs—spooked me into thinking an entire mob of Elston residents shuffled around in the bushes, spying on us. People our own age. White, Protestant boys aged twelve to eighteen.

I blinked to adjust my eyes to the lack of light, and then I grabbed the blanket and basket and trailed Joe and the lantern up the slope. “Where do you think we should go now?”

“How the hell am I supposed to know?” he said. The lantern swung by his side, casting erratic streaks of light that made our surroundings seem to shake and grow.

“Do you think Laurence and the Wittens are in that Junior Order?” I asked.

“Laurence probably is.” He veered to his left at the top of the slope and brushed a thick branch out of his way. “He’s been speaking highly of the Klan and one hundred percent Americanism.”

“Fleur said he’s been after her and her mother to spend more time with church groups, to mind how they look in the community.” I pushed the branch away, too, and sap smeared across my hand. “He hasn’t said a kind word to me in well over a year, not since he befriended those Wittens. Since Uncle Clyde barged his way into our lives.”

“You see what I mean?” Joe stopped, for one of his pant legs had gotten snared on a bush. “The local Klan is more than just a group that hosts baseball games and prints anti-Catholic pamphlets. And even if they did just promote anti-Catholicism, what makes you think their hatred would stop with one group?” He shook his leg free of the branch. “I witnessed it in prison, and I’m feeling it out here—there’s a powerful movement to cleanse this country of the wrong sorts of people.”

I came to a stop near the same bush that had grabbed him. “If they’re as hateful as you believe—”

“Hate doesn’t even begin to describe what’s happening.” Joe turned back around with the lantern shining across his eyes. “People in this state are controlling who can and can’t breed, Hanalee. They’re eradicating those of us who aren’t white, Protestant, American-born, or sexually normal in their eyes. They’re ‘purifying’ Oregon.”

“Oh, God.” I dropped the basket to the ground and crouched into a ball, holding my arms around myself.

Joe knelt down in front of me. “I know. I’m scared to death, too.” He raised the lantern so we could better see each other’s faces. “But if those of us who are being threatened join together and fight back, there will eventually be enough of us to stop them.”

I shook my head. “How on earth do we fight a movement like that?”

He lowered his eyes, and the light from the flame streaked across both our faces. Heat nipped at my cheeks.

I rose back up to a standing position. “Do we just keep running? Find other castoffs and build up a ragtag army against people like Uncle Clyde and the rest of the Klan?”

Joe cracked a small smile in the lamplight. “I like that.” He stood up, too. “An army of blacks, Catholics, Jews, Japanese, and queers would scare the hell out of the f*cking KKK.”

I stepped back. “You sure have a foul mouth for a preacher’s boy.”

“Yeah, well, I haven’t been a preacher’s boy in a long while.” He turned back around to our path. “Come on. Let’s find a place to camp.”

A mere ten paces farther, we entered a small clearing surrounded by a fortress of trees whose tops disappeared high overhead. We both stopped and inspected the area by the light of the lantern.

“Do you think it’s far enough away from the cabin?” asked Joe.

“Well . . .” I cast my eyes toward the darkness that devoured the path back to the building. “It is nice to know the cabin’s within running distance, in case rain arrives. Or a bear.”

“What?” He gasped. “You think we’ll encounter a f*cking bear?”

“Jeez, Joe! Stop using that word.” I crept over to the outer reaches of the lamp’s arc of light and bent down to study the dark outlines of a patch of leaves. “I don’t see any poison oak. Or any animal dens.”

He set the lantern by his feet and threw his carpetbag onto the grass. “Holy Mother of God, we’d better not get mauled by any bears.”

“Stop worrying about the damn bears. They’re the least of our problems.”

“Why are you getting after me for my language? You swear a lot for a girl.”

“I only swear when I’m pushed into situations like this. And my words are tamer.” I dropped the picnic basket and shook out the tan blanket.

Joe helped me stretch the bedding across the ground until it covered an area the size of two bodies. Then we both stood back up and stared down at the makeshift bed before us. I heard him swallow—or gulp was more like it. I swallowed, too.

“You can lie on it,” he said. “I’ll sit against the tree.”