The Steep and Thorny Way(33)

“Don’t be ridiculous. You’ll get a sore back.”

“I don’t think you’d want me lying beside you.”

“I don’t hardly care right now.” I tucked the holster beneath the right side of the blanket and stretched myself out on the rough surface that scratched like a burlap potato sack. My hair felt lumpy between my head and the ground, but I didn’t feel like pulling out all the pins. “As long as you don’t mind lying down beside me,” I added.

“Why do you say that?” he asked.

“Because of my skin color, of course.” I bit down on my lip and then added, “And my sex.”

“Now you’re just insulting the both of us.” He plopped down beside me and pulled out an object from his carpetbag.

I rolled onto my side, away from him. “Am I disgusting to you?”

“Hanalee . . .”

“Tell me the truth.”

He dropped a woolen garment in front of me. “Here, put this on. You’re going to get cold out here.”

“What is it?”

“A coat.”

I patted the sleeves and the buttons in the dark, verifying that it was, indeed, a jacket. “Won’t you get cold?” I asked.

“I’m wearing long sleeves. You’ve got your arms hanging out. You’ll freeze to death without it.”

“Well . . .” I tucked the coat over my shoulders like a cape. “Thank you.”

He shifted about on the blanket beside me. “I’m blowing out the lantern now.”

I shrugged. “That’s fine.”

He raised the chimney and puffed, and the forest went black. The temperature seemed to drop about thirty degrees, and I found myself shivering in an instant. I slipped my arms inside the sleeves of the coat and buttoned up the garment to my throat. Behind me, Joe wriggled around on the blanket until it sounded as though he faced in my direction. I heard him breathing about a foot away from the back of my neck.

“No,” he said, “you’re not.”

I lifted my head. “Not what?”

“Not disgusting to me.” He drew a deep breath that whistled through his nose. “Am I disgusting to you?”

I lay my head back down and tucked my hands inside the warm depths of his coat sleeves. “I haven’t yet decided.”

He didn’t respond.

“It’s not because of the boys thing,” I chose to add. “Although that’s still a bit confusing to me, to be most honest.”

Again, he didn’t respond.

I cleared my throat. “It’s because of the other thing. My original reason for hating you.”

“It’s still sometimes confusing to me, too.”

“What?”

He sighed. “‘The boys thing,’ as you called it.”

“I . . . I suppose that would be.”

“Everything would be a hell of a lot easier if . . .”

I nodded in understanding, although I supposed he might not have seen me doing so in the dark.

We lay in silence, the subject of our mutual fear of disgusting each other still taking up space in the air around us. Crickets and frogs called out in their desperate frenzy of chirping and croaking, and I wondered how I could possibly sleep with all the ruckus, never mind the other discomforts and worries. A splash sounded somewhere beyond the trees, and for a moment I thought Joe might have caught the urge to swim around naked again. I still imagined him as a woodland creature, swimming down among the submerged grasses, hiding in the darkest recesses far below the water’s surface. Maybe he transformed into a fish when I wasn’t looking, like the prince in the Creole story. A sleek coho salmon, or even a swift and frightened minnow.

He scooted closer to me on the blanket—not in a bold and forward way, but in a slow and cautious manner, as though he was trying to come nearer for a smidgen of warmth without sounding like he was doing so.

“Good night, Hanalee,” he said, just a few inches away.

A tear leaked out of my right eye and dampened the blanket below my left cheek. I held my breath for a moment, forcing my shoulders not to shake, and then I answered, in as steady a voice as I could muster. “Good night.”



OREGON WOODS, CIRCA 1918.





CHAPTER 12




HOW UNWORTHY A THING YOU MAKE OF ME

IT TOOK A LONG WHILE TO FALL asleep in such a strange and exposed environment. Terrible dreams bothered what little slumber I could snatch, and at one point I woke up in the darkness, huddled against Joe’s stomach and chest with my hands balled between our two bodies. My teeth chattered, and I shivered and whimpered and burrowed against him, while he breathed in a steady rhythm beside me. The air on the forest floor felt as bitter cold as December, not at all like the beginning of July.

Joe tucked his arm around my back and pulled me close. He shivered, too, but his shirt heated my cheek and nose.

“Are you all right?” he asked, his voice thick with sleep.

“It’s freezing out here.”

With gentle movements, he scooted the two of us over to my side of the blanket, and then he lifted his arm and wrapped the other side of the covering around us. We had to snuggle close for the blanket to reach around my shoulders, and all I could think was The world must be mighty atrocious right now if cuddling up with Joe Adder in the middle of the woods seems my most desirable option.