The Steep and Thorny Way(39)

“I beg your pardon?” Mama’s eyes flew open. “I don’t mean to speak disrespectfully, Reverend Adder, but if your son stole my daughter’s virtue—”

“He didn’t,” I snapped.

“Your son is feeding Hanalee lies about Clyde killing Hank,” she continued. “He’s luring her out into the woods in the dark—”

“Let’s focus on this accusation of murder,” squeaked the sheriff with a nervous little laugh, “before we even begin to think about the possibility of an interracial, premarital union. Good heavens.” He pulled at his collar. “One crime at a time, please.”

Mama, a woman well versed in interracial unions, stepped back at the word crime.

“Hanalee”—the sheriff beckoned to me with an index finger—“come here and have a seat on the sofa. We need to have a little talk about the type of information our young Joe has been telling you.”

Mrs. Adder pressed her forehead against her husband’s chest. The reverend cupped a large hand around the back of her curls, and both members of the couple wilted against each other.

“Come along, Hanalee.” The sheriff waved me over to our sofa.

“Go on.” Mama nudged me toward him with a little too hard of a push. I tripped over my own feet and proceeded forward, my shoes feeling as ungainly as when I strapped on snowshoes. I stood a mere inch shorter than the sheriff, and I hoped my height intimidated him as I followed him to the sofa.

I noticed that Babbitt still sat on the floor next to the armchair—the same spot where I had put it when replacing it with the Bible. I saw my copy of Noted Negro Women still parked on the end table next to the sofa from when I’d read about Charlotte E. Ray two nights earlier. I perched on the edge of the sofa and brought Noted Negro Women onto my lap.

Sheriff Rink squinted down at the title. “Why did you just grab a book?”

“This is the key that’s opened the entire world to me, Sheriff Rink.” I laid my right palm across the clothbound cover. “It’s taught me that people like me can become lawyers and represent the unprotected.”

The sheriff grinned. “A lawyer?”

“That’s right.”

“You ever even been to a trial?” he asked.

“Of course I have. I sat in the courthouse and watched as two lawyers jabbered on about a boy who’d driven around with gin in his bloodstream.” I tilted my head to the right. “But that boy was never allowed to testify. Was he?”

At those words, as if to bulldoze straight over my statement, Uncle Clyde said to the rest of the adults, “Everyone, please, sit down. No need to stand and be uncomfortable. We’ve all been through enough.”

Like a flock of starlings settling over the yard, Joe’s parents and my parents descended upon the furniture around me. Mama sidled up beside me on the couch; Uncle Clyde parked himself beside her; Mrs. Adder took the rocking chair; and the reverend stood behind her with his hand propped on the back of the chair, like a man posing for a formal photograph with his wife.

The sheriff plopped his wide backside down in Daddy’s armchair.

I fought off the urge to pitch Noted Negro Women at his forehead for sitting in that particular chair.

“If Joe were to have testified”—the sheriff clasped his hands together between his knees—“what do you think he would have said?”

I wiggled myself to a more upright position. “What do you think he would have said?”

“Hanalee, no.” Mama sucked in her breath, her teeth bared. “Don’t turn the questions back around on other people, as you did yesterday with Deputy Fortaine.”

The sheriff shifted in his seat toward Mama. “Ben’s already questioned the girl?”

“He, um . . .” Uncle Clyde coughed into his right fist. “Deputy Fortaine came over for coffee yesterday morning. He asked Hanalee if she knew of Joe’s whereabouts.”

I noted the sheriff’s tension concerning the deputy. “Where’s Deputy Fortaine now?” I asked.

The sheriff swiveled back in my direction with a whoosh of his rump against the maroon satin. “He’s out looking for you and Joe.”

“Oh.” I tried not to gulp, but the reaction occurred as an involuntary swallow.

“Where is Joe, Hanalee?” asked the sheriff.

“Heading up to Washington without me.”

The sheriff’s small gray eyes scrutinized me. “Are you certain about that?”

“Yes. No one wants him here in Oregon.”

“That’s not true,” said Mrs. Adder with a break in her voice. “We want him home and safe.”

“You want him sterilized—castrated,” I said, and the bluntness of my voice smacked against the walls with a thud.

Another hush fell over the room, a silence cold and savage that made everyone’s eyes glisten and their lips shiver.

“Hanalee,” said Mama in a near whisper. “What did you just say?”

Uncle Clyde ran a hand through his hair and leaned his elbows on his thighs. “She’s referring to the eugenics movement.”

“We just . . .” The reverend’s fingers slipped off the rocking chair. “We just want the boy to make the right choices. None of this has been easy for any of us.”