The Steep and Thorny Way(49)

In front of the vehicle stood the sheriff, tightly holding the belt surrounding his thick waist. He spoke with Reverend Adder, who stooped as if carrying a great weight on his upper back. Mrs. Adder clung to her husband’s right arm and, without warning, howled like an injured dog—the wail of a woman in the throes of early grief. I knew that sound all too well from the night my father died.

My stomach dropped to my toes. I ran toward Mama through the other picnickers, who turned into streaks of red and white clothing.

“What’s happening?” I called out. “What happened?”

Mama turned to me with a worried brow. “I don’t know. There are murmurings of a death.”

Uncle Clyde sauntered our way from the highway, his face wan, his mouth drawn. His arms hung by his sides.

“They found . . .” He slowed to a stop in front of our blanket and tugged a handkerchief out of the breast pocket of his coat. “This afternoon, in St. Johns, along the northernmost stretch of the Willamette River, the body of a young man . . . a young man meeting Joe’s description . . . washed ashore.”

I dropped down to a crouched position on the grass. No air entered my lungs; I completely forgot how to inhale.

“Breathe, Hanalee.” Mama knelt beside me and patted my back. “Come on—take a deep breath.”

I dug my fingers into Mama’s arm. The world around me turned bright and blurry and distorted, and all I could do was squeeze my mother’s flesh and wonder how a boy—a boy alive in our woods just that morning—could have ended up in a body of water miles and miles over the forested hills.

Uncle Clyde took off his coat and flapped the garment in front of my face, which at first caused me more panic, but somehow the air blowing into my nose reminded me how to take a breath. My lungs expanded, and after more gasping and coat-flapping and clinging to Mama, I lay back on our blanket with my knees bent and breathed in a shallow rhythm.

Uncle Clyde rubbed my arms and asked if I could hear him, but he looked so strange and far away, with the glare of the sun shining against the lenses of his spectacles. My brain flitted to an image of him sitting beside my father on a bed, a needle full of morphine at the ready.

“How f-f-far is the r-r-river from our house?” I somehow managed to ask, still seeing the world as shiny and fuzzy, still imagining Uncle Clyde positioned beside my father in Joe’s bedroom on a Christmas Eve.

Uncle Clyde made responses I only half heard: “At least sixteen miles . . . Tualatin Mountains . . . he could have gotten a ride . . .” I closed my eyes and pushed his voice into the distance and let the world slip away into darkness.


UNCLE CLYDE CARRIED ME TOWARD HIS CAR. I HAD vague memories of townspeople in red ribbons and white suits staring, gaping, as the man who presumably killed my father lugged my limp body toward the family of a boy who might lie dead on a riverbank—a boy who might have died because of the man who carried me, or at least because of people like him. I heard the reverend murmur something about going to identify the body, and the next thing I knew, my head was jostling against the half-opened window in the backseat of Uncle Clyde’s automobile. My stepfather and mother sat in silence in the front seat, and the wind from their open windows screamed past my ears. I stared out at the passing fields and farmhouses and the white clouds smeared across the sky.

We neared a brown-skinned man in a dark suit and a derby hat who lumbered down the highway with a limp. My jaw dropped, and I sat up straighter, and I saw him—my father—right there in broad daylight, wandering in the direction of our house. Daddy raised his head and met my eyes, but the car sailed past him and drifted around a bend, stealing him from view.

“Are you all right?” asked Mama, turning toward me. “I heard you gasp.”

I slumped back down in the seat and closed my eyes.


BACK AT HOME, MAMA TOOK HOLD OF MY RIGHT ARM in the driveway and steered me straight toward the front door.

“I want to look for Joe,” I said, pulling away.

“No.” She pulled back, refusing to let go. “You’re not going anywhere by yourself.”

“Wait,” said Uncle Clyde from the stone walkway behind us. “I want to speak to Hanalee in private.”

“About what?” asked Mama, gripping my shoulders.

“I just . . . I need a few words with her”—he readjusted his spectacles on his nose—“to clear up the trouble between us. Help her get seated on the porch here.”

I didn’t possess the strength or the clarity of mind to keep fighting to run off, so I allowed Mama to guide me up the porch steps and sit me down on our wooden swing built for three.

“Everything will be all right.” She kissed the top of my head and patted my shoulder. “Just stay here. Recover. Behave. I’ll be inside if you need me.”

I nodded and rested my head in my hands, my elbows digging into the tops of my thighs. I focused on all the splinters sticking out from the worn boards of the porch and saw, out of the tops of my eyes, Uncle Clyde’s black oxfords clomping up the steps. Then the shiny shoes came to a stop.

“I don’t think he’s dead, Hanalee,” he said, his voice so calm it made me shudder.

“Hmm,” I said in a low murmur. “You must be like Mildred, then. Gifted with premonitory senses.”

“The northern Willamette River’s too far. I was thinking about the logistics on the car ride home. If you were with him in the woods just this morning, he couldn’t have hiked over the hills that quickly.”