The Steep and Thorny Way(54)
“What about Dr. Koning?” he asked. “What about the medicine he shot into Hank Denney’s veins in my bedroom?”
“I don’t think there was any medicine, Joe. Daddy told me not to blame Uncle Clyde—or to murder him. He begged me not to kill anyone and insisted I leave town and better myself. He said to come back to Elston when I’ve got the tools to change things.”
Joe’s brow creased. He curled his lips and slammed the back of his head against the wall, jangling a harness hanging above him. “How the hell would something that occurred before I hit your father have caused his death?”
“The other night, my father said that his heart wasn’t strong enough that Christmas Eve. I think the Klan might have terrorized him. Do you remember what he looked like when you saw him walking down the road? Was he holding a crate of whiskey?”
“No, there weren’t any crates.”
“Did he walk strangely, like he was hurt? Or scared?”
“I didn’t even see him until I hit him.” Joe rubbed his face with the palms of his hands, stretching his cheeks and his eyes in the flickering light. “He just sort of sprang out from nowhere in the dark. I was already out of sorts.”
“Because Deputy Fortaine caught you in your father’s car with that boy.”
Joe’s hands froze on his face. His eyes turned a liquid shade of brown, and I sobered up enough to realize I had trod into delicate territory. I pressed the heels of my palms against my eyes to dull an awakening pain.
“If Clyde Koning didn’t kill your father,” said Joe, sounding out of breath, “then even if something did scare him before I saw him that night . . .”
I waited for him to continue. My hands stayed shoved against my eye sockets.
He sniffed. “If Dr. Koning didn’t kill your father, then that would mean that I did, after all.”
My palms slid down to my temples. “I don’t entirely believe that to be the case.”
“My mind has always insisted that Koning killed him behind the closed bedroom door,” he said, his voice cracking, “but what if I’ve only been lying to myself? What if I caused your father more than a busted leg and a sore arm? I drove home after drinking, for Christ’s sake.”
“I know you did, and I still hate you for that, to tell you the truth.” I smacked my hands against the floorboards and wiggled myself up to a seated position against the wall. “But Uncle Clyde said some things that made me feel absolutely certain that something more occurred that night. He told me that you were a sacrifice back then. He also spoke of sending you off to a better life—up to a job in Seattle—to appease his guilt.”
“When did he say all of that?” asked Joe.
“Today, right after the Fourth of July picnic—after I thought you’d died, and he was trying to reassure me you hadn’t.” I shifted myself in Joe’s direction and braced my palms against the floor in front of me. “Somehow, Uncle Clyde was still involved, even if he didn’t administer poison. I’m certain the Klan was involved, too, including the Junior Order of Klansmen. I don’t think it was ever a simple case of a white boy hitting a black man with a car.”
“That’s what I’ve been telling you all along.”
“I know. But I don’t think you had the details quite right.” The muscles in my neck stiffened. I grabbed my left shoulder and massaged a spot that ached. “I feel I should go to the Dry Dock. There’s that big old tree sitting between it and Ginger’s . . .”
“You can’t just wander into a restaurant and ask if anyone there tried to lynch your father.”
“What else am I supposed to do? Sit around and wait for someone to finally tell me the truth about what happened that night? No one is ever going to explain it to me. You’ve hidden parts of the night from me yourself.”
“What parts?”
“The part about Deputy Fortaine letting you drive off with just a warning. Why didn’t you tell me he helped you?”
Joe squished his lips together and scratched at his knee through a hole in his trousers. “He didn’t help me. He still ended up blabbing about what he saw to Sheriff Rink. The sheriff came marching up to my holding cell the next morning and called me a . . .” He winced as though the sheriff had just struck him. “He called me every vicious word he knew. And he talked the judge into raising my bail. I couldn’t go home before my trial because of them. I just sat there in that cell with local drunks and thieves who liked to run their fingers through my hair.”
I sank against the wall and remembered what Mildred had said about telling the sheriff about Joe and the boy from the party. I even opened my mouth to say it wasn’t the deputy who’d blabbed, but I soon closed it, not wanting any more hate passing between people.
Joe tilted his face toward the ceiling, his jaw tight. His outstretched throat looked vulnerable and pale in the light of the flame, and I experienced the terrible image of a knife slicing across it.
“People hurt you, didn’t they?” I asked. “You’ve got those scars above your eye and on your lip . . . and those bruises on your ribs.”
“I haven’t been touched by kind hands since I was with that boy on Christmas Eve 1921—let’s put it that way.” He lowered his eyelids. “I’m just glad they let me out on good behavior before anyone in that prison got wise to how I am.”