The Steep and Thorny Way(59)

The woman—his wife, I presumed—crossed her arms over her bosom. “The Denney widow brought her mulatto daughter in here.”

“No, no, no, no, no.” The man puffed up his chest and put his hands on his hips with the blade of the spatula pointing upward. “I don’t know what you think that sign on the door means, but we refuse service to mulattoes and Negroes. This state opposes miscegenation, I hope you know.”

“Oh, I know all about the state’s marriage laws all too well,” said Mama. She clutched my right shoulder and pulled me back. “Come on, Hanalee.”

I pulled away from my mother’s grip. “I don’t want to sit down and eat your food in this filthy Klan restaurant. I just want to ask you a question.”

The couple exchanged a look with their mouths drawn tight, and the women at the table fished for money in their handbags. No one denied that the restaurant supported the Ku Klux Klan.

“Should I telephone Sheriff Rink?” Esther asked her husband.

“Only if this woman doesn’t remove her girl within five seconds.”

“Did you summon my father, Hank Denney, here the night he died?” I asked, pulling forward, for Mama tried to tug me backward with all her might. “Did you ask him to deliver moonshine that Christmas Eve of 1921?”

“Get out of this restaurant now,” said the man, pointing toward the door with his spatula.

“We tolerate bootleggers as little as we tolerate the likes of you,” said Esther behind him, squeezing her apron into a ball between her hands.

“Just answer my question!” I shouted. “Was my father here Christmas Eve 1921, like his restless spirit told me he was?”

The man paled. His wife grabbed a little gold crucifix she wore around her neck and rubbed it with one of her thumbs. The little family from our church gathered up their belongings and scrambled out of the restaurant with a slam of the door behind them.

“Hanalee, please.” Mama snatched my hand. “Let’s just get out of this place and forget about these people.”

“Listen to your mother, girl,” said the mister. “Go!”

“I’ll have you know”—Mama thrust out her chest and glowered at the man—“I intend to speak to the reverend about this establishment and let him know you don’t practice the love of good Christians.”

“Don’t talk to me about being a good Christian.” The man held up his spatula, as if unsheathing a sword. “You’re a whore with an illegitimate child, as far as the law of this state is concerned. You ought to be ashamed of yourself and thankful you’re free of your bootlegging Negro.” He raised the spatula above his head, as though he intended to lunge and strike us with it, which was both ludicrous and terrifying at the same time. “Now get out of here.”

“Are you in the Klan?” I asked, backing up with Mama’s hand clamped down on my wrist.

“I am, indeed.” The man lifted his round chin. “A proud, card-carrying member, and I’m not ashamed to say so.”

“Was my father here the night he died?”

“You come inside my establishment one more time”—he nodded toward the window, toward the shadow of the oak tree stretched across the glass—“and I’ll show you exactly what happened to your daddy that Christmas Eve.”

My skin went cold. The shadows of the branches bobbed across the window—the ugliest sight I’d ever encountered.

“Get out!” barked his wife. “You’ve ruined our breakfast shift, you no-good black and white trash.”

Mama wrenched me away, and we stumbled out the door into the glaring light of day.

I pushed her fingers off me and staggered through the tall grasses surrounding the oak, whose weighty boughs blocked the sun and made me colder still. I braced my hands against the trunk and panted through a painful stitch in my side. Just above my eyes hovered the shapes of letters, carved in the grayish bark. I assumed they were the names of local sweethearts.

“Let’s go, Hanalee.” Mama hooked her hand around my elbow.

“Wait a minute.” I lowered my head. “Let me catch my breath.”

My vision blurred. I stared at the trunk and watched the rippling stripes in the wood sharpen into focus. A carved name caught my eye, to my right: Delia Downs.

I leaned toward the words, my eyes narrowed, for Mrs. Downs was the black war widow who had been attacked in her home in Bentley—a woman scared into moving out of the county. Someone had scratched a line across her name.

“What is this?” I asked.

“What is what?” asked Mama.

I ran my hands over the bark, and a splinter stabbed my thumb. A slew of other names emerged in the jagged pieces, seemingly rising to the surface, the same way I spotted multiple crawdads in the creek whenever I first thought there were none.

Hank Denney—scratched out.

Joseph Adder.

Benjamin Fortaine.

Greta Koning.

Clyde Koning.

Hanalee Denney.

“L-l-look.” I pounded my palm against the names. “Look what they’ve done.”

Mama rested her hands on the trunk, and her eyes widened and darted back and forth over the letters in the bark. She rubbed her right palm across my name, as though she could erase the etchings with her hand, and she breathed with a bleat of panic I’d never heard from her before—a wounded sound, a desperate sound.