The Steep and Thorny Way(60)

“Who did this?” Her nails tore at the bark that contained the H and the a of my name. “What’s happening here?”

“It’s the Klan. They’re not just anti-Catholic, Mama. They’re threatening to hang Joe. I saw one of their pamphlets, and Laurence told me himself . . . they’ll hang him.”

“Oh, God.” Her fingernails tore at Daddy’s name, chipping away the letters—letters that someone had crossed off as though a task had been completed.

“I want to talk to Uncle Clyde,” I said.

“Uncle Clyde is not a part of them! Don’t you see his name on this tree?” She slammed her palm against the name Koning. “They want to get rid of him, too. And the deputy. Oh, God.” Her knees buckled. “What’s happened to this town?”

“Please, Mama . . .” I wrapped my arms around her waist and shouldered her weight, tasting her hair on my lips. “Let’s go talk to him in his office right now. Let’s tell him it’s all right to speak the truth. I want to know what happened to Daddy that night. I’ve got to know, or I’ll end up exactly like him.”





CHAPTER 22





O HEAVY BURDEN


HAND IN HAND, PETRIFIED OF LETTING each other go and allowing the world to topple entirely off its axis, Mama and I marched up the cement front path to the forest-green Queen Anne house that served as the home of Uncle Clyde’s medical practice, one block north of the main highway. The building had once housed the doctor, too, before his marriage to Mama brought him inside our own walls.

The front parlor sat empty, with only my stepfather’s stiff brown furniture and potted ferns greeting us. An ugly gold clock ticked away the seconds upon the mantel of the brick fireplace, next to a framed photograph of Mama.

“Clyde!” My mother slammed the front door closed behind us. “Where are you?”

“Greta?” Uncle Clyde slunk out of his office from around the corner, carrying paperwork of some sort. He looked like a tall frightened mouse, tiptoeing into view that way. I imagined a tail tucked between his legs. “What’s happened?”

“Do you have any patients in here?” asked Mama.

He straightened his posture. “No.”

My mother locked the door with a loud click.

“What happened?” My stepfather’s forehead creased.

Mama turned back toward him and covered her eyes with one hand.

“Greta?” He stepped closer. “Talk to me.”

I slipped my right hand into my mother’s left one and took a breath. “All three of our names are carved on that tree next to the Dry Dock,” I said, “along with Joe’s, Deputy Fortaine’s, Daddy’s, and Mrs. Downs’s.”

Uncle Clyde’s face froze, and he gasped the word “What?”

“Someone crossed off the names of Daddy and Mrs. Downs,” I continued, “but the rest of our names are just sitting there”—my voice faltered—“waiting for us to . . . to disappear.”

“I know that the . . .” Mama moved her hand to her mouth and made a burbling noise. Tears washed down her cheeks and slid across her knuckles. “As much as it sickens me, I’m aware of the prejudices against Hanalee and me, and even Joe, and I’ve heard the rumors about Deputy Fortaine being a Jewish man. But why you? What’s happening here? Why aren’t any of us safe?”

Uncle Clyde inhaled with a force that brought a flash of pain into his eyes. He put a hand on his side and glanced over his shoulder at his office around the corner. “Come . . . sit down.” He waved us over with fingers that looked as though they weighed too much. “We have some things to discuss.”

Mama drew a short breath, and I squeezed her fingers again. We followed my stepfather into his little octagonal office that fit into the house’s front tower. A second fireplace hibernated in one corner of the room, swept of all ashes, a log sitting on the grate, awaiting the first snap of cold in the fall. Upon the mantel stood a photograph of all three of us—Mama, me, and Uncle Clyde—from their January wedding. I stood in the middle of them, in front of Joe’s father’s church steps, the stair rails damp from a recent rain.

Uncle Clyde seated himself behind his desk, a wide worktable with a deep cherry hue, topped with a wooden pencil holder, a lamp, a set of medical books, and a tidy pile of papers. Mama and I took the two chairs with rounded backs directly across from him, below a copy of the Hippocratic oath and a framed degree from the University of Oregon Medical School.

With a whine of his chair, my stepfather leaned forward on his elbows and rubbed his right fingers across his lips, which paled to the same bone shade of white as his hand. “I committed a crime, Greta.”

All the blood left my face. The room tipped to the left, but I clutched the cold armrests and fought to keep my senses about me.

“What crime?” asked Mama in a voice that sounded as though it strained her throat.

Uncle Clyde’s eyes flitted down toward the grains of wood squiggling across his desk. A clock in the room—a plain, round wall clock with a no-nonsense frame and large Roman numerals—ticked with fidgety beats of the second hand.

“Clyde?”

“Perjury.” My stepfather cleared his throat. “I lied in court about the severity of the injuries Joe Adder caused Hank with that Model T.”