The Steep and Thorny Way(61)

Mama stared at her husband with eyes moist and unblinking.

“Did you kill him?” I asked, squirming in my chair. “After you told Joe to wait in the front room, did you hurt my father?”

“No.” He shook his head and folded his hands on his desk. “I did not kill Hank Denney, Hanalee. Nor did I ever want to. I genuinely liked your father and mourned his death as a good friend.”

“Then who did kill him?” asked Mama, scooting forward in her chair. “Why did you lie? Why did you court me and marry me and move into our house, knowing you’d lied?”

“I tried to do the right thing—I went straight to the sheriff and told him what I learned from Hank before he died.”

“What did you learn?” asked Mama. “What have you kept from me this past year and a half?”

“Hank’s neck . . .” Uncle Clyde licked his lips and placed his hands around his throat. “When I examined him, I saw bruising . . . redness . . . encircling his neck. I asked him what happened, and he seemed”—he removed his hands from his throat—“distressed. Terribly distressed. He wouldn’t talk to me about it at first, not until I said that the marks looked like rope burns.”

“A mock lynching?” I asked before Uncle Clyde could speak the words himself. “A-a-a necktie party?”

“What?” asked Mama. “H-h-how do you know about something like that, Hanalee? How do . . . why would—?”

“Laurence taught me about that just yesterday.” I cleared my throat. “And I saw it written on a Klan pamphlet. Laurence said that a group called the Junior Order of Klansmen is planning to do the same thing to Joe.”

“‘Junior Order’?” asked Mama, looking to Uncle Clyde. “They’ve recruited youths into performing this violence?”

“Their violence is limited.” Uncle Clyde removed his spectacles and rubbed his eyelids so hard, I could swear I heard them squeak. “But apparently it does, indeed, happen, more often than what’s reported.”

“So . . . you’re saying . . .” Mama shook. “Th-th-they hanged him? My Hank? They hanged him?”

Uncle Clyde lowered his hand to his lap and nodded. “I’m sorry.”

“At the Dry Dock?” I asked.

“Yes.” Uncle Clyde’s voice dropped to a tone that creaked from the depths of his chest. “According to Hank, Mr. Franklin, the owner of the Dock, telephoned him that night and asked him to deliver a case of whiskey. When Hank arrived, a party of Klansmen awaited with a burning cross and a rope slung around that oak tree.”

Mama’s chin sank against her chest, and she broke into tears that made her shoulders convulse.

Uncle Clyde drew a handkerchief from his breast pocket and handed it to Mama.

I rubbed my mother’s arm but kept my eyes on my stepfather. “What did they say to my father?”

“Hank said they told him”—Uncle Clyde swallowed—“that they didn’t tolerate bootleggers. They fastened a rope around his neck, and they raised him a few feet off the ground . . . to scare him.” His jaw stiffened. “To scare him out of town.”

“Who were the Klansmen?” I moved my hands to the armrests. “Did Daddy say? Were they boys?”

“Young men were, indeed, in attendance.” Uncle Clyde peeked at the doorway of the office, as though worried someone might be eavesdropping.

I craned my neck and checked behind me but found no one there.

“The Kleagle—that’s what they call their local recruiting officer,” he continued, and I turned back to him. “He was initiating members into the Junior Order. That part seemed to make Hank the saddest of all. Boys his own daughter’s age fastened that noose around his neck.”

“But they didn’t kill him?” asked Mama, lifting her face with the handkerchief pressed against her nose.

“No, they sent him on his way with a warning of a full lynching if he didn’t leave the state immediately. Hank said his left arm hurt like the dickens after that. He walked down the highway toward your house, and the pain grew so blinding, he ended up tripping into the road”—Uncle Clyde folded his hands on his desk, and his knuckles quaked against the wood like a telegrapher tapping a line of Morse code—“in front of Joe’s car, as you already know.”

“But the car injured him.” Mama scooted to the edge of the chair and grabbed hold of Uncle Clyde’s desk. “Joe still caused his death, didn’t he?”

“The Model T broke Hank’s leg,” said Uncle Clyde, “that’s for certain. But the arm pain and the breathing difficulty started at the Dry Dock. Hank said he hadn’t been able to catch his breath since the Klan let him go.” Uncle Clyde slid his glasses back over his ears. “Joe hitting him with the car certainly didn’t help matters, but Hank died because his heart was giving out after that mock lynching. I’ve observed other men with failing hearts who experienced that same arm pain, and I’m ninety-five percent certain his heart would have stopped beating that night even if Joe never drove down the road.”

I raised my chin. “Why did you lie in court?”

“The sheriff threatened to harm you if I spoke of what I’d learned.” He looked me in the eye. “I couldn’t risk them hanging you, too.”