The Steep and Thorny Way(68)

“I know this probably isn’t helping you feel a whole lot better”—I plumped up the hay under his head—“but I’ll fetch you a pillow . . . and some oil for the lantern. I’ll take good care of you.”

“No.” He took hold of my left wrist and opened his eyes. “Go back to the house. Don’t come out here again.”

I sank back on my heels. “I beg your pardon?”

“Someone will see you. I don’t want anyone to know I’m here. I don’t want anyone trailing you and hurting you.”

“You need ice and bandages. I could get Dr. Koning—”

“No!” He squeezed my wrist. “I still don’t trust him, Hanalee.”

“Joe . . .” I wrapped my free hand around his cold fingers. “I have to tell you something.”

“What?”

“That oak tree at the Dry Dock . . .” My eyes burned. “The one they used . . . for . . .”

Joe nodded in understanding.

“Someone carves the names of certain people on it,” I said. “People who don’t quite belong. And they seem to cross off the names once a person leaves town. Like Mrs. Downs.” I pressed my fingers tighter around him. “And my father.”

“Is your name on that tree?” he asked, his voice deep, protective.

“Mine. Mama’s. Yours. Deputy Fortaine’s.” I swallowed. “And Clyde Koning’s.”

He slipped his fingers out of mine and lowered his hand to his chest.

I dug through the carpetbag and tugged out a white undershirt. “This morning Uncle Clyde admitted to me that he, indeed, lied in court.” I dabbed the shirt against Joe’s red nostrils with the softest touch I could manage. “When he was in your room with my father, Daddy told him about the near lynching.”

Joe maneuvered himself up to a sitting position with his shoulders curled forward. “Here, let me do that,” he said, and he took the shirt and swabbed his bloody nose on his own. His eyelids fluttered at each brush of the cloth against his skin.

“I should fetch you ice,” I said.

“What did Dr. Koning do with that information?” he asked, still wincing from the dabbing. “How did he go from hearing about a near lynching to accusing me of manslaughter, without one mention of the Ku Klux Klan, in court?”

“Uncle Clyde said he went straight to Sheriff Rink and told him what he saw on my father . . . the marks . . . the marks on his . . .” I held the sides of my throat and crossed my legs beneath me. My mouth refused to utter another syllable, for the words I’d planned to say contained edges sharp and jagged. I closed my eyes and rested my head in the palms of my hands.

Joe stayed beside me without saying a word. He just waited, breathing in a gentle rhythm while he wiped the blood from his lips and chin. A warm breeze nosed through the rafters above our heads.

“Uncle Clyde”—I sniffed—“told the sheriff about the marks from the noose. He reported everything that my father said.” I lowered my hands to my lap and watched my fingers hang like unnecessary appendages off the edges of my shins. “It sounds to me as though the Junior Order of Klansmen met at the Dry Dock on Christmas Eve, and, possibly with the help of a few adult leaders, they terrorized my father at that tree, as part of their initiation. They put too much strain on his heart, to the point where it stopped beating entirely in your bedroom.” I dragged my thumb across a damp patch of skin that itched below my right eye. “They trapped him into heading to the Dry Dock with the promise that they’d pay him good money for bootlegging.”

“And Dr. Koning got paid to keep quiet about the truth.”

“No.” I wiped both cheeks with the palms of my hands. “People threatened to hurt me if he spoke the truth.”

Joe drew his right knee to his chest and leaned his elbow on it, sinking his nose into the undershirt. “You’re positive Dr. Koning’s telling the God’s honest truth?”

“I spoke with the owner of the Dry Dock this morning. He verified that they used that tree to torture my father. He seemed proud of it, as a matter of fact.”

“Christ.” Joe closed his eyes. “It’s even worse than I imagined. So much worse.” He pursed his dark brows. “They’ve won.”

“No.” I folded my hands in my lap. “I won’t let them win.”

“Then what do you propose we do?”

I sat up tall. “We survive.”

He looked at me from above his swollen nose, and I saw some fight burning in his eyes, too.

“We’re still alive,” I said. “Still in one piece. Let’s stay that way. Let’s go make something of ourselves and show them how much we’re thriving.”

He breathed a small laugh. “You make it sound simple.”

“I didn’t say that, but let’s do it. Let’s become better educated than them—make more money than them—love people more fiercely than they could ever dream of loving.”

A smile awakened at the corners of his mouth. His nose had stopped leaking, but it continued to swell and purple. Half circles the same color as his bruises rimmed the skin beneath his eyes.

“But, for now,” I said, “I’m going to make sure you get help.” I peeked over my shoulder at the closed stable door. “Let me go see if Uncle Clyde came home yet.”