The Steep and Thorny Way(73)

The brakes of the truck squealed to a stop. My body jolted. Car doors opened. I writhed again and arched my back, but hands grabbed me and yanked me forward in the dark. My feet hit the ground with a thump that made the gun jump in my boot, and I thanked God for the safety mechanism.

“Look what we found,” said one of the Klansmen who squeezed down on my arm. I recognized his voice as being that of Mr. Franklin from the Dry Dock. “Both of them, huddled in the stable on the girl’s family’s property.”

The man whipped me around toward a scene of bright light, and my breath caught in my throat.

A wooden cross, at least eight feet tall, burned in the patch of tall grasses between the Dry Dock and Ginger’s. The inferno crackled and strengthened and reflected off the glass of the Dry Dock’s windows, brightening the white of the Klansmen’s robes. Beyond the cross stood the oak tree, looking larger and blacker and more monstrous than I remembered, its crooked boughs stretching out to the surrounding darkness. Four more Klan members waited by the tree, and they held torches that illuminated a noose that hung from the thickest branch.

Behind me, Klansmen pulled Joe out of the truck, his mouth and hands still bound. His eyes widened at the cross and the noose, the fire shining against his brown irises, and he dropped to his knees.

“Joseph Adder and Hanalee Denney,” called out a wheezy, high-pitched voice that I knew for certain to be Sheriff Rink’s. He stood by the noose, a slightly shorter figure than the others, and the black and hollow eyes of his hood stared straight inside me. “We have brought you here because you are both threats to the moral purity of this community. As punishment”—he grabbed hold of the noose dangling beside him—“we will bring you each forward, fasten this rope around your neck, and raise you in the air three times in a row.”

I whimpered beneath my gag and bent my arms and knees in a frantic fight to break free. The fire on the cross blurred and jumped about, and all I could see was the color red.

“Afterward,” continued the sheriff, “you will leave this community, as well as the white homeland of Oregon, for the rest of your living days. You are not welcome in Elston, nor will you ever be. Boys”—the sheriff waved to the Klansmen holding Joe—“let’s start with him. You new recruits will have the honor of slipping the rope over his head and ensuring it’s secure.”

Four of our original attackers crowded around Joe, and at first I couldn’t see any part of him, aside from one of his bare feet sticking out from between the bottoms of the Klansmen’s dark trousers below the robes. Two of them reached down and hoisted him to his feet. They steered him toward the noose that the sheriff held in his meaty fingers. Joe’s hands remained bound behind his back, but he wiggled his elbows and kicked at his captors and gave one last go at escape. The sheriff grabbed him by the back of his collar and forced the rope around his neck.

“No!” I cried out from beneath the cloth—a muffled sound, but one that startled the two Klansmen who held my wrists. Their grips loosened. I somehow yanked myself free of their hands.

I tore off, darting down the side of the highway like a hunted rabbit.

Mr. Franklin shouted, “Run after her!”

Footsteps pounded the soil in the grasses behind me, and I heard my name, called out in Laurence’s voice. Adrenaline soared through my body, allowing me to fly over the ground and run harder than I’d ever run in my life. I pulled the binding off my mouth and allowed my lungs to breathe.

The muscles in my legs carried me through the copse of trees that rose up in my path, several yards south of the Dry Dock. With motions swift and powerful, before my pursuers could even think of catching up, I was down on the ground, pulling off my right boot, knocking my fingertips against the wood and cold metal of the pistol.

“Leave me alone, or I’ll shoot!” I cried, and I pointed the double barrel up at two white sheets that came to a skidding stop in front of me. “I swear to God, I’ll shoot.”

“Put the gun down, Hanalee,” said Laurence from beneath the hood on the right.

“Take off your hoods and run to my house for help.” I rose to my feet. “Tell my parents there’s going to be a murder.”

“Hanalee—”

“I know that’s you, Laurence. Take your goddamned KKK friend here and go get Dr. Koning. Tell him blood will be spilled at the Dock tonight.”

“But—”

“If you don’t want the blood to be yours”—I lowered the gun to the direction of his groin, figuring he might value that area even more than his head—“then go now and fetch Dr. Koning—quickly!”

Laurence and his friend remained frozen and hidden beneath their sheets.

I cocked the hammer and fired at the ground next to Laurence’s left foot, scattering leaves and dirt in all directions. “Now!”

Both Klansmen jumped into the air and skedaddled in the direction of my house.

“What was that?” a voice shouted in the distance, back where I’d last seen Joe with the noose around his neck.

I ran back with one foot in a boot and the other one bare, and I clutched the pistol in my right hand, contemplating the damage I could do with that last precious bullet. I could kill Sheriff Rink. At the very least, I could shoot him in the kneecap and cause him to moan in pain and distract his cohorts while I released Joe from the rope. I pushed past trees and the blur of the highway and thought of all the possibilities—all the consequences that would follow. A funeral. A trial. Tears. Heartache. Prison. Eugenics. Pain. Regret.