The Steep and Thorny Way(74)

I reached the oak tree and found the Klansmen unsettled. Two of them held on to Joe by his shoulders. The noose remained around his neck, and the rest of the rope dangled over the branch. The other Klansmen paced about, their wide sleeves flapping.

“I don’t want my life to end in tragedy!” I shouted with my gun raised, and I cocked the hammer with my thumb.

“Oh, Christ!” said a voice that sounded like Robbie’s. “Put the gun down!”

I swept the barrel in the direction of them all—all eight of the remaining Klansmen, along with their victim, Joe Adder.

“I want to live and love and thrive,” I said, and a solution entered my head—a way to lessen the tragedy. To appease the pain.

I pointed the gun at Joe’s head.

His captors dove away from his sides. Joe’s eyes expanded above his gag, and he turned as rigid as stone.

“Stay still, Joe!” I shouted, and I closed one eye. “Don’t move!”

I squeezed the trigger with the pad of my index finger, and the blast of that shot exploded inside my head. The bullet soared in his direction with a force that rattled my bones.

Joe collapsed into a thick blanket of tall grasses, and the entire world fell silent.





CHAPTER 27





THE REST IS SILENCE



I DROPPED TO MY KNEES IN A CLOUD of white smoke and watched as all attention shifted toward me. Hoods came off. Voices shouted amid the brain-piercing ringing inside my ears. To my right, Robbie removed his covering and begged me not to kill anyone else, not paying any mind to the fact that the pistol only possessed two barrels, two bullets. Sheriff Rink yanked off his hood and clamored toward me with his hands in the air, demanding, “Drop the gun! Drop the gun!”

I clutched the grip with both my hands and kept the barrels pointed in the direction where Joe had stood. The weight of the little derringer grew too much to bear, as light as it actually was. My arm muscles weakened and slackened, and the weapon sank toward the ground.

The sheriff lifted the bottom of his robe and fetched a pair of handcuffs from the belt of his dark uniform underneath. “Everyone, leave the scene immediately.” He came over and shoved me down to the ground by my back, pushing me onto my stomach. “None of you were here. Do not leave a trace of yourself behind.”

Cold metal clicked around my wrists. I tasted dirt on my lips and felt the earth digging into my scraped knees.

“Hanalee Denney,” the sheriff barked into my ear in the deepest voice I’d ever heard from him, “you are under arrest for the murder of Joseph Adder.”

Legs swathed in sheets and dark trousers leapt past my head in the mass exodus from the scene. I lifted my face far enough off the ground to see a couple of grown men and several boys my age—the same pack of boys from Laurence’s place—fleeing down the dark highway, their robes billowing behind them, hoods tucked under their arms like empty pillowcases. They ran with their torches and lanterns and left the clearing dark and abandoned, save for the sheriff and me, and Joe, lying somewhere in the patch of blackness beneath the oak tree, near the burning cross.

Sheriff Rink lifted me to my feet by the crook of my left arm and dragged me alongside the highway, past Ginger’s. I tripped on an uneven patch of dirt and imagined hitting my head on the highway, without my arms to catch me. The sheriff yanked me upright before I smacked against the ground, and he tugged me onward.

“You sure saved me a heap of trouble by killing that boy yourself,” said the sheriff with a squeak. “I don’t know why you did that—maybe you were trying to spare him the pain of the noose—but I’m happy as hell you did.”

“I knew exactly what I was doing when I pointed that gun at Joe’s head” was all I said, and I held my chin high.

“Hanalee?” shouted a girl’s voice from somewhere behind us.

I swiveled around, which made the sheriff wrench me toward his car all the faster. A strange, chirping sound emerged from the darkness.

Mildred’s rickety old bicycle.

“Joe’s lying below the branches of the oak tree,” I called out to her, even though I couldn’t see her. “The sheriff’s taking me to his car to—”

Sheriff Rink smacked his hand over my mouth and opened the back door of his vehicle. The sideways grin of the moon spit an anemic haze over the automobile’s black paint, and a jolt of doubt struck my heart. The words I’d shouted to Joe—Stay still, Joe! Don’t move!—replayed in my head, and I kept feeling my arm and my hand aim the gun just so and seeing Joe fall to the ground in the darkness.

The sheriff grabbed a clump of my hair on the back of my head, shoved me into his backseat, and slammed the car door closed, just grazing my heel.

I lifted my head from the dark leather seat and heard him crank the vehicle to a start down below the grille in front of the car. With an obnoxious sigh and a hiss from the upholstery, he plopped down on the front seat and slammed his own door shut.

“It’s time for you to take a little journey outside Elston,” he said with a quick peek over his shoulder.

I scooted myself up to a seated position, despite the hindrance of the handcuffs, and watched Mildred’s bicycle careen to a stop up ahead, in the patch of grass leading to the cross and the oak tree. I thanked the Lord for her bizarre premonitions.