The Steep and Thorny Way (25 page)

She clenched her teeth, and then she nodded. “We had trouble making ends meet after the war. Europe didn't need our crops anymore. Prices fell.”

“And that's what he was doing Christmas Eve?”

“Yes.” Mama closed her eyes. “He received a telephone call for a moonshine delivery, right before we were to head out to church. He was already dressed and ready to go with us, but he insisted he needed to make that delivery because the money would be good. It would pay for Christmas.”

I lowered my head. “He risked his life, just to make sure we celebrated a nice Christmas?”

“That's how your father was. I never met a man with a bigger heart. That's why I loved him so dearly.”

“Who called him?” I asked.

“He wouldn't say.” Mama's shoulders fell. “He wouldn't tell me where he was going. He simply said he'd earn us a nice bit of money and be home by the time we returned from church.”

“Have you ever wondered”—I scooted closer to her across the mattress—“if something happened to him during that delivery that would have made him stumble into the road in front of Joe's car?”

“No, not at all.” She pulled her wrist out of my fingers. “Fate simply didn't work in the favor of Joe and your father that night. No matter what Joe might have told you, Daddy's death was nothing more than a matter of terrible timing and the mistakes people make when it comes to liquor.”

“Then why does Uncle Clyde feel guilty about Joe's imprisonment?”

Mama's face hardened. “Your stepfather does not feel guilty, Hanalee. Stop saying such things.”

“Uncle Clyde told me he wants to send Joe to work with a colleague up in Seattle who would be kind to Joe—to appease his own guilt over what happened that night. He called Joe a ‘sacrifice.' A sacrifice he made to protect me.”

My mother leaned away from me, and her mouth twisted into that difficult-to-watch grimace people make before they're about to either scream or cry—but she did neither. She simply stared at me with that about-to-explode expression, her lips trembling, her eyes crinkled and bloodshot. “When did he tell you that?”

“Yesterday, when he spoke with me in private on the front porch.” I glanced toward my open doorway. “Where is Uncle Clyde?”

“He went to work early. Joe's potential drowning troubled him, so he didn't sleep much last night, and he wanted to—”

“You see what I mean?” I leaned forward. “Joe makes him feel guilty.”

Mama stood up from my bed and pressed a hand to her stomach. “No. I will not let you lead me down this road of suspicion again.”

“Do you think Daddy went to the Dry Dock on Christmas Eve?”

She blinked as if startled. “The Dock?”

I nodded. “Do you think the owners were the ones who made the request for moonshine?”

“I already told you, the Franklins haven't sold alcohol since
Oregon first banned the sale of liquor, back when you were just a child.”

“Fleur says they have a sign on the door that reads ‘We reserve the right to serve whom we please.' Do you know anything about that?”

“I'm aware of that sign.” She brushed hair out of her eyes. “That's why I avoid the restaurant.”

“In case they order me to leave?”

She rubbed her right arm, the same way Mildred scratched at her elbow when avoiding prickly subjects. “Hanalee, it's true, some people around here have a problem with your skin color. I'm not going to deny that fact. It wouldn't be fair to you if I pretended otherwise.”

“Like the ladies from church who urge you to bleach my skin.”

“Those older ladies are harmless and don't know any better. Just ignore them. For the most part”—she stopped rubbing—“people embrace you. It's only an obnoxious few spreading words of hate and bigotry.”

I crossed my legs in front of me and pulled at the edges of my quilt again. “Doesn't it seem awfully strange, though, that a mysterious someone telephoned Daddy, and just a short while later he stumbled in front of Joe's car in the dark . . . and then suddenly died from a busted leg and a sore arm?
After
the crate had been delivered?”

Mama clamped her arms around herself and gave a shudder. “I don't even want to imagine people in this town deliberately hurting your father.”

“I don't, either, but I would like to go to that restaurant and see what the Franklins have to say.”

“No, absolutely not. You are not going to the Dry Dock when they have that sign hanging on their door.”

“Do you know them?”

“The Franklins are a couple from the church in Bentley. I've never actually met them.”

I raked my hands through my short hair, digging at my scalp, knowing what difficult question would need to be asked next. “Do you believe in ghosts, Mama?”

She frowned and stiffened. “Don't you dare mention
that
again.”

“Not only have I seen Daddy during the past few nights, but I've spoken to him.”

She stepped back.

“He looked me in the eye,” I said, “and he told me—”

“You did not see your father.”

“He said, ‘I put full blame on the Dock'—meaning the Dry Dock. And then he told me, ‘If I'd just stayed away from that place that night, if I'd been a stronger man, I'd still be alive today.'”

“No,” said Mama. “Your father did not speak to you.”

“Yes, he did, Mama.” I rose to my feet. “I'm going to that restaurant this morning. I don't know what I'm looking for exactly, but I've got to head there, or I won't rest.”

Mama's face shifted from me to my window, as if she could see the restaurant from two miles away, beyond all the trees and the farms. “You can't go to the Dry Dock on your own.”

“Then come with me.”

Her throat rippled with a swallow.

“Please, come with me.” I held out my hand to her, my fingers shaking. “I'm never going to be able to sleep another night until I learn what happened to Daddy before he and Joe crossed paths on that road. And I don't think Daddy will rest until then, either. Please. Come.”

She hesitated. I watched as gooseflesh dotted her arms, and her chest rose and fell with breaths that looked labored. But then she straightened her back and reached behind her.

She grabbed hold of my hand and held it as fiercely as if she were saving me from drowning.

CHAPTER 21

MOST UNNATURAL MURDER

MAMA AND I WALKED THE NEARLY
two-mile stretch into town and stopped to catch our breath beneath the shade of a pine tree. Mama wiped her forehead with a handkerchief, and I peered through the needles at the restaurants up ahead.

Ginger's was an old brown shack—a former watering hole for local farmers, loggers, and railway men. The Dry Dock, on the other hand, sat in a fine white clapboard building with fancy gables and dormer windows and two brick chimneys that rose from the roof's black shingles. Wicker rocking chairs welcomed visitors for a moment of respite on the low front porch, and a wreath of dried flowers hung on the door, above a handwritten sign I'd always mistaken
for a list of the hours of operation. The two establishments sat uphill from a creek, separated by that monstrous old oak tree with branches thicker than any I'd ever swung from as a child. Fleur, Laurence, and I could have wrapped our arms and legs around the limbs and pretended to be tigers if we'd ever played downtown instead of in the woods.

“I want to go inside,” I said.

“You can't.” Mama mopped her flushed cheeks with the white cloth. “And don't you dare try.”

“Would they throw me out?”

“Yes, I'm sure they would.”

I took a step closer, and my nose filled up with the sweet scent of pine sap. The tips of my fingers felt sticky, even though I hadn't touched the tree. “Doesn't it make you fighting mad,” I said, “that everyone else's daughters can step inside the place, but not yours?”

My mother lowered the handkerchief from her face. “Of course it does, Hanalee. Why do you even have to ask?”

“Then take me inside.” I snapped a clump of dry needles off the branch dangling in front of my face. “I don't want to sit down at one of their tables or take one bite of their food. I just want to speak to the owners.”

“You can't just walk up to people and accuse them of hurting your father a year and a half ago.”

I eyed the Dry Dock.

It would take no more than twenty long strides to get myself to the front door.

I glanced at Mama.

I eyed the Dry Dock again.

“Hanalee . . .”

“I'm sorry, Mama.” I dashed off to the front door upon legs grown strong and swift from running through the woods with Joe.

The black-lettered sign greeted me on the door:

WE RESERVE THE RIGHT TO SERVE WHOM WE PLEASE
.

I flinched, for the phrase, up close, stung like a slap across my face. I grabbed the iron handle and pulled the door open.

Mama ran up behind me and caught the door, but not before I slipped inside. She followed me, and a little gold bell tinkled above our heads.

The dining area before us consisted of one large room with square tables draped in ivory cloths amid pale green walls adorned with paintings of canoes and kayaks drifting down the local creeks and rivers. Only one set of customers—a mother, a grandmother, and three golden-haired children, all regulars at our church—dined in the place on that quiet Thursday morning. The air carried the aromas of eggs and maple syrup and freshly brewed coffee, and I almost worried I'd walked into a private family home.

An embroidered poem, stitched in periwinkle-blue thread, hung on the wall beside my right elbow.

Kind hearts are the gardens
,

Kind thoughts are the roots
,

Kind words are the blossoms
,

Kind deeds are the fruits
.

A slender woman with gray-streaked hair—hair pulled tightly enough off her face to stretch out her eyes—rounded a corner from the far end of the dining room. She wiped her hands on her white apron and smiled at first, but then she caught sight of me, and her hands fell still; the smile wilted.

“No.” She pointed straight at me. “She cannot be inside this establishment. Didn't you see our sign on the door?”

“But I know these customers,” I said, looking toward the family at the table who held their forks frozen in midair between their plates and their mouths. “They go to our church. They're not afraid of me . . . or disgusted by me. Are you?”

“No!” The restaurant woman pointed to the door. “You need to leave these premises immediately.”

“What's wrong, Esther?” A bug-eyed man in his forties or fifties sauntered around the corner behind her, a spatula in hand, a white chef's hat sitting cockeyed on his head.

The woman—his wife, I presumed—crossed her arms over her bosom. “The Denney widow brought her mulatto daughter in here.”

“No, no, no, no, no.” The man puffed up his chest and put his hands on his hips with the blade of the spatula pointing upward. “I don't know what you think that sign on the door means, but we refuse service to mulattoes and Negroes. This state opposes miscegenation, I hope you know.”

“Oh, I know all about the state's marriage laws all too well,” said Mama. She clutched my right shoulder and pulled me back. “Come on, Hanalee.”

I pulled away from my mother's grip. “I don't want to sit down
and eat your food in this filthy Klan restaurant. I just want to ask you a question.”

The couple exchanged a look with their mouths drawn tight, and the women at the table fished for money in their handbags. No one denied that the restaurant supported the Ku Klux Klan.

“Should I telephone Sheriff Rink?” Esther asked her husband.