The Steep and Thorny Way (8 page)

According to Mama, Fleur's father took the second photograph, a portrait of Mama, Daddy, and me, back when I was about two or three years old. Mama had put me in a dress with frills and lace that swallowed me whole, and a white hair bow devoured the top of my head of chin-length ringlets. I sat on our porch rail, and Daddy held me from behind, while Mama held on to him, all three of us interconnected.

I turned my head away from the photographs and cast my glance to the drawer of my bedside table. The bottle of Necromancer's Nectar was hidden within, as well as a teaspoon I had snuck upstairs earlier that evening, after cleaning up the supper dishes with my mother.

I crept across the room, and, without a sound, holding my breath, I slid open the drawer. The items lay before me.

A spoon and a brown bottle covered in symbols.

A spoon and a bottle and hope.

After a few swift twists, the cap came off in my fingers. My hands
shook, but I managed to pour a spoonful of a liquid the color of rust and bitter in smell.

“Oh, dear Lord.” I took a breath and eyed the potion sloshing about in the bowl of the spoon. “Please don't let this puddle of rust water kill me.”

I slid the cold metal into my mouth and winced at the burn of fire and sin on my tongue. The tonic scorched my throat and sweated straight through my skin. My eyes watered; my hair thickened into a blanket made of wool that scratched at my neck and smothered my back. Perspiration trickled down my cheeks, my chest, my spine . . . I unfastened the top button of my bodice to keep from burning alive.

I shoved my feet into my shoes and left my bedroom, in search of cool air and answers. After every three steps, time seemed to hiccup forward, and I found myself five feet farther ahead than I expected to be.

The landing of the staircase.

The middle of the steps.

Halfway across the entry hall.

The front door.

The front yard.

Confidence surged through my blood, along with the flames of the potion. Before long I found myself marching up the highway, toward Reverend Adder's house, where Daddy had died almost nineteen months earlier. The light of the whiskey stills lingered in the air, practically begging to be discovered by federal agents, and the moon, waning in its last quarter, cocked a half smile in the black July sky.

Time kept skipping ahead. I moved a quarter mile. A half mile. Another highway—one that led to the farmlands of the south and the finer houses of the north—met up with the main road, and there I stood, in the crossroads, as crazy Mildred Marks had told me to do. Using the toe of one of my Keds, I drew a circle in the gravel, next to the southeastern points where the two streets met, and I stepped inside it. I waited with my arms hanging by my sides, my veins flowing with molten lava, all alone in the pitch-dark, near midnight, surrounded by a devil's circle.

“Lord, help me,” I whispered.

The stink of manure was so sharp and ripe in the air, it woke me up a bit to my stupidity. I smelled stables and fields and the false sweetness of life in Elston, and I imagined someone like Robbie Witten driving by, finding me all alone, drunk on bottled moonshine.

I turned back to the east, ready to step out of my circle and dash back home, when a sound met my ears.

Footsteps.

Labored footsteps—like those of a man dragging a busted leg as he limped toward me across the macadamized road made of tar and broken rocks. I pivoted on my heels, facing west again, and peered into the stretch of darkness before me.

I saw him. A man my father's height, with long legs and a sturdy build. He wore a dark suit, a crimson bow tie, and a familiar black derby hat that Mama and I bought one Christmas during the war years, when our cornfields turned a fair profit and we waited for Daddy to return from the fighting overseas. He ambled closer, favoring his left leg, and I glimpsed the shine of his brown eyes—eyes
swimming with so much love, they just about melted me to the ground. I recognized his golden-brown skin, his strong jaw, his broad nose, his smooth complexion that always made him look much younger than a man who had endured forty-one years of hardships.

My father, Hank Denney, staggered toward me on that midnight road and stopped two yards away from the shoe-drawn circle in which I trembled.

“Daddy?” I asked, my voice catching in my throat.

He took off his hat and held it against his chest, and he peered straight at me, like a man who lived and breathed.

“I'm so sorry, Hanalee,” he said, his voice gentle yet strong and deep enough to rumble inside the marrow of my bones. “I'm so terribly sorry. I should have gone to church with you.”

“But . . .” I shook my head. My chin and nose quivered with spasms I couldn't control. “D-d-did you tell Joe—Joe Adder . . . Did you tell him that the doc would be—be the death of you?”

He lowered his face and wrinkled his brow. “My body just couldn't take what it was given that Christmas Eve, baby doll. I'm sorry I wasn't a stronger man and that hate won out that night.” He heaved a sigh that made his shoulders rise and fall. “Hate is a powerful demon that worms its way into the hearts of fearful men.”

“But . . . Joe . . . not the doc. J-J-Joe Adder killed you. Didn't he?”

“That Model T surely didn't feel good, I admit, but that boy was so scared”—Daddy raised his eyes to me, a sad smile on his face—“I worried more about him than about myself. No . . .” He
placed his hat back on his head. “Joe Adder didn't kill me, Hanalee. I put full blame on the doc.”

“But . . . Mama . . . she . . .” Tears swam in my eyes, blurring him from view. “Sh-sh-she remarried, just this past winter. Dr. Koning comforted her and—”

“Don't be harsh on your mama. I should have fought harder to survive that night. I should have taken better care of myself so my heart could've been stronger.”

“How can you possibly blame yourself? You just said—”

An automobile engine growled our way from somewhere down the road.

Daddy glanced over his shoulder and stepped back with his good leg. “Go home. It's not safe to wander these roads late at night.”

“Do you want revenge, Daddy?”

“Go home. And stay away from the doc.”

“Do you want me to—?”

“For God's sake, girl, go home!”

Headlights swerved into view, and I thought of Sheriff Rink patrolling the streets, or Deputy Fortaine with his Hollywood smile and his ties to Uncle Clyde. I jumped out of my circle and dove onto my belly in a patch of dirt behind wild blackberries, and as soon as the car roared by, my father seeped away into the darkness, as if swallowed up by ink.

He was gone.

Again.

CHAPTER 6

WILD AND WHIRLING

I TORE PAST TREES AND FERNS AND
scraped my arms on berry thorns, twisting my ankle, not caring at all about the pain. The nighttime forest glowed in a strange haze of gold, and the fat trunks and green awnings soared high above, as if I were nothing more than a spider scampering through a window box. Branches and leaves pushed at my back, thrusting me forward, sending me on my way through the night to the Paulissens' little white shed.

I banged my fists on the door.

“Joe? Are you in there?”

Joe slammed his full weight against the door from within, as if to hold it closed.

“Wait!” I grabbed the knob. “It's Hanalee. I need to talk to you.”

“Have you got a gun?” he called through the slats.

“No.”

“You swear?”

I raised my hands in case he could see me through the cracks. “I swear. I left it behind. Let me in. I just spoke to someone. Someone who said you're innocent.”

“What?”

“You heard me. Open up. I believe you.”

The door opened, and I stumbled into the small space lit by a kerosene lantern, with just a cot, a potbelly stove, and some old fishing rods parked against a wall. My knees and elbows crashed against floorboards half sunken into the earth. I smelled and tasted dirt. And fish.

The door closed behind me, and Joe crouched down by my side, shining that foul lantern into my eyes. Bright light cut across my corneas. I hissed and shrank back.

“What's the matter with you?” He grabbed my arm and shoved the light even closer. “Your pupils are as large as dimes. What'd you take?”

“An elixir”—I pushed the lantern away—“from Mildred Marks.”

“Jesus!” He set the light on the ground beside him. “You look like the dope fiends I met in prison.”

“I don't know what the Markses put in there, but”—I clasped his left elbow—“I spoke to him, Joe.”

“Who?”

“My father. My real father.”

“You . . .” His face blanched, and I watched his own pupils dilate. “You mean—”

“He said he should have stayed away from the doc that night. He puts full blame on Dr. Koning.”

Joe knelt so close to me, I smelled pond water in his hair and saw the C-shaped arc of the scar above his right eyebrow. His bottom lip looked as though it had once split open and tried to heal, with questionable success.

Without warning, the room swayed, and I had to cover my mouth to keep from retching. Kerosene smoke lodged in my lungs. I coughed and wheezed and curled onto my side, the heels of my palms pressed against my eye sockets.

“Hanalee.” Joe nudged my arm. “Wake up. You can't go to sleep in here.”

“We should talk to Sheriff Rink.”

“I told the sheriff about Dr. Koning when he first threw me in jail. He didn't listen to a fucking word I said.”

I flinched at his language. “There's got to be something we can do.”

“There's only one way to get rid of a man who got away with murder, Hanalee.”

I lowered my hands from my eyes and gaped at him. “He's my stepfather, Joe.”

“He murdered your father.” Joe pointed toward the door. “He took that man's life and robbed you of love and peace.”

“I can't kill him.”

“Where'd you get that gun? From Laurence?”

“I'm not shooting Clyde Koning.”

“Talk to Fleur, then. She knows all about herbs and flowers, doesn't she? I'm sure she's aware of poisonous local plants and could—”

“No!” I sat back up. “I'm not tangling Fleur up in this mess. I'd kill myself before anything happens to her.”

“I can't risk going back to that prison.”

“Well, you're going to have to go back, because I'm not a killer.”

“Neither am I.”

I smacked his arm with the heel of my right palm. “You're an ex-convict with nothing to lose. You've got no family, no money, no house, no love—”

He snatched my wrist and squeezed my bones between his fingers. “They'll cut me up if I go back there.”

I tried to wrench myself away from him, but he pulled me forward and tipped me off balance.

“I'm like you, Hanalee.” His dark eyes glistened a few inches in front of mine. “I've got people who hate me and want to hurt me. There are doctors in that prison—barbarians with medical degrees who'll do unspeakable things to change me if I ever go back. There's no way in hell I'm going back there.”

Lamplight wavered and rippled across the wall behind him, stretching and shaking his shadow above the bed. He smelled so much like the pond beyond the shed, I imagined him diving down into the murky green depths and hiding among the underwater grasses whenever I wasn't around.

“Are you sure murder is the only option?” I asked.

He nodded. “All you have to do is slip poisonous leaves into
his tea or coffee—whatever he likes to drink. And I'll get you out of town directly afterward.”

I squirmed. “Why don't you just stab Dr. Koning and run?”

“I just told you—I can't risk jail. Sheriff Rink would be after me the second I finished the job. He'd have the whole goddamned state searching for me with rifles and bloodhounds.”

“They'd hunt you down even faster if your skin was as dark as mine.”

“That's not necessarily true.” He loosened his grip.

I lifted my chin. “I think you're a coward, Joe.”

“If I murder Dr. Koning, I'd have to kill myself, too, just to make sure I don't end up in that pen again. If it comes to that”—he turned his face away and swallowed, hard—“I'll do it. But I think, if we're careful, and you get to him from within that house, we can both end up safe and free in some other place that doesn't want to get rid of us.”

I breathed through my mouth. My tongue went so dry, my throat turned raw.

“Will you consider it, Hanalee?” He peeked back at me. “You just said yourself that your father blames the doc. You have your proof. And I know for certain you have a vengeful side.”

I swallowed. “I wasn't ever truly going to kill you. I sent that bullet straight past your ear on purpose, so you'd feel exactly what I felt when Sheriff Rink told me my father was dead.”