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.”