Just past the heart of the town, we heard the horns of the local brass band blaring “You’re a Grand Old Flag.” I braced myself for the upcoming barrage of socializing that made my head swim on even normal Julys. Every year Elston held the Independence Day picnic on the lawn in front of our forty-year-old church—the type of church one would find on a Christmas card, complete with a steeple and paint as white as heaven itself, minus a few scuffs from stray baseballs and leaky droppings from the birds that nested in the eaves. Even the townsfolk who attended the church over in Bentley, plus the folks who dared to declare themselves Catholics or atheists, migrated to our Fourth of July festivities. If any actual Jewish folks resided in Elston or Bentley, aside from the aforementioned deputy, they’d probably come puttering over in their automobiles, too.
Uncle Clyde pulled the Buick next to a line of parked cars that gleamed in the sunlight in a patch of dirt. From my backseat window I spied the fair citizens of Elston, clad in red, white, and blue, crowded together on blankets in the lush green grass, hopping about in potato-sack races, and stuffing their mouths full of food. The brass band—all men in white linen suits—trumpeted away on the steps of the church, their cheeks puffed wide, their faces flushed and shiny. They looked as though they might already smell a bit sour.
Uncle Clyde popped his car door open and hurried around to Mama’s side to help her with her door. Mama handed my stepfather a basketful of roasted ham, fresh fruit, and sugar cookies and stepped out of the vehicle.
“Thank you, Clyde.” She brushed her left hand across the sleeve of his coat, and they leaned in close to each other, as if about to kiss, but Uncle Clyde stopped and turned his sights to me.
“Aren’t you getting out?” he asked. He stepped toward me and opened my door.
I folded the rim of my hat with a satisfying crunch of the straw, and I remembered how the sheriff had asked Uncle Clyde and Mama to take me to the picnic to serve as bait for Joe.
In the Creole story about the prince whom a wizard turned into a fish, the girl’s father killed the fish to keep his daughter from visiting him by the river. He forced her to cook the fish. And then he ate him.
“Hanalee.” Mama set her hand on the crook of Uncle Clyde’s arm again. “Are you all right?”
I shoved my hat onto my head and slid off the seat. The soles of my sandals thudded against the dirt, and the ground coughed up a cloud of dust. “I’m just dandy.”
Mama frowned.
The three of us entered the picnic grounds, my mother walking in the middle and Uncle Clyde on her right side, still carrying the basket. From beneath the brim of my hat, I glanced around for signs of Fleur but didn’t see her or her mother and brother.
“Greta . . . Dr. Koning,” called Mrs. Adder, coming our way with two glasses of lemonade. “Oh, I’m so glad you came, despite all.” She squinted into the sunlight and stopped a few feet in front of us. “There’s no sign of Joe yet.”
Mama and Uncle Clyde glanced at each other with weary eyes, as if they had both tired of speaking about the preacher’s son for the day.
“I’m sorry.” Uncle Clyde placed his hand on Mama’s back. “I hope he’s safe.”
“Thank you. I do, too.” Mrs. Adder’s gaze flitted toward me for the briefest of moments. She gave a strained smile and then continued onward, toward an area occupied by Joe’s six brothers and sisters—all well-dressed children, younger than he, with hair ranging from caramel-brown to Joe’s darker walnut shade. The weight of an absence settled over me again. The Adders struck me as a jigsaw puzzle with a missing piece. A multi-angled, not-quite-the-same-shape-as-the-others piece that they tried to cover by squishing closer together on their picnic blanket.
Mama and Uncle Clyde walked faster than me, so I ended up trekking behind them through the obstacles of blankets and families, including the Witten twins’ parents, who were dressed in Sunday-best attire and didn’t seem at all like people with sons who carried around knives and gin. Faces shifted my way. Glances settled upon me, no doubt because of the inevitable spread of rumors about Joe and me, but also due to the fact that most people stopped and stared whenever I made an appearance in town.
“Will I ever stop sticking out like a sore thumb?” I remembered asking Daddy one morning on our walk home from buying seeds at the farm-supply store. I only came up to his ribs at the time, so I must not have been much more than seven or eight.
Daddy’s smile had faded at my question, yet the light from his eyes never dimmed. “Probably not, baby doll,” he said. “Not when you’re the only one who looks like you. Just lift your head and show them who you are deep inside. Look them in the eye and smile, and the kind ones will see that brown is a beautiful color.”
I did my best to lift my head on those church grounds, and I tried to ignore all the eyes, although I noted that some of the faces smiled with expressions of understanding, or maybe pity, as if they didn’t blame me for running off with another Elston misfit. No one whispered unpleasant words about me—no hisses of “slut” or “floozy” or even worse. I pressed forward to the patch of grass Mama had selected for our picnic blanket. I helped my mother and stepfather spread the checkered blue cloth over the ground and thought of Joe flapping his brown blanket over us on the forest floor in the dark. I knelt down and stretched out a corner of Mama’s blanket and had to stop and rub my hands over my eyes.