“Yes, he was. He hadn’t been doing it long, and he seemed nervous about it.”
“No, my father simply wasn’t feeling well that night. We believe he decided to walk to the Christmas Eve service after he felt better, and—”
“Bootlegging is nothing to be ashamed about, Hanalee,” said Mildred, and her eyes softened. “We all know the farms have been suffering since the war ended. He came by that night and picked up a crate of hooch, and directly afterward I trembled with one of my premonitions so violently, I dropped to my knees on the floor.”
I grabbed hold of a nearby tree trunk and found it difficult to stand without doubling over.
“I tried to help him, though, I swear.” Mildred also braced a hand against the birch. “After I found the strength to get to my feet, I hopped onto my bicycle and rode after him. I tried my best to stop him from going any farther with that crate, but he must have been walking through the trees and the fields instead of the road.”
“Where was he taking the whiskey?”
“I don’t remember him saying.”
“The Dry Dock?”
She shrugged. “I honestly don’t remember. So much happened that night.”
“Did Joe hit him when he was carrying that crate, then?”
“Joe wasn’t driving back to his house just yet.”
“How do you know?”
She scratched at her elbow again and rocked a little from side to side.
I nudged her left arm. “How do you know Joe wasn’t driving home just yet, Mildred? Tell me.”
“B-b-because . . .” Her eyes shifted about. “When I was riding my bicycle in the dark, I saw a car pulling off the side of the road up ahead of me. By the time I pedaled farther, I heard”—she blinked—“sounds . . . coming from behind the trees on the drive to that old abandoned vineyard. Not the Paulissens’ vineyard; that other one that’s been closed and overgrown for years.”
I furrowed my brow. “What types of sounds?”
Her face reddened, to the point where the blush blended in with her freckles and rendered the spots invisible. “Love sounds,” she said, and she grimaced.
“Oh.” I swallowed.
“I know I shouldn’t have stopped—I should have kept bicycling after your father.” She removed her fedora and fanned her face. “But I did stop. I parked my bicycle on the road and crept through the bushes, and I saw the reverend’s Model T—I knew it was his, because the first three numbers of the license plate are one-three-zero, like my father’s birthday, January thirtieth.”
“And Joe was . . .” I cleared my throat. “He was in the car?”
“I didn’t know who was in there at first, but then the deputy’s car came driving around the bend—he must have seen my bicycle sitting there and worried. His headlights shone against the Model T, and I saw Joe’s head pop up from the driver’s side. The next thing I knew, some other fellow was jumping out of the car, pulling up his pants, and running off into the trees, while the deputy was yelling at Joe to get out of the vehicle.”
“All right, all right.” I readjusted my own hat on my head with a crinkle of the straw. “That’s all I need to know about that.”
“I’ve felt guilty about Joe ever since.” She pursed her lips and sniffed.
I squinted at her. “Why do you feel guilty about him?”
Again, she braced herself against the trunk of the birch. “I watched as he stumbled out of the car while buttoning up his own trousers. He dropped to his knees and begged Deputy Fortaine to keep quiet about what he saw, for the sake of his father. ‘He’s a man of the cloth,’ he kept saying over and over with tears rolling down his cheeks. ‘People will run him out of town for raising a boy like me.’”
“But the deputy didn’t care,” I huffed. “Did he?”
“Oh, but he did.” Mildred nodded. “He took pity on Joe and let him go. He said he was going to pretend he didn’t see anything there, and he told Joe to drive straight home.”
“Even though Joe had been drinking?”
“I don’t know if he’d been drinking. He sure sounded sober when he was caught in those headlights and was begging for his freedom.”
I squeezed my head between my hands, pressing the heels of my palms against the bones of my temples. “Then . . . then how did other people find out about Joe? Joe said he thinks he was put in jail mainly because of what he was caught doing with that boy, not because of my father’s death.”
Mildred flopped her fedora back over her head.
“Did they find the boy he was with?” I asked. “The boy from the party?”
“I blabbed about Joe,” she said, ignoring my question, her eyes cast downward. “Sheriff Rink was over at our house the next day and told us about Joe running the car into your father.”