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.
“Only if this woman doesn’t remove her girl within five seconds.”
“Did you summon my father, Hank Denney, here the night he died?” I asked, pulling forward, for Mama tried to tug me backward with all her might. “Did you ask him to deliver moonshine that Christmas Eve of 1921?”
“Get out of this restaurant now,” said the man, pointing toward the door with his spatula.
“We tolerate bootleggers as little as we tolerate the likes of you,” said Esther behind him, squeezing her apron into a ball between her hands.
“Just answer my question!” I shouted. “Was my father here Christmas Eve 1921, like his restless spirit told me he was?”
The man paled. His wife grabbed a little gold crucifix she wore around her neck and rubbed it with one of her thumbs. The little family from our church gathered up their belongings and scrambled out of the restaurant with a slam of the door behind them.
“Hanalee, please.” Mama snatched my hand. “Let’s just get out of this place and forget about these people.”
“Listen to your mother, girl,” said the mister. “Go!”
“I’ll have you know”—Mama thrust out her chest and glowered at the man—“I intend to speak to the reverend about this establishment and let him know you don’t practice the love of good Christians.”