“Greta?” He stepped closer. “Talk to me.”
I slipped my right hand into my mother’s left one and took a breath. “All three of our names are carved on that tree next to the Dry Dock,” I said, “along with Joe’s, Deputy Fortaine’s, Daddy’s, and Mrs. Downs’s.”
Uncle Clyde’s face froze, and he gasped the word “What?”
“Someone crossed off the names of Daddy and Mrs. Downs,” I continued, “but the rest of our names are just sitting there”—my voice faltered—“waiting for us to . . . to disappear.”
“I know that the . . .” Mama moved her hand to her mouth and made a burbling noise. Tears washed down her cheeks and slid across her knuckles. “As much as it sickens me, I’m aware of the prejudices against Hanalee and me, and even Joe, and I’ve heard the rumors about Deputy Fortaine being a Jewish man. But why you? What’s happening here? Why aren’t any of us safe?”
Uncle Clyde inhaled with a force that brought a flash of pain into his eyes. He put a hand on his side and glanced over his shoulder at his office around the corner. “Come . . . sit down.” He waved us over with fingers that looked as though they weighed too much. “We have some things to discuss.”
Mama drew a short breath, and I squeezed her fingers again. We followed my stepfather into his little octagonal office that fit into the house’s front tower. A second fireplace hibernated in one corner of the room, swept of all ashes, a log sitting on the grate, awaiting the first snap of cold in the fall. Upon the mantel stood a photograph of all three of us—Mama, me, and Uncle Clyde—from their January wedding. I stood in the middle of them, in front of Joe’s father’s church steps, the stair rails damp from a recent rain.
Uncle Clyde seated himself behind his desk, a wide worktable with a deep cherry hue, topped with a wooden pencil holder, a lamp, a set of medical books, and a tidy pile of papers. Mama and I took the two chairs with rounded backs directly across from him, below a copy of the Hippocratic oath and a framed degree from the University of Oregon Medical School.
With a whine of his chair, my stepfather leaned forward on his elbows and rubbed his right fingers across his lips, which paled to the same bone shade of white as his hand. “I committed a crime, Greta.”
All the blood left my face. The room tipped to the left, but I clutched the cold armrests and fought to keep my senses about me.
“What crime?” asked Mama in a voice that sounded as though it strained her throat.
Uncle Clyde’s eyes flitted down toward the grains of wood squiggling across his desk. A clock in the room—a plain, round wall clock with a no-nonsense frame and large Roman numerals—ticked with fidgety beats of the second hand.
“Clyde?”
“Perjury.” My stepfather cleared his throat. “I lied in court about the severity of the injuries Joe Adder caused Hank with that Model T.”
Mama stared at her husband with eyes moist and unblinking.
“Did you kill him?” I asked, squirming in my chair. “After you told Joe to wait in the front room, did you hurt my father?”
“No.” He shook his head and folded his hands on his desk. “I did not kill Hank Denney, Hanalee. Nor did I ever want to. I genuinely liked your father and mourned his death as a good friend.”
“Then who did kill him?” asked Mama, scooting forward in her chair. “Why did you lie? Why did you court me and marry me and move into our house, knowing you’d lied?”
“I tried to do the right thing—I went straight to the sheriff and told him what I learned from Hank before he died.”
“What did you learn?” asked Mama. “What have you kept from me this past year and a half?”
“Hank’s neck . . .” Uncle Clyde licked his lips and placed his hands around his throat. “When I examined him, I saw bruising . . . redness . . . encircling his neck. I asked him what happened, and he seemed”—he removed his hands from his throat—“distressed. Terribly distressed. He wouldn’t talk to me about it at first, not until I said that the marks looked like rope burns.”
“A mock lynching?” I asked before Uncle Clyde could speak the words himself. “A-a-a necktie party?”
“What?” asked Mama. “H-h-how do you know about something like that, Hanalee? How do . . . why would—?”
“Laurence taught me about that just yesterday.” I cleared my throat. “And I saw it written on a Klan pamphlet. Laurence said that a group called the Junior Order of Klansmen is planning to do the same thing to Joe.”
“‘Junior Order’?” asked Mama, looking to Uncle Clyde. “They’ve recruited youths into performing this violence?”
“Their violence is limited.” Uncle Clyde removed his spectacles and rubbed his eyelids so hard, I could swear I heard them squeak. “But apparently it does, indeed, happen, more often than what’s reported.”