During most of the afternoon, I packed and sorted some more, and when the task grew too difficult to bear, I slid my sketch pad out from its hiding spot between my mattress and the box spring. My drawing of Joe in the pond caught my eye first, and above it I found the crossed-out sketch of Fleur, seated in her window seat, telling me of Daddy’s ghost.
I parked myself at my red desk and flipped to a fresh new page. While Mama and Uncle Clyde bustled about down below, I leaned over the paper with my elbows pressed against my strawberry-colored worktop, and using my supply of charcoal pencils, I drew the story of the past few days. I sketched Fleur and me, kneeling over a magazine with our heads tipped close together. Joe and me, running through the woods, lantern and blanket and carpetbag in hand, my skin shaded quite a bit darker than his, even though I rarely ever drew myself with much color. Uncle Clyde, standing on our front porch with his thumbs tucked in his pockets, his mouth open, speaking of making amends with Joe. Mama and me, together, hand in hand, beneath the pine tree near the Dry Dock. Laurence, bending over at the waist, his bruised fist balled against his stomach. A fish wearing a crown, diving back into a river after bursting free from his captor’s stomach. The Dry Dock’s oak tree, standing tall and fierce, with its weight-bearing branches reaching out toward the beholder of the drawing, the ends of its boughs curled like fingers.
I spent the bulk of my time on the oak tree, shaping and shading each leaf, each stripe of bark, until the tree looked precisely as I remembered it. Once I finished fussing over the details, I sat up straight at my desk and studied my creation—forced myself to stare the oak down—as though facing an enemy.
If the tree held on to my etched name, waiting for me to disappear, then I would keep a drawing of it, waiting for its demise.
KU KLUX KLAN MARCH, JACKSON COUNTY, OREGON, 1920s.
CHAPTER 26
HAD I BUT TIME
I LAY IN BED IN MY DAY CLOTHES AND stared up at the candlelight twitching across my ceiling. It still didn’t seem right, leaving a boy marked for death all by himself, unarmed, injured, behind an unlocked stable door.
“Damn it,” I muttered up to the ceiling. “I wish I could have given him my pistol.” I sighed and blinked. “What in the world am I supposed to do?”
No one answered. The wind didn’t even breathe through my curtains.
I waited for Mama and Uncle Clyde to retire to their bedroom and finish opening and closing drawers and get settled in their bed. And then I waited at least a half hour more. The candle burned down to a nub no bigger than half my thumb, and the world outside my window lay still and as dark as a pot of ink.
I didn’t take Necromancer’s Nectar that night, but I did slip out of bed. I grabbed my derringer out of its holster and slid the gun, the lucky sprigs of alfalfa, and my bare feet down inside a pair of big black boots I wore whenever rain soaked the yard. In front of my floor-length mirror, I swiveled my right ankle to make sure the derringer didn’t bulge like a pork chop beneath the boot’s leather, as it did whenever I lugged it around beneath my skirt. If Mama and Uncle Clyde were to catch me prowling around the house, they wouldn’t see I was armed.
“Good,” I said to the mirror with a nod.
I cracked open my door and descended the staircase upon feet that strained to keep from making a sound inside those bunglesome boots. My arches ached from stepping with such caution. My legs moved with a stiff and heavy gait that seemed to fill my calves with sandbags.
Down in the kitchen, I fetched the block of ice from the icebox and chipped large chunks into a dishcloth. I then grabbed our picnic basket—now empty and clean from the day before—and packed it with the ice, an apple, cheese, bread, some bandages and scissors from Uncle Clyde’s first-aid kit we kept under the sink, and a metal canteen filled up to the screw-top lid with water. I retrieved some oil for Joe’s lantern. Silence reigned over the world outside the window above the sink, and only a hint of the glow of whiskey stills peeked above the tops of the trees. Or maybe I only imagined that faint glimmer of orange. Maybe the world slept uneasily, holding its breath, waiting to see what I would do next.
I ventured outside with the basket and the can of oil and bolted across the grass as though a whole herd of Elston boys were chasing me down. I made it to the stable in well under a minute but forced myself not to scare Joe by bursting inside. Instead, I creaked open the door with the softest of movements and stole into the blackness within.
“Joe?” I whispered, closing the door behind me.
“I hope to God that’s just you, Hanalee,” he said from over in the corner where I’d left him.
“It’s me. I brought you ice for your nose and some food and some oil for the lamp.” I attempted to walk in his direction but couldn’t see a darn thing. “Can you light a match?”