“What did they do afterward?”
“What I wanted them to do: they turned all their attention to me and left you alone.”
He nodded and drove us past Mildred’s family’s house. “Well, thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
We approached the patch of trees where the patrol car had sailed off the highway.
“I have a story to tell you, Hanalee,” said Joe, keeping his eyes on the road ahead.
“Oh, yeah?”
“It involves a religious experience.”
I lifted my eyebrows. “Oh?”
“My father asked me this morning what it would take to get me to believe in God again.” He held his breath and drove us through the section of the road where he had encountered my living father in the dark. The shadows of trees cooled my face and filtered sunshine across the highway in a stained-glass pattern of light and darkness. A crow cawed overhead, and I saw the green sheen of its black feathers in a branch that ran as straight as the yardarm of a sailing ship.
“Now”—Joe blew a puff of air through his lips—“I never said that I don’t believe in God, but Pop seems to think that doing what I do—loving whom I love—has made me godless. So I said, ‘I’ll believe in God if he strikes down that oak tree at the Dry Dock.’”
I craned my neck toward him as best as I could. “And what did your father say to that?”
“He told me, ‘Let’s pray for a lightning strike or a windstorm to smite down that tree, then, for I would like to see that oak destroyed, too.’”
I sputtered a laugh. “I haven’t heard any windstorms over the past few days.”
“This was just yesterday, when the Dry Dock was closed on account of it being Sunday.” Joe adjusted the lever for the throttle on the steering column and sent the Model T roaring toward the brick buildings of town. “So, I went out to his toolshed and grabbed his father’s old two-man crosscut saw—his father was a logger, you see. And I strolled up to Pop and said, ‘I prayed to God to get rid of that tree, and I believe he led me to find this old saw of yours. What do you think?’”
I smiled. “Don’t tell me your father honestly believed that fetching that saw was an act of God.”
“He nodded when he witnessed the saw in my hands, and he said, ‘Sometimes the Lord works in mysterious ways, doesn’t He?’ And the next thing I knew, Pop, the saw, and I were on this road, walking to town.”
Joe rolled the Model T to a stop across the street from the Dry Dock and Ginger’s. “And without a word,” he continued, turning his head to his left, “we went to work, and the tree crashed down.”
I leaned forward and saw a mere stump of a tree, no more than four feet high. Beyond it lay the felled trunk and a forest of downed branches.
I gasped. “You and your father . . . ?”
“It’s gone now, Hanalee.” Joe gazed out at the wreckage of limbs and leaves. “The lynching tree is gone.”
I covered my mouth and blinked. My throat tightened. “As much as I love seeing trees standing upright and healthy . . .” I grabbed my chin and rubbed the bottom half of my face. “Oh, Jesus, Joe. That toppled oak is the most beautiful sight I’ve ever witnessed.”
Joe swallowed and nodded, and before anyone from the Dry Dock could come out and yell about the tree, or him, or me, he adjusted the clutch lever and cruised the car to the farthest end of town, slowing down to a stop at a shady spot along the curb in front of the Lincoln Hotel.
He set the brake and leaned back against the seat. We both sighed and stared ahead out the front windshield. A boy with a nose wrapped in bandages. A girl stuck in a cast. Both of us bruised and sore and uncomfortable. The statue of Honest Abe watched us from the rhododendrons to our right.
“Just look at us, Hanalee,” said Joe with another sigh. “We look like war casualties.”
“We look like survivors.”
“Hmm.” He slipped his hands off the steering wheel. “I suppose that’s true.”
I scratched at my leg through my skirt, just above the opening of the cast. “Is it true? You’re really leaving town tonight?”
“Yep.” He lowered his face. “I’m catching a train to Seattle this evening.”
“Are you heading to work in that doctor’s office?”
He played with the lower buttons of his starched white shirt. “I’m going to give that job a try. See what it’s like.”
“What does your father think about that?”
Joe shrugged. “If I stay here, I’ll have to change my ways.”
“Even after helping you chop down that tree yesterday . . . ?” I asked. “Even after saying the Lord works in mysterious ways . . . ?”
“The tree was for you and your father. Not for me.”