“Smells like a fine one—fine witch water,” Honey Bee said. “Here, just pass it under your nose and breathe it in.”
Flannery didn’t understand exactly why he wanted her to do all this, why he didn’t go get Uncle Mary, but she was so curious that she didn’t ask more. Here Honey Bee was treating her like a man, a grown man with the smarts for such things, letting her taste the very first batch of the season right along with him, though she had, in her mind, no idea how to judge the whiskey.
Flannery sniffed the bourbon and smelled oak and hints of maybe caramel candies like her grandmother had made. She looked at Honey Bee.
He jiggled his wrist at her, and then Flannery remembered to hold up the back of her hand, take a breath of skin first.
When Honey Bee nodded, she decided to make extra sure, so she prepared her nostrils again for the first smell by sniffing her flesh again, cleansing, to get a true whiff of the batch.
Flannery stuck the tip of her nose into the glass. Now it smelled of pepper, faint, but present, sure enough, with the oaky scents of the barrel that had picked up the soft pinches of vanilla and a slip of salt. Flannery told him what she smelled.
“Good.” He raised a surprised brow. “You’ve told me about the nose of the whiskey. Don’t you know, I think I may’ve grow’d myself a real Catherine Carpenter,” he teased proudly.
Catherine Spears Carpenter had been a widow, a mighty brave and fierce Kentuckian who’d lived in Casey County in the late 1700s. She’d lost two husbands, but not before she’d birthed nine children, remarkably all healthy babies who lived long lives in the harsh wilderness. Mrs. Carpenter had been well-educated, and worked her dead husband’s distillery, raising her children alone with the money she earned from her famous sweet and sour mash recipes. She was legendary for that, and for surviving the savage Indian attacks and brutal existence the land offered.
Flannery split a wide grin and glanced at her daddy who’d poked his nose the same as she had. Then Honey Bee tilted his face to the sky and exhaled. He pressed the back of his hand to his mouth, smelling, and then pushed his nose back into the glass and parted his lips to inhale the fiery fumes, and then sniffed again. She copied him, mimicking each and every little movement.
Honey Bee set his glass down and said, “Put some on your tongue, let it sit a spell, then spit it out. Go on, now.”
Flannery had been confused. Why wasn’t Honey Bee tasting it too? Still, she took a drop, let the whiskey warm her tongue, then spit it out, coughing. It had tasted like the river flowed today, a rough lapping across flesh with a peppery bite of other savory and unsavory things she couldn’t yet name.
“Take yourself a small pull this time,” he ordered.
His daughter did, then wheezed and coughed as the liquid bumped down her pipe. Flannery wiped at the sudden heat lighting her brow, fanned her neck.
Honey Bee handed Flannery a wooden cup filled with water and told her to take a gulp. After she did, he said, “Dip your fingers into the water and let the droplets stream down into your whiskey glass, soften the spirits a bit. Now take a bigger pull of the witch water, but don’t swallow. Let it work its way to you.”
Flannery filled her mouth, choking back an urge to cough.
“Not yet . . . Chew it,” he said. “Let it nip at your tongue and cheeks. Now swallow it, and see how just a few drops of water can straighten it right and tight.”
Flannery did as she was told, swishing, fighting the bark rumbling her throat. Soon the liquid poked and gently picked up a sweet fire as it passed down and slid into her belly with a satisfying, spreading heat. She gasped, coughed once, and a moment passed before she grinned, leaned back into the chair, and held up her glass for more.
Smiling, Honey Bee lifted his still-full glass and said, “Flannery girl, when the whiskey’s just right, the hand will beg for more. That’s how you’ll know.” And then he passed his drink to her.
*
The smell of dark river, mud, and strange growing things crowded into the memories of that moment. Flannery gripped the guardrail with both hands, dropped her head, and looked down the cliff toward the water. A trembling took hold of her shoulders.
That first-tasting memory had come back so strongly and so sweetly, but she knew it couldn’t be held for long, the bitter piling, a grief pulling her in. It wasn’t but a few weeks later when, just as she got home from school, Honey Bee’d said, “Flannery girl, walk down to the barn with me. I need you to help with something that takes two pairs of hands.”
Patsy had barely acknowledged her daddy, brushing quickly past him and up the stairs, calling over her shoulder, “I hope I don’t have to go, Honey Bee. It’s muddy out there, and I can’t be getting myself all dirty and—”
“No, Queenie,” her daddy said quietly, looking at Flannery. “Takes a worker bee for this.”
Flannery set her schoolbooks down on the kitchen table and followed him out the door.
When Honey Bee took her hand in his on the porch and walked her toward the river to the barn, something inside told Flannery that her daddy needed more than help with a chore.
A blue heron glided past them, its neck tucked tight into an S, long, arrowed legs trailing behind its bluish-gray tail feathers. It landed on top of a nearby sycamore, squawking its landing call. On a branch below, young chicks poked their heads out of a bulky stick-saucered nest, ticking furiously for food. The big crane settled statue-like on the high perch, watching.
Flannery looked away, remembering the boy in her history class with the glass eye. He’d shot one of the birds out of its tree, and when he went over to pick it up, the feisty bird had lit into him with its long, daggered beak, poking Calvin’s eyeball clean out.
Flannery and Honey Bee walked silently into the old pole barn, the coolness washing down oak boards and onto the dirt floor, an earthy dampness rising into the stretching quiet between them. Honey Bee stood there not saying a word and Flannery daring not to ask.
At long last, Honey Bee said, “Your mother is going to talk to you, tell you something very important. But I wanted to tell you first, Flannery girl.... I’ve been mighty sick for a while now. And I’m going to get a lot sicker.”
Flannery gasped. “Honey Bee, what’s wrong? Is it your sugar, the diabetes sickness? Oh, Mama said you’ve been sneaking bites of her pies and—”
Honey Bee took hold of her shoulders. “Promise me something, daughter.” A kind sadness filled his tired eyes as he held her tearful gaze.
Flannery mewed a protest.
“Listen to me, Flannery girl. Ol’ Kentucky River is calling me home. Do you understand?”
Flannery managed a weak nod.
“Your mother . . . When she tells you, promise me you’ll pretend she told you first, that I didn’t tell you what’s really wrong with me.”
*
Over the years Flannery had heard her mama’s protests about her daddy’s drinking: “a killing-type-drinking and will kill you quicker than your diabetes,” Mama’d cried; “the same-old, same-old harping,” he’d denied.
One night had been different, strange in a scary way. Their voices, Mama’s and Honey Bee’s, had startled Flannery in the middle of the night. Unable to fall back asleep, she had wandered downstairs and from the hallway saw her parents sitting at the kitchen table with only a candle lighting the room. Something in their voices made her step back and eavesdrop, poke her head out from around the corner and sneak glances.
“But you never drank until that night,” Mama’d said. “Only sampled for the business. Even made Uncle Mary do most of that.”
“Quiet, woman,” he snarled, and poured himself a bourbon from his River Witch bottle, taking a long swallow. “I never had the need till then.”
“It’s not your fault,” Mama said softly. “And drinking like this won’t bring them back.”