But Hollis landed a punch back to Danny’s head and then another. And a third, hard on Danny’s nose.
Patsy thought she heard a sickening crunch. She ran over to the tumbling brothers and tried to pull Hollis off Danny. “Stop. Hollis, stop. You’re going to hurt him, you brute!”
“Get back, Patsy.” Hollis whipped out an arm, hitting her hard in the chest, knocking the wind out of her.
Danny stuck up his fist and jabbed Hollis square on the jaw, then once again, cutting his cheekbone.
Hollis blinked and grunted, then clamped his hands around Danny’s throat.
Patsy looked around for help, for a rock, for anything that could stop crazy Hollis. Her eyes lit upon the automobile’s open window. She rushed to the Mercury and leaned inside the passenger side, looking for anything to hit Hollis.
Hollis’s flask lay on the seat, and then she remembered, remembered spilling her drink, remembered the oily rag in the glove and what it covered.
With the bottom of her fist, Patsy pounded open the glove box, dug under the dirty rags, and pulled out the pistol. She turned back to the brothers, and cried out, “Let him go, Hollis!” She pointed the gun his way. “So help me God, I’ll shoot.”
Hollis snarled. Pulling himself off Danny, he held out an arm, stood, and took a step toward her. “You hand that right over,” he ordered, slicing a hand in the air. “Right here.”
She wagged her head.
Danny rolled in the dirt, rubbed at his neck, trying to pull off his bow tie.
“Give it here, or I’ll take my belt to you again,” Hollis growled, and in one step was upon her, snatching it away.
Danny got his footing and charged Hollis, grabbing for the weapon.
Hollis held on, the brothers’ arms locked high, gripping the gun and each other. Danny kneed him, and Hollis yelled and loosened his hold long enough to hit Danny on the side of the head. Raging, Danny only jerked a little, fought hard to keep his hold.
The weapon discharged, sending the bullet into the air.
Hollis fumbled. Danny’s grip loosened, and the snub nose dropped to the ground.
Patsy crouched and closed her hands over her ears while the boys scrambled and grabbed for the gun.
Hollis was quicker.
Still Danny latched his arms around his brother’s chest.
Hollis easily broke Danny’s grip, twisted his arms, dug in with his fingers, and the gun went off again.
Patsy tried to scream, but nothing came out, just empty rushes of frantic air. She glanced around for something, anything, to bring Hollis down.
Danny staggered over to the elm, leaning on it for support.
Anger washed over Hollis as he closed in on his younger brother. “I should kick your scrawny ass.” Hollis breathed heavily, inspecting his gun. “I warned ya never to touch my pistol.” Hollis stuffed the gun into his trousers and pulled up his britches, adjusting, covering the gun with his long-tailed shirt. Lifting a fist, he shook it at Danny. “I should break your arm just for that.”
Frantic, Patsy searched again for something to help, and gasped when she spotted it, something she hadn’t seen before: a hefty, hand-sized rock over by the cemetery gate. She scurried to the fence, picked up the broken piece of headstone, and ran up behind Hollis.
Danny cried out and slowly moved his right hand up to his left arm, cradling the injury, unable to stop the growing stain of blood darkening in the early evening light.
Unconcerned, oblivious, Hollis nursed his own self, swiping at his cut face and swollen eyes, spitting blood into the dirt. “Ought to clobber you another good one, Danny boy. You don’t deserve her. Sissy.” Hollis brushed the dirt off his sleeves.
Horrified, Patsy watched Danny wobble, before sliding down the tree trunk, plopping onto the trunk’s bark-legged skirt.
She let out a startling scream and threw back her arm.
Hollis blinked, then snapped his neck at Danny’s wound, gaping before doing a half spin into Patsy’s war cry.
With all her might, Patsy tightened her grip and smashed Hollis in the head with the rock.
CHAPTER 9
Flannery
1972
Flannery stared down the steep cliffs, past the litter of broken bottles and other bits of trash. A breeze of angels’ share and murky waters drifted from the Kentucky, skittered up mountain rock, rippling across the sun-stretching arms of trees. She took a breath, dreading going down there to see what they had pulled up from the river today, the bite of the old land coating her tongue, an aftertaste of stale whiskey caught in her throat.
Thoughts of Uncle Mary surfaced, and Flannery remembered his bite, the whipping he’d given her on the day they buried Honey Bee in the spring of 1950.
*
Honey Bee’d promised Flannery he would wait to push off into the river until after school, but when she got down to the bank, she saw he’d left in the boat without her. She sat there hours, waiting on the grassy slope, knees hugged to her chest, wondering why, worrying how he could leave without her for the first time.
When it was close to sunset and he still hadn’t returned, Mama called Uncle Mary. He went looking and found Honey Bee collapsed on his ferryboat, stuck on a sand bar a mile downriver.
By the time Uncle Mary dragged Honey Bee up the bank, her daddy was dead. Flannery and Mama kneeled on the ground beside Honey Bee’s body, praying over him.
The doctor arrived and told Mama that Honey Bee’s body done broke from the disease he’d been fighting. “Yellowed up like the sun and burned out.” He shook his head.
Mama cut him off, blaming herself. “If only I’d locked up the sugar. If only he hadn’t had the long tooth for it,” she added bitterly.
The doctor and Uncle Mary looked away, not saying a word.
Flannery wrung her hands with a full knowing of her daddy’s true demise. Patsy, who had just walked down to the river to find Mama to help her with something, dropped to the ground in a faint when she spotted Honey Bee.
The morning of the funeral, Flannery, Patsy, Mama, and Uncle Mary sat in the front pew inside the small, packed church soaked in the stink of burial flowers. Folks Flannery knew and those she’d never met came to pay their last respects.
Men from out of town, dressed in wide, chalked-striped suits, sporting pocket squares on jackets and sharp-creased fedoras atop their heads, sat knee-deep with spiffed-up locals wearing clean, pressed Sunday collared shirts and pink scrubbed faces. Other mourners spilled out of the church house and onto its wooden porch and grounds.
Mama, shock on her sagging face, stooped in misery, moved turtle-like.
Flannery and Patsy held hands during it all, soldiering strength from each other until the end when the preacher called for silent prayer. At that moment Flannery felt a soft rumble in Patsy’s grip that leeched into her own hands, battering her heart.
“No, don’t,” Patsy’d mewed low. A deep coloring filled her cheeks as she stared at Honey Bee’s casket. Then her voice grew stronger. “Don’t leave me, Daddy. Please don’t go, Honey Bee,” Patsy cried louder. “Don’t, oh, don’t go,” she’d screeched into the hushed crowd, sobbing until Uncle Mary took Patsy’s hand and led her out of church.
Flannery had buried her tearful face on her mother’s shoulder.
The preacher gave a fine service, one grander than Mayor Dillard’s, who’d died two years before.
From the doorway of the church, Flannery watched Uncle Mary say a private word over Honey Bee’s coffin, lift a bottle of River Witch from inside his jacket, and place it inside his casket.
After, they held an early supper at the Butler house. Strangers stopped in and discreetly left fat envelopes of money on Honey Bee’s cellarette in the parlor for Mama, handing separate ones to the preacher.