Chubby Ray held up a shushing hand. “I’ve tried. Tried for the sake of my old pal Honey Bee and tried to help out your poor ma. But I can’t keep letting you girls off the hook, can I?”
After Honey Bee died, Chubby Ray hired the twins to help the Butler women get on their feet to pay the bills. Honey Bee’d left them a small savings, and Mama got a nice check from the sale of the distillery. But things broke, stuff needed fixing, and the sheriff’s property tax bills got higher, eating away at Mama’s pocketbook.
Mama went to work as a seamstress. The three of them working like that put food on the table, bought coal for the old furnace, and kept up the fine house Honey Bee’d left them.
“Chubby, I can get a pair if—”
“You can’t,” he said sternly. “Your sister missed two days last week and didn’t work her shift the weekend before that. You didn’t show up for her then, and now you’ve shown up late and not in full uniform. And on one of our busiest nights. It’s a bad example for the others.”
“I’ll go get new nylons right now.” Flannery pointed to the far wall, indicating where the outside archway led into the drugstore. “I promise it won’t take but a minute. Promise, Chubby.”
“You’re costing me more time than you’re worth.”
“I can work an extra shift to make up for it—you won’t have to pay me.”
“You can go home, Flannery.”
“Oh.” She wrung her hands. “Uh, I’ll just clean this mess up.”
Chubby Ray sighed. “Junior will see to it.”
“Sorry about the time. It won’t happen again, sir. I, I just . . .” The broken plea got lost in a whimper.
“Leave.” He turned away.
What would she tell Mama? “Y-you mean—”
Wendell pushed open the kitchen door, saw the disturbance, and then thought better and turned to leave.
“You, Wendell,” Chubby Ray called him back. “Get a hot water bucket to the spill in there, and hurry. It’s freezing up fast.” Chubby jerked his head to the freezer.
Wendell grabbed the mop and bucket in the corner near Flannery, sneaking worried glances her way.
Flannery locked eyes with him long enough to see her disgrace in his, a pitiable concern rising.
For one blazing second she prayed to God to light a match to the world, ending her Hell.
“Go home, Flannery,” Chubby Ray said quietly.
“Home,” she whispered, unbelieving, not wanting to accept she was being fired. She’d gotten Patsy fired too.
“Home.” Chubby Ray stabbed the finality with a tight nod toward the back door.
Wendell pushed the mop around, ducking low as he swished it past her.
A tear sprang from her eye, dropped toward her shoe, missed, and puddled on the floor. Flannery wanted to beg Chubby. To push, to ask, “For good? Forever?” but she didn’t dare. Didn’t dare risk calling out the damning disgrace that would have her leaving a bigger mess for Wendell to mop up.
CHAPTER 12
Patsy
June, 1952
Danny finally stirred, then slipped in and out of his drowsy state, startling Patsy each time with curses and loud moans. Patsy wasn’t sure whether it was the liquor or the wound causing his outbursts.
“You’ll be fine,” she tried again to quiet him, “but I’m going to be in a mess of trouble when Mama sees me.”
Danny didn’t respond.
Patsy chanced a glance to the backseat. “Did you hear me? Big trouble, losing those pearls.” It scared her a little. Usually Patsy escaped blame and found a way to pin it on Flannery. She didn’t see how that was possible tonight. “Danny?”
“Trouble,” he whispered, “if-if you and Hollis—”
“Please hush about him. As soon as they patch you, we’ll leave here and be together.”
“God”—he stirred loudly—“this d-damn shoulder. Hurts like hell, gawdammit.”
Patsy took one hand off the wheel to rub her sweaty brow. “They’ll fix your arm just fine, Danny.” She had to get him well so they could get away and get hitched.
“Hurry, Patsy. The pain’s getting worse.”
“Hospital Curve’s just up ahead,” she said, tilting further into the steering column, the night coming fast now. The Mercury’s headlights were weak, and Patsy squinted and squirmed, struggling to see through the shadowy canopy of trees and rocks hugging the uphill side of the road.
Danny whimpered some.
“Soon as we take it, we’ll be out of the Palisades and then—” It was more like a prayer than a declaration. “They’ll fix you up.” Patsy pressed down on the gas pedal, goosed it a bit more. She had to get him there faster, now.
CHAPTER 13
Flannery
1972
“Lord, please don’t let it be my sister. Don’t let my hope become a lie,” Flannery prayed again, pressing down on the gas. She tipped her head toward the car window, letting the breeze cool her brow, gulping the fresh air into her panicky lungs.
Guiding the car toward the others parked in the grassy lot beside the boat dock, Flannery tucked in the Chevy’s wheels and her amen between an old pickup and a Blue-Bess Ice Cream truck.
She sat there a minute and watched the group of officials and bystanders gathered on the boat dock. Beyond, she saw the swirling bubblegum light of a large tow truck poking up from the crowd.
Once again, Flannery prayed for the car to be empty, even someone else down there in that murky water. Let her sister and Danny be alive far away from Glass Ferry, the two runaway lovers living a secret and better life with their kids. Living a good fairy tale like the ones in the books she read to her young students.
She knew Danny and Patsy wouldn’t be the first teenagers to run off and never return. After all, that’s what Hollis had convinced Flannery of long ago, and what most townsfolk reckoned and nearly believed.
As if summoned by her thoughts, Sheriff Hollis Henry appeared, parting the crowd, strolling toward her car, his wide-brim, Smokey-the-Bear uniform hat shielding his face from the early afternoon son.
Flannery cringed, remembering that awful evening with him in 1952.
*
Flannery had left through the kitchen door of Chubby Ray’s, slinking out into the night air, the stain of blame and greasy onions trailing her. The mess she’d made, crowding her.
She stood there in the back of the business, looking up at the nearly full moon, wondering how to tell Mama and Patsy, what to tell them. The laughter of merry prom-goers floated out from inside, whirled around her.
Ol’ Chute slipped out behind her carrying a bag of rotting trash, and stuffed it into the can beside her. He looked at her a little sadly, then pulled out the homemade cigarette he’d rolled and had tucked behind his ear, lit it, and offered her a puff.
Flannery had smoked cigarettes once in a while, in the school parking lot where the principal allowed it, even snuck a puff in the bathrooms, and shared a drag behind football bleachers and a few other places kids smoked to be daring, but she’d never done it with an adult.
She needed Honey Bee’s strong whiskey. Still she accepted Chute’s cigarette.
As if reading her thoughts, Chute pulled out a pint of whiskey tucked in his britches next to his hip.
He took a big swill and offered the bottle to her. “Here now, Flannery. I can’t have Honey Bee’s girl all teary. Have yourself a nip of your daddy’s fine batch I done saved for these creaky ol’ bones.”
Honey Bee had been crazy about Chute’s steak sandwiches. Chute would make the tasty treat only for her daddy whenever Honey Bee had the hankering. Chute cooked the peppered steak in his cast iron skillet with a glaze of mashed cherries and whiskey and sautéed onions. Then he’d top off the juicy meat with a thick mixture he’d concocted out of garlic, bourbon, and fresh cheese from a neighbor’s goat. Sometimes adding a pinch of wild onion and pressed dandelion leaves to the finish, if the season called.
Mama could always tell when Chute fed Honey Bee. He’d pick lightly at his supper, feign a lost appetite, then toss his serving when Mama wasn’t looking.
Honey Bee never forgot the treat. He always thanked Chute with a wild turkey he’d shoot for Chute’s family at Thanksgiving, and a bottle or two of Kentucky River Witch every Christmas.
Flannery looked longingly at the bourbon a second, thinking.