Flannery jerked away from his touch.
“I say good riddance.” Hollis straightened and flicked the dirt off his shirt. “They deserve each other.” Making a show, he swept the front of his britches, patting at his privates.
Disgusted, Flannery turned away.
“Say the word, sweet peaches,” he rambled closer to her ear, “and my daddy, my family and me, you, and your family”—he stabbed his finger at her—“will be spared. Spared from the scandal of your sister’s shameful, hussy ways.”
“Don’t you talk about my sister like that.” Still, the words pricked at Flannery; humiliation grabbed hold and gnawed deeper. She knew the Henrys were one of the most respectable families around. Proud. She also knew about how Sheriff Jack Henry hoped to pass his job to his oldest son after he got in some higher learning at the university. Sheriff Henry’d told Hollis it was a smart world growing out there, and lawmen needed to be smarter than the lawbreakers.
Flannery knew her own daddy had liked the easygoing sheriff and had held him close over the years—“Keeping the lawman’s pockets full, his liquor cabinet stocked, and his eyes turned when Honey Bee’d had his private whiskey dealings,” she’d overheard Mama fuss when she thought her girls were out of earshot.
“Look, say the word for us, and for the sake of our families’ good names. What this would do to our dear mamas,” Hollis added with a plea. “Let ’em come back or leave forever, or whatever. I’ll give you my word as a gentleman, a Henry, that I’ll never tell. She’ll never be disgraced.”
Mama. What would Mama’s canasta club say? Flannery wondered. Jean Butler played cards with Mrs. Henry and the other good and godly women of Glass Ferry. They’d kick her out, the same as they did Mrs. Wilson when her fourteen-year-old girl got pregnant.
“C’mon, peaches. You wanna see Patsy end up like Peggy Ann? Huh?”
Flannery wrinkled her brow.
“Look how Peggy Ann went from valedictorian to being kicked out of school, and now she can’t even get herself a carhop job over at Pap’s Pig Stand. Nobody’ll want anything to do with Patsy or you or anyone else in your family.”
Pap’s Pig Stand was a newfangled restaurant over in the next county, where you could drive your automobile into a parking lot, and a waitress would skedaddle out, take your order, and deliver it all back to your car.
Both families would be shunned, shamed if the other townswomen even suspected a pregnancy out of wedlock. It was going to be bad enough when Mama found out Chubby’d canned her and Patsy, both, tonight. But whether her sister came home later, or didn’t, Flannery wouldn’t have to be the one to spill the beans about the baby, and nobody’d be the wiser. Nobody would be shamed.
She snuck a glimpse at Hollis. It felt like he was holding something back, not telling her everything. “Are you sure ’bout all this, Hollis? Sure about them leaving—”
“What do you think? Listen, Danny boy told me he busted his piggy bank a while back, cleaned out his shitty savings account so he could do some serious courtin’. Said he wanted to take Patsy to Joyland, buy her footlongs and root beer and ride the fun rides, maybe even sneak into their dance hall and see Woody Herman.”
Flannery had been to the old amusement park up in Lexington. Everybody had. But like most teens, she couldn’t wait to have a first dance at the Joy Club inside the park.
Quite the dreamy date the Joy Club was, and Patsy couldn’t wait to go dancing there one day. Talked about it all the time. Flannery did too. Likely, Patsy was on her way there now, Flannery sort of hoped, though not without a tinge of jealousy burrowing inside.
“Hell, those two are likely riding the fun rides ’bout now.” Hollis bumped Flannery’s arm and sneered, pulling her back. “Who knows how their date’ll turn out, after all. Or where it’ll end. But, Flannery”—he dropped to barely a whisper—“we’ll have to be ready for them in case they do come home tonight toting tall tales about who knows what.”
No matter what happened, the end result would be the same. It would break Mama’s heart. Flannery resigned herself to that.
“Okay. Good riddance,” she mumbled under her breath. And then louder and to the star-packed sky for a lucky wish or two, “Good riddance!” She tilted her head up to the heavens, searching for a shooting star to punch her testimony.
“Yessir.” Hollis yawned, stood wobble-legged. “Riddance!”
Flannery and Hollis stayed there on a moonlit Ebenezer Road, agreeing a few more times to save their own necks, promising to bury Patsy’s ugly shame right then and there. If those two came back after prom or whatever, Hollis assured Flannery he’d make sure that, in no uncertain terms, Patsy and Danny would bear the blame for their wrongdoings.
“Can’t believe those two bushwhacked me. They stole the automobile.” He patted his waist, hitched up his belt underneath the shirt, and Flannery saw a pistol. Everyone knew Hollis loved guns same as his sheriff daddy.
He bent over to tie his shoe. Flannery caught another glimpse of the gun, and it reminded her of one of Honey Bee’s.
“Punks,” Hollis said, rising, patting his hair.
“They’ve turned into regular Bonnie and Clydes, is what they’ve done,” Flannery muttered sarcastically, a worry needling her skin.
Hollis cackled. “Dumbass Danny couldn’t hit a two-foot dick off a three-legged donkey. Even if it up an’ pissed on him.” He raised a leering brow at her. “And everybody knows it takes a real man to handle a gun and a woman.”
Flannery glared back at him in the fattening silence until an owl from a nearby tree cut the quiet.
“Shit.” Hollis tucked his stretched lips over his sucking teeth. “I got to go check and see if they left it. If my Mercury’s in the school lot now,” he muttered. “Damn fools. Could’ve at least tossed out my flask after they clobbered me. I need me a drink. Need me one, bad.” He lumbered off.
Flannery kicked at the rock her sister had used to brain Hollis. She was tired of cleaning up after her princess sister, angry at another mess Patsy had left her.
Stuffing her hands into her apron pockets, Flannery tucked in her chin and turned toward home, thinking about what Hollis told her. When Patsy showed up, she’d get an earful. Flannery glanced back once. Wondered where the hell Hollis had disappeared to, but then, out of the corner of her eye she glimpsed a breezy shadow wafting across a stream of moonlight, spilling out from behind the elm. “Hollis?” she said quietly, then again a breath louder, “Hollis. Hollis, is that you?”
When no one answered, she hoped maybe it was Patsy who’d showed back up, tuck-tailed, to make things right. Still she thought it might be Hollis playing a trick, him still lit with the booze like he was.
Without a sound, Flannery made her way back to the tree. “Hollis Henry, I’m not in the mood for your stupid jokes.” She peeked around the wide trunk, hoping to catch him, maybe Patsy and Danny too, come back to make things right all on their own.
Circling the ancient hardwood, Flannery stopped and touched its deep gray furrows, looking up for squirrel or woodchuck. Nothing.
Goosebumps pricked her arms. She hugged herself tight. Flannery wanted to be home. Home and in her safe, warm bed. Forget about Patsy, Chubby, Danny, Hollis, and everyone who’d damned her miserable night. To have a chance to sleep on what would come next.
Stepping back, her shoe hit a stone. The same one Hollis had accused Patsy of using. Flannery stumbled and caught herself. What is that? she asked no one in particular, seeing something else.
She squinted at it in the slant of moonlight and then stretched her neck upward, taking in nothing but the breeze-soaked shadows of branches and leaves. Flannery stooped over, her nose almost to the ground, and then spotted it. A copper bullet.