The wind kicked up, dragging a cloud of angels’ share over the crowd gathering below and waiting for the river’s latest secret.
Another Kentucky River secret, not too unlike Flannery and Honey Bee’s most guarded they’d left in the muddy waters back then.
*
Flannery was pretty sure Honey Bee’d murdered one of the moonshiner thieves with his old .38, and maybe he had. Because no one ever spoke of it again. Honey Bee had wanted to kill him, taking straight aim at the whiskey pirate on that fine day coming downriver, back in the fall of ’47.
That morning Honey Bee had awakened eleven-year-old Flannery just as the moon slipped under its morning wrap. “C’mon, Flannery girl. The river is calling us,” he had whispered and shook her, careful not to disturb Patsy.
The sun burst through the fog, announcing the day as they drove the ferryboat up the hushed river. A sheen of fire lay in a wide path on the water.
The Palisades jutted out of darkness, its crags in russets and golds of rock elm and yellow buckeye trees that snugged lacelike into limestone terraces on the early November day.
Peregrine falcons wheeled and soared in the cool morning air. A pair of blue heron skimmed the Kentucky waters for breakfast while Honey Bee and Flannery sipped at the silence. Their creaking boat chugged past the tulip-and poplar-lined banks. Overhead, migrating geese called out their greeting, hurrying on in V formation.
On the other side of the river up ahead, out of the corner of her eye Flannery watched as strange men pushed their small boat off the bank. Lately, she and Honey Bee had seen the pair of dirty-looking boatmen on the wooden flatboat on their trips upriver.
“Look at those boys on that ol’ Kentucky boat up to no good and likely dumber than a broom handle,” Honey Bee had remarked several times, always passing a testing hand to the small of his back where he’d hitched his snub nose, and keeping a sharp eye tucked their way.
The old boat reminded Flannery of one of Mama’s brown shoe boxes, the ones in the cellar on a shelf where she kept all her old letters. Flannery watched as the muscled oarsmen pushed off the muddy bottom, paddling the boat into deeper water.
Honey Bee was always right. On the return trip back downriver, the men stole out of a cove, sneaking their wooden boat alongside Honey Bee’s. Then one of the men clambered up the rope near the ferryboat’s stern and hopped over the rail and onto their deck. The boat groaned softly from his weight, water slapped at the wooden sides, like it wanted to push him away.
He called out friendly-like, “Hey, Cappy,” to Honey Bee. “Fine fishing weather.” He rubbed his balded chest, tugged at his wet britches. “My brother and me wondered if you might have some spare bait aboard?” He pointed down over the rail to the other man waiting in the flat-bottomed boat. “We’ve been trying to catch this grandpappy catfish, and that ol’ Lucifer cat’s been slipping us every time. Lost two lines to the bastard. Can you spare a ’tucky brother a little somethin’?”
The man smelled dangerous like sour water, dark like trouble that’s just blown in its rot. Flannery knew he had the nastiness a lot like their next-door neighbors the Butler family had problems with. But this man’s meanness was more sharp and unlocked on the face.
“Get into the wheelhouse,” Honey Bee ordered Flannery.
Looking back over her shoulder, she hurried into the cabin, shut the wooden door, and peeked out through its circle window left open to air the cabin.
The man’s leer followed her.
Honey Bee just stood there, resting a curled hand on his hipbone, not saying a word.
The man lifted a long hunting knife from a cow-leather sheaf hooked onto his belt, scratched at his scraggly beard, and eyed his surroundings. “Done used up all my chicken livers on that damn cat.” He sly-eyed Flannery again.
“Don’t think there’s gonna be any fishing today,” Honey Bee said, and pulled his shoulders back, rooted his sturdy legs to a ready parting.
“Know’d what I think?” The man worked a twisted grin on his mouth. “I think you been scaring our fish away, Cappy. Yup, you and your big fancy boat here been hurting me and my lil’ brother’s livelihood.”
Honey Bee pinched his lips together.
“But, hell. I’m a forgiving man.” The man pushed words through brown teeth. “And”—he tipped his blade slightly—“I bet you’re a givin’ one. Maybe you got something under them benches for me an’ Brother’s hurtings? Wet our thirst with that good likker you tote, huh?” the man said sneakily, and leaned over and swept a dirty hand along the locked wooden bench that hid Honey Bee’s whiskey.
Honey Bee stood quietly, then said again, “Ain’t no fishing here.”
“Seems you owe us for our hurting. So maybe I should take it all.” The man jutted his knife toward Flannery. “Me and Brother could start there first, hook our sinkers into that piece of tail for a satisfying bite.”
Honey Bee whipped out his pistol, and a shot rang out. The man screamed, then crumpled to the deck, wriggling, gripping his bloody kneecap that Honey Bee had blown out.
“You fish for trouble and try ’n’ rob respectable folk, you’ll get a fat tick’s worth of hurting in your flesh,” Honey Bee snarled, and kicked the man’s leg and then booted the big knife off the deck into the water.
Then as easy as plucking a weed from a field, Honey Bee picked the man up under the arms and tossed him overboard, the smack of water, its dirty spray lifting, pulling up a stink into the air.
Flannery fled the wheelhouse and rushed to her daddy’s side.
Honey Bee and Flannery leaned slightly over the rail, watching the other man curse and scramble below, pull his screaming, gurgling brother out of the water.
Quietly, Honey Bee said, “Yessir, there’s a paddle for every ass. And sometimes you’re gonna get stuck picking the paddle for an ornery one. Lord,” he breathed, “don’t you know those ol’ boys have some hard ones coming their way.”
Shaken, Flannery stood in the small pond of the man’s blood and bites of scattered flesh, gaping at her daddy who was still lit full with a deadliness that leaked from his eyes.
Honey Bee crooked his head to her and tapped his watch. “In as little as eight minutes your life can change, and the time thief can come collectin’. You fight for it, child. You don’t let him pinch one tender second from you.” Her daddy set his jaw tight.
Honey Bee grabbed the mop in the corner and turned to her. “Not a word to Mama. To anyone. Ever. On these minutes that didn’t happen and are given to you. Understand?”
She didn’t really understand all he said, but readily nodded in obedience and knowing to his warning eyes.
CHAPTER 16
Patsy
June, 1952
Patsy’s eyes lit on the deer standing in the middle of the road. For a second she forgot she was driving Hollis’s automatic, and her feet panicked and searched the pedals before finally finding the brake, jostling Danny in the backseat.
He moaned.
“A deer is all, Danny. It’s okay. I’ll have you there soon. Hospital Curve’s just up ahead.” Treacherous not because it was the last curve out of the Palisades, or the closest to County Hospital, but because it was the coil that had landed lots of folks in that hospital. And more than a few in the morgue. Last fall, Beverly Auler, one of Glass Ferry High’s seniors, was killed when she crashed her automobile into the cliff rocks. A few months back, another boy, Ian Robin, who everyone called “Iam Rotten” because of his dares, broke his back when he raced around the curl of the mountain and pushed the nose of his daddy’s truck into rock.
Patsy looked back and saw the deer hadn’t moved, its head frozen and feet still locked in the wispy tail of her ghosted headlights. She relaxed a second and sent a prayer up to Honey Bee for that.