“What in the world?” Mama said. “Trouble, those two?”
Mama had turned into a mockingbird, lost for words, shocked by the distastefulness of the choices her daughter, her good Patsy, had made that evening. “Inebriated, stealing automobiles, fighting,” Mama said in a high voice, and pulled herself up from the table. “Jack, do you think they are in danger? Some sort of bigger trouble?”
Hollis hung his head, couldn’t look at Flannery’s mama.
“No, no,” the sheriff assured her. “Danny and Patsy are smart kids. Good kids. You know how kids like to goof off at this age. They’ll probably show up here any minute, wearing hang-dog looks and giving heartfelt apologies.”
Mama stared hard at the door like the “minute” might happen any second now. “Whatever has gotten into those two?”
“If they don’t come home shortly, I’ll have my deputy go looking at first light. Don’t you worry, Jean. I’ll let you know.” Sheriff pulled his hat back on and righted the brim, then made his way back to the foyer. “Let’s keep the drinking amongst ourselves, Jean. Hmm? No sense lighting fast tongues.”
All Mama could do was nod and follow the sheriff.
Hollis stayed behind, snatched Flannery close to his side, and whispered, “You’re not telling, right?”
Flannery said, “You done told too much. Thought you were going to say you fell.”
“My ma saw the cut. And it all spilled out before I could help it. You’re gonna keep quiet, right?” Hollis gripped her shoulder, squeezing too tight. “Nobody wants to hear about a baby out of wedlock.”
Flannery bumped him off. “Says only you! Mama’s pretty worried. We should tell them what we know. I think we need to come clean, Hollis—”
“You saw your mama. If you care about her, you’ll keep your trap zipped.” He put his hand back on her shoulder.
“I—I don’t know.” Flannery jerked away and whispered, “I don’t feel a bit right about all this. I think we should tell—”
Hollis caught her wrist. “You don’t side with me, I’ll get Danny to say Patsy’s bastard belongs to a greaser who used to work with me—the punk who got picked up for stealing the distillery’s tools. All on you. Nothing to do with me or Danny boy. My family.”
“Hollis,” Sheriff called from the foyer, “say good night to Flannery. We’ve taken enough of the ladies’ time.”
“Shut up,” Flannery hissed.
“Us big dogs don’t play.” Hollis released her from his vise grip. “And if you know what’s good for you—”
“Let’s get going, son,” Sheriff Henry called out. “Good night, Jean. Try to get some rest. I’m sure they’ll be home shortly. I’ll be in touch.”
Mama slipped into the rocker on the porch, watching and waiting. “Lord, Lord,” Mama said, and prayed. “Please let my baby be okay.”
“Mama, come inside.” Flannery pushed open the screen door and peeked out. “You know a watched pot won’t boil, remember?”
“Yes, but a mother has to keep her baby’s hand from its fire, too,” Mama replied, keeping a sharp eye toward Ebenezer Road.
CHAPTER 18
Patsy
June, 1952
Patsy pulled inside the curve, gripping the wheel so tight she could feel her nails pricking fatty flesh, burning a fire into her sweating palms. The tires slammed into something that made the front end shake and wobble like the fat Roly Poly clown toy Honey Bee’d given her when she was a baby.
Danny stirred and awakened the argument. “You better not have been h-helping Hollis s-s-slap his Sammy,” he spit.
“Stop, Danny, just stop it.” She fought to straighten the Mercury, flexed her hold on the big wheel. “Stop being ornery. Stop with the lies! You promised not to talk about him anymore when I promised not to ask about Violet—”
“You’ve been sick with the s-stomach ailments a lot . . . a whole lot lately,” Danny slurred, coughing.
“My female spells is all. Hollis is a liar. A dirty, rotten, filthy liar. Look what he did to you, Danny. Look—”
“Don’t you be l-lying to me,” Danny said, struggling, pulling himself up to her back. He reached out and gave a slight tug to her hair.
“Danny, don’t.” She threw back her arm, then latched back onto the steering wheel.
“Hey, hand me that whiskey, baby.” He hung heavy over her shoulder, groping for the flask lying on the seat beside her with his good arm. “Busted shoulder hurts like the dickens, Patsy.”
“Be still.” She batted him away. “We’re almost there.”
“Just one pull; it hurts.” Danny couldn’t reach the flask, and weak, he slumped back in pain, knocking Patsy’s shoulder and head.
Patsy flinched and ducked, losing her tight grip. She pounded the brakes, pumping hard. The steering wheel shimmied in her slipping hands.
A startling image of a proud Honey Bee draping his protective arms over her shoulders, helping her sight in the snub nose, flickered before it waned, then Hollis’s gun with the scratched-in initials.
Patsy’s last thoughts rose up from her tightened throat and screaming lungs. Those of her hunger for Danny and a new life, hate of Hollis and his unborn baby . . . of lost pearls, proms, princes, and princesses . . . of the cold loneliness that would come from missing Mama and Flannery, and the coming chill.
She realized how damning her eight-minute-early arrival into the world had actually been—and thought to pray, call out her sins before the river claimed them.
“Dear God,” Patsy urged.
“Oh-o—” Danny breathed.
The automobile skidded, hit rock and skinned trees, somersaulting, tumbling down toward the night-blackened waters of the cold Kentucky.
“Oh, Fatherrr—” Danny hung his sobering prayer into the rot of dying air, the screams of squealing tires and hissing brakes.
“God—” Patsy cried out. Her head batted against the door, off the roof. Hard blows rocked her shoulders, her skull, bruising, crushing bones. Shards of metal and glass flew at her eyes and neck, blinding, burning, stabbing everywhere before God could collect her paralyzed prayer.
CHAPTER 19
For twenty long years that murky river had been the Mercury’s watery grave. Layers of silt mudded the protective coffin. Algae clung to the dented-in roof, draped over its sides and onto all the windows.
Despite being less than twenty feet away, Flannery couldn’t see anything inside the mud-stuffed car.
Hollis had gone off for coffee and brought her back a cup. Grateful and needing a break, she sat down on the grass and drank it.
He cleared his throat as if to speak, and then hesitated like he wanted to chat for the sake of being polite, nothing more, though Flannery knew he wanted to say lots more. “How’s the city?” he finally piped.
“Fine,” Flannery said. “How’s your family? Louise?”
Two weeks after they’d last met on Ebenezer, Hollis graduated high school and moved to Lexington. He started his first year of college (and his last) at the University of Kentucky, and met up with some college girl right from the start. But the girlfriend ditched him three months in, and talk from Hollis’s roommate was that it happened after Hollis smacked her around.
He was one of those, Flannery knew. Just like her own ex-husband. The type of man who thought he had to display his manliness in order to be one. Always talking with closed hands on a woman to make himself feel bigger. Though, Hollis had most in Glass Ferry fooled.
Flannery had heard the talk, the high points, or rather lower ones, on her yearly trips home. Hollis and his roommate, another Glass Ferry boy, Cook Garner, had been drinking heavily in their dorm when Hollis’s girlfriend, Jane, snuck into the boys’ building. But not to see Hollis; to visit another boy.