“You don’t deserve a good woman.”
“I have myself one—kids now, and another on the way. Look, Patsy was just an easy piece of tail. Hell, you can’t fault a young Kentucky buck for—”
“Patsy would’ve never been with you. The likes of you. She loved Danny. Only Danny. You forced her—”
“You know better than that. Shit.” Hollis hissed, and his breath came hot and heavy at her face, a whiskey’d pant riding it. “Know that kind of girl needs a real man.”
“You let your whiskey talk too much.” Flannery wiggled the bullet again. “And you’re a liar, a long-tongued liar.”
“Humph. Who’re you to be talking to me about drinking? The daughter of an ol’ moonshiner who drank himself to death? Hardly. Hell, nobody’d begrudge a hardworking lawman having himself a cocktail or two after duty.”
“You mean the dirty, lying dog folks are going to hear about when I tell ’em how you violated my sister. Shot your own brother.”
Hollis laughed cruelly. “Nobody’d believe ya. You’re a gawdamn blue book.”
Flannery felt the punch in the gut.
“That’s right.” Hollis smiled ugly. “You think nobody knew about you going to the loco house? Was about 1955 or thereabouts, I believe.” He twirled a finger in front of her face. “Your dear mama got worried for word. Hadn’t heard from you in a month, I recall. Said she couldn’t reach you. And then she came a’callin’ to her old friends, the Henrys. Asked us to find you. I searched and searched for the sake of your dear mama. I found you all right.”
Flannery held up a hand. “Shut up.”
“Found you tucked in the Louisville Police Department’s blue book, right smack in their list for touched folks. Cuckoo, cuckoo,” Hollis sang.
“You won’t be singing when they come a’calling for your snub nose. When the law finds out what you did to my sister. Your brother—”
“You’re gonna keep that fat trap of yours shut.” He stabbed a finger at Flannery. “’Cause she came on to me, and I did no more than oblige and did the whore right here, right here in the dirt.” He spit and slammed his fist on his hood. “Had a piece of that right there, peaches. Oh, she cried some, but I gave her a few belts of hooch to heat her up, and she warmed real quick.”
“You sorry, no-good bastard, you raped her. Raped my sister! Sent her and her baby off to die! They put rapists in prison. And we both know you’ll find out what happens to the likes of those in there.”
Hollis’s face darkened with rage, and he turned and kicked at the old gas can somebody had left, spilling out a little, tumbling the container near his car door. “Yessiree, folks.” He raised his hands and called to the wind. “Yessiree, good folks of Glass Ferry, let me tell you, and you, and you, about the whoring Miss Patsy Butler!”
A puff of gasoline fumes licked the air.
“Shut up, you sonofabitch! Liar. You call yourself a lawman—”
Cocking his head sideways, he eyed Flannery. “Oh, wait. Maybe you’d like a little of what she had, some of this lawman. What that ex of yours couldn’t give you. No wonder you went cuckoo.”
“I said shut up.”
“You needing this. Is that it, peaches? All you had to do was ask.” Hollis grabbed her hand and slipped it to his crotch.
Flannery jerked back, slapped him hard across the face.
“Had her begging, I did,” he whispered low, rubbing his red, smarting cheek. “By the time I was through, Patsy girl was asking for more. Praying for it, peaches. Wonder what Mama will say ’bout that?”
Flannery tried to hit him again, but he knocked her arm away and snatched the gun from his holster.
“I swear—” Hollis tucked his teeth over tight lips and shook the weapon at her.
“W-what are you going to do? Haul me to jail? Arrest the woman who just lost her sister? Folks’ll surely talk and ask why. They’ll see who’s crazy then. I’ll sing—” Flannery stopped when she saw a killing take hold in his eyes.
“I swear you and that bitch ain’t gonna take everything I have. Everything I’ve worked for. I’ve paid my dues.”
“You took—”
“You! You think you can smear the Henry name? The bootlegger’s family dirtying my good family’s name. I won’t let you. I won’t let you do that.”
“I . . . I made one more call, to the state police, before I came.” Flannery squeaked out the lie, praying he’d buy it.
Hollis looked down Ebenezer like he believed she had. Flannery struck out and grabbed for the gun, getting a grip on his hand. Hollis whipped an elbow up and caught her chin.
Fury anchored and brought forth a might she didn’t know she had. Flannery’s head snapped, and she lunged at him, clawing at his eyes.
Hollis yowled, and pressed a hand to his face, dropping the gun.
Flannery whipped out the Robin Hood pistol tucked inside her boot and stumbled back. “You . . . you sinful son of a bitch.” She shifted her eyes between him and the gas can. The gun shook a little in her hands. A glint of late summer sunlight bounced off her wristwatch, slashed across Hollis’s eyes. “You’ll not steal another second from me,” she breathed.
“D-drop it,” Hollis said, stooped, cupping his eye, stretching the other arm blindly toward her. “Drop it.”
Pointing the pistol at his head, then at the rusted gas can near Hollis’s feet and back and forth, and then back on the can, and once more to him, she looked down the barrel, cocked the hammer, shifted, and squeezed the trigger. Then came the muzzle flash. The loud crack. She fired once more and heard a clang as if the car had been hit once, maybe both times. Sparks raised from the gas can.
Hollis screamed.
Flannery staggered backwards.
A strange rush of wind lit the air. Charged. The devil stuck his fiery hand up through the hot earth, looking for his sinner.
Flannery scrambled away from the flames that licked out, leapt into the car, onto the grass, exploding, and lighting that time thief on fire.
Hollis turned in tight circles, shrieking.
Flannery screamed too. Then she looked at the outlaw’s gun in her hand and quickly slipped it back down into her boot.
The car hissed and popped, burst from the heat. She pushed back, covered her eyes, and cursed into the snapping flames.
“Here’s your paddle,” she yelled at him for what he’d done and the precious time he’d snatched away from all of them.
Shards of glass and metal shot out of his car. Flames flew, licking, yapping at the ground, hopping in fiery stacks across the grass, pushing Flannery back even more.
Flannery heard crying, weeping, someone else’s, maybe her own? She darted her eyes all around and rested them on the elm. A haze of smoke crawled across the trunk’s rooted feet, turned upright into a wispy cloud, and disappeared.
Hollis whimpered. When she turned to him, he cried out once again. Weaker this time, then rattling out a calf-sick bawl before quieting.
Flannery watched him twitching in the dirt, engulfed in flames, the last cry caught in his chest.
In the distance, hounds yapped, jarring Flannery out of her unbending. She lifted an ear to the barks, and then dared to peek back at Hollis again. Horrified at what she’d done, what she’d allowed to happen, she covered her face, choked out a sob.
Turning her back against his dead-eyed stare, Flannery lit out for home.
CHAPTER 27
Reaching the porch, Flannery bent over to catch her breath. She grabbed the banister for support, the wood slipping in her buttery hands.
The screen door creaked opened, and Mrs. Taylor stepped out. Flannery swallowed her surprise and straightened.
“Oh. It’s you, sweet pea. I thought I heard a loud noise out here,” Mrs. Taylor said, then widened her eyes. “What on earth happened? Look at your—”