CHAPTER 9
Flannery
1972
Flannery stared down the steep cliffs, past the litter of broken bottles and other bits of trash. A breeze of angels’ share and murky waters drifted from the Kentucky, skittered up mountain rock, rippling across the sun-stretching arms of trees. She took a breath, dreading going down there to see what they had pulled up from the river today, the bite of the old land coating her tongue, an aftertaste of stale whiskey caught in her throat.
Thoughts of Uncle Mary surfaced, and Flannery remembered his bite, the whipping he’d given her on the day they buried Honey Bee in the spring of 1950.
* * *
Honey Bee’d promised Flannery he would wait to push off into the river until after school, but when she got down to the bank, she saw he’d left in the boat without her. She sat there hours, waiting on the grassy slope, knees hugged to her chest, wondering why, worrying how he could leave without her for the first time.
When it was close to sunset and he still hadn’t returned, Mama called Uncle Mary. He went looking and found Honey Bee collapsed on his ferryboat, stuck on a sand bar a mile downriver.
By the time Uncle Mary dragged Honey Bee up the bank, her daddy was dead. Flannery and Mama kneeled on the ground beside Honey Bee’s body, praying over him.
The doctor arrived and told Mama that Honey Bee’s body done broke from the disease he’d been fighting. “Yellowed up like the sun and burned out.” He shook his head.
Mama cut him off, blaming herself. “If only I’d locked up the sugar. If only he hadn’t had the long tooth for it,” she added bitterly.
The doctor and Uncle Mary looked away, not saying a word.
Flannery wrung her hands with a full knowing of her daddy’s true demise. Patsy, who had just walked down to the river to find Mama to help her with something, dropped to the ground in a faint when she spotted Honey Bee.
The morning of the funeral, Flannery, Patsy, Mama, and Uncle Mary sat in the front pew inside the small, packed church soaked in the stink of burial flowers. Folks Flannery knew and those she’d never met came to pay their last respects.
Men from out of town, dressed in wide, chalked-striped suits, sporting pocket squares on jackets and sharp-creased fedoras atop their heads, sat knee-deep with spiffed-up locals wearing clean, pressed Sunday collared shirts and pink scrubbed faces. Other mourners spilled out of the church house and onto its wooden porch and grounds.
Mama, shock on her sagging face, stooped in misery, moved turtle-like.
Flannery and Patsy held hands during it all, soldiering strength from each other until the end when the preacher called for silent prayer. At that moment Flannery felt a soft rumble in Patsy’s grip that leeched into her own hands, battering her heart.
“No, don’t,” Patsy’d mewed low. A deep coloring filled her cheeks as she stared at Honey Bee’s casket. Then her voice grew stronger. “Don’t leave me, Daddy. Please don’t go, Honey Bee,” Patsy cried louder. “Don’t, oh, don’t go,” she’d screeched into the hushed crowd, sobbing until Uncle Mary took Patsy’s hand and led her out of church.
Flannery had buried her tearful face on her mother’s shoulder.
The preacher gave a fine service, one grander than Mayor Dillard’s, who’d died two years before.
From the doorway of the church, Flannery watched Uncle Mary say a private word over Honey Bee’s coffin, lift a bottle of River Witch from inside his jacket, and place it inside his casket.
After, they held an early supper at the Butler house. Strangers stopped in and discreetly left fat envelopes of money on Honey Bee’s cellarette in the parlor for Mama, handing separate ones to the preacher.
Later, when most of the guests had left, Flannery found Patsy up in their room. She sat down on the bed where her sister was curled up, crying. “Hey, Patsy, come down to the barn with me. I think that old mama cat had her kittens a few weeks back. We can go find where she’s hidden them. Take them some scraps from the supper.”
Patsy shook her head. “I can’t,” she said. “Can’t stand to go into Honey Bee’s place and not see him. He’s gone, Flannery. Gone! Who’ll care for us now? Who?” Patsy wailed.
“Honey Bee taught me how,” Flannery said, rubbing her sister’s shoulder, her last promise to Honey Bee taking hold, the worry sawing across her bones. How would she bear it all, now that Mama was wrapped in her own silent grief, Patsy coiling inside her own? Who would see to her?
“Our Honey Bee took good care of us,” Patsy whispered.
“I will too,” Flannery said solemnly.
Patsy looked at Flannery, doubt pricked across her brow, but a yearning to believe flickered in her eyes. Flannery sensed that Patsy wanted to be excused from her duty to her sister, the one that comes from obligation as the oldest.
“I always wished I was born after you,” Patsy said quietly.
“Then I’d be the prettiest.” Flannery tried to make light.
“I’m not as strong as you, Flannery. Like you and Honey Bee.”
“Only ’cause Mama says it.” Flannery brushed a curl away from her sister’s wet cheek. “You’re strong and pretty enough.”
“You and Honey Bee were so much alike. I can’t lose you.”
Flannery squeezed her hand. “Shh, I’m here.”
“You’ve always been braver. I wish . . . I—”
“Patsy, I’ll take good care of us.” At that moment Flannery knew. Saw a measure of relief in her twin’s red-rimmed eyes.
“A dear sister, one as good as any friend,” Patsy said. “You’ll always be my one and only.” Patsy pulled Flannery’s hand to her cheek, kissed it. “I love you, sister.” Patsy sighed, a relief in her breath.
“I love you too, sister. I’ll take care of us. Promise.” Flannery crawled into bed beside Patsy and held her until her twin cried herself to sleep.
It was still light when Flannery went into her parents’ room and found Mama asleep on the bed. “Mama.” She gently shook her shoulder.
Mama stirred, fluttered her grief-stricken eyes.
“Mama, I’m scared,” Flannery said. “Can I stay in here tonight? Please. I—”
“Go to your room. Your sister needs you,” Mama said, turning away and onto her side, a sob thickening her breath.
“She’s asleep. Mama, please. It’s only seven. I’m so lonely. I miss him so much. Can I just sit on the bed beside you for—”
“Don’t be selfish.” Mama’s words were strangling, biting.
Flannery went downstairs and sat by herself at the kitchen table. Neighbors and friends had cleaned up and put away dishes. After a few minutes, she snuck out with some fried meats and ran down to the barn. Inside, the feral mama cat slinked past her in the shadows. She watched it disappear behind a crate.
Needing to love and feel that in its wholeness and in absolute, Flannery followed.
She peeked behind the wooden box, dropping pieces of meat, and saw two orange-striped kittens and one calico. Flannery reached, and the mama cat arched her bony back, took a swipe at her hand, nabbing it with a long, blood-tracked scratch, before running away.
Flannery lifted out one of the kittens, then stole one of Honey Bee’s full whiskey bottles from a dusty, cluttered shelf and soaked herself good in the grief, wetting the tiny, mewing kitten with her tears, cuddling the small creature close to her trembling body.
Uncle Mary found Flannery and pulled her thirteen-year-old self out of the barn that evening and lit her tail with a switch all the way back to her porch.
Uncle Mary said, “Lord A’mighty, child, you’ve disgraced our dearly departed Honey Bee. You don’t gulp to a man’s life, you sip nice and neat with a prayerful toast or two for honor. And only when you’re grow’d up.” He switched her legs again. Once more. “And only for your papa. Ya hear me, child?” Uncle Mary carried Flannery into the house, dumped her onto the settee, and called to Mama.
That was all it took for Jean Butler to pack her grief, beg ol’ Uncle Mary to take on and buy the Butler whiskey business.
Flannery cried buckets for her dear Honey Bee to come back, pleading for another chance with the whiskey. Mama wouldn’t budge, but did let her keep Honey Bee’s old recipe books. And that was all.
Uncle Mary placed a weathered hand on Flannery’s shoulder and told her, “It will be waiting for you when you’re good an’ grow’d up, girl. Stay off the witch’s teat, and we’ll partner up in the end, and no charge to you.”
But that was all lost now, dead in the water. Age claimed Uncle Mary eight months later. The following week a businessman from Nashville bought the Butler distillery, the stills, the ferryboat, and moved it all downriver.