The Sisters of Glass Ferry

Patsy
June, 1952

Patsy wondered how deep Hollis’s bullet had dug into Danny. How quickly the doctors could patch him up. She swerved the Mercury, dodging some broken glass, hitting a piece that popped like a gunshot, making her jerk the wheel. She flinched, remembering the gun going off, hitting Danny. All her life she’d hated guns, despite being taught how to use them. And she’d only learned to please Honey Bee, and best Flannery, showing the two she was brave and wasn’t as weak as they believed.

At first, Patsy had been afraid to learn to shoot, and bawled when Honey Bee ordered her to follow him down to the river. Mama tried to intervene. “Honey Bee, please, you’re frightening the child. She’s only eight. Just take Flannery and leave Patsy be. She doesn’t have her sister’s starch. Please—”

“I aim to frighten her; I aim to put the fear in her,” Honey Bee’d growled. “Hell’s bells, Mama, you would leave our daughter helpless for the wolves out there? For the likes of those we’ve seen before—”

Hush, Mama’s eyes warned.

Silence, Honey Bee’s eyes nailed back.

A stillness crackled in the sudden quiet before Honey Bee snatched the twins to his side and walked them down to the barn. Even Patsy’s easy tears hadn’t released her from Honey Bee’s lesson.

Carefully, he placed the gun and bullets on an old wooden stand under the eaves and patiently showed his eight-year-old girls how to load one round into the .38, and then unload the weapon safely. “It’s big for you, has a big bite, but you’ll need it for the bigger ones out there.”

“Point the barrel down, Patsy . . . always when handling . . . That’s it, Queenie,” he’d prompted softly.

When he was through, he made each of the girls repeat the steps over and over, until they could load and unload blindfolded. Then Honey Bee stood behind them and showed them how to properly hold and aim the pistol, placing their small right hands around the grip and resting the gun in their free ones for support.

Again, he had Patsy empty the gun and practice her hold. “Not too tight,” he cautioned. “The gun’ll shake. Place your pointer finger inside the trigger there, and nab your strongest eye down the barrel’s nose to a target. That old chestnut over there. Dry fire. Try it again.”

Next, Honey Bee went into the barn and brought out old bottles and placed them over by a sycamore. Then he pulled the girls back about fifteen feet.

Slipping a protective, cupped hand under her hold, Honey Bee told Patsy to squeeze the trigger.

Blackbirds flew up. The bang deafened, the flash surprised, but when Patsy got over the shock, she asked if she could do it again. “Please, Honey Bee,” she implored. “I want to keep practicing.”

Patsy kept shooting and shooting until she could bravely handle the gun, until Honey Bee brought out more bottles, and stepped back, and raised his hands, and let her try it by herself.

Patsy had a good eye and hit most of her targets.

Flannery was next and hit a few of her bottles, tried again and busted two, but couldn’t hit more than her sister.

When they were done, Honey Bee seemed to relax. “My girls will never have to fear the devil,” he said with a strange mixture of sadness and relief. “Little Queenie”—he beamed at Patsy—“you are going to be a crack shot, and you”—Honey Bee gently pinched Flannery’s cheek—“you did your papa proud.”

Honey Bee was so pleased, especially with Patsy, that he’d pulled out his Boker knife, and let her carve C S into the black barrel. “As fine a crack shot as I’ve ever seen,” Honey Bee said, and ran a finger over Patsy’s crude stamp she’d scratched out.

Then he carried his prissy, brave girl piggyback all the way up to the house, boasting of Patsy’s skills to Mama and demanding sweets for his daughters. “Natural marksmen, if I ever saw,” he said to Mama, then showed Patsy another gun, Jesse James’s Robin Hood No. 2, told her it would be hers one day, and took the girls back down after supper to practice on it.

Shortly before departing the earth, Honey Bee passed outlaw Jesse James’s gun and hand-carved bone dice to Patsy, the heirlooms his own daddy had handed down to him.

Both Patsy and Flannery and everyone from around here knew the story. In the 1860s Jesse James and his brother Frank tried to rob a bank in Brandenburg, Kentucky. Jesse was shot and ran into the woods, while Frank retreated back to his home in Missouri. Honey Bee’s grandparents found Jesse and took the wounded outlaw in, nursing him. It was a small, modest farmhouse, so Jesse had to sleep with the Butlers’ five-year-old son.

One morning the house awoke to find Jesse gone, and a note tucked to the pillow. Next to the note lay his small gentleman’s gun, a Robin Hood No. 2 pistol, and a set of the outlaw’s bone dice he’d left for the little boy. Jesse liked to romanticize that he was Robin Hood No. 2, wanted to be known as only taking from the rich and giving to the poor.

Jesse wrote in the letter that the Butler child had slept with him and thanked the boy and his family for the tender nursing and fine hospitality.

But Patsy didn’t like scarred things, old stuff. Especially the nicked gentleman’s gun. It reminded her of the dead, of things that made people dead, of who Jesse might’ve killed with it. And even though she knew how to shoot and had even enjoyed besting Flannery with her daddy’s shiny snub nose, she’d halfheartedly shot the outlaw’s pistol, then tucked the old revolver back inside Honey Bee’s walnut secretary in the parlor.

“A surefire crack shot,” Honey Bee’d marveled over Patsy’s deft shooting. With time and Honey Bee’s practices, the girls earned his title.