CHAPTER 26
Flannery moved under the old elm, the last hours of daylight falling through its branches, dancing across her itchy feet.
In the distance, sleepy cowbells jangled over on Parsons’s farm as his cows lumbered home for the evening. Overhead, swallows swooped for supper, and a single cardinal tasseled a lilt onto its crest, racing home to its branch. A wind dropped and set its teeth into tall grasses, combing wild onion and tangling fencerow jasmine honeying the June air.
Flannery trembled a little. She couldn’t shake off the earlier chill from the river. And being here in the pull of the leaving hour didn’t help matters. Normally, it didn’t bother her, but today it exaggerated all uneasy feelings.
She spotted an old gasoline can sitting next to the cemetery’s iron gate and frowned. Folks were always dumping stuff out here, the high school kids leaving behind their beer bottles and trash, and once even a ratty couch.
Flannery tried to flick off her bad feelings and nudged her boot at the patch of dandelions and forget-me-nots beside her foot.
She looked over at the scraggly flowers at the crumbly chimney, and hugged herself, remembering the time when she and Patsy had gone picking where they weren’t supposed to.
Flannery had talked Patsy into coming along with her to the Deer homestead, to that ol’ garden of forbidden fruit her parents warned them about.
They’d found some Easter lilies that had sprung up by the chimney blocks and brought them home to Mama.
Honey Bee asked where the pretty flowers came from, and when he found out, he puffed up in a fit of anger and lit both their little hineys with a switch, fired their backsides up so bad they had to carry pillows around to cushion their bottoms for three whole days.
Mama had been angrier, and that scared the girls most. Mama never showed an ugly side, ever. But on that day, her face took on a hardness, and her eyes flickered dangerously, Flannery remembered as if it happened just last week.
Mama had firmly shaken each of them, saying, “Don’t ever do that again.” Then she took those flowers straight out into the yard and poured kerosene onto their pretty, sunny heads and set them on fire. After, Mama cried and disappeared into her room for the rest of the day.
Flannery and Patsy cried too. Though they didn’t rightly know their entire wrongdoing and were confused. Patsy was so frightened she broke out in hives.
To this day, Flannery still wondered about those Easter lilies and why Honey Bee and Mama had acted that way, why they wouldn’t speak about it ever again.
Flannery turned away from those thoughts and those clumps of flowers. Once more, she looked down the road for signs of Hollis. Pulling the cardigan tighter to her chest, glancing at Honey Bee’s old wristwatch on her arm and then back down Ebenezer Road and doing it all again.
Several times, Flannery checked her jean pocket, patting. Nearly thirty minutes later than he’d said, he was stealing her time.
His crookery riled her, boiled in her blood. She knew Hollis was just as bad as her ex, always thieving time from her, nipping here and there until it was all spent. Flannery growled “robber” into the winds and tapped an angry foot on a thick tree root.
She couldn’t be gone too late. Mama might need her. Flannery had told Mrs. Taylor she was going out to stretch her legs while Mama napped, maybe take herself a walk to the barn and along the banks of the river.
“The fresh air’ll do you good, sweet pea. Take your time. I’ll take care of things in here.” Mrs. Taylor had happily shooed Flannery out of the kitchen, saying she would stay and put together a meal for them.
Flannery’d walked toward the barn and then, halfway there, cut through the trees, stealing away toward Ebenezer.
Just when Flannery thought he wouldn’t show, and a full hour had been chiseled from her lifetime, Flannery heard his car speeding down Ebenezer, flying gravel biting at the frame and its tires.
Hollis pulled in next to the cemetery gate, started to get out but left the engine running. He stood leaning against the open door with his left foot on the ground and the other propped on the running board.
“You’re late,” she said, annoyed.
He held up a hand. “Louise is expecting me home for dinner. I’ve had a rough day. I sure hope you’re not going to make it worse with more of your nonsense.”
“Depends,” she said, walking over to him. “I want to know about the fight you had with Danny and Patsy that night. Why you shot him. Shot him with my daddy’s gun.”
“Dammit, Flannery, that’s not true.” His jaw hardened.
“Isn’t it? You were packing that night.”
“You don’t know anything.”
“I know you owned a .38 just like what they said was used on Danny. The very gun your daddy pinched off my daddy for hush pay.”
“He never—”
“I know he did.”
Hollis tightened his mouth and sliced his hand through the air. “Your sister caused this mess. Damn well did, and now I’m left to clean it up.”
Flannery shook her head and poked a finger at him. “I’m going to the state police and you—”
He grabbed her wrist, pulled her to the door frame. “You need to stop this now. Stop railing about this old shit. You’ll have folks upset and talking—”
“Folks’ll know the truth.”
“It’d kill mine, for all you care. Ruin my job, ruin my life. Hell”—he grimaced—“nobody needs to be hurt, and nobody, ain’t nobody needs to know this old, ugly history. Now look, Flannery,” he wheedled, “you can have yourself a nice funeral and put Patsy to rest. Me and my dad’ll even pay—”
“Pay with Butler money.” Flannery gave a short, tight laugh.
“All those taxes he slapped on Honey Bee. He got rich off. Your family got fat from. I believe the Henrys could pay all of Glass Ferry’s funerals while you two are it. I was there when your thieving daddy stole Honey Bee’s gun after my daddy tried to protect us from a few river rats who were set on robbing—”
“Watch what you say. My dad’s not a thief. Everybody in town knows he’s an honorable, respectable retired lawman. And I don’t know a damn thing about that old stuff you’re trying to bring up. But you wanna run ’shine, you’re gonna pay. And Honey Bee wanted to run ’shine,” Hollis said, shrugging. “Them’s the rules. That’s the truth.”
“Honey Bee was a respected businessman with a license, and your daddy—”
Hollis turned and grabbed the car door, dismissing her. “Shut up and go home. You’re just trying to damn the whole town along with you and your mama with the likes of stuff nobody needs to know. Get on home, Flannery, or I’ll throw you in the pokey for disorderly conduct.”
A fear gripped her; memories of her ex having her locked in the insane asylum thumped hot into her eardrums. For a second she almost bolted. A crow cried from its perch on the elm, cawing twice, grounding her. She thought about Patsy’s fear, what might’ve driven her sister to bury those garments under the tree like that. Flannery cut a stony eye at Hollis.
“I need to know the whole truth, Hollis,” she said quietly, taking a breath.
“It won’t do anybody any good. Not now.”
“I know what you did to Patsy.”
“I cared for her.”
She lit her eyes to the old elm.
“Look, Flannery, we were just kids. All of us, dumb kids. Doing dumb stuff.”
“I have to do this, make this right. You have to do this. For me and Mama, for everybody.”
Hollis gritted his teeth. “It’ll surely do your mama in. My dear old dad, too.”
“Not knowing will do her in.” Flannery pulled out the bullet from her pocket and wagged it. “I found this prom night. Right over there by your dirty secrets.”
Hollis’s eyes widened in disbelief. “Th-that old bullet don’t prove a thing. Not a damn thing, peaches.”
“Unless this and that bullet in the Mercury match your snub nose. You shot him with my daddy’s old .38 that your daddy pinched from him. You shot Danny, didn’t you? It was you. Not Patsy. And I mean to safeguard Patsy’s memories. For Mama’s sake. My family’s.”
Flannery could see the truth tightening in Hollis’s cold, silent eyes. “I knew it,” she said. “The one and only question is, you going to tell? Or am I—”
“Dammit, it was an accident. Please, Flannery.” Hollis moved out from behind the car door and faced her. “I swear. Danny went for my gun, and it went off. She was trying to pin her bastard on me first, then Danny—”
“I don’t believe you—”
“It was an accident. She came on to me. Same as she cheated on Danny—”
“Liar!”
“Look here. Nobody killed anybody. Hell, I can’t even remember much of that night. Nothing but getting knocked out by them. Out cold. You saw, same as me. I was lying under the tree over there, coldcocked.”
“Then tell them everything. Tell them about Patsy—”
“Tell ’em WHAT?” he roared. “What? That she played me? Tell them I gave her what my little brother couldn’t? Right over there.” He snapped his arm to the elm. “Tell that the bastard she carried was mine—”
“You . . . you said it was Danny’s on prom night. Right here, you swore it.”
“I know’d it was mine. Saw the truth on her panties she buried,” he said weakly, rubbing his brow, like he suddenly remembered it all. “Shit, Flannery, I would’ve given the bastard my name—could’ve made an honest woman outta the moonshiner’s daugh—”
“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.