The woman turned to the lost travelers, beckoning them up to the white picket fence. The stranded folks walked the fifty-odd feet and looked over at the graveyard and back to the house. But no one was ever there, just a church-quietness that licked at the home’s laced curtains, and a gift resting outside the somber cemetery’s wrought-iron gate—a full gasoline container for the frustrated strangers’ empty automobiles that had mysteriously gone dry at the end of Ebenezer Road.
Late into the blue hour, the weary travelers hurried and tended to their automobiles before full dark took hold. Some ended up renting one of the vacant rooms above Lenora’s Dry Goods & Notions, the only resting spot and motel of sorts to be had in a circle fifty miles across.
Most felt the urge to drive back to Ebenezer Road the next day to thank the charitable family. Pulling up alongside the cemetery, they found only a half-broken picket fence that had rooted itself into the black earth, and the crumbly remains of rubble and chimney rock where a house once stood.
Folks said Ebenezer Deer and his three children had perished in the farmhouse fire decades ago when the midwife, Joetta, left her husband and small boys to tend to an ill neighbor. Others called her a witch and said she’d done the deed herself.
Driven to madness, the widow hanged herself under the elm, folks rumored. She’d been walking Ebenezer Road ever since.
Flannery didn’t mind being on Ebenezer, she’d told Patsy. Said the old place reminded her of a lullaby that was always tucked sweetly in your chest. And that the parting hour made Flannery think of Honey Bee and their old whiskey boat on the river heading home in the sunset.
Patsy couldn’t understand why Flannery would like this horrid place, especially in the hour that calls to the darkness. Why couldn’t her twin feel what she felt? What Honey Bee knew, same as her: The place was bad. Though her daddy’d never said why, Patsy had known his look enough not to push, the tilt of the head; what with that and the cut in his eyes, he’d warn his girls he was through talking about Ebenezer and was ready to let go of any further discussion.
“Flannery, you got to feel something too,” Patsy said one day as they walked home from town. “This old place is ugly, and you know it.” Patsy urged her sister to change her mind, prove Patsy had sound reason to hate the place.
“It’s not too bad,” Flannery’d said.
“Even Honey Bee told us it was. Said we couldn’t play here when we were little. That we shouldn’t tarry in this spot. Not on the way to school, or on the way home either. That there was evil soaked here. Mama said so, too,” Patsy’d reminded her sister.
“Mama just doesn’t like to talk about Joetta. Any bad things.” Flannery had shrugged. “They probably just said that ’cause of the cemetery. And those hoodlums who cut loose once in a while out here and trash it up. That’s all.”
“Flannery!” Patsy said, exasperated. “Remember when Honey Bee took a switch to us?”
“’Cause we were poaching Joetta’s flowers here,” Flannery said. “Simple as that.” Then quietly, “Okay, I might hate it some,” she admitted, “but mostly I think it’s sorta interesting. Kinda pretty in a strange, sad way.”
Now soaked with the hour, those rumors, the feelings, and that history, Patsy looked anxiously over to the Henry boys, tapping her heel against a buckled tree root.
No sooner had the three sped off from her house, Danny got sick, begging his brother to stop. Hollis pulled onto Ebenezer to let him empty his stomach.
The Henry boys had stuck her in this dreadful place. She didn’t care what Flannery thought, and knew Mama and Honey Bee were right. This place was evil. Patsy cast another wary eye over to the cemetery. A swarm of gnats hovered above one of the tombstones like a cloud of swirling black snow.
Standing here with the Henry boys she found herself feeling it more, a flame biting under her raring-to-go feet.
She could hear Danny on the other side of the Mercury throwing up. “Danny,” Patsy called out again, “we’re going to be late.”
Patsy stole a quick glance at the pile of chimney ruins, then back over to the automobile. It had a full tank, Hollis assured her, and her date did too. More than what she’d first thought.
Patsy slipped behind the elm, took her stare to Paintlick Field, waiting for Danny to finish. In a few minutes it got quiet, and she poked her head out and saw what she’d feared. Danny was splayed out in the backseat, passed out from all the hooch he’d been drinking. Hollis leaned against the hood, sipping from a flask.
Flannery had been right after all, Patsy thought.
Patsy rubbed at the rash heating her neck, patting its flaming flesh once, twice, and cried out, “My pearls, oh, my pearls. They’re gone!” Patsy looked down at the ground, twisted and turned, glancing all around. “Help me find them. Please!”
“Sure thing, doll baby,” Hollis slurred, sauntering toward her.
Hollis had set his looting eyes on her from the moment he pulled up to the house. Most of the girls in town thought he was charming in an odd, dangerous way. But Danny was who she wanted; he had wooed her with his book smarts and mostly good grades—something Hollis didn’t know. Hollis’s brain was soaked from bourbon, grease-lightning automobiles, guns, and smutty girls. For two years Hollis had been working as a broom boy down at one of the distilleries, sweeping dirt and stacking barrels, and for weeks now he’d been trolling for another chance with Patsy.
Patsy tried not to give much thought to the older brother, now and oftentimes before this evening, showed contempt for his oil-spotted shirts and dirt-stained hands. When Danny was near, she did it for his sake too.
It was unnerving, the way Danny made her feel protected and certain while Hollis alarmed her and left her confused and out of control. Aside from Danny’s growing fondness for liquor, the brothers were anything but alike.
The three, she, Danny, and Hollis, had been pals when she and Danny were in third grade, and Hollis in fourth, all of them hanging in the school yard, skipping rope, playing tag. It had been an easy choice since Flannery wasn’t much interested in being with the threesome, preferring to twirl her baton with the group of girls called the Battling Bats.
Patsy and Danny had looked up to Hollis, especially when he got himself a huge growth spurt and filled out some. And through the years, Hollis’d looked after them, too, making sure bullies kept their distance from Patsy and Danny.
One time in third grade, out in the school yard, Patsy had a sudden nosebleed. Danny had paled and squealed, but Hollis didn’t. He patted her shoulder, telling her he’d get help.
Then Hollis tore out for the school building, slipping inside to find something to stop the gushing. He’d raced back out with a heap of tissue in his hands, helping Patsy press the wad to her nose, slowly walking her inside to the school nurse.
But when Hollis hit seventh grade, and Patsy was in fifth, he’d ruined their friendship after he’d tried to snatch a kiss from her when no one was looking.
Embarrassed, Patsy stopped hanging with Danny and Hollis when the brothers were together, keeping her distance from the older brother, who became an even bigger pest after the stolen kiss, teasing, dogging her off and on over the years, and usually in between his other girlfriends.
Danny and Patsy’d paired off quietly and left the boisterous Hollis out. Danny was the one, and she had known it when he’d first shown up at her house with some magazines when she turned fifteen, and then brought her a handful of wildflowers the following Sunday. They’d have themselves quiet visits on the porch. She loved the way Danny talked about getting out of Glass Ferry, stepping out of the shadows of his lawman daddy and big brother.
Danny’d told Patsy he’d always had himself a fancy for one of those modern kit houses like the ones that used to come straight from the Sears, Roebuck and Company catalog. Had his eye on the Liberty ready-cut homes that cost less than one thousand dollars and could be mail ordered and shipped by rail to anywhere you laid down roots. Like old Willy Nickles’s house that he
’d bought for three hundred seventy-two dollars in the twenties and put together on Turkey Hill.
Danny had himself some fine aspirations of owning a real castle, becoming a real businessman someday, away from the stinking bourbon town. Many Sunday afternoons the two had spent pouring through his catalogs and old copies of Harper’s Bazaar and the Screen Romances magazines that belonged to his mama and he’d be sure to sneak over.
Patsy pinched at her sticky prom dress, lifted the fabric away from her sweaty chest, looking down at her breasts to see if the pearls might have fallen there.
“I can’t find them,” Patsy said, wild-eyed. “My pearls.”
Hollis lumbered around, kicking at the dirt and leaves. “Me neither,” he mumbled.
Patsy begged him to search some more just as footfalls up Ebenezer Road sounded behind her, closer and closer. Flannery’s.
Flannery ignored them, trudged right past the automobile and her sister, but Patsy latched on to her arm. “You need to help me.”
“Fat chance after you ruined my nylons,” Flannery said, and glanced at the Mercury and Danny’s head plowed against the backseat, mouth ajar. “Patsy, you better march your butt back home if you know what’s good for you. Look at your date, him near dead drunk like that. He’ll embarrass you and me and Mama, too—”
“Tadpole, not now. Oh, I’ve lost them,” Patsy said. “Did you see my pearls back at the house?”
Flannery pulled her glare to Hollis. “These Henry boys are no dates for a prom.”
Patsy followed her sister’s gaze. Hollis held a smirk on his whiskey-glossed lips. “Flannery, my pearls, have you seen them?” Patsy asked again.
A flicker of anger lit Flannery’s eyes. “Gee, no.”
“They’re not here, doll baby,” Hollis said to Patsy, sounding bored.
“Help me find them,” Patsy pleaded tearfully, struggling to stay pretty and fresh as a rain-splashed daisy. Something she was good at too—the faucet she could switch on with no more than a blink. The tears had worked mostly on Honey Bee, always on Mama, and some on Flannery.
Patsy couldn’t bear to see anyone else’s tears, though. Especially not Flannery’s. It was as if her heart was being handed back to her broken.
“Check in the Mercury,” Patsy told Hollis. “Flannery, help us. I can’t lose them.”
Flannery swept her hand down her wrinkly uniform and the torn stockings from Patsy’s earlier kick. “What about these? These cost me a whole forty-nine cents, Patsy Butler.”
She winced. “Not now. Help me find them.”
Again, Flannery pointed at her own legs, then tugged at Patsy’s dress. “You need to fix this.”
Patsy brushed off her sister’s hand.
Suddenly, Flannery kicked off her shoes. “You know the rules. Chubby Ray’ll send me home if he catches me like this.” Turning around, Flannery reached high under her dress and unsnapped the garters. Hopping on one foot and then another, she bent over and peeled off the ruined hosiery.
“Flannery Butler! Stop it . . . Oh . . . What are you doing?” Patsy’s eyes popped.
Flannery threw her stockings at Patsy’s feet. “Give me your nylons.”
Hollis picked them up and struck a low catcall.
“Give ’em here,” Flannery demanded. “They’re hidden under your skirts. They ain’t no use to you.”
Patsy pressed her hand to her heated neck. “I will not!”
Flannery growled.
“I won’t be able to dance,” Patsy argued, knowing there were strict rules about the dancers scuffing up the polished wooden floors. Shoes came off for dancing, and any bare feet had to be properly covered with socks or hosiery.
“Come on, Patsy, hand them over.”
“No. You know Miss Little won’t let me on the floor, and it won’t be any fun unless I can dance. I’ll miss all the fun—”
“That’ll make two of us.” Flannery thrust out her palm, waiting.
“I won’t.”
“You’re making me late.” Flannery looked at her watch and scowled. Disgusted, she shoveled her feet back into her shoes.
“Flannery,” Patsy pleaded, “where do you think you’re going? You can’t go. You can’t just leave me here like this. Please, Flannery? Don’t go.”
Her sister turned away.
“Come back here, now. Mama’s going to be real mad at you,” Patsy said, fuming. “Real mad, you leaving me like this, undressing like that in front of the boys, going into town naked-leg,” Patsy threatened. “Please, I’ll be late for my prom.... Help me now, and I promise I won’t tell a soul what you—”
Flannery snapped up her sweaty arm and kept walking. She struck a finger to her wristwatch, tapping. “Can’t,” Flannery hollered back. “I’m eight minutes late for my nifty night.” She picked up her feet and broke into a light jog away from Patsy and the boys. Away from Ebenezer Road.
CHAPTER 5
Flannery
1972
Flannery slowed down as she drove past the old vacant Butler distillery and wound her way alongside the Palisades toward the location where the wreck had been pulled from the river.
At the last minute, Mama’d been so fraught with the nerves over the news, Flannery feared her heart would surely give out. Flannery called the doctor. He dropped by and gave Mama a sedative, ordering her straight to bed.
Flannery cranked the car window all the way down, letting the cool mountain breezes soothe her nerves. Memories flooded back to her like the great Kentucky after spring rains, thoughts of her daddy and what he did on that river and in that distillery up the bank a ways. The old 950-gallon submarine still Honey Bee and his own daddy had built shortly before her granddaddy passed, nailed and riveted and welded together from hammered sheets of copper and stainless steel and planks of wood.
Each year in the fall, Flannery and Honey Bee would travel up north to Fort Thomas, Kentucky, to purchase sorghum. He’d let Flannery help load up the grasses. “What sweetened the child’s tongue will liven the old,” Honey Bee told Flannery as she chewed on the sorghum stalk, sucking the sugary liquid he sometimes used for his whiskeymaking. Same as his daddy and granddaddy had done.
Flannery loved everything about whiskey, loved that Honey Bee had taught her the secrets of its doings. Loved the dark earth and the mystery of its scent that tucked itself into a strange sweet growing time.
She learned that where they lived was a perfect spot, and a “Heavenly home for the whiskeymakings,” he’d told her. “God’s sweet breath blows through these old rocks,” Honey Bee said many times. The purest waters were found in their neck of the woods because of the limestone and the twisty Kentucky River, the streams and creeks that coursed through the rock-heavy landscape filled with the precious bluish-gray rock.
The waters doing that, running through the rock the way they did, made for the finest tasting bourbon around. “The limestone pulls out the stink of iron and sulfur, makes it pure and innocent,” Honey Bee’d said. “Then my ’tucky River does the rest.” He’d winked.
But her sister was more like Mama, and couldn’t stand the business. “Devil’s stinky hind quarters,” Patsy and Mama called it for as long as Flannery could remember.
“This ain’t your rotgut corn likker those old bootleggers try to pass, Jean. Ours is even better than ol Jeptha’s.” Honey Bee took honest offense.
Jeptha Jones was a moonshiner known for the smooth liquor he made from Bloody Butcher corn. Jeptha’s family had been growing the blood-speckled grain for generations. Every year he’d save Honey Bee a bag of grist so Jean Butler could use it to make the cornbread Honey Bee fancied.
“I use fine grains, the finest touch,” Honey Bee said. “That stuff some of those counterfeit pea-brains make will burn the hairs off your tongue, scald your gums, and leech out your ass, and light your skin afire. Leave you nothing less than mean-dog, knee-waddling inebriated. But, mine—”
“The devil’s water,” Mama insisted.
“Now come
on, Mama. My ’tucky River Witch is respectable. It’s licensed. A true gentlemen’s whiskey. There’s no cut of bath water or cheap sugars in my spirits. No, ma’am,” he’d said.
“Respectable? Only because we have to keep that sheriff’s pockets full with his granny fees,” Mama complained.
“Taxes,” Honey Bee said.
“Sinful bribery by the Henry brood,” she booted back. “Smelly.”
“An angel’s sweet hand and what your pastor has said, and what your ‘respectable’ card club ladies come a’calling for when their menfolk’s leashes unspool a bit. Heaven.” Honey Bee would rile back and point to the family’s fine two-story that overlooked the river and was had from the whiskeymaking.
Mama would fuss a little more until Honey Bee reminded her, “Woman, it saved us through the ’37 flood, and more than once during the hellish Depression and Prohibition. Those government men only allowed four of us distilleries to stay open in Kentucky. Only handed out four measly licenses to produce medicinal whiskey”—Honey Bee had wriggled his fingers—“and sure enough granted me one, same as the fancy Colonel Albert Blanton up there in his Stony Point mansion on the hill.”
Colonel Blanton was the president of the fine George T. Stagg distillery down on the Kentucky River. Folks said that when Blanton was sixteen, he became an office boy at the Old Fire Copper distillery, toiled like the devil, and eventually worked his way up to president of the company when George Stagg bought it.
Flannery had heard the whiskey stories many times, and of the hard times that fell upon the business. “Men seemed to be accident prone during those times, convalescing a lot longer,” Honey Bee’d recalled. They would come to her daddy, show him their note from the doctor, which stated something along the lines of Mr. Brown’s convalescence necessitates the infinite use of alcoholic spirits. Then the doctor would add the instructions that the patient should take the drink at all meal times, quantity indefinite. Carry this at all times was stamped under the physician’s signature.
The Sisters of Glass Ferry Page 5