The Sisters of Glass Ferry

by Kim Michele Richardson

  Flannery never understood the big fuss about any of it. But Patsy and Mama claimed the whiskey made them sick—the way the vapors settled into seams, soaked every crevice, darkening, seeping onto cornerstones, blotching rooftops and skin. It had to be the devil’s imbibing to do all that.

  In the summer of ’43 when Flannery and Patsy turned seven, Patsy’d begged Honey Bee to let her quit her simple chores at the distillery. The sweeping, and the dusting of the old stills in the barn.

  Honey Bee ignored her pleas until late summer. He’d found out Mr. Glass was selling the family ferryboat because the government men were finally going to build the bridge that would connect Glass Ferry to other counties and the rest of the world. Despite Mama’s complaints and the cost to keep it up, Honey Bee bartered with Mr. Glass and brought the ferry home, docking it on the river bank down from their house.

  Soon the government called on Honey Bee, offering him a small fee to keep the old boat in service for the sake of commerce and goodwill. But Honey Bee turned them down. The state pleaded with him to at least consider providing service a couple of days a week for those stranded folks needing to conduct business and family matters up and down the river.

  Honey Bee settled on Saturdays for passenger toting, and pocketed the small change, gaining the sleepy but approving eye of the government for his other totings, he’d told Mama.

  Flannery was so excited to ride in the boat she nearly burst. “Can we go to the city? Will we see oceans? Can we visit China?” she asked Honey Bee. But her sister sulked. On board, Patsy’d fretted about her pale skin burning, then turned green at the gills from the motion. Patsy didn’t want to help clean the boat, saying she would surely be the boat’s Jonah and jinx Honey Bee’s ugly old ferryboat.

  At that, Honey Bee sent Patsy straight back to Mama’s apron, then gave Flannery her sister’s duties, making her helmsman of the old scow that had once belonged to the original ferriers and first settlers of Glass Ferry, Kentucky.

  Fall arrived, and Honey Bee had the boat hauled out of the river and stored in his large pole barn near the banks.

  Honey Bee and Flannery scrubbed the ferry’s wooden sides, rubbing pine tar into the hull’s plank seams, weatherproofing the old bucket. Flannery’d polished the wood railings and shined the brass, mostly inside the wheelhouse, until it gleamed, while Honey Bee took out the four passenger benches below to make room for his firewater.

  It wasn’t long until Honey Bee took a bottle of his good bourbon and christened the old boat The River Witch.

  In early spring and every spring after, Honey Bee would roll out old bourbon barrels he’d made from white oak staves. He and Flannery would char them by rolling the barrels on their sides and taking fire to the inside, charring for a good three minutes, as much as five even, until Honey Bee thought the staves had a rough, shiny texture that looked like alligator skin.

  Once in a while she and her daddy would lightly rub the casks with salt, pinches of coarse pepper, and sometimes tobacco into the lids. After, Honey Bee’d fill the oaken drums with spirits. Other times he might distill a special whiskey by having Flannery press and squeeze the sorghum stalks to use the syrup in his spirits. But most times, Honey Bee had claimed the river could do better than any of those things.

  Finished, Honey Bee lugged the barrels on board, locked them inside on wooden racks he’d built under the refinished bench seats, and daily, weather permitting, he and Flannery would carry the whiskey up the river a ways and back, letting the motion rock the spirits, caramelizing, aging it until late fall.

  For eight months Flannery’s daddy let the Kentucky River breathe into his hooch until the spices and sugars turned to fire.

  Folks from as far north as Cincinnati and as far south as New Orleans and as far west as St. Louis would come and pay top dollar for Honey Bee’s Kentucky River Witch Whiskey—beg his secret, beg to know its cut. Every time Honey Bee Butler swore it was the river, his beloved Kentucky River giving it life, cutting the whiskey with its glory. “Mother river whips it with its gentle paddle. You know there’s a paddle for every ass, and my beautiful ’tucky River spanks the very fires into my whiskey.”

  Flannery flicked through the memories. For generations the Kentucky River had given the Butler family a grander life than most in Glass Ferry, lent Flannery a buoy to make her feel safe for a precious thirteen years before snatching it all away.

  It was hard for Flannery to believe a crueler river would be her sister’s paddle. That the same river that had given her so much would take yet another from her.

  CHAPTER 6

  Patsy

  June, 1952

  Hollis sidled up to Patsy, leaned in, and snaked a traveling hand around her waist and to her backside, pressing down tulle, digging into the pile of dress fabric for a pinch of flesh. “She’s a wet blanket; let her go,” Hollis said. “We don’t need Flannery. Hey, I didn’t get to tell you back at the house, but you look like a living doll.”

  Patsy elbowed his hand away from her bottom and glared up at him. “We have to find my pearls, get Danny sobered, and get to my prom!” She snapped her arm toward the automobile and a lifeless Danny inside.

  “Relax, doll baby. Let junior nap; you got time. Lots of time.” Hollis pushed Patsy back against the elm, crowding.

  “Don’t, Hollis—”

  “C’mon. I really like you. Don’t tell me you didn’t like the last time, haven’t wanted to like it again,” Hollis said, leaning in to kiss her. Patsy turned her head. His lips brushed against her ear. “You’re as pale as a ghost, as white as that ol’ ghoul Joetta. C’mon, doll baby. C’mon over here and let big ol’ Hollis give you a special something that’ll make you glow. Something you can wear proud to that prom. You’ll put them other pretenders to shame. Let a real man love you right.”

  “I love Danny. You know I love Danny.” Patsy shoved Hollis with her elbow. No way. Not here, not now, not ever again—oh, if only things hadn’t turned out this way. If only—

  Hollis grabbed her breast. “Aw, c’mon. Don’t play hard to get with me. I know what you like. Remember? We can even kiss like them movie stars you’re always blabbering on about if that’s what you want.” He laid a sloppy, booze-coated one on her lips.

  “Get off me, you damn fool,” she cried, pushing, swiping a hand over her mouth. “You dumb oaf!”

  Inside the automobile, Danny stirred. Hollis and Patsy turned toward the noise. Danny grunted and groaned again and then, just as quick, he quieted, fell back into his stupor.

  “Danny,” Patsy called, edging herself away from Hollis.

  “We got time.” Hollis sidestepped and blocked her retreat, pulled her in tight and kissed her hard.

  Time. Something Patsy had been running out of ever since she’d accepted a ride home alone with Hollis on that school day nearly three months before.

  * * *

  That day it was Danny who had promised Patsy he’d see her home after classes, but when she came out of the building late, she caught him flirting with Violet Perry and saw the pretty pastor’s daughter dishing it back.

  That is just like Violet, Patsy puffed, a Goody Two-shoes in front of the adults, and a trollop behind their backs.

  “Ain’t I just the prettiest violet amongst all these old boring grasses and weeds,” Violet liked to tout herself to any boy who raised a sniff. Patsy hoped the floozy got her comeuppance one day, got her pretty, nodding head chomped off by a hungry passing ass.

  Fuming, Patsy had slipped by the two, unnoticed.

  Nearby, Hollis sat in his Mercury, happy to see her last straw. He had seen what was happening, encouraged it even, then called Patsy over to his window, urging her to leave Danny behind, spilling on and on about his brother’s cheating ways. “Those two”—he pointed over her shoulder—“have been at it a week. Awful chummy. Looked like he even kissed her on the lips right before you came out.”

  Patsy glanced back over her shoulder and seethed.

  “Come on, doll
baby. It’s after four, and it’s Friday,” Hollis wheedled. “I’m not working this weekend. Give me them lesson books and hop in. I’ll tote you home safe ’n’ sound. Get in, and ya won’t even have to worry about ol’ Hal Hardy’s rabbit getting ahold of you.” Hollis chuckled in a way that, looking back, should have set off alarms, grinning at her with those tom-prowling eyes of his.

  But Patsy shuddered at the thought of Hardy and his crazy grave rabbit on the loose out there. It was bad enough worrying about Joetta, but the thought of that horrid rabbit lit her full of the biting nerves.

  More than once Patsy’d spied a fat hare on Ebenezer, nibbling grasses inside the cemetery, and each time she’d stumbled and fallen trying to run away from what she thought she saw, or imagined.

  Flannery had chided her for being a scaredy-cat of a little bunny. One day the girls were walking home when they saw the awful creature over by one of the Deer tombstones.

  Flannery had pulled out an apple she had saved from her school lunch and tried to prove to Patsy the creature was gentle, harmless. Crouching down, Flannery wetted a ticking on her tongue, held the fruit out to the bunny. But the creature laid back its long ears and let out an ear-piercing squeal, before scrambling away.

  Patsy screamed out, “Run, Flannery! It’s Hardy’s rabbit!”

  Old man Hardy had lived on Blind Neck Hill up in the Palisades. He was a fine rabbit hunter, and before going off to battle in WWII, he’d taken great pains in order to snag himself the luckiest charm known: a bona fide rabbit’s foot taken in a Kentucky graveyard.

  Two weeks before Hal Hardy went to war, he took up camp in Ebenezer cemetery, waiting patiently to catch his lucky grave rabbit. He said he met up with the kind-natured Joetta, claiming it was her who’d helped show him where the hare was hiding.

  Hal got his lucky foot, snaring the biggest rabbit around those parts, carrying that lucky hind leg across the big oceans and then back to Kentucky, and doing it all with nary a scratch.

  Later, one of his two sons took off for the Korean War. Before the son left he asked to borrow his father’s lucky rabbit foot. But Hal was superstitious, partial to his old good luck charm, and selfishly said no. When his son came home in a pine box, Hal blamed himself for letting the boy go off without a charm for protection. And when the government called Hal’s other son to war, the father insisted his boy get himself his own piece of good fortune, sending him out to Ebenezer on a cold, snowy night.

  Inside the cemetery, Hal’s son lost his footing, tumbling down that version of his own rabbit hole, and died when his head hit an old jagged tombstone. Months later, when old Hal was found dead outside Ebenezer graveyard from his own self-inflicted gunshot wound, most whispered that it had been Joetta’s ghost pushing him into a suitable punishment for not protecting his boys.

  Patsy snuck a peek back toward Danny and Violet.

  “Come on. Let’s go, Patsy.” Hollis tugged on her arm and patted the seat beside him. “Oh, c’mon, doll baby. You’re too pretty to walk home all on your lonesome. Look at your pretty dress. Why, you’ll get all dusty, and be all sad, while Danny boy and Violet are having all the fun,” he said, reaching for her books, winking.

  Violet Perry leaned into Danny’s ear and whispered something. Something sweet, Patsy was sure. Because Danny smiled at whatever the shared secret was, then snugged in close to Violet’s bent ear. Then a tease sparked in Violet’s eyes, and she passed another back to his tilted head. A secret he’d never share with Patsy, and one that looked a lot like the ones he and she had split between themselves when they were last together on her darkened porch. The talk they’d shared about getting hitched one day in the not too distant future, getting out of Glass Ferry, and never ever coming back.

  Anger fueled her, and a half-baked good riddance slipped off her tongue. Patsy handed Hollis her schoolbooks through the window. Grinning, he tossed them into the backseat while Patsy rushed around to the passenger side.

  By the time the two reached Ebenezer Road and parked, Hollis had convinced Patsy his brother was two-timing, and sweetened the telling by offering her his flask. He’d turned on the radio, letting the Ink Spots float into the early spring air with their soft crooning of “I’ll Get By.”

  For a moment she regretted climbing into that automobile, sharing that front seat with the older boy and alone, leaving with Hollis in the first place.

  At first she refused him. But he wheedled and begged so sweetly for her to try a sip. “It’ll help with the female nerves some,” he promised. “My ma has a nip or two every afternoon. Never misses her four o’clock sipping.”

  Cooling, Patsy tried the whiskey for the first time ever. She coughed and sputtered. Hollis patted her back. “That’s right,” he said. “Let it get down there good and warm you up from the middle. Breathe its good fire into ya.”

  Surprised, she found the sensation exciting, almost enjoyable. It numbed the pains of betrayal, so she took another sip, this time more quickly. And when Hollis placed a hand on her knee and pushed up her skirts, sliding his fingers casually along her thighs, after the third, she was all in, almost, and only pretended to halfheartedly push his hand away.

  She didn’t half mind him doing that. A senior boy liking her in that way, feeling her in that way, having the manly touch that his younger brother didn’t have.

  Most girls swooned over Hollis too, and the boys thought he was a regular Casanova, him with his weekly paycheck and fine wheels. The looks, a reckless bang slipping over his big sleepy eyes, the always-present pout on his full lips.

  Feelings welled. For a few racing heartbeats she let his hand stay. She knew she had to stop, knew she had to and right now. What if someone passed by? If Flannery changed her mind about baton practice? Or a classmate from school came snooping? What if Hollis bragged? Though she had never heard Hollis, some boys, especially the younger ones, crowed and told till the cows came home. Hollis always said to his friends that he didn’t bite the feeding hand. Still, he’d sneakily tease his pals, let them come up with a few good guesses about his latest squeeze.

  “Stop now, Hollis; that’s enough. You need to take me home.” Every second that she lingered here with him half draped over her could get worse, or better, or . . .

  He looked at her breasts, and on down at her legs as if he hadn’t heard a single word. “You know I’m crazy about you. Just have yourself another small nip, Patsy. Let’s have us a bit of fun, same as ol’ Danny boy.”

  Danny. Revenge stoked inside her.

  Hollis gently forced the cool metal flask into her hand, lightly tapped her button nose. “Come on. Take my batwing. Just one more drink, and I swear on a stack of Bibles if you still want to go, I’ll see you right home, or wherever you want to go, doll baby. Do whatever you want.”

  She giggled at that and grabbed his wandering hand. It was true Flannery never missed baton practice and wouldn’t be home till six—nearly two hours from now. And since it was Friday, most kids would be meeting at Chubby’s after school. Mama had canasta club tonight and would be busy with that. “Okay, one more. But you promise, right?”

  He breathed against her neck, traced a small invisible X on her breast. “I told ya already. Promise.”

  She snatched up his palm, let her fingers flutter against it a few seconds before breaking away, reaching for the flask. Patsy asked him to swear again, spilling some of the booze down the front of the green-striped spring dress Mama had sewed. “Gee, Hollis, look what you made me do.” She laughed and swiped her damp breasts.

  Hollis dropped his head close to her chest.

  She nudged him away. “Give me something to dry this mess, or I’ll be in trouble.”

  Hollis clicked the button on the glove box, and the little door swung down. “In there,” he mumbled, closing in on her neck for another snuggle.

  Patsy lifted out a stained, smelly rag and saw the small gun underneath. “Sure is a fancy gun,” she said, touching its barrel, curious. “Oh, I want to hold it. Looks
like the one my daddy taught us girls to shoot. He said I was a crack shot.” She stared at the black barrel, blinked, then peered at the scrawny, crude letters carved there, trying to make them out. Rubbed her blurring eyes, looked again at what someone had tried to scratch out. “Hey, this looks like—”

  “Don’t touch it.” Hollis clicked the glove door shut and turned back to her, nuzzling her shoulder. “I don’t want it to get scratched. I waited a long time for my daddy to pass me his prized gun, this fine Henry pistol.”

  Patsy knew Hollis was crazy about this new gun of his, and she knew it had been getting him into trouble lately. A month ago Patsy had been walking to work, hightailing it through Ebenezer, when she heard a farmer yelling at Hollis for brandishing the pistol. The old man had lit into him good for shooting off rounds from his new plaything, threatened to take Hollis’s gun away and send for the sheriff. Hollis had begged the farmer not to tell his daddy, promising to atone by painting his fence this summer.

  Soon after, one of the teachers did send for Sheriff Henry, the school gossiped. Mr. Dirkson had confiscated the pistol when he caught Hollis in shop class engraving his initials on the wooden inlays in its handle with the school’s woodworking chisel. The teacher made Sheriff Henry and his missus come in for it, and the principal gave Hollis a big fat detention.

  Hollis’s hands slipped over Patsy’s, pressing into her chest as she tried to clean up the spill.

  Patsy batted at him lightly, then wiped the front of her dress with the stinky rag one last time. At least the smell would cover the drink. She tossed the rag onto the dash and glimpsed down at the stained boots he wore, soaked in mud and whiskey.

  Patsy wrinkled her nose. “How do you stand working in such a smelly place?”

  “It has its perks.” Hollis nibbled on her ear, tickling. “Go on, Patsy, have yourself another swill of the latest I pinched off the distillery. I don’t share my best with just anybody. You know that, don’t you, doll baby?”