Flannery was so caught up in her own misery, naked-legged, and growing more miserable by the minute, she stumbled over Hollis’s crumpled body as she passed under the elm. She nearly screamed as her foot tripped over his.
“Hollis?” she cried out, and then squatted to get a closer look, wondering if he was passed out drunk, or what. When she glimpsed the dried blood on his head and face, she realized it was something more.
“Wake up, Hollis, wake up.” She shook his shoulder harder now, rocking him, his fat head rolling back and forth.
Hollis stirred some, grunted, and slowly came to. He raised his head, the moonlight washing cuts of light across his face.
Flannery moved closer and saw the blood in his matted hair. “What happened to you?” She leaned in further. “What the devil happened here, Hollis Henry? Where’s my sister? Where’s your brother?” She looked back over her shoulder.
Hollis pulled himself up to sit, propped his back against the tree, moaning, touching, then rubbing his head.
“Where’s Patsy?” she demanded, still glancing around, growing alarmed. “Hollis”—she shook his arm—“where is she? Where’s my sister? Is she okay? Where’s Danny?”
Hollis slowly pulled up his leg, rested an arm on his knee. “Fight. Had a fight with Danny. Then Patsy—” Hollis winced.
“What about Patsy?” Flannery smelled the booze on his soured breath. “What did you do to her?” She spotted the nylons she had thrown onto the dirt earlier. Her face warmed, and she snatched them up and stuffed them into her apron pocket.
“I didn’t do a damn thing. Danny landed a punch, and that bitch twin of yours must’ve got me from behind.” Hollis looked around slowly as if trying to remember how he had gotten there. He nudged his chin at a good-sized rock lying near where she knelt. “Probably with that damn rock.”
Flannery followed his eyes and saw the small bite of an old headstone.
“She got in a good lick to my head, same as Danny.” Hollis rubbed his glazed eyes, cradled his face, growling.
Flannery leaned over, picked up the rock, weighing it in her hand, pondering Hollis’s words. She frowned and tossed the stone away. “What happened here, Hollis? What’s going on?”
Hollis shouted, “Your twin is what’s going on! She got herself pregnant an’ caused all this.”
Flannery’s eyes grew wide. “What are you talking about, fool? Patsy pregnant? You’re not making any sense, Hollis Henry.” She studied him, not sure if he was suffering from one of those concussions folks got from bad spills, or if he was too soaked in the stink-drink to think straight.
“Patsy. Is. Pregnant,” he spit at her.
Flannery stood up, flared her nostrils. “That’s not true.” Patsy would never keep something that big from her. Flannery knew she wasn’t a floozy, same as her. Accusing her sister of something like that, why, it was the same as accusing Flannery.
“Sure as hell is,” Hollis said, trying to stand.
“Nuh-uh. I’d know if it were so—”
“You don’t know a damn thing, peaches. She was coming on to me, and here Danny accused me of trying to steal her when he caught her trying to cuddle up with me here.” Hollis jerked out his arm. “Right here under this damn tree.”
“I don’t believe it. She loves Danny.”
“Believe what you want, but she wasn’t acting it. She thought she could tease. Humph, the tramp done got herself knocked up with Danny’s baby.” Hollis pulled himself up, bent a little from the pain. “My head.”
“Your brain’s broke, Hollis Henry.”
“Oh, my head does hurt like the devil. Shit . . . Hurts . . . But I swear it, Flannery. I swear on my ma.” Hollis raised his hand to his heart. “Swear Patsy told us she was having his baby. And then those two said they were going to take off, split for good, run away together. They’re probably shacked up a hundred miles from here by now—what time is it?” Hollis looked around like he was trying to remember something.
“After eight.” Flannery thought about Chubby griping about Patsy missing work two days last week. Her sister had claimed a stomach ailment as her excuse. And for the missed days a few times before that, and always the stomach sickness, with Patsy insisting it was the female jitters. Patsy had thrown up just yesterday morning, calling it early prom nerves.
Flannery and Mama both knew about Patsy’s spells, about how she’d always been frailer than most her age. But this? Pregnant? None of it made sense.
Flannery burned, felt the smarting lick of Mama’s embarrassment, the disgrace that would come down on the Butler name.
Hollis said, “I tried to stop them, swear, but then Danny socked me in the jaw when I . . . uh, wouldn’t give him my keys. And Patsy snuck up behind me and—” Hollis pushed a lock of hair away from his eyes, interrupting himself. “Hey, Flannery. What the hell are you doing back this way anyway?”
“Chubby let me off when Junior showed up.” She brushed off the question with a quick half-truth. “A baby? Are you sure?”
Hollis studied her closely.
“Guess your daddy’s gonna need to hear about it,” she said quietly, looking down Ebenezer Road, frowning. “The whole stinkin’ town’ll hear about it too.” She cocked her head toward him. “Everyone fifty miles wide, even.”
“Dad probably doesn’t need to know everything.” Hollis lightly rubbed his hurt jaw, touched his head. “We can maybe skip that part, the part about the baby.”
“We don’t even know if it’s true,” she snapped.
“Maybe we don’t,” he said as if they were scheming together for some greater good. “But if those two don’t come back from the prom, do you want to risk letting everyone gossip about it? Side-talking ’bout big sister like that? The bastard that may or may not be coming?” Hollis poked a finger at her. “Want your mama fretting over that, too?”
She flinched. It would break Mama’s heart.
“Hey, peaches.” He touched her elbow. “Here’s a good idea. If they don’t come ’round to their senses, if they don’t come back in time, I’ll tell Dad those stupid kids stole the Mercury and lit out on their own when I stopped for a whizz. That those lovesick pups were running away to get hitched. That I tripped and fell trying to chase ’em to stop them. ’S’all.” He pointed to his sore head. “Or maybe I’ll tell the old folks, lil’ brother got ahold of a rock and socked me when I tried to talk some sense into them both.”
Flannery turned it over in her mind, taking a match to his words, wary of his plan hatched from liquored lips. “Danny sure has been asking for trouble lately.” She shot a blaming eye at Hollis. “Used to be a real nice fellow, and he’d hit the books pretty hard. But lately—” Flannery said.
“Pft,” Hollis said. “A man don’t need those kind of lesson books as long as he knows the ’portant ones. Those good ones like my very favorite, Under the Bleachers by Seymour Hiney,” Hollis chortled.
Flannery rolled her eyes. “You should know, Hollis Henry. Took you a while to learn ’em. Two years ‘a whiles’ stuck in Mrs. William’s first grade like that.”
“Damn straight.”
Flannery hoped Danny wouldn’t turn out like Hollis, but feared the younger brother already had. She’d have to have a good talk with Patsy one of these days.
Hollis squeezed her arm. “C’mon, peaches. No one will ever know—will ever need to know about all this—as long as you don’t tell. No one will know about the baby, about Patsy coming on to me like that. Just say so, that you’ll stick with me.”
Flannery jerked away from his touch.
“I say good riddance.” Hollis straightened and flicked the dirt off his shirt. “They deserve each other.” Making a show, he swept the front of his britches, patting at his privates.
Disgusted, Flannery turned away.
“Say the word, sweet peaches,” he rambled closer to her ear, “and my daddy, my family and me, you, and your family”—he stabbed his finger at her—“will be spared. Spared from the scandal of
your sister’s shameful, hussy ways.”
“Don’t you talk about my sister like that.” Still, the words pricked at Flannery; humiliation grabbed hold and gnawed deeper. She knew the Henrys were one of the most respectable families around. Proud. She also knew about how Sheriff Jack Henry hoped to pass his job to his oldest son after he got in some higher learning at the university. Sheriff Henry’d told Hollis it was a smart world growing out there, and lawmen needed to be smarter than the lawbreakers.
Flannery knew her own daddy had liked the easygoing sheriff and had held him close over the years—“Keeping the lawman’s pockets full, his liquor cabinet stocked, and his eyes turned when Honey Bee’d had his private whiskey dealings,” she’d overheard Mama fuss when she thought her girls were out of earshot.
“Look, say the word for us, and for the sake of our families’ good names. What this would do to our dear mamas,” Hollis added with a plea. “Let ’em come back or leave forever, or whatever. I’ll give you my word as a gentleman, a Henry, that I’ll never tell. She’ll never be disgraced.”
Mama. What would Mama’s canasta club say? Flannery wondered. Jean Butler played cards with Mrs. Henry and the other good and godly women of Glass Ferry. They’d kick her out, the same as they did Mrs. Wilson when her fourteen-year-old girl got pregnant.
“C’mon, peaches. You wanna see Patsy end up like Peggy Ann? Huh?”
Flannery wrinkled her brow.
“Look how Peggy Ann went from valedictorian to being kicked out of school, and now she can’t even get herself a carhop job over at Pap’s Pig Stand. Nobody’ll want anything to do with Patsy or you or anyone else in your family.”
Pap’s Pig Stand was a newfangled restaurant over in the next county, where you could drive your automobile into a parking lot, and a waitress would skedaddle out, take your order, and deliver it all back to your car.
Both families would be shunned, shamed if the other townswomen even suspected a pregnancy out of wedlock. It was going to be bad enough when Mama found out Chubby’d canned her and Patsy, both, tonight. But whether her sister came home later, or didn’t, Flannery wouldn’t have to be the one to spill the beans about the baby, and nobody’d be the wiser. Nobody would be shamed.
She snuck a glimpse at Hollis. It felt like he was holding something back, not telling her everything. “Are you sure ’bout all this, Hollis? Sure about them leaving—”
“What do you think? Listen, Danny boy told me he busted his piggy bank a while back, cleaned out his shitty savings account so he could do some serious courtin’. Said he wanted to take Patsy to Joyland, buy her footlongs and root beer and ride the fun rides, maybe even sneak into their dance hall and see Woody Herman.”
Flannery had been to the old amusement park up in Lexington. Everybody had. But like most teens, she couldn’t wait to have a first dance at the Joy Club inside the park.
Quite the dreamy date the Joy Club was, and Patsy couldn’t wait to go dancing there one day. Talked about it all the time. Flannery did too. Likely, Patsy was on her way there now, Flannery sort of hoped, though not without a tinge of jealousy burrowing inside.
“Hell, those two are likely riding the fun rides ’bout now.” Hollis bumped Flannery’s arm and sneered, pulling her back. “Who knows how their date’ll turn out, after all. Or where it’ll end. But, Flannery”—he dropped to barely a whisper—“we’ll have to be ready for them in case they do come home tonight toting tall tales about who knows what.”
No matter what happened, the end result would be the same. It would break Mama’s heart. Flannery resigned herself to that.
“Okay. Good riddance,” she mumbled under her breath. And then louder and to the star-packed sky for a lucky wish or two, “Good riddance!” She tilted her head up to the heavens, searching for a shooting star to punch her testimony.
“Yessir.” Hollis yawned, stood wobble-legged. “Riddance!”
Flannery and Hollis stayed there on a moonlit Ebenezer Road, agreeing a few more times to save their own necks, promising to bury Patsy’s ugly shame right then and there. If those two came back after prom or whatever, Hollis assured Flannery he’d make sure that, in no uncertain terms, Patsy and Danny would bear the blame for their wrongdoings.
“Can’t believe those two bushwhacked me. They stole the automobile.” He patted his waist, hitched up his belt underneath the shirt, and Flannery saw a pistol. Everyone knew Hollis loved guns same as his sheriff daddy.
He bent over to tie his shoe. Flannery caught another glimpse of the gun, and it reminded her of one of Honey Bee’s.
“Punks,” Hollis said, rising, patting his hair.
“They’ve turned into regular Bonnie and Clydes, is what they’ve done,” Flannery muttered sarcastically, a worry needling her skin.
Hollis cackled. “Dumbass Danny couldn’t hit a two-foot dick off a three-legged donkey. Even if it up an’ pissed on him.” He raised a leering brow at her. “And everybody knows it takes a real man to handle a gun and a woman.”
Flannery glared back at him in the fattening silence until an owl from a nearby tree cut the quiet.
“Shit.” Hollis tucked his stretched lips over his sucking teeth. “I got to go check and see if they left it. If my Mercury’s in the school lot now,” he muttered. “Damn fools. Could’ve at least tossed out my flask after they clobbered me. I need me a drink. Need me one, bad.” He lumbered off.
Flannery kicked at the rock her sister had used to brain Hollis. She was tired of cleaning up after her princess sister, angry at another mess Patsy had left her.
Stuffing her hands into her apron pockets, Flannery tucked in her chin and turned toward home, thinking about what Hollis told her. When Patsy showed up, she’d get an earful. Flannery glanced back once. Wondered where the hell Hollis had disappeared to, but then, out of the corner of her eye she glimpsed a breezy shadow wafting across a stream of moonlight, spilling out from behind the elm. “Hollis?” she said quietly, then again a breath louder, “Hollis. Hollis, is that you?”
When no one answered, she hoped maybe it was Patsy who’d showed back up, tuck-tailed, to make things right. Still she thought it might be Hollis playing a trick, him still lit with the booze like he was.
Without a sound, Flannery made her way back to the tree. “Hollis Henry, I’m not in the mood for your stupid jokes.” She peeked around the wide trunk, hoping to catch him, maybe Patsy and Danny too, come back to make things right all on their own.
Circling the ancient hardwood, Flannery stopped and touched its deep gray furrows, looking up for squirrel or woodchuck. Nothing.
Goosebumps pricked her arms. She hugged herself tight. Flannery wanted to be home. Home and in her safe, warm bed. Forget about Patsy, Chubby, Danny, Hollis, and everyone who’d damned her miserable night. To have a chance to sleep on what would come next.
Stepping back, her shoe hit a stone. The same one Hollis had accused Patsy of using. Flannery stumbled and caught herself. What is that? she asked no one in particular, seeing something else.
She squinted at it in the slant of moonlight and then stretched her neck upward, taking in nothing but the breeze-soaked shadows of branches and leaves. Flannery stooped over, her nose almost to the ground, and then spotted it. A copper bullet.
Why hadn’t she seen it earlier? She was always good at spotting stuff out of its natural order. She nudged the ground with her shoe, swishing a foot over loose dirt.
Puzzled, she tried to spot a pie plate or bottle used for target practice, though she knew the adjoining landowners didn’t allow such with their milk cows and horses pasturing nearby. Flannery cast an eye again for the squirrel or critter or crow, any creature that might’ve dropped it, dug it up, or such. But she didn’t find any sign.
Flannery turned to leave and caught the tiny flash of metal again. Scooping up the bullet, she raised it high, inspecting it closely under the light of the moon. Turning it, she brought it closer to her face, then pulled it away, twisting, turning, studying it so
me more.
The bullet didn’t look old at all, or corroded or discolored. Not like old bullets Honey Bee’d pointed out, or the ones she’d found while target practicing.
The color on this bullet was shiny like a new copper penny, but she could see it had been shot, the nose flattened.
From a distance, a hound barked, and another joined its call. Farther away, another dog howled back an answer across the fields.
Remembering how much her daddy loved hunting and how he’d proudly taught his girls to shoot when they were eight, she jiggled the bullet in her palm, then dropped it into her apron pocket.
The bullet rolled and clinked against Patsy’s pearls. It wasn’t a lucky penny, but it was shiny enough to maybe do the trick, and Lord knows Flannery could use a some-kind-of shiny trick for tonight’s troubles.
Patting her pocketed treasures, she hurried off toward home.
CHAPTER 14
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.
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