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.
CHAPTER 15
Flannery
1972
The sun blinded Flannery as she stepped out of her car. Squinting, she watched Sheriff Hollis Henry standing on the banks, one elbow resting on his holster, talking to another official. Hollis had an outstretched palm pinned to the Kentucky River.
Beyond, a small ferryboat idled past, skimming the still waters, pulling her to a different day on the river—a dangerous one she and Honey Bee had met with long ago on her daddy’s old
River Witch boat, back when Hollis’s daddy, Jack Henry, had been wearing the badge.
Hollis standing there like that, hand stuck out, was as if yesteryear had given itself a mirror and reflected it all back into the future.
The wind kicked up, dragging a cloud of angels’ share over the crowd gathering below and waiting for the river’s latest secret.
Another Kentucky River secret, not too unlike Flannery and Honey Bee’s most guarded they’d left in the muddy waters back then.
* * *
Flannery was pretty sure Honey Bee’d murdered one of the moonshiner thieves with his old .38, and maybe he had. Because no one ever spoke of it again. Honey Bee had wanted to kill him, taking straight aim at the whiskey pirate on that fine day coming downriver, back in the fall of ’47.
That morning Honey Bee had awakened eleven-year-old Flannery just as the moon slipped under its morning wrap. “C’mon, Flannery girl. The river is calling us,” he had whispered and shook her, careful not to disturb Patsy.
The sun burst through the fog, announcing the day as they drove the ferryboat up the hushed river. A sheen of fire lay in a wide path on the water.
The Palisades jutted out of darkness, its crags in russets and golds of rock elm and yellow buckeye trees that snugged lacelike into limestone terraces on the early November day.
Peregrine falcons wheeled and soared in the cool morning air. A pair of blue heron skimmed the Kentucky waters for breakfast while Honey Bee and Flannery sipped at the silence. Their creaking boat chugged past the tulip- and poplar-lined banks. Overhead, migrating geese called out their greeting, hurrying on in V formation.
On the other side of the river up ahead, out of the corner of her eye Flannery watched as strange men pushed their small boat off the bank. Lately, she and Honey Bee had seen the pair of dirty-looking boatmen on the wooden flatboat on their trips upriver.
“Look at those boys on that ol’ Kentucky boat up to no good and likely dumber than a broom handle,” Honey Bee had remarked several times, always passing a testing hand to the small of his back where he’d hitched his snub nose, and keeping a sharp eye tucked their way.
The old boat reminded Flannery of one of Mama’s brown shoe boxes, the ones in the cellar on a shelf where she kept all her old letters. Flannery watched as the muscled oarsmen pushed off the muddy bottom, paddling the boat into deeper water.
Honey Bee was always right. On the return trip back downriver, the men stole out of a cove, sneaking their wooden boat alongside Honey Bee’s. Then one of the men clambered up the rope near the ferryboat’s stern and hopped over the rail and onto their deck. The boat groaned softly from his weight, water slapped at the wooden sides, like it wanted to push him away.
He called out friendly-like, “Hey, Cappy,” to Honey Bee. “Fine fishing weather.” He rubbed his balded chest, tugged at his wet britches. “My brother and me wondered if you might have some spare bait aboard?” He pointed down over
the rail to the other man waiting in the flat-bottomed boat. “We’ve been trying to catch this grandpappy catfish, and that ol’ Lucifer cat’s been slipping us every time. Lost two lines to the bastard. Can you spare a ’tucky brother a little somethin’?”
The man smelled dangerous like sour water, dark like trouble that’s just blown in its rot. Flannery knew he had the nastiness a lot like their next-door neighbors the Butler family had problems with. But this man’s meanness was more sharp and unlocked on the face.
“Get into the wheelhouse,” Honey Bee ordered Flannery.
Looking back over her shoulder, she hurried into the cabin, shut the wooden door, and peeked out through its circle window left open to air the cabin.
The man’s leer followed her.
Honey Bee just stood there, resting a curled hand on his hipbone, not saying a word.
The man lifted a long hunting knife from a cow-leather sheaf hooked onto his belt, scratched at his scraggly beard, and eyed his surroundings. “Done used up all my chicken livers on that damn cat.” He sly-eyed Flannery again.
“Don’t think there’s gonna be any fishing today,” Honey Bee said, and pulled his shoulders back, rooted his sturdy legs to a ready parting.
“Know’d what I think?” The man worked a twisted grin on his mouth. “I think you been scaring our fish away, Cappy. Yup, you and your big fancy boat here been hurting me and my lil’ brother’s livelihood.”
Honey Bee pinched his lips together.
“But, hell. I’m a forgiving man.” The man pushed words through brown teeth. “And”—he tipped his blade slightly—“I bet you’re a givin’ one. Maybe you got something under them benches for me an’ Brother’s hurtings? Wet our thirst with that good likker you tote, huh?” the man said sneakily, and leaned over and swept a dirty hand along the locked wooden bench that hid Honey Bee’s whiskey.
Honey Bee stood quietly, then said again, “Ain’t no fishing here.”
“Seems you owe us for our hurting. So maybe I should take it all.” The man jutted his knife toward Flannery. “Me and Brother could start there first, hook our sinkers into that piece of tail for a satisfying bite.”
Honey Bee whipped out his pistol, and a shot rang out. The man screamed, then crumpled to the deck, wriggling, gripping his bloody kneecap that Honey Bee had blown out.
“You fish for trouble and try ’n’ rob respectable folk, you’ll get a fat tick’s worth of hurting in your flesh,” Honey Bee snarled, and kicked the man’s leg and then booted the big knife off the deck into the water.
Then as easy as plucking a weed from a field, Honey Bee picked the man up under the arms and tossed him overboard, the smack of water, its dirty spray lifting, pulling up a stink into the air.
Flannery fled the wheelhouse and rushed to her daddy’s side.
Honey Bee and Flannery leaned slightly over the rail, watching the other man curse and scramble below, pull his screaming, gurgling brother out of the water.
Quietly, Honey Bee said, “Yessir, there’s a paddle for every ass. And sometimes you’re gonna get stuck picking the paddle for an ornery one. Lord,” he breathed, “don’t you know those ol’ boys have some hard ones coming their way.”
Shaken, Flannery stood in the small pond of the man’s blood and bites of scattered flesh, gaping at her daddy who was still lit full with a deadliness that leaked from his eyes.
Honey Bee crooked his head to her and tapped his watch. “In as little as eight minutes your life can change, and the time thief can come collectin’. You fight for it, child. You don’t let him pinch one tender second from you.” Her daddy set his jaw tight.
Honey Bee grabbed the mop in the corner and turned to her. “Not a word to Mama. To anyone. Ever. On these minutes that didn’t happen and are given to you. Understand?”
She didn’t really understand all he said, but readily nodded in obedience and knowing to his warning eyes.
CHAPTER 16
Patsy
June, 1952
Patsy’s eyes lit on the deer standing in the middle of the road. For a second she forgot she was driving Hollis’s automatic, and her feet panicked and searched the pedals before finally finding the brake, jostling Danny in the backseat.
He moaned.
“A deer is all, Danny. It’s okay. I’ll have you there soon. Hospital Curve’s just up ahead.” Treacherous not because it was the last curve out of the Palisades, or the closest to County Hospital, but because it was the coil that had landed lots of folks in that hospital. And more than a few in the morgue. Last fall, Beverly Auler, one of Glass Ferry High’s seniors, was killed when she crashed her automobile into the cliff rocks. A few months back, another boy, Ian Robin, who everyone called “Iam Rotten” because of his dares, broke his back when he raced around the curl of the mountain and pushed the nose of his daddy’s truck into rock.
Patsy looked back and saw the deer hadn’t moved, its head frozen and feet still locked in the wispy tail of her ghosted headlights. She relaxed a second and sent a prayer up to Honey Bee for that.
When Patsy turned thirteen, Honey Bee began sneaking in more difficult driving lessons for her, taking her on narrower back roads and over into the Palisades.
Honey Bee had her ride off the edge of the road, between the asphalt and the tall, grassy gullies, kissing the ditch with the tires, then taught her to ride that a bit, steering slowly back onto the road—rather than jerking the wheel and sending the automobile flipping, toppling down embankments, steep cliffs, or swerving into oncoming traffic headed their way.
Frightened, Patsy’d cried, and more than once stopped dead in the road, frozen until Honey Bee would pull out a fresh handkerchief from his pocket and dab her tears. Then he’d change sides to take her driver’s seat and show her how to do it safely.
A few minutes later, they’d switch back. Honey Bee made Patsy do this over and over until his daughter felt certain she could recover from whatever obstacle she might happen upon while driving. “Drive better than any man three-counties-wide, and get yourself out of a tight spot lickety-split,” he’d said.
Patsy had busted up the sides of Honey Bee’s old Ford pretty good, dented and scraped the paint off the fenders and doors.
Honey Bee had been sick with his sugar illness then, but he never fussed during the lessons, just bided his time, praising her until they were both smiling and had claimed miles of twisty Kentucky roads. Him always saying when they were through, “Let’s not fret Mama with our lessons. Not a word, Queenie.”
Mama never said much when Honey Bee returned home with the automobile more busted than when he’d left, only, “Hmm. Don’t you know, dear husband, I do believe you need to go see Doctor Silverman in the city about spectacles. That, or someone needs more driving lessons,” she’d lightly hint, circling the Ford, flicking her dish towel at a fresh scrape or ding.
Mama. Patsy squirmed behind the Mercury’s steering column. The hospital would call her and Danny’s parents, of course, and Patsy flinched at the thought of seeing the sheriff, even more, Mama’s worried eyes.
Stretching up to the rearview mirror, Patsy glimpsed her face, touched her bottom lip swelling from Hollis’s slap, lighting a quick hand on her bare neck and then back to the wheel again. Concern settled in her brow at what explanation she’d give Mama about the injury, and worse, losing her grandmother’s pearls, the whole prom disaster.
“So hot,” Danny gasped from the backseat.
Patsy glanced back at Danny. She could see his chin tilted upward, his face glowing with a dampness.
“Hot. So damn hot, Patsy. Gotta get this noose off.” Tugging at his bow tie, he clawed and cursed until he ripped it off his neck and tossed it up front.
She snapped her eyes back to the road. He looked feverish now, when just minutes ago he’d complained of being too cold. “Almost there,” she said quickly.
“Did y-you an’ him? Are you really preg—?” Danny asked low.
“No.” She kept her sight locked
ahead.
“You swear it, Patsy? You swear on your dear kin’s graves?”
“I love you, Danny. You. I can’t wait for us to get away. I swear it!”
“People’s been talking.”
“People talked about you and Violet.” She tossed back the blame, trying to keep her eyes on the road.
“Where, Patsy? Where’d he take you that day?”
“What did the nodding Violet say to you? Promise to give you? Her stuck to you like a drunk tick, whispering in your ear like that?”
“Where, Patsy?”
“You know Hollis took me straight home! I told you all that when you came over that night, and the next night after, and every night since then. Promised, same as you did when I asked you about Violet—”
“Dammit, Patsy, y-you’re lying to me. I called at five thirty, and you still weren’t home. Again at six.”
“And I told you I was in the barn looking for a box of stuff I promised to find for Mama,” she lied. “Now please hush with all that nonsense, Danny! I gotta pay attention here.”
That much was true. Patsy and Hollis had argued a little more on Ebenezer until she had run home, sneaking inside. She’d found supper warming in the oven and a note from Mama saying she’d gone out. Flannery wasn’t home either; she’d stopped by Chubby Ray’s with a few of the girls from baton club.
Not wanting to risk being seen in her state, Patsy disappeared into the barn, but only to hide out long enough till she was sure the liquor was good and gone from her. Long enough till she’d drained herself of the disgrace of what Hollis had done to her. She’d heard the whispers from a few girls about a home remedy that’d get rid of any baby that might’ve seeded. Frantic, Patsy searched and found the cure—an old jar full of her daddy’s turpentine—and swigged it some, until she retched again and again.
“Patsy?” Danny said.
Patsy dropped a hand to her belly, pressed on her girdle beneath the layers of fabric, knowing. It hadn’t worked for her. She and Danny needed to get married quickly. She couldn’t risk waiting any longer. The baby was born early, was what she’d tell others. She’d heard the tales of how to spot the so-called early babies. “Look at its nails,” old women gossiped. “Won’t find nary a long nail on a true early.” But she’d hide its hands in tiny mitts so they couldn’t tell the baby had fingernails, had come to full-term, couldn’t gossip that the corn had been planted before the fence planks were put up.
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