“That’ll be four dollars and twenty-four cents,” the clerk said, centering the Coke-bottle-green vase, pushing it back toward Flannery. “Now aren’t these perfect for the gloomy skies we’ve been having.” She smiled.
Something closed in Flannery’s throat, and it became hard to breathe, hard to think through the pounding in her chest, the blood rushing up to her ears.
The lady caught Flannery’s arm. “Honey,” she said, “do you need to sit down?”
Flannery tried to blink and pull herself out of the toppling panic, but the anxious feeling grabbed ahold and wouldn’t let go.
She jerked loose of the woman’s grip and rushed out of the shop, fleeing down a long corridor.
A minute later Flannery found herself outside, in back of the hospital, bent over, taking in large gulps of air. Soon, she felt her legs getting back their grit, and she latched on to the corner of the building to straighten herself.
“Damn you, Mark,” she said hoarsely, and smacked the concrete wall. She was missing more than what he and that old delivery doc took long ago, knew she would always feel her ex’s choke leash on her neck, his bite on her skin.
Flannery pulled herself up and went back into the building. A doctor met her in the hall and said he would keep Mama a few more days, but advised Flannery to take Mama away from Glass Ferry. “Take her to a home for the idiots, if you can’t care for her. The asylum,” he suggested. “Her mind is failing. They can restrain her, best deal with her kind there.”
“A home for idiots? Restrain her?” Flannery repeated his words.
“Yes,” he said, in a mood to rush. “They are equipped to care for these creatures.”
“Creatures? But—”
“Mrs. Hamilton, we’re a hospital. We care for the ill. Not the addled. Now please, I have patients waiting.”
That night when Flannery came to tuck Mama in, she found her tied to the bed with leather straps. Mama’s arms were pulled up high and wide, ugly, stretched to the rails, and her legs were spread and fastened to the metal sides, her gown hitched up to her waist.
Mama pulled a helpless gaze to Flannery. Her lips quivered, but nothing came out.
“Mama! Who did this to you?” Flannery rushed to her side and went to work on the straps, loosening the knots and pressing the nurse call button in between her frantic efforts to get Mama free.
A nurse came in. “Mrs. Hamilton, what do you think you’re doing?” The heavyset woman pushed Flannery’s hand away from the last strap.
Flannery shoved the nurse’s arm back.
“Mrs. Hamilton, you need to stop. You can’t do that. The doctor gave orders for restraint.” The nurse pulled up a strap.
“And I’m giving orders to release her.” Flannery bumped the nurse aside.
“She tried to escape. We had no choice, Mrs. Hamilton. This afternoon we found her in the nursery ward. She was delusional, and argued with a nurse, accusing her of harming the babies—”
“I don’t believe you.” Flannery released the last strap, threw it on the floor, and pulled down Mama’s gown to cover her nakedness. Quickly Flannery snatched the covers and stretched the thin blanket over her mama’s shivering body.
“Mrs. Hamilton, I must insist—”
“Get out. Out. Dammit.” Flannery cursed the nurse and rubbed Mama’s ankles.
“Flannery,” Mama moaned.
“Shh, shh, Mama.” Flannery gently patted Mama’s reddening arm, rubbed the indents the strap had left behind.
A doctor came in behind her. “Mrs. Hamilton, you can’t—”
“You can’t! You can’t tie her up like that. Like a dog. I’m taking her home,” Flannery said.
“She needs her medicine tonight. And Doctor Owen won’t be back till the morning,” the doctor said. “He’ll have to sign her out.”
“I want her released now,” Flannery said, dismissing him. She pressed her hand over Mama’s.
“Help me,” Mama whispered.
Flannery cringed. Mama’s plea, her frail voice brought back Patsy’s last plea for help. “Now,” Flannery ordered the doctor, and then again louder over her shoulder, “right now.” Flannery turned and showed him the fury in her eyes.
“Doctor Owen is the only one who can do that, little lady,” the doctor clipped as he walked out the door. The nurse shuffled after him as if she wanted to talk to him without Flannery hearing.
Mama tried to rise, but slumped back whimpering. Flannery pulled her chair up to the iron bed and took Mama’s cold, shaky hand. “Just rest, Mama.”
They both remained silent for a good spell.
Finally Flannery said, “You’ll be okay.”
“I just wanted to hold the newborns,” Mama said weakly. “The nurse said she couldn’t be bothered to rock them.”
“It’s okay.” Flannery tried to smile.
“That one nurse was the worst.” Mama sniffled. “Said I wasn’t even worth the air in the resuscitator can. Pinched my arms down with her knee while the large one put those tight straps on me.” Mama rubbed her smarting arms.
“I’m sorry, Mama. You’re safe now.” Flannery leaned over and hugged, squeezed her gently.
“I was scared.”
“I’m here now.” Flannery shifted. “Mama, listen, the doctors want you to leave home. I want you to come back to the city with me.”
Mama’s tired eyes grew big. “Live in Louisville? Leave home?”
“It’ll be nice. There’s a cute studio down the street from me. A neighbor mentioned it’ll be available at the end of the summer. And there’s a big fabric store around the block. You can sew up a storm, make us some pretty dresses. Wouldn’t that be nice?” Flannery forced a smile and pulled Mama’s hand to her mouth and kissed it lightly. “Sew as much as you want and—”
“Leave Glass Ferry? Leave Patsy and Honey Bee and the babies?”
“We’ll come back and visit the graves. I promise. The doc thinks it would be good for you to get away. We can sell the old house now. It’s too much for you, Mama.” Flannery rocked Mama’s hand in hers. “Too much work.”
“I—I just wanted the pearls. I didn’t mean to cause—”
Flannery saw embarrassment in Mama’s eyes.
“I know.” She hated that Mama needed that old broken strand, those precious pearls, the broken lifeline, precious moments that were lost to both of them.
“I heard the nurses call me crazy. That one mean one called me a ninny and said it would serve me right to go to the old cuckoo asylum.”
Flannery rubbed Mama’s hand. “You’re not going anywhere but with me.”
Mama grew quiet for a few minutes, then said, “Where will I put all my stuff? And Patsy’s and Honey Bee’s? I can’t leave my baby boys’ cradle. All those things from my life, their sweet memories I kept to keep giving me life? I can’t lose any more of them, not another single piece. It’s all I have left now.” Mama balled up the hospital sheet in her other hand, squeezed.
“You have me. And don’t you worry none; I’ll help you pack everything you need. We’ll try to take as much as we can, and we can always store the rest.”
“When? When do I have to say good-bye?”
“I don’t have to be back to teaching until late August. I have to get my classroom ready for September. We’ll leave in August. Okay, Mama?”
A shame and brokenness filled Mama’s eyes as a hopelessness settled into her frail shoulders and rocked them both, and she sobbed, bobbing her head in defeat.
“All is lost.” Mama covered her trembling lips, smothering a cry. “Just like with your brothers. Just like then . . .”
Flannery couldn’t look at her, knew that she could never look at her again if she didn’t do something. She pulled her tired bones up from the chair. Kneeling down beside the bed, she laid her head on Mama’s belly like she had when she was young and needed comforting.
In a few minutes, Mama stroked her hair. “My baby,” she said softly.
I’ll go to the
trooper tomorrow. Tell him everything. I must do the right thing for Mama.
“My angel, my good girl,” Mama said in a splintered voice. “You’re all I have now. Oh, Lord, I couldn’t live without you. Couldn’t bear it. Thank you, Heavenly Father, for my sweet Flannery.”
Hearing that, Flannery stiffened, knowing she could never tell. Not ever. And filling with brokenness and drowning misery, she allowed herself a moment, just a small one, and pressed her mouth into the folds of Mama’s gown and found a measure of relief in her Mama’s soft arms. She sobbed quietly for babies, Mama’s and her own, and for what she’d done, and what she’d become.
Flannery vowed to do away with the pearls. Maybe it would help some. Yes. She’d bury it all, and shed herself of the secrets, the lies, and now the deadly sin of omission that had stained her and would surely send her to Hell.
Flannery stayed at Mama’s side till midnight, growling at the nurses with her eyes, keeping them out of Mama’s room with her hovering arms.
When the shift changed, a nurse appeared, saying she knew Mama from their early school days before she’d moved away to another county. Quietly, she told Flannery to go home and rest, promising she’d watch over her dear old chum.
The kind nurse convinced her, and, exhausted, Flannery went home to shower and rest.
CHAPTER 31
Early the next morning in Mama’s sewing room, Flannery found an old, empty cookie tin that Mama had set aside for stray buttons. Minutes later Flannery walked toward Ebenezer Road with the tin in one hand and Mama’s small gardening shovel in the other. On Ebenezer, she saw the big bull gate that blocked cars from going down the dead-end road.
She stopped and called up the voices: hers, Patsy’s, Danny’s, and Hollis’s. They were always louder here, her conscience hay-wiring with her racing worries.
Flannery slipped easily around the gate and hurried past the cemetery and over to the elm. She began digging around the tree at a weak spot where she found soft dirt that didn’t run into shallow roots.
After she dug a hole big enough, Flannery opened the tin and touched the bullet and Mama’s lovely pearls. Patsy had looked so beautiful that evening. And Flannery cringed, remembering her sister standing right here, frantic to find them. “Don’t go . . . Help me . . .”
Flannery wept at that, and again begged God to forgive her, dropping her sins and grief into the dark Kentucky soil, soaking it with regrets and more prayers. She thought maybe if she’d given her sister the pearls Patsy would have made it to the prom. Made it to Chubby’s even. Flannery should have been proud of her beautiful sister, happy to see her, happy to wait on her in front of Violet, Bess, and the others that night.
What Flannery wouldn’t give to change it all. To give Patsy the night she’d dreamed of, instead of the jealousy and harsh words she’d left her with. Give those stolen minutes back to her sister that she had let the devil snatch away.
Flannery covered the hole with the mound of soil, tamping it down with her foot, piling dead leaves on top, hoping to lay to rest her own tormented soul.
CHAPTER 32
2002
When Jean Butler passed away in the summer of 2002, Flannery took her ninety-one-year-old mother back home to Glass Ferry and buried her in the marble orchard on Butler Hill, right beside Flannery’s baby brothers, Patsy, and Honey Bee, and under the arms of the two-hundred-year-old chinquapin oak.
Flannery had taken care of her mama up to the very end. Made it her sole duty and daily drive to give Mama the peace she knew she had stolen from her, and to earn herself a half measure of forgiveness, if forgiveness could be earned. Though Mama would never admit to it, she’d thrived in the city. Her mind had cleared, and a long-lost spark returned to her step.
Mama’d made friends at the Knights of Columbus, where she attended bingo twice a week. Found some more folks at her neighborhood church, and formed a canasta club, and also did some seamstress work for the dry cleaners down the block. Less and less she mentioned Glass Ferry. And less and less Flannery thought about what she’d left behind.
After one of Mama’s new friends learned about Jean Butler’s husband and his distillery business, it wasn’t long until some men came calling on her and Flannery.
They were young businessmen, sons of a bourbon king, who were curious about Honey Bee’s recipes, his old ways with the whiskey.
Lately, Louisville and the rest of Kentucky had embraced their bourbon roots, seen a global promise in that colorful past, and soon, new artisanal distilleries were popping up everywhere. A boom, there were now more bourbon barrels than people in the Commonwealth.
In the end the men paid Flannery top dollar for the recipes, and like Honey Bee, only with an operation larger in scale, those smart young folks began toting their barrels of River Witch across seas and back, aging amber liquor aboard ships, letting those grandmother oceans spank the very fires into their newfangled whiskey, using Honey Bee’s old ways.
Flannery and Mama bought a small cottage on the Ohio River and lived comfortably off the sale. Flannery still taught at the elementary school, had herself a few friends in the faculty, and kept busy tutoring several days a week after school.
Occasionally, a fellow teacher would introduce Flannery to a man for a dinner date, maybe a movie, but it never turned into anything more than Flannery wanted it to—a nice night out and only this.
She and Mama would go home to visit, but just that: a day visit to the graves, then Flannery would drop Mama off to see old friends. Flannery always grabbed a book and read under the elm on Ebenezer until the light began to fade, dirtied, and it looked dingy and done, like someone had washed it too many times.
She couldn’t explain to herself why she was drawn back, other than maybe she was like some hardened criminal pulled back to the scene of the crime, who needed to pocket a secret token from his victim, relive it all, like the villains in those old Jerry Bruckheimer TV shows she watched every Thursday evening. Flannery reckoned visiting Ebenezer was her theft, her ugly trophy she held tight and offered up to Patsy.
The day Flannery buried Mama on Butler Hill, a young couple attended the graveside service. They had a familiar feel to them, like she should’ve known them, but Flannery was sure they’d never met.
After everyone left, the couple approached her. “Miss Butler?”
“Mrs. Butler Hamilton,” Flannery corrected absently.
The young woman approached her shyly. “I’m JoLynn Puckett, and this is my husband, Ben.” JoLynn pulled her husband to her side, and he shook Flannery’s hand and offered a warm smile.
“We’re sorry about your mama. We wanted to pay our respects,” JoLynn said. “I left flowers on the graves up here for your family. . . .”
“Thank you.” Flannery looked around, suddenly noticing the small bouquets on her baby brothers’, Honey Bee’s, and Patsy’s graves. “That’s very kind of you.” Flannery made to dismiss them so she could have a private moment.
“Ben and I live in your house now,” JoLynn said. “It’s a beautiful home. We bought it two years ago from the people you sold it to.”
Flannery looked at them curiously.
“Well, I . . . Ben and I just wanted to ask, that is, if you’re not in any hurry, if you might like to have lunch with us today? I made some tea and sandwiches. A nice luncheon for after the service.”
Surprised, Flannery brightened at the invitation. She was not in a hurry to get back to Louisville. She never got in a hurry about much these days, dragging around her sixty-six-year-old bones.
“Nothing too fancy, but we have country ham and biscuits, and a nice salad we made from our garden. There’s tea. Oh, and lemon pie,” JoLynn pressed. Ben nodded and smiled warmly.
Flannery looked down the hill at the big old house peeking through the trees. She would love to see it. Love to walk into those rooms and pretend Mama, Honey Bee, and Patsy were with her.
The day was sunny, breezy, and not too hot. The young couple seemed kind, and
the visit would cheer her.
“Thank you, lunch sounds nice. Just give me a moment to say good-bye to Mama, and I’ll be down in a bit.”
The Pucketts told her to take her time and left.
Flannery reached to the funeral spray lying atop the casket, then jerked her hand back. She grimaced and forced herself to take a flower and then quickly tossed it into the freshly dug grave that awaited, blowing a soft kiss. “Mama, sleep well with your babies and Honey Bee and Patsy. Our kin. All gone too soon. But all together now.”
Flannery stepped over to Honey Bee’s grave and placed a kiss to his headstone, then moved over to her brothers’ and did the same, dusting off the scattered acorns on their old stones. At Patsy’s grave, she rested a hand on the marble. “Sweet dreams, dear sister. Mama is with you now.”
Flannery drove down the hill, pulled up to the house, taking it all in, the freshly painted porch, a new tin roof. Stepping out and under the willow, she smiled. Someone had placed a wrought-iron settee with cushions near the tree.
She touched the lacy leaves, brought a soft branch to her nose and inhaled the earthy scent of green, admired how tall it had grown. Lightly she hummed “The Tennessee Waltz” and swayed her arms a little. “Yes, I lost my little darling the night they were playing the beautiful Tennessee Waltz . . .” Flannery sang softly. Spun around once, the elixir of home lighting music in her bones.
How many times had she dreamed of Wendell Black taking her to a dance one day, practiced her twirls right here under a moonlit weeper.
She wanted to savor everything good from her childhood, spin again. The clap of a screen door stopped her. If JoLynn Puckett had not been standing on the porch watching, Flannery would’ve twirled, would’ve knelt and kissed the earth, kicked off her shoes, stripped her stockings even, and wriggled her toes in the sweet bluegrass to feel the years of her youth once more, feel her family who had once felt it all with her.
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