The Banty House

by Brown, Carolyn

  She helped Connie in the kitchen all afternoon, and they had supper at the dining room table again. The conversation seemed to center on growing corn for the moonshine business, and evidently they were going to sow it over a lot of ground.

  “Just how big is this place?” she asked.

  “The house and yard cover about two acres,” Connie said.

  “That’s what we figure we’ve got fenced in anyway,” Kate told her. “The house sits at the front of our hundred acres. We’ve got a garden and the cornfield out behind us. We gave up growin’ a steer or two for beef and the hogs and chickens about five years ago. Figured that with just the three of us, we could buy or barter for our meat and eggs as cheap as we could grow it, and besides, we was gettin’ too old to go out every mornin’ in the winter to feed and milk the cow.”

  “If we’d have known Sloan was coming back home and we could’ve hired him to help us more than a day or two a week, we might still be doin’ all that, but hindsight is the only twenty-twenty vision most of us get.” Betsy sighed. “I did like having my own beef and pork in the freezer. You never know what that meat we get in the market might have been treated with.”

  “Probably lots of salt to make us live longer.” Connie giggled so hard that she snorted.

  Betsy rolled her eyes. “She always says that because Mama wasn’t even sixty when she died. She always had the garden and the livestock to help feed her girls when she ran the brothel. She didn’t have much bought food, so she didn’t eat all the preservatives that we do these days.”

  “She said it gave her girls something to do in the daylight hours.” Kate’s tone sounded like she was telling Ginger that the price of corn was going up that year. “Now it gives us something to do other than just sitting down and waiting to die.”

  “Don’t talk like that,” Betsy scolded. “We’ve all three got lots of good years left on this old earth. I’m planning on living to be a hundred, myself.”

  “Me and God got us an agreement. Long as I keep that commandment about cleanliness bein’ up there next to godliness, I get to keep dustin’ and cleanin’ this house and workin’ in the flower beds,” Connie said.

  Sloan chuckled. “Did you get that agreement in writing, Miz Connie?”

  “Nope. I figured God’s word was good enough,” she shot right back at him.

  Ginger was glad that she’d just swallowed a big sip of sweet tea, or she would have spit it all the way across the table.

  Chapter Three

  Ginger could feel the expectancy in the house when she awoke on Saturday morning. There wasn’t anything particular that she could put her finger on, but the feeling surrounded her. The only way she could describe it was by comparing it to that year that she’d stayed with a foster family by the name of Williams. The Christmas tree had been set up in the corner of the living room and each of the three kids in the house had two presents under it. She felt the same anticipation that morning as she dusted all the furniture and knickknacks in the living room.

  “We’ll just do this room today,” Connie told her, “because right after we finish eating at noon, we get to dye our eggs. Betsy boils a dozen for each of us, and then we get to decorate them.”

  “What do you do with them?” Ginger asked.

  “Why, honey”—Connie stopped cleaning the window ledges—“we pay Sloan to work for us after church tomorrow. He gets a good Sunday dinner that way, and then his job is to hide our eggs so we can hunt them. Rules say that they have to be inside the yard fence. We’re too old to be traipsing out to the barn to find an egg in an old chicken roostin’ nest.”

  “I’ve never hunted Easter eggs,” Ginger admitted. “I hid them once for the younger kids, but the foster homes I lived in didn’t do anything special at Easter, or Passover for that matter.”

  “Well, you’re in for a treat. Whoever finds the most eggs gets a hundred dollars as the big prize.” Connie went back to cleaning an already spotless window.

  “If you get the prize money, what do you do with it?” Ginger asked.

  “I tuck it away and give it to the church missionary fund the next Sunday,” Connie whispered.

  “Did your mama give you that much money when you were a little girl?” Ginger couldn’t imagine having money that wasn’t needed for bills and food—dollars that she could spend on whatever she wanted.

  “No. Mama gave us five dollars, and we had to give at least one of those to the church the next Sunday. In those days you could buy something nice with four dollars, but now you can’t buy a bag of sugar for that. So we upped the prize a few years ago. What are you going to do with the money if you find the most eggs?” Connie sat down in an old wooden rocking chair and set it in motion.

  “I dreamed I would hunt eggs with y’all, and now it’s coming true.” The thought of even the possibility of having that much money in her hands was mind-boggling.

  “Honey, we all hunt eggs on Easter.” Connie frowned. “Well, maybe not all of us. Sloan says that it wouldn’t be fair since he’s the one who hides them, and that we’re payin’ him to do that.”

  “Well, then I expect if I wind up with that money, I’ll use it to buy a bus ticket to take me the rest of the way to California.” Ginger finished the last of the dusting. “What do we do now?”

  “It’s half an hour until we eat dinner, so I expect we’d better go set the table for Betsy. Poor old Sloan has been out there plowing and planting corn all morning. He’s going to be hungry.” Connie eased up out of the rocking chair. “Kate’s too damn old to be raisin’ her own corn for the shine. She needs something to keep her busy, so I don’t fault her for makin’ the stuff in the basement,” Connie said. “I don’t even mind that she grinds it herself and makes her own mash, but she could buy the corn in the husk. The planting and harvesting is getting to be too much for her.”

  Ginger didn’t know anything about making moonshine, so she kept her mouth shut, but she couldn’t help but think about that prize money. Would it get her all the way to California?

  “Why did you decide to go west rather than east?” Connie asked as she made her way to the kitchen. “The silverware is in the drawer of that buffet over there.”

  “I want to see the ocean, and I want my baby to know that there’s a world outside of Kentucky.” Ginger opened a buffet drawer and brought out the silverware.

  “I used to feel like that when I was your age.” She took the dishes from the china cabinet. “I wanted to see if there was a world outside of Rooster, Texas, but after Mama took us to Medina Lake for a campout one weekend, I decided that Hondo was as far as I wanted to get from my home.”

  “What happened at the lake?” Ginger asked.

  “Nothing catastrophic.” Connie set out the gravy boat and four serving dishes. “I just hated being out there in the wilds. I didn’t like sleeping in a tent, and I hated the mosquitoes. I just wanted to be in my own bed, in my own clean room, and eating food that Betsy and Mama made in the kitchen rather than what they tried to make on an open fire.”

  “But you made a memory, right?” Ginger wanted her baby to have good memories, and most of all grow up knowing that it would never spend time in the system.

  “Oh, yeah.” Connie laughed out loud. “I had mosquito bites that took a week to heal, but Mama read to me every night and put her special salve on them to keep the itch at a minimum.”

  Betsy came from the kitchen with a big bowl of salad in her hands. “Is she tellin’ you tales about the time Mama took us camping? That was so much fun. I learned about cooking over an open fire. Me and Mama burned the chicken, but the inside wasn’t too bad. If the end of times renders us without electricity or runnin’ water, at least we know how to fend for ourselves.”

  “You sound just like Mama did,” Connie told her.

  “I’ll take that as a compliment. I hear Kate and Sloan comin’ in the back door. Y’all come on in here and help me get the meal on the table,” Betsy said.

  “We’re starvin’
,” Kate said as she came into the house. “I forget from one year to the next how much work is involved in the corn plantin’ business.”

  “Well, I keep tellin’ you to buy the corn,” Connie argued.

  “I might buy it another year just to shut you up about it,” Kate fussed.

  “She gets like this when she’s tired,” Betsy whispered. “Lord only knows that she’s downright sassy when it comes to her moonshine. We never did know our father real good. Connie was just a baby when he died, but Mama had a picture of him up in her bedroom, and Kate’s like him. Tall and thin and stubborn as a cross-eyed Missouri mule.”

  “I’m standin’ right here.” Kate glared at her.

  “And I can see you plain and clear,” Connie said. “Go wash your hands.”

  “Don’t boss me,” Kate threw over her shoulder.

  Ginger had seen children act like that, but never adults. It was almost funny, but she was careful not to laugh. She picked up the serving bowls and hurried into the kitchen to help Betsy bring the food to the table.

  After grace, Kate began to pass food around the table. First the platter of pot roast and then a bowl full of potatoes and carrots. Ginger wondered if fried chicken was always served on Friday and pot roast on Saturday. Betsy had told her already that she was planning to make the traditional Easter ham on Sunday.

  You wanted memories, the little voice in the back of her head said loud and clear. No ocean or anything you could look at could provide memories like this. Fate led you to this place. Enjoy it while you can.

  She caught Sloan staring at her just as she nodded in agreement with the pesky voice. She flashed a smile his way, and his head bobbed once, as if he had read her thoughts and knew exactly what she’d been thinking. She was more than a little intimidated by him. The way he looked at her made her feel like he could read her mind.

  “I’ve got a question,” Ginger said. “So, was there a school here in Rooster at one time?”

  “Oh, yes, honey,” Connie answered. “It wasn’t ever very big, and when we were in high school, there were only maybe thirty or forty white children that went to it, but we had our school.”

  “When they finally shut it down about forty years ago, there were only six seniors. The next year, the Hondo school system ran buses out here to get the kids.” Kate sighed. “That was a sad fall for all of us. We lost the post office a few years later. Once those two things are gone from a community, it’s all but a ghost town.”

  “If the majority of the kids were black, then why did you have trouble being a cheerleader?” Ginger placed her hand on her stomach. Lucas had come from Cajun folks down in Louisiana. He’d told her that his nanny when he was in preschool had been French. She should have realized then that he’d grown up in a different social world than she did.

  “Honey”—Connie patted her on the arm—“if we’d been black we might have stood a better chance. Neither race, black nor white, really wanted us.”

  “We’re sure glad that times have changed,” Betsy said.

  An awkward silence followed her statement. Ginger thought about Lucas. If it hadn’t been that she was carrying his baby, things could have gone different for her. She might have found another waitress job when the café she’d been working at closed down, but no one wanted to hire a woman who was visibly pregnant.

  Lucas had said that he loved her when he talked her into moving out of the shelter and into the ratty apartment with him, but his actions often hadn’t matched his words. He’d lose his temper if her tips were a few dollars less than they’d been the day before, and twice he’d slapped her. She couldn’t even find tears to cry when the police came to tell her that he was dead, because down deep, she’d been relieved that she was out of the relationship. She had never known that any of his relatives were alive, but his parents had claimed the body and taken it home with them for burial.

  “So did y’all get the corn planted?” Connie changed the subject.

  “About half of it. We’ll take care of the rest of it Monday afternoon. We’ve got other things to do when we’re finished eating,” Kate answered.

  “I’m thinkin’ that Ginger can wear my dress from last year,” Connie said.

  Kate cocked her head to one side and eyed Ginger. “It just might fit her at that. I’m glad this is my year to choose the Easter dress, so we don’t have to wear those flowing things you always choose.”

  “Hey, just because you’re skinny and nothing binds up your waist don’t mean me and Betsy want to have to wear a girdle and a waist-length bra to look good for the picture,” Connie fussed.

  “She’s right,” Betsy agreed. “Last year’s dress was so comfortable that I felt like I was wearing a nightgown.”

  Ginger took a deep breath and let it out slowly. She didn’t want to offend them, but Lord have mercy—she sure didn’t want to wear one of their dresses if it looked like a nightgown, either. “I have something I can wear, but thank you for the offer.”

  “If you change your mind, it’s a cute little pink linen with butterfly sleeves,” Connie said. “I’ll show it to you after we eat and you can decide.”

  “That would be great.” Ginger managed a smile and decided that if the dress came close to fitting her, she’d wear it. So what if it made her look like Dumbo’s baby sister? Church services would only be for one hour, and if it made Connie happy, then it would be worth it.

  A vision of the dresses from last year flashed through Sloan’s mind. He didn’t know a blessed thing about fashion, but in his mind those dresses sure didn’t look like something Ginger would wear. Both days that he’d been around her she’d worn tight-fitting britches and a faded knit top that hung almost to her knees.

  Kate interrupted his thoughts when she passed the platter of biscuits to him. “Are you going to church with us tomorrow?” she asked.

  “Now, Miz Kate, who’d hide the eggs if I went to church?” he asked.

  “You could do that job while I get dinner on the table,” Betsy told him.

  “Then you’d all be peeking out the windows trying to see where I put them.” He chuckled. “I know you, Miz Betsy, and how much that hundred-dollar prize means to you.”

  “Busted!” Betsy giggled. “But you are welcome to go with us anytime that you want. Your granny wouldn’t be happy that you don’t attend.”

  “I know that, and I hate to disappoint her, but,” Sloan said in a slow drawl, “God and I have got some things to straighten out before I don’t feel like a hypocrite sittin’ in His house.”

  Kate reached over and patted him on the shoulder. “When you get it right with Him, you’re welcome to sit with us on our pew.”

  “Thank you.” Sloan didn’t expect that he’d be attending church anytime soon, but it was nice of Kate to offer her support. Before he enlisted, he’d gone every single Sunday morning and sometimes on Wednesday nights with his granny. He’d gone to chapel a few times, but only in basic training. After that, it was hit and miss, depending on whether he was in the field or not and whether he was hungover on Sunday morning. When his buddies were all killed in one fell swoop, he blamed himself—and then he questioned God. If the Almighty Maker was all that great, how could He let a bomb take out Sloan’s entire team?

  “Where did you go to church, Ginger?” Connie asked.

  “Depended on what foster family I was with,” she answered. “I seldom stayed more than a year with any one of them, sometimes even less. I remember one that was pretty religious, and we went every Sunday morning. On the way home, the lady would ask us questions about the sermon. If we couldn’t answer them, we were punished.”

  Sloan’s hands knotted into fists under the table. No child should suffer because of something like that. It would make them hate God even worse than he did.

  “I didn’t think foster parents were allowed to whip kids.” Connie’s chin quivered.

  “There’s lots more ways to punish a child than to use a belt or a paddle,” Ginger told her. “The punishme
nt if we couldn’t answer the questions was that we had to go to the bedroom, get down on our knees, and pray the whole time the rest of the family was eating dinner. Now”—Ginger’s smile didn’t reach her pretty eyes—“tell me how we go about decorating the eggs this afternoon. How do y’all color them?”

  “We’ve got all kinds of things, from glue and glitter to dye kits and pretty little decals.” Betsy stopped what she was doing and gave Ginger a quick hug. “Decorating the eggs has always been such a big afternoon for us. We don’t get in a rush, and we bring out all our artistic abilities, and, honey, you’ll never miss a meal here at the Banty House.”

  Sloan glanced over at Ginger. “I have trouble hiding the eggs because they sparkle in the sunlight as it is. It takes me the whole hour and a half that they’re gone to get the job done.”

  He liked that he’d made her smile and her brown eyes had taken on a sparkle. He couldn’t imagine how hard her life must have been, or how he would have survived without his grandmother’s support after his mother and dad were both killed.

  When the dishes were all done and put away, Kate gave Sloan orders for what she wanted done in the rest of the corn patch, and then she hurried downstairs to check on the mash she had setting up. Betsy started two pans of eggs to boiling, and Connie took Ginger upstairs to try on the pink dress.

  Ginger would rather have stayed in the kitchen with Betsy or even gone to the moonshine room with Kate. Truth was she’d take going to the cornfield with Sloan over all that. Sloan had a mysterious air about him that made her want to get to know him better. His eyes said he’d known pain and his smile was guarded, but she loved it when he slid one eyelid shut in a wink. She felt as if they were sharing a secret that no one else had any idea about.

  As she climbed the stairs behind Connie, she compared Sloan and Lucas. Both were good-looking guys. Lucas had black, curly hair that he wore a little too long and brown eyes that were constantly darting around. Now that he was gone, she could see that he was always looking for an easy way to make a dollar—legal or not, it didn’t seem to matter. He’d sweet-talked her into moving out of the shelter where they’d both been living and into an apartment with him about a year ago. He’d told her that in a few months he’d have enough money to buy them a house.