The Banty House

by Brown, Carolyn

“I’ve got a good-sized baby.” Ginger mimicked Connie’s head wiggle.

  “Good doctor’s visit. Let’s go home and make a chocolate pie for dessert tonight,” Betsy said, and then her eyes got big. “Better idea! I’m in the mood for some double-layer cheesecake brownies, so we’ll stir up a batch of those.”

  Ginger was elated to see Betsy in better spirits. “Those do sound good, but no funny grass in them, right? Or I can’t have them.”

  Betsy raised her good arm. “Hand to God. I would never jeopardize our baby, darlin’ girl. But I just might make up a little batch of double chocolate, or I should say I’ll show you how to make them, to put in the freezer. Never know when I might need some of them for a special occasion.”

  “Betsy?” Ginger lowered her head and raised her brows.

  “I make a little pan for Flora every so often,” Betsy told her. “Purely medicinal purposes. She’s given them to her mother to help her.”

  Betsy had always been truthful about everything, from the reputation of the Banty House to her little patch of weed in the flower garden out back, and even what was drying in the garage, so Ginger had no reason to doubt her. But there was something in the glint of Betsy’s eyes that caused her to smell a rat.

  When they got home, both Connie and Kate were waiting in the kitchen. Connie had a glass of sweet tea. Kate had a glass of shine at least as big as a glass of tea and was sipping on it. The two of them looked more like sisters with their gray hair and cute little red sweat suits that day than Betsy did with her dyed hair. She’d dressed in her Easter dress and hat to go to the doctor’s office, and she came in with a limping spry step in her walk.

  “Doc says I can have my little smoke before bed, so I’m happy.” She threw her hat at a chair and missed. Both Hetty and Magic made a dive for the hat and started clawing and kicking at it like they were trying to kill the strange thing.

  “Praise God.” Connie threw both hands into the air. “If I’d known that abstaining from your weed was what was making you so bitchy, I’d have rolled one for you myself.”

  Kate just smiled and held up her glass. “I’ve got the blackberry perfected. Want a sip?”

  “You know I don’t drink,” Betsy said. “That stuff ain’t good for you. And for God’s sake, Kate, get my hat off the floor before those cats . . . No, leave it there. Let them have their fun. Y’all get on out of our kitchen. Me and Ginger is going to do some baking.”

  “You sure you didn’t let her roll one on the way home?” Kate whispered to Ginger.

  Ginger just grinned and shook her head.

  Sloan made the drive to Grant, Texas, on Thursday morning. When he and Tinker reached the cemetery, he gave the dog the full length of his leash so he could run and play. Then he sat down in front of Creed’s grave. He closed his eyes for a minute and let his mind go back to the two years he had had with the team. Creed had been the quietest one of all of them. He had a wife back here in Texas, and a couple of kids—rug rats he called the twin boys.

  Thinking of babies sent Sloan’s thoughts to Ginger. The way she’d reacted to only one baby made him think she was disappointed, but he hadn’t asked her outright about it. Maybe he’d do that tonight when they talked. He blinked a couple of times, and a wave of guilt washed over him. He’d come to make peace with Creed, not think about Ginger.

  Don’t waste your time thinkin’ about me, Creed’s voice popped into his head.

  “Hello,” a female voice said behind him.

  He was losing his touch for sure. Two people in as many days had snuck up on him. No wonder they’d sent him home to Texas with a disability discharge. If he couldn’t even hear someone coming up behind him in a quiet cemetery in broad daylight, he sure wouldn’t have lasted long in the field.

  “Hello,” he said.

  “Are you a friend of Creed’s?” she asked.

  “Was at one time,” Sloan said. “How about you?”

  “I knew him, but not well. He went to school with my younger brother. I just come by when I visit my mother’s grave, since it’s close to hers. I’m Gloria Tisdale, and you are?” she said.

  “Pleased to meet you. I’m Sloan Baker.” At first it seemed strange that someone who knew Creed would be in the cemetery, especially after the day before, when Teddy had shown up. “Do you know his wife and kids?”

  “I did, but only because they attended the same church as I do,” Gloria answered. “She’s remarried now and living out in California somewhere. She doesn’t get back here very often.”

  “Creed would have wanted her to move on,” Sloan said.

  “He was a good guy, so you’re probably right. I should go. My husband is waiting for me in the car. Nice talking to you, Sloan.”

  “Same here.” Sloan turned back to the tombstone and did the math. Creed had been twenty-five when he died, and he had already gotten married and had two little kids. Suddenly Sloan felt as if he was dragging his feet.

  He and Tinker drove on up to Hugo that evening, and checked into a hotel right close to a Mexican restaurant. He made sure the dog had plenty of water and food before he walked next door to have supper. If he struck up a conversation with someone, maybe they could tell him where the cemetery was.

  An hour later, he was back at the hotel. The folks at the restaurant had come from Oaxaca, barely spoke English, and he had spent the time looking up cemeteries on his phone while he waited for his order. In the morning he planned to go see Chris’s grave and then get on over to Randlett for John’s and Wade’s gravesites. They’d come from Randlett and a little town called Chattanooga, or Chatty, as the locals called it according to Wade. Even though the towns were close together, they hadn’t known each other until they enlisted. Could be that he’d be home by dark tomorrow evening after all.

  He fell back on the bed and sent a text to Ginger asking her if she was free to talk for a while. The phone rang within a few seconds.

  “How are things going?” she asked.

  “I couldn’t ask for them to be better,” Sloan answered, “and I feel like I’ve lost about a ton of weight off my shoulders. How’d the doctor visit go? Is the baby all right? How about Betsy? Stitches weren’t infected, were they? And are those scratches on Kate and Connie healing up?”

  “Whoa,” she said. “One question at a time. Let’s see . . .” She went on to tell him all about her day, ending by telling him about talking to Flora the night before.

  “You need to watch Betsy like a hawk,” he warned.

  “Why?” Ginger asked.

  “She’s sly as a fox, and believe me, she and Flora are good friends. I’ll just bet she’s got something up her sleeve that she plans to do with those brownies,” Sloan said.

  “You mean with Edith?” Ginger gasped.

  “I wouldn’t put it past her. She’ll work her way around that restraining order somehow. She’s pretty mad at Edith over whatever she said about Belle,” Sloan said. “But I didn’t call to talk about our children.”

  “Children?” Ginger almost shrieked.

  “Don’t you feel a little like a parent raising rebellious kids? We’ve got one making moonshine in the basement, one growin’ pot in the flower beds, and God only knows what Connie is doing that we don’t even know about. She’s the sneakiest one for sure.” Sloan laughed. “And you just came into the parenting business a couple of weeks ago. I’ve been at it for more than two years now.”

  “I never thought of it like that,” she said. “It’s one of those role-reversal things, isn’t it? I should be in the Guinness World Records if this is true. I’ll have a new baby and three daughters who are all nearly eighty.”

  “You are so funny,” Sloan said. “You put sunshine in my life.”

  “Now, that’s a fine pickup line,” she told him.

  “What do you know about pickup lines?” he asked.

  “Honey, I’ve been on my own for almost two years. You think I never used a fake ID to get into a bar?” she fired right back.

  �
�It would take a lifetime to hear all of your stories, wouldn’t it?” he asked.

  “Yep, and another one to hear all of yours,” she agreed.

  By the time they said good night and hung up, Ginger was restless. She wanted what he already had—parents and grandparents. Even though they had passed on, he could go sit in front of their tombstones and think about them.

  She pulled out her phone and followed thread after thread until she found the funeral homes that had cremated her parents. She didn’t expect anyone to answer, but she made the call anyway to the one that took care of prisoners when no one claimed their bodies.

  “Solid Rock Funeral Services,” a man answered.

  Ginger waited for the rest of the message so she could leave her phone number.

  “Hello, hello, is anyone there?” the deep voice asked.

  “I’m so sorry. I thought you were an answering machine.” The words tumbled out so fast that she had to stop and catch her breath. “My name is Ginger Andrews. My mother died in prison about nineteen years ago. I’m trying to locate her grave or find out where her ashes were taken. I was told she was cremated.”

  “And her name was?” the man asked.

  “Brenda Andrews,” she said.

  “Would you have a number?” he asked.

  “No, sir, just that name,” Ginger answered, wishing, not for the first time, she had more information.

  “Let me go check our records.” A thud signaled the phone being laid down.

  It seemed to Ginger like it was an hour before he was back, but according to the clock beside her bed, it was only five minutes.

  “I’m glad you called. We have those ashes stored here at our facility.” He cleared his throat.

  “How much do I send to have them shipped to me, and can I use a debit card?” she asked.

  “Of course you can. It’s a flat twenty-five-dollar fee, and I’ll take your numbers right now if you’d like for me to send the ashes tomorrow. We have to send them by priority mail and mark them cremated remains, so look for a package like that,” he said.

  Ginger got her new debit card from her purse and gave him the numbers. She asked him to hold just a minute and she ran across the hall and knocked on Betsy’s door.

  “What is it?” Kate opened her bedroom door. “Is it the baby? Do we need to go to the hospital?”

  “No. I need the address to the Banty House,” Ginger said.

  “It’s 800 South Main, Rooster, Texas, 78862,” Kate replied. “What do you need it for?”

  Ginger rattled off the address into the phone and then said, “Is that all you need?”

  “Yes, ma’am. They should arrive at your address in two days.”

  “Thank you so much. You wouldn’t, by any chance, know how I could find my father’s remains? His name was Larry Andrews,” she said.

  “I can check. We . . . Oh, yes, ma’am. He’s here, too,” the man said. “We often take care of people who aren’t claimed in this area. Should we ship them to you, too? Same payment and address?”

  “Yes, please,” Ginger answered. “And thank you.”

  “I’ll send you a receipt with the remains for your records. I can send you a copy of the death certificate for each for an additional ten dollars per person,” he said.

  “Please, I’d like that very much,” she said.

  “Anything else I can do for you?” he asked.

  “That’s all, and thank you again.” She wasn’t sure how she should feel, but it sure wasn’t anything like what she was experiencing right then. Her chest had tightened, and tears rolled down her cheeks. She’d never known them, but between them, good or bad, they were her parents. Wherever she put their ashes would be the place where she settled down. No matter what their past was, she wanted her daughter to have ancestors that she could call her own.

  She turned around to find all three sisters standing in their bedroom doors, staring at her.

  “Are you okay, child?” Betsy asked. “You are pale as a ghost.”

  Chills ran down Ginger’s back and she opened her mouth, but words wouldn’t come out.

  Betsy rushed to her side. “Is it the baby?”

  Ginger shook her head. “I just found my parents. I’m having them shipped to me.”

  “Their bodies?” Connie frowned.

  Ginger shook her head. This was all surreal. She would have death certificates and ashes. She might have been an orphan, but now she’d have parents, even if they had been dead for so long. “Their ashes,” she whispered, breaking into sobs.

  The other two sisters gathered around her like mother hens. Betsy was closest, so she wrapped her up in her arms, and Ginger didn’t even care that she smelled like a van from the 1970s. Kate kissed her on the cheek, with a waft of blackberry moonshine. It didn’t matter. Connie made it a four-way hug, and Sloan’s words came back to Ginger about her being their sneaky child.

  “I’m so sorry,” she apologized. “I didn’t even know my parents, but it’s like they just died yesterday, and it hit me hard.”

  “Darlin’, you can’t mourn for something you never knew,” Kate said. “You are grieving for what you wanted them to be, and that’s all right. Just let it all out. When they get here, we’ll bury them in the Cottonwood Cemetery and get a couple of memorial headstones so you can visit them from time to time.”

  “Can you bury ashes?” Ginger dried her eyes on the tail of her T-shirt.

  “Of course you can,” Connie reassured her.

  “I just want my baby to know that she had grandparents.” Ginger hiccuped.

  “Honey, that sweet child will have three grannies who love her very much,” Betsy said.

  That brought on more sobs. “I can’t ever repay y’all for giving me a home and . . .” Ginger laid her head on Betsy’s shoulder, and the weeping began all over again. The sisters cried right along with her.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Rain poured out of dark clouds that hovered overhead when Sloan reached Randlett on Friday afternoon. His goal was to visit all his teammates’ graves to put a measure of closure to the guilt he’d been carrying around with him for so long. So far he’d had fairly good experiences, but he wondered if the dark clouds were an omen.

  He drove through the cemetery and located John Matthews’s gravesite, but there was no way in the pouring-down rain that he could get out of the truck and lay a hand on it the way he’d done the others. Instead, he sat in his vehicle and thought about all the times John had told them he’d sell one of his kidneys for a good old Oklahoma rainstorm. Of all the things he’d missed when they were in Kuwait, he’d said that the smell of rain topped the list.

  Sloan rolled down the window just enough to get a whiff and said, “I miss you, my friend. I hope, wherever you are, that you’re enjoyin’ this rainstorm. I’d like to say that I ordered it up special just for you, but I can’t take the credit.” The driving rain blew into the truck and got his shoulder wet, but he didn’t care. Getting wet was well worth the price of saying a final goodbye to his old friend.

  According to the map on his phone, it was only twenty-five miles to the hotel where he had reservations in Wichita Falls, Texas. That should have taken less than thirty minutes, but with the rain slowing the traffic down, it took him an hour to get to the hotel. Poor old Tinker whined the last ten minutes and squirmed over there in the passenger’s seat. Sloan snapped the leash onto his collar and dreaded going out into the rain to the section marked for dogs, but Tinker took care of that problem in a hurry. He hiked his leg on the back tire of the truck, and Sloan could’ve sworn that the dog let out a long sigh when he finished his job.

  He left Tinker in the truck and got checked in. Then he went back out to drive the truck around to the nearest entrance to his room. As luck would have it, there was no awning over that door, so he and the dog both got soaked again going from the vehicle into the hotel. Sloan was a little jealous of the dog when he shook from his head all the way to the tip of his tail in the hallway, sl
inging water everywhere. He had to wait until he was in the room to strip out of his own wet clothing.

  As soon as he’d changed into dry pajama pants and a T-shirt, he sent a text to Ginger asking if she wanted to do some FaceTime with him. In seconds she called back, and he could see her bright smile right there on the screen.

  “You’re a sight for sore eyes,” he said.

  “I’m glad you think so. I see more life in your eyes than when you left,” she told him.

  “Oh, really? Want to tell me why you think that?” He knew that his heart had made peace with what happened, but what did that have to do with his eyes?

  “When I first met you, there was a curtain over your eyes,” she said. “You do know that the eyes are the windows to your soul, right?”

  “Seems like I heard that somewhere.” He grinned.

  “So that meant you were holding sadness inside you that you didn’t want anyone to see. Every so often a shimmer of light would come through, kind of like opening the curtains in a big auditorium just a crack. Then it would go away, but now it’s like I can see the real Sloan Baker, and that’s real nice,” she told him.

  “My granny used to talk about old souls,” he said. “I think you must be one of those to be able to see and understand things the way you do.”

  “I read lots of self-help and psychology books when I was in high school. I so wanted to understand why my parents were the way they were and how it affected me,” she said. “And speaking of parents . . .” She told him about the ashes that would be arriving in a couple of days.

  “You do know that if you bury your folks in the Cottonwood Cemetery, it means you’re probably going to be staying in Rooster.” He got up and moved from the chair to the bed, where he could stretch out his legs.

  “I’ve thought about that.” Her expression changed from cheery to serious. “I love it here at the Banty House, and I love the ladies so much, but I think it would be best if I moved out when I can. Not moved on. I’ve figured out that someday I can take my daughter to visit the ocean and see other places, but she needs to have a permanent place to call home. And since my parents’ ashes are coming here and the ladies have offered me space to put them in the Cottonwood Cemetery”—she paused—“I want to be near them even though I never knew them. I want my child to know that she had grandparents, no matter what kind of folks they were.”