The Sisters of Glass Ferry

by Kim Michele Richardson

  The trooper stepped aside, and Flannery gathered Mama in her arms. “Mama, I’m so sorry. Mama, are you okay—”

  Mama wailed, “Let me go, please. Just let me go find them.” Mama stretched her arms for the river. “We have to find them.”

  “C’mon, Mama, we need to get you home.”

  “Not without her pearls! I have to—”

  “Dammit, Mama. They’re gone forever, like her. Patsy’s gone. The pearls are gone. For good!” Flannery snapped and flicked her hand down her own soaked clothes, smacking the water off herself.

  Mama lowered her head. Flannery immediately regretted the lashing. What is wrong with me, talking to my dear mama like that, continuing my eternal lie on top of other lies. “C’mon, Mama,” she said more kindly, taking a gentle hold of Mama’s arm. “Let’s get you dry. Home.”

  The trooper latched on to Mama’s other arm, leading both women to his car. Embarrassed, Flannery whispered to the trooper, “Mama’s not well. With all that’s happened, she’s having a hard time. Thank you, Trooper.” Then louder and to Mama, “Thank the trooper. You nearly drowned yourself out there.”

  “Thank you, Trooper.” Mama hung a meek, wet head and mumbled something more about the pearls.

  The deputy rushed over. The trooper took him to the side and said, “I have it here; you can go on, Deputy. Everything’s fine now. Mrs. Butler is okay.”

  Trooper Green picked up his discarded uniform shirt, grabbed the shoes he’d thrown onto the hood in a hurry, and said to Flannery, “Glad I was close. I got the call on my way in.” He turned to Mama. “Ma’am, you can’t be in the river like that. Someone could get hurt.” He pointed to an old, crooked fence-post sign the state or someone had planted near the bank long ago. No Swimming in bullet-riddled red letters.

  “I’m sorry, Trooper,” Flannery said. “I’ll take her straight home.”

  Mama’s lip quivered as if she understood.

  The trooper sighed and swiped at his wet trousers. “It’s too dangerous.”

  “I’m sorry about your uniform,” Mama apologized, shivering.

  Trooper studied her, still unsure what to do. “The river is too dangerous for a little lady like yourself,” he went on. “Unsafe for most men.”

  “Unsafe,” Mama repeated numbly. “But my Honey Bee taught me to swim.”

  “No. It’s too dangerous,” he repeated.

  Mama bobbed her head. “Y-yessir.”

  “I’m glad you’re okay, Mrs. Butler. And no harm. I live over the ridge.” He pointed to the cliffs. “Won’t be no trouble to run home and change,” he told her, easing up on his lecture, offering a kind smile. “Okay. No more swimming for now. You best get dry, ma’am.” The trooper dipped his head to Flannery.

  Mama’s old friend, Myrtle Taylor, walked up behind them. “I heard there was trouble. I heard the sirens and told my Harry I’d walk straight down to the dock and see. Look at you, Jean. Oh dear,” Mrs. Taylor fussed. “Let me help you home, honey. Home and dry, sweet pea.”

  Flannery released Mama into Mrs. Taylor’s steady arms, grateful for the help. “Thank you, Mrs. Taylor. You’re a godsend.” Flannery balled the hem of her shirt and wrung it; the sopping clothes clung wet, chilling.

  Mrs. Taylor helped Mama into her car, easing her into the passenger side. Flannery jumped into her Chevy and pulled out of the lot, with Mrs. Taylor following Flannery close behind in Mama’s car.

  Inside the house, Mrs. Taylor phoned her husband and told him to pick her up later in the evening, that she would be helping the Butler women, visiting with her old friend Jean.

  Flannery mounted the stairs. She changed out of her wet clothes and took a bath, while Mrs. Taylor fussed after Mama.

  Flannery soaked up the horror of the afternoon and the close call of almost losing Mama. A hard, undeniable truth crept in. Something had to be done, and she now knew exactly what that something was. Flannery finished scrubbing and stepped out of the tub.

  She dressed and then went to Mama’s room. Mrs. Taylor had a blanket wrapped around her dear friend. “I should draw her a hot bath,” Mrs. Taylor said. “It’ll take off the chill. Wouldn’t that be nice, Jean?”

  Mama nodded weakly.

  Flannery offered to lend a hand, but Mrs. Taylor insisted she would help, for Flannery just to relax, that she’d see to Mama’s bath, give her a clean gown, and put her friend to bed. “Heavens, you women have been through enough. It’s time to let an old family friend help some.” Mrs. Taylor smiled.

  “I’ll just be downstairs,” Flannery told them. “I’ll put on a pot of tea.”

  Flannery pulled out a pair of her old leather boots from her closet and slipped down to the parlor and pulled them on. In the kitchen, she made tea and then dialed the old rotary. “Sheriff Henry, please,” Flannery said quietly for the second time that afternoon.

  Seconds later Hollis answered the phone. “Sheriff Henry.” “Hollis, it’s Flannery—”

  “Flannery, I heard. Is Jean okay?”

  “She’ll be fine.”

  “Good, the last thing I need is another body in the river.”

  “She’s okay. Mrs. Taylor is here helping me with her now. I need to talk to you right away.” Flannery wrapped the phone cord around her hand, gripping the receiver, looking out the window toward the river.

  “What about? Look, Flannery, I’m very busy,” Hollis said, annoyed.

  Flannery looked over her shoulder, then cupped her hand over the receiver. “It’s about Patsy and—”

  “I already told you. You need to let that go.”

  “I need the truth.”

  “Listen—”

  “No, you listen—” She squeezed the phone, knocked her boot against the base of the counter.

  “Patsy was a whore,” he bit out in a hard whisper.

  “That’s my sister you’re talking about, you bastard, and I won’t let you—”

  “God, woman, give it a rest. Give your mama some peace!” For a few seconds the phone went silent, and she feared he’d hung up on her. Then he said, “Shit, for the love of all that’s holy, leave it be.”

  Flannery flexed her cramping fingers around the phone and whispered, “I’m telling you, Hollis, if I don’t talk to you soon, I’m going to go talking to someone else. Maybe”—she drew a breath—“the state police . . .”

  He hissed into the receiver. “Shit, Flannery. I’m in the middle of something.” She heard paper rattle, then his sigh. “Okay, I’ll swing by tomorrow at lunch.”

  “No,” she said, shaking. “Not tomorrow. Not here. Mama . . . Mama’s not well, and she can’t be disturbed. I’ll meet you now.”

  “It’s too busy and loud here, and I can’t get away until after six.”

  Flannery stretched the cord over to the screen door and looked out toward Ebenezer, then down at Honey Bee’s old watch to her fast-ticking eight minutes—Patsy’s minutes, all Flannery’s stolen minutes, and those robbed from her unborn children.

  In Hollis’s voice came a ringing of untruths and truths. It all hit her. Flannery knew she wouldn’t have left Glass Ferry if Patsy were still here. Wouldn’t have cut off her one and the same and married that bastard Mark Hamilton. Wouldn’t have lost her babies and with them a chance for family, for children of her own.

  That all of it was, most surely, Hollis’s foul doing. He’d interfered with so many lives. Hers, Patsy’s, and Danny’s. And Mama’s, poor Mama’s. His meanness, lust, and false, rotted power had rooted all this. Flannery pulled her anger into a hard fist, slapped it against her thigh, knocked her boot against the door.

  “Listen. I sure hate to hear you tearing yourself up over all this old stuff, peaches.” Hollis dropped a concern into his voice. “Henrys and Butlers have been like family,” Hollis murmured, soft and syrupy, pulling in doubt.

  She let the anger in her voice weaken some. “It hurts not knowing, Hollis—”

  “I’m feeling it too. Danny was a good brother. Hell, a better kid than me
. I’m trying to be a better man now, Flannery.”

  “I just can’t take knowing they were harmed. That my twin might’ve been hurt like your brother. My poor mama’s beside herself just thinking—”

  “Hell, I love your mama like my own. Louise checks in with a dish every month, visiting Jean. I lowered her property bills the last ten years to ease her pocketbook. Did Jean tell you that? Tell you I only stamp a due of a measly two dollars on her yearly taxes?”

  Her mama hadn’t asked her for extra money in a long time, though Flannery sent her a check every month.

  “I care, Flannery. Let’s just put this behind us. I know your daddy was a forgiving man. Me too—”

  The words of the thieving river rats lit fresh, and she shifted, tapping her boot against the floor. The crumbs Hollis fed Mama came from guilty fingers.

  “Fight for it,” Honey Bee’d said. “Don’t let him pinch one tender second from you. . . .”

  Flannery slipped out the door, stretching the long curled telephone cord with her. “Meet me on Ebenezer.”

  A short silence filled the airways, then Hollis grumbled, “I can be there at 6:15.”

  “I’ll be waiting.”

  CHAPTER 26

  Flannery moved under the old elm, the last hours of daylight falling through its branches, dancing across her itchy feet.

  In the distance, sleepy cowbells jangled over on Parsons’s farm as his cows lumbered home for the evening. Overhead, swallows swooped for supper, and a single cardinal tasseled a lilt onto its crest, racing home to its branch. A wind dropped and set its teeth into tall grasses, combing wild onion and tangling fencerow jasmine honeying the June air.

  Flannery trembled a little. She couldn’t shake off the earlier chill from the river. And being here in the pull of the leaving hour didn’t help matters. Normally, it didn’t bother her, but today it exaggerated all uneasy feelings.

  She spotted an old gasoline can sitting next to the cemetery’s iron gate and frowned. Folks were always dumping stuff out here, the high school kids leaving behind their beer bottles and trash, and once even a ratty couch.

  Flannery tried to flick off her bad feelings and nudged her boot at the patch of dandelions and forget-me-nots beside her foot.

  She looked over at the scraggly flowers at the crumbly chimney, and hugged herself, remembering the time when she and Patsy had gone picking where they weren’t supposed to.

  Flannery had talked Patsy into coming along with her to the Deer homestead, to that ol’ garden of forbidden fruit her parents warned them about.

  They’d found some Easter lilies that had sprung up by the chimney blocks and brought them home to Mama.

  Honey Bee asked where the pretty flowers came from, and when he found out, he puffed up in a fit of anger and lit both their little hineys with a switch, fired their backsides up so bad they had to carry pillows around to cushion their bottoms for three whole days.

  Mama had been angrier, and that scared the girls most. Mama never showed an ugly side, ever. But on that day, her face took on a hardness, and her eyes flickered dangerously, Flannery remembered as if it happened just last week.

  Mama had firmly shaken each of them, saying, “Don’t ever do that again.” Then she took those flowers straight out into the yard and poured kerosene onto their pretty, sunny heads and set them on fire. After, Mama cried and disappeared into her room for the rest of the day.

  Flannery and Patsy cried too. Though they didn’t rightly know their entire wrongdoing and were confused. Patsy was so frightened she broke out in hives.

  To this day, Flannery still wondered about those Easter lilies and why Honey Bee and Mama had acted that way, why they wouldn’t speak about it ever again.

  Flannery turned away from those thoughts and those clumps of flowers. Once more, she looked down the road for signs of Hollis. Pulling the cardigan tighter to her chest, glancing at Honey Bee’s old wristwatch on her arm and then back down Ebenezer Road and doing it all again.

  Several times, Flannery checked her jean pocket, patting. Nearly thirty minutes later than he’d said, he was stealing her time.

  His crookery riled her, boiled in her blood. She knew Hollis was just as bad as her ex, always thieving time from her, nipping here and there until it was all spent. Flannery growled “robber” into the winds and tapped an angry foot on a thick tree root.

  She couldn’t be gone too late. Mama might need her. Flannery had told Mrs. Taylor she was going out to stretch her legs while Mama napped, maybe take herself a walk to the barn and along the banks of the river.

  “The fresh air’ll do you good, sweet pea. Take your time. I’ll take care of things in here.” Mrs. Taylor had happily shooed Flannery out of the kitchen, saying she would stay and put together a meal for them.

  Flannery’d walked toward the barn and then, halfway there, cut through the trees, stealing away toward Ebenezer.

  Just when Flannery thought he wouldn’t show, and a full hour had been chiseled from her lifetime, Flannery heard his car speeding down Ebenezer, flying gravel biting at the frame and its tires.

  Hollis pulled in next to the cemetery gate, started to get out but left the engine running. He stood leaning against the open door with his left foot on the ground and the other propped on the running board.

  “You’re late,” she said, annoyed.

  He held up a hand. “Louise is expecting me home for dinner. I’ve had a rough day. I sure hope you’re not going to make it worse with more of your nonsense.”

  “Depends,” she said, walking over to him. “I want to know about the fight you had with Danny and Patsy that night. Why you shot him. Shot him with my daddy’s gun.”

  “Dammit, Flannery, that’s not true.” His jaw hardened.

  “Isn’t it? You were packing that night.”

  “You don’t know anything.”

  “I know you owned a .38 just like what they said was used on Danny. The very gun your daddy pinched off my daddy for hush pay.”

  “He never—”

  “I know he did.”

  Hollis tightened his mouth and sliced his hand through the air. “Your sister caused this mess. Damn well did, and now I’m left to clean it up.”

  Flannery shook her head and poked a finger at him. “I’m going to the state police and you—”

  He grabbed her wrist, pulled her to the door frame. “You need to stop this now. Stop railing about this old shit. You’ll have folks upset and talking—”

  “Folks’ll know the truth.”

  “It’d kill mine, for all you care. Ruin my job, ruin my life. Hell”—he grimaced—“nobody needs to be hurt, and nobody, ain’t nobody needs to know this old, ugly history. Now look, Flannery,” he wheedled, “you can have yourself a nice funeral and put Patsy to rest. Me and my dad’ll even pay—”

  “Pay with Butler money.” Flannery gave a short, tight laugh.

  “All those taxes he slapped on Honey Bee. He got rich off. Your family got fat from. I believe the Henrys could pay all of Glass Ferry’s funerals while you two are it. I was there when your thieving daddy stole Honey Bee’s gun after my daddy tried to protect us from a few river rats who were set on robbing—”

  “Watch what you say. My dad’s not a thief. Everybody in town knows he’s an honorable, respectable retired lawman. And I don’t know a damn thing about that old stuff you’re trying to bring up. But you wanna run ’shine, you’re gonna pay. And Honey Bee wanted to run ’shine,” Hollis said, shrugging. “Them’s the rules. That’s the truth.”

  “Honey Bee was a respected businessman with a license, and your daddy—”

  Hollis turned and grabbed the car door, dismissing her. “Shut up and go home. You’re just trying to damn the whole town along with you and your mama with the likes of stuff nobody needs to know. Get on home, Flannery, or I’ll throw you in the pokey for disorderly conduct.”

  A fear gripped her; memories of her ex having her locked in the insane asylum thumped hot into her eard
rums. For a second she almost bolted. A crow cried from its perch on the elm, cawing twice, grounding her. She thought about Patsy’s fear, what might’ve driven her sister to bury those garments under the tree like that. Flannery cut a stony eye at Hollis.

  “I need to know the whole truth, Hollis,” she said quietly, taking a breath.

  “It won’t do anybody any good. Not now.”

  “I know what you did to Patsy.”

  “I cared for her.”

  She lit her eyes to the old elm.

  “Look, Flannery, we were just kids. All of us, dumb kids. Doing dumb stuff.”

  “I have to do this, make this right. You have to do this. For me and Mama, for everybody.”

  Hollis gritted his teeth. “It’ll surely do your mama in. My dear old dad, too.”

  “Not knowing will do her in.” Flannery pulled out the bullet from her pocket and wagged it. “I found this prom night. Right over there by your dirty secrets.”

  Hollis’s eyes widened in disbelief. “Th-that old bullet don’t prove a thing. Not a damn thing, peaches.”

  “Unless this and that bullet in the Mercury match your snub nose. You shot him with my daddy’s old .38 that your daddy pinched from him. You shot Danny, didn’t you? It was you. Not Patsy. And I mean to safeguard Patsy’s memories. For Mama’s sake. My family’s.”

  Flannery could see the truth tightening in Hollis’s cold, silent eyes. “I knew it,” she said. “The one and only question is, you going to tell? Or am I—”

  “Dammit, it was an accident. Please, Flannery.” Hollis moved out from behind the car door and faced her. “I swear. Danny went for my gun, and it went off. She was trying to pin her bastard on me first, then Danny—”

  “I don’t believe you—”

  “It was an accident. She came on to me. Same as she cheated on Danny—”

  “Liar!”

  “Look here. Nobody killed anybody. Hell, I can’t even remember much of that night. Nothing but getting knocked out by them. Out cold. You saw, same as me. I was lying under the tree over there, coldcocked.”

  “Then tell them everything. Tell them about Patsy—”

  “Tell ’em WHAT?” he roared. “What? That she played me? Tell them I gave her what my little brother couldn’t? Right over there.” He snapped his arm to the elm. “Tell that the bastard she carried was mine—”