The Sisters of Glass Ferry

by Kim Michele Richardson

  Flannery had brought a box of Christmas oranges she’d purchased from the farmers’ market in Louisville, and the family stuffed their Christmas stockings with them, the aroma of fresh, tart fruit permeating the house, a cheer against the winter storm brewing outside.

  Flannery stood back to admire the stockings hanging from the mantel above a cozy fire. JoLynn came in from the kitchen and handed Flannery a small package.

  “Open it,” JoLynn said.

  Flannery hadn’t bought gifts, just the oranges, and she hesitated.

  “Go ahead,” Ben Junior and his bride and Ben Senior cheered, smiling.

  JoLynn pushed. “It’s not a purchase.”

  Flannery unwrapped the gift and found a beautiful, hand-quilted Christmas stocking with Aunt Flannery embroidered on it that JoLynn had made.

  Flannery’s old eyes filled as she looked around the home of her family, the ones gone and the ones who were now given to her. She breathed in the festive air and could almost smell the Christmas pine Honey Bee would chop down for the parlor, imagine his rugged face, a twinkle in his eye—hear Patsy’s excited giggles and Mama’s musical laughter echoing. Family. It was all intoxicating, and something she’d thought she would never have again, never feel again.

  “My seams are a little crooked, but I hope you like it.” JoLynn grinned.

  Speechless, Flannery could only bob her head and stare at the precious gift.

  Taking the present from Flannery’s spindly fingers, JoLynn stuffed an orange gently inside and hung it in between the Pucketts’ stockings.

  “We can’t have anyone waking up Christmas morning without a stocking. You’re family too,” JoLynn announced with a sniffle. “Our family.”

  The Pucketts gathered around Flannery, pulling her into their arms.

  JoLynn was a young mother who was wise and kind in old ways lost to this frenzied world, her family gentle and hardworking. Flannery loved JoLynn, the sweet family, and the new life and laughter they breathed into the Butler home—her.

  * * *

  In 2014, Flannery was delighted to find out she was going to be a great aunt, that Ben Junior and his wife were having a baby.

  Excited, Flannery took her brothers’ wooden cradle to Glass Ferry to surprise them with it. The crib had been so dear to her mama, and she couldn’t think of anything finer to give her new family—this precious baby coming into her life.

  But when she opened the rear car door to show JoLynn, her friend had paled. A second later, JoLynn teared up, and she told Flannery to take it back. It was their first and only disagreement.

  “I thought the kids might like it,” Flannery said, hurt. “Look at the fine workmanship on the wood. There’s a perfect sweep on the carved rockers here.” She tapped the base. “It’s sturdy enough for my grandnephew or niece, twins even—”

  “I’m sorry, Flannery,” JoLynn said. “I can’t have it for my grandbaby.”

  “But it’s antique, and you like antiques.” Flannery raised a hand to the Puckett house packed with old furnishings.

  Trembling, JoLynn shook her head and said, “No. Not that.”

  “But—”

  “Take it back!” JoLynn ran to the house.

  Bewildered, Flannery stared after her, wondering what had gotten into JoLynn.

  On the drive home, Flannery reasoned that JoLynn must want something more modern for the young couple, a piece without history. Maybe JoLynn thought it was bad luck for her son and daughter-in-law to have it.

  Back home, Flannery had a neighbor lug her brothers’ crib back into the garage. That evening JoLynn called and apologized for her strange behavior, leaving it at just that, an apology and no other clue as to why the earlier outburst.

  A few weeks passed, and JoLynn stopped in Louisville to visit Flannery. JoLynn seemed back to her old self, the crib business forgotten, her chatter happy, her hugs warm.

  CHAPTER 34

  2016

  Flannery pulled her Buick up to Ebenezer Road, the June sun warming her seventy-nine-year-old body as she stepped out of the car on the eve of her and Patsy’s birthday. Still spry for her age, she opened the trunk and pulled out the small hand shovel and towel.

  The grass seemed a bit higher, wilder, the old tree beyond the rusty bull gate a little more beaten and broke-limbed than on that day, but it still felt like it could’ve been yesterday. Was one of those memories where it would always be yesterday for Flannery.

  Under the elm, Flannery pressed her knees into the towel and shoulders into her small gardening tool, wedged her gnarled hands down deeper between the dirt and cookie tin. Carefully, she worked the soil with her bony fingers, separating the earth until she unplugged the cookie tin.

  At last she held it up, heard the rattle of pearls against copper, and lifted her head, letting her prayers wash the sky.

  She’d come back every year for the last four decades, checking. Each time digging it up, inspecting the pearls and bullet inside, then burying it all back again. But this year the doctor told Flannery her ticker wasn’t strong. Told her to slow down some.

  Flannery worried she couldn’t wait for another year to pass. She’d have to touch the pearls one last time and say a final good-bye.

  She pushed the shovel aside, and Honey Bee’s wristwatch broke loose from its clasp and slipped off her arm, falling onto the tin.

  Alarmed, Flannery picked it up. The drop had cracked the old, brittle crystal. Peering closer, she spied the dead second hand. Flannery shook the watch, tapped it a few times, and held it up to her ear. Broke. Everything breaks eventually, like me too.

  That old watch had been running forever, grabbing the extra life since the ’40s without so much as a hiccup, and here it stopped. Stopped as sure as it started when Honey Bee’d given her those extra eight minutes when she was born.

  For as long as Flannery could remember, like her, Honey Bee had set the Zenith watch exactly eight minutes fast. He’d said he started doing it on the day she was born, and told her many times, “In eight minutes your life can change, Flannery girl. And when you were minutes behind your sister, ol’ Doc knew you were in trouble. Mama’s cord caught hold of you and wouldn’t let go, damn near killing you and her, till the doc cut you out. That eight-minutes-late arrival changed your life and changed mine. You weren’t born eight minutes late; you were born eight minutes on time to steal from the devil. And I aim for you to hold on to that time for when that thief comes a’calling.”

  He’d reminded her another time too when they were on the river and had passed the spot where the men had come after them. “Always guard your eight minutes. Lord knows I wish I had them for your brothers. If only I’d gotten to them sooner . . .” Honey Bee had grown quiet for the rest of the day, stoking something troubling inside him.

  She wrapped the watch around her thin wrist, fastened it, and then tapped once. No use. Her eight minutes had finally run out.

  Dusting off her dress, she trudged over to her vehicle with the tin. Inside the car, she mulled over what she had to do. Cradling the container, she knocked her knuckles on the lid a few times, thinking, then reached over to the passenger side and pulled out the diary tucked inside her purse, setting it beside her.

  Flannery studied the soft-sky-colored journal and glanced at the old button tin in her lap, cutting her eyes back to the diary again. She’d been hauling the old diary around everywhere since she’d discovered it. Wouldn’t dare let that out of my sight.

  After a minute she inspected Honey Bee’s watch again. Flannery had the urge to tap it once more, and after giving it three sharp raps, she pinned the crystal to her ear. The silence thickened. A sadness sunk her shoulders, but then she straightened in relief.

  Plucking up the diary, Flannery placed it carefully inside the tin atop the pearls and bullet, stared thoughtfully out the window.

  She needed to make one last stop. She started the car, pulled off Ebenezer, and drove over to the Butler cemetery.

  Inside her family’s g
raveyard, Flannery saw the grass had been mowed, weeds plucked around the tombstones, and, like JoLynn had promised, fresh flowers perched atop the graves in polished urns. Flannery glanced through the trees, down at her childhood home.

  Standing amongst the graves, Flannery studied her broken wristwatch and made one last reckoning with God. Finished, she drove down the hill past the Puckett house.

  In the rearview, she saw JoLynn step out onto the porch, wave her dish towel, heard the concern rising in her voice. “Flannery, wait. Flannery, where—” JoLynn ran onto the gravel road, calling after her.

  But Flannery couldn’t. Wouldn’t dare stop, not this time.

  Moments later, Flannery drove through the Palisades, whirred down and around old Kentucky roads bathed in dappled yellows and cloaked in a peacefulness that clung to its crags. The trees were a bit scragglier at the tops than when she and Patsy had driven it, some a lot taller and thicker at their bottoms, though the rock face jutted strong, resolute.

  Flannery rolled down her window and inhaled the honeyed breezes of mountain laurel, pine, and yellowwood blossoms.

  Soon she saw the sign and pulled into the State Police Post Seven’s lot and parked.

  Inside the stale building, a young receptionist looked up from her sandwich. With a mouthful of food, she asked, “Can I help you, ma’am? Are you lost?” She took another bite.

  “I’m Mrs. Butler Hamilton,” Flannery announced to the woman hunched over her desk.

  “Haven’t I seen you with the Pucketts?” The girl pinched off another glimpse under her flurry of thick false eyelashes. “Do you need to call them?”

  “I’d like to speak with Trooper Claymore Green.”

  “Ma’am, Captain Green is in a meeting,” she said flatly, swallowing the bite before setting the sandwich aside, “but if you’ll tell me what this is about, I can call another trooper for you.” The receptionist placed a hand on the phone, waiting, the bother set plain in her purple painted lips, the steady tap of a long nail with a cartoon painted on it.

  “I’ll wait for Captain Green.” Flannery rubbed the rusted cookie tin in her grip, pressed down her skirts.

  The receptionist shook her head, wagging pumpkin-streaked curls. “I told you, he’s busy. What’s this about?” the receptionist needled, eyeing Flannery’s dirt-stained hands, beat-up old wristwatch, and odd package.

  “I have some information for him about an old matter. An old family matter and my missing paddle. And a few others who’ve been missing theirs.”

  “Ma’am”—the receptionist sighed—“it could be a while. We’re very busy here. If you’d like to leave word stating what this is about, maybe I can have him call you later.” The receptionist took a big bite of her sandwich and then pulled out a telephone message pad from under a pile of papers.

  “I need to see him about one of his old files—an open case. I’d like to close it for him,” Flannery clipped, dismissing her.

  The girl choked on her food and had to swallow twice before she grabbed the phone.

  Flannery shuffled over to the wall where a row of empty folding chairs sat, and took one, rattling the pearls and bullet inside the tin as she hugged it to her lap.

  The receptionist made another phone call, whispering, spinning her chair around, turning her back to Flannery.

  Flannery pried open the lid on the button tin and pulled out the small blue leather journal again.

  Six months ago, a retired teacher from the elementary school dropped by and had admired the curious wooden box sitting on Flannery’s mantel. When Flannery told her she didn’t have a key, the woman pointed her to an antique dealer who went through all of his old keys, finding the one that opened the locked box that JoLynn had given her.

  Flannery hadn’t risked breaking open the family keepsake, harming the heirloom, and was thrilled to find the antique key fit—until she saw what the memento held, saw what she couldn’t allow others to see, until now.

  Inscribed inside, on the wood bottom, it read To Jean, Love Honey Bee, and was filled with an old diary that had belonged to Mama.

  Footsteps fell across the buffed linoleum, smacking, startling the quiet. The receptionist glanced sideways at Flannery, pursing her lips. Flannery watched until the young girl disappeared into the mouth of a sterile hallway.

  Crossing her nylon-lined legs, Flannery guessed the woman had surely gotten her stockings from a plastic egg. Settling back in her seat, she opened the diary to the first page. She had read it before—many times—but it deserved one last reading.

  1931, April 7

  It won’t be long now. I’m much stronger, and the fever is gone, though midwife Joetta Deer has ordered me to bed rest until my delivery.

  Oh! My darling husband has cheered me once again. Honey Bee traveled to Lexington and bought this fine journal from a stationery store so that I may fill it with our blessings. Then he carved a beautiful box from the felled cherry on Butler Road for me to safeguard it in.

  Dear Lord, thank You for Your goodness. Thank You for my good Honey Bee.

  Flannery shut the leather journal and ran a gnarled finger over the smooth cover, glanced at her busted watch. In a minute she opened the book again and carefully flipped through the yellowed linen pages until her eyes came to rest on Jean Butler’s final entries. She admired the fanciful oval handwriting her mother had penned, lightly traced the elegant Spencerian Script that nowadays could only be found on an antique Coca-Cola sign tucked inside an abandoned filling station off some forgotten state road.

  Her eyes filled a little, and she slipped a finger under her glasses and wiped away the dampness.

  1931, April 20

  The stork is coming this week. I just know it. I can feel it somehow, in my bones, in this sweet spring air. Honey Bee painted the nursery and has fussed for days in the barn, finishing the walnut cradle he’s making. It is beautiful and big enough to hold triplets, even.

  Lord, don’t I look like I swallowed three pumpkins. Dear Honey Bee pokes good-naturedly that I may have been sampling in the watermelon patch too long.

  I never told a soul, but the day I learned I was pregnant, I found two yokes in my morning egg. Won’t my darling Honey Bee be surprised!

  Thank you, Gracious Lord.

  1931, April 22

  My baby boys were born at nine O five tonight. They are striking lads. Honey Bee is worried about their long hair, and says their strength could be stolen. He frets that a baby born with a full head of hair may be weakly because all the might has been spent on the hair. My own granny used to say a babe born with long hair is born looking old and will surely have a short life. But Joetta insists they are fit and strong. We are blessed!

  Honey Bee says his sons look just like him. Joetta thinks so too. She proclaimed them the handsomest baby boys in the county, surely the most handsomest babies she has ever delivered, and the only twins she’s ever seen.

  Before Joetta left, she showed me how to nurse. She said there’s nothing finer than mother’s milk to keep the sickness away from my babes, and claimed her two- and three-year-old boys were still nursing, and nary an illness has struck either one.

  My milk was thick and flowing, and my strong boys were greedy and quickly rooted and filled themselves before falling fast asleep.

  We named our precious sons Paxton and Preston.

  Paxton Beauregard Butler and Preston Lee Butler!

  Thank you, Dear Lord, for my precious, darling angels.

  1931, April 22

  Joetta’s house burned down not two hours ago. She has lost everything dear to her. There is nothing left. The Good Lord called her beloved Ebenezer and their three boys to His home.

  I’m positive it is my fault, though Honey Bee begs different. He says he insisted on Joetta’s help and pleaded with her to come for the birthing, paying her handsomely for her services. But the fire broke out while she was delivering my babies. How could it not be my doing? I took her from her home, her sweet babies, her gentle husband,
to tend to me.

  Dear Merciful God, please keep Ebenezer and his baby angels in Your heavenly arms and protect them until Joetta can once again hold them.

  Forgive me, Father, forgive my sins and weakness.

  1931, April 26

  Joetta has been staying with us until her kin can call for her. Yesterday, she made pillows for my darlings’ cradle. Together we embroidered a circle of sweet cherubs onto the pillowslips’ hem. Joetta helps me with the babies, and my little angels seem to brighten her mood.

  Honey Bee says she’s helping too much. He worries about her spending every second with them. Lately, Joetta doesn’t want me or Honey Bee holding them much, and is bothered when I must nurse them. She insists too much coddling will make them weak, and too much nursing will make them needy.

  Today, in the dark morning hours I caught her in the nursery offering her breast to Paxton. We argued, and I accused her of trying to steal my sons.

  Joetta fled, crying. I tried to go after her and apologize, but she disappeared onto Ebenezer Road.

  Forgive me, Heavenly Father, for my anger and jealousy.

  1931, April 29

  My heart is broken. My precious sons, Paxton and Preston, are dead. Gone! Murdered in their sleep. My husband is surely lost to me as well.

  Honey Bee caught Joetta in the nursery clutching the pillow. But it was too late to save my sweet angels from that madwoman’s hands.

  Joetta has vanished. And I fear for my beloved husband.

  I watched him take a rope from the barn, and now he has gone looking for her. Honey Bee has surely locked arms with the Devil himself!

  O’ Merciful Father, forgive him. Save me. Save us all.