Whiskey Lullaby

by Stevie J. Cole

  The organist finished up the last chorus of “Amazing Grace.” Just as she folded the sheet music, the back doors of the church banged against the wall. I turned in my seat. The early morning sun poured through the doorway like a piece of heaven trying to sneak its way in, and just when I was about to face the front again, a girl came straggling in last minute. I dragged my gaze over her curves. Within three seconds, I knew she was too good for me. One, she was in a church, and two, that black dress she wore fell below her knees. With her dark hair and fair skin, she had that Audrey Hepburn classic beauty thing down pat, and you really couldn’t beat that.

  That was the kind of girl I’d make love to while whispering promises I’d intend to keep, but wouldn’t….

  She glanced around the tiny, packed chapel, gnawing on her lip. Her chest rose in a heavy breath before she grabbed the wicker offering basket from the chair by the door and took a seat. I thought only Deacons sat in those. Maybe she’s a rebel... I was half tempted to stand up and give my spot on the pew to her, but the preacher stepped to the pulpit and cleared his throat. “Good Morning, Rockford First Baptist.”

  The congregation mumbled a unified hello, and Grandma swatted at me with her Bible. “Face the front, boy.” With that, I turned around and slouched in the seat.

  Halfway through the sermon about that man Jesus raised from the dead, I turned around to take a peek at that pretty girl. She swiped at her check, doing that finger dab thing girls did when they were crying and they didn’t want their mascara to run. And even though I didn’t know her, it bothered me that she was upset. I guess she felt me staring at her, because she glanced in my direction. Our eyes locked for a second before her chin dropped to her chest, still dabbing at her eyes.

  When I turn around, I grabbed a donation envelope from the back of the pew, along with a pen, and I scribbled out lyrics—inspired by that pretty girl in the black dress. Grandma nudged me, and I crammed the envelope in my pocket.

  The sermon went on and on. Tithing. Sinning. Spiritual healing. I was almost asleep when Grandma elbowed me again. I swear, growing up, I had a permanent bruise from her prodding.

  “Let us pray…” the preacher said from the pulpit. And I was ecstatic because that meant this was almost over. I had things to do after all, get my truck, find a job… I bowed my head, but I didn’t close my eyes. Instead, I stared down at the frayed laces of my Chucks.

  The kid in front of me whimpered. I peeked up just as he stood in the pew, crawling over his mom. He looked at me and I crossed my eyes and stuck out my tongue like a dead frog. He giggled before falling into his mother’s lap.

  “Amen.”

  Everyone stood, turning to their neighbor and shaking their hand. I thought about going to introduce myself to that pretty girl. Grandma always said, you never know what burden someone’s carrying, and she was obviously carrying something.

  “Oh,” the preacher said. “If any of you young men are looking for a little summer work, I need some help around the farm. I’m getting too old to tend to twenty acres, and the pay is good.”

  I went to walk off and Grandma snagged me by the elbow like she used to when she was about to send me out to get a switch. Even though I was twenty-one, a little bit of panic shot through me at that particular grab. “The Lord works in mysterious ways.”

  She led me straight to the altar, stopping in front of the preacher. He extended his hand. “John Blake,” he said, smiling. “I don’t believe I’ve seen you two here before.”

  “Doris Mae Greyson.” She shook his hand. “Member of First Baptist Sylacauga, but my grandson here was gonna make me late, and I don’t walk into the Lord’s house late.”

  John nodded like that made perfect sense.

  “But I guess it was divine intervention because he could use a job.”

  Great. Just great. Twenty-one and Grandma’s still wiping my ass for me. I glanced at the back of the church and that pretty girl was walking through the doors. Damn.

  “Couldn’t you, boy?” She pinched me, and I turned back to face the preacher, swatting her hand away from my arm. “Just lost his job because he went to jail.”

  “Grandma…” I said through gritted teeth while I forced a smile.

  “Not prison mind you, just jail. Got in some fight.” She grabbed my chin and turned my face to the side. “As you can see by the state of his face. Now, I raised him better than this, but sometimes…” she sighed.

  I wanted to argue with her. I didn’t need her asking for handouts, but how do you argue with your grandma in a church? I may have been an asshole, but I couldn’t be one around her.

  “You know where Memorial Cemetery is?” John asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Go on down a mile from it, my house is on the left. Twelve, County Road Two. Come over Friday and we’ll see if we can’t get you some work.”

  “Thank you,” I said, even though I wasn’t the least bit excited about whatever tending twenty acres entailed. I should have just called Grandma and told her I went to jail, then I could have just slept in that day.

  5

  Hannah

  Daddy waved at me from his shop when I stepped out of my car. “Hey, honey!”

  Sampson ran doing circles around me, barking and wagging his tail so hard he nearly toppled over.

  “Hey!”

  “Have a good day at work?”

  “It’s work.” I sighed and headed up the porch steps with Sampson at my heels. “I’m gonna go start dinner.”

  He nodded before he went back to whatever project he was working on.

  Just as I grabbed the doorknob, I heard tires roll over the gravel. I glanced around at the unfamiliar black pickup creeping down the drive before parking to the side of Daddy’s shop. Whoever it is, is probably the next “troubled soul” Daddy’s hoping to help. For as long as I could remember, he’d taken in those less fortunate, paying them for odd and ends jobs around the farm. He swore his plot in life was to give those people the second chance no one else would.

  Sampson pawed at the screen door, dragging my attention away from the truck. “Okay, okay. Don’t be so needy,” I said, the hinges to the screen door groaning when I finally pulled it open. He shot inside, skidding around the corner. A hazy cloud of smoke crawled through the air, and my nose wrinkled at the smell of burnt pizza.

  “What the…Bo!” I shouted up the stairs, even though I knew he most likely had in earbuds which meant there was no hope he’d hear me.

  Swatting the smoke away from my face, I headed into the kitchen, grabbed a potholder, and opened the oven. Plumes of smoke billowed out, and there, inside the oven, sat a smoldering, charred pizza. “Dear Lord,” I huffed before I yanked it out. I quickly set it on the counter and cracked the window over the sink, trying to guide some of the smoke out with my hands.

  Momma did everything before she started chemo. God knows had Bo and Daddy been left to their own devices, they would have burnt the house down that summer.

  After I raised all the windows and got most of the smoke out, I went upstairs to change out of my scrubs, stopping at Bo’s room. “Bo!” I tapped over the Lincoln Park poster tacked to his door.

  Nothing.

  Bang. Bang. “Bo!”

  The door partially opened, and he rested his forehead against the doorframe. “Huh?” His eyes were puffy and barely open.

  “Were you asleep?”

  “Yeah…”

  I rolled my eyes. “So, you put a pizza in the oven and fell asleep?”

  “Ohhhhh…. Yeah.” He frowned, brushing his dark hair out of his face. “Sorry.”

  “Between you and Daddy this house is going to burn to the ground.” I motioned him out into the hall. “Go downstairs and throw some spaghetti in a pot, would you, while I go check on Momma.”

  Tossing his head back, he groaned before shuffling out into the hallway. His dark hair was unruly, similar to Dave Grohl in the way it hung over his eyes. I swatted at the tangled hair covering his nec
k. “You need to cut this mop.”

  “I like it.”

  “Bo, you look homeless.”

  “Nah, if I were homeless, I’d have a beard.” He begrudgingly headed down the stairs as I walked to Momma’s room. A small twinge tightened my chest. Bo was only sixteen, and while he thought he was a grown-up, he was not. I wasn’t even a grown-up. As hard as everything with Momma had been for me, I knew it had to be harder on Bo.

  When I pushed open the door to Momma’s bedroom, she was sitting up in bed, reading. That’s good. She’s sitting up and reading and it doesn’t matter what those tests said because she looks better and— Hope. I understood why so many of my patients’ families had hope when they knew they really shouldn’t: it is the only way you can manage.

  “Hey, baby,” she said, smiling as she placed a bookmark between the pages and set the book on the nightstand. “How was work?”

  “Good.” I stepped beside the bed and took a seat. Now that I was closer, I saw she didn’t look better, healthier. She looked fragile and tired. That hope was quickly consumed by the panicked question of, “how much longer”? I fought that thought away and I smiled at her, pretending everything was okay.

  “That’s good. I’m sure Doctor Murray is happy to have you there.”

  “He said I was almost as good a nurse as you were.”

  A small smile touched her lips, and I swallowed as heavy guilt perched on my shoulders. I wanted to cry. I wanted to scream. I wanted to do anything but pretend this was okay, that this was normal. “You hungry?” I asked, shoving my anxieties deep down. “I’m gonna fix some spaghetti… Bo put a Totino’s Party Pizza in the oven and incinerated it.”

  Momma laughed. “Well, did he at least take it off the cardboard this time?”

  “Yes, he at least did that.” A short-lived chuckle slipped through my lips. “Do you feel like dinner?”

  I saw in her eyes that she didn’t feel like moving, so I gave her hand a little squeeze. “Why don’t I just bring it up here?”

  She patted my cheek. “You’ve always been such a sweet soul, Hannah. Nurturing…”

  “Learned from the best.”

  She grinned before settling back on her pillow, and I quietly slipped into the hall and down to the kitchen where a pot was boiling over on the stove. The water popped and hissed as it splashed onto the eye. “Seriously?” I grumbled, moving the pot to the side and turning down the heat.

  The screen door to the back porch banged shut Seconds later, Daddy and Bo came stomping into the kitchen. Bo glanced at the pot and shot me a toothy grin. “Sorry.”

  “Again, you are going to burn the house down!”

  “Geez Louise, drama queen!”

  Daddy squeezed Bo’s shoulders as he stepped around him. “Be nice to your sister.”

  I glared at Bo, nostrils flaring. God, I felt like I was eighteen again and someone was about to get grounded. Daddy grabbed a jar of sauce from the pantry and I took it from him. “Who was in that truck?” I asked.

  “Some boy that’s gonna help out this summer—”

  “Thank God,” Bo mumbled. “Maybe I won’t get worked like a pack mule.”

  Daddy lifted a graying eyebrow at him.

  Bo flexed his arm and kissed his baby muscle. “I know I look like I’m made for manual labor, Pops, but this is all for show.”

  “Can your head get any bigger?”

  Bo shrugged. Daddy just shook his head. “Well, I don’t know how long he’ll be around for. He’s closer to your age, Hannah. Been in some trouble, lost his last job. Seems like a good enough fella.”

  Sounds like every boy Daddy’s taken in to help around here.

  Some of them changed their ways. Most didn’t.

  6

  Hannah

  Meg stood at the end of the kitchen island, tapping her peach nails on the counter. “Come on, Hannah Banana,” she whined.

  I stopped wiping the counter and shot a death glare in her direction. She knew I hated when she called me that.

  “Look, I”– she thumbed at her chest—“can call you that.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “As the person who punched Billy Coker in the face for pulling your pigtails while singing ‘Hannah Banana is a sissy, prissy girl,’ I inherited rights to the nickname.”

  “I swear, you have the maturity of a twelve-year-old.”

  “Life’s more fun that way.” She grinned and grabbed the dishtowel from me, tossing it in the sink. “Come on. It’ll be good for you to get out.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “I’ve been your best friend since second grade, I know when you’re fine and when you’re pretending you’re fine.”

  I exhaled. She was right, but I’d be damned if I’d let her know she was. “You know I hate going to bars.”

  “Tipsy’s isn’t a bar, it’s a… gathering place.”

  I picked up the dishtowel and went back to scrubbing the baked-on cheese from the stovetop. “You’re right, it’s a full-blown honky-tonk.”

  “Tomato, tomoto. Whatever. You need something normal. Outside of this house and outside of work.”

  “Fine,” I huffed. “We can go to an art class.”

  “This is Rockford, Alabama. There are no art classes. Plus, you suck at painting.”

  She was right. Again. I kept scouring the cheese, picking at it with my nail. Meg rested her hand over mine. “Hannah.” Her voice was soft, soothing. “Staying here won’t change anything.”

  “I know that, Meg!” I wanted to cry, but instead, I sucked in a breath and walked to the sink. How the hell was I supposed to go to a bar when my mother had cancer? I felt bad anytime I laughed at work, anytime I allowed myself to forget for a moment that she was sick. Her world was ending—so why shouldn’t mine?

  “Going on with your life doesn’t make you a bad person, Hannah.”

  I swallowed.

  “You have to take care of yourself to take care of them.”

  My chin dropped to my chest.

  “It’s just a band. Just an hour out of this house for fresh air.”

  “You should go.” My daddy’s voice came from the doorway leading into the hall. When I turned around, he was staring at me with his lips flat across his face. “Go do something for you, baby girl.”

  I nodded even though I didn’t really want to go. I guess I just want to seem strong even though I’m falling apart.

  ______

  The cliché neon sign flickered: Tipsy’s. Next to the name of the bar, the outline of a yellow beer mug tipping forward and backward flashed. That bar had been around since the prohibition ended, and that sign had stood proudly since 1983 like a beacon in the night calling to all the locals. Half of the tiny brick building had been painted white years ago, but the rest had been left red. Meg was right, it wasn’t a bar. It was one-hundred and ten percent the epitome of a honky tonk.

  I slapped a mosquito away from my arm as we made our way across the gravel lot toward the back entrance. There was a short line of people huddled around the door, waiting to get in.

  Meg rummaged around in her purse, digging out a tube of lipstick and applying a fresh coat of shiny pink gloss. She wobbled on her heels. “Thank you for coming.” She smiled, batting her long lashes.

  “Yep.”

  The bouncer by the door leaned over a wooden stool, flirting with a group of giggling girls. They looked young enough to still be in high school, but he ushered them in without checking their IDs. When he turned to look at us, Meg groaned.

  “It would be him, wouldn’t it?”

  Brian Jones, one of her exes… or ex-sex partners— I’m not sure what actually qualified as an ex with her.

  Meg attempted to breeze past him, but he blocked the entrance, crossing his arms over his chest. “Well, well, well.” His thin lips drew into a smug smile. “Meg and Hannah. Just like the good ole days.”

  “Shut it, Brian,” Meg said, attempting to step around him, but he didn’t budge.

  His e
yes narrowed. “Imma need to see some ID.”

  “Really?” Meg snatched her purse from her shoulder, pulling out her license and handing it to him. I grabbed mine from my wallet while he inspected hers. “Ten dollars,” he said, the smile evident in his tone as he took her hand and drew a massive black “X” over it.

  “Since when has Tipsy’s had a cover?”

  He was trying to wind her up, which, in all honesty, wasn’t hard to do. She was already tapping the toe of her high heel over the gravel. And I’m sure if I could have seen her face her nostrils would have been flaring like a bull.

  “Hi, Brian,” I said sweetly, giving him my license.

  “Hannah.” He winked before giving my ID a flippant glance then handing it back to me. He marked a microscopic “X” on my hand and waved us through the door.

  “He’s such an asshole,” Meg grumbled as we stepped over the threshold onto the uneven linoleum floor. “I hate that he’s seen me naked.”

  She slept with every guy she could, and like I said, she looked like a pageant queen, so there was never a shortage of boys. People used to think I hung out with her in an effort to bring her to Jesus. They were wrong. I hung out with her because I liked her. “Meg, honestly, who hasn’t seen you naked?”

  “Well, I wish he hadn’t.”

  The inside of the bar was already packed. A thin haze of smoke swirled through the air, and the aroma of stale beer and body odor nearly knocked my feet out from underneath me. “Oh my God...” I coughed.