Whiskey Lullaby

by Stevie J. Cole

  “Don’t talk like that.” I pulled back and swept a tendril of her salt and pepper hair from her face. “You aren’t going anywhere.” Guilt plucked at my heart because I was lying to her. There may not have been much I could do about her physical suffering, but I could lessen the pain to her soul. “If you get on that clinical trial up in Birmingham, you’ll be better in no time.”

  A sympathetic smile slowly worked over her lips. “Okay, baby.” And there she was, trying to make me feel better. She rubbed her hand over my cheek. “You better get to work.”

  I kissed her forehead. “I love you, Momma.”

  “And Lord knows I love you.”

  I walked out of her room. Out of the house. The second I got inside the solitude of my car, I completely broke down. I cried until I was gasping for air. I cried until my throat burned, and then I cleaned my face up and put the car in drive, because no matter how my world may be crumbling, life went on.

  11

  Noah

  There it was, five ‘til six and I was speeding down the road trying to make it to Grandma’s in time for dinner. It was just the two of us, but still, she hated when people were late for anything. I slammed on my brakes and turned into her drive.

  It was six on the dot when I pushed open the door and stepped into the small living room, taking a deep breath. I loved the smell of her fried—Where’s the greasy smell?

  “Grandma?” I rounded the corner and found her sitting at her card table, reading the Bible. I glanced through the doorway of the kitchen. The counter was covered in flour, but there was nothing simmering on the stovetop. “Grandma...”

  She glanced over the rim of her glasses. “Hmm?”

  “You uh...” I placed one foot over the threshold to the kitchen. “You want me to cook?”

  “I ordered pizza.”

  “Pizza?”

  “Yes, boy, that’s what I said, pizza. Ain’t that what you kids live off of anyways? Pizza and beer?”

  That woman had never, in her life, ordered food. Never. Not even for my thirteenth birthday when all I wanted was a pizza from Dominos. No, the woman had me in the kitchen helping her roll out enough dough to feed six teenage boys.

  She narrowed one eye at me before going back to the Bible.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing’s wrong,” she griped. “I’ve just decided it’s high time I get a lazy streak in me.”

  Studying her, I walked to the table and dragged out the chair next to hers. She side-eyed me. Something was off with her.

  “What are you looking at me like that for?” she huffed.

  “Nothing.” I looked away and leaned back in the chair.

  “Pizza should be here any minute.”

  “Alright.”

  An awkward silence settled between us, and I watched her from the corner of my eye. When she finally turned the page, she used her left hand.

  “Let me see your hand,” I said, holding out my palm. Knowing her, I figured she’d accidentally chopped a finger off and was trying to use some damn liniment to stave off the bleeding. She slowly placed her left hand on the table. “Nuh-uh. Your right one.” I wriggled my fingers. “Grandma.”

  Huffing, she pushed up from the table and headed into the kitchen, that right arm of hers as limp as a noodle.

  “Were you gonna tell me?” I asked, standing and following her into the kitchen.

  “Ain’t nothing.” She stood on her tiptoes to open the high cabinet above the sink. She moved the CVS brand of Tylenol out of the way along with the St. John’s Wart, and she came out with the bottle of whiskey she’d had hidden up there since I was a kid. The only reason that didn’t get drank when I was a teenager was because I respected her too much.

  Shaking my head, I walked up behind her and took the whiskey from her hand. “I’m taking you to the hospital.”

  “I’ve got Bunko tonight.”

  I closed my eyes and tossed my head back on a groan. “You can’t be serious, Grandma.” I looked at her and pointed at her drawn up hand. “You’ve had a stroke!”

  “Since when you been a doctor?”

  “Grandma, don’t make me call the ambulance.” I cocked a brow and she glared at me, her jaw clenching.

  “Don’t you dare.”

  I pulled my phone from my pocket. “I will and then when you get back home, Patty Wilder will be over here asking you a thousand questions.” Grandma couldn’t stand Patty Wilder—she called her a curtain twitcher, said Patty was always standing at her window trying to see whose business she could get in, ‘just a twitching her curtain.’ If there’s one thing Grandma couldn’t stand it was being the topic of the gossip circle.

  She grunted. “Fine, take me on in, but I’d be just dandy taking a shot of that whiskey. It’ll wear off.”

  “Grandma, strokes don’t wear off.”

  She hmrphed at that.

  “Come on.” I grabbed her purse from the counter and tucked it under my arm before I gently took her hand.

  “Always making a fuss about things, I swear, can’t nobody age with dignity no more.”

  ______

  The antiseptic smell that seems to linger in ERs always nauseated me. And it was unbearably strong that night.

  They had just put Grandma into a room and started an IV. Oh, Grandma was all sweet smiles and ‘yes darlin’s,’ but the second the nurse left the room, she attempted to yank the IV out of her arm.

  “No, Doris,” I smiled and gently moved her hand away. “You can’t leave.”

  “Don’t Doris me, and I most certainly can!” She frowned as she shifted in the hospital bed and huffed.

  “You had a stroke. You can’t leave.”

  “A minor stroke.” Another agitated huff. “I ain’t got time for this mess. I done told you, I’ve got a Bunko game tonight with the ladies from church.”

  “Grandma…” I narrowed my eyes at her.

  “Fine.” She shrunk down into the bed and crossed her good arm over her chest. Ill as a hornet. “My granny had a stroke back in nineteen-thirty-five and she just drank a shot of whiskey and went on her way. If it’s my time to die, it’s my time to die. At least I could die playing Bunko. They’ve got one of them Instapots as the prize and I had to go and have a stroke. Lawd have mercy.”

  I dragged a hand over my face because I didn’t know what else to do.

  “Well, I’m eighty-eight years old, Noah. I’m goin’ sooner than later.”

  “What are you talking about? I thought your goal was a hundred.”

  “My goal ain’t nothing if I can’t play Bunko!” She fiddled with her IV line before tossing her head back on the pillow. I placed my hand on hers and squeezed. She’s all I had—all I’d ever had. If it weren’t for her, God knows where I’d be.

  The heart monitor beeped, and I glanced at it. The little green line kept making peaks and valleys. “Can you go get me some ice?” she asked.

  I stood up and shot a skeptical glare at her. “I don’t trust you.”

  “For Pete’s sake, boy. My mouth is as parched as the Gobi Desert.”

  “Alright.” I pointed at her. “Don’t take your IVs out!”

  She threw her one hand in the air. “Cross my heart.”

  I left the room with one more warning glare before I walked across to the nurses’ station and asked if they could get some ice. One of the women behind the desk grinned, her eyelashes batting. “You’re Noah Greyson, aren’t you?” she asked.

  I rubbed my hand over the back of my neck. “Yeah.” I had no idea who she was, and I was worried it may be one of those situations where I should remember her, but…alcohol. She motioned for me to follow her to a doorway at the side of the desk, propping the door open with her foot while she grabbed a Styrofoam cup.

  “I come watch you sing all the time at Tipsy’s.” She glanced over her shoulder while she placed the cup under the ice dispenser. “You’ve got the best voice.”

  “Thanks. Appreciate that.”

  “
You’re gonna be famous one day.”

  “Oh, I don’t know about that now.” I laughed.

  “You will.” She handed me the cup and stepped out of the room. “Watch.”

  “Well, thanks for the vote of confidence, but I’m not really into the whole fame thing.”

  “Sexy and humble, huh?” She bit down on her lip. “Next time I see you out, I’m gonna say hey.”

  “You do that,” I said, winking before I crossed the hall and went back into Grandma’s room.

  There was a different nurse than the one who started her line standing at the whiteboard. Her back was to me, her dark hair was piled in a messy bun, and her baby blue scrubs fit her just right. She erased the old nurse’s name and started to write hers in green marker as I handed Grandma her ice.

  She set it on the table, and I glared at her. “I thought your mouth was parched,” I said.

  “You’re just lucky this one came in,” she grumbled. “Foiled my escape plan.”

  “My name’s Hannah,” the nurse said, and my ears perked up. “I’ll be taking care of you for the rest of the shift.” She capped the marker and spun around, and I was already smiling.

  “Hey, you,” I said.

  Her eyes widened, and damn she was adorable. “Hey,” she said abruptly.

  “Just can’t seem to get away from you.”

  “You two know each other?” Grandma asked.

  “Kinda.” I shrugged a shoulder. “Sorta.”

  “Well,” Grandma started, “depending on what his kinda sorta means, I may have to apologize for his actions.”

  Hannah laughed. “He’s working for my father.”

  “Oh,” Grandma said glancing at me and winking. “I see.”

  There was a quick knock at the door before it swung open and some tall guy in scrubs poked his head into the room. “Hey, I’m supposed to take her down for a CT, but I’ve got one giving me some issues in three, can you take her down for me?”

  “No Problem, Mike,” Hannah said, disconnecting the lines from the heart monitor. “We’re going to do a quick CT on you, Ms. Greyson.” She kicked at something on the hospital bed. “Standard procedure.” She grabbed the bed rail and started to push. I took the other side, and Hannah stopped rolling the bed. “You can’t do that.”

  “Why not?” I shrugged. “It’s my grandma.”

  “Hospital policy.” She hit the door open button on the wall and smiled before she wheeled the bed through the doorway. “I’ll be back in just a minute.” And with that, the door closed behind her.

  I fell back onto the uncomfortable hospital chair, pulled my phone from my pocket, and scrolled Facebook. A smirk crossed my face when I typed in: Hannah Blake. We had exactly one hundred friends in common, and in a small town like Rockford, I have no idea how I’d never run into her before. Her page was nothing but pictures of her family. Pictures of the beach. Inspirational quotes from Marilyn Monroe and Mother Theresa. Her college graduation. Ahhh… I see why. Because she’s a good girl—at least compared to the Britney Swinsons I was used to. She had aim and purpose and she came from a good family.

  A few minutes later, the door opened, and she stepped back inside. “You’re Grandma’s something,” she said.

  “Yeah, that’s the truth.”

  “She tried to bribe me to let her go, said something about whiskey and that you need to eat.”

  I laughed. “She thinks whiskey cures everything. She keeps it in her medicine cabinet.”

  Hannah smiled before pulling something from the front pocket of her scrubs. “I snagged you an energy bar from the staff lounge. Hopefully, that’ll hold you over until they get her situated.”

  Something so simple, yet so sweet. Thoughtful. Outside of Grandma, I wasn’t really used to people like that. I pushed up from the chair and took a step toward her, taking the bar. There was something like gravity pulling me in. Something familiar. Something about her that felt right even though I knew I’d ruin her.

  A tendril of her hair slipped free and I brushed it behind her ear, purposefully letting my fingers trail along her jaw. Small touches like that only made me want more.

  She timidly glanced down, the softest blush staining her cheeks. And it was that innocence that got to me, that made my stomach anxious. Most girls I’d met—most girls that were interested in me—they were edgy. Sexual—

  “It shouldn’t take long for them to figure out what’s going on. Does she live with you?” she asked, pulling a pen from her pocket.

  “No…”

  “You take care of her?”

  “Well, we kinda take care of each other.”

  A soft smile crossed her lips, and for some reason, I felt like she was trying to prove something to herself. She clicked the pen open and closed while her gaze dragged over my face, landing on my lips. “See, I knew you weren’t that bad.”

  “Now, even bad boys can love their grandmas.”

  She laughed, still clicking that pen. “I guess.”

  It fell quiet, and while she shifted anxiously on her feet all I could think about was how soft her lips would be underneath mine.

  “Well, I should go check on some of my other patients…” she shoved the pen into her pocket and walked to the door, glancing back once more before she slipped through the crack.

  Shit. I scrubbed my hand over my face. That’s the kind of girl I’d always imagined I could love—and I was pretty sure that was terrible news for me and her both.

  ______

  Grandma was discharged at ten the next morning with directions to follow up with a neurologist on the following Monday. She said she wasn’t going back, but all I had to do was threaten not to take her to church anymore and she agreed.

  “Don’t waste the power,” she grumbled when I flipped the light on in the living room. “And I’m not an invalid, Noah.” She shuffled past me straight into the kitchen. I took a breath before flopping back on the couch. I was tired from being at the hospital all night. I heard the pantry open and the clink of dishes.

  When she came out, she sat down in the recliner with a glass of whiskey in her hand. She lifted one gray brow and held the glass up in a toast. “Those doctors are still wet behind the ears.” Then she downed the whiskey. “Whiskey and prayers. That’s all I need.”

  All I could do was shake my head.

  Nodding, she set the glass on the side table before kicking the footrest up with a groan. “Now, leave me be so I can get some rest. Those hospital beds sleep like lumpy potatoes.” She closed her eyes and folded her hands over her round stomach. “Go on.”

  Groaning, I pushed up from the couch and made my way to the door. “I’ll leave you alone, but I’m staying here tonight.”

  “Fine,” she grumbled, nestling down into the recliner.

  The sun heated my skin the second I stepped onto the old porch. I breathed in the fragrant sweet shrub. There was something tranquil and lazy about Alabama summers. No matter how old I got, standing out on her porch and staring across the fields made me feel like a kid. The sounds and smells offered a sense of nostalgia. When you’re a kid you still have something called hope, you have dreams. You think you can do anything. And that’s a train of thought I’d pay good money for these days.

  12

  Hannah

  The chorus of “Living on a Prayer” woke me up, and while I loved Jon Bon Jovi’s voice, it’s not what I wanted to hear at—I glanced at the blue block numbers on the clock—one AM.

  I grumbled, fumbling around for the ringing phone on my nightstand. Bo’s name flashed on the screen and my heart dropped to my stomach.

  “Are you okay?” I blurted, already swinging my legs over the edge of the bed and searching with my feet for some shoes.

  “Can you come get me,” he slurred. “Please, Nanner?”

  Oh, the nickname. He’s drunker than Cooter Brown. I sighed, trying to calm my racing pulse. “Where are you?”

  “I don’t know, some… place.” He huffed. “Jerod said some gu
y came and took people’s keys. Someone said something about cops, so I ran into the woods. Come get me.”

  “I should just make you sleep in Jerod’s truck.”

  “Jerod’s screwing some girl in it, so I can’t sleep in there.” He groaned. “Please. I love you. Don’t leave me drunk and stranded in a smelly, sex truck.”

  “Well, I can’t come get you if I don’t know where you are!”

  “Hang on.” A rustling came over the line. He swore, and seconds later, there was a ping on my phone. Up popped a text with his location pinned by a little red dot. He’s all the way out in Sylacauga? Jesus! “And, you might wanna bring Pop’s truck,” he said. “I’m like, in the woods or some shit.”

  “I’m going to kill you,” I groaned before I hung up, already slipping a pair of jeans and tennis shoes on.

  ______

  Thirty minutes later, I was in the middle of the woods, gripping the steering wheel to Daddy’s truck so hard my knuckles ached. The truck bumped over a rut. The headlights bounced over the tree trunks. Branches slapped against the window. A deer darted across the path and I slammed my brakes on. I wasn’t even sure if I was headed in the right direction. I kept cruising over the uneven path, glancing at the phone to see if I was anywhere close to that little red blip on the map when the right side of the truck suddenly dropped. My phone clattered to the floorboard and I screamed, closing my eyes as I prepared to go into a ravine. The tail slid around when I hit the brakes, and the truck thankfully stopped. My heart hammered against my ribs, a jolt of adrenaline buzzed through me, and my hands shook on the steering wheel.

  When I shoved the gear into reverse and floored the accelerator, all the tires did was spin, slinging mud and gravel into the wheel well. I shoved the gear into drive and floored it. But it didn’t budge. Sighing, I pressed my forehead against the steering wheel. “Shit.”

  I was literally going to strangle my brother.

  I glanced through the window. Nothing but woods. Dark woods. That is how horror movies start. Every single time. I threw open the door and hopped out. The distant sound of music and people laughing at least told me I was in the vicinity. “I’m going to kill you, Bo,” I whispered, using the flashlight on my phone to navigate through the overgrown brush. The distinct smell of burning timbers filled the air and I stopped at the top of a hill. From there, I could see the orange glow of a bonfire, embers flitting into the open sky. A circle of pickups and Jeeps filled with teenagers drinking surrounded the fire pit. Shaking my head, I started down, grabbing onto the branches of shrubs and trees to keep myself from sliding.