The Banty House

by Brown, Carolyn

  “Anyway . . . ,” Connie sighed, “back then Rooster had a bank, a post office, and a general store. Our great-grandparents, Elizabeth and Rooster Carson, were instrumental in starting the town when they put in the general store and built this house. And yes, that was his real name—it’s right there on his tombstone. Rooster was his mama’s maiden name, so that’s where they got it, but from what we hear of his reputation, he was a short man with a real cocky attitude.”

  Okay, Ginger thought, so we’ve narrowed down the topic from the whole area to a ghost town that only has half a dozen houses left and no businesses.

  “They only had one child, our Grandma Carson, and she inherited this place when they died during that big flu epidemic back in 1919,” Betsy went on. “When Grandma Carson passed on about the time the Great Depression started in 1929, she left Mama this place. Y’all know something?” She drew her dark brows down in a frown. “We should get our house put on the historical registry. I’m going to have Sloan look into that.”

  Kate pointed a finger at her. “You really want them fancy bitches from one of them historical societies knowin’ our business? Comin’ in here and checkin’ everything out to see if we’ve added on to the house. Goin’ down into my basement?”

  “I guess not.” Betsy sighed.

  Kate continued. “Mama and Grandma had a real nice seamstress business going here in Rooster. Folks down in Hondo didn’t have much to do with Grandma since she had Mama out of wedlock, and since—”

  Connie butted in. “Might as well go on and spit it out. Mama was a quarter black. Folks back then called her a quadroon, when they weren’t callin’ her meaner stuff. That makes us an eighth black.”

  “Some of my foster siblings were mixed race,” Ginger said. “I never thought much about the color of a person’s skin.”

  “A person should look at the heart first.” Betsy pointed in Ginger’s direction. “Why don’t you get yourself a glass of milk from the refrigerator? And then sit down here with us. You don’t need to be drinkin’ caffeine in your condition, and milk will be good for the baby.”

  “Thank you.” Ginger got a glass from the cabinet and filled it with milk. Then she sat down across from Connie.

  “Folks today would call Mama mixed race,” Kate said. “Grandma never married, but the love of her life was a man whose mama was black and his daddy was white. His name was Malachi James and he was the preacher at one of those missionary churches that used to be here. Anyway, I guess it was a good thing that old Rooster was dead and gone by the time Grandma gave birth to our mother, or he might have shot her and the preacher both. Grandma said he was a hard man who thought he was above the black folks that did business with him at the store.”

  “Havin’ a baby out of wedlock is not a killin’ offense,” Ginger said.

  “It was back in the time when Mama was born,” Connie told her. “Lots has happened in this old world in the past hundred years.”

  “After Grandma died,” Betsy said, “Mama tried to keep things afloat with her seamstress business. The hoity-toity folks in Hondo might not want to be her friend, but they sure loved her fine sewing skills. The Depression hit Texas right hard at that time, though, so no one had money for anything. Food and shelter took the place of fancy clothing to wear to church, and Mama’s business was going under fast. Taxes were due on the house and things were getting bad. Prohibition was still in effect, and . . .” Betsy stopped to take a sip of her coffee.

  Connie picked up the story. “And Grandma had taught Mama how to make moonshine, just like her mama had taught her and so on and so on back down the line. It wasn’t legal, but word soon got out that folks could buy their liquor here, and the whole town had an interest in it being secret. The way Mama told us the story was that it didn’t quite keep the bills paid, town or no, so she hired six girls and turned the house into a brothel.”

  Ginger almost choked on the milk.

  Kate stood up, went to the sink, and rinsed her cup. “Since Rooster was the name of the town and since most men are like little banty roosters, she had that sign made that still hangs out there on the porch—the Banty House.”

  “And then she made the rules that still hang on the wall above the piano,” Connie said.

  Ginger made a mental note to reread the whole list of rules she’d seen when she crossed what the ladies called the parlor. Connie had quoted the first one to her on the way to Rooster from Hondo the day before: Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it. Heb. 13:2

  Ginger wondered why that was the first rule in a brothel.

  Sloan made sure there wasn’t a fleck of dust anywhere on the car, and then he rapped on the back door and went inside. The smell of sweet elderberry jelly filled the whole place. A dozen pint jars sat on the counter. Once the people in the area knew that they were available, they’d fly out of the house pretty damn fast.

  No one was in the kitchen, so he poked his head through the basement doorway and yelled, “Kate, you down here?”

  “I am, but I’m on my way up, so stay up there,” she yelled. “And I’ve got dibs on you for the whole afternoon.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” If he’d been a drinking man, his mouth would have watered at the aroma of apples and cinnamon floating up the stairs. But Sloan would rather have an actual apple pie than a double shot of moonshine.

  Thank goodness the law down in Hondo never bothered much with Rooster, and not even the most conscientious police officer would lock up an eighty-year-old woman for brewing shine for nothing but personal use.

  Kate took the steps a little slower than she had when he’d first come home, but she didn’t need to pull herself up by the banister by any means. “I want you to plant our cornfield today. It’s two weeks since the last frost. I saved seed from last year’s crop, so we’re ready to go. Come harvest time, I’ll be gettin’ almighty low on my supply of corn for mash. Since I been makin’ flavors, seems like I can hardly keep up.”

  He held the door for her and then closed it behind her. “You’ve got everything all safe, and you’ve double-checked your vent pipes, haven’t you?”

  “Every week, regular as clockwork, just like Mama taught me, but thanks for reminding me,” she said. “Have you met Ginger?”

  “Yes, I surely have. Will she be needin’ a ride to town later this evenin’?”

  Kate shook her head. “No, I don’t reckon so. We’re going to keep her another day or two.”

  “How’d you find this one?” Sloan asked.

  “Connie found her sittin’ on the park bench in front of the beauty shop yesterday.” Kate went on to tell him the rest of what had happened.

  “I’ve told y’all before that pickin’ up strangers isn’t a good thing.” Sloan followed her into the kitchen.

  “Now, just exactly what could one little bitty pregnant woman do to harm the three of us?” Kate protested.

  “She might not be as innocent as she looks,” Sloan warned her.

  “Well, she’s good help in the kitchen, and she says she knows her way around a mop and broom. We may keep her for a while instead of our usual just two or three days.”

  “Why is that rule so important anyway?” Sloan asked.

  “Mama said that we wouldn’t want to turn away someone that might be an angel sent from God to help us get through a difficult time,” Kate answered.

  “Just be careful,” Sloan told her.

  “Always.” Kate patted him on the back. “Shhh . . .” Kate put a finger over her lips. “I hear them all talking in the dining room. Betsy will set the dinner table in there since there’s five of us now. Speakin’ of that, since the garden is comin’ on, reckon you could give us another day a week, like maybe Saturday?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He nodded. “Starting tomorrow?”

  “That would be great,” Kate told him.

  “What would be great?” Betsy heard the last word as she came through the
door separating the dining room and kitchen. She picked up a basket of biscuits. “We’ve got everything on the table but the sweet tea. By the time y’all get washed up, we’ll be ready for grace.”

  Sloan took his time washing up, then fished a comb from his back pocket and ran it through his black hair. He wore it a little longer these days than he had in the service, but lots of things had changed since then.

  He was the last one to the table, and they’d seated him right beside Ginger. He sat down and bowed his head. Betsy said a short grace; then they began to pass the food around the table.

  “The rules say that we always bless our food,” Kate said. “You figured that out last night, Ginger, but we didn’t tell you that we take turns. When Mama was alive, we divided it by oldest to youngest.” Kate put a fried chicken leg on her plate. “I say the breakfast prayer. Betsy does the noon one, and Connie takes care of supper.”

  “Fried chicken is my favorite meal.” Sloan was glad they never asked him to pray. He and God hadn’t had much of a relationship since he’d lost all his buddies over there in the sandbox.

  “Mine, too,” Ginger said. “I never learned to fry it like this, though.”

  “The secret is in being patient. Some things you just can’t hurry along.” Betsy smiled across the table at her. “The sisters and I’ve decided that if you’re willing, maybe you’d stay through Sunday. That’s Easter, you know, and we’d hate for you to be out on the road all alone on a holiday.”

  “Are you serious?” Ginger asked.

  She seemed genuinely surprised at the invitation. Maybe she wasn’t out to fleece his friends after all and was really what she claimed to be—just a woman down on her luck.

  “Yes, we’re very serious. Mama wouldn’t want us to turn you out right here at Easter. It was her favorite holiday,” Kate offered.

  “You barely know me,” Ginger said.

  “They’re pretty good at reading people.” Sloan dipped deep into the mashed potatoes when they came his way. “I’ve seen them follow rule number one a lot of times.” They’d sure looked after him plenty of times since his grandmother died.

  “And the next morning, we sometimes feed our stranger and send them on their way,” Betsy said as she picked up the gravy boat and handed it to Sloan. “Mama said that the rule said we could tell within twenty-four hours if we had an angel or just a passerby.”

  Connie shot a smile across the table toward her. “I’ve been wearing a lapis lazuli next to my heart since you got here. It leads to enlightenment and wisdom. In the dream, I saw us all four hunting Easter eggs together. I never go against a dream, just in case it’s Mama talkin’ to me in spirit form.”

  She’d given Sloan a small chunk of rose quartz when he first came to work for them. He was supposed to keep it with him at all times, and according to Connie, it would heal all emotional problems. He’d thrown it in the dresser drawer with his socks when he got home and had forgotten all about it until that moment.

  “Are you Wiccan?” Ginger asked.

  “Not really,” Connie answered. “Mama taught me the healing powers of the stones. I didn’t even know that it was a part of Wicca until I was grown.”

  “It’s bad enough that everyone has thought our blood was tainted for all these years. We sure don’t want them thinking that we’re witches.” Kate passed the green beans to Connie.

  “I’ll be glad when we can start gathering garden vegetables. These green beans aren’t bad, Betsy, but fresh ones are so much better.” Connie sighed.

  “You’ll have to come up here in the evenings and snap beans with us when they start coming in,” Kate told Sloan.

  “Be glad to,” he said.

  Working more than one day a week occasionally in the spring and summer wasn’t anything new, but they’d never invited him to sit on the porch and snap beans or shell peas with them. Maybe Connie had consulted her stones and decided that he wasn’t getting enough social life.

  “Just so y’all know,” Kate said, “I’ve already asked Sloan to start helping us on Saturdays, and he belongs to me that day. We’ve got to get the corn in the ground, and I’d like to enlarge our garden, especially the strawberry patch for Betsy’s jams.”

  Betsy turned her head slowly and gave Kate the old stink eye. “And I bet you want those strawberries for your moonshine, don’t you?”

  “Thought I might experiment with it a little,” Kate said.

  Sloan chuckled. “Sounds like it might be good.”

  “My best seller is the apple pie, but I thought about trying some different things, like maybe wild grape and even buttered pecan if I can figure out just how to do it all,” Kate said.

  Ginger couldn’t believe that she was sitting around the table with three old ladies who looked like they’d be strict Sunday-school teachers and they were talking about moonshine. That shouldn’t have been a surprise since they lived in an old brothel, but it shocked her nonetheless.

  “So when’s the baby due?” Sloan asked right out of the blue sky.

  Ginger shrugged. “I’m not real sure.”

  “Didn’t the doctor give you a due date?” Connie asked.

  Ginger shook her head. “I haven’t seen a doctor yet. I just bought one of those drugstore tests and it was positive.” She hadn’t given much thought to the time when the baby would be born. Up until she sat down on that bench in front of the beauty salon, she’d just been trying to get through a day at a time.

  “Good Lord!” Kate gasped. “I’ll call Doc Emerson and make an appointment for you.”

  Ginger felt the heat crawling from the back of her neck all the way to her face. She was sure if she looked in the mirror, she’d have two bright-red circles on her cheeks. “I should wait until I have enough money to pay him.”

  “We’ve been bartering with Doc since before Mama died, and she passed almost sixty years ago. He does like his shine, and he doesn’t like to pay for it, so . . .” Kate shrugged.

  “Thank you,” Ginger said. If she was dreaming, it went far beyond anything she’d ever imagined, maybe short of winning the lottery. She reminded herself that she’d be leaving on Monday morning, so she shouldn’t get too attached to these sisters.

  “So, where do you come from, Ginger?” Sloan broke the moment of silence.

  “All over Kentucky,” she answered. “The latest place was in Lexington, but most of my life was spent in and around Harlan County.”

  “I knew a guy in the army who had an accent like yours.” Sloan buttered another biscuit. “Man would use five hundred words when five would do the job.”

  “I’ve known folks like that.” Ginger passed the platter of chicken to him.

  She didn’t even have to close her eyes to get a clear picture in her head of Lucas Dermott. He’d promised her the moon, the stars, and half the universe if she’d leave the shelter and live with him. He’d delivered the first two all right. She could see them through cracks in the dirty windows in the last apartment where they’d lived before he was shot and killed. At first she’d tried to keep the windows clean, but that proved to be an exhausting job. Dust and dirt from the gravel business nearby, plus all the grime that flew up to the second-story windows from the car-repair shop below them, collected on the windows on a daily basis. Using his ability to sweet-talk, Lucas would run a few scams occasionally, but that money went for what he wanted to buy. The paycheck she brought in as a waitress had paid the rent and put food on the table.

  “You don’t say much, do you?” Sloan nudged her shoulder with his.

  “Neither do you,” she shot back.

  “Maybe we’ll have to work on that.” His shoulder touched hers again.

  The sparks from his touch brought her from the past to the present in a split second. “I was just enjoyin’ this fine meal and y’all’s company. Last time I sat down in a dinin’ room like this was in Harlan, Kentucky. A little girl became my friend at the new school and invited me to have supper with her family. My foster mother said it
would be all right.”

  “What happened?” Connie asked.

  “That was the only time I was invited. Guess they figured out that I wasn’t going to be a cheerleader.” She raised a shoulder in a shrug.

  “Funny how that works, isn’t it?” Connie’s smile didn’t quite reach her eyes. “I wanted to be a cheerleader, too, but Mama’s reputation and the fact that we didn’t have one hundred percent white blood in our veins put a stop to that.”

  “The past is gone. The future is iffy. That means the present is all we’ve got, so we’ll dwell on that,” Kate said.

  “You sound just like Mama,” Connie told her. “And she was always right. So let’s talk about the peach cobbler that Ginger helped me make for dessert. We’ve got fresh whipped cream for the top. If everyone is ready, I’ll bring it out.”

  Ginger pushed back her chair. “I’ll carry the dessert bowls for you.”

  Connie laid a hand on her shoulder when they reached the kitchen, and then she leaned over and whispered, “Sloan don’t usually talk as much as he has today.”

  “I didn’t think he said all that much,” Ginger said in a soft voice, wishing she could get to know him better.

  “We’ve gotten used to one-word answers from him and very little conversation.” Connie picked up the cobbler in one hand and the bowl of chilled whipped cream in the other and headed back to the dining room.

  Ginger followed her with dessert dishes and clean spoons. “How do you girls stay so slim eating like this every day?”

  “Honey, we appreciate the compliment, but Kate is the only skinny one among us.” Betsy giggled. “She’s built like our father. Me and Connie took after Mama.”

  Ginger had always wondered what her biological mother and father might have looked like. Her father had been shot in what they called a domestic abuse situation. Her mother was pregnant with her when she was sent to prison for killing him. Six months after Ginger was born, her mother died. She’d never even seen a picture of either of her parents.