The Sisters of Glass Ferry. Kim Michele Richardson
Ferry to other counties and the rest of the world. Despite Mama’s complaints and the cost to keep it up, Honey Bee bartered with Mr. Glass and brought the ferry home, docking it on the river bank down from their house.
Soon the government called on Honey Bee, offering him a small fee to keep the old boat in service for the sake of commerce and goodwill. But Honey Bee turned them down. The state pleaded with him to at least consider providing service a couple of days a week for those stranded folks needing to conduct business and family matters up and down the river.
Honey Bee settled on Saturdays for passenger toting, and pocketed the small change, gaining the sleepy but approving eye of the government for his other totings, he’d told Mama.
Flannery was so excited to ride in the boat she nearly burst. “Can we go to the city? Will we see oceans? Can we visit China?” she asked Honey Bee. But her sister sulked. On board, Patsy’d fretted about her pale skin burning, then turned green at the gills from the motion. Patsy didn’t want to help clean the boat, saying she would surely be the boat’s Jonah and jinx Honey Bee’s ugly old ferryboat.
At that, Honey Bee sent Patsy straight back to Mama’s apron, then gave Flannery her sister’s duties, making her helmsman of the old scow that had once belonged to the original ferriers and first settlers of Glass Ferry, Kentucky.
Fall arrived, and Honey Bee had the boat hauled out of the river and stored in his large pole barn near the banks.
Honey Bee and Flannery scrubbed the ferry’s wooden sides, rubbing pine tar into the hull’s plank seams, weatherproofing the old bucket. Flannery’d polished the wood railings and shined the brass, mostly inside the wheelhouse, until it gleamed, while Honey Bee took out the four passenger benches below to make room for his firewater.
It wasn’t long until Honey Bee took a bottle of his good bourbon and christened the old boat The River Witch.
In early spring and every spring after, Honey Bee would roll out old bourbon barrels he’d made from white oak staves. He and Flannery would char them by rolling the barrels on their sides and taking fire to the inside, charring for a good three minutes, as much as five even, until Honey Bee thought the staves had a rough, shiny texture that looked like alligator skin.
Once in a while she and her daddy would lightly rub the casks with salt, pinches of coarse pepper, and sometimes tobacco into the lids. After, Honey Bee’d fill the oaken drums with spirits. Other times he might distill a special whiskey by having Flannery press and squeeze the sorghum stalks to use the syrup in his spirits. But most times, Honey Bee had claimed the river could do better than any of those things.
Finished, Honey Bee lugged the barrels on board, locked them inside on wooden racks he’d built under the refinished bench seats, and daily, weather permitting, he and Flannery would carry the whiskey up the river a ways and back, letting the motion rock the spirits, caramelizing, aging it until late fall.
For eight months Flannery’s daddy let the Kentucky River breathe into his hooch until the spices and sugars turned to fire.
Folks from as far north as Cincinnati and as far south as New Orleans and as far west as St. Louis would come and pay top dollar for Honey Bee’s Kentucky River Witch Whiskey—beg his secret, beg to know its cut. Every time Honey Bee Butler swore it was the river, his beloved Kentucky River giving it life, cutting the whiskey with its glory. “Mother river whips it with its gentle paddle. You know there’s a paddle for every ass, and my beautiful ’tucky River spanks the very fires into my whiskey.”
Flannery flicked through the memories. For generations the Kentucky River had given the Butler family a grander life than most in Glass Ferry, lent Flannery a buoy to make her feel safe for a precious thirteen years before snatching it all away.
It was hard for Flannery to believe a crueler river would be her sister’s paddle. That the same river that had given her so much would take yet another from her.
CHAPTER 6
Patsy
June, 1952
Hollis sidled up to Patsy, leaned in, and snaked a traveling hand around her waist and to her backside, pressing down tulle, digging into the pile of dress fabric for a pinch of flesh. “She’s a wet blanket; let her go,” Hollis said. “We don’t need Flannery. Hey, I didn’t get to tell you back at the house, but you look like a living doll.”
Patsy elbowed his hand away from her bottom and glared up at him. “We have to find my pearls, get Danny sobered, and get to my prom!” She snapped her arm toward the automobile and a lifeless Danny inside.
“Relax, doll baby. Let junior nap; you got time. Lots of time.” Hollis pushed Patsy back against the elm, crowding.
“Don’t, Hollis—”
“C’mon. I really like you. Don’t tell me you didn’t like the last time, haven’t wanted to like it again,” Hollis said, leaning in to kiss her. Patsy turned her head. His lips brushed against her ear. “You’re as pale as a ghost, as white as that ol’ ghoul Joetta. C’mon, doll baby. C’mon over here and let big ol’ Hollis give you a special something that’ll make you glow. Something you can wear proud to that prom. You’ll put them other pretenders to shame. Let a real man love you right.”
“I love Danny. You know I love Danny.” Patsy shoved Hollis with her elbow. No way. Not here, not now, not ever again—oh, if only things hadn’t turned out this way. If only—
Hollis grabbed her breast. “Aw, c’mon. Don’t play hard to get with me. I know what you like. Remember? We can even kiss like them movie stars you’re always blabbering on about if that’s what you want.” He laid a sloppy, booze-coated one on her lips.
“Get off me, you damn fool,” she cried, pushing, swiping a hand over her mouth. “You dumb oaf!”
Inside the automobile, Danny stirred. Hollis and Patsy turned toward the noise. Danny grunted and groaned again and then, just as quick, he quieted, fell back into his stupor.
“Danny,” Patsy called, edging herself away from Hollis.
“We got time.” Hollis sidestepped and blocked her retreat, pulled her in tight and kissed her hard.
Time. Something Patsy had been running out of ever since she’d accepted a ride home alone with Hollis on that school day nearly three months before.
* * *
That day it was Danny who had promised Patsy he’d see her home after classes, but when she came out of the building late, she caught him flirting with Violet Perry and saw the pretty pastor’s daughter dishing it back.
That is just like Violet, Patsy puffed, a Goody Two-shoes in front of the adults, and a trollop behind their backs.
“Ain’t I just the prettiest violet amongst all these old boring grasses and weeds,” Violet liked to tout herself to any boy who raised a sniff. Patsy hoped the floozy got her comeuppance one day, got her pretty, nodding head chomped off by a hungry passing ass.
Fuming, Patsy had slipped by the two, unnoticed.
Nearby, Hollis sat in his Mercury, happy to see her last straw. He had seen what was happening, encouraged it even, then called Patsy over to his window, urging her to leave Danny behind, spilling on and on about his brother’s cheating ways. “Those two”—he pointed over her shoulder—“have been at it a week. Awful chummy. Looked like he even kissed her on the lips right before you came out.”
Patsy glanced back over her shoulder and seethed.
“Come on, doll baby. It’s after four, and it’s Friday,” Hollis wheedled. “I’m not working this weekend. Give me them lesson books and hop in. I’ll tote you home safe ’n’ sound. Get in, and ya won’t even have to worry about ol’ Hal Hardy’s rabbit getting ahold of you.” Hollis chuckled in a way that, looking back, should have set off alarms, grinning at her with those tom-prowling eyes of his.
But