The Sisters of Glass Ferry. Kim Michele Richardson

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      “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 Patsy shuddered at the thought of Hardy and his crazy grave rabbit on the loose out there. It was bad enough worrying about Joetta, but the thought of that horrid rabbit lit her full of the biting nerves.

      More than once Patsy’d spied a fat hare on Ebenezer, nibbling grasses inside the cemetery, and each time she’d stumbled and fallen trying to run away from what she thought she saw, or imagined.

      Flannery had chided her for being a scaredy-cat of a little bunny. One day the girls were walking home when they saw the awful creature over by one of the Deer tombstones.

      Flannery had pulled out an apple she had saved from her school lunch and tried to prove to Patsy the creature was gentle, harmless. Crouching down, Flannery wetted a ticking on her tongue, held the fruit out to the bunny. But the creature laid back its long ears and let out an ear-piercing squeal, before scrambling away.

      Patsy screamed out, “Run, Flannery! It’s Hardy’s rabbit!”

      Old man Hardy had lived on Blind Neck Hill up in the Palisades. He was a fine rabbit hunter, and before going off to battle in WWII, he’d taken great pains in order to snag himself the luckiest charm known: a bona fide rabbit’s foot taken in a Kentucky graveyard.

      Two weeks before Hal Hardy went to war, he took up camp in Ebenezer cemetery, waiting patiently to catch his lucky grave rabbit. He said he met up with the kind-natured Joetta, claiming it was her who’d helped show him where the hare was hiding.

      Hal got his lucky foot, snaring the biggest rabbit around those parts, carrying that lucky hind leg across the big oceans and then back to Kentucky, and doing it all with nary a scratch.

      Later, one of his two sons took off for the Korean War. Before the son left he asked to borrow his father’s lucky rabbit foot. But Hal was superstitious, partial to his old good luck charm, and selfishly said no. When his son came home in a pine box, Hal blamed himself for letting the boy go off without a charm for protection. And when the government called Hal’s other son to war, the father insisted his boy get himself his own piece of good fortune, sending him out to Ebenezer on a cold, snowy night.

      Inside the cemetery, Hal’s son lost his footing, tumbling down that version of his own rabbit hole, and died when his head hit an old jagged tombstone. Months later, when old Hal was found dead outside Ebenezer graveyard from his own self-inflicted gunshot wound, most whispered that it had been Joetta’s ghost pushing him into a suitable punishment for not protecting his boys.

      Patsy snuck a peek back toward Danny and Violet.

      “Come on. Let’s go, Patsy.” Hollis tugged on her arm and patted the seat beside him. “Oh, c’mon, doll baby. You’re too pretty to walk home all on your lonesome. Look at your pretty dress. Why, you’ll get all dusty, and be all sad, while Danny boy and Violet are having all the fun,” he said, reaching for her books, winking.

      Violet Perry leaned into Danny’s ear and whispered something. Something sweet, Patsy was sure. Because Danny smiled at whatever the shared secret was, then snugged in close to Violet’s bent ear. Then a tease sparked in Violet’s eyes, and she passed another back to his tilted head. A secret he’d never share with Patsy, and one that looked a lot like the ones he and she had split between themselves when they were last together on her darkened porch. The talk they’d shared about getting hitched one day in the not too distant future, getting out of Glass Ferry, and never ever coming back.

      Anger fueled her, and a half-baked good riddance slipped off her tongue. Patsy handed Hollis her schoolbooks through the window. Grinning, he tossed them into the backseat while Patsy rushed around to the passenger side.

      By the time the two reached Ebenezer Road and parked, Hollis had convinced Patsy his brother was two-timing, and sweetened the telling by offering her his flask. He’d turned on the radio, letting the Ink Spots float into the early spring air with their soft crooning of “I’ll Get By.”

      For a moment she regretted climbing into that automobile, sharing that front seat with the older boy and alone, leaving with Hollis in the first place.

      At first she refused him. But he wheedled and begged so sweetly for her to try a sip. “It’ll help with the female nerves some,” he promised. “My ma has a nip or two every afternoon. Never misses her four o’clock sipping.”

      Cooling, Patsy tried the whiskey for the first time ever. She coughed and sputtered. Hollis patted her back. “That’s right,” he said. “Let it get down there good and warm you up from the middle. Breathe its good fire into ya.”

      Surprised, she found the sensation exciting, almost enjoyable. It numbed the pains of betrayal, so she took another sip, this time more quickly. And when Hollis placed a hand on her knee and pushed up her skirts, sliding his fingers casually along her thighs, after the third, she was all in, almost, and only pretended to halfheartedly push his hand away.

      She didn’t half mind him doing that. A senior boy liking her in that way, feeling her in that way, having the manly touch that his younger brother didn’t have.

      Most girls swooned over Hollis too, and the boys thought he was a regular Casanova, him with his weekly paycheck and fine wheels. The looks, a reckless bang slipping over his big sleepy eyes, the always-present pout on his full lips.

      Feelings welled. For a few racing heartbeats she let his hand stay. She knew she had to stop, knew she had to and right now. What if someone passed by? If Flannery changed her mind about baton practice? СКАЧАТЬ