CHAPTER 3

      Flannery

      1972

      Flannery had always managed to slip in and out of town, dodging Hollis Henry most of the time. But there was no escaping the sheriff now with that announcement hitting the air waves.

      Mama moaned and dropped into the chair, pressed a clenched hand to her mouth. “My baby girl, my Patsy.”

      “Mama, shh, that Mercury could be anybody’s—maybe not even from around here, maybe not even from Kentucky.” Flannery picked up the cake knife and set it on the counter. “And if it is the Henrys’ car, it doesn’t mean Patsy was in there. Lately they’ve been pulling all sorts of stuff out of the river not even from around here, from places way far away,” Flannery said softly, hoping she was right. Still, the “maybes” felt dark, not lanterned near enough to be true.

      For many, the river had been a guardian of private matters. A slow, meandering 260-mile tributary of the Ohio River that coursed its way through craggy Kentucky mountains and thick forests, winding past forgotten family cemeteries, small and bigger bluegrass towns. Some of its depths unknown. Folks claimed spots of the Kentucky never had a bottom to begin with, that in certain parts a person could crawl across, and in other parts, drop and never surface again. Recent years of drought had changed that.

      Lost things spilled onto the Kentucky’s banks, into fishermen’s hands, more than a few, revealing age-old secrets. The usual trash: beer cans, bent fishing lures, refrigerators, and other such junk. And a few scarier things: a rubber glove with a person’s bloated hand inside, and the red sneaker stuffed with a human foot. The Glass Ferry Gazette ran a story, but no one came forward claiming to be missing their nubs.

      In the last few years, Mama’d told Flannery the local newspapers and radio stations had been providing exciting updates about surfaced treasures. One Glass Ferrian had found a Civil War sword and a tinderbox full of old Indian artifacts, and another, a large tin of coins from a century-old bank robbery.

      Someone else netted an emerald bracelet, mud-stuffed, inside an ancient bronze goblet. Folks said that chalice was really old and had traveled from Ireland, maybe even from as far away as Japan.

      A pretty maple violin in its tattered coffin case had been discovered last year. And two years ago they pulled out Web Sloan’s garden tractor that had gone missing in the ’20s. A partial human skull and one leather boot were wedged between one wheel’s rusted metal spokes. Mr. Sloan claimed his mama had reported his daddy and the tractor missing in 1921, but no one could find any records of such a report.

      Quickly, Flannery poured Mama a glass of water and knelt in front of her. “Mama.” She nudged the glass gently. “Here. Drink some water. Come on, have a sip; you’ll feel better.”

      Mama took a trembly breath and nodded.

      “Did you take your medicine this morning, Mama?”

      Mama took a gulp and shook her head.

      “You know Doc wants you to take it. Especially today. Let me go get it for you.” Flannery patted Mama’s knee and stood.

      “It’s in the cabinet,” Mama said, and bobbed her gray head toward the hall bathroom. “Get dressed. You need to drive me to Sheriff Henry.”

      Flannery hurried into the bathroom, opened the mirrored medicine cabinet, and searched the stacked glass shelves. Her daddy’s old razor fell out, and she knocked over a bottle of amphetamine salts the doctor had prescribed for Mama years ago. “No longer effective to boost her mood, or keep her mild depression at bay,” he’d said to Flannery back then. “Let’s try something new. For both of you.”

      Flannery scattered a few more half-empty pill bottles, iodine, old brown glass containers with rust-encrusted tops of dried-out paregoric and castor oil, and then snatched up the one that was new. It slipped from her grasp, and she bent over the soft-rose-tinted sink, trying to still her nerves bumping against the porcelain. That Patsy might be coming home, and like this, was something Flannery’d never dreamed, well hardly ever.

      Flannery picked up Mama’s medicine, read the instructions on the bottle, and pulled out two yellow pills. Her fingers buttered, and she dropped those too. Scooping the Valium out of the basin, she knocked Mama’s frosted-glass bottle of rose toilet water over, spilling the pink liquid everywhere.

      Pink. All this cupcake-pink. Mama and Patsy had insisted on smothering the room in it. The hue was everywhere, reeking from the tub to the sink, onto the commode and its matching roll of toilet paper, the blossomed wallpaper and rosy curtains. Flannery had begged Mama over the years to at least add some green, or a burst of red even, to break up the noxious crawl pink left under her skin.

      It reminded Flannery of what she’d read about Jayne Mansfield and her Pink Palace with its pink champagne-flowing fountain and heart-shaped tub.

      Mama and Patsy had fussed that the color was sophisticated, lovely like the silkiest nylons, or a pretty lacy slip worn under a dowdy duster. It fit Patsy and Mama fine, but for some reason, Flannery felt she hadn’t, nor would ever live up to the expectations of that strong, womanly pink.

      “Flannery?” Mama said faintly from the kitchen.

      “Just a small spill, Mama. I’ll clean it up,” Flannery called back, dropping a towel onto the mess. “Be right there.” She hovered over the sink, taking in tiny breaths of rose-filled air. She had to collect herself. Grabbing a washcloth, she pressed it to her nose.

      Flannery looked hard at the bottle of pills. She’d been leaning on them, same as Mama. Years of this new medicine, that old new, and yet, better new, all the doctors promised, but never new enough to fully nip the pain from Patsy’s leaving, from Flannery’s losses, or to calm the shakes from what had happened back in the city.

      She’d been a divorced woman for decades now, fancy-free in the fifties at that. Even though divorced meant the same as disgrace, a damnation in the eyes of small-town folks, being single suited Flannery just fine. Still, she couldn’t talk about the marriage, not to anyone, ever.

      Last year when she’d returned home to Louisville from “Patsy’s birthday week,” Flannery had stopped taking the pills. She’d cleaned herself up with the help of a nice psychiatrist, after having swallowed one too many and once again landed in Saint Anthony’s. That hospital had kept her for two weeks. Two whole weeks. Luckily, it hadn’t affected her teaching position at the elementary school because she had been on summer break, and the school was never the wiser. In some ways, bigger, more important ways, cities provided a shelter that no small town could.

      Flannery hung the pink, wet towel over the tub and opened the window to air out the sickeningly perfumed bathroom.

      Leaning over the sill, she looked out past the trees toward Ebenezer