Patsy stole a quick glance at the pile of chimney ruins, then back over to the automobile. It had a full tank, Hollis assured her, and her date did too. More than what she’d first thought.
Patsy slipped behind the elm, took her stare to Paintlick Field, waiting for Danny to finish. In a few minutes it got quiet, and she poked her head out and saw what she’d feared. Danny was splayed out in the backseat, passed out from all the hooch he’d been drinking. Hollis leaned against the hood, sipping from a flask.
Flannery had been right after all, Patsy thought.
Patsy rubbed at the rash heating her neck, patting its flaming flesh once, twice, and cried out, “My pearls, oh, my pearls. They’re gone!” Patsy looked down at the ground, twisted and turned, glancing all around. “Help me find them. Please!”
“Sure thing, doll baby,” Hollis slurred, sauntering toward her.
Hollis had set his looting eyes on her from the moment he pulled up to the house. Most of the girls in town thought he was charming in an odd, dangerous way. But Danny was who she wanted; he had wooed her with his book smarts and mostly good grades—something Hollis didn’t know. Hollis’s brain was soaked from bourbon, grease-lightning automobiles, guns, and smutty girls. For two years Hollis had been working as a broom boy down at one of the distilleries, sweeping dirt and stacking barrels, and for weeks now he’d been trolling for another chance with Patsy.
Patsy tried not to give much thought to the older brother, now and oftentimes before this evening, showed contempt for his oil-spotted shirts and dirt-stained hands. When Danny was near, she did it for his sake too.
It was unnerving, the way Danny made her feel protected and certain while Hollis alarmed her and left her confused and out of control. Aside from Danny’s growing fondness for liquor, the brothers were anything but alike.
The three, she, Danny, and Hollis, had been pals when she and Danny were in third grade, and Hollis in fourth, all of them hanging in the school yard, skipping rope, playing tag. It had been an easy choice since Flannery wasn’t much interested in being with the threesome, preferring to twirl her baton with the group of girls called the Battling Bats.
Patsy and Danny had looked up to Hollis, especially when he got himself a huge growth spurt and filled out some. And through the years, Hollis’d looked after them, too, making sure bullies kept their distance from Patsy and Danny.
One time in third grade, out in the school yard, Patsy had a sudden nosebleed. Danny had paled and squealed, but Hollis didn’t. He patted her shoulder, telling her he’d get help.
Then Hollis tore out for the school building, slipping inside to find something to stop the gushing. He’d raced back out with a heap of tissue in his hands, helping Patsy press the wad to her nose, slowly walking her inside to the school nurse.
But when Hollis hit seventh grade, and Patsy was in fifth, he’d ruined their friendship after he’d tried to snatch a kiss from her when no one was looking.
Embarrassed, Patsy stopped hanging with Danny and Hollis when the brothers were together, keeping her distance from the older brother, who became an even bigger pest after the stolen kiss, teasing, dogging her off and on over the years, and usually in between his other girlfriends.
Danny and Patsy’d paired off quietly and left the boisterous Hollis out. Danny was the one, and she had known it when he’d first shown up at her house with some magazines when she turned fifteen, and then brought her a handful of wildflowers the following Sunday. They’d have themselves quiet visits on the porch. She loved the way Danny talked about getting out of Glass Ferry, stepping out of the shadows of his lawman daddy and big brother.
Danny’d told Patsy he’d always had himself a fancy for one of those modern kit houses like the ones that used to come straight from the Sears, Roebuck and Company catalog. Had his eye on the Liberty ready-cut homes that cost less than one thousand dollars and could be mail ordered and shipped by rail to anywhere you laid down roots. Like old Willy Nickles’s house that he’d bought for three hundred seventy-two dollars in the twenties and put together on Turkey Hill.
Danny had himself some fine aspirations of owning a real castle, becoming a real businessman someday, away from the stinking bourbon town. Many Sunday afternoons the two had spent pouring through his catalogs and old copies of Harper’s Bazaar and the Screen Romances magazines that belonged to his mama and he’d be sure to sneak over.
Patsy pinched at her sticky prom dress, lifted the fabric away from her sweaty chest, looking down at her breasts to see if the pearls might have fallen there.
“I can’t find them,” Patsy said, wild-eyed. “My pearls.”
Hollis lumbered around, kicking at the dirt and leaves. “Me neither,” he mumbled.
Patsy begged him to search some more just as footfalls up Ebenezer Road sounded behind her, closer and closer. Flannery’s.
Flannery ignored them, trudged right past the automobile and her sister, but Patsy latched on to her arm. “You need to help me.”
“Fat chance after you ruined my nylons,” Flannery said, and glanced at the Mercury and Danny’s head plowed against the backseat, mouth ajar. “Patsy, you better march your butt back home if you know what’s good for you. Look at your date, him near dead drunk like that. He’ll embarrass you and me and Mama, too—”
“Tadpole, not now. Oh, I’ve lost them,” Patsy said. “Did you see my pearls back at the house?”
Flannery pulled her glare to Hollis. “These Henry boys are no dates for a prom.”
Patsy followed her sister’s gaze. Hollis held a smirk on his whiskey-glossed lips. “Flannery, my pearls, have you seen them?” Patsy asked again.
A flicker of anger lit Flannery’s eyes. “Gee, no.”
“They’re not here, doll baby,” Hollis said to Patsy, sounding bored.
“Help me find them,” Patsy pleaded tearfully, struggling to stay pretty and fresh as a rain-splashed daisy. Something she was good at too—the faucet she could switch on with no more than a blink. The tears had worked mostly on Honey Bee, always on Mama, and some on Flannery.
Patsy couldn’t bear to see anyone else’s tears, though. Especially not Flannery’s. It was as if her heart was being handed back to her broken.
“Check in the Mercury,” Patsy told Hollis. “Flannery, help us. I can’t lose them.”
Flannery swept her hand down her wrinkly uniform and the torn stockings from Patsy’s earlier kick. “What about these? These cost me a whole forty-nine cents, Patsy Butler.”
She winced. “Not now. Help me find them.”
Again, Flannery pointed at her own legs, then tugged at Patsy’s dress. “You need to fix this.”
Patsy brushed off her sister’s hand.
Suddenly, Flannery kicked off her shoes. “You know the rules. Chubby Ray’ll send me home if he catches me like this.” Turning around, Flannery reached high under her dress and unsnapped the garters. Hopping on one foot and then another, she bent over and peeled off the ruined hosiery.
“Flannery Butler! Stop it . . . Oh . . . What are you doing?” Patsy’s eyes popped.
Flannery threw her stockings at Patsy’s feet. “Give me your nylons.”
Hollis picked them up and struck a low catcall.
“Give ’em here,” Flannery demanded. “They’re hidden under your skirts. They ain’t no use to you.”
Patsy pressed her hand to her heated neck. “I will not!”
Flannery growled.
“I won’t be able to dance,” Patsy argued, knowing there were strict rules about the dancers scuffing up the polished wooden floors. Shoes came off for dancing, and any bare feet had to be properly covered with socks or hosiery.
“Come on, Patsy, hand them over.”
“No. You know Miss Little won’t let me on the floor, and it won’t be any fun unless I can dance. I’ll miss all the fun—”
“That’ll make two of us.” Flannery thrust out her palm, waiting.
“I won’t.”
“You’re making me late.” Flannery looked at her watch and scowled. Disgusted, she shoveled her feet back into her shoes.