JoLynn called her once a week too, making sure to keep telephoning if Flannery was out and until she reached her. And twice a month when the young mother and her family came to Louisville to shop, JoLynn made sure to stop in and visit Flannery.
Ben Junior even dubbed her Aunt Flannery, and when the Pucketts’ sitter canceled on them for the parents’ second honeymoon trip, the boy spent a week in Louisville with Flannery. Ben Junior had trouble with his fractions and Flannery enjoyed helping him learn. She told him to think of fractions as slices of pizza pie. “Ben,” she’d say, “five tenths is like five of the ten slices of a pizza, and we all know that when I’ve eaten five of ten slices, I’ve eaten half the whole thing.” He got that real fast. They’d celebrated at a pizzeria.
And when Ben Junior was married under the weeping willow last spring, Flannery was invited. She couldn’t have been prouder if it had been her own son, and felt Honey Bee was looking down, pleased to see one of his dreams come to life.
Flannery had stayed at the Puckett home last Christmas for the first time, enjoying Ben Senior’s fine Christmas Eve service he’d preached over at the United Methodist Church, seeing Ben Junior’s pretty new bride, and helping JoLynn prepare a grand Christmas feast.
Flannery had brought a box of Christmas oranges she’d purchased from the farmers’ market in Louisville, and the family stuffed their Christmas stockings with them, the aroma of fresh, tart fruit permeating the house, a cheer against the winter storm brewing outside.
Flannery stood back to admire the stockings hanging from the mantel above a cozy fire. JoLynn came in from the kitchen and handed Flannery a small package.
“Open it,” JoLynn said.
Flannery hadn’t bought gifts, just the oranges, and she hesitated.
“Go ahead,” Ben Junior and his bride and Ben Senior cheered, smiling.
JoLynn pushed. “It’s not a purchase.”
Flannery unwrapped the gift and found a beautiful, hand-quilted Christmas stocking with Aunt Flannery embroidered on it that JoLynn had made.
Flannery’s old eyes filled as she looked around the home of her family, the ones gone and the ones who were now given to her. She breathed in the festive air and could almost smell the Christmas pine Honey Bee would chop down for the parlor, imagine his rugged face, a twinkle in his eye—hear Patsy’s excited giggles and Mama’s musical laughter echoing. Family. It was all intoxicating, and something she’d thought she would never have again, never feel again.
“My seams are a little crooked, but I hope you like it.” JoLynn grinned.
Speechless, Flannery could only bob her head and stare at the precious gift.
Taking the present from Flannery’s spindly fingers, JoLynn stuffed an orange gently inside and hung it in between the Pucketts’ stockings.
“We can’t have anyone waking up Christmas morning without a stocking. You’re family too,” JoLynn announced with a sniffle. “Our family.”
The Pucketts gathered around Flannery, pulling her into their arms.
JoLynn was a young mother who was wise and kind in old ways lost to this frenzied world, her family gentle and hardworking. Flannery loved JoLynn, the sweet family, and the new life and laughter they breathed into the Butler home—her.
*
In 2014, Flannery was delighted to find out she was going to be a great aunt, that Ben Junior and his wife were having a baby.
Excited, Flannery took her brothers’ wooden cradle to Glass Ferry to surprise them with it. The crib had been so dear to her mama, and she couldn’t think of anything finer to give her new family—this precious baby coming into her life.
But when she opened the rear car door to show JoLynn, her friend had paled. A second later, JoLynn teared up, and she told Flannery to take it back. It was their first and only disagreement.
“I thought the kids might like it,” Flannery said, hurt. “Look at the fine workmanship on the wood. There’s a perfect sweep on the carved rockers here.” She tapped the base. “It’s sturdy enough for my grandnephew or niece, twins even—”
“I’m sorry, Flannery,” JoLynn said. “I can’t have it for my grandbaby.”
“But it’s antique, and you like antiques.” Flannery raised a hand to the Puckett house packed with old furnishings.
Trembling, JoLynn shook her head and said, “No. Not that.”
“But—”
“Take it back!” JoLynn ran to the house.
Bewildered, Flannery stared after her, wondering what had gotten into JoLynn.
On the drive home, Flannery reasoned that JoLynn must want something more modern for the young couple, a piece without history. Maybe JoLynn thought it was bad luck for her son and daughter-in-law to have it.
Back home, Flannery had a neighbor lug her brothers’ crib back into the garage. That evening JoLynn called and apologized for her strange behavior, leaving it at just that, an apology and no other clue as to why the earlier outburst.
A few weeks passed, and JoLynn stopped in Louisville to visit Flannery. JoLynn seemed back to her old self, the crib business forgotten, her chatter happy, her hugs warm.
CHAPTER 34
2016
Flannery pulled her Buick up to Ebenezer Road, the June sun warming her seventy-nine-year-old body as she stepped out of the car on the eve of her and Patsy’s birthday. Still spry for her age, she opened the trunk and pulled out the small hand shovel and towel.
The grass seemed a bit higher, wilder, the old tree beyond the rusty bull gate a little more beaten and broke-limbed than on that day, but it still felt like it could’ve been yesterday. Was one of those memories where it would always be yesterday for Flannery.
Under the elm, Flannery pressed her knees into the towel and shoulders into her small gardening tool, wedged her gnarled hands down deeper between the dirt and cookie tin. Carefully, she worked the soil with her bony fingers, separating the earth until she unplugged the cookie tin.
At last she held it up, heard the rattle of pearls against copper, and lifted her head, letting her prayers wash the sky.
She’d come back every year for the last four decades, checking. Each time digging it up, inspecting the pearls and bullet inside, then burying it all back again. But this year the doctor told Flannery her ticker wasn’t strong. Told her to slow down some.
Flannery worried she couldn’t wait for another year to pass. She’d have to touch the pearls one last time and say a final good-bye.
She pushed the shovel aside, and Honey Bee’s wristwatch broke loose from its clasp and slipped off her arm, falling onto the tin.
Alarmed, Flannery picked it up. The drop had cracked the old, brittle crystal. Peering closer, she spied the dead second hand. Flannery shook the watch, tapped it a few times, and held it up to her ear. Broke. Everything breaks eventually, like me too.
That old watch had been running forever, grabbing the extra life since the ’40s without so much as a hiccup, and here it stopped. Stopped as sure as it started when Honey Bee’d given her those extra eight minutes when she was born.
For as long as Flannery could remember, like her, Honey Bee had set the Zenith watch exactly eight minutes fast. He’d said he started doing it on the day she was born, and told her many times, “In eight minutes your life can change, Flannery girl. And when you were minutes behind your sister, ol’ Doc knew you were in trouble. Mama’s cord caught hold of you and wouldn’t let go, damn near killing you and her, till the doc cut you out. That eight-minutes-late arrival changed your life and changed mine. You weren’t born eight minutes late; you were born eight minutes on time to steal from the devil. And I aim for you to hold on to that time for when that thief comes a’calling.”
He’d reminded her another time too when they were on the river and had passed the spot where the men had come after them. “Always guard your eight minutes. Lord knows I wish I had them for your brothers. If only I’d gotten to them sooner . . .” Honey Bee had grown quiet for the rest of the day, stoking something troubling inside him.