Apple Pie Shine

Apple Pie Shine

It was Jimmy who was waiting for her at the bus stop outside of Berea. Jimmy who took her plastic travel bag and threw it in the trunk of his old Pontiac. Jimmy who offered her a nip from the shine flask he always carried. Jimmy who told her the way it felt to clean up warm intestines. She could have stopped him, asked him to quit talking about it until she got drunk. Raw from the bus ride and hoarse from the loss, she listened, consuming each bite like she’d been eating that apple.

The drive from the bus station took longer than she remembered. Winding hills, climbing deeper and deeper into the holler seemed small, more jagged, less beautiful. In her mind, the holler had always been a place of enchantment. Even though most folks had less than what she made in a week to live on for a month, somehow people managed to get by, learning to rely on one another, their kin, and the randomness of kindness.

“So we gonna have to pay for Mama’s plot,” Jimmy finally said after he’d explained in harrowed detail the clean-up process. His bloodshot eyes had cut across to Audra, sitting in the bench style front seat. He’d reached inside his jacket for the flask, forgetting that it was empty already.

“How much,” Audra asked.

“A lot.”

She’d anticipated this. Knew that Jimmy and Pete wouldn’t have a lick of money between the two of them, and that it would fall to her to pay for it.

At the funeral parlor, the undertaker mortician was a greasy, slick haired fat man with a charlatan voice and a bulbous nose. He’d pressed the siblings, trying to convince them that Ginny needed an expensive casket, something with lace and mother-of-pearl. If it’d been up to Pete, they would have buried Mama in a pine box and been done with it. After haggling over price and the style of casket for an hour, Audra was out all of her savings and hadn’t even been able to afford a headstone. She promised herself that she’d get one for Ginny, one day.

The funeral was sparsely attended. Everyone in town knew that Ginny was off a bit, and she’d stuck to herself for so long that anyone who used to be her friend had long since given up hope of ever getting back into her world. The last few years, Ginny would walk the woods, a collection of motley feral cats following behind her. Jimmy stayed drunk, Pete stayed silent, leaving Audra to greet the random cousins who wanted to come see what all the fuss was about. The casket remained closed, even though Ginny’s wound was in her stomach. It was easier that way; better to not see the woman’s face cold and dead.