Hunny

Chapter 2: Fire in Her Bones

Arkansas, Late 1940s

Hunny didn’t walk. She staked claim — dust rising in her wake like defiance made tangible. Every step she took was a declaration, a dare to any soul within earshot. Her hips swung more than necessary, reckless as Sunday church bells, while saddle shoes slapped the dusty road. Hunny always walked with a purpose, but what that purpose was, most folks missed, and she didn’t share.

She was never just a poor girl hemmed in by hardship — she was raw voltage, the kind of lightning the good church folk pretended not to notice until it split the sky wide open or hit them square between the eyes.

Before she painted her lips the color red in silent rebellion, Hunny ruled her childhood like a barefoot empress of disobedience. Fence lines weren’t barriers — they were invitations. And the wedge between her Daddy and the Preacher’s clan stood tall. But the kids? They blurred those borders. They would vanish into the briar patch and overgrown garden rows, chasing shrieks of laughter where propriety couldn't catch them. It wasn’t play—it was mutiny. A holy secret under a sun-dappled sky. Hunny was their general, full of orders, splinters, and gall.

She never waited for permission. She didn’t flatter. And she never came home clean.

She’d return feral — watermelon juice dripping down scratched knees, hair tangled with twigs, both shoes sacrificed somewhere between rebellion and recklessness. Her Mamma would clutch her Bible and warn of Paw’s fury, but Hunny wore defiance like a badge of honor stitched from scars. Watermelons became her calling card. She’d sneak past barbed wire like a ghost, drag the fat fruit to the clearing behind the shed, and if rage had risen in her chest, that battered sledgehammer would sing.

“You gonna eat it?” asked a boy once, eyes wide as platters.

“Nope,” she grinned. “I smashed it so it’d regret growin’ — just like my Paw regrets me.”

Snakes offered a different kind of thrill — cooler than boys, more honest. She’d snatch them mid-hiss, swing them around her neck like a treasured necklace, cackling as her baby sisters screamed. Momma’s scold had no teeth; she threatened but never followed through. She thought that her mamma felt the brutality of their Paw was more than enough discipline for any child.

Hunny would just laugh and say, “They know it ain’t poisonous. Ain’t no need to cry over what won’t kill you.” To Hunny if it was dangerous, it was exciting.

But it wasn’t about danger. It was about control.

By sixteen, her name was legend. She could out-sprint, out-yell, and out-curse any boy in town. When E.C. joined the Marines, Hunny didn’t cry. She watched from beneath a peach tree, arms tight across her chest, jaw locked like a vault. The ache didn’t show — not in her eyes, not in her stride.

She claimed she didn’t think of him. But her fingers traced the grooves he’d carved into the porch railing. The silence was loudest near the pecan tree where he'd once sat and whittled. She'd grown choosier. Less scrapes, more studies. Boys weren’t lovers—they were chess pieces. She watched them to learn the angles of deceit, the weight of departure.

None of them felt real—not compared to E.C., that silent storm with feather-light strength. His quiet lingered longer than the noise.

At seventeen, she flirted with precision but granted no victories. She'd laugh and lean in, but her kisses were warnings, not promises. What she wanted hadn’t come home yet. Not officially.

On sweltering nights, she'd sit outside, carving pine bark into feathered shapes, humming half-buried hymns, and pretending not to wish for a life free of fear and full of E.C.

When word spread E.C. was returning, her breath staggered. She stopped sleeping, as if she were guarding her dreams from theft.

And then, one glorious July morning, he returned.

The air hung heavy, thick as syrup and mean as gossip. Hunny stood on the porch, pretending her fingernails mattered, heartbeat riotous behind her ribs. She felt him before she saw him — a shift in the wind, birds erupting skyward like something sacred had come undone.

The crunch of gravel announced him.

Her Momma watched from the window — laundry limp in her lap, jaw tight, eyes hollow. She’d seen that hush before—the kind that followed a broken wrist no one dared explain. Her Momma always figured Paw’s fury was the culprit. And Hunny? She took her beatings with a grin, just to prove pain had no dominion over her.

E.C. stepped out — boots first, body next, like he’d been carved from Tennessee oak, edges worn but not dulled. His uniform shimmered, lines sharp against soft light, as if war had pressed him clean.

That’s when she looked.

Her breath didn’t catch. It bolted.

He hugged his Momma, nodded at the Preacher, and tipped his cap with reverence. Hunny didn’t care. She watched him as if he were her one bright, shining hope. Every movement told a story she remembered better than the Preacher’s sermons.

Her mama tugged the curtain shut.

“He ain’t yours,” she muttered. “Don’t start that fire.”

But Hunny had already lit the match.

She stepped forward, sunlight slicing through her auburn hair, lips painted like they’d been dipped in wildfire. She radiated confidence far beyond someone of her age and upbringing should ever have.

Down the road, a picnic table sagged beneath names she'd once run wild with. Laughter tiptoed among them—Billie Dee, Erma Jean, Juanita—all pretending not to see the storm walking toward them. Public manners trumped private loyalty. Heads turned, but never lingered.

E.C. didn’t turn away.

She marched toward the table, smiling with determination, and climbed atop it like it was her stage, toes curling to avoid the splinters. She walked its length, stopped in front of him, and planted her bare, dirty foot right in the center of his watermelon.

Juice exploded. Silence clung.

“Hiya, soldier,” she drawled.

The air trembled. Ants and clouds suddenly became fascinating to the others at the table. Folks had said she cursed without speaking, and E.C. guessed they were right. It was her tone, her facial expressions, and the way she stood, straight back, chin held high, that said, without saying, “piss on you, if you can’t take a joke” (which would become her signature phrase as an adult). But E.C.? He stared like he’d just seen heaven and heard the angels dare to speak his name.

Church gossip devoured the moment before sundown. That wild redhead—the drunk’s daughter—had stomped a perfectly good watermelon and flirted like sin. Some muttered shame. Others whispered about freedom disguised as rebellion.

“You couldn’t just smile and wave?” E.C. whispered, struggling against a smirk.

“I don’t just wave at boys,” Hunny said, flicking seeds off her heel. “I make damn sure they remember me.”

She didn’t need watermelon crimes to be unforgettable. She was infamous. Dangerous. Mythical.

Her Paw was said to keep a shotgun loaded with rock salt, always aimed at any suitor who dared approach. She’d meet the boys down the road a piece, and when returning after dark, she would jump from the car just before her Paw pulled the trigger. Her sisters wept through her beatings. Hunny never cried. She taunted him—daring him to break something he couldn’t control.

She worked at the feed store under a false pretense of actually attending school. She had stopped attending because she was certain they had no useful information to impart to an ambitious young lady of the “white trash” persuasion. The job at the feed store was hers — her coin, her salvation. Her mama knew but kept silent. If Paw found out, he'd drink her wages dry at Zoobee’s honky-tonk. She had plans, and he was not going to steal her money or her spirit. It was either make her own money or marry to escape the house of horrors where she presently resided.

The only candidate for husband she had even considered was the young, quiet marine from a family steeped in hatred for those lesser beings without the moral compass they mistakenly thought they possessed. She was definitely off-limits for any male member of the Webb clan to date or for any female member to befriend.

But E.C. wasn’t deterred.

He lingered. He showed up. He orbited.

He didn’t want to fix her. He wanted to be the doorway, her way out.

Hunny didn’t ask to be saved. She could build her own exit. She knew if she held out, E.C. would marry her if only to spite the Preacher and his wife. She was wild, yes, but her virtue was intact and would stay that way until marriage. It was her only bargaining chip. If he wanted her, he would marry her!

And it was never a request.

It was a promise. And since he was now home from the Great War and would soon be out of the Marine Corps, she wouldn’t have to worry about him. But what she didn’t know was that he had joined the Naval Reserves as a “safe” way to serve the rest of his time. What happened in 1950 could not have been predicted, or at least not by the likes of anyone from Arkansas.

So, on a muggy morning, outside the house of another preacher. Hunny wore white that didn’t belong to her and held flowers she stole from the preacher’s front yard. E.C. stood beside her, uniform starched, jaw set, his future chosen in spite of his family. And noticeably sullen but in attendance was E.C.’s mamma.

E.C.’s momma, while getting dressed to attend the sorted affair, had told him flatly: “I’d rather be going to your funeral than your wedding. Why you would choose to marry so far beneath you, I will never know.”

Hunny did not hear this statement through rumor. E.C. told her straight up. That was the beginning, or more so, the continuation of a lifelong feud that even grandchildren could not calm. Their hatred for one another ran deep and would last a lifetime.

“She believes death’s cleaner than rebellion,” he said. “But I’d rather survive with you than die politely without you”, E.C. lamented.

The preacher refused to call her Hunny and used her given name instead, “Helen Elizabeth.” Hunny didn’t correct him. She wasn’t marrying a name. She was making a declaration.

After the ceremony, there was no reception as was tradition. The few people in attendance went about their day. Hunny and E.C. ate fried pies under the peach tree. After the wedding, she had kicked off her shoes the minute she said “I do. Feet bare, a mouth sticky with sugar, and the vow to love, honor, and cherish (she refused to have obey mentioned in her vows) still fresh in her mind. E. C. tucked a flower from her make-shift bouquet behind her ear and whispered against her temple.

“You make me brave.”

She smiled triumphantly. She looked up at the sky to a God that she felt had long since forgotten about her and thought, “Took you long enough.”