The Loves of Ruby Dee (11 page)

“Let’s go,” Will said, striding into the kitchen. “We got a lot to do today.”

Wildcat and Lonnie looked up in surprise. Lonnie had sense enough to keep quiet and get on his feet. But Wildcat said, “I ain’t finished my eggs yet.”

“Bring them along then,” Will said. He stopped beside the table—Ruby Dee D’Angelo had set a full table, complete with napkins and a pitcher of orange juice—and grabbed two biscuits, broke them open and stuffed a bit of ham inside each. He held the biscuits in one hand, jammed his hat on his head with the other and then grabbed hold of Wildcat and urged him out the door.

Ruby Dee D’Angelo stood in the middle of the kitchen, steaming coffee pot in hand. The last thing Will looked at was her coffee-brown eyes. He felt them on him as he went out the door.

He was sweating again.

Chapter 9

When the men drove off for the day, Ruby Dee was in the backyard, feeding the birds the remaining biscuits. Actually, she crumbled them and threw the pieces on the ground, while the birds, watching from the power line and the trees, waited for her to finish. Ruby Dee had been hoping to feed the chickens, but the Starrs didn’t have any chickens. They had a big, wild barn cat that terrified Sally. There were a few horses in pens, and some cattle, too, in a fenced pasture to the west. Ruby Dee thought she would take time soon to go and look at them.

The Starrs and their hand, Wildcat, were squeezed together on the seat of a big old flatbed pickup, with Will Starr behind the wheel. They had a stock trailer hooked behind, carrying three saddle horses. They were on their way to sort cattle, so Will Starr had told her. It sounded like something done to laundry to Ruby Dee. He stopped and told her not to expect them back before supper time.

“If there’s an emergency with Dad, call the mobile phone number,” he said, and then drove off.

Lonnie waved gaily. “Can’t wait for supper, Ruby Dee!” he called. Lonnie Starr had few shy pockets. The way he said her name was funny, too, making it sound like the ringing of a bell.

Will Starr, on the other hand, wasn’t comfortable calling her by her given name. He made it sound like a skip over a ravine. And when he looked at her, it was mostly in a shadowed way. His disapproval was gone, though.

There was a lot to Will Starr, she thought, but it was buried in deep pockets inside him. Lord only knew what was going to happen if all the seams on those pockets burst at once. They were splitting some now.

Ruby Dee called Sally, so the dog wouldn’t chase the birds from the crumbs, and went back inside the kitchen. She stood there a minute, gathering the strength to deal with Hardy Starr. He desperately needed to get in a better mood. His thoughts were poisoning him, as much as anything. He needed cleansing inside and out, and a bath would certainly be a step in that direction. The man had spent all night in the clothes he had been wearing the day before. That was not healthy for mind nor body.

When she went to get his breakfast tray, she said, “Would you like me to give you a shave, Mr. Starr?”

It had been her experience that nothing made a man feel better than having someone give him a shave. And nothing led to rapport with her men patients like giving them a shave. Shaving broke the ice, because it was such a personal thing. Once started, Ruby Dee suspected there wasn’t a man alive she couldn’t seduce with a shave.

Hardy Starr looked startled, as if she had proposed something indecent. “I don’t care if you was the queen of Sheba, I wouldn’t want you to give me a shave! What I want is for you to get out of here and leave me alone. And take that good-for-nothin’ mutt with you.”

He spit tobacco into his spit cup and then glared—a look that was enough to melt the flowers right off Ruby Dee’s dress. Sally slunk backward. Ruby Dee got hurt and stubborn.

Hand on her hip, she approached him. “How about we get you bathed, Mr. Starr. I think you’d feel a lot better.”

That suggestion went over as well as the one about giving him a shave.

“You or no woman is gonna be bathin’ me,” he said.

“I’m a nurse, Mr. Starr. I’ve bathed lots of men.”

“Then you ought to be content with that,” he told her smartly. “Go away and leave me be. I might be dead by nightfall, anyway.”

Ruby Dee didn’t want to hear him talking about dying. It so upset her that she said very foolishly, “If you plan on dyin’, you’d certainly better get bathed and be prepared for laying out.”

They went at this sparring for a full five minutes, but in the end, he agreed to Ruby Dee’s putting the two-step kitchen stool in the bathtub, with soap and towels at hand, which would enable him to bathe himself. When she went to help him get the bandages off his knee and ankle, he slapped her hands away. Then he hobbled into the bathroom on his crutches and slammed the door shut in her face.

She hadn’t really been going to go into the bathroom with him. She had just wanted him to think so, in order to keep him stirred up. It was better for him to be stirred up than languishing in thoughts of death.

She busied herself with changing his bed linens and dusting and straightening his room, getting rid of the spit cup and bringing a fresh one. She didn’t know who had invented chewing tobacco, but in her estimation that person had not made it into heaven. In the Bible one read about all kinds of people drinking, but one did not read about the filthy habit of tobacco.

Beneath the bed, she found a bunch of candy wrappers and empty Skoal cans. These she threw away. The whiskey bottle beneath his pillow was empty, but she put it back. He would know she’d found it, but he would also know she didn’t pilfer things that didn’t belong to her. Every now and again, she would tiptoe to the bathroom door and listen for the sound of water splashing, which told her he was still alive and functioning.

After nearly forty-five minutes, Hardy Starr came hobbling out of the bathroom. He was still all bristle-faced, but he had combed his hair and he had on a clean shirt and overalls. Ruby Dee viewed him with satisfaction.

“You’d be real handsome, Mr. Starr, if you’d let me give you a shave.” She cast him a tempting look.

“Leave me be,” he told her. He wouldn’t even let her massage and wrap his ankle and knee back up. And he didn’t want anything to eat or drink, either. “Are you deaf?” he yelled. “What I want is for you to go away!”

Well. The bath had not made the transformation she had hoped for Mr. Starr.

She left him, as he wished. There were times when being alone was the best medicine. Right at that minute she would just as soon have been alone, too.

Gazing out the kitchen window, she saw the wind snatch fine sand from the rock bluffs that rose to the east, past the fenced pastures. The red dust puffed up, then disappeared to parts unknown. These men and their contention could wear her away like the wind did that sandstone, she thought. Right then she felt it wouldn’t take much for that to happen. She sensed herself as not much more than a crumbling lump of clay.

Turning her attention to the house, which couldn’t grouch at her, she went at it in the fashion of a preacher with a mission to win souls at a revival—relentlessly, with purpose and gusto. Ruby Dee considered cleaning nursing business. If the world was cleaner, there would be a lot less sickness. And cleaning the house was something worthwhile to throw herself into, so she wouldn't have to think about herself so much.

She cleaned the dishes and kitchen counters until they shone, and then she went at the bathrooms in the same way. She dusted and mopped the rest of the house, which didn’t take a whole lot of time, since she didn’t do the living room or the men’s bedrooms. There was no helping the dingy walls or the pitiful furnishings, but what she did do made a definite improvement. She left the doors to the living room slid back. The room really was ugly, but the light that came through its windows was bright and cheery, and improved the feel of the entire downstairs.

A couple of times, recalling the charm of Miss Edna’s home, Ruby Dee suddenly started crying, but she didn’t stop cleaning. Cleaning and crying seemed to Ruby Dee to go right together.

Several times she stopped and checked on Hardy Starr. He was either dozing or just sitting there, staring. After checking on him the third time, she got a knife and went outside to cut some flowers. The only ones were the brown-eyed Susans that grew along the fence rows. She cut their tough stems, brought them in and put them in water in an old quart Mason jar and carried them into Hardy Starr’s room.

He spoke to her then. “They won’t last but an hour.”

“Then you’d better enjoy them fast,” she said.

She fixed sandwiches, canned pineapple and iced tea for lunch. She had half of a Vidalia onion, which she was saving to flavor the supper meal. After arguing with herself, she cut off a thick slice and put it on Hardy Starr’s plate. Onions were good for purifying the blood, and heaven knew Hardy Starr could use that. Besides, older men just seemed to love raw onions.

She carried Hardy Starr’s lunch in to him, received not a word for her effort, and ate hers with Sally out on the back step. It was quiet, the cicadas having stopped by this time, the birds taking shade. The roof overhang provided Ruby Dee with shade, but the heat swirled around her. She thought it delicious to sip ice tea in the heat.

Ruby Dee’s thoughts went to the farm she had wanted just about ever since she could remember. Not really a working farm—she could earn her living as a healer—but a small farmhouse and some land on which to live. A place like Big Grandma’s farm.

Big Grandma had been stern and impatient and as unlike a child like Ruby Dee as a big old woman could be. She was one of those who believed in using the rod, in this case a tree switch on Ruby Dee’s legs. Still, they had found something in common, which was that they both loved the farm. Oh, Ruby Dee had loved the animals and the barn and the grass that tickled her nose. She loved the peace of the farm. She had been happier there than anywhere, except with Miss Edna, of course.

Ruby Dee looked out across the backyard at the barns and the fenced pastures. She thought about how she wanted a nice barn and pasture, great places for children to play. And how she wanted a couple of boys or a boy and a girl. She would dress them in Oshkosh overalls. She would play with them and never use tree switches on their legs. There would be haystacks to jump in, and a swing made of rope hung from a barn rafter.

These dreams were what her paper of cut-out pictures was about. The things she wanted. It had been Miss Edna’s idea a month before she passed on; she’d called it Ruby Dee’s dream paper.

“I worry about what you’ll do after I’m gone, Ruby Dee,” she’d said, not fretfully but in that fact-of-the-matter way she had. “You don’t half have a plan. You don’t know what you want half the time.”

“I know what I don’t want. It’s about the same.” But Miss Edna shook her head. “You have to be specific about what you want to get it. You have to
see
it clearly.”

So to please Miss Edna, Ruby Dee had found pictures of the things she thought she wanted and pasted them on the paper. She had actually gone and toured the house advertised by the real estate company and had looked into buying it, but she didn’t have the down payment the bank insisted upon. She had always paid cash for anything she bought, which left her without a credit history. Banks were big on credit history and very small on self-employed practical nurses.

Getting into the spirit of the thing, she had cut out the drawing of a boot from
Western Style
magazine. She wanted a pair of Blutcher handmade boots—a lot of the country-western singers had those.

And she’d put the picture of the man on the paper to please Miss Edna. Ruby Dee wasn’t certain she wanted a man, but she knew having one would be the best way to get children.

When it came to romantic relationships, Ruby Dee did not have a good track record at all. Men generally liked her, but usually they didn’t want to marry her. The couple of men who had wanted to marry her, Ruby Dee hadn’t wanted.

Ruby Dee had been very sensible about men all of her life. Because of her helter-skelter existence, often placed in foster homes that were less than they were supposed to be, she’d grown up fast in the sexual department. Very early on she had learned what a prize her sexuality was—so many boys, and men, too, were after it that she knew it was valuable. She made up her mind to keep it untouched until just the right man came along with whom to share it.

She was twenty-seven before she lost her virginity to Beauford Vandiver. He was the first, the only, man she had ever loved. They were to be married.

“Beauford Vandiver was a nefarious scoundrel. You should have known that from his name,”
Miss Edna said, still aggravated from the other side.

“How can I follow you when you use big words like that?” Ruby Dee asked. “And with that reasoning, who would trust Santa Claus?”

Beauford had been one of the prettiest men Ruby Dee had ever seen, and just as sweet as he could be. He liked to be waited on and spoiled, and he sure liked sex, but in those ways Ruby Dee found him no different from most any man she had ever known. And she liked to wait on Beauford, she liked to spoil him and she liked to have sex with him.

But they did not get married.
“Your guardian angel saved you,”
Miss Edna said.

A day before their first wedding date, Beauford broke out with the measles. On their second wedding date, it snowed and Beauford got trapped at his office. A month later Beauford told her he needed more time to think about marriage and that he was taking a job his architectural firm had offered him, building a hotel down in Acapulco. Ruby Dee saw his picture in the society pages, his arm around the daughter of the president of the firm.

Ruby Dee didn’t know if she could ever love another man. She still liked men. She just couldn’t seem to stop liking them. But she was no longer certain she wanted to risk getting involved with one. That just hurt too much.

Perhaps she could simply contract with one to give her a child. It seemed a viable alternative. That or artificial insemination. She wondered if Will Starr would be willing to give her a child. She knew she and Will Starr would have no problem having sex...not at all. But some men were touchy about being used that way.