The Loves of Ruby Dee (21 page)

With Ruby Dee in the house, every morning there was an enormous breakfast on the table, every noon a light meal, and every evening another enormous meal. There was ice tea and fresh-squeezed orange juice in the refrigerator and fresh baked cookies in the cookie jar.

With Ruby Dee, there was prayer before meals, lingering afterward over the best coffee Will had ever tasted, and watching while Ruby Dee hummed her way through clearing the dishes. There were clean towels on the rods, clean socks and underwear in their drawers and clean sheets on their beds each Wednesday. Sheets that smelled like summer air, because she strung the clothesline from her aluminum trailer to the corner of the tractor barn.

Will had propped a two-by-four in the middle of it to keep it from sagging when it was loaded with sheets or her endless array of underthings.

With Ruby Dee in the house, Will saw more bras and panties in a month than he had seen in his entire lifetime—hanging all over the shower rod, fallen on the floor, lying on the washer. In Will’s opinion, the woman was a little careless with clothes that were not meant to be seen.

One afternoon, he found a bra lying on the stairway. It was startling pink against the worn brown wood. As far as Will could tell, Ruby Dee didn’t have a stitch of white underwear.

He hesitated, then picked up the delicate article, held it gingerly with his fingers. It struck him that, aside from undoing clasps when these things were on a female, he had never touched one.

He could hear her singing in her bedroom. He went on up and stopped in the open doorway of her room. She was peering into the mirror above the dresser and swaying to the sound of her own singing. Will imagined quite dearly what the pink bra and matching panties would look like on her beneath the dress she wore.

Seeing him in the mirror, she whirled around. “Will, you scared the daylights out of me! I guess I was thinkin’ hard.”

“The door was open,” he said. “Ah...you dropped this on the stairs.” He held out the bra.

She didn’t so much as blush. “Oh, gosh, thank you so much. I just carried a load down to the washer. I want to hang them out in the moonlight tonight.” She said it as if the moonlight were something very important.

She turned back to the mirror, and Will’s gaze roamed the room. It had become the most colorful place in the house. Scarves draped here and there, old movie and circus posters, books and magazines, that urn on the dresser.

“Will, I’ve got somethin’ in my eye...I can’t see anything, and I’ve blinked and blinked. Can you see anything?”

She came over to him, just like that, and lifted her face to him. There was that about Ruby Dee—she didn’t keep distance with anyone. She touched people with her hands and her eyes and her voice.

He looked closely. “I think...yeah, there’s a piece of fuzz. Don’t blink.” His fingers felt big and clumsy, but he managed to pick away the fine, crinkled filament caught in her lashes. “There.”

“Thanks...oh, that’s better.” She blinked rapidly.

And then her eyes were on his, and he knew she was feeling the same heat he was, because those brown eyes began to steam.

That she would feel what he did came as a distinct surprise. Later he wondered if he had imagined it. Maybe it had been some other emotion.

With Ruby Dee in the house, there was so much emotion, like her underwear, cast all over the place. Her coffee-brown eyes shimmered and simmered with feelings, the same as a neon sign, and she didn’t try to hide them any more than she did her underwear.

She didn’t laugh a lot, but she had a way of smiling quietly, and she could sure snap like summer lightning if she was mad. She turned to liquid when she was sad. The woman could cry...at a sad movie, a song on the radio, a dead bird left by the cat, and over nothing in particular at all.

Ruby Dee’s frank display of emotions unnerved Will. Aside from anger, which he tried to keep under wraps, he wasn’t used to emotions being on open display. Giving way to feelings just wasn’t done in his world. The fight he and the old man had had was a prime example of what could happen when they weren’t contained.

As for crying, he had seen his father cry one time in his life, and that had been the day his mother left. He remembered his daddy calling Lonnie a sissy for crying. Aunt Roe had held that an emotional display was so unseemly that at her own husband’s funeral she had gotten up and served cake, dry-eyed and grand with grace, and when his cousin Betty Jo started crying, Aunt Roe had cuffed her good and sent her from the room. After that, anyone in the room even thinking about crying had dried up.

Ruby Dee’s emotions swirling all around made Will pointedly aware of emotions inside himself that he didn’t understand and didn’t want to understand, by God.

They also made him powerfully aware of living the life of a monk, a life he had not chosen at all.

Tossing his cigarette butt into the dirt, Will went to see if he could find a can of stop-leak for the radiator. As far as he could tell, deep thinking got a man nowhere but confused.

* * * *

Wildcat went home after Ruby Dee bandaged his hand, and Will went back to fixing fence with Lonnie. Apparently Lonnie felt the need to cover the older man’s absence by talking.

“I heard on the weather channel this mornin’ that rain isn’t in sight for another two weeks. We’re gonna burn up...Wildcat says he hasn’t seen a summer like this one since 1980. I don’t recall how it was that year. I didn’t pay much attention to the weather in high school...Wildcat, he eats and sleeps weather and movies.”

“Hand me a couple of clips,” Will broke in, wiping sweat from his eyes with his shirt sleeve.

“I really hate workin’ with these things. Staples in wood posts are easier. ‘Course, wood posts rot. I don’t know how such stupid creatures as these cattle can always manage to find the one place they can get through. Seems like—”

“Lonnie, can you shut up for five minutes?”

Lonnie grinned. He had been intent on annoying Will, and he had succeeded. Lonnie did know his brother well. “If you’d like to be rid of me, I’ll just knock off for the day.”

Will straightened. “Okay, you win. You’ll talk me to death if I don’t give in.”

Will was still trying to get his stiff legs to work by the time Lonnie had the tools and supplies stowed in the back of the truck. As far as Lonnie was concerned, cows would always be getting out and fences would always need fixing, and there was no need to get overworked about it.

Soaked with sweat and irritated at leaving a job half done, Will headed the truck toward home on the red sandy road. A quarter of a mile from the drive, they saw Ruby Dee and Sally at the mailbox, getting the mail. Lonnie reached over and tooted the horn. Shielding her eyes with her hand, Ruby Dee stood there and watched them come, her legs apart, clearly outlined by her dress.

Will had come to the conclusion that Ruby Dee never was going to put on a pair of pants. He had never seen that she had any.

“You two ladies are an awful pretty sight,” Lonnie called and went sailing out the door before Will got the truck stopped.

“You want a ride back to the house?” Will asked, but Ruby Dee shook her head.

“We’re a lot cooler out here than squashed in that truck, and the whole purpose of walkin’ down for the mail is for me and Sally to get some exercise.” She held the mail out to him. “You want to look now?”

He shook his head. “Lonnie might.” Then he drove on, careful to go slowly so as not to stir up dust.

He watched them in the rearview mirror. Lonnie took her hand once, briefly. Will didn’t know if Lonnie had let go of her hand or if Ruby Dee had drawn away. She laughed and ran a few feet, and Lonnie chased her...playing like kids. Both of them were like that, with the dog yipping around them in circles.

Then Will looked straight ahead. He felt old and shut out. He had the urge to put his hand through the dusty windshield.

From his bedroom window, Hardy watched his younger son and Ruby Dee. Lonnie was showing off, and for the space of half a minute Hardy felt a deep kinship with his son. It was painful, watching his son, who was a reminder of the man Hardy had once been...a man long dead.

Hardy swiveled the wheelchair and bumped into the bedpost. “Damn!” It seemed the wheelchair was out to kill him. Finally he got it over to the nightstand. Bending, he lifted a colorful tin. It had contained Whitman’s candies about twenty years ago.

He lifted its lid and pulled out a small black folder. He opened it and stared at the portrait inside. Jooney. She wore a coat with fur up around the neck. It had belonged to the photographer. She looked like a lady in it, despite she had only been fifteen at the time.

“Dad?”

Will’s voice startled him. He twisted around to see Will poking his head in the door.

“What’d ya want?”

“I was just checkin’ to see if you needed anything.”

“Privacy. I need privacy. Somebody’s always pokin’ their head in my room.”

“Not because it gives us a lot of pleasure,” Will said sharply.

He went upstairs to beat Lonnie to the shower. More and more he was feeling the need to beat his brother out on a few things. He was getting pretty damn tired of having Lonnie’s charms with women played out right in front of his face. Lonnie wasn’t the only one who could make Ruby Dee light up. Will could, too, and he had an idea about how to make her glow, and all for him.

Chapter 17

Two evenings later
,
after supper, Will said, “I got a horse for you, Ruby Dee, if you’re still wantin’ to ride.”

Her face lit up like that of a child seeing a Christmas tree. “Oh, you do? Oh, yes, I’d like that a lot. Now?” Then she was up and eagerly clearing the table. “I’ll just stack the dishes and wash them up later.” And she smiled at him, a really bright smile.

Lonnie stared at Will with curiosity—and annoyance, too. He didn’t like having Ruby Dee’s attention stolen from him. Lighting up Ruby Dee and putting a damper on his brother at the same time made Will quite satisfied all the way around.

He felt so satisfied that for a few foolish minutes he harbored the idea that he might have Ruby Dee all to himself. But of course Lonnie and the old man had to go out and take part. Lonnie went and saddled up his paint pony, while Ruby Dee and Will got the old man into the Galaxie and drove him over to the training pen, where Will wanted to start. He was going to make darn certain Ruby Dee really could ride before she struck out into wide open spaces.

The old man’s and Lonnie’s eyebrows went up when they saw the horse Will had for Ruby Dee. It was a twelve-year-old dappled gray Will had sold two years ago to the Millers, who had wanted an older horse for their son to learn on. None of the ranch horses would have been suitable for Ruby Dee to ride, at least not without Will worrying himself to death. They didn’t pay particular attention to getting a ranch horse well-broke. Even the ten-year olds they had could be wild, and Will didn’t keep horses much past that age.

The dappled gray was naturally quiet and had been well trained in during its two years with the Millers.

“Oh, she’s lovely,” Ruby Dee said. “What’s her name?”

Will shrugged. “I don’t recall. Lonnie, do you recall this horse’s name?”

“Oh, somethin’ Smokey. She’s one of those Doc horses.”

“Well, she has to have a name,” Ruby Dee said, as if Will had better produce one.

Will felt he had let her down, but he just couldn’t think of a name. “I guess you could name her whatever you want.” He thought that was saving the day, but she didn’t seem any happier about it. “Are you ready?” he asked, eager to change the subject.

Her expression brightened again, and she nodded, reaching up to grab hold on the saddle.

“Are you gonna ride like that?” the old man demanded, shouting from the front seat of the convertible.

“Like what?” She looked downward. “I’m wearin’ boots.”

“In that dress, dang it. You can’t ride in that dress.”

“Why
not? It’s loose, see.” She lifted out the skirt to show it was wide and roomy.

“‘Cause you’re gonna show all the way to yer fanny, that’s why not.”

She gave a little laugh. “Oh, Hardy, you know I don’t ever wear pants...and you’ve seen a girl’s fanny before.”

On occasion Ruby Dee did say embarrassing things like that, but it was a little startling to hear her say it to the old man. Will’s eyes met Lonnie’s, and he saw his brother was also taken aback.

“You hold that horse, Will, until she’s sittin’ good,” the old man called, even while Will had hold of the horse’s bridle. Ruby Dee swung up into the saddle with only a flash of bare thighs. Will had to adjust the stirrup leathers for her, and he made certain the reins were straight before he let her go. Lonnie, sitting on his paint pony outside the fence, was fairly fuming, which added to Will’s enjoyment.

“All set?” he asked.

Her dark eyes eager and just a little nervous, she nodded. He stepped back to watch from the middle of the round pen, to be there in case she should have some trouble. The gray mare was calm and quiet but not unspirited. And any horse was a wild animal and not totally predictable.

She could ride, just as she had said she could. She was nervous and stiff at first, but she had a good seat, and she was firm enough so that the horse didn’t act up. Within minutes she was galloping around the pen, her hair flying back, delight beaming from her face. Standing there and watching her, pleasure spilled all over Will. She was awfully pretty, riding in the golden glow of a western sun.

Of course the confines of the training pen weren’t going to contain her for long. Will didn’t wait for her to ask but went over and opened the gates that led into the arena. She shot over in there, and Will flung himself on top of the mustang to join her, leaving Lonnie to answer the old man’s demand to be driven over to a better watching spot.

Ruby Dee acted the same on the mare as she did in the convertible—she wanted to run.

After getting the car parked to the old man’s specifications, Lonnie joined them on his paint pony. He and Will fell to mirroring each other, back and forth on their horses, like football players trying to block each other, each trying to outturn the other. Showing off for Ruby Dee, of course. Will didn’t cut Lonnie any slack at all. Lonnie was younger, but Will never felt his years on the back of a horse. In the saddle, he knew who he was.