The Loves of Ruby Dee (23 page)

She started to rise, but he reached out and grabbed her wrist.

“No. It’s just a broken lip. The rest is only dirt and bruises.”

She gazed down at him, at his hand holding her. It was the first time he had ever truly touched her.

“Right now the nurse is off-duty,” he said. “Sit back down with me for a bit.”

Slowly, her heartbeat skittering, she lowered herself once more beside him. He let go of her wrist then.

“What does the other guy look like?” She pulled her legs back up and tucked her gown and robe tight around them. Suddenly she was very aware of wearing only her thin gown and robe.

“A lot better than me,” he said, striking a match on the cement step. “But I did leave him throwin’ up."

“Well, that’s a bonus,” she said. “What were you fightin’ about?”

He breathed deeply, saying after long seconds, “Manners. And honor, of course. Mostly because both of us felt like fightin’.”

“Both of you felt like gettin’ beat up?”

He chuckled around the cigarette between his lips. “No one ever looks at it like that. Both of us felt like givin’ punches, not gettin’ them.”

She stared at him for a second, then said, “I can’t stand fightin’ with anybody. I just hate to argue or have cross words. I hate to hurt somebody, and I sure hate to be hurt. Usually the body can heal pretty well, but it’s a lot harder for the heart.”

“I don’t think this fella’s heart was involved.”

“Well, that’s good. And I guess yours wasn’t, either.”

“Not a bit.”

They shared a smile and then fell into silence. Will’s cigarette smoke curled up into the silver light and disappeared into the shadows. Ruby Dee wondered if he was as aware of her as she was of him. She didn’t see how he
couldn’t
be.

Then Will said, “Tell me somethin’,” and his voice came low and husky.

“Okay...if I can.” Anticipating an intimate question, a small shiver went down her spine.

But what he came out with was, “Why don’t you ever wear jeans or trousers?”

Well. She saw he was frowning seriously.

“I just don’t like to,” she said, pulling her robe tightly around her bent legs. “I like dresses a lot better, long ones. I can move easily in a dress. Dresses are cooler in the summer, and in winter I wear leggin’s or long johns, and that’s real comfortable. And, well, I just don’t like to have my legs hangin’ out. It makes me feel funny, naked. I guess that sounds awfully odd.”

“Not from you,” Will said, and for an instant Ruby Dee wondered if he was making fun of her. But he didn’t sound like he was.

They fell silent for a few more minutes, and then Ruby Dee pointed out a firefly. And then another. They were like stars flying around, she told him. He said there was a place up in Iowa, some medical research place, that paid for fireflies in the summer. Then they turned their attention to the stars, and Ruby Dee commented that they could have seen the stars a lot better, were it not for the pole lamp at the edge of the yard.

“I’ll fix that.” Will got to his feet so suddenly that he startled her. Then he was striding across the yard.

She jumped to her feet, too, clutching the fold of her robe, and called to him in a loud whisper, “What are you gonna do?”

He didn’t answer. She thought at first that maybe he could turn the light off at the pole, but he kept on going to his pickup. And he came back with a rifle!

“Oh, Lordy, are you gonna shoot it? Don’t do that!”

“Just one shot,” he said, stopping in the edge of the yard, lifting the rifle and taking aim.

“Oh, Will Starr—don’t break that lamp! You’ll wake your daddy!”

He slowly let the rifle down and came toward her down the walk. When he stood in front of her, he said, “You don’t want me to wake up Dad?”

She felt caught. Her cheeks burned, but she shook her head. “I don’t see the need to disturb him.”

He nodded. “I guess you’re right. So maybe we’d better do this..."

He slipped up beside her and snaked his arm inside the screen door; the pole lamp went out, plunging them into darkness.

“Oh, Will...you tease.” She laughed. It was the first time he had ever teased her. The very first time! And her heart swelled with that special, warm joy.

He slipped back down past her, brushing against her as he moved. Setting the rifle aside, he reached for her hand and pulled her out to see the sky. She wouldn’t step off the cement walk, though, because of her bare feet.

“Oh, look, Will, the Milky Way! It’s like a trail. There must be thousands and thousands of stars. It doesn’t look like that in winter, does it?”

"The stars move with the seasons."

“We move,” she said.

“The universe moves.”

“Yes.”

And then they were just standing there in the thin moonlight, looking at each other. Ruby Dee suddenly felt an enormous, overwhelming fear, as if some cloud was about to overtake her.

“I’d better go in,” she said and turned toward the house, while all along she wanted him to call her back. She had reached the first step, when Will called softly to her.

“Ruby Dee.” His voice stopped her, held her.

She turned, gazed at him. He came toward her, and she could not take her eyes from him. She couldn’t see his expression clearly, but she could feel the strength of his emotion. It held her there. Desire swirled up from her belly and went humming through her veins.

With his face directly in front of hers, he slipped his hands up to cup her face. He didn’t have to pull her to him, because she was already falling. She saw his lips part just before they met hers.

His kiss was gentle, seeking, exploring. Erotic. She caught a taste of blood and remembered his cut lip, but that faded as desire turned the kiss long and deep and hard. His muscles were full beneath her hands, and the scent of him, all manly sweat and after-shave, filled her.

Out of breath, they broke apart. He looked at her, his eyes holding hers. He rubbed his thumb over her lips. Wanting thrummed through her. She slipped her arms around his neck and pulled his face back to hers, and then they were going at each other again, clutching and tugging, and Ruby Dee was thinking,
“Oh, Lord...oh, Lord..
.
oohh, Lord.”

She had gotten swept down the river of passion before she even realized it. The two of them probably would have gone right on down that river and on to the ground, except that suddenly Will broke away. She saw him gasp for breath, his chest heaving.

Ruby Dee laid her forehead against the base of his neck. Oh, he was warm, and she felt his pulse, his arms strong around her, his scent and virility all over her. It was beautiful. She wanted to stay there forever.

Will thought of his bed, above the old man’s; of Ruby Dee’s bed, up the stairs from the old man’s; of the jumbled bed in Lonnie’s horse trailer; and even of the old mattress down in the cottage Wildcat used to use. Then he drew himself up, took hold of her arms and set her from him.

She gazed at him, her face all warm and wanting and questioning, and with her right shoulder bare where her gown and robe had fallen loose. She didn’t have a thing on under those two thin layers of fabric, either. Will had felt her warm flesh right through them, as if they hadn’t even been there.

Tightly, he said, “I think you’d better go in now.”

She nodded. “Okay.” Her voice was a hoarse whisper. And she didn’t say yes, but okay, as if she would do whatever he said.

She turned, took the two steps and opened the screen door. Then she stopped and looked back at him for a second, before going quickly inside.

He listened to the faint sound of her bare feet going across the kitchen floor. The next instant there was Sally, up on the steps, looking at the screen door and wagging her tail expectantly. Will opened the door and let the dog inside.

There was no way he could go in, though.

Snatching up his hat and rifle, he went back to his truck, started it up and headed back down the drive, then turned west, without the slightest idea of where he was going. He only knew that he had to go somewhere other than his room, right down the hall from Ruby Dee’s.

He felt all confused. One part of him felt awfully happy. He’d made Ruby Dee smile and he’d kissed her, and she’d kissed him back, and it had been everything he had imagined.

On the other hand, now he was more frustrated than ever, and fearful, too, about where he might be headed with her.

He drove west a bit and then north, finally heading over to the old James place. He hadn’t been certain about buying the place from Ambrose...but the minute he pulled up the drive, he began to think of it as his.

At least he wouldn’t have to share this place with his dad and his brother, the way he had to share Ruby Dee.

He drove up the lane to the empty cottage and dilapidated barns. It all looked eerie in the thin moonlight. Will sat smoking a cigarette and gazing at the house. He had the somewhat startling thought that maybe he had at last fallen in love. He figured that could be the only reason he was feeling so happy and sad at the same time.

* * * *

Crystal’s voice woke him. “Lonnie...Lonnie, wake up. We fell asleep.” She was shaking him.

He opened his eyes to see her looming over him, her face all flushed and her hair curled all around it. He smiled and reached for her.

“No, Lonnie. Get off my jeans. Oh...we went and fell asleep, and it’s almost mornin’. What if someone comes? I’ll just die if someone comes.”

They were still on a blanket in the grass, in the Methodist cemetery, to be exact, where they had come last night. Lonnie, blinking, saw that first light had come. He could easily make out the grave markers stretching out around them.

He and Crystal had put the blanket in an empty place between his cousin Son-Jack and the grave of Leonard Houston’s three wives. Son-Jack’s real name had been Jackson; he’d been one of Lonnie’s childhood friends, despite the old man had hated him since he was from Mama’s side of the family. He had been killed in the Navy, in a freak accident on an aircraft carrier, when a plane had crashed on the deck. What was buried in the grave was the duffel bag of effects the Navy had sent home, because they had never found enough of Son-Jack to call a body.

Leonard Houston’s three wives were all buried in the same grave, one on top of the other. They had been sisters. The first had had to be lifted out and the hole dug deeper for the second, and then again for the third. There was only one marker, with all their names on it.

Crystal tugged at her jeans, which Lonnie was lying on. He teased her by refusing to move. She had on his shirt, little, itty-bitty pink panties and nothing else.

She said, “You have got to get me home, Lonnie. Georgia is gonna raise the roof. She’ll probably come after you with a gun.”

“Sister Georgia has her own sins.” He sat up slowly, feeling happy and totally satisfied, even though he hated mornings. His back itched from mosquito bites, and he went to scratching.

“Come on, Lonnie. What if somebody comes? It’s
Sunday.”

He hurried then, to please her. He never cared much what people said of him, but he didn’t want Crystal embarrassed. Hopping from foot to foot, he put on his boots and told her to keep his shirt. She gave him his hat—he felt funny putting it on without a shirt—and snatched up her bra and blouse and the quilt. He grabbed the empty soft-drink and beer bottles and threw them in the bed of the pickup. When he slipped behind the wheel, he scratched his mosquito bites against the seat.

Crystal snuggled up against him during the short drive to Georgia’s. Crystal was staying at her sister’s, behind the Quick Stop, which was why they had been at the cemetery in the first place. It was that or a motel, and Lonnie counted the cemetery as a much more romantic place. Instead of a tawdry room they’d had the magic of the stars and moonlight and fragrant night breeze.

He liked the feel of Crystal snuggled against him, liked the scent and feel of her, which served to make him recall pleasurably what they had shared in the night.

“Don’t go around back,” Crystal said when he drove into the gravel lot of the store. “Maybe Georgia’ll be asleep. When Frank’s off drivin’ the truck, she sleeps in.”

“What’s Frank bein’ away have to do with it? Doesn’t he let her sleep in?”

Crystal shook her head. “She says he snores, and she can’t hardly sleep at all. Half the time she sleeps on the couch.”

Lonnie didn’t think he needed to comment on that. She wrapped her arms around his neck, and he kissed her, running his hand up beneath his shirt for one last caress of her silky, soft breasts. She shuddered and moved against his hand, and he squeezed gently.

Then she clutched him around the neck and whispered fiercely, “I love you, Lonnie.”

Lonnie tightened inside. He hugged her to him and whispered, “Oh, Crystal...Crystal.” Then he kissed her again, before she could say anything else.

“I got to go, Lon.” She gave him a tender smile, then slipped out of the truck and raced away, her brown hair and the tails of his shirt flying.

He listened but didn’t hear the door, and he guessed he wouldn’t, since she was trying to be quiet. As quietly as he could, he turned the pickup toward the road. The morning wind blew in the window, and on his right the sky glowed golden.

What Crystal had said, that she loved him, whispered across his thoughts. Her words struck something inside him, some secret, tender place that quivered and shook. And hurt.

A lot of women had said they loved him. Some of them had meant it, but he supposed none more than Crystal. He was glad, but it made him feel like he was about to get caught in the saddle rigging.

He had never told a girl that he loved her. He wasn’t certain he believed in love, not as a lasting emotion, anyway. From what Lonnie had seen, a person could say he loved someone one day and didn’t the next. It wasn’t that people lied, but that hearts were unreliable. He himself had experienced what could be called in-love a hundred times, but eventually the feeling passed. It seemed to Lonnie that love wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. It surely didn’t keep people together...until death do them part.