The Loves of Ruby Dee (4 page)

Back then Lonnie hadn’t seen how that could happen at all. But he was taller than his brother now by half a foot, and his inseam measured thirty-six, where Will’s was just thirty-four.

Pausing underneath the locust tree, he dug the tin of Skoal out of his back pocket and tucked a pinch in his lip. He had been dipping since he was fifteen, the year he had passed Will in height and had started running off with friends for the high times and the gals in towns and at rodeos. Will used to dip back then, too, but he’d had a fit about Lonnie’s starting, and he had even punched old Wildcat Burns for giving Lonnie the dip.

Lonnie thought of what he had said to Will about the old man not being his father. That was truth—not pretty, maybe, but truth.

There had been a time, dim in his memory, when the old man had set him on his first horse, and had taken him out and bought him his first pair of boots. But the old man had been fifty-five by the time Lonnie was born. He had had little patience for a wet-nosed kid. It had been Will who Lonnie had trailed after. Will who had taught him to tie his shoes and button his shirt. Will who had picked him up and held him, after their mama had slung him in the dust and driven off with that mineral-rights buyer from Amarillo.

After that, when Lonnie would cry at night, Will would take him into his bed. “Come on, Lon. You don’t need her...you got me, now, don’t ya? You’ll always have me.”

Lonnie had made Will swear never to go away, and Will never had.

When the leaving did happen, it was always Lonnie doing it. When he just couldn’t stand the old man’s meanness or the coldness of the house, he would take off. Sometimes for a week, sometimes for several months. But he always came back.

Without fail, when Lonnie would turn and come up the drive, his heart would lift. For some really stupid reason, he would have convinced himself that the old man would be glad to see him and that being home would ease the ache inside him. But each time, within five minutes he would discover that the old man was as obnoxious as ever and the house cold and empty as ever.

Still, Will was always there.

That’s what was eating at Lonnie now. He thought it true what he had said to Will, that his brother was growing too much like the old man. Will was withdrawing, going away, just like their mama, and even the old man.

Lonnie didn’t want that to happen to Will. He didn’t want that to happen to himself. He didn’t want to lose Will.

But he couldn’t ever have explained that to anyone. Just thinking it all embarrassed him.

Chapter 4

When Ruby Dee came back into the kitchen, Will Starr handed her the glass of Dr. Pepper. The glass was dripping sweat. He quickly apologized, grabbed a towel and wiped it for her. His hands were dark and rough—the strong, banged-up hands of a man who worked hard for a living and then came inside and scrubbed raw to get clean, making his hands drier and rougher still.

He braced himself against the counter, looked at her and said, “Look, Miss D’Angelo, there’s some things we have to get straight.”

She piped up, saying, “I’m not what you expected, am I, Mr. Starr?”

That gave him a start, causing his blue eyes to widen for an instant. And then he breathed deeply. “No, ma’am, you’re not quite what I expected.” His eyes rested on hers; then they skittered down her body. Quickly, before he realized what he was doing, and shyly, too. Ruby Dee felt something touch her as he did that, something of surprise and pleasure.

He wiped his hand on the taut thigh of his jeans. She noticed his eyes had taken on more of a blue color from his shirt. He was a quietly handsome man, probably too quiet, too plain to turn a woman’s head, until a woman caught sight of his eyes. His eyes would arrest any woman, or man.

They were striking, seeming to burn out of his deeply tanned, craggy face like two beams of light. And his was a strong face. The face of a man, not a boy.

His hair and mustache were a rich brown. His mustache leaned toward red, but he had no noticeable gray in either his mustache or in his hair. That was a bit uncommon for a man who had to be over thirty-five. She gauged his age by the fine lines around his eyes and by the way he filled out his clothes with the thick muscles a man got only when he came into his prime. And Lordy, the man had muscles—his shoulders were wide and thick.

Will Starr wasn’t as handsome as his brother, she thought, but she liked the look of him better. She had a thing about older men. Miss Edna said it was because she had never had a father.

She was looking at his wide shoulders when he said, “Look, I owe you an apology. I didn’t fully read your résumé. Had I read it as carefully as I should have and seen that you were only thirty, I could have saved both of us a lot of time and you a lot of trouble. But I did specify when we spoke on the phone that the job was on speculation. Either one of us was free to change our mind after we met.”

Will remembered that he had stressed that. He didn’t think he needed to feel bad that she had up and taken it upon herself to bring everything she owned with her.

“Oh,” she said. Her right eyebrow rose, and she gave him a look, a look that jangled him, and he didn’t like that. “So you want someone older, more experienced...Maybe someone with a wart on her nose would qualify.”

So then Will felt foolish, and highly irritated. Straightening, he set his glass on the counter and gave her a look of his own.

“Ma’am, I just don’t think this is a job for a young and pretty woman such as yourself. You’ll be the only woman in this household. As you saw on the drive out, there’s no one livin’ right next door. The closest female neighbor is three miles down this road, and she’s eleven years old. You’d have this house to take care of, as well as seeing to my father, and he’s a downright crotchety old man. Many days you’ll be stuck here with him from dawn to dusk, or even for several days at a time, when I have business away. If you run out of milk, you have a ten-mile drive one way to get some. For a full grocery store, you’ll have to drive about forty miles, and there certainly aren’t any big shopping malls like you have down in Oklahoma City.

“If you’re anticipatin’ meeting some of those cowboys like you see in the movies, you’re gonna be disappointed. This isn’t one of those big Texas spreads, and the only time I have a lot of help around here is for a few days in the spring and fall. From now until then I have one full-time hand, and he’s nearly twice your age and married.”

And then he added, “There is my brother, of course, and you might as well know he likes the ladies, which is another reason I think it just wouldn’t work out to take you on.”

There it was. He never had been much of a diplomat. He had said what he had to say, and as nicely as he could, and he searched her face, wondering if he had hurt her feelings.

Then he realized she didn’t look hurt at all. She looked like she was fixing to jerk him up and set him straight.

In that slow way she had of moving, she propped a hand on her hip, took a stance that showed what she had to give, and, with her eyes bright as two drops of hot crude oil on a plate, she said slowly and precisely, “Mr. Starr, if it was cowboys I wanted, I could’ve had my pick down in Oklahoma City.”

With her eyes holding his, Ruby Dee let Will Starr take that in.

“Yes, ma’am, I imagine that’s so.”

“Oh, yes, sir, that is so. I feel about men pretty much the same way I do about television—something I can live without. It’s okay for a bit of entertainment, but mostly I prefer a radio—heard but not seen.”

He didn’t say anything to that, just kept looking at her. He was flushed, and she sensed he was embarrassed, as well he should be.

“Well,” Ruby Dee said, and let that sit for a few seconds, while she gathered steam. “Bein’ isolated and stuck with a grouchy old man—you explained that when we spoke on the phone, Mr. Starr. I understood fully what I would be dealin’ with. I came out here as a professional. Now, perhaps I don’t appear to be what you were expectin’, but I can tell you a few facts that aren’t in that résumé.”

She leaned forward, holding his eyes with hers. “If it’s experience you’re wantin’, I have it. I have been an LPN for six years, but I’ve been a healer for all of my life, startin’ with holdin’ my daddy’s head and keepin’ him from drownin’ in his own vomit when I was just three years old. At the age of five I was takin’ care of my crazy great-grandma—just her and me livin’ together. I did such a good job of it that for four years no one knew my great-grandma had gone to live back in 1936 most of the time. We didn’t get caught, until one day a developer came, wantin’ to buy her land, and insisted on talking to her. For some reason she thought he was her dead husband, and before I realized what she was about, she’d shot him. She missed anything important, and got him in the leg.

“They took her away to the nursing home, and I went on to take care of myself and other kids who no one else wanted to look out for. Since I was fifteen I have been makin’ a living by carin’ for people in one way or another, and all of those years before and since add up to hard experience, because when you’re young, you tend to get the jobs that no mature adult will take on. I have been talked to worse than you can imagine. I’ve been spit on and punched and scratched. Once a lady with a real hot temper took a butcher knife to me, and another time a seventy-year-old man, who wasn’t near as feeble as he pretended, tried to rape me. I find it hard to believe your father could be much worse, Mr. Starr. Do you think he could be?”

It suddenly occurred to Ruby Dee that perhaps the elder Mr. Starr was worse. She couldn’t imagine how anyone could be, but she needed to know.

Will Starr’s eyebrows went up, and he swallowed. “My father wouldn’t try to rape you.”

Ruby Dee felt some reassured. Will Starr appeared to be pondering, so she went on with whatever else came to mind.

“You are concerned that I won’t stand up under the isolation out here. Well, right now that isolation is exactly why I’ve come. That, and the fact that your father is not bedridden and at death’s door. I’m really tired of old people dying on me.”

Will Starr sort of started at that.

“As I see it on your side, Mr. Starr, you all need me. You’ve already gone through four housekeepers, and the way Maggie Parsons tells it, you aren’t gonna find another one anytime soon. It seems to me the worst that can happen to either of us is that you’ll fire me or I’ll quit. So I’m still willin’ to give it a go, if you are.”

Finished, she waited. She really had gone on; she could do that—get carried away and go on. It was no wonder Will Starr was staring at her.

His gray-blue eyes had gone steely as little ball bearings. She wondered what was working behind them. It was disconcerting the way he was looking at her. His eyes drifted down and back up her body, assessing her. His look was as strong as if he’d run a hand over her, checking and searching and weighing her flesh. It made her squirm inside, causing her to feel absurdly shy, annoyed.

Then he asked, “Can you make apple pie?”

Ruby Dee was surprised, but she answered quickly enough. "Yes. We are what we eat, and the body more readily accepts the nourishment of food that is tasty. I can make an apple pie to crawl fifty miles for, and one with little sugar, too, that your daddy can eat. I also make buttermilk biscuits that won a state-fair ribbon once. I don’t make them often, though, because of their high fat content.”

His sharp, ball-bearing eyes bore into hers. “All right, Miss D’Angelo, we’ll give it a try.”

He stuck out his hand, and after a moment’s hesitation, she shook it. His shake was strong, his hand moist, his steely eyes like blue flame.

* * * *

Will Starr explained that Ruby Dee would have complete charge of the house, but the most important thing was to see to his father.

“His medicines and an instruction sheet from the doctor are in this cabinet.” He pointed. “Dad takes pills to thin his blood, and some for his arthritis— for the swelling of his joints—and he has pain medication for that, too. I’ve been settin’ his pills out for him, but I’m not certain he always takes them. He simply refuses sometimes. He says that he feels fine, so he doesn’t need to take anything.” His expression and tone stated clearly that he found this idea of his father’s somewhere near lunacy.

Ruby Dee felt called on to defend the older man. “When you think about it, it is his body. He feels good, so why take medicine? He’s probably tired of taking pills. You don’t have to agree with it, but surely you can understand it.”

“Oh, I understand my father, all right, Miss D’Angelo. He doesn’t take the medicine because he thinks all the rules that apply to the rest of us don’t apply to him.”

His voice was sharp and tired at the same time, and Ruby Dee felt she had been told.

He led the way through the house at a rapid pace. The soles of their boots echoed on the wood floor, and Sally’s toenails went pitter-patter. Except for a worn rose-patterned rug beneath the dining room table, the floors were bare, and in need of polishing.

Through the downstairs hallway he pointed out his father’s room. With a quick glance, Ruby Dee saw a massive, dark old bedstead with a messy, unmade bed, a jumbled nightstand and a dingy window shade crookedly pulled halfway down.

“Where is your daddy?”

He gestured. “He’s in his shop—out back.”

“He can get around pretty good, then?”

“His knees are stiff—the right one’s almost locked in place—but he can get anywhere he wants to go. He still drives a pickup truck, mostly just around here, because he doesn’t have a license anymore. It’s automatic, and we’ve had it fixed with hand brakes, so it’s easier for him. We got him a wheelchair back last winter, but he just uses it to roll things around in his shop.”

“What does he do in his shop?”

“Leatherwork—halters, saddles, things like that.” He paused at the stairs for Ruby Dee to go up ahead of him. She noticed, too, that he stepped back—he seemed to keep at least three or four feet from her, as if he didn’t like breathing anyone else’s air.

The room that was to be hers was at the top of the stairs. Like the rest of the house, it was ugly, but not without hope—the hope being a southfacing window that looked out over the backyard, barns and pastures. She could see out to the east and west a little, too—red sandstone buttes and rolling grassland.