The Loves of Ruby Dee (8 page)

The old man barked that he didn’t care one iota, he wanted the window open. “And go get me that pee bottle I got in the hospital the last time I was there.”

Lonnie found the plastic bottle in the bathroom closet, brought it back and thrust it at him. “Is that all?”

‘‘Get on back to that woman."

Back in the kitchen, Lonnie strode over to the back door. “He won’t take any help,” he said. He reached up and got the shotgun that hung above the door. It was the only gun left in the house. He grabbed the box of shells kept atop the refrigerator, took the shotgun and shells onto the back porch and stuck them in the cupboard behind an assortment of seldom-used household things. The old man would have to do some looking to find them.

Good God, Lonnie fervently hoped Will came back in soon.

Ruby Dee cast him a thoughtful look, but she didn’t question him. He sure was glad, because he didn’t want to think about any of it.

She had taken the turban off her head, and her hair tumbled against her pale skin. Lonnie liked pale-skinned women.

She had the old man’s stock of medicines in front of her on the table. She was reading the typed pages of instructions from the doctors and writing in a spiral notebook.

That wasn’t exactly what Lonnie had hoped would happen; he’d been hoping she would talk with him. Instead she asked him questions about the old man.

“How long has he been taking this blood pressure medicine?”

“For a few years now. Is D’Angelo your maiden name?”

Her eyes lit on his for a second. “Yes.” She looked at the vials. “The date on this arthritis prescription is only two months old. Has he been taking it as long as his blood pressure medicine?”

Lonnie couldn’t say. He couldn’t tell her much about the old man’s health, because he had never paid much attention to it. He did tell her the old man had had his stroke back in February.

“Me and Will came back from checking the cows—they were calvin’ then. Will found the old man passed out. He seemed okay after a few days, but the doctors said he’d had a stroke.”

“Has he seemed confused once in a while since then?”

Lonnie shrugged. “He’s old.”

“He’s eighty-five, but he’s not so old.” Her brown eyes rested on him, and Lonnie wondered what she meant, but he didn’t want to ask and look stupid. Old was old, wasn’t it? Eighty-five was old...the old man was old...what was she thinking?

“Your resume
says you’re thirty,” he said. “You don’t hardly look it.”

“I didn’t lie.”

“Oh, I didn’t think you did. I didn’t mean it like that. You just seem awfully young to be doin’ this kind of work—takin’ care of old people.”

She kind of smiled and shot him a glance, but she didn’t say anything to that.

He wanted to kiss her, but he imagined she would take offense. He sure didn’t want to run her off.

Abruptly she closed her notebook and rose to put away the medicine. “It’s time for me to take a bath and get to bed. I’m an early-to-bed person.” She picked up the notebook and headed out of the room, but then she turned. “If there isn’t anything else you need,” she added, a questioning look on her face.

Lonnie could have told her about a lot of things he needed—erotic pictures flashed across his mind. And he thought that she could read his mind.

He shook his head and said no, he was fine. And then he watched her leave, with the dog trailing after her.

With a confusing disappointment settling heavily on him, he got a bottle of beer from the refrigerator. On his way up to his room, he glanced in at the old man, who had fallen asleep—or else was pretending to be. In his room, in the dark, he tugged off his boots, stretched out on the bed, propped against his pillow and leisurely drank his beer. He could look right through his doorway and across the dark hall to the bathroom door. Light shone through the crack beneath it, and he could hear the splashing of water as Ruby Dee D’Angelo dribbled it over her body— a bath, not a shower.

He imagined her in the tub, her auburn hair curling around her pale face. Her skin milky white all over. His groin warmed pleasurably, and he elaborated on the mental images. He waited to see her when she came out of the bathroom, and fantasized about her appearing in nothing but a towel.

But he fell asleep before she came out.

* * * *

When Hardy opened his eyes, he saw Jooney standing in the doorway. “Jooney?” Good Lord, he was glad to see her! His leg was hurting near to killing him, and she would make it better. Then Jooney came forward, and with keen disappointment he saw it wasn’t Jooney, but that hussy gal.

“It’s me, Mr. Starr—Ruby Dee.”

“I can see that! You caught me half-asleep.” It could happen to anyone, coming out of a dream, but everybody thought he was losing his mind. Everybody was stupid.

He’d been dreaming about Jooney. And as he righted his glasses it startled him to realize how much like Jooney the hussy gal looked. He had noticed it before but passed it off. Now he looked more closely.

Jooney’s hair had been that same reddish color, though longer. It had fallen in waves all the way down her back. The gal’s eyes were very much the same, though, dark like coffee beans, and her skin was pale as buttermilk. And, by God, she was wearing a gown like Jooney would wear—a white gown that covered her from her neck to her toes, which were bare and peeking out beneath the bottom stretch of lace. He could see the dark shadows of her breasts through the fabric.

Jooney’s laugh came to him. She would laugh and tease him when he’d gone to feeling her breasts.

He blinked. It irritated him, that this girl could look so much like Jooney. Jooney had been special.

“What do you want?” he demanded.

“I heard you moanin’ and talking. Is your ankle hurtin’, Mr. Starr?”

“Aw, everythin’ on me hurts. I’m eighty-five.”

His leg, that blamed bum knee and that blamed ankle, ached like the dickens. That was why he was dreaming so silly, about Jooney. Dreaming of the accident that had ruined his leg forever, back that time he and Jooney had been riding the river, and that crazy horse had gone down with him and broke his leg. Jooney had splinted the leg right there. He’d bitten the tip of his tongue off in order to keep from crying in front of her. In his dream, though, he’d been calling for Jooney to come help him, and he’d heard her calling back, but she hadn’t come.

The gal disappeared, and Hardy was just about to reach for the bottle of whiskey behind his pillow, when she returned with her arms full.

“You can’t have any more of your pain pills, but I brought you some aspirin." She took what she had in her arms and put it on the chair, then brought him three aspirin and a glass of water. “If you’ll let me, I can make your ankle and that bad knee feel better.”

He stared at his foot, refusing to invite her to do anything at all, wanting Jooney and to be young again.

The gal turned to leave.

“Wait a minute...I thought you was gonna do somethin’ to my leg.”

“Do you want me to?”

He wasn’t about to say he did.

He said, “Isn’t fixin’ me what you’re bein’ paid to do?” He figured he had her with that one.

She looked at him for a minute, then reached for her things and went around the bed to sit near his hurt ankle. She moved his leg over to her, and he told her to be careful. She rolled up his pants leg. His ankle was quite a sight, all swollen like a melon, but then, his feet and ankles sometimes swelled these days—Mother Nature’s tricks to make his life hell, as he saw it.

The gal poured something from the bottle into her palm, and then rubbed it gently on his ankle.

“What in the hell is that?” It was oily and thick as snot.

“Castor oil, and I’d appreciate it if you didn’t swear."

Hardy started. That was what Jooney had said to him. She had made him watch his mouth and had read the Bible to him, too. He stared at the gal’s hands, small, young hands. A chill came over him. He studied the gal, the curve of her cheek and the wisps of hair that curled to her shoulders. Thoughts of Jooney came so strong that he felt off-kilter, as if he were lost somewhere in time.

“It’s an old remedy,” she said, keeping her eyes on what she was doing. “Your mama might have used it. Lots of people discount it now, but in ancient times castor bean plant was called the Palm of Christ, because it was believed to have healing properties.”

“We used it to get rid of moles and warts,” Hardy said. Jooney had used it to take warts off his hand, and it had worked. “There ain’t no warts on my ankle.”

“It will soak in and help the sprain.” She glanced up at him. “Who was Jooney?”

“She was a gal I knew a long time back,” he answered, not knowing why he should. So he added, “And it ain’t none of yer bizness, is it?”

The gal looked at him, her eyes all warm and liquid. Her eyes were so much like Jooney’s. It unnerved him, and what was worse, he thought he might cry.

He said, “Now, are you ‘bout through?” She said she would do his knee, too, if he wanted. He told her to suit herself. She did his knee, rubbing that oily stuff on it and binding it up with an ace bandage. He jumped when her hand first touched him. He felt embarrassed about her touching his bare skin like that, but the ache began to ease with her massaging. He thought of telling her to stop but couldn’t get the words out of his mouth. So he settled for pretending to fall asleep, hiding himself with his eyes closed. She said something to him, but he didn’t answer. A few minutes later, he felt the bed move as she got up, heard her gathering her things to leave. There wasn’t anything wrong with his hearing, not like with his eyesight. He heard her bare feet patter across the floor and head up the stairs.

He was left there thinking about Jooney. And he didn’t have enough whiskey to drown the thoughts. He wondered if he could think himself dead and set out to give it a try.

* * * *

Ruby Dee knew good and well that Hardy Starr was awake. His trick wasn’t anything new to anybody. Ruby Dee herself had employed it when she didn’t want to face up to something.

Sally was waiting in the hallway. She got up and followed Ruby Dee up the stairs, hopped up on the bed, made a circle and lay down. Ruby Dee wiped her hands with a cloth and replaced her bottle of castor oil into her medical box. Confident that Hardy Starr would sleep more comfortably now, she closed her door.

The room was already a lot prettier, more welcoming as a place of her own. It hadn’t taken much to make it so. Ruby Dee’s own pillows with lace-edged cases were on the bed—four of them. Ruby Dee could hardly sleep with fewer than four feather pillows. She had run an oiled rag over the dresser and placed Miss Edna’s urn and Bible and the framed photographs of her mother and father there, along with her small jewel box and the Webster’s dictionary that Miss Edna had bought for her. It had a zippered genuine leather covering. Atop the dictionary was the paper of pasted cutouts, which she’d unfolded and straightened as best she could.

The room was lit with a warm, coral glow, because she had draped a red printed scarf over the bedside lamp. Ever since reading that lighting tip in a woman’s magazine, Ruby Dee had followed it.

Once, however, a scarf she had draped over a lamp had caught on fire. Ruby Dee had thrown a glass of ice tea on it, which dampened the fire but caused the light bulb to explode. For a week she had found glass splinters and sticky spots from the sugar in the tea all over the lamp base, the table, the wall and the floor. Not wanting to repeat that disaster, she had never again tossed a scarf over a small lamp. This particular lamp being enormous, with plenty of space between the shade and the bulb, she considered it safe.

The room was a little stuffy, so she opened the window. It was stiff, and she had to tug hard, but then it suddenly flew upward quickly, startling her.

The fragrant summer air came through the screen, and Ruby Dee breathed deeply. Cicadas were kicking up a ruckus in the trees and bushes, and birds were calling, too—a chuck-will’s-widow far out in the trees, she guessed. The sky was bright with diamond stars. The moon was a half curve and bright. It was amazing that only half a moon could light so much—it lit the leaves of the big elm in the backyard, the roofs of all the buildings, the white pipe fencing, even the wooden fencing.

She saw a figure then, out in the small pen, way over to the side. It was so far over that she could see it well only with her head just about resting on the screen.

It was Will Starr, and he was still on that horse. He was just sitting there on it, in the middle of the pen. Bathed in the moonlight, both of them, man and horse, looked like ghosts. The horse’s tail swished once, twice. The animal blew through his nose, and the sound came all the way up to her.

Will Starr’s hat came up slightly. After a moment, Ruby Dee realized he was looking at the house. Ruby Dee had the feeling that he looked at her window. Looked right at her.

She went very still. He couldn’t clearly see her, not in the muted glow of the lamp, but she believed that he was looking at her, just as she was looking at him. Ruby Dee knew this clear and strong in that moment, when she continued to look at him and remember his intense blue-gray eyes, and the way he had looked at her that afternoon.

Then she pulled back inside the room. Leaving the window open, she slipped into bed and turned out the lamp. After she got settled, she could still hear the night sounds coming through the window, among them the thudding of the horse’s hooves way out in the pen.

She wondered if Will Starr was going to stay out there all night.

* * * *

Will sat the horse, quiet now, worn out. Up above, the stars twinkled like glitter and a bright half moon was on the rise. Over at the house the light was on above
the kitchen sink. Lonnie’s window was dark. There
had been a faint glow from the gal’s room, but it was dark now, too. The old man’s window was on the opposite side of the house, and Will couldn’t see it.

Will had told Lonnie that he might stay out in the pen all night just to get Lonnie’s goat, and because he had been gripped by the rare euphoria of recklessness. Recklessness had been his refuge. He had wanted to run clear away from the ranch and the old man and Lonnie, but he hadn’t been able to, so he’d run off into recklessness, and damn, it had felt good.