Cynthia Bond - Ruby

The whole town of men made their way there on Saturday nights. Gathered against stacked lumber and around the pit fire. Inside the one room house, thick with sweat and smoke, men bellowed at the roll of a seven or turn of an ace. Knives lined the backs of trousers and for the men who worked at Grueber’s, or in Newton or Jasper, Friday pay bulged inside work shirts or front pants pockets. Nearly once a month, a few of the working girls from Beaumont would ride down with one of Bloom’s cousins. A Falcon or a Tuscadero with Beaumont plates would alert the men not to spend all of their money on craps and liquor. Bloom partitioned off what had once been a pantry at the back of the house. He’d tacked up a line of string and draped black fabric over it for a door. Put a small kerosene lamp in the corner of the room, which men turned up or down depending on their mood and their need for visuals. Mostly, the lights stayed down. The “girls” were gristle whores, too old for Fair Street in Beaumont, broken from decades of trade. They were two-dollar prostitutes, five with the tight market in Liberty. But sometimes if a man were particularly drunk, they’d go as high as seven dollars. They knew they could get away with it in Liberty. They also knew about the needle of lust that pierces the heart of small church towns. Where Bible quotations were stitched into the lining of panties. And Jesus plaques stared from the headboard of marital beds.

While the inside of Bloom’s main room was loud and light — full of smoke, the sour scent of new alcohol and old sex — outside was for the quiet drinkers. The men who sipped their rye and whiskey under naked branches and whispering stars.

Ephram paused as he recalled last Saturday. He had been resting against the flat tire of Bloom’s rusted Buick. He had thrown his hip out while loading groceries into Mrs. Gregory’s mint green Skylark. And the pain had started making the usual rounds to his sacrum, coccyx and femur. The clear rye helped. Bourbon was his favorite. But Bloom didn’t always have that in, and when he did it was a dollar for one small shot. Ed’s home brew was the economical selection. The first sip cleared his nose and watered his eyes. It tingled against the crown of his skull. The second fell deeper, burning hot down his tongue and sizzling against the acid of his belly. The third loosened the girder of his pelvis, let the spring of pain ebb like a pint of peach ice cream in August. By the sixth and seventh he melted against the flat of the wheel. One half a bottle and he could grin at the shades of grass and the lady bugs tucking into the shadows. The crickets whittled in the dark ushering in something akin to peace.

Ephram softened, like corn bread dipped in warm milk, as Gubber, Charlie and Celia’s former beau, K.O., stumbled onto the lawn. K.O.’s younger brother Jeb was heaving up his first ten drinks.

“That’s the way, boy,” K.O. called out. Firm and dark as stone. The only sign of age a crisping of white along his temples. “Got to lay it out before you can play it out.” Then to the other two men, “He’s seventeen tonight, going to have his first taste when Mabel gets through with Chauncy.”

“Best get sick here than in her lap,” Charlie scolded, in his thin nasal voice. “Say she ain’t comin’ back next man do that.” He wiped the bald of his scalp, then slapped his narrow thigh to emphasize the point.

Gubber Samuels, a butter cream lump of a man, wall-eyed since birth, turned up his whiskey and smacked when it came down. “Best she don’t bring her black ass back nohow. One mo’ drop a’ ugly in Liberty and we gone have us a flood.”

“Mabel’s all right. She know her business.” K.O. lit a Lucky.

Rooster Rankin, nearly dead drunk beside the well, slurred out, “Sh-she sho d-d-do!”

“But the woman too fat!” Gubber countered. “Lord, ain’t seen that many rolls since the Michelin tire man won a pie eatin’ contest.”

“Aw no,” K.O. crossed, “if that’s not the pot callin’ the kettle. Gubber so fat when he die they’ll take him to the River Jordan and jes’ set him down.”

Charlie answered the call, “And why is that?”

“Hell, ain’t nothin’ mighty ’nuff to tote his big ass over.”

A few good sized chuckles skitted across the yard.

“Well, I ain’t got no ‘for sale’ sign tacked on my behind,” Gubber countered.

“Already got a ‘all you can eat’ one takin’ up space.”

The men broke into laughter. Rooster hollered so something gave way in his throat and he took to coughing.

K.O. threw Gubber a rope, “But you right ’bout one thing, Gub. Town full a’ spinster virgins and old married women. Ain’t no bona-fine-in-they-prime women like we usta have.”

Mabel appeared in the doorway. She was a chocolate Easter bunny filling out a blue ribbon dress. “Y’all ain’t much to look at neither.”

K.O. pointed at his brother. “Hey Mabel. He’s next.”

“Not ’til I have my Lucky. Girl need a break. Gimme one K.O.”

He handed it over while Gubber muttered, “You sure ain’t a girl no more.”

“Wish I could say the same ’bout you Gubber Samuels.” And the men roared. Gubber sipped his bottle in silence.

Ole Pete, a white haired man with burnt almond skin, spoke from the shadow, “Too bad y’all ain’t ole enough to remember them Bell girls. Lord, they was some pretty women.”

Charlie jibed, “Aw Pete, you too ole to ’member what your own mama look like.”

Pete cut back, walking towards the pit fire and settling before it, “But not too old to ’member what your mama like.”

Charlie mocked anger, “Man, you so old if I told you to act your age you’d be in the grave.”

“You know boy, I coulda been your daddy, but the fella in line behind me had correct change.”

Charlie feigned rising in protest. K.O. sat him back down. “Hush.” Then to Pete, “Naw, I remember them Bell girls. There was three of ’em. I wasn’t but a young boy, but I was old enough to know they was some fine women. What was they names?”

Pete looked into the fire. “Girdie was the youngest with them long Indian braids, the redhead was Charlotte, then the eldest Neva.”

K.O.’s brother Jeb, a spindly boy all teeth and legs, came to life against the stairs. He wiped his mouth and slurred, “K.O., ain’t that crazy gal livin’ out at the Bell place they kin?”

Pete replied, “That’s Charlotte Bell’s daughter Ruby out there.”

“She ain’t nothing to look at.” Jeb shrugged.

K.O. said quiet, “Usta be.”

“Well,” Jeb tried to focus, “she look like the scarecrow now.”

Mabel asked between a slow drag, “Wasn’t that them three sisters had that trouble with the law?”

Pete shifted before the fire and shook his head. “Yes, but Neva make out the worst.”

Jeb leaned forward. “Who?”

“Neva Bell, Ruby’s Auntie.”

K.O. started, “Yes, yes I remember. I remember hearing what they done to that child.”

Charlie nodded. “It were a sin before God.”

Jeb’s face squeezed tight with interest. “Well — what happened to her?”

Pete shifted in the firelight. And the whole of the front yard seemed to lean into him. As he spoke, the ash on Mabel’s cigarette grew.

“TROUBLE COME the year of Mister Bell’s bumper cotton harvest. Nineteen and thirty-two. When the crop grew so tall and white, folks said it dusted the heaven. That year Mister Bell bought brass bells up in Jasper and tied them to his chinaberry tree. So that on a windy day at picking time the air was full of ringing and bits of cotton all the way to P & K.

“Now most of them Bells passed for White. Left the South on buses, boats and trains … flew up north just like them bits of cotton, but not Mister Bell, who was whiter than milk from a white cow in winter. Folks always speculating if Neva would take that train up north, but they knew just as well that she wouldn’t, she loved her daddy so.