Cynthia Bond - Ruby

“Now, Neva was the kind of pretty make the sun jealous. Not just because she was strawberry blond with her daddy’s blue eyes. And it wasn’t just her figure, though it looked like God must have been tickled with hisself with that handiwork. It were her smile. Lord help the men in Liberty when that child took a notion to smile. It were a miracle of nature, the apple that come into her cheeks. So we didn’t get mad one at the other for loving her cuz there wasn’t no escaping it. Still, we keep a distance from her, all Colored folk did, cuz she was different. We watch Neva Bell like we do a star just a-twinkling. Which made it all the harder when Mr. Peter Leech yank her down to earth.

“She’d kept house for them Leeches in Newton two years before when the rains had drowned most of her papa’s crop. Mr. Leech were Viceroy of the First National Bank. Folks say he look like Lincoln ’thout the whiskers. His wife, Missus Julie Leech, were a mean scrawny thing with a Adam’s apple. One day after Neva had put they three horse-faced children to bed, Mr. Leech tried to jump her. Neva up and quit the next day.

“Know how some men won’t work hard at nothin’ ’cept doing wrong? Well that man, who could barely lift his head to say hello to folks, who wouldn’t raise a hand to catch it if his soul was driftin’ off — somehow got the wherewith to chase Neva Bell up and down that red road in that black Fairlane of his. She say no ever’ way she could think of, but yet he chase and chase for months on end. Chase all the Black fellas away. Chase ’way what few friends she had. Chase so she didn’t feel safe walkin’ with her own sisters. She make them follow a mile behind. He chase her ’til she didn’t know where to turn. Chase her ’til that apple left her cheeks. Chase away her hope, and any dreams she might have been kindling ’bout that yella English teacher from Louisville. Mr. Leech chase her ’til she was tired enough to let him catch her, one Sunday after church in a ditch out by Marion Lake.

“Some folk say after time she come to love him. Others say she jes’ give in to shame. Me, I don’t know much, ’cept that he chased her all the way to lonely. And once you make it there, ain’t too many choices left.

“Things was easier for her after that, ’cept folks wouldn’t look her straight in the eye. They’d look at her new hat, or her paten’ leather shoes. She and her sisters was still invited to the same church socials, husking bees and melon splittings — only when the fiddle come out, didn’t nobody ask her to dance ’cept her daddy. He don’t never reproach her. Treated her like a princess, like he always done.

“All went long smooth ’til that man up and build her a house in them piney woods. Mr. Leech spent three months raising that place, hired my daddy, who was a sawyer and carpenter, to build it. I helped haul lumber from the mill and seen Mr. Leech there. Hands on his hips, his left foot jest a tappin’ ’til the last plank was painted. He fixed that house up with real glass windows, running water, and a icebox to keep his root beers cold, but not one single door lock. Not even a screen hook. Now he ain’t got to share her with nobody. Call her Bluebell cuz of her eyes.

“Now, she don’t go nowhere. Weddings, barn raisings come and go without Neva Bell. He only let her out once a week for church and her daddy’s Sunday supper after, but the rest of the time Mr. Leech have her stay in that little white house.

“Now they up there together most weekends. Smoke just a-churning out that chimney. Him leavin’ his wife and chirren ever Friday and not coming back ’til Sunday mornin’ in time for service. Sneakin’ off middle-week too. His black Fairlane kickin’ up clouds a red dust at noon while folk workin’ they fields and then kickin’ it back up in the opposing direction less than an hour later.

“ ’Til the day come when he pack up two steamer trunks and land them on Neva’s front porch. She’d been out working her little vegetable garden, her sister say, and pushed her spade down in the soil by her radish tops. She look at him and just knew trouble on its way. Say she could taste it in the back of her throat. Seem like a White man can do anythang on earth to a Black woman — rape her, beat her, shame her. But he show her a ounce of respect and all hell break a loose. And that day, he give her just a drop and tell her he leavin’ his old life on the side of the road to Liberty. So Neva, in spite of something holdin’ its breath in them woods, accepted that little drop. She left that spade planted in the earth and opened her unlocked door.

“Now Missus Julie Leech, who didn’t much mind having her husband out her hair and her bed on weekends, thought another thing altogether when her neighbors seen him putting his trunks in his Fairlane. Then that little Adam’s apple took to jumpin’ and she call on her family. First she call her mama, Lucy Levy, who tole her husband, Mr. Jeffrey Levy, president of First National Bank, who tole his son, Sheriff George Levy, who called on his sister where she cried into his collar ’bout shame, niggah whores and Black witches, and not bein’ able to show her face nowheres.

“I ’member that were late September and all them acres of Bell cotton been picked, baled and levied. Fetched a fair price so that Mister Bell’s purse was chock-full for a change. That Saturday — naw, it were a Sunday. I remember ’cause I’d seen Neva in church that morning, with her two sisters. Preacher’d been in fine form, and the sun shine soft on the fields, the road and the faces of folk after church. Especially on Neva Bell. She was wearin’ something with little purple flowers. The wind danced with that dress like a beau. She was talking to her sisters, they heads leaning one to the other like does.

“I wasn’t but seventeen but I swore God if he let her look my way I wouldn’t sin a day in this life. God pitied a liar and she did just that. Turn and smile all big and pretty right into my eyes. Then her sister Charlotte, ’bout seventeen her own self, with them evergreen eyes and pretty red hair, look over too, and the two of them start giggling like young girls do. Then they walk on off. And that’s the last I seen of Neva Bell ever on this earth.

“Neva stayed late at her papa’s for Sunday supper since Mr. Leech been called to Austin for bank business. She sat round the hearth with her sisters and watched her daddy play ‘Clementine’ on his fiddle. Afterwards, Papa Bell he say he gone treat his three girls to a soda pop, so he give each a nickel and they take off walkin’ to the store. Many a day I wonder how he live without them nickels. The hollow they yet make in his pockets.

“It happened a mile from P & K. When Sheriff Levy on his black quarter horse, come upon them three girls. Him and eleven of his deputies. One, two, six won’t do. He need all eleven for the job. That night they hauled the two youngest girls, Charlotte and Girdie, off to the Newton County jail sayin’ they got to question them about Claud Jackson’s missing cattle. Girdie wasn’t but ten.

“That leave Neva alone with the rest. If she thought to run, she musta chose against it. They wasn’t no place on earth to go, so she laid her hope on mercy instead.

“Them lawmen drag her out to that hill past Marion Lake. It musta been then they slide on they white hoods. The moon, it was nearly full and bright. From up there Neva musta been able to see her daddy’s land. All them fresh-harvested acres. Maybe that’s where she fix her eyes while them Klux keep her out there for hours — doin’ what God ain’t got the muscle to look at.

“Then when they was done, out there on that hilltop, time stretch itself out like molasses. Crickets slow they crik. Owl drag her ‘hoo’s.’ That’s when Sheriff Levy click the safety off that Remington Sport rifle of his — the one he brag on so, its barrel catching a piece of moon. Then each every man take his firearm to his shoulder and aim at that child. What they see through them deluxe ta’get sights they think need shootin’? Only Neva Annetta Bell. Eighteen and a half year old. Knees on the dirt. Her hope broke like water round the edges of her skirt. But them the kind use to firing into gentle things.