Cynthia Bond - Ruby

Still, if he had so much as lifted her shirt, stroked her leg, she would have settled into herself, but night after night he lay next to her like a deacon. Friday he brought her maple syrup for Saturday pancakes; Saturday he planted sweet peas in her front yard. As she watched him sweating, something perched upon her like a dove. She shook it off, but on Sunday as he hammered her roof it came back and decided to nest.

Monday evening it rained as he toted home a bag of fresh apples from Jordon’s Orchard in Jasper. He laid them at her feet and against her better judgment she circled his neck with her arms. They stood together like that. The woody scent of him entered her lungs. She pulled him tight until they pushed into one another, kissing, with the smell of wet earth rolling over their toes from the open doorway, the scent lining the floor and playing in the folds of their clothes. The bag of apples resting just inside the house.

When their breath came in hot gusts, Ephram bent his head down and held her like she was a cloud he couldn’t squeeze lest it disappear. He stepped back and looked at her grinning. Her beauty shook him: the smooth tan of her skin, her collarbone and shoulders, her neck as graceful as a queen’s, and her eyes — her eyes were where her heart lived.

“What chu got there, gal?” He let his fingers linger on her cheek.

“Just a mole,” she answered.

“Naw, it ain’t. That there’s a beauty spot.”

“It’s just a mole.”

“Yes, Ruby, it sure is.” He held her face, as soft as a peach, and turned it up to the single light. “It sure is. Looka there. Somebody round here got them a beauty spot where anybody can see it.”

“Do not.” He saw a chuckle rising from her chest.

“So do. Miss Beauty Spot.”

“You better stop it.”

“Cain’t stop it when it be right there staring at me.”

She mock-slapped him against his chest and began to turn. “Now that’s enough.”

Ephram wouldn’t let her leave. He spun her softly in a bitty two-step. “All right then, Miss Beauty—”

He kissed her again and Ruby felt the rock inside of her begin to crumble.

He held her so firm and so long her chest ached and a pinch in her throat came out in soft sobs. She cried into his open mouth. Now inches away but still crying, she pulled him down to the floor with her and she let her salt mix with his old sweaty collar.

She sniffed in deeply. “See? I open up for one drop of good and out come all this.”

He softly joked, “All a’ what? That ain’t but a little faucet … Miss Beauty Spot.”

And she began laughing.

“I don’t know what happens now,” Ruby whispered.

“Well, that one ain’t so hard.”

“What do you mean?”

“Cuz we can sit here, or we can stand up, or we can walk outside, or we can lay ourselves down, or any hundred number things what come to our mind. What you feel like doing, Miss Ruby Bell?”

“I don’t feel like doing … anything.”

“Nothing?”

“No. I can’t say one way or another, so nothing suits me fine.”

“I can tell you what I want — and it ain’t nothing. I want something from you, Ruby.”

“What you want from me?”

“I need you to look at me. I need you to see me, right here. Right here. I ain’t nowhere but here. I need you to see that.”

Ruby stared at the man in front of her. “I see.” Suddenly she did. A good man sat before her, strong and patient. She had thought not one existed in the entire world, but here he was, looking right into her, skin still wet with rain.

“Thank you.” He paused, then, “What do you want Ruby?”

So she told him the truth. “I want you with me in sleep every night. And when I wake up, every morning, I want you there too.”

“So that ain’t so hard is it?”

Ruby shook her head no. Ephram rose and offered her his hand and they walked to the bed.

Ruby smiled. Ephram took off his shirt and slacks and shone like dark wood against the white of his undergarments. They sat on the bed, brown against caramel, breathing in the scent of gardenia as the rain began to rage.

NIGHT TOOK hold and the storm became alive. The sky was charged and crackling. Up high in the pouring black, a cluster of clouds paused above the world. They tingled with ions and unleashed great claps of sound and fire bolts along their path. The Dyboù let the clash of wind and rain lift him. He watched the deluge beat upon the little graves near the chinaberry, rivulets of topsoil running down the small hill, leaving small waxen faces bare to the wind.

Inside the house the girl was lost in the gold of love. Through the window his idiot son lifted up from the bed and handed her his shirt to wear then turned his back as she slipped it on. He watched the boy fiddle with the girl’s hair as the rain poured harder, little spirits lifting up against the whip of the storm. The light of the house was like sunlight cutting through the dark woods. The girl Ruby was eating an apple his boy had cut with a pocketknife. One child started whimpering softly as he approached. The crow was cawing as the girl popped a slice of apple in her mouth, the wind screeching through the pines as he reached the graves and in one easy move lifted a tiny, wriggling six-month-old and opened his mouth.

Maggie the Crow lifted against the storm, rain pelting her eyes, and screamed like a siren, an earsplitting caw that cut through the air currents and fell like an ax onto the floor of earth. The sky split open in answer and hurled a bolt of lightning close, too close to the house, ’til the spirit dropped his prey. To the uninitiated it was only the twist and turn of nature, but Maggie watched as Ruby Bell burst out the front door, hair flying, and ran to the graves of her children.

Ruby’s feet pounded in time with her heart as she leapt from the porch, Ephram’s pocketknife in her hand. It was hard, cold, sure. She had grabbed it as she swept out of the house. All of her children were crying as she raced towards them. Lightning had struck the chinaberry tree and one massive branch lay smoldering on the ground like a severed arm, flames flowering only to be smothered by the rain. The ghost children saw Ruby and hurled themselves towards her, knocking her to the ground. They each knew fear, had lived and died with it collecting in cold sweat against their skin, but still they scrambled towards her, tripping and falling, getting back up and running into her arms. Ruby lifted up and saw the thing they ran from. It moved in the dark, held at bay for a moment by the burning branch of the chinaberry. The rain fell in sheets across Ruby’s face, her eyes cutting between the heavy pines. Ruby had felt him for too long, had taken him to her bed. There he was, perched and waiting for her to lower her vigil. Her children knew like lambs sense a wolf prowling, and they pressed closer to her, limbs flowing through her chest, heads buried in her legs, her shoulders. Soft little shoes stepping onto her calves and pausing for a heartbeat before falling through her body like sand. The sky flashed bright with lightning and then growled low and hot. Ruby knew Ephram was watching her from the porch. She knew he was afraid of her, she knew it did not matter, she would not budge until her children were safe.

Ephram stepped into the rain, his chest bare under his suit jacket. He walked to Ruby and stood above her on the wet earth. That is when he saw the knife in her left hand.

“Ruby?”

She looked up at him through the reaching arms and heads of her children, and for a moment in the shadow and blackness, she forgot there was a man named Ephram, she held her knife tight until the sky flashed again and she caught the soft of his eyes.

“Ruby, come on inside.”