Cynthia Bond - Ruby

“You hang-dog country motherfucker. I like to spit after you first kiss me.”

Ephram broke through. “You kiss me, woman! Don’t let sorrow steal ’way truth. Don’t blaspheme who we is.”

“You right. I kiss you. After I fucked Chauncy,” she lied.

Ephram stood with his hands about her rib cage. A part of him froze.

“You walk up right after we finish. Remember? How we — Chauncy and me — laughed at you. Lord, I needed a real man after being around your limp punk ass.”

Ephram shot out, “You think I’m a fool? You think I don’t know what you been doing since you come to this town? What you doing now? You think I like it? Naw! Naw! But I know how life don’t teach you no different. Like a fox can’t stop chewing at his own leg after it been in a trap.”

He watched her anger as it began shaking her center, breaking apart. “Ain’t no trap but the one you fixed for me. You dress it up with marriage, pancakes and maple syrup! Fix me up so you can bend me over! Act all deaconly and holy but I know what you come for! Even if you don’t! And you don’t! Can’t admit it now!”

Ruby fell down onto the ground and lifted her dress. She spread her legs and pushed down her panties. “ This what you want ? Don’t be afraid to take it like Chauncy and all them other men you call friend. You only here for two reasons — cuz I’m a crazy cunt like your mama, and cuz you want to fuck me. I know you. I see you. Seen men like you since I was six.”

“I ain’t none of them men.”

She leapt up. “ I ain’t nothing but a whore! I want your food, your money — that’s all. I can pretend like I want anything, even a moose in heat. Ain’t you been laughed at your whole fucking life? There’s good reason for it. You a servant to your own sister? Cuz you a coward and a fool.”

Ephram started, “Ruby — you care for me. I feel it like an ax in my chest.”

Ruby screamed the knot from her throat. “Why you think them flowers and blue napkins do shit for me? Why you think building me up like a queen what I need? Doing every little thing before I ask and never letting me give nothing back. That don’t make me no queen. That makes me a cripple. But you need to fuck broken. You need to love crazy. Right? Right?”

“Ruby … I know what you doing. I know—”

“What do you know?”

“I know you love me.” He was gulping for air, sobs catching, then breaking free.

“So what if I love you? I’m the fucking fool for it. You got the kind of love that keeps me from rising. That make me take my eye from my children, make me lose my children. One of us got to die we stay together … by my hand. You want that? So you get from here before I kill you. I see you on my land again, I’ll kill you.”

Ephram took one step back, then two. The knife had hurt less. He turned and stumbled, then he began to run. He ran past P & K, and past the whole congregation of men on the porch. He felt every eye on him, judging and laughing at him. He ran collecting shame and self-hate like pollen on a daisy hill. He ran all the way to Celia’s house, where he stepped in the door, walked past Celia, straight to his bedroom and lay down on the chenille spread.

Celia stood just outside his door, her hand soft on the wood. Ephram was safe. All that she had done was to keep him safe from the pit fires of life. Safe from the haints killing souls in the woods. From the Devil, who walked the earth. Safe from Ruby, who had dragged her papa to hell, who had cut her brother — her boy — and nearly killed him. Ruby Bell, whom he would learn to love a little less every day … every day he was with her.

Celia said calm as a still sea, “I done made your favorite, Ephram, fried pork chops, greens and corn bread with a pinch of sugar — just the way you like it.”

In less than ten minutes Ephram would wash his hands. He would dry them on Celia’s dress towel, with the pink ribbon stitched on. He would sit at her table and eat every scrap of her food along with the yellow cake with chocolate frosting she had made just that morning. He would hand her his plate and let her wash every dish and clean every sign of life from the kitchen. Then he would bathe and dress for bed and read marked passages in his well-used Bible.

Once he had done all of these things, Celia came in and sat beside him on the bed.

“How you feeling, boy?”

It felt as if a stone had set upon his chest. All he could manage was, “I ain’t no boy, Celia.”

“I know that Ephram.”

She placed her hand on his forehead to make sure he didn’t have a fever.

“Let me see your dressing.”

“Not now.”

“Doctor say we got to change it every day.”

He looked straight at her, “Not today, Celia.”

She backed away and stood.

“I go to Jasper tomorrow, get me some more of that gauze and iodine. And that special grease they be rubbing on your scar.”

Ephram said nothing. He simply set his Bible down and turned out his light.

Celia almost said, Glad you home , but decided to let well enough alone. But she thought it so loud, Ephram heard it anyway.

She slipped out of the door as Ephram lay atop his bedspread, too tired to crawl under the covers. He turned to his side, ready to bide the years until he slipped into grateful oblivion.

Ruby no longer wandered through the piney woods. Instead she hunted, searched, ripping away branches until her fingers scraped and bled. She knew their souls were still alive. She heard them on the wind at times like flutes, until they faded around a bend in the trees. Ruby felt them — held, bound like a spider’s feast.

Ruby called to them as she walked until her voice became sandpaper. She returned home each night to eat the bread, fruit and beef jerky Miss P left her during the week. Not to satisfy any hunger. There was no hunger. There was no pain nor joy. She ate to keep walking. She ate to sustain her breath. She ate so that she could find her babies before it was too late.

So when Chauncy came looking for her early one Saturday morning, she picked up the shovel Ephram had brought and hit him upside the head. Hard, so that he fell out cold in her front yard. When Ruby came back that evening, fingers bloody, he was still there in a heap on the ground. As she stuffed food into her mouth he came to, stumbled home, weaving and leaning in the dim evening.

He came back the next day with a nasty lump on the side of his head and a package of mean stowed in his gut. This time when Ruby swung the shovel Chauncy caught it and threw it to the ground so hard it broke in two. The tail end of a shadow flapped behind him, which is how she knew the Dyboù was living inside of the man like a dead rat poisoning a well.

Ruby felt a fear spread hot in her belly. Still she asked with the weight of a stone, “Where are my children?”

Chauncy and the Dyboù walked slowly towards her.

Ruby stood like a tall pine. “Where my children?”

His hands were taut, his arms like springs. “Woman, you too crazy to live, God knows.”

Ruby grabbed one of the large stones and hurled it at him, hitting him on the dimple he loved so much. He swooped down and picked it right up.

Next Ruby pitched a gray rock onto Chauncy’s broad chest. It tore his shirt. He — they — roared towards her and she took off running, but screaming, blasting, “Where my children!”

She sprinted like a wild deer through the piney woods. He was a bulldozer, tearing away branches and kicking away low brush. Ruby turned back and saw the rock still tight in his hand.

Ruby leapt ahead. The forest pushed her along ahead of the man — the men — who chased her. They meant more than to take her, to push her down, they meant to steal her soul even if they had to kill her to do it.