The Loves of Ruby Dee

by Curtiss Ann Matlock

  “She’s quite something,” Ruby Dee said, feeling as if they had been visited by a whirling dervish.

  Then the waitress was setting their food in front of them. Everyone except Hardy agreed their meals were delicious. When Ruby Dee asked Hardy what he thought of his food, he said it was okay. Then he asked if anyone wanted his helping of guacamole, which made them all chuckle.

  After a few minutes, Ruby Dee asked, “Who was Mr. Irwin and why were you gonna beat him up?”

  Hardy glanced at her, then looked at his plate and forked his food. Will said he didn’t remember, and then Lonnie said that Mr. Irwin had been the school principal in Harney for a couple of years.

  “He gave me licks one time.” He looked at Hardy. “Fifth grade. I could hardly sit down that night. Dad, you went up to school and got into it with him.”

  Hardy cleared his throat. “Huh...I guess I did.” He nodded slightly, and acted as if that were all he was going to say, but then he added thoughtfully, “He was a mealy sort of fella, from up north, too. I didn’t threaten him, though. I just told him that if he felt the need to use that board again on my son, I was gonna come up there and stuff it down his throat.”

  Will cracked a smile. “Dad gave us whippins, but he didn’t want somebody outside the family doin’ it.” Then Lonnie was chuckling, and even Hardy smiled, almost.

  Reaching for his beer, Hardy said, “How were you gonna do your chores, if that fool kept takin’ a board to ya? ‘Sides, the whole thing was over a gal sayin’ you said somethin’ dirty to her. There’s two things I know about this boy: he wouldn’t ever say somethin’ ugly to a gal, even then, and if he says he didn’t do somethin’, he didn’t do it.”

  Well. Hardy saying that mouthful surprised them all.

  He said hardly another word during the rest of the meal, but still Ruby Dee felt that this evening the men had made a connection they had not felt for some time. A connection that had been beat down and covered over by years of hurt and resentment.

  When they came out of the restaurant, Will put his hand on Ruby Dee’s back. Oh, how she felt that casual touch. He guided her to the front seat of the pickup, then helped his dad get into the back seat. Lonnie stopped at her window to say good-bye, explaining that he would be home a little later, but it was Ruby Dee he looked at the whole time. When he walked away, Ruby Dee looked over to see Will’s intense gaze upon her.

  It was dark when they got home. Will suggested sitting on the front porch, and Ruby Dee got them ice tea. She was always thirsty after Mexican food. Hardy sat in his wheelchair, Ruby Dee got the only porch chair, an old rocker, and Will sat at the edge of the porch floor, his back against the post, with Sally’s head lying on his thigh.

  It was nice and quiet, and for once the sense of anger wasn’t vibrating between Will and Hardy.

  Ruby Dee suspected that Will was recalling some of the memories from supper. Cora Jean had been like an angel coming to them, she thought.

  “What happened to the swing?” she asked Hardy, looking up at the ceiling, where she could just make out the hooks in the dim light coming through the window.

  He shrugged. “Darned if I remember. I don’t rightly recall there ever bein’ one. That Cora Jean would probably know. She has one of those photo memories, I guess.”

  Not a half hour later, Lonnie was home, and he came to sit out on the porch, too.

  For the next hour, while the moon rose in the sky, they all sat there. Every once in a while someone would say something, about the weather, about fireflies, about the coyotes—which each of the men called ki-oats, in the old way—and how they were getting awfully thick again.

  Will explained to Ruby Dee that when the coyotes started attacking the calves, the men had to get together to hunt them or call in hunters. As a warning to other coyotes, they would hang a coyote carcass on the fence.

  “That works?” Ruby Dee asked, surprised.

  Will nodded. “Coyotes are smart.” He stroked Sally’s head. “They know enough not to challenge men or dogs straight on, but they’ll tease and lure a dog out from his own yard and then kill him. Not hounds, though. Coyotes won’t mess with hounds, at least that’s what I’ve always heard.”

  And Hardy said, “No, coyotes won’t mess with hounds. Coyotes don’t like a hound’s foghorn bark. Don’t need to worry about this little collie, either. Coyotes only get the stupid dogs.” Then he added, “I always did like coyotes, though.”

  Ruby Dee, rocking in the creaky chair, talked about Miss Edna’s porch swing and how sometimes when a person swung in it, the hooks would start making this god-awful squeal, and the best thing she’d ever used to quiet it was Crisco shortening. “I guess Crisco wouldn’t work on this chair, though.” She didn’t realize she’d said something funny until Will and Lonnie laughed.

  Lonnie brought up the subject of Cora Jean’s daughter, Camellia, and how he had heard she was down in Fort Worth, making a fortune shining shoes. She owned several chairs and had people working under her, too, down at Billy Bob’s and the hotels and the rodeos and horse shows.

  “Camellia bought Cora Jean that champagne Cadillac she drives, from shining shoes.” After a minute he added, “All Cora Jean’s girls were named after flowers.”

  They sat on the porch until nearly eleven, when Ruby Dee rose to go upstairs. She felt that if she wasn’t the first to get up, they might all just sit there until morning.

  Lying in her bed with the sheet spread over her, she listened to the men as they each settled in for the night. She heard Lonnie’s boot steps come along the landing first. He had a jaunty way of walking, even when he was being quiet. Then she heard Will’s footsteps, in his sock feet, but heavy. Slow.

  She heard them stop outside her door! She closed her eyes and hardly breathed and tried not to think about how much she wished he would come in and make love to her.

  His steps went on to the bathroom, and the door closed. After several quiet seconds, Ruby Dee rose and turned on the bedside lamp. She reached for her dream paper, and looked at it for a long time. Re-folding it, she tucked it beneath the lamp, turned out the lamp and settled back down.

  She knew she could not put Will’s face to the picture on the dream paper. She just kept thinking:

  HELL TO PAY.

  She clutched one of her feather pillows, because she ached so badly to have Will make love to her.

  * * * *

  Fully clothed except for his boots, Will lay stretched out in his bed, watching cigarette smoke twirl upward in the moonlight and thinking about Ruby Dee, only five strides down the hall. Not a sound came from her room.

  He thought, too, about what had been said at supper. He’d heard the story about Hardy holding him as a newborn, of course, but not in at least twenty years...not in twenty-five years since his mother had left. His dad had let his mother take away a lot more than just herself and their marriage. For a minute he felt angry, but then he felt sad, and then he felt a sort of wonder, because it seemed like now that Ruby Dee had come, his dad was returning to what he’d once been.

  He sat up and raked his hand through his hair, the sense of wonder turning to a cold, knowing chill. He wanted Ruby Dee for his own. But how could he take her from the old man now?

  He slept little and fitfully, was up early the next morning and went out to take a walk. Right after breakfast, he told Lonnie to take Wildcat and start baling the alfalfa they had cut the week before. “Anything that comes up, Lon, you handle it. Like as not, I won’t be back until afternoon. Don’t set a lunch for me, Ruby Dee.” Not wanting to give Lonnie time to go asking questions, he was already heading toward the door.

  His gaze touched Ruby Dee’s, though, for just a second. Her quick look was enough to make him feel excited.

  Will met Ambrose Bell over at the old James place, and together they walked for two hours around the surrounding land, until they struck an agreement. Will would buy the house and surrounding quarter section, because he just had to own some land of his own,
and would lease six sections of range. He would also work for Ambrose part-time in exchange for a small salary and the use of Ambrose’s equipment.

  “I guess we have a deal, Ambrose.” Will stuck out his hand, and the older man took it in a firm grip.

  Hefting up his pants, which sagged beneath his paunch, Ambrose said, “It’s more than I started with at your age.”

  “Things are a lot different now,” Will said.

  Ambrose nodded. “You got that right. A man can’t hardly start a place these days. But I guess it was always a chancy thing.” He cast Will a curious look, but he didn’t ask why Will was leaving the Starr. “That’s why I sent J.R. to chiropractor school. I never wanted him to be a rancher...and I have a bad back,” he added with a grin.

  Ambrose was making plans for selling out his operation in another couple of years, getting ready for retirement. His only son was a chiropractor down in Clinton. Will thought a man was lucky when he felt he could do any number of things. For himself, he only wanted to ranch. He was like so many men these days, trying to make a bygone way of life fit into a computer-driven century.

  Ambrose said, “Might be easier to just move a mobile home up here and forget about the house. The only good thing about it is that it’s brick. That’s why it’s stood here so long. Me and my Rosie used to talk about fixing it up ourselves, but we just never got to it. Seemed like one thing after another came first. And once we moved in with Rosie’s mama, I couldn’t get her loose.”

  Will nodded in understanding.

  Together, they headed for their vehicles. Will said, “I’ll go on to the bank and get this deal goin’, Ambrose. It shouldn’t take more than a couple of weeks, three at the most, for the appraisal and legalities.”

  Ambrose nodded. “I’m glad it’s you gettin’ this place. And like I said, I have three more sections you’re welcome to lease, if you come to need it.”

  “Thanks. I’m hoping I will eventually.” Will stuffed his hands in his pockets. “Ah, Ambrose, I’d appreciate it if you’d keep our deal to yourself. I’d rather not have a lot of people know just yet.”

  Ambrose said, without raising an eyebrow, “I’ll sure do that, Will. People around here are nosy as hell, aren’t they? Gets on my nerves. I don’t like a lot of people knowin’ my business all the time. Good luck to you, son,” the older man added, waving as he opened the door to his black Lincoln, a big boat from twenty years ago that was still going strong.

  Will stayed there, looking out over the rolling hills for a few minutes after Ambrose left. A quarter section wasn’t much, not in this part of the country, but he had bought it outright just because he had to have land to call his own. It had a good tank on it, too, that held water at least half the summer.

  He walked on to the house, up the two steps and in through the back porch door that hung crooked, through the kitchen and on through the other rooms, with their peeling wallpaper and cracked plaster. The house was forty-five years old, and had sat empty for the past eighteen years.

  But it was his now, and he’d fix it.

  Outside again, looking over the rolling hills that stretched away to the high plain of Texas, he felt a rush of excitement, and then a great disappointment that there was no one to share it with. He would have liked to show Ruby Dee... and Lonnie...and the old man, crazy as that was, because he could just hear the old man ragging him about the how poor the house was and how he wouldn’t do much with a quarter section.

  Slowly Will went to his pickup and climbed in. Pulling a cigarette from his pocket, he lit it and then headed home, with the windows down and the hot summer air blowing away the cigarette smoke. The air had grown heavy, and white cottony clouds were coming from the west. He anticipated rain, if not tonight, then soon. Finally. Out in this country, rain always came like that...just when a person was certain it was never going to rain again. It seemed a lot like his life.

  He was making a beginning, he thought. When the bank loan went through, he would have a house—almost one, anyway—a well, a cement storm cellar, a couple of barns, and in spring, stands of purple irises. He would also have a mortgage, which he would be hard-pressed at first to make by ranching on his own.

  Few new ranchers made it. That was a fact. The ranching operations that remained today were those that had been started by the previous generation, like his family’s. And for many of those, like the Starrs, oil leases had brought them to where they were, as much as any of them hated to admit it. A lot of the younger men today had a regular job with a regular paycheck and ranched on the side. Will would have to do that once he left the old man’s employ.

  Leaving the old man was another big step that weighed heavily on him. It appeared the old man was settled into that wheelchair. Will didn’t like that, but he wasn’t going to let the old man use it to stop him. He still worried, though, about him and the old man getting into a fight that ended up with the old man having a big stroke. This fear was one of the things holding him back.

  Ruby Dee. He thought of her brown eyes, which could hold such sadness one minute and the next light with sunshine...and that could make Will feel things he had not known he could.

  But he wasn’t the only one to get pleasure from Ruby Dee’s eyes. After all these lonely years, the old man had finally found a woman to bring him some joy. And Lonnie had finally found a woman who made a real home for him. Will just couldn’t get past any of that. Things were rocky enough between all three of them, without Will upsetting the goodness that had come into their lives. Without Will going after a woman they all claimed.

  It would be like the old man, he thought, to have a stroke on purpose, just to get back at him.

  * * * *

  Will drove right to the bank in Elk City, to speak with Garland Snyder about a loan. He could have phoned Garland, told him a deal had been struck, but Will wanted to tell him in person and talk a little about his plans with someone. He wasn’t quite ready to tell them back home. Garland took him to lunch as a sort of celebration.

  It was late afternoon before Will got back to the house. He saw the old ranch pickup parked near the barn, and Lonnie’s pickup was there, too. Wildcat’s truck was gone.

  Will knew Lonnie would be inside, with Ruby Dee.

  Jumping out of his own truck, Will slammed the door, hard, and strode into the house. And there the three of them were—Lonnie, just as Will had known he would be, slouched in a chair at the kitchen table, a glass of ice tea in hand, Hardy across from him, in his wheelchair, and Ruby Dee near the counter, gazing happily at an object in the middle of the kitchen floor.

  It was a porch swing.

  Lonnie had bought it down in Harney at the Lumber and Feed, and he was quite pleased with himself.

  “What about the alfalfa?” Will asked, breathing fire.

  “Oh...baler broke down,” Lonnie said, acting unconcerned, knowing full well he was provoking Will. “Wildcat had to go all the way to Woodward for a part, so I told him just to knock off after he got it. It’s too dang hot to be balin’ or anything else out there, anyway. And you know, Wildcat’s gettin’ on,” he added piously.

  “You aren’t gettin’ on, Lonnie,” Will said, pointedly.

  Lonnie just gave him a bland look.

  Will said, “You’ll wish you’d sweated a little bit, when winter comes and you don’t have anythin’ to feed your fancy horses.”

  Will always liked to have the last word.

  Chapter 20

  August was turning into September, the time of final haying and equipment overheating and breakdowns, fences needing to be repaired, plans made for returning the bulls to the lots, and the weaning of cows and calves, and the selling of steers.

  During these weeks, Will took what time he could away from the ranch to start fixing up his new old house and the corrals for his horses and bull. Ambrose had said to consider the place his right from their handshake, so Will wasn’t wasting time waiting for papers to be signed.

  Many nights he worked himself i
nto exhaustion, which kept him from lying in his bed and thinking about all the confusion inside himself. And about Ruby Dee, just five strides down the hall.

  He ached to tell them all about the place. He felt like a child, wanting to say: see what I’ve done. He doubted he’d receive approval from the old man.

  The best thing was not to say anything until he was ready to move in, which he figured would be as soon as he got hot and cold water running. All the renovation could be made while he lived in it. It only then occurred to him that he had no furniture to call his own, no dishes, sheets or towels. He was going to have to buy all of it.

  Once, while he was making plans for the house, he realized he was measuring everything by questions: what would Ruby Dee think? Would she like the place? Would she want to live there with him? Did he even want to carry it that far with her?

  He guessed he still had that to find out.

  He snatched what time alone he could with Ruby Dee. Each morning, he made a point of being the first to the kitchen, where he waited for her, instead of going outside to do chores. Usually he had twenty or thirty minutes alone with her, before Lonnie and the old man came in.

  During this time, they sat together out on the back step, with their coffee, and watched the land wake up. Will felt shy, and he could tell Ruby Dee did, too, but he could also tell she welcomed having him around.

  Their talk was just about everyday things, what she planned for supper, the condition of baseball, that Will kept the old ranch truck because the newer ones were all electronic and harder to repair. But from these things he learned that she loved garden tomatoes and would only eat them during the season, and that she knew nothing about baseball but enjoyed rodeo and performance horse events and that she knew a lot about the workings of an engine.