Under a Cloudless Sky

by Chris Fabry

  Her father returned, walking slowly as if he were carrying a heavy load. He stopped on the street beside the store and stood as if preparing for something. Finally he disappeared under the awning.

  “Is she awake yet?” he whispered when he walked into the kitchen.

  Ruby shook her head.

  “Sit down. I need to tell you something.”

  Ruby sat dutifully and stared at her father. He seemed older now and tired, the skin below his eyes sagging.

  “Bean’s mother did die last night. The midwife was there cleaning her body when I arrived.”

  “What happened?”

  “She was attacked, and that sent her into labor, and she died trying to give birth. The midwife didn’t know how she was injured but neither she nor the baby survived. I’m sorry.”

  Ruby stared through tears that rimmed her eyelids. “How awful. It was Saunders, the flat-headed man.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Yes, I do.” She wanted to tell him what she’d heard, but she couldn’t.

  “It could have been Bean’s father. A man who drinks can become violent.”

  “No,” Ruby said, shaking her head.

  “Listen to me. We have to be strong for Bean,” her father said. “And we have to move on with your life as we have planned. That’s the best thing—”

  “I’m not leaving my friend,” Ruby said.

  Her father leaned forward. “The best thing you can do for Bean is go to that school and let me care for her. Do you understand? I’m going to see she has a place to stay. Maybe in time she’ll come to the school herself. I don’t know. But I’m going to see that she’s all right and that those responsible for her mother’s death are brought to justice. But I can’t do that with you here. It’s too dangerous.”

  “I can’t get on that train today.”

  “Yes, you can. And when you do, you’ll be telling her that everything is going to work out. Confidence. Strength. That’s what she needs to see in you.” He sat back. “It’s not easy for me to let you go. I want you to stay too. But I believe this is the best path for us now. And I need you to trust me in this, Ruby. Will you trust me?”

  Ruby saw something in her father’s eyes that she hadn’t seen before. What was it? Was it fear that made him try to convince her to leave? Or something else? Was it the kind of faith she had come to know in the little church, that said God was in control and was working out a plan for good? She couldn’t ask him these things, but she decided it was so. She nodded and wiped her face.

  “We’re going to be at the platform this afternoon, you and Bean and me, when the train pulls in,” he said. “I want you to be ready.”

  “All right,” Ruby said.

  43

  RUBY TALKS WITH FRANCES ABOUT HER LIFE

  BEULAH MOUNTAIN, WEST VIRGINIA

  FRIDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2004

  The bed creaked as Ruby turned onto her side to look at the window. It was pitch-black out and a light rain fell, ticking against the pane. She pulled her covers up and now her head hurt along with her arm. The only light on was the lamp beside her bed.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to take one of those pills for pain?” Frances said.

  “I don’t want to get hooked,” Ruby said. “Too many are on pills these days.”

  “Mama, you’re not going to get hooked. It’s just so you can sleep.”

  Frances unzipped her suitcase and took some clothes into the bathroom. A few minutes later she returned and turned down her bed and got in. “If you need anything, let me know. I’ll be right here.”

  “Could you turn the light out?” Ruby said. “I can’t reach it.”

  Frances got up and turned off the light and Ruby heard the springs creak in the other bed. There was nothing between them now but the space between the beds.

  “It’s been a long day, hasn’t it?” Frances said softly.

  “Longer than I can remember,” Ruby said.

  “I want you to know there’s not an angry bone in my body about this. I’m just glad you’re safe. Glad you’re all right.”

  “But I’m going to pay for it when we get back, right? You’re going to move me into a home or assisted living or whatever they call it.”

  “Don’t worry,” Frances said. “Jerry and I want to give you what you want. And if you want to live at home, we’ll help you do that. Our goal is to make you happy.”

  “There’s nobody on earth that can make me happy, Frances. Not you. Not Jerry. Happy is something I have to choose.”

  Frances sounded like she was smiling when she said, “Well, I won’t argue with you there. I’ll just say our goal is to help you. How about that?”

  “That sounds right. And I appreciate you coming down here. Don’t think I don’t notice that you’ve taken off work and put your life on hold.”

  Silence in the room. The rain picked up and splattered the window. A flash in the distance and a roll of thunder.

  “When you said you wanted me to forgive you, what did you mean?”

  Ruby thought a moment and felt her chest rising with another breath. She closed her eyes and saw the room above the company store. And her friend.

  “Bean was a mimic. She had a natural gift to imitate and it would like to kill you trying not to laugh.”

  “People in the town?” Frances said.

  “Pastor Brace. Mrs. Grigsby in the store. She could imitate different miners and the way Coleman would walk up the steps. All it took was the littlest thing to get going and we’d laugh and laugh.

  “Sometimes a smell or a taste will take me back there. Just a whiff of a barn with fresh hay or the venison stew we had tonight. Or something sweet. I pass a bakery and it reminds me of those days. And to think that old camera held on to those pictures all these years, just like I have.”

  The other bed creaked and Ruby figured Frances had rolled onto her side.

  “What happened, Mama? What consequences are there if you tell the truth?”

  “If I tell you, it changes everything. I think it’s enough that I know. I’m not far from my grave, and if I take this with me, it’ll be all right. I’ve dragged this secret around my whole life. I can carry it a little further.”

  “But you don’t have to. Let me help you carry it.”

  Ruby shifted and felt pain in her wrist. She got situated enough to lessen the pain and realized this was how she’d lived her whole life, trying to get in some other position to lessen the pain. But it was always there because the break was always there.

  “Maybe being here and knowing I can release myself from the obligation is enough. I don’t think God would make me walk through all of that again.”

  “Maybe what you have to say will help somebody else.”

  “What I’ve got to tell can’t help anybody, Frances.”

  Her wrist throbbed and eventually subsided. Her breathing became more even as she drifted off to sleep. In her dream, she returned to the store and the mountain. The whistle of the train was all she needed to bring her back.

  44

  RUBY AND BEAN FACE A TRAIN DELAY TOGETHER

  BEULAH MOUNTAIN, WEST VIRGINIA

  OCTOBER 2, 1933

  Ruby’s father walked Ruby and Bean to the train station and it felt like the march of death. Even the skies above seemed to sense the mood, clouds forming above them dark and thick. When the man at the station informed them that the train had been delayed because of a problem with the tracks, it felt like a reprieve. The girls celebrated when Ruby’s father said they could leave her suitcase with the man and wait at the company store.

  “But we’ll have to listen for the whistle and make it down here pronto when it comes,” Ruby’s father said.

  “When will that be?” Bean said.

  “I hope the train doesn’t come until next week,” Ruby said.

  “It’ll be later,” Ruby’s father said. “We just need to listen.”

  After Bean had awakened that morning, she’d gone back to
her house and retrieved some things. It pained Ruby to see Bean walk in with a pillowcase half-full of clothes and a few pictures.

  “I brought these shoes of my mother’s, too,” Bean had said sadly. “I don’t care that they’re a little big on me.”

  “Are those the shoes that . . . ?”

  Bean nodded. “Part of me wants to burn them. But I think I need to remember what she went through.” She’d wandered to the dresser and picked up the train ticket. “Hard to believe this will take you so far away from here. Just a piece of paper’s all it is.”

  When they got back from the station, Bean sat on the bed and stared at the floor. “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

  “We’ll figure out something,” Ruby said.

  “There’s no ‘we’ to it anymore. You’re still going away, and I don’t blame your daddy for sending you. There’s nothing but heartache here. More heartache and death than you can shake a stick at.”

  Ruby remembered what her father had said about remaining strong for her friend. She had told Bean what she’d learned from her father and how hopeful he was that she would be cared for here. “I prayed for your daddy last night before you came. I asked God to help change him. Maybe this whole thing will turn his life around.”

  “I don’t think even God could do such a thing,” Bean said.

  There had to be some way to take Bean’s mind off of all the ugly things that had happened, Ruby thought, but there were so many it felt like a full-time job. Ruby knew what it was like to lose a mother. She didn’t know what it was like to lose one so close who made desserts even when there was no sugar in the house. She also didn’t know what it was like to lose siblings before they had ever taken a breath of life, a brother or sister that they’d tried to name. A life snuffed out before it began.

  “Maybe my father will set up a spare room downstairs. And give you a job in the store.”

  “What kind of job?”

  “I don’t know—cleaning up or the soda fountain? You’d make some money and have enough to eat.”

  Bean frowned. “I don’t think I want anything to do with this store. Your daddy is bound to leave and you know how Coleman and the others act.”

  “Things are changing. My father said. The mean things are going to stop.”

  “I don’t know how he’s going to stand up to those men alone.”

  Bean got a far-off look and stared out the window. The rain was coming down now like tears on the pane.

  The sight sent a shiver through Ruby and it was all she could do to keep from crying. Finally she said, “It’s not fair.”

  “What’s not fair?”

  “You having such a hard life and me with everything I need and then some.”

  Bean sat and put an arm around Ruby. “It’s not your fault God gave you a nice daddy. You don’t have to be ashamed of it.”

  Ruby set her jaw, determined to do what her father had asked. She walked to the closet and opened it. “All the clothes I need are in a trunk that’s already at the school. The rest are in my suitcase at the train station. These can be yours now.”

  Bean’s mouth dropped. “You mean it?”

  Ruby smiled. “Take those overalls off and put something on. Anything you want. It’s all yours now.”

  “My lands, I might have to get another pillowcase!” Bean stood and unhooked the overalls.

  While she put on a dress, Ruby grabbed Bean’s overalls and put them on. “I don’t want you to ever forget our game and the fun we’ve had. And the fun we’re going to have when we see each other again.”

  “I don’t feel like playing right now,” Bean said.

  “You need something good to eat. That’ll help get you in the mood.” Ruby grabbed a pencil and paper and the two of them thought of everything from downstairs they could eat. She put the order on the dumbwaiter and sent it down. The two watched through the shaft until the motor stopped. Then they heard Mrs. Grigsby gasp at all that was on the paper.

  “It’s my going-away meal, ma’am,” Ruby yelled down.

  Mrs. Grigsby huffed and puffed. Twenty minutes later a tray was sent up and Ruby watched Bean eat hungrily. The window was open slightly so they could hear the train whistle, but the rain was coming steady now. Daylight was nearly gone.

  “Where you reckon your daddy is?” Bean said.

  Ruby went to the window and looked out. What she saw nearly took her breath away. “Isn’t that your father coming this way across the street?”

  Bean jumped up and joined her and looked through the rain. “Yeah, that’s him.”

  “Is he drunk?”

  “Can’t tell. He’s not walking funny.” She stared through the water-streaked window. “There’s something I never told you.”

  “I don’t think I can take another surprise, Bean.”

  “Do you remember that day you came to my house and my daddy showed up? I heard him talking to my mama later. He thought there was something going on between your daddy and my mama.”

  “That makes no sense.”

  “Things don’t have to make sense for him to believe it.”

  Bean’s father ran through the rain to the company store entrance. Ruby rushed to the dumbwaiter and opened it, listening through the shaft. The man bellowed like a cow bawling for hay.

  “That’s him,” Bean said. “And it sounds like he’s soused.”

  “Mr. Grigsby is talking to him,” Ruby whispered. “He’ll get him to leave.”

  Bean went back to the window. “Yep, there he goes. Crawling back to wherever—wait! Is that your daddy on the street?”

  “Oh no,” Ruby said, rushing to the window, praying nothing would happen to her father. The conversation went on for a few minutes with Bean’s father pointing at the store and yelling. Ruby’s father pulled him under an eave, out of the rain.

  “If something was going to happen, don’t you think your daddy would already have done it?” Ruby said.

  Finally the two parted and Ruby sighed. She heard footsteps up the back stairs, but her father didn’t stop at the apartment. They listened as he continued, then heard a banging on the door above them.

  “What do you reckon he’s going to do?” Bean said.

  “Maybe Coleman is up there,” Ruby said. She moved toward the door. “You stay here. I need to see what’s going on.”

  “No,” Bean said. “I’m going with you.”

  “Stay here. I’ll be back in a jiffy.”

  45

  RUBY STARTS TO TELL THE TRUTH

  BEULAH MOUNTAIN, WEST VIRGINIA

  SATURDAY, OCTOBER 2, 2004

  Ruby awoke with a start, the crack of thunder rolling through the hills like a coal train. At first she couldn’t remember where she was and movement next to her made her think she might still be in Liz and Kelly’s trailer. Lightning flashed and she saw Frances’s face illumined, and it scared her. Then she remembered they were at Charlotte’s house.

  “Are you all right?” Frances whispered, throwing back the covers and sitting up.

  Frances had always been jumpy, even as a child. Leslie had called her “Linus” because she always needed a security blanket. There didn’t seem to be one big enough.

  “Just had a bad dream,” Ruby said.

  “You want to tell me about it?”

  “No. I can’t.”

  Frances began to speak, then held back. Finally she said, “I think you came down here to deal with this, whatever it is. You hid that you wanted to come here from Jerry and me.”

  “I didn’t hide anything you didn’t want me to, Frances.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  Ruby was fully awake now. “It means I gave clues to people all along. But we’d rather believe lies than uncover the truth.”

  “I have no earthly idea what you’re talking about, Mother. Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “See? You’d rather believe I’m demented.”

  “I’m the one who’s asking you to tell me what’s goi
ng on,” Frances said, sounding exasperated.

  “Keep your voice down. You want to wake up the whole house?”

  “I’m tired of playing cat and mouse. I’m ready to hear your story. Forgiveness drove you down here. Tell me what that means.”

  When Ruby didn’t speak, Frances put her head on the pillow and covered up. “Fine. Keep it to yourself.”

  Ruby sat up and fiddled with the light. When she couldn’t find the button, Frances rolled over and stretched to turn it on. Ruby leaned over and picked up one of the shoes, holding it in front of her.

  “That Marilyn at the store says there were no shoes on the third floor. Now you know that isn’t true.”

  “Charlotte took me there yesterday and told me what she thought happened up there.”

  “What did she say?”

  “That some women were required to visit the room in order to keep getting Esau scrip.”

  Ruby looked back at the shoe and traced a finger along the laces. “Remember that day I caught you playing with these?”

  “I can’t believe you remember that. It was such a long time ago.”

  “But you remember.”

  “You yelled at me and it nearly scared me to death. It was uncharacteristic.”

  “I apologize. You weren’t doing anything wrong. It’s just that I didn’t want you to be near them. I was mad at myself for not keeping them out of sight. Nobody was supposed to know about these shoes.”

  “Why didn’t you get rid of them?”

  “I should have. But then I’d still have the memories. These were my one link to the past.”

  “That and your steamer trunk. I know this will upset you, but I went through it, trying to figure out where you might have gone.”

  Ruby waved a hand. “It’s all right. I understand. It’s just that I thought I’d come here, see what I needed to see, and leave. I didn’t know it would turn into all this hullabaloo.”