Ruby River

by Lynn Pruett

  Dodd cut the engine, stuck his nose in a wet towel, and inhaled. “Sweet lemon freshness.”

  “Jewell said Daddy was a drunk.”

  “That woman exaggerates everything. One beer a day and she thinks he’s an alcoholic. One slight sway out of line”—Mama ­rapidly pinned the remaining towels; she bent and raised like an automaton as she spoke—“one step off the obsessive track, and you’re condemned for sloth or weakness.”

  Darla held the last wet garment, Hattie’s bra. “She said Daddy broke up with her because she wouldn’t grovel in the dirt.”

  Mama snatched her bra and hooked it over the line. The cups filled in the breeze. “Exactly. And look where it got her. You are not going into the Army, and that is the law.” She turned to Dodd. “Would you please finish cutting the lawn? I can’t stand the silence.”

  “If you’ll get me a drink of well water.”

  “Fair enough.” Mama marched up the porch steps. “Perhaps you should move into town and live in an apartment near Jewell. Grovel in the dirt indeed.” She cranked the bucket up the well. Paul Dodd, waiting at the bottom of the steps, laughed.

  Darla ran, her pockets bulging and wet, into the kitchen. The only place safe from that man was her bedroom. She raced up the stairs and pulled out the underwear. She hung a pair on each bedpost. That man acts like he owned Mama and the house and us, she thought. She watched from the window as he got closer, marking the territory as he mowed down the grass, clipping nearer and nearer the clothesline with Mama’s underwear on it.

  Jewell Miller is the only one who understands, thought Darla. Mama said I can’t join the Army but I did. She cannot stop me. Now I will have to find Daddy by myself. I’m the only one who still loves him. Except Jewell.

  Wearing yellow shorts and a long-sleeved shirt, she drove to Jewell’s apartment door, climbed the stairs, and knocked on her black door.

  “Come in,” said Jewell, as if she was expecting company.

  The door swung open on the living room. Along one wall rested a metal contraption for weight lifting. Next to it was a couch of hard flat cushions. The couch faced a metal bookcase painted industrial gray. It was the kind of shelf Darla had seen in shop class, where drills and goggles and bits were stored. The books, though, had either red covers with black lettering or black covers with red lettering. What a strange way to pick out a book, she thought. Unnerved, Darla stepped inside and squinted at the bookshelves. The covers were hand-lettered. She smiled, satisfied. False backs.

  Jewell fidgeted with the dials of an enormous radio. A static buzz whined for a few minutes until she clicked it off. “I can get stations all over the world on that thing. I like to keep tabs on the whole planet.”

  Darla nodded, then grew self-conscious in the ensuing silence. She couldn’t blurt out that she had joined the Army. “Do you have anything I could drink?”

  “You don’t pussyfoot around, do you?” Jewell said. “I like that. Most women spend half their lives talking all around what they want to say.” She pushed back an accordion wall. A jungle seemed to flood into the living room. Jewell disappeared among some woody vines.

  Darla walked closer to the bobbing foliage. She heard water running and saw grapevines staked in rattan buckets. She squeezed between them. The rungs of a wooden ladder held trays of short cornstalks and cherry tomatoes. Cucumber vines sprawled across the floor. Strawberry leaves clung to the granite countertop. Two spikes of sugar cane stood aloof in the midst of the jungle. Along a vast window spread an array of potted lettuce, its wrinkled leaves ranging from russet to lemon-green. Thick green ivy covered the unseen kitchen walls. Jewell turned away from the sink, over which an iron pipe jutted.

  “Your plants are green,” Darla said.

  “They’re supposed to be.”

  “There’s a moratorium on water.” Darla inhaled the lush smell and was immediately wistful for her early morning runs in the spring when the dew-moistened soil gave off a sweet scent.

  “Nobody can see what I’ve got in here. I learned many years ago, in a drought before you were born, the importance of inside gardening. That year my garden was half an acre of sticks, thanks to a moratorium. It was the sickest year of my life. Take a look.” She snipped off a tiny ear of corn. “I was growing miniatures long before they became vogue.” She popped it in her mouth, then pointed to a cup on the counter.

  Darla drank cautiously. Grape juice, sweet and fresh as she’d never tasted before. “Wow. It’s delicious. You ought to sell it. You’d make a lot of money.”

  “I am not interested in becoming a businesswoman. There’s others quite willing to do such things.” Jewell rinsed the cup. “Did you come to spy on me?”

  “No,” said Darla, as Jewell’s clear hazel eyes probed her face. Couldn’t Jewell see that they weren’t enemies?

  “Well,” Jewell snapped, “I suppose us weirdos must stick together.”

  “That’s why I came to you.” Darla tugged at her shorts. “I mean, you’re a vegetarian, right? And you’re probably the healthiest person around and I want to be that way.”

  “No, I’m not a vegetarian in the strictest sense. I enjoy fried catfish. I was raised here, you know. Come along. I’ll show you another secret.” She swept back a wave of greenery and stepped through a door.

  Darla followed through the exotic forest, her heart pounding. A leaf grazed her hand. Her palm began to sting. “What’s that?”

  “Sorry, I forgot to warn you about that one.”

  They stood in the bathroom. Jewell drew the shower curtain back to reveal a growth that resembled a massive ball of dewy spiderwebs, threatening to overflow the tub.

  “Sprouts.” Jewell picked a clump and began to chew. “Excellent source of protein. Have some.”

  Darla’d heard of sprouts. They felt wetly tender. She could not imagine what they tasted like. “Where do you bathe?”

  “Hah! You’re afraid these greens are unsanitary. Don’t join the Armed Forces.”

  Darla squeezed the cool crisp fibers into a ball.

  The older woman leaned forward. “I’ll reveal how I keep myself clean if you say why you came to visit me.”

  “Deal,” said Darla.

  “Out back, there’s a shower head, left over from the days when this place was a boardinghouse. Every night around twelve, I go down and shower. There’s a light on the lot so I can see anything coming my way.” She laughed, then tightened her lips. “Why are you here?”

  “Well, I wanted to tell you I joined the Army,” Darla mumbled at the linoleum.

  Jewell grasped her chin and raised it. “Speak up. Be proud of your actions.”

  “I said, I joined the Army.”

  Jewell’s fingers tightened like a slow vise. “Why did you go and do a fool thing like that?”

  “I want to find my father.”

  “Crazy!” The old woman gave her neck a twist and disappeared back into the jungle.

  Darla tossed the wad of bean sprouts onto the white pile. The thorny plant raked her legs as she plowed through the grapevines. She knew who was crazy. She had to get out quick. She banged into the ladder, knocking the bottom trays to the floor. “Shit!” She scrambled to scoop the dirt back onto the corn plants. The shoots of cane were broken off, ruined. She stood up and brushed her hands on her yellow shorts. A dumb color to choose, it turned out.

  She emerged to find the older woman perusing the book spines, as if she were in a library on a quiet afternoon. “Don’t leave yet, young lady.”

  Darla wanted to race away and forget everything she knew about Jewell. She feared her life in the Army would be plagued by nightmares of this apartment. It suddenly seemed hot with the smell of overripe vegetation.

  “Sit down.” The strong command in her voice made Darla obey.

  So what if her shorts were muddy? The ugly couch would absorb the dirt. Maybe Jewell slept on it.

  “Now,” Jewell still faced the books. “Close your eyes.”

  Anything was better t
han staring at the escape door. “Okay.”

  “Now, I don’t happen to believe that you joined simply to find your father. I believe there was another reason. Think hard.” The voice glided close. “Here,” Jewell trained Darla’s hand around a cup. “This is more grape juice. Drink it while I tell you what I think. You felt lonely. You hated your job. You had run into problems at home. You walked into an army recruiting office.”

  “Yes,” Darla hissed.

  “You stood around in the office, looking at brochures. In about five minutes, a very handsome young officer came out and introduced himself.”

  Darla refused to nod, although she could see Will Alton Russell clearly as he smiled and held out his hand. She remembered the long handshake because her hand was suddenly chilled when he let go and led her over to the chair in front of his desk. She sipped the grape juice.

  “This young man was remarkably fit. He had an intense stare. He listened to every word you said. He complimented your intelligence.”

  Darla winced. Somehow she didn’t mind letting Jewell tell the story. If she’d tried, she would have been too embarrassed to breathe a syllable of it.

  “Shysters!”

  Her eyes flew open. She gulped the juice.

  “I can’t believe it,” Jewell said. “Well, yes, I can. There’s not much opportunity in this county for a young woman, other than the ancient choices. Don’t be mad, young one. I saw the world, too much of it. No, I know all about recruiting because that was the job they shunted me into after the war. Because I was southern and female and had such a seductive little voice and trim little body,” Jewell said, “they let me recruit the black boys in this region, the immigrants in the Northeast, and the farm boys of the Midwest.” She slammed her fist on the table. “But I learned about sabotage then. I’m just sorry I didn’t get a chance to warn you.”

  Darla crushed the cup. “You shouldn’t use Styrofoam. It’s bad for the environment.” Standing suddenly, she was dizzy. Then blood pounded her temples. “I am going to find my father.”

  “Yes, I think you will. You are so determined to do just that. Sit down.” Again the authority in Jewell’s voice stopped Darla from moving toward the door. She closed her eyes and concentrated on slowing her heartbeat.

  “I have more to say about that foolish notion but I will not bore you with all the entanglements you would run into, trying to retrieve lost military information. You look ill. I’ve got something that will cure you.”

  Darla sank down on the couch. She heard Jewell cluck over the broken cane shoots. Maybe she’d bring out raw sugar. Next she heard the clack of tin snips cutting through the cane. Silence followed. Darla considered her options. If she left now, she’d miss out on Jewell’s promise of more information. A soldier would not wimp out.

  “Close your eyes,” Jewell called out. Her irregular soft footfalls approached the couch. “Wet your finger.”

  Darla closed her eyes and stuck her finger in her mouth. She could feel Jewell’s closeness. “This isn’t sprouts, is it?” she said, lightly, hoping the older woman would laugh.

  Jewell jabbed Darla’s finger into something powdery, like con­fectioner’s sugar. Darla’s mouth watered. Her finger tasted like a cigarette, gritty and ashy, much worse than the chewing tobacco Daddy’d given her once. She spit it out. “That was a mean trick! You should have told me the cure would make me sick!” She took a step forward, her fists clenched.

  Jewell held up a red box like a shield. Stamped in black letters were the words REMAINS OF LT. OAKLEY BOHANNON, U.S. ARMY. Darla brushed past the old woman. She just made the stairs before she heaved. At the bottom of the steps, weak and nauseated and dry, she crawled outside and somehow got herself home.

  CONNIE BOHANNON

  Darla wasn’t at the cash register and I had to use my break to find her. Nothing was right about this day. Mama was mad as hell at Jessamine for causing the protest march and tired of waiting for Daddy’s ashes. They hadn’t come in the post this morning and the Army didn’t know where they were—again. No special delivery; they’d sent him regular mail. Mama had a date with Sheriff Dodd tonight, so the timing was bad.

  I went up the hill to the house and lit up as soon as I opened the front door. Calling for Darla, I carried the burning cigarette up the steps, daring her to get on me about smoking.

  For some reason, our underwear was hanging on the bedposts like there’d been a panty raid. I figured my secret boyfriend, Darryl, had done it. A lump stretched under the covers on Darla’s bed. I pulled them back and breathed smoke into her face, “You’re supposed to be working.”

  Darla shivered. Her face was an exotic lime color. She heaved, such an agonizing sound that even I felt pity. “Darla, are you pregnant?”

  She covered her nose and mouth and gasped. I put out my cig.

  “Do you need a Coke?” I asked.

  Darla opened her eyes. They reminded me of the drying ponds around Maridoches whose banks were littered with carcasses of little spiny things. “Jewell Miller has Daddy’s ashes. She got the Army to send them to her.”

  “That goddamn old bitch. They belong to us!” I said. Jewell never overcame the fact that Daddy didn’t marry her. Maybe it was cruel of him to dump her after the war but she only had one leg. How could she have raised chickens and had babies? Besides, Daddy loved Mama. Lord knows, she can work like a mule. Daddy was pretty smart to have married a much younger woman. But now it was Mama’s turn to have some fun. If I gave the ashes to her, she would mourn, but if I gave them to Sheriff Dodd, she might recognize him as her future and leap happily into his arms.

  I was halfway over to Jewell’s when I remembered Darla’s Coke.

  “All right,” I yelled, as I pushed Jewell’s apartment door open, “where are they?”

  A strange pink light poured from a half-open accordion wall and settled gently around the old woman, sitting in a rocker. Her hair, a fresh set of wispy curls, cushioned a green felt hat with an awning of black net. A yellow ball of yarn and two shiny needles lay in her lap. Jewell looked like a sweet grandmother. What a trick. I closed my eyes to picture what a nasty customer the old woman really was, always demanding to know if the salt was from the sea or from a lick.

  “You are rude and impertinent,” said Jewell. “You will go far.”

  “You can’t boss me.”

  Jewell’s needles clacked away. “I have been semiretired against my will. The telephone company will only let me work weekends now, thanks to the wonderful world of computers. So I knit.”

  I put my hands on my hips but stayed just inside the door. “Where are my father’s ashes?”

  Jewell raised her lined face. Two round spots of blush dusted her cheekbones, the color horribly unnatural on faded skin. I started; my father would be an old man.

  “Would you like something to drink? I understand it’s never too early in the day for you.”

  “Don’t try to pull anything or I’ll call the sheriff over.” I gulped, afraid I’d let out Mama’s business to the telephone operator. To cover, I said, “This is a nice place.”

  “Your sister needs a lot of help.”

  “They all do.” I sighed as if deeply concerned.

  Jewell stamped her wooden leg. “The one that joined the Army.”

  “Darla joined up?” I said. “The Army sounds like a great place for her. Lots of sweating and horrible clothes that make you look like sticks and stones.”

  “Young lady, this is a serious matter. Your sister is a tomboy who doesn’t see many choices for her in this town so she made a very poor one.” She shook her needles. “She hasn’t the sense to help herself.”

  Jewell was right on that one. Darla’s pale, weak face peering from the covers flashed into my head.

  “You, however, are overendowed with self-interest.”

  “I want my father’s ashes.”

  “I want, I want. See your greedy self?” She aimed the pointy end of the needles at me. “We will make a trade. The box
for a promise. I am taking all the risk since you are a known liar.”

  “Look, you old biddy, you can just cut the shit.”

  “No, you cut the shit.”

  I was shocked and pleased. She was showing her true awful self. The rouge circles were the palest spots on the old woman’s face. “You have to tell me what the promise is.”

  “That you will help your sister get out of the Army.”

  “But she doesn’t want to get out.”

  “This is a rescue mission.”

  “Get real,” I said.

  Jewell sucked in her cheeks and clacked off two rows.

  I looked around the ugly apartment. Goddamn her. The more she knitted, the sweeter she appeared. How could I get to her? “I am sure my father would want to rest near my mother.”

  “You are? And just what do you know about your daddy?”

  “Well,” I paused. I remembered once walking in the woods with him and my foot had gone to sleep. Daddy said to take a stick and whack it. I winced and my eye fell on Jewell’s false ankle. Another time he’d given me a plug of tobacco and told me it was chewing gum. I remembered the bitter shock in my mouth and then I wondered if I smoked now to bring him back. “Well, he wasn’t a saint.”

  “You’ve got more on the ball than the rest of your family,” Jewell said. “That’s why the burden of saving your sister falls on you.”

  “And just how am I supposed to do that?”

  “There are ways.” Jewell bent her head over the yellow yarn as if the matter was finished.

  Her pink skull showed in patches through her white hair. For the first time, I felt I was seeing someone completely naked. I would never, never, never let myself go nuts over one man, especially a man who went away. Not even Darryl would turn me into this. Poor Mama. My heart shifted into high gear. Mama was my rescue mission. “I promise I’ll do it. Tell me how.”

  “Substituting a pregnant woman’s urine is an old tried-and-true method, but they’re on to that one. Homosexuality is another. Hepatitis, but your sister looks fit as a horse.”

  There was no way I could fake any of those things. “I’ll try.”