Ruby River

by Lynn Pruett

  “Good,” said Jewell. “When she’s discharged, you get the ashes.”

  “No. I need them tonight,” I blurted, and regretted the crafty look that pulled the edges of her face toward her nose.

  “Tonight? What about tomorrow or next year or after I pass on to the great sisterhood in the sky? What difference, tonight or ten years from now?”

  “The difference,” I said slowly, as the words took form in my mind, “is that you return them to me now or I’ll tell the Army you stole my father’s ashes. They want to know where he is.”

  “Young lady, remember I know where you live and who you love.” Jewell stood up and limped into the pink light. Tendrils of ivy seemed to spring from the wall. I wondered if Jewell had escaped through a secret door. But soon she returned, carrying a red box. Her hands wavered as she held it out.

  The box was surprisingly light and its contents rattled in a creepy way.

  “Are you sure they’re all here?” I didn’t trust the old lady not to substitute rocks for the real ashes.

  Jewell nodded. Her brimming eyes were too bright, magnified by the tears.

  “They better be,” I said, deliberately looking into the wild tangle of plants. It would be just like the old coot to use ashes for fertilizer.

  “I could have been your mother,” she said. For a moment I saw her as just that, a kindly old lady with a kind old heart, and I felt like saying something sweet that would bring her into our family, but then I remembered how she had stolen Daddy’s ashes from Mama. She was mired in a love for him too heavy and thick.

  “I’ll get Darla out of the Army. I promise,” I said, then ran down the steps and leapt into the car. “See you later, jail baiter,” I called to the gray bun in the window. How weird, I thought, as I put on my seat belt, that there is such a thing as the right amount of love. With the box stowed safely under the seat, I drove straightaway to Fred’s General Store, where I located a dusty little urn. It had a lid and molded roses running down its sides. In candlelight, the roses would deepen with shadows, just the kind of thing Mama liked. I called Sheriff Dodd from a pay phone and told him I was headed his way. My own evening would be wasted trying to convince Darla to break her leg or poke her eye out or do some other hideous mutilation to herself. Too bad Darla wasn’t a boy.

  “You caught me just in time,” Sheriff Dodd said, when I drove up to his house. It was small, a dull yellow. He was washing his RV, which he was going to use for his rendezvous with Mama. “I was getting ready to take a shower.”

  “Everything all ready?” I asked. I tried to peer past him into the window. I wanted to see if the setup was romantic enough. Inside my chest a large happy face was smiling. I wanted Mama to have some fun.

  “Food’s all set. Wine’s cooling. Did you get them?”

  I gave him the sack from Fred’s and the box.

  He carefully placed the box on the ground, then opened the bag. “Pretty little thing.” He handled the urn with an ease that showed his hands were comfortable with delicate objects.

  “Mama likes roses.”

  He nodded. “I got the flowers taken care of.” A little gold tab stuck to the urn. He peeled it off. “Damn it, girl, this would have ­ruined everything.”

  “Made in Japan.” I shrugged.

  “Don’t you know your daddy was fighting the Japanese in World War Two?”

  I shrugged again. “I dropped out in tenth grade.” I patted his sticky arm. “Now calm down. Mama will be nervous enough without you being all jittery and spoiling everything.”

  “Out of the mouths of babes,” he said.

  I smiled widely at his compliment. “Well, have a good time, Sheriff Dodd.”

  HATTIE BOHANNON

  Paul Dodd’s RV cab was navy blue with a silver stripe zooming across its door. The back end of the stripe puffed up like a cloud, the dust raised by his blinding speed. Before Hattie knocked, the cab door opened. She stared at his white-stockinged feet. Awfully casual, she thought, and regretted her lace collar and upswept hair. “I hope you’ll take us somewhere with a pleasant view.”

  She accepted his hand but was annoyed that she needed help up. Aloft, she found herself pressed into him. “Please.” She pushed him away, although they were cramped by the seat and the roof. “You’ll wrinkle my dress.”

  He grinned. “This view doesn’t please you, then?”

  She sat down on the seat and said, “I’ll tell you when it does.”

  He drove out of the lot and took the old road. The thick canopy of leaves threw shadows into the cab. She pointed at a clearing, the entrance to an overgrown wagon path. The camper hummed slowly through the high grass and stopped beneath tall pines. She wondered what he was planning, since she had told him over the phone that the ashes had not yet arrived. She glanced at his pleased face.

  “I’m starved,” she said.

  “Well, come on back to the dining room.” Paul nodded at dark curtains behind the seat.

  “Do I have to climb over the seat?”

  “I invited you special ’cause I figured if any woman would know how to get from the front seat to the back without climbing, it’d be you.”

  “If you insist on making rude remarks about me, I will leave.”

  “The door ain’t locked.” He stepped over the seat and parted the curtains.

  Her flat shoes were a help. She walked on the seat then swung over the backrest as if it were a fence.

  “I can see where you’ve done this before.”

  “Not exactly. When I was growing up, my jeans had a little hole on the inside right cuff where I always caught them on barbed wire. That’s how my mother could tell them from my sister’s.”

  His hand swept across her waist for a thrilling second as he moved toward a tiny round table, the kind where knees couldn’t help but meet. He lit a candle and dripped the wax on a saucer to make it stick. On the ceiling, shadows, like fleeing clouds, beckoned. Instantly the dark space became a small charming private booth. He pulled out a chair for her.

  “Wine?”

  She nodded. He disappeared in the shadows.

  A cloud of burnt spices lingered. Aftershave, an insidious invention. Until you slept with a man, the smell was false and even offensive. Then afterwards, because your nose had the best memory of all the senses, the smell made you think of him naked in your bed. Hattie hoped this evening would be pleasant. Otherwise she’d be stuck forever with the smell of rotten memory. She wanted to move toward this man, to enjoy the scent of his soap, but she had promised herself for her daughters’ sakes not to slip up again.

  “Like my home away from home?” He bent over her glass, then his. The clear wine gurgled like a fresh spring.

  “It’s quite a surprise.” She’d almost forgotten they were inside a camper at the edge of the piney woods.

  “This is where I keep my lobsters.” He nodded at a tank full of green liquid, secured to a shelf. He rapped the wall. “This door falls out and becomes where I lay my head. Ironing board, too. Got good little greens in this basket from North Carolina. I have a refrigeration compartment where I keep the best surprises.”

  “Where do you keep your condoms?”

  “Shit, woman, I don’t keep my condoms.”

  She filled her mouth with wine. Paul became a low gentle voice, cooking in the dimness. Steam rose from the stove. He wore an apron and wiped his hands. Low flames under a cup of butter set in front of her. Artichoke leaves. Peel and dip. She bit the leaf and chewed. Thorny rough spikes. One caught in her throat. Discreetly tore and swallowed two rolls and drained her glass. Still there. Stuck. She smiled and clinked his wineglass. The men these days cooked with more attention and technique than she did. A bonus.

  She smiled and felt something like love.

  He licked the butter from his lips. “Look, you been king of the hill for a long time. And if that’s what you want, you can be as lonely as a mountain goat. But I like a connection, something soft and reliable, something I can count on.
I’m beginning to count on you.”

  She sighed and turned away so he wouldn’t see the upstart smile flitting across her mouth.

  “If you don’t want to hear it, then this just isn’t going to be very satisfactory for either of us.”

  “I suppose I will adjust.”

  “I figured you might.” He poured more wine and sat back down. “I got something for you.” He held out a lidded vase with a flower on it.

  “Thank you.” How quaint. Perhaps she’d stick some real flowers in it and keep it at home. It wasn’t professional enough for the office. Not really her kind of thing. She set it beside the candle.

  “Take a good look,” he said.

  She obliged him. It was weighted. She hefted it. Held it up. Set it on the table. Cocked her head. Said cute things about it, feeling the romance of the evening slink away. By the time she had admired each of its sides, it seemed as if someone had turned on the lights. She settled her mind. They must go on.

  “I’d like some more wine, Paul.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He looked at her, not with soft eyes of love but like he was taking an exact count of her facial flaws.

  “You got any music? A second course or dessert?”

  “Something better.” Cold air trailed in his wake.

  She felt to see if her bun was still in place and debated whether she should let her hair fall.

  Paul held a cold peach-colored rose to her lips. “I want you to breathe out like you’re fogging a mirror.”

  She touched its cold petals. Slender lines of frost sparkled as she twirled the stem. She breathed out. The yellow-pink tips wavered. A silver drop ran down into the melon-pink center. Slowly, as her breath warmed them, the stiff petals quivered. Moist and luminous, the rose glowed like a cup of peach brandy. The candlelight stretched into the points of stars.

  “You’re some damn woman,” he said, as he breathed down her neck.

  “Mmm.” She blinked her eyes and lifted her shoulders. “That is a nice vase. Maybe I’ll put some frozen roses in it.”

  He laughed. “You better not do that.”

  “Well, why not? You gave it to me.”

  “It’s not very respectful, that’s all.” His chin rested gently on her shoulder.

  She tickled his ear. “I thought you wanted me to be disrespectful.”

  “You don’t have to be disrespectful ever again,” he said. “That urn is holding your husband’s ashes.”

  She pushed at his face and wrenched her shoulder free. Somehow her voice came out even. “That is the cruelest thing you have ever said to me. What is this whole setup? You’ve been making fun of me and my feelings all along. And then, right when I’m finally letting go and trying only to think of right now, you got to come out with his name and accuse me of betraying him?”

  “Oh, Jesus. Oh, Jesus.”

  “You better pray.” She stood up and clawed at the curtain.

  “Hattie, listen. This is your urn. And your husband’s ashes are inside it. I thought that’s what you wanted. It’s all I’ve heard about from you.” He held out a red box. In the dimness, it looked like a candy box, lettered with the words REMAINS OF LT. OAKLEY BOHANNON, U.S. ARMY. “I’ll open the urn if you like.”

  She marched over to the table and picked up the urn. “Thank you for the evening, Paul Dodd. It was nice. And thanks for returning my husband. Sometime you can tell me how you did it. Someday you will be telling the law.” She paused and was struck by how ordinary he looked out of uniform. “Telling the U.S. Army how you stole him.” She grasped its slender neck and, with as much dignity as she could muster, climbed over the cab seat and down the running board.

  Hattie fled through the woods, willing the sun to dive headlong into a distant ocean. But the slow twilight made her path all too clear, her moving figure an anomaly among the shafts of withered plants. Her flat shoes chafed in the dry dust of pine straw.

  How could there still be daylight? Paul’s cab had been dark and close. It had even smelled of evening. How had he done that? The frozen roses, the lobster in its battened-down tank. And then the surprise, he’d said. She had imagined—what? Some exotic fruit that hinted of smuggler’s hands, a powerfully sweet drink native to a ­Pacific island? But the ashes.

  She focused on the scaly trees, the dusty feeling of brown, the smell of dry grass, the heat. She must slow down before the pulses of pain in her head formed a knot. Out here there was no water, no cure for a headache. She’d go to the river.

  It was only after a half hour of walking that her thoughts began to cohere. Everything else since he’d said your husband’s ashes had been pure body response. An awful confluence of past and present slamming head-on into each other: who she was, had been, was about to be. Her body had turned tail. Around her, disembodied advice and rules had floated, then spun, growing tighter and smaller and faster until they torqued inside her skull, threatening to explode the bone. Her breath rasped. She barely saw the narrow deer path as it wound through the pale forest grasses.

  But she held the urn in a tight grip. As she slid in her good shoes, she kept the urn close to her hip and let her left hand flail and steady her. It was a fragile thing she carried and yet so heavy, like an infant, or a tablet from God, or a vaccine. It was herself embodied in it, a genie Paul Dodd had hoped to call forth by rubbing the urn with his hands.

  The sun dropped. It would soon be dark, and who would she be, out in the woods at the edge of the river at night? Could she find Troy Clyde’s raft in the dark? She wanted to drift without aim, not face who she was now. No longer Oakley’s wife; that was past. Even the night she’d made love to Paul Dodd was past. It had happened too fast, Oakley gone, Paul there. Her stomach rose, wine and the prickly piece of artichoke. This was madness.

  After the urn, she could no more have stripped down with Paul Dodd there in the privacy of his RV than she could have at Oakley’s funeral with a hundred witnesses. Paul had spoken of connection, but she’d felt sheered off from him as if by a heavy blow. Walking in the dim light took all her concentration. The river was too far away. She had to get home on her own accord.

  THE LADIES OF THE CHURCH OF THE HOLY RESURRECTION

  As it was their duty to keep perversion in its place, the ladies forbade their children and husbands and beauticians and recipients of charitable donations to brighten the doorway of the truck stop. They took some satisfaction in knowing the dust on Hattie’s driveway lay undisturbed for days at a time.

  The ladies spent all summer sweating. In church, their paper fans, depicting a dole-eyed Jesus cuddling a hot woolly lamb, fluttered so much their wrists thickened. They sent fumes of prayer heavenward for an air conditioner. Water beads, strung like pearls, glistened on their foreheads. They didn’t dare go without pantyhose—too tacky. Up front, Reverend Peterson raged with fire over the sins of the flesh. The church was hot as hell.

  The gym on the town square sweated through its cinderblock walls until stopped by external pink baked-on paint. The sweat seeped back into the gym, which smelled like an unfinished basement. One by one, the ladies discovered that a certain leg-lifting exercise, reputed to flatten their stomachs, caused the liveliest little shivers to race along their pelvic floors. A few braver ones actually allowed the shivers to build to a crescendo. They modestly turned their faces from the huge mirror. Such a sight was far too intimate in a large writhing room of pink and purple.

  Jewell Miller munched her bean sprouts in stealth as the pitch of conversation whined against her eardrums. She missed Oakley’s box, now safely in Hattie’s hands. Jewell had transported it to and from work for several months, in order that she might share her day with him. Often she held the earphones up to the box so he could share her dismay. She had replaced him with a clever automatic redial attachment, a small humming box that was more companionable. She hadn’t been in the Army for nothing.

  IV

  CONNIE BOHANNON

  Mama didn’t come home the night she went off in Sheriff Dodd�
�s RV. Afterwards in the light of day she looked pale and talked as if all her energy had leached out. She didn’t mention Daddy’s ashes but I saw the urn on her dresser when I went in to put a sachet in her underwear drawer, for the next time she went out with Sheriff Dodd.

  I spent a lot of time working, covering for Darla, who slept late. Mama didn’t make her get up and go to school, so what could I do? One day I got a phone call at work from a high school boy, which was a first.

  When the voice said, “This is Kyle Childers,” I didn’t say anything back. He probably thought I’d fainted because next he roared, “And I am asking you to the prom.”

  My mind was sorting through heads in a yearbook trying to recall which one Kyle was. “When is it?”

  “May thirteenth,” he said, like I was retarded.

  Then I remembered him. He was so huge that if it wasn’t for football he’d be in a sideshow at a carnival.

  “Well?” He sounded like he might hang up.

  I wasn’t sure how Darryl would feel about me going to the prom with another boy. Darryl is my uncle’s stepson, and we’ve been friendly since last Fourth of July. Real friendly. I’d gone to the barn that day to get a mess of hamburger patties from the freezer and was cooling off in the chilly steam when Darryl saw me. He was smoking dope behind the old baptismal font they use for saving dying sinners in the winter. Darryl said he saw me standing over that freezer in my short shorts and my yellow tank top and saw my nipples turn hard and he knew what that meant. He came up behind me and touched my waist real easy. My whole body went on fire from my ankles to my head. I didn’t have an orgasm the first time but I had enough hot shivers to go back for more. I’d been having orgasms all my life. I just didn’t know you were supposed to have them during sex.

  Darryl is married, besides.

  I could see Kyle’s impatience weighing down the telephone wire leading to the truck stop. He cleared his throat and three finches burst off the line. I remembered Dear Abby’s advice to the Other Woman: Get on with your own life. He will never leave his wife.