Ruby River

by Lynn Pruett

  But if she came around too much, too many Sundays and Wednesdays, the ladies decided they would simply not speak to her. It was a tactic tried and true, the only way to keep themselves untainted and superior. Imagine God looking down into the church and seeing the tart in their midst. They trusted God would know whose souls were white and whose were scarlet. The church could forgive and they would as members of the church forgive, but, they could not, as individuals, consort with a girl with a reputation.

  JESSAMINE BOHANNON

  She was so happy. She had passion and love was its reward. She thought of Paul and her heart beat quickly and a smile grew and grew across her face. There was no place for the ordinary—the stuff that brides plan forever—their china, their patterns, tablecloths. This was not about silverware, it was about feeling at home at last.

  When she rode in his truck, her body relaxed, even though she knew she should not be seeing him. How could she deny this relationship? Everything was sky blue: his eyes, the Ruby River as they shot around Horseshoe Bend, clouds forever, the days long as Mardi Gras. They rode into DeSoto Park and walked hand in hand under the trees. There, up high, it was actually cool. He would take her wrist and nuzzle it, pull her close, and then they’d be lying on pine straw, his eyes looking, pleading—she knew she could say no but she never did. Always yes. This is what her life had become with Paul. The undersides of leaves were beautiful.

  At night they went to the river, to a place where the ferry had operated a hundred years ago. There was a short rocky beach and often teenagers who needed to be chased away. At times she and Paul listened to the drone of all-terrain vehicles, illegal at night on the hills, but Paul was occupied, his tongue on her. The picnic table became their bed; her back was chafed near her backbone. She looked over her shoulder in the mirror at those two scraped spots with pleasure. Would they linger? How could she explain them? It was clear, very clear, that when he gave her a ring she would have to tell her mother.

  They talked of it, she and Paul, how to tell Hattie, though she could not see him as the man who’d been courting her mother. He was hers, new, a different soul altogether. He raised herbs and made his own pizzas; she doubted her mother knew that. He liked to throw steaks on a grill and buy tomatoes and fresh corn at roadside stands. He knew how to clean up after himself: her favorite view, Paul with his fair-haired arms up to his elbows in bubbles at the kitchen sink. Was there ever a man such as this? A man who vacuumed his house every Saturday, who routinely hauled his bound bags of garbage to the dump? Everything Paul did was remarkable.

  The night of the ring he took her to Birmingham to Copa Cahawba, the fanciest place she’d ever been. In his blue cotton work shirt, he seemed awkward at first, surrounded by men in suits, but he was the law and rose above discomfort. The glances of appreciation he got from the other men, because she was so young and blond, put him at ease. She relished this and held his arm as if she needed his support as they were led to their table. Jessamine had eaten nothing all day and fell upon her salad, despite its strange leaves, like a mountaineer on greens after a long winter. Purple and bitter the lettuces were but she ate them all and then, too, the nut-crusted trout, the curled carrots and apple slivers, a hill of sliced cabbage. For dessert, key lime pie, so rich and creamy it made her blush. Happiness looked like Paul Dodd, and he was looking at her. She wondered how they’d ever last the two-and-a-half-hour drive home without making love.

  He saved the ring until it was past dark and they were on the highway alone, heading north to Maridoches. He pulled over at a scenic mountain view. Clouds had come in and covered the stars. He got out of the truck and flashed his badge at several vehicles occupied by men, which screeched out of there fast. When it was quiet he came around to her door and opened it and held out his hand, warm and strong.

  She walked with him in the sweet summer air to the guardrail and looked out into the dark. He got down on one knee and held up the small box. She clutched it in both hands and stepped forward, pulling his head to her belly. She stroked his head, the short bristly hairs so fine on her palm.

  He lifted his eyes and said, “I want to see your face.”

  She smiled down and held the box in her left hand and opened the lid. Light sparkled in the dark box, light from somewhere, her eyes perhaps. A small shining diamond that was bigger than the dark valley behind them.

  “Yes,” she said to his two bright eyes. “Yes.”

  He stood and embraced her. Their mouths met, but it was different now. She could wait until they got home, until they told Mama. She could and would. His grip on her was less intense, more settled, relieved. He picked her up and spun her. A car slowed and caught them in spotlight: Jessamine lifted high above his shoulders, her hair and skirt umbrellas of flight.

  REVEREND MARTIN PETERSON

  The next week in the men’s Sunday school class, the Wheel of Gratitude spun lackadaisically as the men brooded over the need for rain, an aspect of life they could not control via gifts and favors. Finally, Toller Odom spoke up, “Reverend, explain to us the mysterious ways of the Lord regarding that Bohannon girl joining our church.”

  “The Lord forgives those who want to be washed in the blood of Jesus. She spoke in tongues. She was saved, her sins washed clean,” said Martin, managing not to choke over the words that Stelle had uttered.

  “That’s all well and good,” said Toller Odom, “but it interferes with our other holy purpose of establishing a Christian steak house on the site of former sin. We need the Lord to understand that our work is like reclaiming toxic landfills, rooting out what is poison and returning the land to proper prosperity.”

  “Let us pray on that,” said Martin, and bowed his head. Around him, he felt the men shifting their bodies to an attitude of prayer. No words came to him so he let the silence grow and grow until it seemed the room was about to combust. “Amen,” he said, and the chairs squeaked and the men glanced around at one another.

  “I believe,” said Baker Thomas, “that even though the young girl has reformed, the taint of her past will linger at the truck stop.”

  “And,” said Martin, surprising himself, “there is still her unredeemed mother.”

  “My wife does not like to share altar space with that girl,” said Toller Odom.

  “Ask her to pray for a forgiving heart,” said Martin. “After all, the girl has not sinned against your wife.”

  Toller Odom’s open mouth clamped down on his prepared reply. In a moment, he said softly, “No, Reverend, my wife has no truck with that particular girl.”

  “I would like to raise another issue,” said Ed Wohlgemuth in his raspy voice. “Where is our steak going to come from since the plague of caterpillars has annihilated this year’s crop of cattle?”

  “I wish Richard Reynolds was here to give us a report,” said Baker Thomas. “Then we’d have a better sense of what a good steak will cost next year.”

  “We may have to go outside the state of Alabama for beef,” said Toller Odom.

  The men sat in solemn silence at this prospect.

  “Well,” said Ed Wohlgemuth, “we might could try Texas.”

  “You addled old man,” cried Toller Odom, “have you forgot the 1980 Cotton Bowl?”

  “Nothing good has ever come out of Texas,” said Baker ­Thomas. “We ought to try South Alabama first—get some of their beef. It’s been done before.”

  “And Warner Robins, Georgia wasn’t hit by the plague.”

  “It’ll cost us. It’ll cost us.”

  “Trust in the Lord to find a better way,” said Martin.

  “Reverend, I’d appreciate it if we prayed long and hard for some rain. It seems the only place rich in vegetables this summer is the truck stop, and I am sorely needing some vitamin C,” said Toller Odom.

  The men bowed their big heads in prayer, and this time Martin issued a call for rain to end the drought and for patience in the face of unforeseen obstacles, such as the caterpillar plague and the unlikely being saved.r />
  The men seemed cheered by the prospect that their prayers might be heard and moved happily out into the heat of the parking lot. In a few minutes the lot was empty but for Martin’s Cadillac and a VW. He went inside to his office and had swabbed his face with a baby wipe when there was a knock on his door. Before he could say anything, Jessamine Bohannon came in.

  “Reverend Peterson, hello. I’m sorry I missed church this morning but I have something important to tell you.”

  He hastily dropped the wipe into the trash can and pointed at the chair in front of his desk. His mouth had gone suddenly dry. During the revival and baptism service, he had been surrounded by so many people, Stelle, and music, involved in the ceremony, that his mind had stayed where it should regarding the girl. But now, with her in his office, alone, her face fresh and pretty, her breasts cleanly outlined by her small pink T-shirt, he was overcome. He sat down and swallowed.

  “Is it about your mother?” he asked, trying to calm himself. “Or Gert Geurin? She works with you?” Suddenly an awful thought flashed through his mind: Gert Geurin a prostitute, the reason for his dream of her?

  “No,” she practically yelled. “This is about me, just me, or rather”—she smiled and held out her left hand, where a small diamond sparkled—“me and my fiancé.”

  “Your fiancé?” he said as the chill of disappointment flushed through his body.

  “I want to have my wedding in the church. A white dress, bridesmaids, music, and you to marry us. I want to plan it with you.” She smiled again, like a child preparing for a slumber party.

  “Well,” said Martin, “let me see what papers we have about weddings.” There were no papers, just a list of suggested donations for the minister and the pianist as well as places to shop for wedding needs, stores all owned by church members. He wished to call Stelle and ask her advice. “Just a minute.”

  He left the office and went into the sanctuary and stood above the baptismal font. He did not believe that praying among the wives would bring the church together on the issue of this girl joining the church. His control was slipping away and God was not helping him. Where is my salvation? he asked his pale reflection in the pool of ­water.

  His face rippled with light coming up off the white bottom of the pool: a swimming face, indistinct, backed by the darkness of the ceiling. There was no answer in his face. He stirred the water until his face broke into tiny leaves of light and went back to Jessamine.

  “Who is your groom?”

  “Sheriff Paul Dodd,” she said proudly, and lifted her head as if she wore a crown.

  He gazed for a moment at her smooth forehead and felt a force in her that he would turn back. “Paul Dodd is not a member of the church. You can’t marry here.”

  “Is that a rule?” she said, her jaw hardening, reminding him of her mother.

  “I doubt your husband-to-be would take the plunge into salvation. What do you think?”

  She stood above him, red color washing up her face. “You’re against me too.”

  She turned and dashed out of his office. He heard her shoes slap the corridor and the door groan as she slammed into it. Next, rocks of gravel thrown by her tires, a long hard blast of her horn, grinding gears, and then quiet.

  He carried his weary self into the sanctuary for the third time that morning and dunked his head in the holy baptismal water.

  HATTIE BOHANNON

  The food was beautiful and illegal, bounty of Troy Clyde. He’d brought it to my kitchen at home in crates: striped cucumbers; red, gold, and green peppers, skins smooth and clean, jalapeños and red-hots, like tiny Christmas lights at the top of a package; corn husks upright in a crate, the soft yellow silks a crown of ribbon; red potatoes and yellow potatoes promising firm buttery mouthfuls of pleasure.

  Jessamine came into the kitchen and began poking around in the crates. “More gifts from the hose monster,” she said. “Sunday supper will be pretty good.”

  Although no one had ever talked about it, we both knew that Troy Clyde was siphoning water from the river with long hoses. The plot he and I had planted with tomatoes was in the flood plain. He’d added the other plants as an experiment. Usually the river ran over the bed, but this year the drought proved it worth his gamble. Hence I could serve fresh local vegetables at the truck stop, circumventing Kenny Ranford and his Vegetables of the South.

  I plucked a tomato from the basket on the table, Heather’s contribution. I bit it. Fresh flavor bloomed in my mouth and made me bite again and again. Firm flesh from my own backyard.

  “Mama,” said Jessamine, her back to me, hands testing the vegetables for firmness, “I’m going to cook your breakfast from a new recipe.” She picked out a jalapeño and washed it in the sink.

  “How nice,” I said. Here was my born-again daughter, the one Gert said I deserved, cooking for me. I watched as she took down an onion-soup pot I’d picked up at the outlets in Boaz. I hadn’t used it but once. No one liked the dollops of parmesan clogging up the thin brown soup. They’d just as soon eat their onions raw, they’d said. With a tomato and corn bread and some black-eyed peas. That was a good dinner, they’d said, my girls. So away went the onion-soup pot, banished to a high remote shelf.

  Jessamine sliced the jalapeño. She put the pot on a burner and melted butter in it. She cracked an egg on the rim of the pot. I heard it crackle as it hit the hot butter, a second crack for another egg. I began to have a little déjà vu. Paul Dodd had made me eggs in a red clay bowl the night I’d overslept at his place. He had a hot green sauce, made from tomatillos and jalapeños, that he put on the eggs.

  The diced pepper went into the pot.

  “Would you like orange juice and coffee, Mama?”

  “Juice,” I said. “But don’t bother shaving chocolate into the coffee.”

  “I wasn’t—wouldn’t do that,” said Jessamine. “It’s not wintertime.” Her voice grew thin and a little higher. She moved very quickly. Sweat showed under her arms, and then I saw it: a diamond ring on her left hand. She’d turned the ring so the diamond was on the palm side, to hide it from me. I watched and waited to see if cream was the next ingredient.

  She placed the hot little pot in front of me and opened a new carton of cream and poured it on, stood back, and looked at my face, hopeful for praise, I saw.

  I picked up my spoon and ran it under the crisp edge of the egg, letting the cream saturate the whole dish. Then I ate it, because it was good, the sting of the pepper mellowed by the cream, the egg a neutral solid. My firstborn, cooking up treachery and betrayal, offer­ing it as love. My grip grew tighter on the spoon as I scraped up the cream and egg cracklings. How many times did I have to suffer birthing pains with this daughter? The truth was too awful. It was there on her finger, twisting.

  “You’re fired,” I said.

  “Fired?” she said. “But where will I go?”

  To hell, I wanted to say, but did not. “I don’t need to tell you.”

  “Oh.” She stumbled over a few more words but then relief bloomed on her face; it was a pretty color, the lovely tone of a peach just where the deep red begins. “Pshew,” she said. But then, because she is Jessamine and has to push, “Heather—”

  “Don’t even think about it,” I said.

  A sob broke from deep inside her, the sound of a wounded animal. Her shoulders heaved and she slapped the orange juice to the floor. She ran out of the kitchen then, leaving me in shock, with dirty dishes. I threw the soup pot in the trash and poured the good cream down the sink. It was strange to be up and moving when I wanted to smash Paul Dodd over the head, crush his skull, pound his bones to powder, and condemn Jessamine to eternal fire. Dangerous thoughts were flying around in my head, given that there were knives on the cutting board. I could not see what my body was doing, but after a time, the kitchen was clean and shining.

  I aged suddenly. My softening thighs, my squinting eyes, my lowered center of gravity, a wisp of gray in my hair—all of it the look of an old woman. Paul Dodd
and his lie about preferring a woman his age. This is my reward for saying no to a man who was not right for me. This. To Paul Dodd:

  I feel as if I have been murdered, by you, man of the law, and by her, daughter of my body; blow by blow, you killed me. You killed me in secret when I did not know it, every time you met. Together you murdered me. And when you would not kill me fast enough, she delivered the final blow.

  But I am alive, my body shattered. I lie smashed, bloodied, no longer a shape recognizable as me.

  CONNIE BOHANNON

  The Sunday Jessamine moved out, the rain came down so hard it struck the dry ground like pebbles flung on tin. Mud slopped up on her shoes and on everything she carried out of her room—her pillow, clothes, makeup case, yearbook, tapes—all her junk. Nobody helped her. I was at work and so was Mama. Darla told me about it that night. Her room seemed hollow when I went into it. My name echoed when I spoke it out loud. I’d thought I’d ask Mama if I could move in there, but the room gave me the creeps, like she’d died or something.

  On Monday, it was raining hard when Jessamine called me and asked me to meet her at the courthouse. I told her I was watching Heather. She said to bring her and a pair of boots because Jessamine had none. I borrowed Darla’s combat boots; mine leaked. Heather and I splashed to the Jetstar and got in. It smelled like slick plastic, an odor I hate, but I had to keep the windows rolled up all the way to town. We drove slowly on the highway, flashers blinking, because truckers will barrel along as if it’s sunshine all the way to Hawaii.