by Ruth White
“Ooo, poor thing,” Ruby sympathized. “I always say there’s nothing nastier than a summer cold. Why, you don’t mind a cold in January. You expect it, don’t you? But who wants a cold when you can’t lay out of school?”
Mrs. Morgan, from Morgan’s Drug Store, entered the bank and took her place in line behind Ruby.
“Good morning, Ruby June,” said Mrs. Morgan.
“Good morning, Mrs. Morgan,” she said. “How’s Juanita and Jude and Edna and Slim, and Mr. Morgan?”
“In good health, Ruby June, and what are you up to today?”
Ruby produced an envelope from her shorts pocket. “I came in to make a deposit for Miss Arbutus—twenty-five dollars.”
“How is Miss Arbutus? I don’t reckon I’ve seen her in a month of Sundays. Is she as backward as ever?”
Ruby did not get a chance to respond, because at that moment the short stranger jumped out of line and started waving a gun around with one hand and a brown paper bag with the other.
“This is a holdup!” he shouted.
The bank customers sucked in air together as if they were fixing to sing on cue.
“Heah me?” the stranger hollered more forcefully. “A holdup! Just do as I say and you won’t get hurt.”
Except for Mrs. Morgan placing a hand on Ruby’s arm, nobody moved. They just stood looking at the man.
“All right, then,” the gunman said, handing the bag to the teller. “Here, miss, take this poke and fill it full of money.”
“Miss” was Shelby Chambers, a pretty young thing only recently married to Wally Chambers, son of the mayor. She did not take the bag. With one hand on her heart she swayed precariously, the blood drained from her face, and she crumbled like a rag doll onto the floor behind the counter.
“Now what? Now what?” the man muttered, seeming totally confounded.
Mr. Dales, the bank president, appeared from a back office behind the teller’s window. He stopped in his tracks and surveyed the scene.
“Fill this poke full of money!” the bank robber shouted at Mr. Dales. “Understand?”
Mr. Dales moved forward, carefully stepped over Shelby, and took the bag from the stranger through the teller’s window.
“Just small bills!” the man said sternly.
Calmly, Mr. Dales began filling the bag from a cash drawer.
At the sight of a twenty-dollar bill, the man cried out, “I said no big bills!” His voice cracked, and he finished almost in a whisper. “You can’t get nobody to break ’em for you.”
“You’re no bank robber!” Ruby blurted out.
The man whipped his gun around to point it in Ruby’s face. A gasp rose up from the group. Unruffled, Ruby stood almost eye to eye with the dangerous criminal.
“He’s crying,” she said, with hands planted on hips. “Just look at him. See?”
It was true. Big fat tears were rolling down the bandit’s cheeks and onto his T-shirt.
“You’re no bank robber,” Ruby repeated.
The man stood there holding the gun in Ruby’s face—and yes, he bawled. Mrs. Morgan walked to him and placed one hand on his bare arm.
“You don’t want to do this, do you?” she said.
“Course I do!” he croaked. “I got five young’uns and they need things. I can’t do for them worth a flip.”
“That must be hard,” Mrs. Morgan said as she patted his arm. With the other hand she touched the gun and gently nudged it away from Ruby’s face. The man did not protest.
Mr. Dales dropped the bag and walked through a small swinging gate into the lobby. “You wanna give me your weapon, friend?” he said to the man, holding out his hand.
“Weapon?” The man looked at his gun through tears. “You mean this weapon?” he said.
He pointed the gun at Mr. Dales and pulled the trigger.
7
SNAP! THE GUN WAS PLASTIC.
With this revelation, the bank customers let out a collective breath and gathered round the stranger, their noses fairly twitching with curiosity.
“Charity gave it to my boys for Christmas. I’m scared of real guns,” the man said.
At that moment Sheriff Reynolds came in, whistling. Freshly shaved and trimmed at Bevins’s Barber Shop, he was looking spiffy in his new blue uniform, which had a gold patch on the sleeve.
The sheriff stopped just inside the door. The cluster of bank customers was like a painting of big-eyed people frozen in place, as they stared at him, but his professionally trained eye was fixed on the stranger with the gun.
“Stop waving that thang around, will you?” the sheriff scolded the short man. “It might go off and hurt somebody!”
The would-be bank robber quickly stashed the toy gun under his overalls bib.
At that moment Shelby came to and pulled herself to her feet. “How much did he get?”
“Hello, Shelby, my girl. What were you doing down there on the floor?” the sheriff said, smiling at her.
She didn’t answer.
Not realizing he was breaking in line, because the line was pretty well scattered by then, the sheriff stepped forward and slid a ten-dollar bill through the cubbyhole. “Change that for me, would you, sugar? One one and five fives.”
The sheriff glanced around at the other customers, who still did not move, except for Ruby. She was scratching a mosquito bite in that hollow place behind her knee.
“You mean one five and five ones,” she corrected the sheriff.
He turned back to Shelby. “What did I say?”
When Shelby didn’t answer, Ruby volunteered, “You said one one and five fives.”
“Did I?” the sheriff bellowed, and slapped his thigh. “I meant one five and five ones. Bet y’all thought I was trying to pull a fast one, didn’t you? Trying to rob the bank or something!” And he laughed so hard, his face turned red and he began to cough.
Shelby, seeing the brown bag half-full of money right there in front of her, retrieved the requested bills from it and passed them to the sheriff, replacing them with his ten-dollar bill.
The sheriff pocketed the money, said thanks, and left, still laughing at his own blunder, and muttering, “One one and five fives. Lordy mercy!”
The door closed behind him.
With the law gone, Mr. Dales placed a hand on the stranger’s shoulder and asked, “What’s your name, son?”
The man’s eyes moved sideways to look at the hand.
“Bob,” he squeaked. “Bob Reeder.”
“Well, Bob Reeder, I know you did not really mean to rob this bank.”
To which Bob Reeder answered in a decidedly biblical manner. “My friends, deep despair has befallen me, and I was sorely tempted into transgression.”
He paused and looked around at all the various colors of puzzled eyes watching him. He saw no meanness there, so he continued.
“To put it another way, I am riding high on the crest of a slump.”
He paused again and wiped his eyes with his T-shirt sleeve.
“You see, me and my good wife, Pearl, were married for thirteen years, and produced five of the finest offspring who ever breathed. And life was good. But then . . .”
He put his face in his hands. “Well . . . you see,” he mumbled through his fingers, “my Pearl left this life six months ago.”
His voice quivered. There were sympathetic sounds in the room as many reached out to touch the grieving man.
Bob heaved a weary sigh and sprawled into one of the genuine leatherette chairs Mr. Dales kept there in the lobby.
“That was only the beginning of my troubles,” he went on. “Next, my old daddy’s brain got so addled, he couldn’t tell you the year if he had to. He lives more in the past than the present. Naturally, I took him in so me and the kids could look after him.
“Then my oldest boy, Peter, started catching the tonsilitis every time the weather changed. So his tonsils had to come out, and the doctor bills were awful. Then—”
“Your boy’s name is Peter
Reeder?” Ruby interrupted him.
Bob nodded and went on. “My second oldest boy, Cedar, started acting like a reg’lar juvenile delinquent, always cussing and acting up soooo bad at school. He makes me ashamed.”
“Cedar Reeder?” Ruby mumbled, but Bob Reeder paid her no attention.
“And there’s my baby Rita, poor little tyke. She’s five, and has not uttered one syllable since her mama died. I just thank the Lord for my nine-year-old twins, Jeeter and Skeeter. They don’t give me a lick of trouble.
“If that was not enough,” he continued, “I lost my job at the sawmill. Now I can’t feed and clothe any of them proper.”
“Where might you be from, Mr. Reeder?” Mr. Dales said.
“Y’all call me Bob, heah? I’m from Yonder Mountain. Ever heard of it?”
“Oh, sure, heard of it. Never been there. It’s over in Virginia, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, just barely.”
“How’d you get to Way Down, Bob?”
“On the bus.”
“And how were you planning to get away after robbing our bank?”
“On the bus,” Bob said.
Bob’s listeners were too polite to say what they thought of that dim-witted scheme.
Since serving refreshments to important guests was a custom in the bank, Shelby appeared with a coffeepot and a trayful of cups and cookies. She started to pour coffee for Bob Reeder first, but her hands were trembling so hard, she couldn’t hit the cup. Bob Reeder sprang up from his chair and kindly took the pot from her.
“I apologize for giving you the vapors,” he said to Shelby. “I hope you will forgive me.” And he proceeded to serve the coffee himself.
Shelby smiled a shaky smile and passed around the cookies.
Bob Reeder returned to his seat, took a handful of cookies, and tried to eat them all at once. The others nibbled politely, and looked anywhere except at this unfortunate man in the chair, for he was a pitiful sight.
“I reckon it had been a long time since he saw a cookie,” Ruby said that afternoon at Morgan’s Drugs, as she and Mrs. Morgan related the story to some of the townspeople who had come in from the heat for an afternoon break.
“Mr. Dales gave him the rest to take home to his kids,” Mrs. Morgan added.
Ruby was twirling round and round on one of the soda counter stools. Between sentences, she was biting the caps off of tiny wax Coke bottles and slurping the colored liquid out of them. Walter Rife at Rife’s Five and Dime had given them to her, probably trying to make up for the behavior of his mother, the nutty rock thrower.
“The mayor donated a bunch of groceries from his store to the Reeders,” Ruby went on.
“And Mr. Dales is arranging for them to come to Way Down and live in his old empty house on Ward Street,” Mrs. Morgan added. “Get them close to us, see, so we can all pitch in and help them.”
“For inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me!”
The room fell quiet as everybody turned to look at Miss Worly. She and Mr. Gentry were sitting in one of the tall black booths, sipping something cold. The townspeople were surprised to hear Miss Worly quoting Scripture, as she was not known to be religious. No doubt the word inasmuch, one of her favorites, had tempted her to do it.
“You said it, Miss Wordy,” Ruby said. “The least of these my brethren—that’s Robber Bob to a T!”
From that moment to the last day of his life Bob Reeder was known as Robber Bob, and contrary to what one might think, he liked the nickname. He figured anything was better than Shorty.
8
THE TELEPHONE WAS STILL A FAIRLY NEWFANGLED INVENtion to the small towns and hamlets of West Virginia, and folks were not yet inclined to depend on it for conducting business, which suited Miss Arbutus, for she did not like to speak into a receiver any more than she liked talking face-to-face with folks. When she needed to contact somebody outside of town, which was a rare occasion, she wrote very nice handwritten letters. To Way Down folks, she sent a messenger.
For the convenience of the boarders, however, there was indeed a phone at The Roost. The number was Olive-4000, requested by Miss Arbutus’s father because it would be easy for guests to remember. Rarely did a call come for reserving a room at The Roost. Most folks just showed up at the door. But when such a call came, whoever answered the phone took the message for Miss Arbutus.
There were four other residences on the same party line with The Roost. The phone was located by the fireplace in the common room, and any time you passed through, you were liable to find Mrs. Thornton Elkins curled up there on the sofa, with an ear to the receiver, listening in. She found telephone discussions most interesting and enlightening. So much so, in fact, that sometimes she plumb forgot herself and joined in the conversation.
To be fair, Mrs. Thornton Elkins was not alone in her attraction to the party line. It was common practice for Way Down folks, when they had nothing else to do, to pick up the receiver, and hear what they could hear.
So it was from the party line that the big news spread around town on the following Saturday that Mr. Dales had taken a bunch of boys from town up to Yonder Mountain in his truck that morning to haul the Reeders and their belongings down. They had moved into the green two-story frame house on Ward Street, a few houses beyond The Roost. The Dales family had lived there before they built their new brick ranch out on Highway 99. Mr. Dales was letting the Reeders live there rent-free for the time being.
Ruby refrained from intruding on the newcomers at such a hectic time, but all day her curiosity led her to watch the street for any signs of the new kids. She thought perhaps they would want to look around the neighborhood. It was after supper when she glanced out a front window, and sure enough there was a strange boy and an old man walking on the sidewalk.
“Gonna run down the street for a bit!” she hollered to Miss Arbutus, and hurried out the door.
“Hello!” she called to the strangers. “What’s your name?”
The boy turned to her with a shy smile. “I’m Peter Reeder, and this is my granddaddy. Everybody calls him Bird.”
“Why do they call him Bird?”
“ ’Cause that’s his name.”
“Oh.”
The man jingled when he walked because he had a string of tiny silver bells tied round his ankle.
“How do you do, Bird,” Ruby said politely, and held out a hand to the man. “My name is Ruby June.”
Bird did not take the hand. Instead he stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and stared at Ruby with a puzzled expression.
“He’s not quite all there,” Peter apologized as he took his granddaddy’s arm.
“Then where’s he at?” Ruby asked.
“Floating around somewhere in the past. He’s going through his second childhood.”
“What are the bells for?” Ruby asked.
“He’s liable to wander off and get lost. So the bells let us know where he is.”
Peter was about the same age as Ruby, she guessed. He was taller than his daddy, Robber Bob, but he had the same gray eyes. He was tan as a nut and had a mess of blond hair hanging down in his face.
“Where you going to?” Ruby asked him.
“Just to walk around town,” he answered. “Maybe I’ll see a HELP WANTED sign in a store window.”
“Monday morning might be the best time to look for a job,” Ruby informed him.
“Well, to be honest, I was thinking Saturday night might be the best time to make friends,” Peter said.
“Consider me friend number one, and I’ll show you around,” Ruby said.
“Sure. I’d like that.”
Together they continued toward Busy Street.
“Panthers got ’er,” Bird said.
Peter ignored the old man, and said to Ruby, “Do you live in that big white house you came out of?”
Ruby nodded.
“I saw a goat in back of there today. He was standing on the top of a Studebaker.”
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“That’s my Jethro,” Ruby replied. “He likes to have a good view of the town.”
“You’re right handy to the schoolhouse,” Peter said. “Just across the road. With the football field over there, I bet you could go up to the top floor of your house and see the games for free, couldn’t you?”
“I could, but I just pay my quarter like everybody else.”
Peter glanced back over his shoulder at The Roost. “It sure is a nice big house,” he said, with admiration in his voice.
“It’s a boardinghouse,” Ruby explained. “Did you see the sign there over the porch that says ‘The Roost’?”
“Yeah, I saw it when we first went by today, but I didn’t know what it meant.”
“Well, that’s what it means. You know, when chickens turn in for the night, people say they are going to roost?”
“Yeah, it’s a good name. Does your mama and daddy own The Roost?”
“No, I just live there with Miss Arbutus Ward. She’s the proprietor.”
“How come you live in a boardinghouse?” Peter asked.
“Panthers got ’er,” Bird mumbled.
Ruby was distracted by the old man’s mumbling, and did not hear Peter’s question.
“Don’t pay any attention to Bird,” Peter said. “He rambles a lot. Has no idea what he’s talking about.”
“He’s talking about panthers,” Ruby said.
“That’s right!” Bird said loudly. “There were panthers on the mountain.”
“It’s okay, Bird,” Peter said. “There are no panthers here.”
“Panthers ate her all up!” Bird cried out, pulling at his thin silver hair in agitation.
Peter comforted the old man by patting him on the back. “Who, Bird? Who did the panthers eat up?”
“Her!” Bird hollered again, pointing at Ruby.
Peter and Ruby burst into laughter. At first Bird appeared to be startled and bewildered at their amusement, but then his face melted into a sheepish grin.
“But here she is, still alive and kickin’,” he admitted.
Almost immediately Bird’s attention turned toward a dog on the other side of the street.
“There’s old Red,” he said. “Followed us all this way.”
