Way Down Deep

by Ruth White

  “No, ma’am,” he objected. “After that big breakfast I can’t take money from you.”

  Finally he agreed to take one pint of honey home to his family, and he was gone. Ruby felt a moment of regret that their time together was over, but she couldn’t think of that right now because Granny Butler’s words were going around and around in her head.

  The mystery of Ruby June is about to unravel.

  Miss Arbutus was studying her face. “What is it, Ruby June?”

  “Just a headache,” Ruby said. It was true that her head had started to hurt. “Too much sun.”

  She went to her room and lay down on the yellow-and-white ruffled bed. The pansy curtains moved slightly with the breeze, and outside she could hear some small children playing May I? on the sidewalk. She was reminded of past days when she was just a child herself playing that game. There were many such sweet memories of growing up in this fine old house with Miss Arbutus.

  “Take two baby steps.”

  “May I?”

  “Yes, you may.”

  “Take a giant step.”

  The mystery of Ruby June is about to unravel.

  “Uh-oh! You forgot to say May I? You have to go all the way back to the start line.”

  Heard it from a panther.

  “What am I afraid of?” Ruby asked herself. “Haven’t I always wanted to know who I am, where I came from? Why else did I think of my parents all those nights and say to them, ‘Don’t forget me. Woo-bee is right here waiting for you’?”

  Sometimes she did feel like she was waiting for someone to come and get her. Someone who had just gone to the store or to the movies, leaving Miss Arbutus to babysit.

  What would it be like to have a father? Some fathers were strict. Would he boss her around? Would he change everything?

  She thought of the woman in the rocking chair who had haunted her in the wee hours of so many mornings. Yes, she had felt secure and loved when that woman was near because she was sure it was her mother, but now she felt threatened. Someone might take her away from all that she had grown to love. That was why she was afraid.

  Later, as they manicured their nails, Ruby debated with herself about telling Miss Arbutus what Granny Butler had said. It would be nice to share it, she thought, but then again, maybe this was Granny Butler’s imagination working overtime. Already the news had given Ruby a headache, so why worry Miss Arbutus with it?

  14

  THE NEXT DAY, AFTER COMPLETING HER ERRANDS, RUBY was pulling the Radio Flyer up Busy Street toward home when she met Cedar Reeder walking in front of the doctors’ office.

  “Hey there, Cedar!” she greeted him. “Where’s Peter?”

  “Oh, he’s looking after Bird and the kids. Daddy started working for Mayor Chambers today at the A&P.”

  “And what are you up to?” she asked him.

  “I was just walking down Ward Street minding my own business when this real old woman tried to kill me.”

  “What!”

  “I’m not foolin’. Lookee here!”

  Cedar pulled his T-shirt aside, revealing a small red spot on his shoulder.

  “That **##~~ old hag hit me with a rock, and I didn’t do a thing to her!”

  “It was only Mrs. Rife,” Ruby said. “She throws itty-bitty rocks. They don’t hurt much.”

  “Well, I’m gonna throw one back at her next time!” Cedar declared.

  “Cedar! Don’t you dare!” Ruby scolded him. “She’s ninety years old!”

  “I don’t give a—”

  But Cedar did not get a chance to finish because someone interrupted by yelling, “Hey there, Ruby June! Who’re you talking to?”

  It was Reese Mullins, pushing a cart full of fresh produce across the street. He had been selling it in the residential areas, and now to people on Busy Street. This was one of Reese’s jobs when The Boxcar Grill became overrun with vegetables and fruits.

  “Hey, Reese,” she greeted him. “This is Cedar Reeder, one of the new boys.”

  “Is he the one you were stepping out with on Saturday night?” Reese demanded to know.

  “I was not ‘stepping out,’ as you put it, with anybody!” Ruby said hotly.

  “That was my brother Peter,” Cedar contributed.

  “My name is Reese Mullins,” Reese said, “and you can tell your brother Peter that Ruby June is my girlfriend.”

  “Now, Reese Mullins, you are telling a big fat lie,” Ruby scolded. “I am not your girlfriend or anybody else’s.”

  “Well,” Reese said sulkily, “if you was anybody’s girlfriend, you’d be mine, now wouldn’t you?”

  Ruby was embarrassed and desperately wanted the topic of conversation changed. Luckily her eye fell on a poster in the doctors’ window. It was a notice about Kids’ Day.

  “They have started advertising about Kids’ Day already,” she said to Cedar, eagerly pointing to the ad.

  “What’s Kids’ Day?” Cedar asked.

  “It’s a day at the end of the summer when all the businesses give things free to kids. And we have a parade, a carnival, a free movie, free bowling and skating, all the pop and candy and ice cream we can hold, and I don’t know what all.”

  “What’s it for?” Cedar said.

  “Just to show appreciation for the kids in town.”

  “Can I go with you and Peter on Kids’ Day?” Cedar asked.

  “She always goes with me!” Reese blurted out.

  “Everybody goes together!” Ruby snapped at Reese. Then she turned her back to him as she talked to Cedar. “You and Peter must bring your twin brothers and your little sister, too.”

  Reese was doing a slow burn. Here was this new kid, younger than he was, by cracky, getting more attention from Ruby than she had ever given to him.

  “I can sing!” Reese blurted out. “I always sing to Ruby June, don’t I, Ruby June?”

  Ruby rolled her eyes, then turned to face Reese again. “Don’t sing, Reese, please?” she pleaded with him.

  “It’s ‘Push Cart Serenade,’ ” Reese informed Cedar. “I learned it from the radio so I could sing it to Ruby June when I’m selling my fruits and vegetables.”

  Ruby groaned, knowing what she was in for, but she had learned there was no stopping Reese. He began to sing “Push Cart Serenade.”

  “BEETS! BEETS!

  How my heart beats for you.

  BEETS! BEETS!

  Say yours beats for me too.

  LETTUCE!

  Oh, LETTUCE! get married today.

  HONEYDEW! HONEYDEW!

  Say you’re mine to stay, hey!

  PEARS! PEARS!

  We’d make a lovely pair.

  PEACHES! PEACHES!

  The peachiest anywhere.

  If we CANTALOUPE! CANTALOUPE!

  How I will pine.

  Oh, ORANGE! you gonna be mine?”

  Cedar groaned, for Reese was without a doubt the worst singer he had ever heard.

  Then suddenly from out of nowhere another person had joined them on the sidewalk, and was now saying, “Reese Mullins, I want to buy some of your vegetables!”

  It was Mrs. Bevins. “That is, if you can stop courting long enough to tend your business.”

  But Reese doggedly went on with his song to the end.

  “If you CARROT! all, CARROT! all, please marry me.

  We’ll get by on my CELERY!”

  Then he grinned and made a wide, sweeping bow to Ruby, while Mrs. Bevins stood by impatiently tapping her black high heels on the sidewalk. Wearing canary yellow trimmed in black, she had outdone herself this day. One’s eye was naturally drawn first to the lemon yellow skirt, where there were wide bands of black at equal intervals. Underneath she was obviously wearing several stiff crinolines, which made the skirt stand out like an umbrella. As always, Mrs. Bevins’s eyelids were decorated with shadow, and today she had chosen black. On top of her head was a yellow beany-type hat with two thin black feathers resembling antennae.

  “##**!!,” Cedar
suddenly bellowed, pointing to Mrs. Bevins’s outfit. “You look like a **!! bumblebee!”

  After a quick examination of Mrs. Bevins’s outfit, Ruby felt an unholy giggle trying to escape from her throat. Tactfully, she managed to swallow it, but not so with Cedar. He had about as much tact as a wild animal.

  “Just look at her!” he squealed gleefully. “A ##!!** bumblebee!”

  At first Mrs. Bevins was too stunned to react. She simply stood there, her face glowing pink, then red, then burgundy. Unfortunately, at that moment she caught her reflection in the doctors’ window, and a giant bumblebee looked back at her. Abruptly Mrs. Bevins made an about-face in her snappy heels and stalked away with crinolines swishing and antennae bobbing.

  15

  REESE AND RUBY WERE SPEECHLESS. THEY LOOKED AT each other, horrified, and not a word came to mind.

  All this time, unobserved by anyone, Mr. Doctor had been standing behind the screen of his waiting room door, watching and listening to the children. He chose this moment to poke his head out.

  “Young man,” he said to Cedar, “I am a doctor, and I’m afraid you have a serious condition. You must come into my office at once!”

  Cedar touched a finger to his chest. “Who, me?”

  “Yes, you.”

  “What! I ain’t sick. What the **!! is wrong with you?”

  “I must insist that you come in here immediately!” the doctor said more forcefully.

  Cedar looked at Reese and Ruby and jerked one thumb toward the doctor. “Is he pixilated?”

  “No, he’s Presbyterian,” Reese said.

  Mr. Doctor was holding the screen door open wide. Cedar hesitated, then shuffled toward him. Inside, the waiting room was empty.

  “Come into my private office,” Mr. Doctor said to him as he stepped to the right.

  The drone of a dentist drill could be heard from the left, where Mrs. Doctor’s office was located. Cedar did not like that sound at all, so he hurried along behind Mr. Doctor. When they were in Mr. Doctor’s office, he motioned for Cedar to sit in a chair, where he listened to the boy’s heart with a stethoscope.

  “Just what I was afraid of,” the doctor said after a few moments. “It’s weighing your heart down.”

  “What are you talking about?” Cedar cried, his face turning almost as red as Mrs. Bevins’s. “There’s nothing wrong with me.”

  “Of course there is! You have the worst case of cussitis I have ever heard.”

  “Of what?!”

  “Cussitis, a most severe case, and we must treat it promptly before it gets any worse, or before it spreads. It’s extremely contagious.”

  “There ain’t no such disease!” Cedar argued loudly.

  “Who’s the doctor here anyway?” Mr. Doctor said sternly. “I know cussitis when I see it. It is caused by two very dangerous germs—pain and anger. And these germs attack the vocabulary so that the afflicted person is not able to express his true feelings.”

  Cedar studied the doctor with narrowed eyes, but didn’t react.

  “I recommend four steps to recovery,” the doctor said. “First, you should find some things that belonged to your mother. Touch them. Smell them. Second, talk to your father about how you feel.”

  “We don’t talk about that!” Cedar yelled angrily.

  “Oh, my, it’s worse than I thought,” Mr. Doctor said with concern in his voice. “You must talk about it, and you must do it right away!”

  “You’re just a **^^## crazy old man!” Cedar hollered, but his eyes were beginning to fill with tears.

  “Good! Good!” the doctor praised him. “Crying is the third step. A good hard cry.”

  “I ain’t crying!” Cedar screamed with anger. “Boys don’t cry!”

  “I beg to differ,” Mr. Doctor said. “Boys certainly do cry! I cried my eyes out when my mother died. And as a result, I destroyed those dangerous germs—pain and anger. I drowned them with my tears.”

  But Cedar held his own tears in check.

  “It does no good to swallow your feelings,” Mr. Doctor kindly advised him. “They will continue to plague you in offensive ways.”

  At that, Cedar Reeder bolted from the doctor’s office and back onto the street, where Ruby and Reese were still standing as he had left them.

  “Dumb old doctor!” Cedar cried as he raced past them. “***@@@!!!*** old quack!”

  16

  AFTER DINNER THAT EVENING, RUBY SKIPPED UP THE sidewalk toward the house where the Reeders now lived. It was a nice summer evening.

  Peter and Cedar were on the spacious front porch with Bird when she arrived. Bird was in a rocking chair, his ankle bells jingling softly every time he rocked. The boys were sitting on stools. All were stringing green beans into pans.

  Peter’s face lit up when he saw her. “Oh, hi there, Ruby June!”

  “Hi, Peter, Cedar, Bird!” Ruby said as she stepped up onto the porch. “I came to meet the rest of the family.”

  Ruby was itching to know what Mr. Doctor had said to Cedar, but she didn’t like to meddle unless she had to. Perhaps Cedar would volunteer the information. She could only hope.

  Hearing a voice through the screen door, the twins came out, with Robber Bob behind them. In the dim light one might mistake the short man for one of the kids.

  “My twin brothers, Jeeter and Skeeter,” Peter said. “Jeeter is the one on the left, and Skeeter . . .”

  The identical twins laughed.

  Peter started all over. “Jeeter is the one on the right.”

  The twins laughed again as they traded places.

  “Well anyway,” Peter went on, “this is Daddy.”

  “I remember you from the bank,” Robber Bob said to Ruby.

  “And sneaking up behind you, Ruby June, is our little Rita,” Peter said fondly. “She was trying to catch a lightning bug.”

  Ruby felt a small hand slip itself into one of her own. She looked around and down into the sweet face of five-year-old Rita Reeder. The child smiled up at her, showing a deep dimple in each cheek. Like the other children, she had Robber Bob’s wide gray eyes. But she was wearing a ragged brown shirt and shorts that subdued her natural brightness.

  Ruby remembered what Robber Bob had said about Rita—that she had not spoken a word since her mother died. She placed an arm around Rita’s thin shoulders.

  “I’ve been wanting to meet you, Rita,” she said.

  “Come have a seat, Ruby June,” Peter said to her as he cleaned off another wooden stool beside his.

  Ruby went to sit down, and Rita followed, still clinging tightly to her hand, as if she feared it might be snatched from her.

  “She craves the feminine touch,” Robber Bob said softly. “She attaches herself to every female person that comes along.”

  “Then we should be friends,” Ruby said to Rita. “If you want to, you can go with me on my round of errands tomorrow on Busy Street. Would you like that?”

  Rita nodded eagerly.

  “I’ll come by and get you right after breakfast, and you can ride in my red wagon, okay?”

  The child’s eyes were bright as she nodded again, and smiled. She stood very close to Ruby.

  Each member of the Reeder family watched this exchange carefully, pleased at Ruby’s attention to the child.

  “Won’t that be fun, Rita?” Jeeter or Skeeter said to her.

  Rita beamed as her head bobbed up and down.

  “You can come back home and tell us all about it,” Robber Bob said.

  “Panthers ate her all up,” Bird said suddenly.

  “Don’t start, Bird!” Peter said with annoyance.

  “She was a little bitty thing,” Bird went on doggedly.

  “What the **## are you talking about?” Cedar screeched.

  “Watch your mouth!” Robber Bob snapped at him.

  “He’s talking about that girl who was grabbed by a panther on Yonder Mountain,” Peter said.

  “Ate her all up,” Bird said again.

  “Now, Da
d,” Robber Bob said, laying a hand on the old man’s shoulder. “Don’t think about that right now.”

  “Redheaded,” Bird said.

  “Yes, that girl, Jolene Hurley, was redheaded, too, just like Ruby June. Lots of people have red hair.”

  “Real real red, real real curly,” Bird said.

  “You’re real real crazy!” Cedar mumbled.

  “Just a little bitty thing,” Bird went on.

  And to everybody’s surprise, Bird started to cry. Nobody spoke for a moment. Robber Bob began massaging the old man’s shoulders. “What’s the matter, Dad? It’s not a bit like you to act up the way you’re doing.”

  Bird continued to cry, and one of the twins removed the pan of green beans from his lap.

  Peter spoke tenderly to his grandfather. “Does Ruby June remind you of the girl?”

  Bird nodded. “She favors Jolene,” he managed to say.

  Rita went to Bird and leaned her head against him, but he could not be comforted.

  “Come on, Dad, you’re tired, let’s get you to bed,” Robber Bob said as he helped the old man to his feet.

  Bird did not object. Meekly, he allowed Robber Bob to lead him into the house. Unlike the flighty Bird of Saturday night, this stooped-over, gray-headed man seemed very old and worn out.

  “I don’t know what y’all are talking about,” Cedar said to Peter, when the two men were gone inside.

  “Me either,” Jeeter or Skeeter whispered. “Who got eat up by a panther?”

  Rita returned to Ruby, and the twins sat down on the top step, as Peter, in low tones, told the story he had heard from his father.

  “When the ***!!! did that happen?” Cedar asked.

  “Watch your mouth!” Peter said. “A long, long time ago. When Bird was a boy, I think.”

  “Oh, no, not that long ago,” Robber Bob said, as he rejoined the group after tucking the old man into bed. “Now, let me think . . .”

  Robber Bob leaned against a post, scratched his chin, and looked at the evening sky.

  “Was it when you were a boy, Daddy?” Jeeter or Skeeter asked him.

  “No, it wadn’t that long ago either. It was . . . I remember it was warm. It was . . . yeah, that was it! It was around your birthday, Peter—your third birthday, as a matter of fact.