by Ruth White
Miss Arbutus led her into the common room, where a paunchy middle-aged man with thin red hair and a face full of large freckles sat on a couch beside Sheriff Reynolds. With straw hat in hand, the man stood up to greet Ruby. Detective Holland, who had been standing by the door watching the pansies dance in the sunshine, turned to face the room again.
When Ruby walked up to Christian Combs and said hello, the man’s knees gave way on him, and he sank back onto the couch.
“You feel okay?” Ruby said with concern. “You don’t look too good.”
“It’s her,” Christian barely whispered. “I know it’s her. It’s like looking at Jo when she was a girl.”
“That was my first reaction exactly!” Holland agreed. “She’s the spittin’ image of her mama.”
“My mama?” Ruby squeaked.
“Yeah, honey,” Holland said. “If you’re who I think you are, your mama was this man’s sister. She was Jo Combs, and your daddy was Clay Hurley, a friend of mine. Your name is Ruby Jolene Hurley.”
Ruby could not speak. She turned to look at Miss Arbutus, who was still standing quietly in the doorway that led into the dining room, one hand in her apron pocket.
Miss Arbutus gave Ruby a sad, sweet smile, then faced the detective and said, “You have to have some proof.”
“Well, ma’am,” Holland said to her, “I think all the evidence we have so far—when she showed up here, her apparent age, her name, her appearance—all that would be about enough to convince anybody.”
“You have to have something else.”
“Such as?” Holland said.
“Information about what she was wearing that night.”
“She was in a homemade petticoat,” the sheriff blurted out. “Everybody saw that.”
“Something no one knows except me.”
Everybody stared at Miss Arbutus.
“And her mother. She would know,” Miss Arbutus added.
“Her mother is dead,” Christian Combs said bluntly.
“Dead?” Ruby’s voice failed her.
“Yes, and your father, too,” he said more gently. “They died before you . . . before you got lost.”
Ruby could not absorb it all. She felt no pain, no grief for those people who had died. She did not know them. She was numb.
“Then who was that girl staying with?” Ruby asked.
“What girl?” Christian Combs said.
“That little Ruby Jolene Hurley.”
“With my mother, Goldie Combs, her grandma . . . your grandma.” Then he turned to Miss Arbutus. “Are you talking about a pair of little girl’s blue cotton step-ins with R-U-B-Y embroidered in red across the bottom?”
Miss Arbutus’s face paled, and she sank into a nearby chair, her hand still in her apron pocket.
“My mother had to describe to the law what the baby was wearing,” Christian said. “That’s how she hung on to the memory. It was a habit of Jo’s—to embroider Ruby’s name on her things. When she was a girl herself, she embroidered her own name on her clothes.”
Slowly Miss Arbutus pulled her hand from her pocket and produced an item. Lovingly she spread it across her knee. It was a toddler’s pair of underpants, blue in color, with R-U-B-Y prominently displayed in red across the bottom.
Ruby walked over and stood beside Miss Arbutus, gazing at the underpants. “I was wearing those?”
Miss Arbutus looked up into Ruby’s eyes, so clear, so blue, so trusting. “Yes, nobody ever saw them but me and perhaps Mrs. Doctor,” she whispered. “I put them away that same day and brought them out again only now.”
Ruby turned to the detective. “But how did I get here?” she said earnestly, her face clouded with confusion. “How far away is Yonder Mountain?”
“Sixty miles,” Detective Holland said. “And that’s the question all right. How did you get here?”
20
IN THE FOLLOWING DAYS RUBY AND MISS ARBUTUS TRAV-eled with Sheriff Reynolds to Virginia, where they appeared before a judge, along with Detective Holland and Christian Combs. There Ruby’s fate was decided, at least temporarily.
“She needs to ease herself gradually into this new situation,” the judge said kindly. “I suggest she be taken to Yonder Mountain for a visit before she is permanently removed from the only home she has ever known.”
Christian Combs stood up. “And after that, what?”
“Then she needs to come back and talk to me.”
Christian Combs continued. “Your honor, as you know, the girl’s grandmother, Goldie Combs of Yonder Mountain, was not well enough to appear here today, but she has instructed me to say that she is the girl’s legal guardian and she wants her returned unconditionally.”
“I know that, Mr. Combs,” the judge snapped. “But wouldn’t you agree this is a peculiar case? I don’t want to make a hasty decision with the child’s life.”
Christian Combs sat down without saying more.
“Now do as I say. Take her to Yonder Mountain for a visit.”
Then the judge turned to Detective Holland and instructed him to continue his investigation into Ruby’s disappearance.
“I would like to know what happened to this girl that night on the mountain.”
“So would I,” Holland said.
Now it was the first day of summer once again, the day Ruby and Miss Arbutus had always celebrated as Ruby’s birthday because it was the day she had showed up at the courthouse. But on this birthday Ruby found herself sitting in the front seat of Christian Combs’s green DeSoto, heading out of Way Down Deep onto the highway toward Yonder Mountain. She could see the road winding between the hills toward Virginia. The air was heavy and the sky looked like rain.
“You can call me Uncle Chris,” Christian Combs said. “I guess you want to hear about Jo and Clay—your mama and daddy.”
Ruby felt like her heart was too battered and bruised to go on beating. Hearing about Jo and Clay would only damage it further. She said nothing, but studied her uncle’s face.
This man had known her mama as a little girl and as a teenager and as a grownup married woman, too. And he had known her father. She should want to know about that. But still her mind would not go there. It kept going back to the place she had left behind.
“My sister and Clay met at the county high school and courted for about two years before they ran away and eloped on an Easter weekend,” Uncle Chris began.
“Why did they run away?”
“Because Mama thought they were too young to marry.”
“How old were they?”
“Only seventeen. Clay seemed older because he had kinda raised himself, you see. He grew up in an orphanage and never knew who his people were.”
Uncle Chris glanced over at Ruby. She was reading the Burma-Shave signs that appeared at intervals by the roadside.
Don’t take
A curve at
Sixty per
We hate to lose
A customer
****BURMA-SHAVE****
But Ruby was also thinking very hard. And she kept coming back to one question: How could she possibly take on another life and toss away the past like a pair of worn-out shoes?
“They set up housekeeping in a shack down at the foot of the mountain,” Uncle Chris went on. “Clay started working in the coal mines, and Jo didn’t like that a bit because it was bad for his lungs. He had asthma. She kept after him to find something else, and I’ll have to say, he did try, but there was nothing else to be found. Then you came along, and—”
“When is my birthday?” Ruby interrupted him.
Uncle Chris scratched his head. “You know, I’m not real sure. I’m not good at remembering dates. But your grandma will know. She remembers stuff like that.”
“Well, how old am I?”
Her uncle scratched his head again. “Twelve, thirteen maybe. I’m not sure, Ruby Jo.”
“Was that what everybody called me—Ruby Jo?”
“No, that’s the name your folks gave you, but it seemed like e
verybody had a different name for you. Your mama and daddy just called you Ruby, but after they died, your grandma, well, she didn’t like that name, Ruby, so she started calling you Jolene. That was your mama’s whole name, you know.”
There was silence for a moment in the car. Ruby was thinking that she liked Ruby Jo better than just Ruby or just Jolene. Ruby Jo had something of her mother, and was also not so different from Ruby June.
“Yeah, your grandma wouldn’t call you anything but Jolene,” Uncle Chris said. “And after you went to live with her, she insisted that everybody else call you Jolene, too.”
Uncle Chris lit a cigarette and blew the smoke out the window. Ruby’s mind went back to Miss Arbutus.
“We’ll celebrate your birthday when you find out the real date,” Miss Arbutus had said.
“That sounds good,” Ruby said as she and Miss Arbutus packed a few clothes and personal belongings in her suitcase. “And I don’t want to say goodbye to anybody before I leave!”
“I understand,” Miss Arbutus said softly. “You don’t need their sadness dragging you down.”
“That’s exactly right!” Ruby said. She sat on the suitcase and snapped it shut. “You can tell them whatever you want, but make sure they understand I am coming back soon. I know for sure I am coming home for Kids’ Day, and even before then if possible.”
“If these people are not good to you, you don’t have to stay that long!” Miss Arbutus told her. “Just let me know and I will send somebody for you.”
“I won’t stay any longer than I have to,” Ruby said, not even considering the possibility that she might like her kin. “Surely they will not want me to stay if I’m unhappy there.”
Neither she nor Miss Arbutus had mentioned that perhaps Ruby would not have a choice about the matter. The old grandmother had the law on her side.
“Ruby’s grandma has mourned for her all these years,” Uncle Chris had told the judge. “She lost our dad when Jo was a baby. Then she lost Jo and Ruby within a few months of each other. All that grief aged her before her time.”
Rain started in small splatters against the windshield. Uncle Chris threw his cigarette butt out and rolled the window up. In the distance Ruby could see patches of clouds quivering in the hollows.
21
HOW DO YOU THINK I GOT FROM YONDER MOUNTAIN to Way Down, Uncle Chris?”
“I have no idea, but it stands to reason that somebody took you.”
“I don’t remember anything about it now, but they say I told everybody I had come on a horse.”
“I heard that from the sheriff. But it don’t seem likely, does it? I can’t think of a soul who had a riding horse at that time, and besides, I don’t think a horse could travel that far in one night.”
“A car could do it easy,” Ruby said. “It must have been a car.”
“It had to be a car,” her uncle said. “But we were all poor folks up on that mountain. We had no cars. To this day, you can’t even drive a car up there. Somebody who wanted to take you would have to walk up the mountain in the middle of the night, steal you off the porch and haul you down the mountain without making a sound, put you in his car, and then drive you to West Virginia and dump you out. I reckon it could be done, but who would do that? And why? It don’t make a bit of sense to me. Not a bit.”
“Who else was in the house that night?” Ruby asked.
“Your grandma, me and my wife, and our six kids.”
“So that’s who the other kids were on the porch? Your kids? How old were they?”
“They had some size to them. I was lots older than Jo, you know, so I already had my family half raised before she got started. That night y’all slept on the porch together was ten years ago, and my three oldest ones, all girls, are married now, two of them with kids of their own. The three boys are still at home with me and the wife. They are Jeff, Sam, and Sidney, all teenagers.”
“And who lives with my grandma now?” Ruby asked.
“Nobody. My wife and me took the kids and moved out a few years ago.”
“Where do y’all live?” Ruby asked.
“Down at the mouth of the holler at the foot of Yonder Mountain. Where you’re going is way up to the top of the mountain.”
“How on earth does a little old lady live up there on the top of a mountain all by herself? She must be afraid!”
“Afraid of what?” Uncle Chris bellowed so loud, Ruby was startled. “There ain’t nothing on that mountain meaner than she is!”
And he laughed like he had told a very funny joke. Ruby watched him with puzzled eyes. This was his mother he was talking about.
“What I mean is—” Uncle Chris abruptly changed his tune and took on a serious face. “I mean she’s a brave woman, always has been, not afraid of anything.”
They both lapsed into silence. The WELCOME TO VIRGINIA sign rose up before them. Ruby stared at it until they had passed. Then she turned around and looked behind until it faded away. The mountains were a hazy blue in the pouring rain.
“Tell me how my mama and daddy died,” Ruby said at last.
“It was during the war.” Christian began his story. “Clay missed the draft because of his asthma. Word came to the hills from the shipyards in Norfolk, Virginia, that any able-bodied man who was not in the war and wanted work would find it there in Norfolk. I reckon they couldn’t keep up with the wartime demand.
“Clay and Jo jumped at the chance to leave the coal mines behind. By this time you had come along, and I reckon they thought you would have a better future out there. So they packed up their belongings and took the train out to Norfolk with only a few dollars in their pockets.
“We figured they’d be back hungry and broke in a matter of days. But we were wrong. Clay found a good job, and they rented a pretty decent apartment, a nicer place than they had here anyhow, and they stayed. And they bought themselves an old rattletrap—a Ford, I think it was.
“I don’t recollect exactly when they went or how long they were there, but sometime in February of 1944 we got a telegram from the police in Norfolk that Jo and Clay both had been killed. The roads were slick with snow and ice, and the tires on that old car were plumb bald. They had skidded into a moving train.”
Uncle Chris stopped there. Ruby closed her eyes and pictured that long-ago February.
Snow. Lots of snow. Her memory of being rocked could have come from that same day her parents were killed! Suddenly she also remembered icicles hanging from the gutters. Yes, there was a bitter cold outside, while warm arms cradled her inside. A deep sadness came over her.
“Where was I?” she said. “Why wasn’t I in the car, too?”
“As I understand it, your mama went to pick your daddy up after his shift ended. It was close to midnight, and she didn’t want to take you out in the weather. So she left you with an old woman who lived in the next apartment.
“I didn’t have a car myself, but I borrowed one and drove out to Norfolk to get you and your family’s stuff. The old woman was real attached to the three of you, but I’ve forgot her name now. Still, I do remember what she told me were the last words your mama said to you.
“Jo was all bundled up in her heavy clothes, and she bent over and kissed you and said, ‘Ruby, you wait right here for me. I’ll be back soon.’ ”
Woo-bee is right here waiting for you.
“Then you came to live up on the mountain with your grandma, and me and my wife and our six kids, for the next four months, until you vanished in the night.”
The rain had stopped, and a sign by the road read,
YONDER MOUNTAIN ↑
The arrow pointed up a gravel road that snaked through the hollow between the hills. Uncle Chris turned the DeSoto onto the road.
“That’s where I live,” he said, pointing to a white frame house beside a small country store that stood in the crook of the intersection. The store had Chesterfield cigarette ads tacked all over the outside.
He drove right on by.
“
Me and the wife bought the store a few years back. She’s looking after it today, and the boys are at football camp.”
Ruby wondered why her uncle hadn’t stopped and introduced her to his wife, but she didn’t ask.
“What’s your wife’s name?”
“Maxine. You can call her Aunt Max.”
Going up the holler, they drove by only two houses, which were spaced far apart. Then her uncle pulled the car over to one side, where a path curled up the mountain and vanished into the trees.
“This is the path to your grandma’s house,” Uncle Chris said as he jerked the hand brake into place and climbed out of the car.
He unlocked the trunk and removed Ruby’s suitcase. Ruby opened her door, placed her feet on the ground, and studied the path. It was even steeper than the one leading to Way Up That-a-Way. Her uncle walked ahead of her, carrying the luggage.
The trees were dripping from the recent rain, and there was mud on the path. Ruby picked her way carefully so she wouldn’t mess up the new white moccasins that Miss Arbutus had given to her before she left The Roost.
“They are either an early or a late birthday present,” Miss Arbutus had said. “Just wear them back to me soon.”
The sun began to speckle the ground through the trees. Ruby breathed in deeply, as she had always loved the smell of the earth after a summer rain.
They had not gone far when Uncle Chris began wheezing with the effort of climbing the hill. He stopped to rest and leaned against a tree.
“I can carry the suitcase,” Ruby offered.
“Oh, no, I’ve got it.”
They repeated the same ritual several times. Ruby was not as tuckered as her uncle was, and finally he did hand the suitcase to her.
He mopped his brow with a handkerchief. “It’s not much farther.”
22
WHEN THEY REACHED THE TOP OF THE MOUNTAIN, RUBY saw a wood frame house ahead at the edge of the woods. It was not made of polished logs like Granny Butler’s house but of rough boards, weathered gray. There was no nice slate walkway, nor flowers or green grass, only a plain dirt yard with a few chickens scratching about.
