The Book of Ruth

by Jane Hamilton

  “A person don’t have to be in love to hold hands,” he said. “I’ve touched hundreds of girls. It don’t mean I have to marry any of them.”

  “Why don’t you just go touch your other hundred girlfriends, then?” I mumbled. “If you ever mention the subject again I’ll make sure Ma never buys sour cream and onion potato chips.”

  I didn’t think about what I was saying. He made my dinner thrash around inside me. I couldn’t stand the sight of him gripping his change purse, but after I spoke like a snide prom queen my knees went shaky and I felt a little sorry. But then again I couldn’t help thinking that if only Randall had been in my class in school, all the bullying would have gone to him. I had a nightmare that I ended up married to him and all my babies were as big as full-grown Randall when they were born. Randall didn’t speak to me after that. He turned his head away as if my presence disgusted him also.

  Besides bowling we went for fish fries down at Johnny’s on Friday nights. Johnny’s has soft red paper that sticks off the wall, inviting you to pet it. May said I should keep my hands to myself. It was all you could eat on Friday nights for $3.99. May and I went down with Dee Dee and Randall and Daisy, and Daisy’s younger sister, Lou, and Lou’s friends. We’d have a long noisy table, everyone talking at the same time and grabbing for the onion rings and ketchup. None of the Footes had patience when it came to eating. I tried to sit far from Randall because he loved food so much, and because I was afraid he might grab my hand and squeeze it, to spite me.

  Daisy didn’t have a job and probably spent all day being photographed on different kinds of vehicles. She was supposed to behave, stick around, seriously look for employment, and quit drinking as part of her probation. The police had their eye on her every move because she stole and went driving around when she was smashed. She had hurt Mr. Kirk—a farmer with a wife and three children—so badly his arms and legs will never function. They couldn’t absolutely prove it was Daisy’s fault because no one saw the accident and Mr. Kirk failed the breath test too. Still, she was not allowed to go out at night unless she was with family members. For me, Johnny’s was the special event of the week; for Daisy spending Friday nights in a greasy restaurant with her family was like being tortured mercilessly. She said, “It takes me a whole week to get the smell of this dump out of my hair.”

  Sometimes she’d catch my eye and cock her head in the direction of the bar. She made my heart run and scramble just as it used to when I saw Miss Pin, my third-grade teacher. We’d go stand at the bar and talk while everyone else sat in the next room. Daisy said, “How come you don’t ever say nothin’ and I just jabber away?” She didn’t give me time to answer. She said, “I wish everyone was like you, you know, friendly without always giving me the time of day.”

  I know I blushed at the compliment, before I continued to pant for more details. Daisy always described her favorite boyfriends and where they took her, before she was on probation. She always made them drive her to fancy clubs and restaurants, otherwise she wouldn’t bother to date them. Secretly I was glad I wasn’t a man of Daisy’s, because she bossed them around and spent their money. They came home broke, wondering who she was going to go to next. She didn’t ever mention a motorcycle to me, however. Daisy was either going to enroll in broadcasting school so she could be on the news, or beauty college. She couldn’t decide which. “I think I’m a natural for communications,” she said—but if she graduated a beautician she told me she’d always do me up for free. She said I was lucky to have curls but that a person had to show them to the best advantage. Her good taste made it possible for her to instantly say what could make a girl look beautiful. She tilted her head, inspecting my whole body. She made me feel like I was a frog but that she could almost imagine the fairy princess, if she whipped her brain into working overtime.

  She explained that at beauty college she would learn to do stage makeup and facials, so she could go to New York and do makeup for ABC. Either that, or someone would be putting the makeup on her in New York, before she went on the set for the evening news to describe the fires and the murders. When Dee Dee stuck her head in the bar to see if we had run off, Daisy gave her cold stares, practicing, I supposed, for the looks she’d give the weatherman when he predicted snow and ice.

  Daisy told me about the classes she was supposed to attend where they teach you not to drink and drive at the same time. I bet she sat in the back row of the classroom with her arms folded, her feet on the seat in front of her, and stared the teacher down, letting him know she had never been subjected to such a boring human being in her entire life.

  I could see both Daisy and Dee Dee in one of the books Charles Dickens wrote, because sometimes it seemed as if they were larger than life, on top of the fact that they were so greedy for trouble. Randall also could fit in the books perfectly. He could be the star boy in the schools Charles Dickens always has, where there are two hundred scrawny starved kids, and one boy who is fat and greasy. That’s Randall for you. Daisy is certainly beautiful, but she assumed she didn’t have to do one thing; she would always look glamorous and everyone would automatically love her for her looks alone. I did love her; I even worshiped her, but I knew she was no saint. She did hit-and-run accidents and thought nothing of it. She kept saying she was moving to Hollywood, California, one minute, and then New York City the next, to do makeup for famous people, such as soap opera stars, and one of the actors would fall for her and then they’d put her on TV. She said it would be a high-class program about policewomen stopping criminals. We had to laugh over that one. I didn’t like to tell her but sometimes I had the feeling Daisy and I were going to be bowling forever right in Stillwater. We’d probably have heart attacks when we were eighty-five, down at the Town Lanes.

  On the first anniversary of our commencement from high school May got word from Matt. He said he was planning to spend the summer out in Boston doing research. He wrote that he was sharing an apartment with a person named Virgil King. May looked up at me, worried. She said, “Ain’t that a jigaboo name?”

  I considered saying yes, to see if Matt’s high standing would plummet, but there was a chance May would walk straight into the kitchen and stab herself. So I said, “It’s probably just one of them common names out there in Boston.”

  My remark didn’t comfort her any. She frowned, no doubt running over a list of who she might call to ask what black people name their children. It would have to be someone who knew but wouldn’t wonder why May wanted such curious information.

  She hadn’t seen Matt since Christmas—and that time doesn’t count. He came home for two days in late December; he didn’t spend more than an hour with us, because he had teachers in town he wanted to talk to. It didn’t bother me that Matt wasn’t coming back for the summer. I already figured I’d never see him again.

  It doesn’t do one bit of good to say, If only . . . , but if that summer of 1974 hadn’t happened to me, I know May and I would still be down at Trim ’N Tidy, rubbing our noses from the odor, polishing up the bowling trophy I won for the team. It was the summer, in the month of July, when we, all of us, weren’t ever going to be the same again.

  On a scorching night around Independence Day we were restless and irritated by every noise and movement. Even the bugs seemed nervous, due to the sultry weather. The mosquitoes buzzed extra loud in my ears. Daisy drove up in the truck when I wasn’t doing anything but slouching on the porch. She had behaved herself and gotten her driving privileges back. She said she was going to go straight through the ceiling if she stayed in the house. It was too hot to do the usual activities she does with men so she was staying miles away from temptations. She said she was going to melt down any minute. All that you’d see if Daisy melted would be a patch of green eyeshadow on the carpet. May was so upset about Matt staying in Boston that she didn’t notice what I was up to. She fanned herself with a magazine and flicked her hand at us. She didn’t care if we drove to Toledo and back. We went out into the night, Daisy and I, climbed
into the Footes’ truck, Daisy revved the engine, and we bombed away. She had on lime green shorts with a halter top. Her perfect oval navel looked like someone yawning. Daisy laughed at me and said I looked like Miss Baily, our ex-gym teacher, who always wore shorts past her knees. We got to giggling over what a dried-up homo she was. In fact, I was wearing some prehistoric shorts of May’s and a blue T-shirt that didn’t show my shape, just the kind of thing Miss Baily wore every single day. We went over to the beach in Stillwater. There’s a lake two miles outside of town where you pay fiffy cents to get in, unless you wade in from the swamp, which is what Daisy and I did.

  That night the full moon lit up a trail on the lake. I almost said out loud that it looked as if you could follow it and actually get somewhere, but I knew Daisy might push me over in the water for remarks of that sort. We didn’t see too many people around, because it was a Tuesday, and because even the water looked hot. There was no relief. Probably everyone was at the movies just to feel the cool air and to think about ice and snow and salt on the roads. We couldn’t help noticing the orange wooden boats parked upside down on the beach, with their oars tucked away inside. There was something inviting about the line of boat ends touching the hot waves. Daisy went and tipped one of them over; that’s how she could be, acting as if everything belonged to her.

  “How about a ride?” she said. She pushed the boat into the water and stuck one of her legs over the side. She kept telling me to hurry up, what was I waiting for, hell’s half-acre to freeze solid? “Don’t we wish, my friend,” she said. “Come on, you Miss Baily look-alike.”

  “What are we going to do if we get caught?” I asked, standing in the water ankle deep with my sneakers on, trembling because she had called me “my friend.” Also, I didn’t like tampering with things that weren’t mine.

  “We’ll get into trouble, but it ain’t the worst thing that can happen to a person. It’s better than roasting alive. They ain’t gonna murder us just for borrowing a beat-up orange boat on a night when you can crack an egg in the water and it poaches. My armpits are soaking wet and stink worse than a piglet. GET IN, I’m gonna shove off.”

  So, we were out there in the water; I trailed my hands along while Daisy rowed. I stared up at the moon wondering if the man on the moon was as sad as he looked. If I were the moon, all silver, lighting up the water, transforming the earth, I’d feel pretty great about myself. Since we didn’t have a light on the boat we couldn’t see things as they were. There was an object in the middle of the lake that looked like an enormous piece of litter, as if a giant had wadded up his heavy-duty Kleenex and tossed it in the water. We couldn’t figure out what it was. We were one hundred percent sure it wasn’t a fishing boat. Daisy, of course, insisted on checking it out. She’d make a much better spy than a broadcaster. She’d have to learn to whisper before her first mission, though. What we came alongside of, after we rowed out was an ordinary inner tube. A man lay still in it looking as if he’d been drained of his blood for several weeks. We didn’t say anything to him. He had his head resting on one side of the tube and his legs flopped over the other. He didn’t have a shirt on. We could see the ivory skin of his moist stomach and chest shining. He was wearing sopping wet blue jeans and he had a six-pack tied with a string around the tube. His eyes were closed and there was a stub of a cigarette hanging from his lips. There was something about him—the way he soaked up the beams and how serene he was, you could just tell it—that made me want to get in with him, see how it felt. Daisy leaned out of the boat, squinting at him, and then she started to snicker. She took her oar and splashed him while she shouted, “DING DONG MORNING, DING DONG MORNING.”

  “Hi, Mr. Ruby,” Daisy said sweetly when he shook his head in slow motion. The water didn’t surprise him. He felt refreshed. He must have been very far away because he had to look around himself and blink and dunk his head back.

  Finally he grinned at her and she splashed him twice more. “You seen Mr. Party-face lately?” Daisy said to him.

  Turns out they were familiar with the same probation officers.

  I didn’t register the conversation. Daisy did most of the talking without bothering to introduce us. I couldn’t help staring at Ruby, because he looked as if he lived in the water. The inner tube was home. He needed nothing to be happy except water, a few beers, some damp cigarettes, and the moon shining down filling him with the pure light.

  “Don’t all the fishes nibble your toes?” Daisy asked him. “Don’t they eat them up for live bait?”

  “Yep,” Ruby said, grinning at her again, as if he didn’t care if a snapping turtle came and bit his foot off.

  I wouldn’t have been surprised if he had a smooth black seal’s body under the water, if in a moment he pointed his nose in the air and let out a hoarse bark. Daisy didn’t notice that Ruby was looking at me. He smiled. He asked me a couple of shy questions with his grin and the curve of his eyebrows. I didn’t know what those questions were about, but I knew he was asking me. I don’t know what he saw in my face. Maybe the moonlight made me look like Liz Taylor. I stared at him for more than five seconds, until I couldn’t stand it any longer and I had to quick squint at the water. The little waves were giggling at my reeling heart. I studied his reflection because I knew it was going to disappear if I didn’t watch it carefully. Don’t ask me what Daisy talked about because I didn’t hear one word. Her loud voice was like a radio too far off to pick up meaning. I only knew we were peaceful, drifting in the water, and that after a while she said we had to shove off, intimating that we had appointments to keep. Ruby stared at me with moonbeams on his teeth while we rowed away—made his incisors look like they were electrified. I could see him smiling, I was sure of it, until we got to shore.

  I didn’t ask Daisy one question about him. I wanted to make him up from scratch, without one single fact. He was a waterman, that much I knew; perhaps he was also an amphibian. I thought about how a person got cool on such a terrible night, in the water, without clothes.

  Daisy put the boat back without turning it upside down as we found it, and she mentioned that I was so quiet, we might just as well get loaded. We drank quite a few tequila drinks and watched Johnny Carson in the bar. I could tell he was wanting to recite dirty jokes. He kept making snide remarks to the movie star he was talking to and snickering into his chest. The liquor we drank made me want to hug something large, such as a continent. Daisy was flirting with the bartender and so I sat squeezing the leather on my chair, feeling my empty arms growing heavier.

  Three nights later, on league night, May came down with her quarterly headache. Matt was responsible for them. She knew he had made a new life for himself that was leading him directly into the fire. Perhaps she was wondering how she was going to commute from heaven to hell, if God issues passes so you can visit your children. She told me I should go bowling on account of league night. They’d need me to score. She said, “I’ll call Dee Dee and tell her to give you a ride.” Even though she couldn’t bowl to save her life, it mattered to her that we whip the pants off of all the teams in Stillwater. She celebrated seriously when Trim ’N Tidy destroyed the other teams.

  Dee Dee obeyed May’s orders and picked me up. She told me about Randall’s hemorrhoids on the way. Right there in the parking lot, when I got out of the car at Town Lanes, was the waterman smoking and sniffing the air, perhaps searching the skies for signs of intelligence. My heart took a trip down to my knees, paid vacation. I stood staring until Dee Dee said, “Are you froze to the car door?”

  I mumbled no and tripped over the curb.

  That was the night we were killing the Red Bell Market. I made strike after strike without sweating a drop. Artie kept saying, “Sweetheart, are you hot!”

  Everyone was waiting for me to have my turn to see if I could do it again—they were primed to whoop and stamp. All the check-out girls from the Red Bell looked genuinely glum, because there wasn’t a chance in the world for them. Without May to bring our average down our t
eam had the possibility for greatness. After each strike I turned around trying not to smile, and walked coolly down to my seat. Then I couldn’t help it; I beat on the table and flashed a smile at my friends. I knew I was doing a spectacular job. I’m crazy about bowling when I score off the charts. I was also noticing my waterman, Ruby. His name is a precious gem. He sat at the bar watching my every move—I know, because I felt his gaze burning through my back when I stood at the line. He stared at me, only it wasn’t at all like Randall’s look which made me sure he was going to eat me whole. Ruby stared as if he would never stop searching for my face because he knew he would find something good there. He stared as if he was compelled to see me. Maybe he had never noticed magazine photos of beautiful people. I swear he admired the way I stood up to bowl and with each turn I became more and more flamboyant, for him alone. I waltzed after I made points and hollered, trying to mimic Daisy. I knew I could score 300 forever if only he was there observing my form.

  In the tenth frame of the third game I cocked my head so I could see him out of the corner of my eye. He was gone. In my two shots he had disappeared. I turned around and scanned the room; then I rushed out to the bar and over to the vending machines. I no longer cared about smearing the Red Bell Market, and as I knocked my empty head against the pay phone I realized that with him gone there was no reason for doing anything any more. The shell of me slumped down on the yellow sofa until Artie came to fetch me for my turn. My streak was over, although we still won hands down.

  I didn’t see a sign of him for an entire week. I looked for him everywhere I went. I searched the aisles in the grocery store knowing that if I ran into him, within an instant my tongue would dislodge and moss would cover my brain. I wondered if he floated away because he didn’t belong to anyone. He lived his life on rivers and lakes. There wasn’t a minute when I didn’t dream about his coming to find me. He had a silver boat glistening even without moonshine, and we went sailing away. We had delicious fish to eat, boneless, plus we didn’t ever get seasick, not once. Finally we turned into swimming creatures and never came back to land. There weren’t dry cleaners or chicken manure in the deep sea, and we communicated only by loving gestures.