Ruby in the Rough

by Emily Shore

  Putting an end to the tension, Angel steps forward and addresses both crews. “If you leave now, my men won’t pursue any of you. From now on, you will keep to your own territories and never enter the Hotel’s. And stop stealing from my shipments. Rest assured, I will find out which crew is doing it, and I will rain hell down on you.”

  Members of each crew have begun to back away, so petrified, I can almost see the hairs standing on end like porcupine quills. But there is just one matter left.

  I find my voice. “Bring Ink to me NOW!”

  One of Big Sis’s crew shambles up to the front with Ink in tow and surrenders him very carefully to me. More and more members begin to trickle back into the darkness, fading into the Ghetto like sewer rats. First, I untie Ink’s hands, skimming my fingers along the blistered skin on his wrists, thumbing the imprint of a portion of his tattoo trail.

  Finally, I remove his hood.

  Behind me, Angel gasps.

  “Charlie?”

  Ink blinks a few times, adjusting his eyes to the scene. In one moment, his eyes coast from mine to Angel’s. Recognition mixed with shock spreads his eyes open wider than a barn door in a tornado.

  “Angela?”

  I should have always known it was just a pipe dream. One that rusted long ago like so much of the Ghetto. Who was I kidding but myself? If Ink could spend the past two years searching every home and building he possibly could with me in the Ghetto, how could I believe he’d ever pick up and leave when the opportunity came? And now, his family is here.

  Voices battle in my head like the snowflakes bumping into one another around me as I trudge along the street just outside the Hotel, leaving Ink alone with his sister and nephew. The resemblance between all of them should have alerted me. Everything Ink said about her is true: she’s the strongest woman I’ve ever met. Ink likes to call me Ruby in the rough, but Angel is its diamond. This place will never break her. No, she downright shatters it. Not like me. For four years, the Ghetto and I have operated more like enemies with a mutual interest. I’ve maintained a healthy respect for its power, and it’s graciously afforded me the practice of scaling the length and breadth of its body.

  Tomorrow, all that will change.

  Tonight, I have unfinished business.

  I kick small mounds of slush and snow bruised black and brown by Ghetto street grime on the familiar journey back to the nightclub. The streets are unusually quiet for this time. Even the houses around the Hotel have closed their drapes and shutters, but that’s not as much of a surprise. With all the unrest from tonight, the older locals always shut themselves in. No one wants trouble from the gangs, especially when most are living off them with a barter system.

  The Hotel will see few clients on this long night that seems to stretch on and on like a stage curtain.

  Not one of the Sawyer’s crew is outside the nightclub to stand guard. I sense the leftover chaos inside. Already, I can hear the boom of the bass like rows of trees falling to the earth one by one. Pulses shoot into my feet, working their way upward to tease the hairs on my skin. As I ascend the stone staircase up to the entrance, I continue to mull over what I’m going to say to him. Why I’m even doing this is a mystery. Nothing will come of it. His heart shrunk years ago.

  Stuffing my gloved hands in my pockets, I grip one of the door handles, pull, and step inside the club. Inside, it reeks of inhalers, and I hold my breath a few seconds at a time, but it doesn’t do much. No one advances toward me. No one threatens me. Not that I expected it. Instead, they cluster closer together to give me a wide berth as if sensing why I am here. The scraps of Sawyer’s crew aren’t about to mess with the Fox, who led him to his death. The Fox with the Hotel on her side.

  I find him in the back of the club sitting at a table with a few other guys, liquor bottle in one hand and a hand of cards in the other. Nothing changes.

  “Got a lotta nerve showing yer face here, Rubes,” Malachi slurs every last word.

  Regret seems to billow around me as much as the inhaler smoke. But I’m not about to quit now.

  “Move,” I command the others at the table while removing my gloves. Fortunately, they take off when Mal waves a hand.

  His eyes are bloodshot, red as our hair, collar popped on one side, buttons of his shirt undone to show his upper chest, smear of whiskey on his sleeve from where he’s wiped his mouth. There’s no trace of the brother I once knew here.

  “Make yourself at home!” He raises his voice an octave and kicks out a chair next to him. “Want to play a hand with me? You were never good at bluffing.”

  “You still let me win every time,” I remind him of our days playing cards back on the farm. I’d give myself away by giggling every time I got a good hand or crying every time a bad one came along. Mal always folded or pretended my low cards were high ones just to cheer me up. After Mom and Dad were asleep, Mal and I snuck out onto the porch and played cards by lantern light after a long day working on the farm. Stormy nights were even better since he’d tell ghost stories.

  Mal grumbles and tips his bottle back. “Not one of my better choices.” He slams the bottle back on the table, shaking the cards and scattering droplets along the table.

  “I’m going to the cliffs, Mal.” I lean toward him.

  “Goody for you.”

  “I’m leaving at dawn. Angel’s getting me out on one of the military trains. Come with me. Leave this place. Leave the Ghetto. We can start over again.”

  He tilts the bottle back and forth like a pendulum, edge of his lip curling back. “You’re a piece of work, Rubes.”

  “Come on!” I smack my hand on the table but think better of it and close my eyes, feeling a sense of euphoria peppering my spine. I need to leave here soon before the inhalers cloud my senses too much. Mustering a deep breath, I urge Mal, “Talk to me. We could always talk. Like when we woke up at the crack of dawn to milk the cows and you’d squirt me every time, getting milk up my nose.”

  “You fell for it every time.”

  Even if it’s an insult, it’s something. A glimmer of recollection in his eyes. All the encouragement I need.

  “I loved it.” I scoot my chair closer. “I loved watching you in the barn mucking out the stalls, and I tried to help you.”

  “Yeah,” he snorts. “You flung manure in my face.”

  “And when you’d feed the chickens and collect the eggs―”

  “You always dropped your basket and break them. I’d get to clean up after you.”

  I try harder. “We’d skip our work and go climb trees together.”

  “Only thing you were ever good at,” he growls at me, but I don’t flinch or back away. Not even when he grabs my shirt, yanking me forward and burrowing his eyes into mine like dung beetles. “Get a clue, Ruby! Twelve years. Twelve years of watching over a little sister I never wanted. A little sister who caused me nothing but trouble. A little sister who never outgrew being a baby. I looked after you. I let you follow me around all over the place. I cleaned up after you. I catered to your every beck and call. You never did anything for me!”

  His whiskey breath parades itself all over my face, but his words are stronger. Sharper. Each one is the tooth of a steel trap cutting deep into my heart, bleeding dry any love I once had for Malachi.

  “Don’t do this,” I cry and strain against him, shutting my eyes so I can avoid looking at him.

  His forehead prods mine like a pitchfork. “And the one time, the one time I really needed you, the one thing all you pathetic women are good for, you disappeared. Left without a word. The irony that you were here all along right under my nose. And the second time in my life when you could’ve been useful to me, you just give me more work. More headache. More trouble. Cause that’s all you are.”

  He thrusts me back onto the chair and takes another swig of whiskey while I hug myself, holding my skin together so it won’t just sag on the floor. It feels like he’s sucked out all my flesh and ground up all my bones. I want to believe it’
s Sawyer’s words in his mouth, but then Malachi stands up, approaches me, and finishes:

  “I could have kept that farm!” He shouts down at me. “After they died, I would have kept it running like I always had. Hell, we could’ve stayed on it together. I would’ve worked it all. You just would’ve paid for it.” He leans over and plucks a strand of my hair.

  “Shut up!” I whip my head back and forth, tugging my hair and myself away from him, knocking the chair over.

  I slam my hands over my ears.

  I was twelve.

  Only twelve.

  Just a little girl.

  Like so many other little girls.

  Whatever armor was holding back my tears, they’ve found the chinks. One by one, they start to drip down my cheeks. He’s my brother!

  No, he was never my brother.

  Ink is a brother. Ink spent years looking for his sister. A sister who healed him. A sister who shared his pain. A sister who never stopped loving him. A sister who named her child after him. The realization settles on me like briars pushing out of my skin, spilling blood through each tiny pore.

  Malachi and I never had that.

  We never will.

  “Goodbye, Malachi.”

  Picking up my gloves, I forsake the nickname I once gave him. I forsake every memory we once shared and turn my back to him.

  “Don’t let the door hit you on the way out!”

  Ignoring his berating words, I make my way to the door and only pause when I notice Chastity sitting in a corner nearby with nothing on but lingerie and an inhaler in her hand.

  I make one last plea. “You can come with me, Chastity. It can be better than all of this.” I wince when the inhaler smoke hits me, clogging up my nose and sending thousands of tingles branching out into my body.

  She leans back, displaying the bruises and cigarette burns like a gruesome tapestry on her body, shakes her head, and sucks down another inhaler breath.

  “There’s nothing better out there. This just takes the edge off.”

  I leave the nightclub. Just as I reach the gate around the front of the perimeter, I notice again the spiked head of the nameless girl. Strapping on my gloves, I march right over to the gate, grab onto both sides of the head and pull as hard as I can until I’ve freed it. After stuffing it into the backpack because Angel can see that the head receives a proper burial or at least a cremation, I walk back out into the Ghetto and breathe the street air. While more and more snowflakes make nests on my head, I wander along the familiar network of alleys and streets and sidewalks as close as the veins under my skin until I reach the Hotel.

  A pale glow starts to clothe the sky around me.

  Dawn.

  The only thing worse than a long goodbye is any goodbye. Ink knows this. As for Angel, I already said my goodbyes to her before I climbed down from that two-story balcony. In case anything went wrong, I wanted to do that. Of course, I didn’t know exactly who I was saying goodbye to at the time. Part of me wants to return to the Penthouse if only to see the baby. Maybe get a chance to actually hold him. Knowing he has microscopic DNA parts related to Ink only stokes the desire, but I can’t afford the risk. I just took back every scrap of my heart when I left the nightclub. I’m not about to lose any of it to the Ghetto. Today, I slash all ties.

  So, I drop the bag off with a sweeper patrolling the perimeter of the Hotel. “Angel will know what to do with it,” I tell him, ready to embark around the back to the loading dock where I will catch my ride to the train leaving the Ghetto.

  Once there, I discover two sweepers and one soldier waiting to accompany me. But no shipment truck waits this time. Instead, it’s a sleek black SUV.

  “Looks like I’m getting the special treatment today, boys,” I joke with them and approach the formal vehicle.

  “All part of the cover,” one soldier responds, and I recognize his voice from the tunnel again.

  I snap. “Avery.”

  He gives me a blank look, blinks once.

  “I’ll explain on the drive over.”

  “Might want to do that after you change,” says a sweeper, producing a woman’s military uniform.

  “Hope it’s not too big.” I stroll over to accept the uniform without hesitation and climb into the far back of the SUV.

  Considering the clothes I’m wearing stink of Ghetto and Big Sis’s perfume as they came from her wardrobe, I’m glad to do away with them. A military uniform is more my style anyway. It might not be the greatest for climbing, but I’m sure I’ll have more opportunities for climbing gear and clothes when I reach the cliffs. A small part of my conversation with Angel included my desire to find the mountains, and not only would she guarantee safe passage there but also directions to a seaside community where I would be a welcome asset. To think I never knew such places existed. At the time I left home, I was concerned about escaping from my brother and the bounty hunters he’d hired to come after me. Ironic that I slipped into the Ghetto underneath a Hotel shipment truck, but now I’m leaving with the Hotel’s blessing and their finest car.

  “Good thing you’re getting out now,” one of the sweepers calls from the front without turning around out of respect.

  “Word on the street is you’ve got a nasty bugger on your tail,” Avery echoes from the middle. “Goes by the name of Tanner.”

  I hike the camouflage pants all the way up to my waist and tighten the belt right before stripping out of my old top and jerking the plain tan undershirt on below the matching fatigues jacket.

  “What’s he on my tail for? Shouldn’t be any bounty now that Sawyer and Big Sis are out of the way,” I protest and then lean forward to catch the rest of the conversation.

  One of the sweepers turns his head now and informs me, “He’s not with the Hotel. Ex-military, too. Works independent.”

  “Even if he does pair up with Hotel sweepers every now and then,” the other sweeper mutters under his breath, loathing soaked into his voice.

  “News just came out that he’s working for a heavy hitter,” Avery says while nailing his eyes to mine. “Between your skill, that hair, and now your reputation, sounds like you’re worth a lot. Good for you to get as far away from the Ghetto as possible.”

  And I’ve never been closer.

  Leaning back against the headrest, I let the low conversation and jokes from the men in front of me fade into the background. Outside, the sunrise is so close, if I open my window, it could singe my fingertips if I try to reach out and touch it.

  It doesn’t take us long to reach the train station. It’s not often that this train is running, but today is an exception due to the dozens of soldiers boarding it. Probably in the Ghetto for training or drills, which happens every so often though they stay away from the inner city and closer to the outskirts. Avery explains that most of them will depart once the train reaches a few strategic locations just on the Ghetto’s border. The rest will be moving on up north.

  “Do they know about me?” I wonder, eyeing one soldier passing by me with his cap slung low to shadow his face.

  “Just the ones going up north. The rest are routine. Here.” Avery lowers a matching fatigues backpack from his shoulder and hands it to me. “Compliments of Angel. Should be everything you need for your journey.”

  Angel really did have everything planned out. Or maybe she’s just this good and always anticipated our paths would one day cross. I smile down at the identification card, which reads Ruby Fox. I guess the community up north functions with identification cards.

  I thank the gentlemen who’ve escorted me and head for the train. With every step closer, I’m shedding pieces of the Ghetto, brushing off shards of broken glass ― semiprecious city stones, bits of brick like ground-up bark from a tree, random shreds of rubber coated in tar like syrup. A million and one Ghetto scraps flee my skin as soon as I board the train. I salute the city that was my home for four years. The one where I unearthed all my climbing muscles. The one where I became Queen. As soon as the train takes
off, I hold onto the closest railing and feel any leftover Ghetto smog from my clothes fly away to return to its home.

  Finally, I enter the inside of the train car and find it curiously empty. Except for one person.

  “What on earth?” I yell, marching right up to the familiar figure with his head tipped back against the headrest, his trench coat collar like a black fan around his neck.

  “Keep it down!” complains Ink while settling back in the seat. “Trying to get some shuteye here.”

  “No.” I jab him in the chest, forgetting all about his busted ribs until he doubles over in pain.

  “Oh, Ruby!” He grips his chest, wheezing a little.

  “I’m sorry, I forgot.”

  “Yeah, I’d like to see you do that trick. Hanging onto the back of a van while it does a 360 and then getting flung from it like a rag doll onto the street.”

  “Listen to me...” I squat down and needle my eyes onto his so hard, I imagine pinpricks in his pupils. “I did not climb all the way up that godforsaken Hotel to save your pathetic, little rear end for you to throw it all away. Once we reach the next stop, you’re getting off with the other soldiers and I don’t care if you have to walk all the way back to the Hotel. Your family is back there.”

  “Wrong.” He kicks his leg up onto the seat opposite of him, popping his collar back up. “My family’s right here. And she can either stomp her little foot and throw a fit about it. Or she can calm down and shut the hell up for once.”