A Virtuous Ruby

An unexpected love in a small, Southern town.

Migrations of the Heart
, Book 1

After fifteen months of hiding from the shame of bearing an illegitimate child, two words drive Ruby Bledsoe to face the good citizens of Winslow, Georgia. Never again. She vows to speak out against injustice. For her sisters. For her parents. For her infant son, Solomon.

When she comes to help an injured mill worker, she bristles when a tall, handsome man claiming to be a doctor brushes her aside. Despite his arrogance, Ruby senses he’s someone like her, whose light skin doesn’t quite hide who he is.

Up north, Dr. Adam Morson easily kept his mixed race a secret. Now that he’s in Georgia, summoned by his white father, he can feel restrictions closing in around him.

Something powerful draws him to the beauty whose activist spirit is as fiery as her name. And soon, Adam wants nothing more than to take Ruby and her child far from Georgia’s toxic prejudice. But Ruby must choose between seeking her own happiness and staying to fight for the soul of her hometown.

Warning: Contains a doctor learning there’s more to healing his patients than stitching a wound, and more to a woman than knowing her place—and it’s not in the shadows with her head down. Sorry, Buckeye fans, this hero’s a Wolverine—but we won’t hold that against him.

A Virtuous Ruby

Piper Huguley

Dedication

Everything came together in my life, work and writing when I realized that I had to tell my Great Migration stories. After all, I had made that promise to my great aunts so long ago and at the time, I struggled to tell them how much I admired their sacrifices.

I dedicate this story to those Great Migrators in my life: my mother-in-law, grandmother and great aunts who numbered among the six million in the United States who knew there had to be a better way of life. Thank you, thank you so very, very much.

Acknowledgements

I thank and appreciate all of those critique groups who had a hand in shaping Ruby, especially Julie Hilton Steele and Elaine Manders, who both took a great leap of faith in believing in this story. I thank you so much for your belief in this most unusual story. The comments that you made, for good and bad, helped to shape me for the better.

Thomas Hardy’s novel,
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
is Ruby’s foremother in that they were both young women who had great strength, courage and fortitude, but were wronged. I always felt Tess deserved a happy ending and I endeavor to give her one by way of my Ruby. For you and all of the young woman who have been attacked, you all deserve a happy ever after.

Chapter One

1915-Winslow, Georgia

“You got to keep things quiet, Ruby, or they be lynching you next.”

Ruby Bledsoe ignored her younger sister, Margaret, and picked up her pink hat as she readied to leave the house for the first time in a year. Margaret dubbed Mags—much browner than she with a nice maple color—didn’t need to wear a hat to protect her skin. She thinned her lips as she adjusted the hat on her head. Brown Mags could choose. Pale Ruby had no choice.

“You can’t keep stirring up trouble,” Mags admonished her.

Her envy vanished. Mags always followed the rules, just like their mother.
I’m eighteen. And light skinned. I can do what I want.

But all of that wasn’t true because the outside loomed—large, hot and unfriendly.

Staring out through the window onto the porch and the red-dirt road beyond, she clamped down on the fear threatening to consume her. It went down hard, like a dried-out biscuit. The outside. Where the attack happened. Fifteen months ago.

Be quiet about the lynchings.

She’d stayed inside so long, old Paul Winslow probably thought he had succeeded.

But he hadn’t. Not today.

She turned on her high-heeled boot toward the corner of the room where all of her sisters slept and her gaze rested lovingly on the cradle where the result of the attack napped.

Solomon.

For him, she must speak. She would not be quiet. She would leave the house, starting now. Ruby stepped out onto the porch, trying to feel brave, but felt the contents of her breakfast stirring in her stomach instead.

“Coming, Mags?” Ruby held the screen door open. Two years younger, Mags was the one of her four sisters who would not deny her. Besides, everyone else in the house told her no. Good old Mags came through the door, just for her.

“What about Solomon?” Mags asked.

She adjusted her large, wide-brimmed hat in response to her sister’s question. The pink in the hat matched the embroidered roses on the white shirtwaist and matching skirt she wore. Wearing white would help her look respectable. The wide brim would protect her too pale skin from the June heat.

“He’s the reason I have to do this. The company store is first.” A pain in her heart surged with a fierce love for her child.
Thank you, God.
Solomon was the only light in her life. And nothing would happen to him. “I have to make things better for him. Especially since Uncle Arlo…” She shook away the horrible picture. The lynching. She had seen things about his mutilated body no niece should ever see.

“Just so long as you don’t end up like him.” Mags kept up a nervous chatter with another reprimand as they strolled along the country road into town. Ruby hated the town because Paul Winslow had not cared to make it beautiful. Town was a bunch of knocked together, thoughtless buildings: the square red brick cotton mill, the tan pinewood general store, a gray clapboard hotel and a drinking establishment, painted a dingy brown with red dust at the fringes of everything. Silence was the order of the day, since they reached the edge of Winslow just before lunchtime.

She stepped up to the wooden sidewalk and kept on walking and talking. “Is it right Paul Winslow can hire more Negroes and pay them less ’cause of some old war in Europe? What about Travis? He can make more money after we help the men protest Paul Winslow for more money. Then you can get married sooner.”

“That’s why I come with you.” Mags’s maple skin could show a red blush in its dusky undertone and did.

“Came. Speak proper, like Miss Mary.” She directed her younger sister. “Now you see why we got to say something. Time for things to change. Specially for Uncle Arlo.” She had to make things right. His blood was on her hands.

Her nose wrinkled as they got closer. She hated the smell of town, especially the stink of the mill. Linseed, Uncle Arlo had told her. It burned on the wheels of the machine and filled the air with a sharp tang. More like burned pecans. In the wintertime whenever her family wanted a snack, they would toast pecans and sometimes, the edges turned black. The smell from the mill was stronger than ever now.

The scream of a whistle split the air.

They stopped.

Something was wrong. The emergency whistle sounded from the mill.

She arranged her own features into calm, not reflecting the fear on her sister’s face. People spilled out of the small buildings and stood around on the wooden sidewalks. No one seemed to know what to do. With a quick glance, she could see Dr. Morgan, the white doctor, was not in his office next to the general store.

“I’m going to go to see if I can help.” She started toward the mill.

“What can you do? You just help with baby birthing.” Mags shouted after her.

“I’ve seen blood before.” She put more certainty in her voice than was in her heart as she yelled over her shoulder. “I can help. You stay here.”

No need to reinforce the warning with Mags. She did not like blood and she never moved.

The whistle of the afternoon train sounded as Ruby rushed on to the mill. Normally, the arrival of the train was something to note in little Winslow, but the screams of a man coming from the edges of the mill yard, distracted her. Four men, including Mags’s suitor Travis, carried out another Negro man. Jacob. Blood trickled from his hand.
Thank God, Travis wasn’t the injured one.

“What happened?” She asked him.

Travis showed no surprise at her question. Apparently a midwife, even a disgraced one, was better than nothing. Even one who hadn’t left her house in a long time. They were clearly going to try to take this man to Dr. Morgan, but it didn’t mean he would treat him.

“Hand got caught in the machine.”

She swallowed. The flesh had been cut deeply across his palm, but luckily, all of his fingers were there. Moving. Underneath his dark brown skin, the man had colored to an unhealthy gray. “Set him down on the sidewalk.”

The men did as she directed and almost immediately, Jacob’s co-workers stepped away from him in fright. “No Dr. Morgan?” He managed to grit out in pain.

“He’s not there. You’ll have to do with me, I’m afraid.” She tried to ignore the alarm on his face. Jacob had a family of four young girls and a baby boy. She struggled to keep her hands steady. She prayed for guidance.

Inhaling the familiar metal-rich tang of blood, Ruby touched the stripped-apart flesh. “Does anyone have a clean cloth?”

The men stared. They had just come from the machines and they were dirty. One by one, they peeled away. All of the onlookers who had been there moments before had also vanished. “I go find something, Ruby,” Travis said, and he left Jacob to her, rushing off.

No time to lose. Looking quickly from side to side, she reached up under her white dress and, with a sharp quick tug, pulled at her slip and ripped way some of the white cotton. Tearing the slip into strips, she startled.

A man had pushed her to the side and began to probe at Jacob’s hand.

“What are you doing?” An unfamiliar deep male voice spoke sharply to her and with the push to the side, red scuffs marred her best high-topped shoes.

Back before her shame, she would have been completely humiliated in front of a strange man. Now, pushed aside, she stopped. The man had large, beautiful grey eyes edged with long, black fringe lashes, which would have looked female if his cream-colored features were not so chiseled.

“I’m trying to fix his hand.”

She fixed him with a hard glance, and spoke again, demanding, “Who are you?”

His angular, handsome face reflected scorn and disapproval.

Then, she immediately regretted her quick words.

Was this man white or a Negro?

His color sure gave her pause. Even now, as she took her glance away from his disapproving gaze and to his lips, there was a hint of fullness to them.

She blew out a sigh of relief. She had not been wrong. He was a Negro, just as light as her. They were the same.

“Don’t use those dirty bandages on his hand. What’s wrong with you?” The man sat next to Jacob and probed Jacob’s hand with sure fingers. Jacob calmed. Her pride prickled and she clenched her teeth at the stranger yelling at her now. Everyone was after her today.

“And who are you?” Ruby repeated the question. Her mother always told her she was too forward, but she couldn’t help it.

“I’m a doctor.”

“Praise God,” Jacob said with clear relief. “See Ruby. This man here a doctor. He can fix me up good.”

“How do we know he’s a doctor?” Ruby pursed her lips together and applied pressure to keep them shut.

“Fetch my bag over there on the train platform, there are sanitary bandages in it. Hurry.”

Who was he to tell her what to do? Directing her! Ruby tossed him a quick look of distain, but she raced back on fast feet. Jacob’s situation required speed, even if this strange man treated him. When he got the bag, as if he were a magic man, he began to take out bandages and other things from it.

He handed her a needle and a spool of thread. “Please thread this. Try not to get it dirty.”

The nerve! She knew how to thread a needle! Well, enough she supposed. Sometimes after a delivery, a woman needed to be sewn up some, but sewing wasn’t her strong point. Did this man know about her poor sewing skills just by looking at her? Maybe he did, just as she knew his secret by looking at him.

Jacob’s voice was too polite even as he enthused. No, he didn’t suspect the man was as much Negro as them. “Wait ’til May hear about this. God was sure looking out. I got some real doctoring.”

“I’m glad for you.” Ruby handed the threaded needle to the doctor. “This sewing up part can’t be no fun now. Calm down, Jacob.”

“It’s all right. Long as my hand can get fixed.”

“It will take some time.” The doctor splashed some smelly stuff on the gash. Jacob jumped but the doctor held him firm. He applied neat stitches to the gash in Jacob’s hand, which had stopped bleeding, “But it will be as good as new in a few weeks time. You will need to keep it clean so infection does not set in.”

“Infection?” Ruby asked.

What did I just say?
She knew what infection was. This stranger moved her and made her act like she knew nothing.

The handsome stranger stared at her as if she had taken off her slip right there in the middle of the street. “Yes. Infection can be worse. Please be still, Mr. Jacob.”

That confirmed it. A white man would not have addressed Jacob so respectfully.

Now she’d talk to him any way she liked. Still, she continued watching in fascination to see the competent way the man sewed up Jacob’s wound and bandaged it with the clean bandages from his bag. And all Ruby had was a ripped-up slip.

No loss. A torn slip was an easy fix for Em, one of her sisters who sewed the best.

With the proper bandages, the metal tang of blood cleared from the air and the mill stench reasserted itself again. Jacob struggled to right himself, but stood up, holding his bandaged hand in the other. “Take it easy, Jacob.” Ruby patted his good arm.

The man waved off her concern and her eyes smarted at his bravery. He had to go back to work. No time off for his injury. It just wasn’t fair.

Jacob said in a shaky voice, “I don’t have much to pay you, Doctor, but thank you kindly.”

“You’re welcome. Try to keep it clean. The dressings have to be changed in two days time.” He wiped his glasses with the edge of a clean bandage. He was all business wasn’t he?

“He heard you the first time. Jacob works here at the mill.” Ruby inserted herself into the conversation. “I’ll come back here in two days time at lunch. I can change your bandage for you.”

His color was a bit better as they watched him go back to the mill. The doctor repacked his medical bag and picked up a valise from the train platform before making his way back to her. “Thank you for your help, Miss. Could you kindly direct me to a hotel?” His voice was deep and brusque.

“The only hotel is the Bouganse. It’s on the left side of the street, right over there.” Ruby pointed to a grey clapboard building down the street, the tallest building, three stories high. “But, I…”

“Thank you.” He tipped his bowler and carried his bags, making his way to the hotel. Where did the doctor think he was going? Did he know Negroes couldn’t stay at the Bouganse?

She guessed not. He strutted down the street with a defiant, proud carriage. He was being white. What a fool he was. Did he know passing could get him lynched? It would be mighty sad to see a handsome stranger be lynched, no matter how rude he was, pushing her to the side and putting scuff marks on her shoes. No more. For Solomon’s sake. She would save him.

Ruby’s short legs had a harder time keeping up with the handsome man. He had to be almost a foot taller than her, but she caught up with him. Breathless, head lowered and body slumped, she was now in proper posture to speak to a white man first and not be seen as a prostitute. Be lower than him, willing to step into the mud and scattered horse offal.
Great. More marks on her shoes
.

What a foolish man. Even if he were nice to look at. She would do her good deed today and be on her merry way to remind the workers about her organizing meeting. Ruby kept her eyes downcast as she approached him.

“Sir, how you doing this fine day?” She addressed him to keep up his charade, since he insisted on it.

“Yes, Miss?”

Ruby kept her head down, even though she wanted to look up. She had never been addressed that way and it was very startling. “Good. Sir, I wondered if you knew this hotel house establishment is not one of the best places in town to stay.”

“It isn’t? But they told me…” Ruby did glance up at him then, and those gray eyes were on her. The beauty and clarity of them made her heart skip a beat. “This was the place to come if you wanted to stay in Winslow and not leave it.”

“There are other places.” Ruby kept her voice particularly low and stared down at his shiny black shoes. “This one for whites only. Sir.”

What if she were wrong?

He looked Negro—to her.

But then, his shoes and clothes were almost too nice.