A Virtuous Ruby (19 page)

Brother started speaking in low tones to relieve the tension. “Lord, we is all here with heavy hearts. Help us to relieve the troubles in all of our hearts. Brother, please be there for Reverend Dodge, especially. He has a terrible sadness in his soul, Lord, and he needs you to heal it. Please touch him tonight with your healing power.”

“Amen,” Sister Jane took her mouth off of the mouth organ and emphatically agreed with her husband.

“Amen,” Lona Bledsoe said.

Ruby’s sisters said it too, but Ruby could not bring herself to say it for Dodge. He wanted to make her pay for rejecting him. His daring to come to the revival, drunk, and confront her, only proved the point. How terrible would her life have been if she married him?

In her work for the men in the mills and as a midwife, she witnessed what alcohol did to men with families who had spent all of their pay on spirits and the woman and children were left to fend for themselves. She had to be temperance. She never wanted to be part of that kind of existence. Children went cold, hungry and miserable and the women became shrunken shells of themselves. A terrible way to live.

She peered at Lona to see what her reaction was to Dodge’s drunken appearance, but she couldn’t tell what her mother was thinking. She never could. Lona almost never betrayed any emotion—but at least now Ruby understood what made her so dead inside. She just didn’t want the same life. She pulled Solomon’s little body closer to her and was about to give him some comfort in the music time, when they heard loud shouting outside. The noise came in the same direction where Adam had taken Dodge.

She handed Solomon off to one of her sisters and, on bare feet, ran up the aisle to see what was going on. Several of the men followed her as well, and she covered her mouth at the sight in the diminishing twilight of the summer evening. Dodge, spread out on the hood of Adam’s car, did not move. The doctor, the peaceful doctor stood over him, looking angry and ready to beat him down if he rose up again. “Adam!” Ruby screamed out to him, “Stop!”

Chapter Eighteen

Adam stopped where he was. Hearing Ruby’s sharp cries snapped him out of his rage. She couldn’t be in danger, it registered in his thoughts, since he was taking care of Dodge. He looked down at his hands, the hands he always thought of as healing hands. They were split and bleeding. His knuckles were beginning to sting from the feeling of bone and flesh interacting as he held down Dodge with one hand and connected with the minister’s chin and soft body parts with another.

“Are you okay?” Adam lifted his hands from Dodge’s portly body and began to examine him.

“Get your hands off of me,” Dodge coughed. “You a doctor and all and you trying to kill me.”

“I wasn’t trying to kill you. I was stopping you from hurting Ruby.”

Dodge wiped blood from the corner of his mouth. “And what right do you have to her, coming in here and trying to claim her? If you going to claim her, be man enough and do it.”

At Dodge’s words, Ruby raced to the car and grabbed Adam’s hands, examining his knuckles. He couldn’t help it, he warmed to her touch and the pain lessened. He started healing in spite of himself. Brother was right.

She began to rub his damaged hands, “Adam, what’re you doing? You can’t hurt your hands. Why did you do this?”

Her plaintive tone touched him and he had to respond to her truth with truth. “I didn’t want him to hurt you anymore. I had to stop him.”

Ruby’s warm agate brown eyes stared into his. “They are just words. I have stood up to words before.”

“That doesn’t make it acceptable. You don’t have to keep being a martyr.”

“Oh, Adam. I’m so sorry.”

Dodge gave a snort and began to act more hurt than he really was, Adam could tell. Other people from the revival approached Dodge and started trying to treat him.

Fine
. Dodge shifted away from him, sitting on the ground.
See how he does without expert care.

Adam let go of the worry since he knew Dodge’s wounds would eventually heal. Since the pain in his hands hurt him, he might have felt warm again in embarrassment, but Ruby’s attentions to him soothed the pain.

The air crackled with the sound of loud honking horn down the long red road from town to the tent. The sheriff? How had the sheriff known what was going on?

Adam groaned. He and the sheriff had not parted on the best terms, when Ruby had been taken away at the picnic.

The car pulled up and the sheriff stepped out. Adam stood, ready to greet him and trying to look as if nothing had happened.

Since nothing had.

Dodge writhed on the ground, making it look as if he were seriously harmed.

When Baines saw Adam standing up over Dodge, he smiled. Baines had made it crystal clear earlier how much he despised Adam coming into town and using his familial relations as power over someone like him. Pure rage radiated from Jim Baines’s beefy countenance. How could someone who was a small-town sheriff afford enough food to get to such a size? “What do we have here, Doctor?”

“A tiny scuffle.”

“It don’t look so tiny to me. I see the good Reverend is here on the ground. You okay, Dodge?”

In answer, Dodge groaned. Something about the whole situation seemed fake, but Adam understood how this all must look, so he focused his efforts on getting this sheriff, who was not so bright, to see reason, if possible. Baines said, “This situation is quite serious. You cause harm to the Reverend here?”

“We had some words.”

“Look like more than words,” Sheriff Baines looked at Ruby standing next to him. “You set out to hurt this man, a man making an honorable proposal of marriage to a woman of questionable honor.”

His words, spoken so casually, made Adam angry. He glared at Baines who only smiled at him. Ruby’s gentle touch on his arm stopped him from advancing further. “What? Did I say something wrong?” Baines asked.

“You know who I am, Sheriff,” Adam said in measured tones. He hated having to trade on his familial relations, especially given how he felt about Paul Winslow, but he had no other choice.

Baines’s eyes grew small and beady. “I see an uppity colored doctor who just came to my town and causes trouble at a religious service. Pretty clear cut to me.”

“Leave us alone, Sheriff Baines,” Ruby spoke in measured tones. “We’re just here to praise God. Let us be.”

“Wonderful. And I would be willing to leave, except the good Reverend is lying on the ground and bleeding. I would be abandoning my duties to leave just now.”

Someone in the gathered crowd shouted out, “You ain’t never cared about arresting no Negro man for beating up on another one.”

“Maybe I’m getting to see you alls side of things. Maybe I have been abandoning my duty before this. I intend to do it now. Get in the car,” Baines snarled at Adam.

“No!” Ruby held Adam’s arm with a more firm grip. “Don’t get in the car with him.”

“Ruby,” Adam disengaged her arm from his. “I have to go and get this all straightened out.”

Ruby’s eyebrows heightened with alarm and she began to cry. “You don’t understand. Please, don’t get in the car with him. We might not ever see you no more if you do. Please.”

He did not understand her worry. Adam patted her hand and squeezed it. “I’ll be all right, Ruby.”

Her strong fingers dug into his flesh. “Please, Adam.” The service had come to a complete stop. Now everyone surrounded them with worried looks on their faces. Only Dodge was apart and sat up against the wheel of Adam’s car.

“Remember as I showed you, Ruby. Drive the family back home in my car. Take care of Solomon. I’ll be back very soon.”

Ruby sobbed harder and more insistently than ever. “If you get in his car, he’ll lynch you on the way to the jailhouse. Just like Uncle Arlo. Oh God.”

The delighted look on the sheriff’s face matched Ruby’s words. This man was willing to hurt him now and risk Paul Winslow’s potential displeasure later. Adam’s mouth grew dry. Could his life be over? And for what? He hadn’t really done anything.

All around him people stared with concerned looks stamped on the faces of all of the Bledsoes, their neighbors he had come to treat, and Brother Carver and Sister Jane. Even Solomon’s little face was very serious even though he couldn’t possibly know what was happening. Then there was Ruby’s tear-stained face and her hands clinging to his arm.

Bless her, she was the one who had been saving him since he first came to this God-forsaken town, just to obtain the approval of his father. Now it came to him. His entire pursuit of his father’s approval was a fool’s errand.

Foolish, not for coming to Winslow, but for trying to get the approval of a man like his father. Being a doctor mattered, but he had wasted his life chasing after something invisible. He had given up his humanity in holding up ideals, having dignity at all times, putting on a brave face, and living with no emotion. Now, these things didn’t matter. What mattered was right in front of him.

He grabbed Ruby’s shoulders. “I’ll be all right. Don’t worry. Take everyone home and wait for me there.” He looked around at all of them. And at her. Into those brown eyes—a safe place. This was the home he had been searching for, after looking for one for so long. “God’ll take care of me.”

She sniffled. “God’ll take care of you,” she repeated.

“That’s right,” He tipped up her chin. “I love you. Do you hear me, Ruby? I love you.”

“I love you too.”

He reached down and he touched her lips with his, something he had been longing to do. Her lips were so soft and she smelled so sweet, like a fresh summer day. If something were to happen to him it would be all right if this first kiss with Ruby were one of his last moments. He never wanted the kiss to end.

But end it did. The beauty of the moment was shattered by Dodge’s sharp, hoarse laugh,

“Do we have to witness these scenes of sin? In front of good Christian folk? Take him on out of here.”

Dodge’s sarcastic tone conveyed something was going on, and this was all intentional. He had been set up. Despite all of his education and smarts, he played into the hands of these men who hated him. Now, he would pay with his life. Too bad. He nearly laughed with joy at knowing her lips. He had won. His life didn’t matter. The love he felt for her was the reality.

A prayer came, unbidden, from the recesses of his heart.
Thank you, God. Thank you for letting me see love before I die. If it’s your will for me to live to see it again, I will honor love with all that is in me. But if it is your will and I should not live, then at least I am glad I have seen it, and felt it, once before I die.

Baines shoved at him. “Get in the car.”

“I love you, Ruby,” he said once more.

“No! Don’t get in his car!” Ruby’s cries sounded out full-blown now. “I love you. Please, don’t leave us now.”

As Adam walked toward the sheriff’s car, Dodge had a small smile at the corner of his lips.

Adam ducked his head to get into the car, a peace settled in his heart he could not explain, even as it tore at Ruby’s wails and Solomon’s little shrieks. “I love you,” he said again, not sure if she heard, because she sobbed so loud, fighting against the restraints her father and Sister Jane had placed on her by simultaneously embracing her.

Baines said to Dodge. “If you pressing charges, you got to come too.”

Dodge, still inebriated like his cousin Lucas, wobbled and tried to get in the car in the front seat next to Sheriff Baines. “Get in the back with him.” Baines snarled at Dodge. Adam wanted to laugh in the midst of trouble. Dodge was in such deep cahoots with the Sherriff, he believed he was as good as him, but Baines made it clear where his alliances really were.

Dodge gestured at Adam, “You need to cuff him. He might attack me again.”

Sheriff Baines gave a sigh that reverberated in the summer air and got out of the car to reach over the back and put handcuffs on Adam. The click they made hit Ruby and she wailed even louder in reaction.

The pain in his hands was nothing compared to the pain in his heart at Ruby’s cries. Little Solomon too. Then, his resolve grew louder and stronger. He would live to come back to her. He was smarter than both of these men put together, and he would find a way to defeat them to come back to her. And at the thought, the beating of his heart slowed and he calmed. What could he do to get out of this situation?

Sheriff Baines hopped in the car to drive it up the road. He drove past the Winslows, and Adam noticed he did not slow down or stop. “I want to stop here to talk to Paul Winslow,” Adam demanded.

Baines gave a snicker and Dodge accompanied him. “You didn’t know? Paul Winslow leaves town every time the revival comes. He left this morning. He won’t be back until the end of the week.”

Dodge leaned over. “There ain’t no saving you now, fancy doctor. There ain’t nothing worse hated around here than an uppity Negro and they hate you.” Dodge leaned forward and yelled out companionably to the Sheriff. “Where we going to string him up? Closer to town.”

“Don’t tell me how to do my job, boy. I know what to do with this man.”

Dodge sat back in his seat again, like a whipped puppy. “Just warning you, boss man. He’s one of them smart ones. He’ll get away if you let him.”

“There ain’t no way he’s smarter than this white man. I know what to do. It’s easy now with Winslow away, where he can’t ruin things with his emotions and money. I’m the law in this town.”

“Yeah,” Dodge echoed.

He didn’t like the sheriff’s response. Whatever the sheriff had in mind, could be worse than a lynching. His shoulders drooped. Just as he had come to know real love, he was going to be in dangerous circumstances that might mean the end of his life. He didn’t know what was coming.

Ruby tried to keep calm and remember all Adam had taught her about his car as her mother got in the car with the baby, Sister Jane and Brother Carver. She drove carefully down the road, keeping her walking sisters in sight behind her, going very slowly. When she pulled the car in front of the house, she didn’t turn it off and stayed inside.

Her mother directed her. “Get in this house, Ruby Jean. Now.”

Ruby looked straight ahead. “Sister, will you see to it my mother gets proper rest?”

“Yes, of course, child.”

“If my mother doesn’t want to take care of Solomon, then my sisters will be along shortly to help. You can keep an eye on him in the meantime, will you?”

“Of course, Ruby Jean.”

“You can not go on off to see about him now. It’s getting after dark, and you know it’s too dangerous.” Lona handed the baby off to Sister Jane. “Listen to me now. He’s important and all, but what about Solomon? You know he wants you to take care of Solomon.”

Ruby cleared her throat. “I’ve always know Solomon would be taken care of if something happened to me.”

“That’s my point, girl. Ain’t nothing going to happen to you if you wait here until the sun come up again,” Lona pleaded.

“You want me to pace the floor all night wondering if Adam is dead or not? I can’t just sit here, Mama, I got to go to help him. I love him.”

The tears started coursing down Lona’s cheeks. “I’m happy for you. Solomon gonna have a daddy, but the only way it can happen is if you stay here.”

Ruby’s sisters entered the yard, so they were home safe. “If I don’t go tonight to see about him, I’ll always wonder if I did right.”

“You should be living your life to protect your boy.”

Her father broke away from her sisters and went up to the driver’s side of the car. “You still here, Ruby Jean?”

“I’m trying to explain to Mama, why I got to go.” She turned to her father. “Can you help?”

John went to the other side of the car and put his arm around Lona’s shoulders. “Let her go on, babe.”

Lona started screaming and her sisters gathered around their mother. “Something terrible is going to happen to her if she go, I just know.”

Ruby’s eyes started to fill with tears, but she wiped them away to be able to see as she drove. Brother Carver came around to the driver’s side of the car. “How about a prayer before you go?”

Everyone quieted as Ruby bowed her head to receive Brother Carver’s blessing. “Lord, please look out for this child as she do your work. The good doctor ain’t harmed no one—help him to come on back home so he and she can marry and live in your word. In your name, amen.”