In An Arid Land (9 page)

In the kitchen the old woman sang, "Hurry, hurry!" Ruby hurried out. The car the big Lincoln was idling in the driveway and she could see Mr. Livermore, shadowy and distant behind the windshield, both hands on the wheel. She opened the back door.

"No no," he said. "Up here." His hand patted the seat.

She got in, smoothed out her dress. He looked at her, hard, close, right in the eyes. She glanced at him, just a turn of the head. His eyes were smiling, gentle, but his mouth was even and flat. Something touched her arm and she started to pull away, but then realized what it was. He touched her again, turned his hand over on the seat for her to hold, but she left it alone.

"I guess things are going to change a little now."

"We better be going, Mr. Livermore. I got to catch a bus."

"It doesn't have to change."

She looked at him. Now his mouth was smiling too, almost tenderly, lovingly. He said, "I'll keep him busy."

"Mr. Livermore"

"I know," he said through his moustache, gray, yellow-stained from cigarettes. They lurched backward and he leaned over the seat, peering back, gripping the wheel with one hand. The car swayed into the road and he whipped it around, started off. He was smiling again, and she knew it was to convince her. He was an old man and she knew that he thought he would have to convince her. "You can have a good life here, Ruby. Just listen to me."

"Right now I got to get to the bus and you're already late."

"Are you listening?"

"I hear you." She paused. "You know he'd kill us both."

"He'll never know." He spoke through his moustache, gripped the wheel with both hands, the car surging forward over the dust.

"I can't do it no more, Mr. Livermore."

"Don't call me that," he said. He touched her thigh and she jerked it away. She could feel his disappointment, the minute shifting of his shoulders, the added pressure on the seat from the deeper slump of his body. "There are ways," he said.

"No. Not no more. I can't no more, I just can't."

She sensed him slump again. There was a frightening finality to it as if he might strike her because he couldn't convince her, in the same way that all men do, even the gentlest of men, who strike out at what they cannot control. She held on to the armrest of her door; he made no movement except for the minute adjustments of the wheel. They were silent as the car rushed on.

At the junction he stopped. The dirt road arched up onto the blacktop, the highway. Something in the silence, the queer stillness, the taut grip of his hands, made her think that he was waiting for her to do something. "I'm late in Bryan," he said.

She snapped her head toward him. His face was serious, grim amid the spots on his fleshy cheeks, those white bushes above his eyes and the lines above them. "But you said you'd take me."

"Sorry," he said with a half-glance, like a child's.

She got out. The car lurched up onto the highway. She walked up, up the arch, and watched it. Crossing the highway, she watched it. The car, wavy as it went away, melted into a shimmer beyond a hill. She started walking.
Hurry. Hurry.

III

The highway sign said HUNTSVILLE 5. It was cool in the bus the window was streaked with condensation but the air was smoky and musty smelling. Then the narrow road between the trees swept open and became a four-lane, the blacktop lined with yellow stripes. Ruby could see the Interstate up ahead, rising in a camelback. Cars and trucks lumbered by on the overpass. There was someone up there on the shoulder: a woman in bright orange pants. And her arm was out. A hitchhiker, going to Houston.

Ruby had been to Houston once when she was a girl. She remembered the tall buildings and the traffic downtown, sidewalks clogged with hundreds of people she didn't know. The people walked swiftly and paid no attention to her, even when she was lost. Her daddy had found her, hugged her, when she had been afraid. He took her into a drug store and gave her a dollar. She bought two little Goody barrettes; she still had one of them.

She glimpsed a sign: HOUSTON 72.
Only 70 miles.
A shadow darkened the window and the roaring of the bus grew louder as it passed under the Interstate. The woman up above disappeared.

They were in Huntsville. She had been through Huntsville a few times. The bus turned several corners and then they were on a thoroughfare with businesses and restaurants, traffic. They went under a canopy. The bus stopped, hissed. The driver stood up and stretched, and then everyone started pushing down the aisle.

Inside the bus station, congested with people, a man told her where the prison was. "Six blocks down, four blocks over."

She started walking. A clock on a bank showed twelve-fifteen. She walked four blocks and turned into a neighborhood of old houses and old trees, tall and thick. Soon the neighborhood on one side of the street gave way to a high, red-brick wall, each brick separate, clean, outlined with mortar. Atop the wall at a corner was a brick block with a pointed roof, like a garage or a shed. Curly wires hung from it and a man in dark glasses stood under the roof. He seemed to watch her as she walked.

She came to a place where the wall veered away from the street like an alcove. There was a high gate and another little house with another man in it. The road that led to the gate curved around a flower bed in the middle of the asphalt. She walked in the shadow of the wall until she could no longer see the little house at the gate or the guard who had watched her.

He'll come soon,
she thought,
I'll wait. He'll find me.

Down the street was a vacant lot, grown up with weeds, and she could see the foundation of a torn-down house. At the front of the foundation were the old porch steps, and a rusty bathtub turned upside down. Scruffy hedgerows shielded the lot from the homes next door. Ruby crossed the street and sat down on the steps.
It won't be long,
she thought, opening her purse and taking out an apple. Mrs. Livermore had said the apples were good this week. She ate the apple and waited.

The sky shone orange and purple like the wildflowers. The sun had just slipped below the trees. Ruby got up and walked toward the gate in the prison wall. She stopped when she saw the man in the little house. He was busy, a telephone in his hand. Now the guard saw her. She could tell by the tilt of his head, his halted motions. She wanted to go up and ask him where Joboy was, but he seemed threatening, menacing in his uniform.

Night lurked just above the trees. In the yard behind the foundation she found a blanket, olive drab, soggy on the corner, pressed flat against the ground and covered with a layer of pine needles. She picked up the blanket and shook it out, carried it to the steps. She wondered if this was the wrong day, if she had mixed up the dates. But she had let Mrs. Livermore read the letter and they had agreed, today was the day.
I'll just wait.

Then it was night. She looked out at the street once more to see if Joboy were there, but the street dripped with silence under the trees. Letting her head rest on the old doorsill, she laid down and spread the blanket over her body.

Memories, yapping at her mind, kept sleep at bay like the hounds that her father used to run when he hunted. They bellowed and howled until even the thought of sleep crawled out of her and hid in the branches of the trees. She recalled a night, a night only weeks before Joboy had left. "Where you been for three whole days?" she had asked him. He had just come in, it was late.

"Looking for work," he said.

"No, you ain't looking for nothing. I think you found it."

"Let me be, woman."

"Why I should let you be? I'm your wife." He stared at her, his eyes slippery-looking but direct. "Am I not your wife?"

He stared. He walked toward her, staring, and kissed her.

"Answer me, man."

He kissed her, rubbed himself against her. His heavy man odor filled her head and she could just make out his pretty face in the darkened room. He said, "Come on, let's make a baby." She said, "No!" but he touched her, purred for her. And she lay beneath him then. Later, curled warmly in the bed beside him, she had whispered, "Am I your wife, or not?" but he was asleep.

Now, as her own sleep began to numb her body, she realized that the thumb on her left hand had been rubbing the fleshy skin between the knuckles of her bare ring finger. She made it stop and then everything was calm. Once in the night she woke, chilly and frightened, to a sound in one of the shrubs, a rustling, as if someone were shaking it. When she sat up she saw a bird fight its way out of the leaves and strike off into the darkness.

IV

Ruby felt her bones warming. She felt the concrete under her hip and shoulder. She smelled pine needles warming as if in an oven. A car passed on the street, its engine loud, coughing like Joboy in the morning. Her eyes opened to a face, a child's face, peering down at her. The boy held a satchel over his shoulder.

"It's about time," he said. "I've been waiting on you five, ten minutes."

"Where's Joboy?"

His eyes cut into her, questioning. "You better get gone, gal," the boy said. "Daddy says vagrants go to jail."

Her body hurt and her head seemed to be swimming through a deep, dank pool of water. She looked up at the boy. He was twelve, maybe thirteen. Dark curly hair rose from his head like the crown of a chicken. His face was smooth and clean, but colored with curiosity and a vague meanness.

"I'm going," she said and groped for the white purse.

"The police come around and you're in trouble."

"I'm going," she said and stood up, clutching the purse.

Ruby walked into the street, glanced back. The boy was watching her, but soon he started off in the opposite direction. She went to the road through the gate in the wall. There was a new guard in the little house and he saw her, scrutinized her, as if she had arrived to ask him a difficult question.

"Can I do something for you?" he said.

"I'm here to collect Joboy Johnson. He's getting out."

"Johnson. Johnson, you say?" He rubbed the folds of neck under his chin. "Don't know of no Johnson. But hang on."

She could see through the window of the guard shack that he was talking on the telephone. He talked for a long time. "Who are you?" he asked, leaning out the door, the phone in his hand. She told him and he spoke into the phone again. Ruby took out her handkerchief and wiped off her shoes, raising them one at a time to the low curb. She saw him hang up the phone.

"Mrs. Johnson. Somebody's on the way."

Ruby sat on the curb. The guard stayed inside. She marveled at the perfect order of the flower bed in the middle of the asphalt and wondered who tended it. "Mrs. Johnson?" It was another man's voice. He was wearing a dark suit and a tie, but the features of his face blurred in the sunlight behind him.

The man said, "Would you come with me, please."

She followed him through the gate and up a road to a large brick building. Above the door hung the word ADMINISTRATION. He took her through a room crowded with dozens of desks and metal cabinets and then to a smaller room with a single desk and a window full of sunshine. Another man entered behind them. He introduced himself, Mr. Cutler, and they all sat down.

"So you're Mrs. Johnson," he said. "Ruby Johnson?" He also wore a dark suit. His bulgy face and neck looked like a bucket on his thick shoulders. "If we'd of known, we'd of contacted you."

"Contact me?" She glanced at the other man, sitting against the wall. He was watching her carefully. She said, "What about?"

"You see, Mrs. Johnson." He too looked at the other man, as if for help. But then he said, "Mrs. Johnson, Joboy's dead."

Something like hot grease slid down her throat into her stomach and burned. She clutched the purse in her lap and leaned forward. An image of Joboy's pretty face stood up in her mind his eyes were closed, but that was the only change. She didn't know what to do, so she simply stared at Mr. Cutler.

He said, "It's been a couple of months now." He talked for a long time, but she heard only some of what he said. "There was a fight in the mess hall, you see . . . . There was nothing we could do . . . he died almost immediately . . . . If we'd of known, I'm sure we would of contacted you." He seemed about to say something else, but the words never formed in his mouth.

"But I'm his wife." It was almost a whisper.

His eyes, little marbles in his bulgy face, stared at her flatly. "Yes, that's right," he said. "That's what you've told us." He stared until she turned away. On his desk sat a picture of a huge white horse, its mane and tail standing up in braids.

"Would you like to see the grave?" Mr. Cutler asked.

The man who had led her into the building now led her through several offices until they stepped through a door into the sunshine. "This way," the man said. She followed him down a narrow road, through a gate, and then another, his shoes clapping against the blacktop. The land sloped away on either side to rows of young crops. In the distance she could see figures in white overalls digging at the ground with hoes. Several of them stopped and watched as she and the man walked along.