The Loves of Ruby Dee (24 page)

He did care for Crystal, a lot. What he felt for Crystal was an aching to hold her and kiss her and screw her. He simply liked to touch her and to see her, and he liked to talk to her, too. He liked to flirt with her and watch her grin. And he would admit that he felt all of that more strongly for Crystal than he could recall feeling for a woman in quite some time. But he still wasn’t prepared to call it love everlasting.

When he pulled into the ranch drive and looked up at the house, he got as nervous as Crystal had been. The sun was rising, which meant Will and Ruby Dee would be up. He anticipated Will’s cutting remarks. Worse, he imagined Ruby Dee’s face.

What would she think of him coming in at this time of the morning?

Oh, she knew he was seeing Crystal, but not how close things were between them. When a man came in at dawn, however, it was pretty plain what he had been up to the night before. Ninety-nine percent of the time the man had either been drinking, coon hunting or spending the night with a woman. In Lonnie’s case, it was well known he was averse to too much drinking and to coon hunting at all.

He didn’t want Ruby Dee to know about him and Crystal. He was afraid if she knew, it would change things between them.

Lonnie
had come to think of Ruby Dee as a part of his days and Crystal as a part of his nights. Two women in two separate areas of his life. He felt about Ruby Dee the same way he felt about Crystal. He wanted the same things from her, and when it came down to it, he got them all, except one. Sometimes he held hopes of getting that one thing. But no matter; he didn’t want to risk losing everything she already gave him. He wasn’t certain what place he had found in Ruby Dee’s life, but he did know he had found a place, and he didn’t want to lose it.

Lying was the only safe course, and while he searched for a shirt in the pile of things in the back seat of his truck, his mind raced with plausible excuses. He found a shirt, wrinkled but near in color to the one he had worn the night before, and as he slipped into it, he looked over and realized Will’s pickup was gone. He didn’t see it parked anywhere.

The back door stood open, but the kitchen was empty. There was no aroma of coffee and no sausage sizzling. Not a sound, either.

His mind reeled with horror stories of people being killed in their beds. But what had happened was that Lonnie had lucked out.

When he found the old man still in bed and snoring, Lonnie right then took off his boots and tiptoed up the stairs. Ruby Dee’s bedroom door was closed, and Will’s bed was plumb empty. It hadn’t ever been slept in, by the look of it.

Lonnie paused and looked once more at Ruby Dee’s dosed door. But then he remembered that Will’s pickup was not outside.

He tiptoed down the hall to his room and closed the door, stripped down to his underwear and stretched out. He wondered where Will had gone.

Then he was struck by a disturbing thought: maybe Ruby Dee wasn’t actually in her bedroom. Perhaps she was
off
with Will somewhere.

Of course that wasn’t likely, because neither of them was likely to leave the old man alone. Nevertheless, the thought niggled at him and caused him to get up, crack his door open, and peer across to Ruby Dee’s door. He didn’t figure he could peek in on her, without her door creaking and waking her up. Every door in this dang house creaked with the age of Moses.

There was nothing he could do but wait. Leaving his door open, he went back to bed. He dozed lightly, until Ruby Dee came out of her room. Then he fell asleep.

He awoke an hour later to the aromas of coffee and sizzling meat and sun-warmed walls. Quickly he showered and went downstairs. The old man was in the bathroom, with the shower running, and Ruby Dee was at the kitchen sink, still in her pink bathrobe and barefooted. There was no sign of Will.

“Good mornin’, beautiful.” Lonnie dared to kiss her cheek but not to pat her behind.

She gave him a bit of a smile along with a mug of coffee, but the way her gaze passed over him made Lonnie wonder if she knew about last night. Ruby Dee had a way of seeing right into a person, and she could have heard him come in.

He shook off the notion and filled his plate with fried turkey, baked apples and slices of pan-toasted bread.

“Where’s Will this mornin’?” he asked as sank into a chair.

“I don’t know.”

That brought his eyes up, but something kept him from asking anything further. The next instant Ruby Dee dropped the coffeepot, and it shattered all over the floor, and she went to crying. Right after that the old man came rolling into the room, so Lonnie didn’t get any good time alone with Ruby Dee.

Before the old man knew the facts, he jumped all over Lonnie for making Ruby Dee cry. Even when he was told the facts of it, he still considered Ruby Dee’s dropping the coffeepot all Lonnie’s fault.

Chapter 19

In the clear light of day, the wonderful, warm, fuzzy feeling of desire and the romantic fantasies that had been wrapped around Ruby Dee faded right away.

Goodness, she had gotten so carried away, kissing Will, it embarrassed her. She had so
revealed
herself.

And wasn’t she being silly to make a mountain out of the molehill of a few romantic minutes and a few hot kisses? She wasn’t a naive ninny; she had shared romantic moments and kisses before. People had their needs. Sometimes loneliness just welled up in a person.

Once, when she’d been twenty-one, or maybe just twenty, she had been on a Greyhound bus going from Muskogee to Oklahoma City. It was January, just after the Christmas holidays, which she had spent working at a nursing home, filling in for several people who’d wanted off to spend the holidays with their families. She didn’t have a family. A young man about her age sat next to her. All she could recall about him now was that he had been attractive and polite, though shabby. Pretty soon
they
had started talking, and then, when the bus took a few good slides on the icy road, they had started holding hands. The winter storm had set in before they left, and halfway to Oklahoma City, the bus had had to pull off and wait in the parking lot of a Love’s Country Store.

It had been sort of like a party, with everyone buying Coca-Colas and hotdogs and popcorn at the Love’s. She and the young man had kept holding hands, and a couple of times they kissed during the night. In the early hours of the morning, when they finally got to Oklahoma City, they said good-bye.

She had certainly been lonely last night, and she knew Will had, too.

But this time she wasn’t going somewhere on a bus, and the kisses she had shared with Will Starr were not the sort easily forgotten. She could never before remember experiencing what she had last night...such longing and urgency and quenching all wrapped up in one. No, she hadn’t. Not even with Beauford, whom she had loved.

She could love Will Starr, she thought. Maybe she already did. And maybe she had started loving him that first day, when she had come out of the bathroom and into the kitchen and seen him standing there, sort of like a wild mustang, all hemmed in in the kitchen and needing care.

She was thinking about that as she served breakfast to Hardy and Lonnie, and just then, when she looked from one to the other, she saw, clearly and concisely, in big capital letters in her mind: HARDY AND LONNIE and HELL TO PAY.

Well. There it was.

Never had she thought to be in this position. She loved them all, each in a special way. She did not want to see any one of them hurt, and she surely didn’t want to be the cause of their pain. She couldn’t, wouldn’t, come between these men. She told herself this over and over. She told herself to push the thought of Will giving her babies right out of her mind. She could not wish that Will cared for her. She prayed to God to take the longing for Will from her heart and to make her behave.

She worried a lot about how she would act when she saw Will. How he would act when he saw her. Few times in her life had Ruby Dee felt called upon to hide her emotions. Generally she considered hiding emotions unhealthy and dishonest, and besides, her feelings just seemed to pop out of her.

But this time one of her strongest emotions was the sense to hide. She was considering going off for a day of shopping, perhaps all the way to Amarillo, or maybe back to OKC, where she could see if her cottage had been sold, when Will’s pickup came up the drive. She thought urgently that she could go to her room.

But she didn’t. She stood right there at the sink.

Behind her, at the table, Lonnie and Hardy sat with their coffee, watching
Outdoor Oklahoma
on the tiny television. The screen door creaked, and Will’s boots scraped on the porch. A rush of gladness touched her, and then Ruby Dee turned and looked right at him as he came in the door.

When her eyes met his, for just that instant, she felt like the ruby stone for which she was named, touched by the sun.

Grabbing a towel and wiping her hands, she said, “I saved you a plate.”

He tossed his hat on top of the refrigerator. “Thanks. I’ll just go wash up.”

Again their eyes
held, and then they looked away at the same instant.

She turned to the oven. Behind her, at the table, Hardy and Lonnie didn’t say anything more than, “Mornin’.” No one said a word about the scrapes on Will’s face or his torn shirt.

Will came back and sat at the table with Lonnie and Hardy and ate his breakfast. Lonnie asked where Will had been, and Will just said, “Campin’.”

He sat there and had his coffee. He didn’t say a word, not one word, but Ruby Dee could feel his eyes on her. Sometimes she looked at him.

Lonnie got tired, went into the living room and stretched out on the couch for a nap. Will kept sitting at the table, and so did Hardy, the entire time Ruby Dee finished cleaning the kitchen and making fresh ice tea. When there was absolutely nothing left to be done, Ruby Dee said she was going upstairs to lie down.

She needed to sort out her emotions. It was certainly wearing her out, trying to hide them.

* * * *

Late that afternoon, Will came in from feeding the stock and said, “Go get yourself ready, Ruby Dee. I’m takin’ everybody down to Cheyenne for a Mexican dinner.”

His lips said everyone, but his eyes said
her.

Ruby Dee went flying to her room to put on her black dress with the apricot flowers and apply Ripe Apricot lipstick. When she came downstairs, she heard Hardy complaining that he didn’t feel like going all the way down to Cheyenne. She paused, thinking that she just couldn’t leave him behind. He was perfectly capable of staying alone, but it seemed too cruel to go off to a wonderful supper without him.

“We’ll be glad to bring somethin’ back for you, Dad,” Will told him.

Hardy said, “Ain’t no good with grease all gone cold. I guess I’ll go.”

Lonnie met them down at the restaurant, because he wanted to drive his own truck. He thought he might stay down and visit friends afterward.

The restaurant was friendly and colorful, filled with the rich aroma of spicy meats. It was not too crowded. Lonnie and Will were both greeted by name. Lonnie maneuvered himself to sit beside Ruby Dee, and he looked pleased with himself. Will cast her a resigned grin. He sat across from her, and they put Hardy at the end, in his wheelchair. Hardy was plainly ill at ease in it, and after a few minutes he told Will to help him move to a regular chair—specifically Lonnie’s chair, beside Ruby Dee. Lonnie had to go around and sit next to Will.

Ruby Dee began to feel a little like the chicken pulley bone again. She saw Will’s eyes on her, repeatedly, and found her eyes drawn to him. She fluctuated between enjoyment and tenseness. In one of her favorite dresses and with her hair up in a ribbon, she felt bright as a shiny new penny. She wished very much to be alone with Will, yet she was very happy to be with all three men. The men, however, didn’t appear to be nearly as pleased to be together.

There they sat: Will, looking pleasant enough, played with the sweat beads on his bottle of Mexican beer; Lonnie, smiling at Ruby Dee, peeled the label off his; and Hardy, scowling, said his tasted like piss and for Will to go over and get him a Budweiser.

Just after Will returned with his father’s beer, a couple passed by from the rear of the restaurant.

“Well, good gravy, if it isn’t Hardy Starr!” The woman stopped beside him.

She was tall and buxom, with snow-white hair braided and twisted around her head. It had so many twists that it would be quite long when let down. She wore wonderful Indian jewelry—it dangled from her ears, neck and wrists. Her dress was a simple cotton shirtwaist, yet she wore it with style. She was a handsome woman, and her smile was bright and lively. She beamed at Hardy.

“I don’t think I’ve seen you in at least a year. I heard you had a stroke—but I knew you weren’t dead, because I read the obituaries every day...to make certain I’m still alive,” she said, laughing. “Will and Lonnie...I have not seen you-all in a decade, if it’s been a day. Well, I see you sometimes, Will, at the bank...but Lonnie, I haven’t seen you since my Rosa Sharon’s wedding, and you were kissin’ all the girls.”

“Hello, Miz Vinson. How are you?” Will said with a slow grin. Lonnie smiled at her and nodded.

It would have been hard to look at this lady and not smile; Ruby Dee just sat there grinning. Hardy, though, did not look at her.

“Fair to middlin’.” Her lively eyes fell on Ruby Dee, and they seemed to jump with curiosity. Will made the introductions. The woman’s name was Cora Jean Vinson, an old friend of the family.

Cora Jean said, “Nice to meet you, Ruby Dee. That sure is a pretty name.” Her intense gaze made Ruby Dee wonder if she had a smear of salsa on her face.

Then Cora Jean drew back, as if remembering her companion. “Oh, and this is Eugene Wheeler. He’s my restaurant companion. I love to eat in restaurants, but not alone, so Eugene is kind enough to take me.”

Mr. Wheeler was a small, shy man, who was far too skinny for his polyester sport coat and at least half a foot shorter than Cora Jean. He bobbed his head in a hello, then averted his eyes.