Ruby & Roland

by Faith Sullivan

  “Oh, look,” Dora exclaimed, lifting a hand. Around us, fireflies flickered and danced, incandescent souls trapped between earth and heaven. “Did you ever catch them in a jar?” she asked.

  “Serena and I, we did that.”

  “Your mother.”

  “Sometimes she was like a little girl. We were growing up together. Did I ever tell you about the china tea set and the gazebo?” She shook her head. And so I told her, concluding, “I have the tea set but I’m still short a gazebo.”

  “It’s sad,” she said. “We both lost our mothers.”

  It had grown dark. I lit a second cigarette; the smoke seemed to keep the mosquitos away. We talked for another hour, then I asked, “What did you name your baby?”

  “Lily.”

  “Lily Allen. With a name like that, I bet she’d grow up to be someone famous.” Dora raised the hem of her apron and dabbed her eyes. “I didn’t mean to hurt you,” I said.

  “It’s all right. I like talking about her. Roland doesn’t. But I think if you talk about somebody, it means they really existed. She only lived a few months, so sometimes it seems like I dreamed her.”

  “She existed. I saw her cradle. Do you have a photograph?”

  “No. I wanted one after she died. They do that, you know, take pictures of people after they die, especially babies, so you have something to remember them by.”

  “But?”

  “Roland didn’t want to do that. He said it was morbid. It seemed like he hoped to forget the whole thing. I kind of understood, but I’d still have liked a picture.”

  “Did you bury her here on the farm?”

  “She’s in the Protestant cemetery down the road. Once in a while, I go there by myself. I want her to know I tried. And I loved her.”

  “You did your best.”

  “That’s what worries me. My best wasn’t good enough. She was small when she was born, and … and she did sort of go downhill. If I’d been smarter …” She shook her apron skirt in a gesture of frustration. “I’m stupid.”

  “You’re not stupid. You just don’t know very much. There’s a difference. But look at what you’ve learned this summer. And learning tends to lead to more learning.”

  She appeared heartened by this. “Is there any coffee left?” she wondered, rising.

  Later, we sat at the table drinking warmed-up coffee and eating cookies. Around ten-thirty we decided to play checkers, but then Red set up a howl inside the barn, throwing himself against the door.

  I snatched the lantern from the table and ran to the porch, grabbing the broken spade handle. As I hurtled out and down the steps, a hen in the center of the farmyard squawked and thrashed and fluttered in the brainless way hens do when upset. Why was it there? A gibbous moon shone enough light to reveal the henhouse door standing open.

  I waited, listening, but the only sounds were the chicken and, inside the barn, Red howling and banging. Raising the lantern and carrying the spade handle, I started toward the henhouse, glancing around as I went.

  Then, from the shadows beside the barn, a large black dog slunk out, crouching and, with infinite care, laying down one paw at a time on the hard, dry earth. It froze for an endless moment before streaking silent across the yard, leaping in an arc and pouncing on the confused chicken as the bird ran in circles. Clutching the fowl in its jaws, the dog gave it one violent shake, and the squawking ceased.

  Now I was racing, wielding the cudgel in a circle above my head. The dog dropped the chicken and stood facing me, teeth bared, guttural rumbling warning me not to come closer. But I had blood in my eye. Dropping the lantern, I held the stick with both hands, like a bat. Swinging it in front of me, I shot forward.

  The vaulting dog and I met with a deathly crack across the side of his head. He fell at my feet. I stood swaying. What had happened? I moved closer. He didn’t stir. His lips were still drawn back in a snarl. Then his body convulsed, his spine seizing in a spasm. I screamed.

  Dora came running. “Ruby! Ruby!” She stopped, staring at the dog, then: “Are you all right?” She held me. “You ran out so fast, I didn’t know what was happening. Are you all right?” she asked again.

  Weak and shaking, I let her lead me back to the house, gathering up the lantern on the way. “What have I done?” I asked. “What have I done?”

  Dora made me tea from the last in the tin. But when I’d sipped some of it, I laid my head on the table. Near midnight, we heard Henry’s automobile snorting down the road, letting Roland and Moses out at the gate. Dora ran to meet them.

  As they opened the screen door, she was telling them, “And it’s still out in the yard, the dead hen too. You should walk her home, Roland. She’s weary to death.”

  “What have I done, Roland?” I asked. “I killed a poor hungry thing. I lost my senses.”

  “Hush.” He helped me up, supporting me as I stumbled toward the door.

  “He was an orphan, Roland, and … and he was only doing what any hungry creature would do. An orphan.”

  A cloud bank covered the gibbous moon as Roland guided me across an inky Cemetery Road and up the long Schoonover drive.

  In the vast darkness around us, no dogs howled.

  I lay awake for hours, tossing. Somewhere in the night, I pleaded with Serena, “Tell me what happened. What have I done? Why do I feel this dark, terrible loss?”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Hot weather continued through threshing. As she’d promised, Emma fed the threshers in the Schoonover kitchen. Avoiding the heat of the day, at night Dora and I turned out cakes and pies to contribute. And digging up early season potatoes from the Allen garden, we tossed together great batches of German potato salad. Roland’s sweet corn had weathered the heat better than Henry’s, so we cleaned dozens of ears to boil and carry.

  Although Dora’s pies were slipshod looking and their crusts somewhat tough, they were toothsome and that was all the threshers demanded. And it did not go amiss that the baker was young and pretty. For those two weeks in the Schoonover kitchen, we women were coquettish and silly, even Emma. Dora flirted with each of the men, without favor, Roland included. Possibly to annoy “lover boy,” shy Dennis was lavish in his praise of Dora’s cookery.

  For the first time since I’d known her, Dora relaxed, moving with the tempo of feverish days, taking the lack of sleep in stride. Despite a continuing limp, she’d managed to abandon the cane.

  At night, after the visiting threshers had left and before each of us began preparing food for the next day, Emma, Dora, and I stole half an hour to sit on the Schoonover front porch on chairs dragged out from the kitchen. Fanning ourselves with paper fans from Redene’s Funeral Parlor—“Let Us Prepare Your Loved One for His Heavenly Welcome”—we spoke in muted voices. In the scruffy grass, crickets sang a homely song, and I recalled summer nights in childhood when crickets were friends who sang me to sleep. Half a mile down Cemetery Road, on Sioux Woman Lake, a loon launched its inconsolable cry. I paused at the sound.

  On these nights, hot and sultry, I smoked cigarettes. At first Emma made a small offended sound, but then she shrugged and said nothing. Occasionally, Dora took a drag. Several evenings, Emma poured a tot of something bold for each of us, a liquor she used in her mincemeat recipe, “like my ma.”

  The last night of threshers working at the Schoonovers’, Emma handed Dora and me each a shot to revive us, saying, “The both of you has lost a good five pounds, and you’d neither of you five to lose.” Lifting her glass, she said, “Here’s to hardworkin’ women.” I could not imagine life being pleasanter than this, unless I were alone with Roland—and in these febrile days, we had no opportunity to speak except in front of others.

  Climbing the stairs after midnight, I fell at once into a stupor of sleep. Strange to say, it wasn’t Roland but the dog who nightly visited my dreams, each time falling dead at my feet, each time howling even as he lay lifeless, the same howling I had heard those evenings as I stood at the window.

  What h
ad I done? I had killed a hungry creature, an orphan. People, threshers included, kept congratulating me, telling me the dog had been slaughtering chickens, domesticated rabbits, and ducks. I ought to get a reward, they said. I’d done everyone a favor.

  • • •

  The second week, when the threshers worked at the Allen farm, they continued eating their meals at the Schoonovers’. But Dora and I carried rest-break sandwiches and watermelon slices out to them in the field, along with cool water.

  And we went on, as before, working into the night. On one such late night, we sat at the table playing two-handed patience while we waited for pies to bake.

  Parceling out the deck of cards, three at a time, onto the pile in front of her, Dora said, “I never worked so hard. I never did much work at all—before I got married, anyway.”

  “Serena made me do a little work every day, when I was small,” I said. “But she made it seem like play.”

  “I was a house pet,” Dora explained, “like a cat or dog.” She thought about that for a moment. Then, laying a queen of diamonds on a king of spades, she confessed, “When Emma said that about us being hardworking women, it made me feel good. Nobody ever said anything like that to me before.”

  “You can be proud.”

  “Did you know, Ruby, that if Roland had been a Baptist instead of a Methodist, my folks wouldn’t have disowned me? They’re powerfully strict Baptists. If they knew I’d smoked part of your cigarette or tasted Emma’s liquor, I’d be double disowned.”

  Something about “double disowned” struck us as funny, and we laughed. “‘Double-disowned Dora,’” I said. “It has a ring to it. Like ‘Champagne Charlie.’ We could write a song.”

  Looking suddenly unsure, Dora asked, “Do you think I’ll go to hell for talking like this?”

  “Girls are supposed to talk like this. Besides, if you go to hell, we’ll pal around together.”

  • • •

  The final Saturday of threshing, we were a group of twenty for Dennis’s going-away-to-college party. Emma had invited the threshers and their wives. After finishing their work early, the visiting men headed home to wash up.

  From Reagan’s Saloon and Billiards in Harvester, Henry ordered a washtub of beer; Emma set out fried chicken, homemade rolls, a platter of sweet corn, a big bowl of sauerkraut, and a fancy dish of assorted pickles on her best cloth.

  As Dora and I crossed Cemetery Road at six-thirty, carrying two cakes each, I pointed out the rising moon. Gigantic, the biggest I had ever seen, and orange, it loomed over Harvester, its face gazing down with a pensive, melancholy expression.

  “Does it look sad to you?” I asked.

  Dora studied it. “No. I think it looks jolly, like good things are coming.”

  Emma came to meet us when she heard the screen door. “Roland?”

  “He’ll be over in a few minutes, and Moses when he’s finished milking.”

  “Did you see the harvest moon?” Emma asked.

  “Ruby thinks it looks sad,” Dora said. “I think it looks like good times. What do you think?”

  Emma glanced at the moon, then at each of us. “Both, maybe.”

  After folks had eaten, I told an exhausted Emma to visit while Dora and I washed dishes. Some guests had spilled onto the front porch, carrying beer with them, while a number of men, Henry and Roland among them, sat down at the cleared kitchen table to play a version of poker requiring arguing, laughing, and hammering of fists. As Roland scooped in his cards, he glanced up, catching my eye and casting me a hungry look.

  Three of the threshers’ wives carried coffee cups into the parlor and settled into chairs more comfortable than they could afford at home. Pulling crochet-work from their bags, they bent their heads together to confer over some private matter and at length, determining guilt or innocence, they nodded knowingly and continued their handiwork.

  Still later, I sat on the back steps with Dennis. In the henhouse close by, chickens in disturbed dreams clucked muffled displeasure.

  “Are you excited?” I asked him.

  “About what?”

  “About college, of course.”

  He shrugged. “I guess. I don’t expect I’ll be there long. We’ll be at war pretty soon. By Christmas, I think.”

  “Please don’t say that.”

  “It’ll happen. Wilson can’t keep us out much longer.”

  We sat silent. Would Roland have to go if there was war?

  “We’re going to miss you. Come see us when you have a vacation.”

  “You won’t miss me.”

  “Wrong. People can love each other without being romantic. I love Emma and Henry. And I love you.”

  “Not the way you love Roland.”

  “Oh, for pity’s sake …”

  “Sorry.”

  I reached into my apron pocket for cigarette makings. I rolled one for Dennis, another for myself. He lit them both.

  “You taught me how to smoke,”

  I reminded him. “I’m sorry I did.”

  “Oh?”

  “It’s not ladylike.”

  “Ah, well, you don’t think I’m a lady anyway.”

  “I never said that.”

  “Truth to tell, I’m not sure what a lady is.”

  The moon was high, no longer orange but so brilliant it cast shadows. The visiting horses nickered and moved restlessly, as if to say it was time to head home.

  Exhaling smoke, Dennis asked, “Would you write me once in a while, you know, a line or so? Emma said she would.”

  “Of course. I like to write letters. It gives me a chance to see how I feel about things.” I flicked ashes onto the brick walk. “I write something, I look at it, and I say, ‘I had no idea that’s what I thought.’”

  Some minutes later, I ground out my cigarette and rose, tossing the stub under the porch. Bending, I kissed Dennis on the lips, then went inside.

  The party was breaking up. Emma, Henry, and I trailed the guests to the back gate to see them off. Teddy appeared from somewhere, wagging his tail sociably. “Sorry I’m late,” he seemed to say.

  Last to leave were Dora, Roland, and Moses. When the good-nights were said, I watched them go down the drive, the still brilliant moon with its wide, pale aura picking out Dora’s wifely arm tight around Roland’s waist.

  I knew the pain that came upon me was jealousy, but it felt like hate. I would not be able to endure it for long.

  Beside me, Emma said, “You’ve done a good job.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Immediately following breakfast, Dennis’s father was at the back door. They were journeying on to Minneapolis in Mr. Cansler’s important-looking Ford sedan, loaded with boxes of whatever Dennis might need at the University of Minnesota, including the impressive new dictionary from Emma and Henry.

  Henry, Emma, Jake, and I followed Dennis out the door, Emma pressing on him a packet of chicken sandwiches and cookies, Henry grabbing him by the shoulder and shaking his hand in a fashion both manly and fatherly. Having declined to come inside, an impatient Mr. Cansler stood on the brick walk twisting his hat in his hands.

  Addressing Dennis’s father, who seemed not of a sentimental turn, Henry said, “This is a fine, bright, hardworking boy you have, a young man anyone would be proud to call son. We will miss him.”

  Mr. Cansler nodded, thrust his hat on his head, pivoted, and was out the gate before we had time to send Dennis off properly. In this country, a proper send-off required no less than ten minutes of “Have you forgotten anything?” and “Write when you’re settled” and “Sure I can’t send some pie with you?”

  All too quickly, Mr. Cansler was in the Model T, and Dennis was cranking the engine. Then they were clattering down the dusty drive and onto Cemetery Road, Emma and I waving them on their way.

  Turning back to the house, I told Emma, “I’m staying home from church today. Correspondence. Do you mind?”

  Something in my voice must have caught at her, for she hesitated, final
ly saying, “If you’re staying home, would you run Dora’s cake pans over to her?”

  The things I had to do this day, I had to do alone and without conversation. Were I to speak of them, especially with Emma, I might well lose my nerve. I could so easily lose my nerve.

  When Emma and Henry had left for church, I did indeed sit down at the kitchen table and dash off quick notes to Professor Cromwell and Mrs. Bullfinch. Too busy working with Dora, especially during the threshing weeks, I had been remiss. But now there were important requests I must make of my Beardsley friends, especially Professor Cromwell.

  The envelopes sealed, stamped, and addressed, I grabbed the cake pans from the table and hurried out. At the Allens’, the yard and house were quiet, the silence broken only by the crowing of a rooster, the clattering of the windmill, and, from the nearly dry creek in the pasture, the half-hearted maundering of one or two cows. Maybe the folks had all gone to church. For Dora, that would be a remarkable milestone.

  Opening the screen door, I stepped into the porch. “Anybody home?” I called out, moving to the kitchen. No response. Laying the pans on the table, I wheeled, leaving again, pausing in the yard to check the garden.

  It was dry, and vegetables remained to be harvested, so I began carrying pails of water. As I surveyed the tomatoes, arms crept around my waist.

  “They’re at church,” Roland whispered. “Moses talked Dora into going with him.”

  Shucking our clothes, hands darting, we lay down on the dry, dusty grass beneath the rock elm, and I rained kisses on every inch of Roland I could reach, storing up memories of lips, eyelids, neck, arms, and legs.

  After we had spent ourselves and lay in a swoon, I ran my hands over his shoulders and his clavicle, over the depression where clavicle met breastbone. I caressed his ribs and hip bones, the inside of his elbows, his belly, the trail of soft blond hairs leading to his groin. Finally, I kissed the calloused palms of his hands.

  I ran my finger along the little half-moon scar beside his navel, where he told me he’d fallen on a piece of glass as a boy. On the inside of his thigh was a birth stain the size of a nickel and the color of a brown egg. His first two toes were identical in length, unlike mine, which descended like stair steps.