“Lucy, stop,” he commanded, trying to hike her tank top up from behind. “I want you to like this, but you have to stop fighting.”
There was too much pressure on her neck and Lucy knew she was about to pass out. She couldn’t breathe and the blood flow was being impeded. She couldn’t even swallow the way he had her neck angled and spit dripped from her mouth to the floor.
“Clyde,” she begged, voice raspy. “Get the hell off of me!”
Her hoarse voice had no impact on him. He continued to pull her tank top up from behind, reaching around again to touch the underside of her exposed breast. Just as Lucy began to slip into unconsciousness, a loud thumping echoed off of the kitchen walls.
Clyde instantly went limp.
Lucy was very nearly unconscious but she heard two more thumping sounds, like something hitting heavily against a hollow surface. An eternity of silence followed, or at least it seemed like an eternity. Lucy was trying to crawl away but she wasn’t doing a very good job. Then, someone rolled her onto her back.
“Ms. Lucy?” It was a woman’s anxious voice. “Oh, my God. Ms. Lucy, can you hear me?”
Lucy was struggling to breathe now that the pressure was off of her. She was only semi-coherent. “Help me,” she muttered. “Please… help me.”
“It’s okay, honey,” the woman said softly. “You’re going to be okay. He’s not going to hurt you again.”
“He… he tried to kill me.”
“I know, honey. I saw.”
Lucy didn’t say anything more after that. Blissful blackness closed in on her.
* * *
The crackle of police and fire radios were the next things Lucy was aware of.
Coming out of unconsciousness to the sound of soft chatter, Lucy flinched, a reflex reaction to the noise and light. Hands were on her, holding her steady.
“Easy,” a soft, deep voice whispered steadily. “Take it easy, sugar. You’re going to be okay.”
A man’s voice. The last thing Lucy remembered, she had been fighting for her life with a man, with Clyde, so she suddenly began kicking and swinging her arms. Many hands stilled her again, trying to keep her from moving around, and that deep voice was in her ear again.
“It’s okay,” Beau said gently but firmly. “Lucy, you’re okay now. Nothing is going to hurt you. Stop fighting, okay? There’s no need. I’m here.”
Coming through the cobwebs of unconsciousness, Lucy’s eyes opened to his anxious face looking down at her. It took her a moment to recognize him. Then, her first reaction was one of terror.
“Clyde!” she suddenly gasped, throwing her arms around his neck and nearly pulling him down on top of her. “He’s here! He tried to kill me!”
Beau was in an awkward position the way she had him. In her fear, she was nearly strangling him. “I know,” he said steadily, his big hands caressing her in a comforting gesture. “I promise, he won’t hurt you again, okay? I won’t let that happen. I’ve got him now and he’s not getting away, not ever again. Do you understand me?”
Lucy still held on to him with a death grip and Beau let her hang on to him for a moment longer before one of the EMTs pulled her arms off of him and laid her gently back on the floor of the kitchen. Another EMT put an oxygen mask over her face.
“Breathe deeply, ma’am,” he told her, looking her in the eye. “Just take a few deep breaths, okay? That’s right.”
A blood pressure cuff was on one arm and they were taking her vitals. Men were working all around her but Lucy’s eyes were on Beau as if there was no one else in the room.
“He came here,” she told him through the oxygen mask. “He came back. He tried to kill me. He hit me over the head with a pan and tried to suffocate me. He kept telling me that I was mean to him and that I need to let him show me… something. I don’t even know. I kept telling him to leave and he wouldn’t do it. He kept trying to knock me unconscious.”
Beau listened to her breathy statement. He was usually a pretty cool character, even in the worst of times, but listening to Lucy tell him what had happened with Clyde had his blood boiling.
“I was afraid he’d do something stupid like that,” he muttered, shaking his head. “He must have already been at the house when I called you.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because that was only a half-hour ago,” he pointed out. He looked around the kitchen. “It looks like you gave him a hell of a fight, though.”
Lucy was trying to think back to the struggle for her life. She was still groggy, but things were becoming clearer. “He kept trying to hit me with a pot,” she said. “He’d already hit me once with it and caught me off guard. But he kept trying to smack me with it. I tried to get away from him but he jumped on top of me and tried to suffocate me. I thought I was a goner for sure but… but someone pulled him off of me or something. Some woman saved me. She said something to me but I don’t even remember what it was.”
Beau was looking up, at someone behind Lucy. “Some woman saved you, all right,” he said quietly. “Ms. Ruby?”
Ruby Ransom suddenly appeared in Lucy’s line of sight. Beau motioned for the EMTs to move away and they did, leaving a space for Ruby to kneel beside Lucy. The woman’s expression was much different than it had been a couple of days before. There was great concern there… and great emotion.
“How are you feeling, honey?” she asked softly.
Lucy was stunned. “R… Ruby?” she finally said. “What on earth are you doing here?”
Ruby sighed softly, glancing at Beau hesitantly before she began speaking. “I came because I wanted to apologize,” she said quietly. “I’ve spent the past two days thinking about what you said to me and… and something told me to come here today. It was as if God told me to get in my car and come over here, because early this morning I had such a need to see you, I can’t even describe it. Something was pushing me over here, Miss Lucy. When I got here, I heard you screaming. I came in the back door and saw that man squirming on top of you, so I hit him over the head.”
Lucy was staring at the woman. “You did that?” she asked, astonished. “Oh, my God… it was you?”
Ruby nodded, looking rather sickened by the whole thing. “I took the lamp out there in the corridor,” she said. “It’s that old brass lamp on the floor over there. I hit him with it as hard as I could, three times. That boy isn’t going to walk away from what I did to him, but he was trying to kill you. I saw it.”
Lucy could hardly believe what she was hearing. “Is he dead?” she asked, looking at Beau. “Did she kill him?”
Beau shook his head. “He’s not dead,” he said. “But I would be willing to believe he is seriously injured. He hasn’t regained consciousness.”
Lucy’s attention moved back to Ruby. “You saved me,” she said sincerely. “He was absolutely trying to kill me. If you hadn’t come when you did, I probably wouldn’t be talking to you right now. It doesn’t seem like enough to say thank you, but thank you from the bottom of my heart.”
Ruby averted her eyes, maybe modestly, maybe because the entire situation still freaked her out. She wasn’t even sure. But she looked down the length of Lucy’s body as the woman lay upon the floor before coming to rest on her left hand. After a moment, she picked it up and squeezed it.
“After you left my home, it occurred to me that I did the same thing to you that your daddy did to me,” she said, her voice tight with emotion. “See, when I came to Glory five years ago, it was right after my mama had died. At least, she was the woman who raised me. She never told me I wasn’t one of her own children, although I should have guessed because my brothers and sisters were all so much darker than I was. I’m very light skinned for an African American, but I never thought much about it until my mama told me the truth. She told me that I had been born at Glory and that my kinfolk still lived there. And that’s when I came over to the house to see if I could talk to anyone. Well, your daddy chased me off and fast. He’s a white man from an old famil
y, so I naturally assumed it was because he was embarrassed over a black relation. But what you said to me two days ago… I haven’t been able to get it out of my mind. You said that a man was killed because of me and that a white doctor risked his life for me.”
Lucy squeezed the woman’s hand. “Dr. Latling,” she said softly. “The first Dr. Latling, I mean. If you want to know the whole story, I’ll be happy to tell you.”
Ruby nodded, looking at their two hands, bound together, holding each other. “I think I need to hear all of it,” she said. “I want to understand where I’ve come from. Even at my age, that’s important.”
Lucy was looking at their hands, too, because Ruby was. “See the color of your skin against mine?” she asked. “It’s the same color, Ruby. I don’t see a difference. Do you?”
“Not really.”
Lucy was still looking at their hands. “It reminds me of a poem that your father wrote for your mother. I have that poem, in fact. Your mother wanted you to have it. That poem talks about no blackness and no white. Maybe this is what he meant – our skin of the same color.”
Ruby smiled, a sad smile, but it seemed to Lucy that it was one also filled with hope. “I’d like to think that,” she said. “I’d like to hope that. But I grew up in rural Mississippi and I’ve seen prejudice. I’ve seen a lot of it. I suppose that’s why I was so willing to believe that about your daddy.”
Lucy shook her head, as much as she was able considering it was killing her to even move it.
“I can’t pretend to say that I understand where you’re coming from, because I don’t,” she said. “But I can promise you that I see that you have the same skin color as I do. And your mother was my Mamaw, who was a strong and amazing woman in her own right. If it took a hunch or a nudge from God to get you back over here, I’ll take it. I’m just so glad you came.”
Ruby just held her hand, squeezing it. When Lucy smiled at her, brightly, Ruby smiled back and giggled. It was a joyful moment and one that Lucy truly thought she’d never know. It might have taken a near-death experience for them to come to this point, but here they were, holding hands and smiling.
“Holy hell!”
Lucy heard the boom from the hallway, recognizing her dad’s voice in an instant. Beau was already on his feet, moving through the deputies and the EMTs, meeting Bill and Mary just as they charged in through the back door, panic-stricken.
Beau went straight to Bill, grasping the man by the arm as he looked at all of the activity with a wild-eyed expression.
“Mr. Bondurant,” Beau said calmly and steadily. “Lucy is going to be okay. I just want you to know that right off the bat. But there’s been a little incident and that’s why there are deputies and ambulances here.”
Bill looked as if his eyes were about to pop out of his head. “Incident?” he repeated. “What in the hell is going on?”
Beau hated to tell the man the truth. “Clyde was released on bail this morning,” he said. “It seems that he came back here to try to finish what he started with Lucy. Now, she’s banged up a bit, but she’s going to be fine. Luckily, Lucy had a guardian angel today.”
Bill wanted to see his daughter. “What guardian angel?” he demanded as he pushed past Beau and headed towards the kitchen. “And where in the hell is Clyde? I’m going to kill him!”
Beau was following, as was Mary. “Clyde is going to be in the hospital for a few days. He got it worse than Lucy did.”
“Good!” Bill boomed. “That son-of-a-bitch better stay in that hospital because when I get finished with him, he’s going to be a permanent resident!”
He was furious and terrified, entering the kitchen to see his daughter lying on the floor with EMTs around her. But there was also a woman kneeling next to her, thin and attractive, with close-cropped white hair. She was holding Lucy’s hand. Bill came right up to his daughter but something about the woman caught his eye.
He found himself looking at the woman more than he was looking at his daughter. There was something familiar about her….
“Hello, there,” the woman said. “Do you remember me?”
Bill was overcome with an odd sense of déjà vu. “I… I’m not sure,” he said. “I think we’ve met.”
“I’m Ruby Ransom.”
Bill’s eyes bugged for the second time in as many minutes. “Oh, my God…,” he hissed. “Now I remember!”
Ruby nodded. “Yes,” she said. “I was just coming to see ya’ll this morning and came up to the house just as your daughter was in a bit of trouble.”
“She saved me, Dad,” Lucy said, tears in her eyes now that her mother and father were there. “If she hadn’t whacked Clyde over the head, he would have killed me.”
Bill turned ashen. As if his strength suddenly left him, he fell to his knees by his daughter’s head, his gaze fixed on Ruby.
“Good Lord,” he finally said, struggling to regain his composure. “I can hardly believe it. Ms. Ransom, I can’t thank you enough for your help.”
Ruby smiled, looking back at Lucy. “It was just a favor returned,” she said. “Your daughter did me a favor a couple of days ago, so I owed her.”
Bill wasn’t following what Ruby meant since had no idea that Lucy had gone to see Ruby. He shook his head. “I don’t understand.”
The EMT was trying to put an I.V. line in Lucy’s arm but she lifted it anyway, reaching for her father, who took her hand tightly.
“I went to tell her how sorry you were for chasing her away those years ago,” she said. “I told her that you just didn’t understand who she was.”
Bill looked at Ruby, his eyes wide with sincerity. “No, I didn’t. I had no idea who you really were. I’m so sorry I was rude, Ms. Ransom. I hope you’ll forgive me.”
Ruby nodded. “I know that now,” she said. “I guess it was rather bold of me to just show up uninvited and expect ya’ll to embrace me.”
“Had I know who you really were, I would have. I’m just sorry my rush to judgement cost my mother a chance to meet you before she died. I am so, so sorry about that.”
Ruby could see the remorse in his eyes. “Maybe it just wasn’t meant to be,” she said. “Maybe it just wasn’t the right time. Who knows? I like to think God has a plan for everything and maybe right now, right here, is my plan. It was His plan for me to be here so that man couldn’t hurt your daughter. He drove me over here as sure as He was behind the wheel of my car.”
The EMT pulled Lucy’s arm away from Bill so he could insert the line and Bill put a hand on Lucy’s head. “I’ve never been one to believe in divine providence, but I have to admit, this did work out for a reason,” he said. “I’m… I’m just really glad you’re here. There’s so much to talk about.”
Lucy, lying on the ground looking up at Ruby and Bill, piped up. “Don’t do anything before I come back from the hospital,” she said. “I want to be part of this, too.”
Bill and Ruby chuckled. Even Beau, standing back behind Bill with Mary, laughed softly. “You mean you’re actually going to go to the hospital this time?” he asked.
Lucy made a face at him. “I hate hospitals,” she said. “But I think, in this case, I really should go. I admit it.”
When Lucy was finally loaded up into the ambulance, Beau took Bill, Mary, and Ruby with him in his police cruiser, following the ambulance to Pea Ridge Memorial Hospital and remaining with them the entire time as they waited for news of Lucy’s injuries.
As he sat with Lucy’s parents and her aunt in the waiting room, Beau couldn’t help but think that hanging with the Bondurants and Hembrees was the most natural thing in the world to him. After all, the Meades and the Hembrees had always been intertwined one way or another, but in this case, there was no evil attached to it.
Time had passed and prejudices were passing. Beau thought of the poem Lewis had written to Victory, a poem that wished for a day when there would be no black and no white. A poem like that could have a thousand different meanings to a thousand different peopl
e, but at that moment, Beau could see the meaning translated into peace for two families who very badly needed it.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
~ Where My Heart Is Free ~
Lucy had spent most of the day in the hospital getting checked out, finally coming home in the late afternoon. She had a concussion this time, her second good knock on the skull in just a few days, but there was no serious damage. The first thing she did upon returning home was to take Ruby up to Mamaw’s bedroom to show her Mamaw’s letter.
Nothing else in the world, at that moment, was as important as that, including her own battered state. Lucy wanted to make sure that Ruby knew how much she had been loved and the tragic circumstances surrounding her birth. That had been her promise to Mamaw. Therefore, this was the moment she’d been waiting for. With great anticipation, she handed Ruby the letter to read.
Ruby reacted the way everyone who had read Mamaw’s letter had reacted – by the end of the note, she was in a flood of tears, only this time, the tears were different. She was reading about herself as an infant, her conception and birth, revealed in Mamaw’s careful handwriting. Sitting on her mother’s bed as she read it, surrounded by her newfound family, it was both traumatic and heartbreaking.
But it was also empowering.
Empowering in the sense that Laveau Hembree didn’t triumph after all. The man who had breathed and bled evil hadn’t been able to keep mother and daughter apart in the end. Love stronger than his hate had bridged that gap. Maybe it was a little too late, considering Victory’s recent passing, but that didn’t matter much.
Ruby was home where she belonged.
Lewis’ poem seemed to affect Ruby even more. After reading it, she closed her eyes and held it against her chest as if clutching the man to her. Discovering the words of her father, in his own handwriting, had been a soul-transforming experience. She, too, saw the sensitive man trapped in a world of oppression, only allowed to free himself of that bond through his words.
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