She didn’t want to think about it at all; she just wanted to be away from Will and Lonnie and the confused feelings that churned inside her. By golly, her thoughts were too embarrassing to be allowed to do more than flit through her mind, and she wouldn’t have let them do that if she could have stopped them.
She went to Hardy, thinking: Lordy, Ruby Dee, get a hold of yourself.
Miss Edna’s voice came to her: “Straighten up!”
“Thank you, Miss Edna,” Ruby Dee whispered, breathing deeply, as calm returned.
Hardy Starr himself did wonders for taking Ruby Dee’s mind off its carnal bent. There he was—just lying in that bed, just as he had been when she left, staring out the window, all rumpled and with tobacco stains on his shirt. He looked so pitiful he probably would have made even Georgia Reeves cry.
Ruby Dee stopped in the doorway when she saw him. For a second she wanted to throw herself across his bed and wail, and at the same time she wanted to jerk him up by his shirt front and give him a good shaking.
“Mr. Starr, you are tryin’ me. You surely are,” she said, marching into the room. “I brought you some things to read.”
He looked at her, his pale eyes hard behind his glasses. “I never asked you to.”
“I know that. I was being kind. You have heard of it before, haven’t you—kindness? Here. I have today’s paper from Oklahoma City and the Western Horseman and the Louis L’Amour Western Magazine—it has lots of western stories in it—and the Farm and Ranch Trader.”
She had hoped especially to delight him with the last one, which had lots of pictures of items for sale.
“It doesn’t matter if you can read any of them, because I’ll read them to you, and you’re gonna learn.”
But he didn’t so much as glance at any of them. He said, “Did you happen to get me some Skoal?” Of course he didn’t think she had.
With great pleasure, Ruby Dee pulled the small tin from her dress pocket and waved it in his face. “Lonnie said you liked spearmint. Ha!”
Thankfully that got a reaction. He stared at her in surprise, with his mouth hanging open. Ruby Dee dumped the newspaper and magazines in his lap and dropped the tin of chewing tobacco on top of them.
“You are gonna have to change that shirt, Mr. Starr.” She went to his closet, flipped through the few that hung there and chose a pale green plaid.
On a second thought, she took all the shirts out of his closet, tossed him the plaid one and left with the others over her arm, saying, “I’ll have your lunch in half an hour.”
With relief, she found Lonnie and Will gone, and she was left alone to load the washer, put the groceries away and ponder ways to make Hardy Starr want to be alive. Considering all that didn’t leave her time to think about the stirrings inside herself.
Chapter 14
By the following day, Hardy gave up completely on trying to die, although he wasn’t really trying to live, either. He just lay there because he didn’t know what else to do and didn’t feel like doing anything else.
He did feel like getting a drink. He felt it powerfully, but the opportunity to go into the kitchen and get the bottle of Jack Daniel’s in the cabinet beneath the sink never presented itself. His need for the whiskey was outweighed by his need to keep all of them thinking he couldn’t get around. It depressed the hell out of him.
And the gal kept pestering him. He thought that no man, even one who was reaching for Saint Peter, would have been allowed to die with that gal around.
She came popping into his room, her steamy brown eyes falling all over him, her smoky voice nagging him—change his shirt, eat his lunch, read, watch television. She read to him for thirty minutes at a time, and she pestered him to read for her, which he wouldn’t do.
Not being able to read very much at all embarrassed him, but he didn’t like to think about that, and he didn’t appreciate the gal making him think about it.
And she kept asking him questions. What did he think of her Mexican omelets?...What did he think of the President?... How did he like the drink she had made him in her juicer?
He told her he didn’t want to read and he didn’t want to watch television. He liked eggs fried, period; he’d never liked any of the Presidents; and he wasn’t gonna drink anything that was the color of snot.
He told her that unless she wanted to bring him a bottle of whiskey, to leave him the hell alone. He threw the magazines on the floor and turned off the television. She picked up the magazines and turned the television back on.
She moved around him, slinging her womanliness so that it seemed like it scattered all over the room and hovered even after she’d taken her little body sashaying out of there. Her movements stayed in his memory, and he realized she moved like Jooney, graceful and fluid.
It startled Hardy when he realized he was watching her move, mostly watching her breasts bobbing as she adjusted the roll underneath his ankle. The idea that he could be his age and looking at a woman’s breasts with even a whisper of lust confused him. Hardy had not looked at a woman with lust since Lila had walked out on him. He had taken lust and all other passions out to the trash barrel and burned them right along with his and Lila’s marriage certificate and a nightgown she had left behind.
He was thinking about all this, when he suddenly heard Woody Guthrie singing through the house: "...dust storm comin’... from Oklahoma City...to the Rio Grande...”
It took him a few minutes to realize it was Woody Guthrie singing. He hadn’t heard Woody Guthrie for...well, he couldn’t remember when he had last heard Woody Guthrie.
When it came down to it, Woody Guthrie’s voice wasn’t something Hardy figured anyone would miss. Woody’s voice was similar to the sound of a saw biting through wood and sending sawdust flying, at least in Hardy’s opinion.
But Woody’s music was real music, yes, sir, guitar to be understood as a guitar and harmonica to be understood as a harmonica. And words that could be understood, that told how it was to live when people had to work for a living.
The gal came swaying into his room. “I brought you some tomato juice, Mr. Starr. It’s red, not green."
“Where’d you get that... those songs of Guthrie’s?” he demanded. “What in the hell do you know about Woody Guthrie?” It did not seem right for her, young and fresh like she was, to be playing Woody Guthrie.
“Why, I imagine every Oklahoman knows somethin’ about Woody Guthrie,” she said. “A friend of mine, Miss Edna, told me all about him. She knew him.”
“Huh...probably half the old farts in the state say they knew Woody Guthrie.”
“Did you?” she asked, her eyes fully on him.
“Yeah, I did. Weren’t so many people around back then. Folks knew folks.”
She went swaying back out of the room and then she reappeared, bringing a black portable stereo. Without asking him, she left Woody Guthrie singing beside the bed.
Hardy lay there listening to the craggy voice sing about the land blowing away and people blowing with it. “Dust Pneumonia Blues.” “Dust Storm Disaster.” “Vigilante Man.” “Blowing Down This Road.” The sawdusty voice singing about desperate, dusty days to tunes picked on a plain old guitar and blown on a plain old harmonica.
Woody Guthrie sang about how it was for them, and he made a name and a living for himself doing it, too. He did it mostly out in California, while the rest of them were still blowing away back in Kansas and Oklahoma and Texas. But they had his songs to sing, and that helped.
It was hearing all those old songs from his virile youth, when he still had hopes and dreams, that started something cracking inside Hardy, the same as hard, dry ground yielded to the power of moist green sprouts.
“Mr. Starr, would you like me to give you a shave?”
The gal stood leaning against the doorjamb, a hand on one of her slim hips, her left leg forward just enough for her dress to outline her thighs.
Hardy said, “I reckon you won’t be satisfied until you get your hands on me.”
His voice was thick.
A grin swept her full lips and lit her entire face like a sunbeam. “I’ve been after you all the time,” she said in her smoky voice.
In that moment, she was Jooney. And he accepted it.
* * * *
When Will saw the old man stretched out in the old green Lazy-boy and Ruby Dee hovering over him, his heart went into his throat. He thought maybe the old man was dying. It did occur to him, though, to wonder about the recliner being in the old man’s room, crowded up against the bed. It belonged in the living room, in the corner.
Then Ruby Dee laughed. “Oh, Hardy Starr, who was the Queen of Sheba, anyway?”
She straightened and Will saw the razor—a straight razor, no less—in her hand. His heart jumped. He saw shaving cream coating the old man’s face.
Ruby Dee was shaving the old man.
The old man growled, “Ain’t you ever read your Bible, gal?”
Will took it all in, his gaze moving from the old man, back to the razor, and then to the bowl of water in which Ruby Dee rinsed the blade.
The two of them saw Will. The old man slowly looked away.
Ruby Dee said, “I’ll be a little late with dinner, ‘cause I’m givin’ your daddy a shave.”
Will nodded. “Okay.”
He watched her bend over the old man again. Her earrings dangled against her cheek, and the neckline of her dress hung low.
He turned and walked away. Halfway through the dining room, he stopped, hesitated, then went back, walking softly. He peered furtively around the door, not wanting them to see him. Ruby Dee was again bending over the old man, talking softly to him. Too softly for Will to hear.
Will went back to the kitchen.
“What’s Ruby Dee makin’ for lunch?” Lonnie asked. He had his head in the refrigerator. “She hasn’t started anything yet.” He came out of the refrigerator, bottle of Red Dog in his hand and a puzzled look on his face.
“I don’t know,” Will said and slipped in and got himself a beer.
“What’s she doin’?” Lonnie craned his neck, looking toward the back hall.
“Givin’ the old man a shave.” Will gave the bottle cap a hard twist. He threw it across the room into the sink, strode to his office and shut the door behind him.
* * * *
Three days after he’d put his foot through the rotten flooring, the swelling on Hardy’s Starr’s ankle was completely gone. By the fourth day, he was eating heartily, bathing without a fight and had given up his overalls in favor of jeans or slacks and a shirt. But by the end of the week, he still wasn’t on his feet. Ruby Dee figured he would get up when he got more tired of lying around than of annoying his sons, but Hardy thought of something better. On Saturday, he had Lonnie bring the wheelchair in from the shop.
Well, that didn’t do Will Starr any good at all. He already felt like his daddy’s injury was his fault, and when he came in at noon and saw his daddy sitting there in the kitchen in that chair, he demanded, “What in the hell is this?”
“It oughta make you happy. You been tryin’ to get me into this chair for a year.”
“I ain’t never tried to get you into that chair.” When Will Starr got mad, his tone and speech became very rustic.
“Then why’d you buy it... and nag me ‘bout usin’ it?”
“Aw, geez, Dad.” Will Starr got all red in the face, then pointed his finger at his daddy. “If your leg is all that bad, by God, you’re goin’ down to the doctor on Monday.” Then he turned around and stormed out.
Ruby Dee was drying a bowl as she peered out the window, watching him walk down the drive. She dried the bowl so hard, she polished it. Setting it aside with a clunk and not saying even an excuse me to Hardy or Lonnie, she went out the back door.
She knew Will went straight to that roan mustang any time he and his daddy got into it, which was at least once a day. He would get a cigarette from his pickup truck if he didn’t have one in his shirt pocket, and go down and smoke it in the shade of a dying cottonwood at the corner of the tall fence corral.
When she reached him, she didn’t bother to make small talk. It was too hot to strain herself. She did pet the colt, who stuck his nose over the fence at her. “There is not a thing wrong with your daddy’s legs,” she said. “He could walk if he wanted to.”
“What makes you so certain of that?” He took the cigarette out of his mouth and raked a hand through his hair.
“How do you know when this colt is feeling cooperative or is wantin’ to run off?” Ruby Dee rubbed the colt’s forehead. “You just know; you feel it. Well, I just know there is nothin’ wrong with your daddy’s leg. Oh, he has aches and pains in it, just like he has for years. But the reason he doesn’t walk is that he doesn’t want to.”
His steely eyes studied her for a long second, then doubt flickered across his face. “I’ve been thinkin’ the same thing. But he’s had that wheelchair for a year and refused to use it. He was too dang proud to use it. Now he suddenly gives in?” He shook his head and threw the cigarette butt in the dirt.
“You and your daddy are cut from the same cloth, Will Starr.” Exasperation rose up and took hold of her. “You told him you were leavin’ when he got on his feet again. He’s not gonna get on his feet, because he doesn’t want you to leave, but he sure doesn’t want to have to ask you to stay, either. I don’t think this is anything it takes an Einstein to figure out. Now, if you want to get your daddy out of that chair, you just go in there and tell him you are not leavin’.”
Will stared at her, his steely-blue eyes brilliant and his jaw tight as petrified stone. “I can’t do that.”
“You can’t or you won’t?”
He gazed off into the distance and said, “I guess it doesn’t make much difference which one it is.”
“No, I don’t suppose it does,” Ruby Dee said after a few seconds.
In the past few days she had come to learn that Will Starr was not one to spare himself. He wasn’t one to place blame on anyone besides himself, or spend a lot of time with “if-onlys.” He tried to see things as they were and go with them. She had come to admire that about him.
The colt got tired of being ignored and began to nibble the grass. Ruby Dee gazed off in the same direction as Will, seeing the white pipe fencing, the sunburned grass, grazing horses.
“You know, I never had a place to call home, not like you have here, a place where you grew up with your family and everything. I always wanted a place like this.”
“This is Dad’s place,” he said. “I want a place of my own."
Ruby Dee could understand it, a little.
He propped his boot on the bottom rail and leaned his forearms on the top one, intertwining his fingers. “Here I’m always standing in the old man’s shadow, having to do things his way or answer for it. Here I’m just a hired hand—a foreman, but a hired one all the same. Dad thinks I want to take it away from him, but I don’t.” He turned to Ruby Dee. “It isn’t about takin’ from him. It’s about what I need. I need my own place.”
Ruby Dee turned and leaned her back against the fence rails. She thought about how Will’s leaving would affect Hardy, but she didn’t speak of it. Instead she said, “What about this place? Hardy can’t run it on his own, even when he’s back on his feet again.”
“He can get a foreman to do the same things I do, and I’ll still look in,” Will said, looking down at his folded hands. “I don’t mean I won’t check in and be here to help out.”
It crossed Ruby Dee’s mind that neither of them had mentioned Lonnie. Lonnie kept himself unattached.
His brilliant gaze came up to her. “I never thought you’d be here a week. I sure appreciate you stickin’ it out.”
She chuckled. “I told you I would stay, Will Starr.” She liked to say his name.
“Yes...you did, Ruby Dee.”
He said her name hesitantly, like a boy stealing a feel. And a hint of a smile touched his lips and lit his eyes. His eyes searched hers, and sh
e felt the heat deep inside. She had the urge to put her hand on his cheek, to touch the lingering scab on the wound, to soothe him. And to know him, inch by inch.
It was there between them, a knowing and wanting, but neither of them spoke of it. What was there to say?
“It can’t be easy, bein’ a woman in our household. I want you to know I appreciate all you’ve done for the old man...and for me and Lonnie, too.” He shifted and shoved a hand into his jeans pocket, looking embarrassed.
“Well, I’d like to pretend it’s all been terribly hard,” she said. Turning, she fingered the peeling paint on the top rail. “But it hasn’t been so much. Oh, Hardy gave me a tussle, but he’s come around. And I’ll tell you, Will Starr, this job is easy compared to those when I have to be at a deathbed, helping the patient over and trying to keep the family from losin’ their minds to heartbreak, or bein’ called on to tend not only the sick but all the puny, selfish relatives.
“Here I get to have a lot of time to myself and to nap, while I’m gettin’ paid, and believe me—I need the rest and the money."
There was an awkward pause, then Ruby Dee said, “I’ve had a hard time over losin’ Miss Edna. She was my mama and my best friend in one. And goin’ through those last weeks with her was hard enough, without all the strain of the bills pilin’ up. Miss Edna had cancer off and on for six years, and it didn’t only eat her up, but it ate up what little savings she had, insurance, everything. Her medicine bills alone rivaled the national debt. Oh, yes, there was Medicare, only Medicare forgets that people have to eat, if they manage to stay alive. I make good money—as you know—but there just never seemed enough, and I didn’t work at all the last month, except for caring for Miss Edna. Medicare owes me for that.”
She looked at him then. “We all like to pretend that the consideration of money comes second, after the life of a person, but it doesn’t and it can’t, because you’ve got to have money to keep a roof over your head and food on the table, plain and simple. Right now, I’m so glad that it’s you havin’ to think of that and not me.”
The Loves of Ruby Dee Page 14