The Loves of Ruby Dee

by Curtiss Ann Matlock

  Ruby Dee caught sight of Georgia and a man she assumed was Frank Reeves making their way up into the stands. Georgia gave Ruby Dee that dead-and-buried look. Then she looked at Will, and Will saw her, too. Ruby Dee thought he was going to wave, but Georgia turned her head.

  And then along came Cora Jean Vinson, in a long, full denim dress with a big concho belt and flashing Indian jewelry. With a hearty hello to them all, she bent down and kissed Hardy on the cheek. He turned red, but he liked it, Ruby Dee could tell, no matter that he spoke gruffly. He was enjoying all the attention.

  Ruby Dee was very pleased that Cora Jean remembered her. Cora Jean was one of those people you couldn’t help but like. Once again, though, her close scrutiny made Ruby Dee wonder if there was a smudge on her face.

  With Cora Jean was a husky young man, her grandson, who was going to be a contestant in the calf roping. Will and Lonnie knew him, and immediately started talking about roping. In the space of a few minutes, a number of men joined them: young men, with low-crowned, wide-brimmed hats and wearing chaps and spurs or carrying ropes over their shoulders, and older men, with the tall-crown, curved-brimmed hats and work-worn faces.

  Talking low, the men moved off toward the cattle pens and chutes. Even Hardy rose to go. Will leaned down to tell Ruby Dee he’d be back. Lonnie kissed Crystal and sent her to the stands, while he followed his brother.

  “Time for men stuff,” Cora Jean said, sitting heavily in the chair Hardy had vacated. “They have to go over there and check out the buckin’ bulls and broncs and ropin’ stock. It’s sort of like how they go around and kick the tires of a car they might buy. Doesn’t have a bit of meaning, but they need to do it.” She was laughing and fanning herself.

  “Whew...I’ll sit here a bit with you, if you don’t mind. I just have to have a rest from those grandkids of mine. After awhile they wear me out.”

  “I’d enjoy your company,” Ruby Dee said. It occurred to her then that she was hungry to talk to another woman. She hadn’t chatted with a woman since she had come to the Starrs, over two months ago.

  Sally nosed Cora Jean’s knee for a pat, and the older woman stroked her head. “Goodness, when did Hardy get a dog...or is this one of the boys’? I’ve never known Hardy to have a dog.”

  “She’s mine. Her name is Sally.”

  “You have certainly trained her well. Look at her—she got her little pettin’ from me and then lay down. Most dogs just have to pester and jump up and slobber.”

  “I didn’t train her. I found her at a 7-Eleven, and she’s always been like that. She knows just what anyone tells her.”

  “Hum...I believe that. Animals understand a lot more than people think they do. I have cats myself, but I’ve always liked dogs.” Her gaze sharpened. “You and Hardy appear to be gettin’ on well.”

  “We are now. I had an awful time with him at first. He made up his mind he wanted to die, and just laid in that bed, waitin’. But I kept after him, and now he even likes me, even if he wouldn’t say it.”

  “No, he wouldn’t say it,” Cora Jean agreed, smiling ruefully. “Well, he’s lookin’ real good”—a mischievous grin twitched her lips—”so it must be true what they say.”

  “And what’s that?” Ruby Dee asked.

  “That you’ve pepped him up.

  “Is that how ‘they’ are puttin’ it?”

  “When they’re bein’ polite.” Cora Jean laughed. She had a wonderful laugh. Her gaze turned curious. “I heard that he had hurt his bad leg and was in a wheelchair. Seems like he’s come along out of that.”

  Ruby Dee nodded. “He hurt his ankle, but it never was anything serious.”

  “Oh, Hardy’s a tough one. He’s had to be, or else he’d have been crippled long before now. He hurt that bad leg when he wasn’t but fifteen—when he was ridin’ with my sister Jooney one time, and his horse fell on it. Jooney had to set it right there beside the river, and Hardy was so proud that he bit off the tip of his tongue rather than cry out.” She chuckled softly.

  Ruby Dee’s curiosity jumped sky-high. “He’s spoken of Jooney,” she said quickly. “You were her sister?”

  Cora Jean nodded thoughtfully. “Jooney was the eldest. They used to say she was the prettiest girl in the county.”

  “Hardy said Jooney was the one who did the doctoring around here when he was young."

  “She did.” Cora Jean turned her gaze toward the distant setting sun. “Jooney took care of everybody—she delivered babies, doctored sick and laid out the dead. I guess she delivered our mama’s last three babies, and I was one of them. She was only about thirteen when she did that. Real doctors were up in Woodward or down in Cheyenne, but either place was far and cost dearly, considering how poor we were.” Her eyes cut back to Ruby Dee. “She and Hardy were supposed to be married, but Jooney died.”

  “I thought maybe she was special to him. How did she die?”

  Cora Jean breathed deeply. “Law, it was a bad day when that happened. It was nearly sixty-five years ago, but I recall it—a person doesn’t forget watchin’ someone catch on fire.”

  “Jooney caught on fire? How?”

  There was commotion all around them, people riding by on horses, two little boys wrestling only a yard away, but all that faded as Ruby Dee listened to Cora Jean.

  “Daddy was gone, like he always was. Daddy wasn’t worth much, and Mama was dead a year. Hardy was out beside the barn, splittin’ wood. Him and Jooney had been sweethearts since they were small, and he was always lendin’ a hand. Jooney, she took care of all five of us. I was the fourth one, five years old then, and Lyle was still crawlin’.

  “That day Jooney was treatin’ our heads for cooties—sounds terrible, but kids get lice no matter how clean they are, and Jooney kept us clean. But in those days we didn’t have fancy preparations to get rid of the lice, like today. It could be a battle once you got them. We used kerosene to douse our heads with, and that’s what Jooney was doin’, when the next thing, her and Tommy, our middle brother, went up in flames. Too close to the lantern or somethin’, I never did know, really.

  “Well, Jooney went to beatin’ Tommy’s hair out, but her hands and arms were flaming. Everything happened so fast, it really was a blur. Jooney threw herself outside to keep the house from goin’ up. We were all screamin’, but I’ll never forget the sound of Jooney’ s scream.”

  “Oh, my God,” Ruby Dee whispered, feeling as if she couldn’t breathe.

  The story kept on flowing out of Cora Jean. “There is no worse sight than a burned-up person. Hardy came runnin’ and threw himself on Jooney, but it was too late. She was burned black in so many places. You know, though, she was still alive, and she said to him, ‘Help Peter take care of the rest.’”

  Cora Jean stopped speaking, and despite the sounds of talking and yelling and laughter all around her, a dead silence rang in Ruby Dee’s ears.

  Cora Jean pulled a tissue from her dress pocket and blew her nose. “I haven’t talked about it in a long time.”

  Ruby Dee wiped the tears from her cheeks with one of Miss Edna’s hankies and struggled to breathe. She just couldn’t seem to get her breath.

  “Oh, goodness, honey. I’m sorry to upset you... are you all right?” Cora Jean asked, putting a hand on Ruby Dee’s knee.

  “Yes..." Ruby Dee breathed deeply. “I could just see it so clearly.” Sally pressed up against her leg.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  Ruby Dee nodded. “I just cry a lot. And, well, I was burned once, a long time ago. I caught my nightgown on fire on the flame of an open gas heater. I only have a few scars, really hardly anything, considerin’. But I can imagine how it was for Jooney.” Her own memory threatened to engulf her, and Ruby Dee pushed it away, stroking Sally’s sleek head. More clearly, she asked, “Did Hardy help Peter take care of the rest of you?”

  “Yes, he did.” Cora Jean bobbed her head. “Oh, none of us had much out here—it was the dry years, you know. But Hardy was always lookin�
� in and makin’ certain we had food and firewood. When Peter wanted to go to Amarillo for a job, Hardy lent him the money.”

  Hesitantly, Ruby Dee asked, “From a few things Lonnie’s said, I take it Lila left Hardy and her sons for some other man.” She was prying, but she figured she should take advantage to learn all she could.

  “Oh, Lila! Hardy was silly to marry her in the first place...He was twice her age.” She snorted. “Hardy Starr never could feel for Lila what he’d felt for Jooney, and put that together with Lila being as shallow as the day is long, and it wasn’t ever gonna work. I never could for the life of me figure out why he took her leavin’ so hard. Lila wasn’t much. She was pretty but so puny.”

  “He must have loved her, if he took it hard.”

  She shrugged. “Maybe so, but I imagine it was more his pride that took the beating. Hardy is a man made of pride.”

  “Yes, he is,” Ruby Dee agreed.

  Music was coming out of the loudspeakers now, and the arena had filled with riders, all going around the outer edge in a circle, some slow, some fast. Cora Jean pointed to one of her grandsons, a tiny boy in a big red cowboy hat, riding a fat pinto pony. He bounced atop that pony like a little rubber ball.

  Cora Jean said Hardy had given her her first horse, a little bay pony, when she was about nine.

  “Oh, he got wild after Jooney died, chasin’ women and drinkin’, but he wasn’t a bad man. He just had a hair-trigger temper. That and his drinkin’ landed him in jail on more than one occasion. One time, and he was near thirty by then, he had to take off, when Buck Coley come after him with a shotgun for foolin’ with his wife. He wasn’t afraid of Buck, but he did have sense enough to know he might’ve ended up killin’ him. Hardy’s temper was that bad.”

  “He still drinks some,” Ruby Dee said, “and he sure has a temper. But he doesn’t seem to like women at all.” She had trouble imagining him running wild with women.

  “Well, that’s Lila’s doin’.” Cora Jean flattened her lips. “Lila’s leavin’ made him go to hatin’ just about everything and everyone, especially women. I think watchin’ Hardy and Lila caused Will not to trust people much at all, and Lonnie, he missed having a mama so much that he just hankers after all women. You know, he really takes after his daddy as he was at that age.”

  “Lonnie would be amazed at that statement, and I don’t imagine he would appreciate it, either. He doesn’t like to have anything at all to do with Hardy.” As soon as the words were out of her mouth, Ruby Dee wished she hadn’t said it. She felt she had betrayed a private family matter.

  “Hardy simply quit being a dad to Lonnie when Lila left. He let Will do it.”

  Ruby Dee thought she would change the direction of the conversation. “You said you taught Will in school. Did you have him when he was small?” She wondered what Will had been like as a boy.

  Cora Jean eyed her knowingly, and Ruby Dee felt a blush sweep her cheeks. “Yes,” Cora Jean said, “I was Will’s first-grade teacher and later his fifth-grade teacher, and then I had him again in high school, when I went to teaching history and government. Will wasn’t a rebel. He was one of the quiet ones, very respectful. Hardy made certain of that. But every once in awhile Will would up and do something outrageous—like the time he rode his horse through the school lunch room. In and out, and left us all wonderin’ if we had really seen it. I used to think that Will kept himself hemmed in, until he just had to break loose.”

  Ruby Dee agreed with that, but she kept it to herself. Hugged it to herself.

  The rodeo announcer’s voice interrupted the music from the loudspeaker and caused both Ruby Dee and Cora Jean to jump. “Lord’a Mercy, I wish they wouldn’t turn that thing so high,” Cora Jean said. Ruby Dee noticed then that sunlight was fading and the pole lamps surrounding the arena had come on.

  As the riders cleared the arena to make way for the grand entry, Cora Jean rose, saying she ought to get back to her brood. “And your menfolk are headin’ back this way.”

  Standing beside her, Ruby Dee saw Hardy and Will and Lonnie walking toward them. In that instant, seeing the three men together, she was struck by how alike they were. She had seen it before, of course, but now the similarity stood out so boldly. Perhaps that was the root of their animosity, as well as the attraction each held for her, for they were like younger and older mirrors of the same man.

  Cora Jean said, “I was partial to Hardy for a long time. He never saw me, though.”

  Her gaze was on Hardy, and her voice echoed with long-ago sadness. Then she was looking at Ruby Dee, a curious expression on her face. “Ruby Dee, I want to tell you somethin’.” She paused, her eyes searching Ruby Dee’s face. “I don’t have a picture of Jooney—the only one we had got lost back in the sixties, when a tornado blew Peter’s mobile home up to Kansas. But in my memory, you are a spittin’ image of her.”

  Looking into the older woman’s intense eyes, Ruby Dee felt a shiver go down her spine. “Really?”

  “Oh, yes. And I imagine why Hardy’s so taken with you, after all this time, is that he’s seen the same thing I have.”

  Cora Jean patted Ruby Dee’s arm and walked away.

  Chapter 24

  The Harney rodeo was a small, hometown event. Only a couple of the contestants, like Lonnie, had professional experience. Most were everyday or weekend cowboys riding for a dab of hometown glory, or young teens getting their first taste of the sport and the two minutes of glory.

  The second bareback bronc rider, a young man who was no bigger than a minute, got thrown, and landed right in front of Ruby Dee’s eyes with so hard a plop it could be clearly heard. Will’s hand tugging at her kept Ruby Dee from dashing out to see to the boy, even as the medics came running. As the ambulance bore him away, the announcer reported that the young man had a broken shoulder, which was Ruby Dee’s guess from where she stood.

  During the rodeo-queen coronation, the queen’s horse got spooked by waving flowers and took off running and bounced the girl in her silvery shirt into the dirt. The frantic horse almost trampled a man who tried to catch it. Lonnie rode out on his paint horse and caught the runaway animal, then waved to the cheering crowd. He was a real showman.

  Ruby Dee got so excited for Will in the steer wrestling that she ran right up to the fence, urging him on with her own energy. She was thrilled by the look on his face when he got up from twisting the big-horned steer to the ground. He was beaming, and people were cheering. He came in second out of twelve contestants. He acted modest, dusting himself off as he sauntered back over to his horse, but Ruby Dee could see the pride in that saunter. There was such a presence about Will Starr.

  Lonnie won his event—calf roping—by catching and tying a calf in ten seconds, which Hardy said was not Lonnie’s best time by far. He took his time letting the calf loose and catching his horse, so he was still out there when his time was called, and he lifted his hands in victory.

  Ruby Dee’s heart beat so proudly for both men, and pride was evident on Hardy’s face, too. Hardy was a different person that night—the man he truly was, Ruby Dee thought.

  The ladies’ barrel racing had Ruby Dee yelling, and by the time of the final event, bull riding, she was worn out from all the excitement. Considered the most dangerous event, bull riding was always saved for last. The huge bulls, mostly Brahmans, were impressive even in the chutes. One tried to jump clear over his chute while a rider was getting settled on top of him.

  Lonnie was helping the rider. He’d stayed over at the chutes after his event, but Will had come right back. With the opening of each bull’s chute, Ruby Dee would glimpse the man waving like a bundle of rags tied atop the giant animal, then she’d hold tight to Will’s hand, close her eyes and hide her face against his starched sleeve. Therefore she missed seeing one rider knocked into the fence by his bull and seeing another bull chase men back up into the chutes, Lonnie being one of them. She had to ask what had happened each time, and Hardy and Will teased that they wouldn’t tell her.<
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  Will did tell her, but it wasn’t the same as seeing the eye-popping happenings, and she wished she could keep her eyes open.

  And then it was over, the blaring loudspeaker silent and people’s voices coming in moderate tones, as they streamed away from the arena. It seemed a sense of excitement lingered, a sense of euphoria from having seen up close the line between life and death.

  Ruby Dee held tight to Will’s hand. His eyes met hers, and he smiled.

  All evening, even while he had been chatting with friends or watching the rodeo, his eyes had returned repeatedly to Ruby Dee, looking at her intently, sometimes with a question, sometimes with desire.

  He said to Hardy now, “I’ll be glad to take you home, Dad. You must be tired.”

  “Well, I’m not. I’ve been sittin’ for the better part of four hours. I’d like to go on over and hear the music.”

  Will frowned, but Ruby Dee tugged on his hand, and he smiled at her. As they walked toward the dance, his hand held hers tightly, and he rubbed his thumb over her fingers.

  The dance was held in a big metal building. The country band was at one end and at the other were refreshments and tables and chairs, which were given over to older people and a few children. Hardy sat down at a table at the edge of the dance area, and Sally skittered beneath it and lay down, her ears erect.

  Hardy told Will to go get him a beer before he took Ruby Dee off to dance. No sooner had Will left than Hardy stood, swept off his hat and said, “Give me this first dance, gal.” His eyes sparkled with mischief, and she couldn’t help but laugh.

  Leaving his cane propped against the table, he swept her into his arms and moved out onto the dance floor to a slow ballad.

  Ruby Dee had never been in Hardy’s arms before, but it did not seem strange at all. He held her lightly, very properly. He acted courtly. People smiled at them, and Ruby Dee felt like a princess.

  Why, he could dance! He was stiff on his bad leg, but he had a sense of grace as he waltzed her around. His face was that of an old man, but for the minutes that he moved with her to the music, his eyes were young again. For an instant, gazing into his eyes, she thought about what Cora Jean had told her—that she reminded him of Jooney.