Ruth’s Journey

by Donald McCaig

Clumps of the worthless stuff cluttered the walk, the stairs, the gutters: it was everywhere. The river roared, smashing dirty spume against the docks. Wesley had never been still. The people circled quietly around were not as still as Wesley now. Where had Wesley’s motion gone? Solange crossed herself. Could Methodists go to Heaven? She’d never thought about that.

  “How?”

  “No one saw, missus.”

  A spectator spotted Solange and Nehemiah on the Walk, and the circle opened to accord the new widow a better view. Solange began shuddering and was grateful when, of its own accord, her shuddering stopped.

  “Does missus wish to . . . ?”

  These stairs, these docks; how many hundred times had she descended without once noticing how loudly, how jarringly the gulls screamed? When Solange let go the handrail, her hand ached.

  Men removed hats and, with murmur and rustle, stepped aside. Wesley’s poor head was turned unnaturally, and his hair had fallen over his eyes. His cheek lay in a pool of dark fluids.

  After a time, Nehemiah took her arm. What would Ruth think? And poor Pauline? And who was Widow Solange? Desperately, she gripped Nehemiah’s kindly arm.

  * * *

  Pierre’s new carriage delivered Solange, Pauline, and Ruth to the Methodist Chapel. Perhaps at Pierre’s direction, they passed down Abercorn Street, where the floppy crepe badge on Philippe Robil­lard’s front door mourned Osa’s stillborn baby. There’d been no Catholic funeral. Some said the baby had been buried by the Muscogee.

  Pierre had hired the coffin maker and Pierre handed out funeral favors before the service: black kid gloves for the ladies, dark handkerchiefs for gentlemen. The mourners were Pierre’s friends and businessmen Solange barely knew. In their pew, black-clad Philippe and Osa pressed against each other. The O’Haras stood in the back of the church.

  Solange’s mind flitted from the flowers on the altar to the preacher’s velvet-faced gown to the smell of beeswax candles. She could not imagine tomorrow. Wesley and Solange: their is had become was.

  At the graveside she gave Pauline a rose to lay atop her father’s coffin, and Ruth slipped something wrapped in blue cloth among the flowers. Solange dribbled sandy dirt onto the box.

  The sky was the color of Spanish moss.

  Back in Pierre’s carriage, the stink of newly tanned leather and neat’s-foot oil made Solange sick. She swallowed. The knotted black lace of her mourning dress stretched like anchor cables across her bulging belly.

  In Pierre’s home, men and women she knew and didn’t patted her lifeless hand and offered condolences. Why should she believe them? Their beloveds still lived! At least the O’Hara brothers didn’t offer to touch her. “It is sorry we are for your trouble, ma’am.”

  The drinkers drank, the hungry lined the buffet. Philippe was dumbstruck: his grief for his stillborn child superseded. Two other guests were in full mourning; others wore mourning bands, still other gentlemen had mourning badges in their lapels. Antonia Sevier embraced her. Hadn’t Antonia recently lost a sister? Those who’d come to mark her Wesley’s death were a headland toppling yard by yard, beloved by beloved, into the sea. The brandy Nehemiah gave her tasted like water.

  Ruth was feeding Pauline cake and protecting her from effusive adult condolences that left the child sobbing.

  Solange’s eyes leaked.

  What was she to do? What to do? She had always done. Something. She had always done something.

  Everything was blurred. Why couldn’t she see through the damn mist?

  She snatched Pierre Robillard’s arm. “Pierre, dear Pierre. You must help me. I must sell the business.”

  He patted her hand. “Yes, dear Solange.”

  “Soon I shall need money. With Wesley gone . . .”

  “Poor Wesley, my dear, dear friend.” Pierre sobbed. He extracted an oversize handkerchief from his sleeve and honked into it. So­lange flexed her very empty hand.

  “Pierre. You must help me sell Wesley’s business.”

  “Ah, dear. Oh, my dear . . .”

  Solange fought the urge to comfort him. Pierre was so helpless. Mr. Haversham offered his condolences. His wife stood at the door waiting to go. Wasn’t Mrs. Haversham wearing a mourning brooch? A favored cousin? Solange had heard something . . .

  Mr. Haversham’s face was gray, and his formerly corpulent cheeks hung from his cheekbones like a hound’s. His eyes were shot red, so bright red they must be painful.

  “So kind of you to come,” Solange said.

  When they’d gone, Solange asked Pierre, “Mrs. Haversham’s cousin?”

  “John Whitemore, yes. John was one of General Jackson’s volunteers. His war wounds . . .”

  “We are all mourners, everyone here . . .”

  Which thought refreshed Pierre’s tears.

  “Your dear Louisa, precious Clara. You must miss them so.”

  “Oh, I do! How I do!”

  “Pierre, I must sell our house. I’ll move into the Pink House.”

  “What?” He wiped his eyes.

  “I cannot afford two domiciles.”

  “Dear me. Dear me, Solange. But your Pink House isn’t finished!”

  “The plumbing isn’t, but I have lived all my life without it and can manage perfectly well.”

  “The bedrooms?”

  “Unfinished. But the roof is new, the exterior complete; doors and windows installed. Why, I even have a fine mahogany circular staircase. At any rate, part of it . . .”

  Whereupon they both wept for beloveds lost and sweet dreams come to naught.

  * * *

  Early next morning, Nehemiah arrived with wagons and O’Hara men to move Solange to the Pink House. She, Ruth, and Pauline rode with the first load, and Pauline ran through the big empty rooms, sorrow forgotten.

  O’Hara’s men set couches and sideboys in the withdrawing room. The unfinished withdrawing room would be Solange’s bedroom, and Ruth and Pauline would share the smaller room meant to be Wesley’s office.

  “Master Wesley, he be laughin’ now,” Ruth opined. “Seein’ Pauline and me in here!”

  “‘Laughing!’” Outraged. “Why, how do you mean?”

  “Oh, Master Wesley like things separate. He business stay at he business. Now we be snorin’ in Master Wesley business.” Ruth chuckled.

  “How do you know what Wesley thinks—thought?”

  Ruth went to a glass-front china cabinet being carried carelessly and answered, distracted, “Oh, I talks to him. Talks to Master Augustin too.” To O’Hara’s men she said, “Careful that! That glass!” Her eyes flashed. “They cares ’bout you, missus. Both you husbands lookin’ after you.”

  Solange felt a curious luminescence at the edges of her eyes and the stillness that presaged a fierce headache. She swallowed bile. More cheerfully than she felt, she said, “We will be happy here. After I sell our other home we’ll manage quite well.”

  Spell broken, with her customary cheerfulness Ruth replied, “Yes, missus. I sure you will. You has and you always will.” She wiggled a finger at the men. “Have a care with that. It ain’t yours and you ain’t got money to pay if you busts it.”

  * * *

  Solange’s familiar furniture was adrift in the much larger room, and her carpets were islands in seas of yellow pine floor. The thought “We’d have been happy here” popped into her mind, uninvited, and she blinked it away, ordering O’Hara’s men to move her four-poster (her bed not their bed) against a different wall.

  Ruth took Pauline for her nap.

  Somewhat later, Solange was sitting on that bed with thoughts chasing their tails when Ruth returned, upset.

  “What now?”

  “Missus. You got come the carriage house. Please come.”

  “But . . .”

  “Someb
ody gots talk to you. Waitin’ in the carriage house.”

  “Later, Ruth. I need to rest. Tell whoever it is to come back later.”

  “He can’t! He goin’!”

  Solange saw two shimmering Ruths side by side, separating and reblending. She feared she might throw up.

  “Very well. If it’s so desperately important. Fetch me a glass of water.”

  While Ruth did as bid, Solange went to the carriage house. Its empty doorframe pulsed. Its unwashed windows gleamed balefully.

  Jehu Glen was sharpening chisels at the empty workbench. Rasp, slick, rasp, slick, rasp, slick. He dripped oil onto the stone.

  “Why are you here? Hasn’t Mr. Jameson paid you?”

  Jehu jerked around suddenly, too suddenly, and whipped off his hat. “Sorry, missus, I didn’t hear you slippin’ up on me. These chisels Sheffield steel and gots be looked after.” He caressed a wooden haft.

  Solange felt like screaming. She licked dry lips. “You’re finished here.”

  “Yes, mistress. I comes back when you wants your staircase complete. Only lack a fortnight.”

  “Not now.”

  “Yes, missus, I knows. Staircase complete anytime. You say and I comes.”

  “Jehu, I am feeling unwell and you must go. Now.”

  “Mistress Evans, I can’t go till I put proposition to you. I been waitin’ this whole day.”

  “Your proposition . . . it . . . it will wait.”

  “No, mistress, it can’t no more. I done loaded my wagon, bought my mule, and I ready to go. I ready yesterday.”

  Solange felt coolness on the back of her hand. Ruth had brought water. She lifted the tumbler to her lips and swallowed.

  “I bought the lumber Mister Jameson ain’t need. Pay good money for walnut and cherry in Charleston.” Jehu shook his head at that astonishing fact. “Got Mister Jameson’s sale bill right here.”

  Solange saw writing on the paper he produced from his vest pocket. She recognized Mr. Jameson’s signature.

  “I sorry ’bout Master Evans. He were”—he searched for a word—“he were right kindly.”

  “Yes, he was.”

  Jehu set his hat on his head but snatched it off as if his hand had betrayed him.

  Ruth said, “Jehu . . .”

  “I want marry Miss Ruth.”

  Solange clamped her eyes shut but reopened them when she began to sway. “You wish to jump the broomstick. As Ruth is my servant and you are free colored, that presents difficulties we can resolve when you return to the city.”

  “I ain’t comin’ back.” Then, brightly, “Till Mister Jameson send for me. Mighty fine staircase, missus. Only lack a fortnight.”

  Solange handed Ruth the empty glass. “Later,” she said. “Come back later.”

  “We ain’t jumpin’ no broomstick, missus. Me and Ruth marryin’ in church. Stand up front of everybody. Till death us do part.”

  “That won’t be possible. Ruth is my . . . Ruth belongs to me.”

  His eyes were so hot, so determined! Jehu’s face blurred, and Solange heard his voice as if underwater. “I good with my hands.”

  Solange thought, stupidly: Oh. You’re good with your hands.

  “But I ain’t no kind of talker.”

  Solange thought: Indeed.

  He said, “I buys Ruth. I got money.”

  At her side Ruth whispered, “Go ahead, Jehu. Show Missus your money.”

  Ruth—her Ruth—was a shape, a black blurry shape. Solange needed a cool dark place. The Pink House windows didn’t have curtains. There were no dark rooms where she could lie down while Ruth laid a cold cloth on her forehead. “Tomorrow. I’ll consider this tomorrow.”

  “Missus Evans, all this rain bringin’ the rivers up and I got go. I goin’ with or without Ruth. Ruth say ready money welcome today.”

  The man untied a leather purse from his belt, laid it on the bench, and carefully counted ten-dollar gold eagles, eight stacks of five. He squatted to eyeball each identical stack, containing not one more or one less. “Might have give five hundred last year, but prices down and four hundred’s more’n fair. Just last evenin’, girl like Ruth—though not so fetchin’—brought three hundred at the Vendue House. Four hundred more’n fair.”

  Solange croaked, “Ruth?”

  Ruth squeezed her hand hard. “You been good to me, missus. I gonna miss you and Pauline. I wants go. I wants be Missus Jehu Glen.”

  Solange howled, “But who will take care of me?”

  Who You Pretends You Is, You Comes to Be

  AS SUNRISE GILDED the marsh grass, a lanky coffee-colored man and a very black woman departed Savannah on the old King’s Highway. She perched on a tool chest in a decrepit wagon beside odd lengths of cherry, walnut, and mahogany lumber. The man led the aged mule, who was much inclined to balk.

  Ruth marveled at spring flowers, tiny frogs peeping, big frogs croaking, and all those birds darting and swooping over cattails and oat grass. Ruth knew just how they felt because that’s how she felt!

  The King’s Highway wasn’t fit for a king; it was a narrow sand track with shelly intervals and planks or logs laid down where small streams crossed. Sometimes Jehu had to roll up his trouser legs and wade, dragging the hee-hawing mule.

  They moved onto the verge for other wagons, riders, and a coffle of twenty-two coloreds chained single file behind the slave speculator dozing in his saddle and brought up by the driver, a burly Negro whose bullwhip rested upon his shoulder. The coloreds didn’t see Ruth and Jehu or the marsh birds or the cattails. They saw the switching buttocks of the speculator’s horse or the back of the colored in front of them. Their feet swished in the sand and their chains clinked and somebody’s breathing was loud and raspy and somebody else was whimpering.

  When they passed they took the light with them, and Ruth didn’t look around for a while. She heard the thud of their mule’s hooves and the tiresome predictable squeak of an ungreased axle. The sky had turned gray, the marsh stretched to flat horizons, and those darting birds were killing and eating every creature they could. Ruth shivered and drew her shawl close.

  They continued along until dusk, when they stopped, shared a loaf of bread and a chunk of hard cheese. Jehu unhitched and hobbled their mule, and they bedded down under the wagon. Jehu was too tired to talk and Ruth too afraid. One misspoke word might permit anything. Anything! She wrapped herself around Jehu’s back, tucked her knees into his hollows, and slept.

  Next forenoon, the pilgrims arrived at the broad reach of Port Royal Sound. A distant dot eventually became a ferry under a yellowed triangular sail. The ferryman shouted instructions from his chair in the prow to two shirtless coloreds, whose ripped trousers snickered at modesty. The ferryman spat the stub of his cheroot into the water as the helmsman quit the rudder to dash forward and secure the craft to its floating dock.

  Swiftly, the captain stepped ashore demanding papers. “Caught me four runaways last year.” He ran his finger down Jehu’s certificate of emancipation. “Fifty-dollar reward for the full task hand, thirty for the house slave, twenty for her whelp. Course”—the man admitted gloomily—“I had to share with the slave catcher, but ’twere found money. Nobody wanted the old runaway, so he died on me. Slave want be prudential when he run off lest Master don’t want ’em no more. Wench, you ’mancipated too?”

  He studied Ruth’s bill of sale. “Huh. You a Master now? Master Jehu Glen?” The ferryman cackled. “This landin’s prime for catchin’ runaway niggers. Only place to cross Port Royal Sound in a hundred miles up or down ’less’n you swim like a fish.” Pleased with a familiar phrase, he repeated, “Like a fish!”

  Jehu’s face betrayed nothing, but his eyes never left the captain’s hands with the precious papers, which meant who he and Ruth were in this heartless world. Finally, the f
erryman rolled them carelessly and pushed them at Jehu, who refolded each to its original creases, laid one atop the other in his oilskin wallet, and returned that wallet to the inner pocket of his leather vest over his beating heart. He said, “Me and Missus needin’ cross, Master. What you fare?”

  He rubbed his jaw, considering. “Dime each. Two bits for your wagon and mule.”

  “Master, that’s half day’s wages.”

  The man grinned. “Like I told you. Hundred miles to the next crossing.”

  A Savannah-direction dust cloud became a redheaded drover with twenty black and tan Aryshire cattle.

  The captain greeted the drover familiarly. “Calm today, Tom,” he said. “Not like last time.”

  “Master . . .” Jehu said.

  “Back for you all soon as ol’ Tom’s acrost.” He chuckled. “Provided you got my forty-five cent.”

  “Oh, I gots money. Master, they’s plenty room . . .”

  The captain cackled. “Yeah. But these damn Aryshires are par-tic-ular.” He guffawed, but the redheaded drover seemed embarrassed.

  The cattle lowered their heads and objected to the slick plank footing, but the drover was everywhere with his lash and they were soon aboard.

  The sail was swivel-screeched around, and the younger colored flipped hawsers off the stanchions and trotted to the rudder, where both men waited until the current captured the craft before they grunted into the rudder, using it as a sweep to set course.

  Jehu perched on the wagon as the ferry beat back across the sound. When Ruth put a hand on his shoulder, Jehu said, “Not now.”

  They shared a heel of bread. They grazed the mule. They waited as the sun marched toward Savannah and dipped into the marshes. Clouds of mosquitoes came out of nowhere. Shrill marsh birds feasted.

  A buggy with a black-clad driver and woman appeared. Ruth guessed he was a preacher. The driver never spoke, and when the woman spoke she leaned in to whisper. Maybe, Ruth thought, he ain’t no preacher. Maybe theys runnin’ off! The notion cheered her. A shabbily dressed farmer appeared with two shoats on ropes. The farmer leaned against the preacher’s buggy, and the white men talked.