Ruby River

by Lynn Pruett

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Okay? Okay?” Kyle sounded mad.

  “Thank you very much.” I said, just like a Dear Abby teenager.

  Out front, I wiped a table clean and thought, I don’t even know Kyle’s phone number if I want to cancel.

  I couldn’t get my mind off the prom even with Darryl’s hands running all over me in the garage behind the truck stop. I hadn’t been to County High for a year. My exit had been grand. Ninth grade was finally over—I’d passed everything, even algebra—and I was skipping toward the open door and the blue suntan sky above the tennis courts. In my joy I didn’t wait until I was outside before lighting up. Mr. Hitson, the principal, burst like a bull from the classroom at the end of the hall, his face as red as Mama’s tomato aspic. He stormed down on me and grabbed my wrist, like to broke it in two. The cigarette fell into his hand—what did he expect?—and ash burnt a hole in his black polyester suit sleeve.

  “Turn me loose,” I shouted, right up in his face. Not because I was brave but because I was scared.

  That’s when the cigarette burnt him and he rared back like he was going to hit me. If he had I could have sued and then not worked until I was maybe thirty years old. But he didn’t. He said, “Connie Bohannon, you are suspended.”

  I couldn’t help myself. I said, “Whoopee ding-dong. I’ll just take the whole summer off.”

  I walked out that door with my head up and I was fine, watching the group of instant admirers I had just got, and I was cool all the way to Jessamine’s car—and then I thought about Mama and what would happen to me next.

  But Jess and I were going to the lake for the afternoon so Mama was put on hold. Instead I recalled every step I took and the appreciative glances I got from kids who wouldn’t give me the time of day even though I had been in school with them all my life. They were the kids who lived in town. They acted like us kids from the county had lice and wore the stupidest clothes. It was the only time I ever saw Daniel Warner look away from Marylou Dearing for a second. Usually they were Velcroed together.

  As I passed him holding open the door to Marylou’s gold Camaro, he smiled a real-person smile. It said, Good going!

  I floated toward Jessamine’s Bug like I was riding the jet stream.

  Daniel Warner was not my type at all. He seemed more like a model for JC Penney than a real boy. He’s cute but I’m not into cute. And he wore khakis and colors boys aren’t supposed to wear. But I hated Marylou Dearing. Mr. Briggs, the bachelor high school teacher all the girls loved madly, said once, out loud, even though it was a private thought, “Marylou Dearing wears the nicest clothes.”

  I was so mad I told Mama and she got her tight-lips look on her face and I was real sorry then. I was afraid she’d go storming into school. But she said, “If Mr. Briggs makes another statement like that, you call him on it right out loud.”

  Mama has been fighting battles all her life, and as Troy Clyde says, she’s finally learned which ones she can win.

  After I got off work—it was a busy day, with busloads of tourists heading to or coming from Noccalula Falls—I looked at the calendar. The prom was only one week away. Kyle Childers was desperate for a date. Every other girl at school must have turned him down and he had finally got to the dropouts. I hadn’t thought about school much this year. Once I turned sixteen and started waitressing, I knew I wouldn’t go back. Being in the world with real people was too interesting. There are truckers who send me postcards from where they’ve been.

  Now I have postcards from every state, even some you never hear of, like Delaware and South Dakota. The truckers are mostly nice men who like to talk to a pretty girl. I am pretty. I take care of my looks even though I am in the prime time. I like to try on different makeups—you know, make Monday a peach day, Tuesday raspberry, that kind of thing. I have to do something when things get dull, which they can.

  Mama watches me like a hawk and she watches the truckers like they are about to commit a crime. I’ve learned how to be friendly but not suggestive: Mama’s word. I’ve learned that when they say they want to show me something in their truck, it’s not what they say it is. Lord, some of those men are so old, forty even, and they want to show me something. At their age. I can’t get over it.

  As I sat looking at my calendar, I got a good idea, a very good idea. I would go to the prom and everyone, even Mr. Hitson, would have to be polite. I would wear the most fantastic gown there ever was. I would go up and speak to Daniel Warner and Marylou Dearing and all those idiots and I would make them talk to me. Kyle, being a football player, wasn’t such a bad date after all. No. He would be the perfect prop.

  “What if I get pregnant?” I asked Darryl once.

  “I know someone who will take care of it.”

  That seemed too simple, but Mama didn’t tell me anything about the facts of life. I learned about love from Darryl.

  Mama’s talk went like this: “These are the pads you use when you need them. Do you have any questions?”

  “Is white the only color they come in?” I mean, why not a dark color?

  “Good heavens,” she’d said, and left the room, the big box on my pink bedspread.

  With only a week to prepare for the prom I was in bad straits. First of all, every beauty salon in Maridoches County had been booked for months. I called around and got an eight-thirty in Gadsden, 52 miles away.

  The dress was the most important thing. I had made such a grand exit from County High that I had to come back even better. I had to show all of them I was high class; I was somebody. Of course I could not afford $400 to buy the beautiful black sateen cigarette dress I wanted. And I didn’t want to buy one that was advertised for a hundred dollars in the newspaper’s bargain basket. If someone had worn it to last year’s prom, my stock would fall faster than a stone drunk from a bar stool.

  I was so nervous about the dress I kept mixing up food orders until Gert looked across her broad blue shoulder and said, “Is it your time of the month?” real loud so the whole kitchen could hear. She always shouted everything. “Scarlupt potatoes and hambuggars up!”

  I told her my problem, and much to my surprise she said, “Don’t worry, Connie honey. I sew real good. I was the one what made County High cheerleader uniforms before they got X-rated.”

  My dress turned out beautiful. It was made of emerald-green satin that shimmered every time I breathed. The bodice was shaped like a green heart, with a curve over each breast. Gert had sewed black lace between the cups and collar, a bit of modesty I could have done without until I saw how mysterious my skin looked beneath the dark roses. Jessamine lent me a pair of black high heels and she and I actually worked together one whole night without fighting, gluing paste emeralds from toe to heel. My stockings were black lace, expensive. It took half a day’s tips to buy one leg. I thought of that as I put them on, hoping I wouldn’t snag them on my sparkly fingernails.

  My hair was done up like a Gibson Girl’s, all butternut curls, and my face had turned out perfect. I’d practiced it a million times, but I’d never had the proper accompaniments before. I couldn’t stop staring at myself. Even Mama and Darla, for once, were struck dumb. I couldn’t believe the beautiful young woman was me, Connie Bohannon, in this one-of-a-kind dress.

  I imagined the other girls would look like Barbies in dress-up clothes, or guides for a gardenia tour, and I would be a woman. That was it. I looked like a woman.

  The doorbell rang and it was all I could do to keep from running to get it. I listened for the call to come down the stairs, and then I heard Darryl ask for me.

  My heart leaped about a mile in the air.

  “Why?” said Mother.

  “I brought her something for the prom.”

  I felt sweat begin under my armpits. Cigarettes?

  I could hear Mother’s foot tap the floor. I heard the steps squeak as she came up.

  “You have a visitor,” she said.

  “Oh, wow.” I primped.

  “It’s
not your date. It’s your married cousin.” Mama spoke evenly so I could not tell what she knew or what she thought she knew. I played dumb.

  “What is he doing here? Gee whiz.”

  “That’s what I want to know,” said Mama.

  “Okay, Mama. I’ve been letting him get away with not paying for his meals and he owes me. I told him I needed the money tonight.” My face flushed.

  “Oh, dear,” said Mama. “You’re beginning to glow under your arms.” She unsnapped my buttons, dabbed me with Kleenex, and rolled my armpits with Sure. “I’ll send him home.”

  “Okay.” I struggled to rebutton the bodice.

  Next thing I knew Darryl was stepping into my room.

  “What?” I said, crossing my arms, forgetting I was beautiful.

  “You’re—wow, you’re not Connie.”

  “Screw off.” I went to the window and looked at the truck stop, lit like a flying saucer in an empty field, and hoped one of the cars turning up the lane was Kyle’s.

  “No. You’re so gorgeous it scares me. I mean, some guy going out with you—”

  “Screw off, Darryl. I’m supposed to be gorgeous. I’m going to make them all bow down before me.” I beamed with the thought.

  “Yeah.” He fiddled for a cigarette in his pocket.

  “No smoking in here,” I said, even though I did it all the time.

  “For you.” He cupped his hand so I couldn’t see what was in it until he opened his palm.

  It was a small velvet-covered box, a ring box. “Darryl,” I whispered and looked at him, all hunky and tall and dark.

  He smiled, then shrugged like he didn’t care.

  Downstairs the front door opened and I could hear Mama introduce herself and ask Kyle how the air was, like she hadn’t had her head stuck out the window for the past half hour watching for him.

  “See you,” Darryl said.

  He clumped down the stairs and didn’t say a thing to Kyle but “Hey.” Didn’t bother to check him out, he was so quick out the door. I could tell. His engine roared before Mama called me down the steps.

  I yelled, “In a minute!” which I know I wasn’t supposed to do. Holler like I was at a ball game. So Darryl wanted my loyalty. I felt like I was already at the prom under the crystal ball. I swooped around the room, imagining Darryl, Darryl pressed close. I opened the ring box. Inside were three silver foil packets. Three! I crushed them.

  I went down the stairs in a blur. The flashbulb from Mama’s camera erased the rest of the false cheery scene, me and Kyle as a couple. I couldn’t see right until we sat down to dinner at Romeo’s Ristorante.

  Kyle squared his sloping shoulders against the chair like it was a big effort to hold up so much flesh. He would have looked better if he’d worn his football shoulder pads under the tux. As it was, I was on a date with a sack of sand. But he had nice eyes and one of those open chubby faces so common around here, the kind that gets jowly and growly around age thirty. He’d already taken the best picture of his life and I was in it, back home in Mama’s camera.

  All the prom couples went to Romeo’s because they let kids bring booze inside in paper bags. Kyle had pink Riunite for me. I ordered 7-Up and mixed the two whenever he went to the men’s room, which was a lot. He’d brought himself a six-pack and drank it all.

  On the table between us a candle burned in a glass covered with fishnet, which cast weird shapes all the way up his neck, reminding me of heat rash. I blew the candle out. In the dark, I covered my mouth to hide a yawn. Good Lord, boy, think of something to say.

  He banged his fork about twenty-five times on the table. “Why’d you quit school?”

  I stared at him. How could he not know about me telling Mr. Hitson off? He began to bang his fork again so I said, “Intro to Business One was typing and Business Two was more typing. I learn lots more about business working at the truck stop.” I tore my hard little roll in half and smeared the pat of real butter out to the edges, then left it sit on the bread plate. “I’m not going to talk about work anymore. You got to say something. This is prom night.”

  “I guess it would be easier if we were in love.” He sighed. At the next table, a couple I thought I recognized were buried in each other’s necks. They made Kyle and me seem even more like total strangers.

  As we ate I checked them out and it was Marylou and Daniel. Kyle accidentally kicked over his sack of empties, which rattled across the floor. I saw Marylou Dearing flinch. A can rolled under her enormous southern-belle skirt. She reminded me of dolls with crochet skirts propped up by a roll of toilet paper. Daniel Warner smiled at me and I smiled back. He was dressed as a Confederate soldier. Kyle was having a time chasing the empties around the floor. As he bent to pick them up I got a good look at his blue tux. It clashed with my dress. He was probably color-blind.

  Outside I made myself smile at Kyle and he grinned back. After all, next year I would be too old for the prom, or married, and I didn’t want to miss it.

  “I’m getting a new car,” Kyle said. He opened the door of his yellow Gran Torino and slid across the seat and unlocked my door. I got in and said, ”Nice.”

  “Now that I signed with the Tide, Mr. Walker is loaning me a convertible. Pick it up next week. A blue Trans Am.”

  “Mr. Walker’s the only Auburn fan in Maridoches. Why’s he lending you a car?”

  “Maybe he’s seen the light,” said Kyle, as he sped up the hill. Then he talked more about the convertible and all its features, which I couldn’t give two hoots about.

  Drowsy from the wine, I leaned against the car window as the headlights swept the road. Every star in the sky was shining on us. The night was so beautiful. I thought of the old ladies at the beauty parlor this morning and wondered why the word prom had made them froth at the mouth.

  I giggled, remembering one woman, wrinkled as a pachyderm, squawking over and over, “The prom is the first step to the altar,” as if she were a talking doll with a pull string.

  “What’s so funny?” Kyle asked.

  “Old ladies.”

  He sighed and kept driving and driving.

  “Are you lost?”

  “No,” he snapped. “I know the territory.”

  I slumped in the seat and almost said, Wake me when we get there, but I could tell he was annoyed. Finally the car stopped. I recognized the scenic-mountain view marker and broken railing of Pealiquor Ridge. Beyond the hood, the lights of the town seemed farther away than the stars. “What are we doing here?”

  “Prom goes on all night.” He looked at me like he wanted something, something I knew about. “You’re so beautiful.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “Can we go now? I can drive us straight there.”

  “It lasts ’till eleven. Then there’s the after-prom. We got plenty of time.” He pulled a bottle of Rebel Yell from under the seat and set it on the dash. I looked over the ridge and listened as he uncapped the bottle.

  “I want to go right now.”

  “You’re so beautiful.”

  His hand fell on my forearm. I stiffened. His fly was open and there, like the water tower outside of town, stood his dick, curved and gleaming in the moonlight.

  “That’s against the law,” I said.

  “Aw, truck-stop girl, you’re so beautiful.”

  He lunged and I was being squeezed, choked it felt like, mashed. He held me so tight I could not breathe. The air smelled too much like a locker room and I was drowning in it. He kept saying, “You’re so beautiful, truck-stop girl. You’re so beautiful.” The power in his arms shocked me. He was like a giant vise. I felt small, very small. There was so much fabric around my face.

  I heard ripping. “My dress!” I fought him, twisting, flailing, wriggling my legs. “I’ll take it off. Let me!” I screamed.

  I found the door handle and jerked it and the door opened and I fell out and the air seemed cool. Kyle flopped across the seat, looking down at the gravel. Sweat glistened behind his ears.

  My hands flew to
my head, my beautiful hair, which dangled in stiff clumps. Kyle raised up and watched, like a fish inside a tank. His eyes seemed large, his mouth hollow as a coal shaft.

  I breathed deeply and stood up. Slowly I lifted my elbows above my head and reached for the first button of the high neck. All the while I was thinking, This is not supposed to happen. What next? What can I do? I was shaking inside, like I might get sick, but afraid that if I did I’d lose everything. I had to say to my fingers, Grab the button, push it through the hole. Now the next one.

  Kyle moved. Toward me. I sprang against the door. I felt the jarring crack as his head went backwards. I leaned into the door and dug my shoes into the gravel and pushed and pushed until my sweat broke and turned cool. He wasn’t going to get out of that car for anything.

  I pressed against the door a long time. My legs cramped and my arms felt more tired than they do after a ten-hour shift. There was no sound from the car, no movement either. I peered into the shadows of the front seat and saw Kyle’s tux rise and fall as if he was asleep.

  I had started around the car when I felt a sharp tug on my dress. I yanked at the cloth, convinced Kyle had come to. But he hadn’t. My dress was snagged in the door. I pulled it out. A dark stain grew near the hem.

  I danced around and around but the wet fabric wouldn’t swing free. I twirled and spun, lost my shoes in the gravel. I ran, the dress slapping my legs, down the warm blacktop road until I was winded.

  Self-defense. I’d walk to town, which was a long way and might take all night, and call Sheriff Dodd, who wanted to get back together with Mama after their fiasco of a date. My ruined dress would tell everything, the blood and rips. Gert had worked so hard to make it perfect and I still owed Mama eighteen hours of overtime to pay for it. My stockings were run, my unpainted toenails sticking through the lace like the long toes of a rat.

  I wanted to kill Kyle. If we never showed up, everybody at County High would think we were screwing. Even without us doing it, they’d think I had screwed that big fat freak-show freak. I cried and cried and followed the center line through the dark woods.