by Sharon Sala
* * *
Lon Pittman was on patrol when the call came in. An armed arsonist in the alley behind Ruby Dye’s house?
What the hell?
He made a U-turn in the street, hit the lights and siren, and took off through town in a black-and-white blur.
Deputy Ralph was also on duty when he heard the dispatch. He hit his lights and siren, made a U-turn in front of the Blue Ivy Bar, and floored it.
The smoke from the burning grass in Ruby’s yard was barely rising about the rooftops when the fire truck shot out of the station with its siren sounding a warning.
People all over town were either running outside or to their windows to look. That many sirens at once signaled danger.
* * *
Ruby ran to the kitchen window.
“My backyard is on fire!” she cried, and ran out.
Peanut heard the sirens at the same time he heard Ruby shout. He was two steps behind her as she ran out the door and was gaining on her when he saw a man suddenly appear in the alley on the other side of her fence. And then Peanut saw the pistol in the man’s hand and leaped.
Ruby saw the man and, for a moment, thought she was having a bad dream. Gary Dye? Why was he here?
And then she was hit from behind in a flying tackle as Peanut grabbed her. At that point, if felt as if everything began happening in slow motion.
She heard a pop as she hit the ground. The impact knocked the breath out of her, and as she was struggling to breathe, she realized Peanut was on top of her and motionless.
Fear rolled through her in waves.
“Peanut! Peanut! Are you okay?”
Nothing.
“Peanut, what’s…”
Something wet rolled down the side of her cheek. She touched her face, saw the blood on her fingers, and realized the pop she’d heard had to have been a gunshot. She screamed, and screamed again, then couldn’t stop.
* * *
Gary Dye was in shock. He could already hear sirens and the smoke was just a wispy gray, barely visible in the air.
“How the hell?” he muttered, and swung his gun toward Ruby, only to see a man running right behind her. This wasn’t going as planned, but he shot anyway because he knew they’d both seen him. He fired a heartbeat after the man took her down in a flying tackle. When the bullet meant for Ruby hit the man instead, Gary silently cursed in frustration.
Damn Jarrod and damn Ruby.
If he could start over, he would have ignored his brother’s subtle message and let both of them rot. But it was too late to take all of it back, and now he couldn’t see anything because of the smoke blowing in his face. Anxious to be gone, he ran away from the smoke to the other end of the yard.
Because he was taking aim, Gary never saw the cop who came running through the gate from the street. He never saw the gun in the cop’s hand, and heard the shot only a second before a bullet went through his heart. He was dead before he hit the ground.
Lon Pittman saw him go down and could tell by the way he dropped that he was gone. He saw his deputy’s cruiser coming down the alley toward the shooter as he ran toward Ruby. He knew she was alive because she was screaming, but he wasn’t so sure about his friend.
He dropped down beside them and grabbed Ruby’s arm.
“Ruby! Ruby! We’re here! Help is here!” he said.
“Oh my God! Oh help him, please help him,” she sobbed.
Lon checked Peanut for a pulse. It was there.
He grabbed his radio.
“This is Chief Pittman! I need ambulances to 312 Porter Avenue, ASAP. I have multiple gunshot victims.”
Deputy Ralph came to a sliding halt in the alley beside the body and got out with his weapon drawn, then dropped to check for a pulse.
“He’s dead,” the deputy yelled, and then called dispatch to get more officers on the scene to work traffic.
The fire truck arrived, but when the firemen realized the blaze was small and there were injured people too close to use water and hoses, they grabbed fire extinguishers instead.
Ruby was covered in Peanut’s blood and sobbing when Lon began applying pressure to the wound on Peanut’s head, trying to stem the flow of blood.
“Ruby, are you wounded?”
“It should have been me!” she cried, and then began clawing at the grass, trying to pull herself out from under Peanut’s body.
“Ruby! Answer me! Are you wounded?”
“No, no, no,” she moaned.
Lon motioned to the firemen. “Hey, I need a couple of you guys to help me get Ruby free,” Lon said.
Two of them rolled Peanut over just enough for another fireman to pull Ruby out. She got to her knees, then rocked back on her heels and reached for Peanut.
“Is he dead? Please God, don’t let him be dead.”
“He has a pulse. An ambulance is on the way. Are you hurting anywhere?” Lon asked. “Your ribs, your chest? You both fell hard.”
“No! He saved me and took the shot meant for me. Oh my God, oh my God, this can’t be happening,” she moaned. She wanted to hold Peanut, but he was too hurt and she was too scared he would die in her arms.
The EMTs came running past neighbors who were rapidly gathering at the gate. They took over for the chief, assessed Peanut’s injury, and got him ready to transport.
Lon pulled Ruby to her feet and out of the way. “Can you tell me what happened? Did you know the shooter?”
“His name is Gary Dye. He’s Jarrod’s older brother,” she said, swaying on her feet.
Lon caught her, then put an arm around her shoulders to steady her. “I’m sorry, Ruby.”
“Is he dead?” she asked, staring across the blackened patch in her yard to the body on the other side of the fence.
“Yes.”
She shuddered, then realized the EMTs had Peanut on a gurney and were already moving him out of the yard toward the ambulance. “I want to go with him!”
“You can’t,” Lon said. “I’ll take you to the ER.”
She pulled away from him, running behind the gurney, past her neighbors who were calling her name, telling her they loved her, telling her they were praying for Peanut, telling her they would take care of things here.
She didn’t see them. She didn’t hear them. She didn’t care about anything but Peanut.
* * *
The ride in the police car was a nightmare.
Lon drove with the lights flashing and the siren screaming, echoing the scream inside Ruby’s head.
Word was spreading through Blessings faster than the fire Gary Dye had set. Half the people heard that Ruby and Peanut were dead. The other half heard one of them was dead and didn’t know which one. But everyone knew that Chief Pittman took out the shooter.
Mercy Pittman was in a panic until she knew that her husband was safe.
Betty Purejoy locked up Peanut’s office and went straight to the hospital.
Lovey drove to the ER to be with Ruby, praying the story she’d heard about Peanut’s death wasn’t true.
Vera and Vesta closed the Curl Up and Dye and headed to the ER, with Mabel Jean in her car right behind them.
The town was in an uproar as people headed to the hospital in shock. A prayer vigil began in the hospital parking lot, and the more people who arrived, the larger it grew.
Chapter 14
Lon’s car was still rolling to a stop when Ruby opened the door. He slammed on the brakes just as she jumped out and disappeared inside the ER.
“Good lord,” he muttered as he parked and followed her inside.
He heard her voice before he saw her. She was arguing, telling the nurses around her that she wasn’t hurt, and it wasn’t her blood.
“Where’s Peanut?” she cried, trying to push past them.
“They’re already working on him. He’s alive, and yo
u need to let them do their job,” a nurse said.
Lon put a hand on Ruby’s shoulder. “Come with me, Ruby. You can’t be with him right now.”
She looked at him then, and the stark terror in her eyes nearly broke him.
“But what if he doesn’t make it? I need him to hear my voice. I need him to follow it back to me.”
Lon sighed. “Wait here a second,” he replied, and walked away.
Ruby ignored what he’d said and followed, and when he found the right exam room, she pushed past him.
Peanut was motionless, oblivious to the meds they were shooting into his IV. He was already hooked to a heart monitor, and another machine was taking his blood pressure. He looked even taller than usual because his ankles and feet were hanging off the end of the exam table, and Ruby shuddered as she watched a tech positioning a portable X-ray machine over Peanut’s head wound.
Oh God, please, God, don’t let him die.
Lon pulled her back out of the way, but she didn’t acknowledge his presence. Every ounce of her energy was focused on the man she loved. When the doctor left to view the X-rays, Ruby wanted to go to Peanut’s bedside, but there were nurses all around his bed.
And then the doctor came back with the news.
“The bullet didn’t fully penetrate the skull, but he has a small brain bleed and swelling. We’ll monitor him to make sure it doesn’t get worse. For now, he’s going to critical care,” the doctor said, and when they began wheeling him out of the bay, Ruby panicked and began running beside the bed, her hand on his arm.
“I’m here, Peanut. I’m here. I love you.”
“No, ma’am, you can’t go any further,” someone said, and then they went through double doors and out of her line of sight.
Ruby didn’t move. Couldn’t move. And she couldn’t stop shaking.
“Wake me up. Wake me up,” she kept muttering. “This isn’t real. Wake me up.”
Then she heard Lovey’s voice behind her. “It’s me, honey. You need to come with me now.”
Ruby turned, unaware tears were rolling down her face.
“Oh, Lovey, why doesn’t God want me to be happy?”
Lovey grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her into her arms. “It’s not God doing this, baby. It’s the devil in those men. God’s got this. Peanut is going to wake up, and you two will live happy ever after.”
Ruby let the words wash over her, willing them to be true.
* * *
The parking lot was packed with people standing silently, praying and waiting for word of one of their beloved residents. Peanut Butterman had done so much for so many, and now the people who cared for him were helpless to do anything for him but pray. They slowly learned the same thing Ruby had been told. Brain bleed and swelling, concussion…in critical care. They stayed praying, waiting for word that he had awakened, and were there when night fell.
Ruby was upstairs in the waiting room outside critical care, waiting for news as well.
The twins and Mabel Jean left to get Ruby clean clothes, but when they saw all the food that had been left out at her house, they put it up and cleaned the kitchen before they got her clothes.
Back at the hospital, Lovey took what the girls had brought and stripped Ruby of the bloody clothes and helped her into clean ones.
Ruby knew it was happening, but she couldn’t focus enough to talk. She kept reliving the shooting, as if thinking of it enough would change the ending. Now she sat motionless in the waiting room, watching the door for someone to come jump-start her life.
* * *
It was midnight—the witching hour—when a nurse came into the waiting room.
Ruby wasn’t alone, but she was the only one awake. She stood abruptly, her hands fisted and motionless, as if she was going to have to fight her way to him.
“He’s waking up,” the nurse said. “You have five minutes.”
Lovey woke and grabbed Ruby’s arm. “I’m going with you. I won’t say a word, but you’re not going in there alone.”
Ruby nodded, then followed the nurse. They moved past the other patients, ever mindful that Peanut was not the only resident of Blessings in critical condition, and then they walked into his room.
The nurse moved toward his IV to check the drip.
Ruby was trembling.
He was so pale and so still, that for a moment she thought they’d made a mistake. He wasn’t waking up. If it hadn’t been for all the machines beeping his life signs, she wouldn’t have thought he was even breathing.
So she took a breath for him and moved forward. It wasn’t until she put a hand on his arm and felt a muscle twitch beneath her palm that she knew he was still in there.
His eyelids twitched.
She stifled a quick sob. “Peanut, sweetheart…I’m here.”
He took a deeper breath.
“Can you hear me? I love you, Peanut…so much.”
His fingers twitched.
She waited, watching his eyelashes fluttering, fluttering, and then his eyes opening. She saw confusion in his eyes, then his gaze was going from ceiling to floor to the nurse and then to her.
“Hey, you,” she said, and made herself smile.
His eyebrows knitted across his forehead. She thought it was from pain. She was wrong.
“Where?” he mumbled.
“You’re in the hospital, but you’re going to be okay.”
The confusion on his face was turning to panic as he stared at the fading bruises on her face. “Who are you?”
She froze.
“How do I know you? Do you know my name?”
Ruby moaned.
The room was beginning to spin when she fainted in Lovey’s arms.
* * *
Lovey sent a text to the chief, telling him Peanut had awakened without knowing who or where he was—and didn’t recognize Ruby—and then she sent the same text to the girls in Ruby’s shop. Within half an hour, the news had spread to the prayer vigil in the hospital parking lot. It was bittersweet, knowing Peanut was alive and going to recover, and yet unaware of who he was. The heartbreak for all of them was Ruby. In less than a week, she’d gone from terror to true joy to heartbreak.
One by one, they gathered up their things and started home—some walking, some driving, but all of them with the same guilty thought.
Thank God it wasn’t me.
* * *
Ruby came to in the waiting room, curled up on a sofa with a pillow beneath her head and a blanket covering her body. Lovey was gone, but Vesta was there with a cup of coffee in her hand, standing at the window overlooking the parking lot below.
For a moment, Ruby couldn’t think where she was, and then the dark, sick feeling returned as she remembered.
She pushed the blanket aside and sat up. “Why are you here?” she asked.
Vesta turned. “Because you are.”
Ruby’s lower lip trembled. “I don’t know how to live with this,” she said.
Vesta sat down beside her and took her hand.
“You don’t live with it, honey. You set it aside and let it live on its own. Given enough time, everything finds its own level. He’ll get better, and he’ll remember. You’ll see.”
Ruby’s eyes burned from crying. Her chest hurt—so much—like someone was standing on her heart. Earlier, Rhonda Bailey, one of the critical care nurses, had come out to tell her the doctor didn’t want her to visit Peanut for a while. They couldn’t tell her he would get better, and they couldn’t tell her he wouldn’t. Amnesia and head injuries were tricky. Right now, they didn’t want him agitated.
She’d been banished.
She took a deep shuddering breath. “I want to go home now.”
“I’ll take you,” Vesta said. “Do you want me to stay with you? I can.”
“No. I need
to be alone for a while. I need to figure this out. There’s something I’m missing here…something God needs me to learn.”
“But I don’t—”
“I’ll be fine,” Ruby said. “Twice I should have died and didn’t. I have a purpose here, and I’ll find it. My heart is broken, but it healed before and it will again. All that matters is that Peanut is alive. I won’t be selfish enough to ask for more.”
Vesta was crying now. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
Ruby closed her eyes, willing herself not to shed another tear. “Oh God, Vesta, so am I.”
Vesta wiped away tears and got up.
“Well then, come on, honey. I’m taking you home.”
* * *
Vesta drove without trying to strike up a conversation.
Ruby rode with her eyes closed, too wounded to look at Blessings because today had forever changed the way it made her feel. She’d been invaded here in the place where she had felt the safest. Not once, but twice. She needed to see the town in the light of day and hope it was still enough.
“We’re here,” Vesta said, as she slowed down and pulled up in Ruby’s drive. “Here’s your house key.”
“Thank you for the ride. I’ll see you in church Sunday. I need to pick up the donations from the clothing drive and get them to the Conroy family so Charlie and his little sister can enroll in school.”
Vesta was speechless. Ruby was already thinking of others. Maybe that would be her salvation. She couldn’t fix her world, but she could help others fix their own.
She waited until Ruby was inside the house and the door shut behind her. She continued to wait until she saw Ruby turn on the lights. After that, she drove away, too numb to cry.
* * *
Once again, Ruby’s home had become a place of great betrayal, and now she had to come to terms with it before she could feel safe again.
The last happy place she’d been with Peanut was in the kitchen, and so she went there, expecting ruined food to still be on the table and dirty dishes in the sink. Instead, it was as if the lunch she’d been making had never happened. She suspected friends again, coming to mop up the continuing mess of her life.
Ruby glanced at the clock. It was nearing four a.m. It would be daylight all too soon. Twenty-four hours since food had touched her lips, almost that long since Peanut last kissed her, never imagining that it might be their last kiss. And so being alone was her reality again.