Chapter Twenty-One
When they came close to the Bledsoe farm at the Winslow home, Adam stopped the car. “I appreciate what you’ve done, David. Thank you.”
David slumped on the front seat, napping. The motion of the car and Adam’s voice stirred him awake.
“Are you well?” Should he check him for a fever? David’s attack on Ruby staid his hand. Were his feelings reflecting a Christian attitude? Probably not, but Adam needed a bath. His need to be free of the grime of the chain gang seemed to be more of a priority now.
Still, his doctor’s training kicked in. David wiped at his face with a handkerchief. “I’ll be alright. If there is anything else I can do, please let me know. She deserves to be happy.”
With the bereft look on David’s face, something inside of him turned over. He couldn’t imagine what it must be like to want to love Ruby, and not be able to. Well, yes he could. “Yes. I’ll help her.”
David gave a faint smile and sat up, getting ready to exit the car. “I don’t see why not. You reflect everything possible for her in this life.”
“Ruby has aspirations. If she marries, she could compromise her goals. She wants to finish high school and become a nurse and help me in my practice.”
David nodded. “I could see her as a nurse. She’s very smart.”
The Bledsoe farm was down the road, and he wanted to run to it, and into Ruby’s arms, but all of a sudden, he was afraid. “She has so much potential, I don’t want to destroy it by asking her to give all of it up.”
“Then don’t ask her to,” David offered. “A wife is a helpmeet, as much as anything. Why can’t she still help you in your practice? Dr. Trywell, over in the next county has his wife help him. It’s all possible, Adam. You have to put it just like that. She’ll say yes.”
Despite his misgivings, Adam reached a hand out to David, and slowly, ever so slowly, David shook it. “Will you be all right?”
“I will. Please, take care of them.” David fixed him with a look. “Do what I can’t.”
Adam got out of David’s car and started the walk down the pathway when he heard, rather than saw David’s car pull off toward the Winslow house.
When he opened the gateway into the front yard of the Bledsoe farm, Delie’s little face was the first one to greet him. She rushed out onto the porch in her bare feet. “He’s back!” she cried and ran down the pathway to hug him. “I told them you would be back, no mean old chain gang could hold you back!”
Delie’s shouts caused everyone else to come running, everyone except Ruby. Mags came out holding Solomon and he squeezed the baby to his chest, who seemed happy to see him. Lona stood in the doorway smiling, but shouted out she was glad to see him. “Got breakfast going,” she said, “Come on in to eat.”
“Where’s Ruby?”
Everyone, all of Ruby’s sisters, her father, the Carvers and even the baby quieted on his question. His heart started to thud. Was he too late to see her? But Solomon was still here. She wouldn’t leave her son behind.
John spoke up, “She’s at her spot near the creek. She been there for some time now, trying to figure out how to get you out. She been feeling mighty bad she didn’t have no other way to get you off of the chain gang.”
“How did you do it?” Delie asked in her childish voice. “I bet you fought your way out?”
Adam handed the baby to John. “I’m going to go find her. I need to talk to her.”
John’s eyes met with Adam’s and tears stood in them. “Whatever you going to say to her, I agree and I approve.”
Adam looked squarely at him. “How did you know?”
“Anytime a man been on the gang, it makes him think about life. You want to have the same thing in your life, day in and day out. You don’t take as much risk. They won’t mess with you as much then.”
“I love her.”
“I knows,” John put Solomon’s young cheek next to his older one and they both bent to their eggs.
“Yeah, we know,” Delie said. “Go on and get her so there can be a wedding.”
Adam looked down at her and smiled. “It’s okay with you?”
Delie checked the red dirt on her feet. “Ruby’s great. I can’t wait around for you forever, so you might as well marry her. By the time I’m old enough, you might be too old anyway, so I’ll go for someone else.” Everyone laughed as he bent down and gave her a kiss on her forehead.
“And whomever he is, he’ll need to come through your big brother.”
Brother Carver raised his hand in benediction. “Go with God, good Doctor.”
Sister Jane nodded. “Go on to her. Claim it. She loves you.”
Adam nodded then went off through the woods in the direction of the pond, his heart pounding with fear, joy, excitement and trepidation all at once. How was it possible to feel so many things at once? Ruby made such a difference to him.
She had changed his life.
No luck without Adam. And no fish either. The fish were not biting this morning and since the sun was up, she should head home. However, something stopped her. She felt like a failure. She couldn’t go home to Solomon and see his grey eyes searching hers anymore, wondering where the man who held him as if he were precious and mattered had gone. For the first time in her life, she regretted all she had done.
Why did she have to be such a troublemaker? Big, fat, hot tears slid down her cheeks and landed on her overalls-covered lap. If she had been more of a lady, if she had not caused so much trouble, Mary Winslow might have been willing to help her. Goodness, Adam wouldn’t even be on the gang, and she wouldn’t have been attacked to begin with. It was all her fault.
Ruby swiped at her tears, trying to clear her field of vision. She resolved to finish her studies and become a nurse. She would seek out the chain gangs to help the men on them stay healthy and strong.
Maybe one day, she would run into Adam and let him know how sorry she was.
She pulled in her line. It looked like biscuits and gravy for breakfast.
Guilt ate at the edges of her conscience and the tears began again. She stood up to go back through the trees to go home. She didn’t even try to wipe them away.
Her sight was blurry, so when the visage of a tall man with light skin like hers, who was also dressed in tattered and rough denim overalls, appeared she couldn’t believe it. She wiped her tears away and, praise God, it was Adam, with his arms folded over his barely covered chest in a too-small shirt. “I see you didn’t catch anything. Did you ever catch anything before I came into town?”
Her mouth flew open and she gasped. She couldn’t help it. She rushed into his arms. “Oh, Adam, I mean, Doctor. How did you ever get out? No one gets off the chain gang.”
“I guess it’s pretty rare.” He leaned down to embrace her and whispered into her braids. “But I had to find a way to come back to you. You’re such a rare jewel, everyone in the camp was cheering me on.”
Despite what she wanted to do, she held him out from her, looking at his beautifully shaped pink lips and wanted to kiss them, but she had to ask the question through her tears, “Who was cheering you on in the camp?”
“Big Jim, he said his name was.”
Ruby’s eyes widened in recognition. “Big Jim Sawyer, from over Caton way? I know him.”
“You’ve done so much good for so many around here, Ruby. I had no right to judge you and to condemn your crusades. I’m sorry.”
She wrapped her arms around the long trunk of his body and a rush of warmth came over her when he reached down and embraced her in return. Tightly. “I’m the one who caused all of this trouble. If it hadn’t been for…the attack,” Ruby swallowed, “It wouldn’t have happened. You wouldn’t have felt like you had to protect me. So many things are my fault.”
He pulled back and took her chin into his big hand. Even his hand seemed better. His ha
nds were so important to so many. “You must never, ever feel as if you deserved to be attacked. The things you do, what you fight for, are good. You bring good in this very dark world. It’s what makes you virtuous. You don’t just take things in. You do something about it. And make you special.” He ran a hand over her cheek. “It’s one reason I love you.”
“I love you, too, Adam.”
He reached down and covered her lips with his, kissing her with his wonderful, delightful juicy pink lips. If she died right there on the spot, God would take her straight to heaven and she would be glad to tell him of this happiness she had found here on earth. Then, as he lifted his lips from hers, a little cloud edged in on her happiness. She had to speak her concern—even if this was the only chance she ever had in her life. “But, Adam. You said I was virtuous.”
He smiled at her. “You are.”
“Virtuous means, virginal. It means you kept yourself pure. I’m not pure.”
He ran a thumb over her lips and Ruby wanted to pucker them, just a little, to kiss the pad of his thumb, but she stopped herself short. “You have the wrong understanding, my precious jewel. You didn’t willingly give yourself to David. He did a great wrong doing what he did to you. He knows it.”
Ruby pulled back from him a little more. “How do you know?”
He pulled her into the crook of his arm, and tightened his hold on her, just a little. “He told me. He’s the one who freed me.”
Ruby made a face and stood apart from him even more. “So I owe him?”
“You owe him nothing. He did a very terrible thing and he knows it. He said he came to help me because it would help you. I didn’t want his help, but there was no other way off of the gang without him. And I wanted, no, I needed to come back to you, Ruby. I thought about you day and night while I was away. The thought of you kept me going, despite the hard, hard work.”
“Really?” She looked up at him.
“Yes. I thought even if I died, or lost my capacity to be a doctor, I wanted to let you know I love you. And.” Adam took her hand in his and kissed it. Please say you will be my wife. I want you to finish your education, and even keep going to school to be a nurse and help me in my practice. I would never take your education from you.”
The prickle of tears at her eyes startled her. She would have never thought, mere months ago, someone like this man could come and ask her for her hand in marriage. Her breaths came shallow, as if she had been running in a race. “Your wife?”
She didn’t quite know what to say. It was as if she had been presented with a great big sumptuous banquet and she didn’t know what to eat first.
Adam’s face was almost half sad, almost yearning. “That’s all you have to say, Ruby?”
She looked up at him. He was the answer to so many things. And she said she would go away with him, but she didn’t want to cause trouble in his life. He didn’t deserve trouble. “Let me think about it.”
“You mean thinking about it like with Dodge?” She couldn’t tell if, in his response if he were being funny or if he were angry.
“No, no. No. I mean it, I don’t want to bring you any more trouble.”
“Ruby, I just said—”
And she put a finger to his lips.
“I heard what you said. It’s wonderful. It’s too wonderful for someone like me.” Ruby stared ahead, almost dazed. “I have to get used to being treated in such a fine, fancy way.”
Adam wrapped his arm around her shoulders. “There’s nothing else I can say to convince you?”
“No. Not right now. Let’s go back to the house and get breakfast.”
“With no fish.”
She smiled at him and put her arm around his waist to show him she loved him. “No fish. Just us.”
“Everyone knows I came out here to ask you to marry me.”
Ruby fixed her chin in a defiant way. “They know me. They know I would give such a wonderful proposition the serious consideration you deserve.”
“Of course. Let’s go back to the house for some biscuits and gravy. Too bad I couldn’t get here sooner, or else we could have had some trout.” She gave him a light punch on the arm.
“We can always come back tomorrow.” Ruby guided him through the trees back to her family’s farm, wishing for his sake, she was more comfortable eating at the banquet he had laid out for her.
“And many more tomorrows,” Adam said, “just as long as we are together.”
“I’ll be just a second,” Ruby stood up on tiptoe and kissed his lips then went back through the woods the other way looking for the answer to help her be free of her sins.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Ruby couldn’t believe Adam’s proposal. It would mean really leaving her home. Winslow was a childish pipe dream. It was time to put it away. But how, how would she do without the piney woods? The creek? The quiet and loneliness of this beautiful land? She took a deep breath of air and inhaled it. She would never, ever forget this, even as she returned to it.
When she came to the wider part of the brook, closer to the beginnings of town, she startled to see David sitting there, picking apart pine needles and staring into the creek.
Her heart leaped in her throat. Despite the preeminence of her heart, she turned back and tiptoed away, quietly as if she were a deer.
“Ruby!”
Then, she became a deer as she ran.
No.
No more.
She had been caught before. Flashes of that day swept through her mind, coming home after delivering Jacob’s son, relishing in the joy of that family, David seeing her there on the road, offering her a ride on his horse. And she accepted, thinking she would get home faster, sooner before the dark.
Save me, please, save me.
“Ruby!”
Why didn’t she move faster? Run harder? Had the ravages of childhood compromised her body? No, something else made her feet leaden and weighty, fear.
God will protect me. He will keep me.
But once before, one time sixteen months ago, David and she were on the back of his fine horse, with Ruby using one hand to grab him around his waist, so she didn’t fall off and grabbing onto her birthing bag with the other.
Could David feel her heart thudding? Was her heart thudding as it did now? She had not felt alarmed when David said he was going a different way, because he wanted to show her something.
When they had been friends as children, they spent much of the day tearing through the woods in bare feet and patched-together clothing until her body betrayed her and became something strange and foreign to her.
And after a space of a few years of ignoring her, he noticed her again. Now he was a sophisticated college man coming home on break. She was his old childhood chum, from back when they would hang out together all day long and they didn’t know who was white and who was black.
Or at least she didn’t know.
She didn’t know, until David took her to the vast fields behind the cotton mill and bothered to tell her.
“What you got to show me? You know Mama, she going to worry.”
David helped her down off the horse, and his hands around her waist made her feel grown up. Like a young lady. “Just this way, over here.”
Why was there such grimness in his voice? What was wrong?
“I be glad to help you. But not for long, you know how Mama is, so I got to get back.”
But she wasn’t scared. Not for one minute. This was David, not his father. They used to spend whole afternoons talking about the difference.
David, not his Daddy.
Ruby, not her mother.
They were never going to be like their parents of the same gender.
Except, Ruby was. And she didn’t know it.
“Come here, Ruby.”
“What for?”
Ruby w
ent over to him in the field. “Hey, this is just where the old cisterns were. But your Daddy’s crop is doing fine. That’s good for you all.”
And she lost her voice, because David had taken down his pants and stood there, exposed to her in the warm March day.
At first she wanted to laugh. What was her old chum up to? She had seen him before. They used to go skinny dipping all the time in the creek, didn’t think anything about it. They had to look at each other, just to prove that Ruby was as white as he was. They were both white all over and that satisfied her to know that she was as she thought she was, white.
She lived in some type of sustained workplace, and would stay there until David graduated from school and would come and marry her and sweep her up and take her to live in the big white Winslow house.
That was to be her life. That was her dream.
Now, she was forced to wake up because David stood exposed in the warm March day. And it came to her, in a way she hadn’t understood before, that she was a Negro.
Everyone kept telling her.
And she hadn’t believed it until that moment.
And now, David asked her to do something, vile and terrible.
He might as well have slapped her. And she stood there. But then he did slap her and the sting of it resonated on her face. “Do it.”
Ruby backed away. “Are you okay?” She asked him. What was wrong with him?
He grabbed her wrist and began to twist it in his hand, hard enough to bring Ruby to her knees in the hard red dirt. “Do as I say.”
“I can’t do what you say. I can’t.”
“If you don’t, there’ll be worse.”
“Worse?” Ruby repeated as if she didn’t know what the word meant. Except she didn’t. What was worse than the filthy thing he wanted her to do to him? What had college done to him? This wasn’t her old childhood chum. He was different, acting different.
And he joined her, on his knees, her wrist still in his hand and faced her, angry at her as if she had done something to make him mad. What could she have done to make him upset? “Lift up your dress to me.”
A Virtuous Ruby Page 23