by Susan Wilson
In the last few days there has been a darkness to my companion’s spirit. At first I thought that the object with the papers in it, pungent with the scent of a dark damp place, was the cause of her darkness. But now I wonder. I think it has something to do with me.
* * *
Ruby knows that her fallback position on raising the money to purchase the Hitchhiker is to ask Sabine for a loan. She just wants that loan to be as small as possible. A far better thing to owe your daughter $500 bucks than $1,000. Even better, to owe nothing at all. Sabine has already offered, and Ruby declined as quickly as she could. She really doesn’t want Sabine to have proof that her mother is living as close to the financial vest as she is. Sabine surely has few memories of the belt tightening Ruby inflicted on her during her earliest childhood. The thrift store shopping, the soup kitchens. No, Beenie was a little child, a toddler. She couldn’t possibly remember those horrible years. Living not in a Westfalia, but in shelters and motels far less clean than the Dew Drop. Ruby had been a child herself, so young, that she often pretended that she was the babysitter, not the baby’s mother. Did Sabine hold some vestigial memory of eating stolen baby food? Ruby remembers one day, a hot Florida day. She’d taken them down south so they didn’t have to worry about staying warm. There were only a few bucks left from the bus trip down. There they were, sitting on a beach, watching a woman throw perfectly good bread crusts to gulls. The urge to fight off the birds and give those spent crusts to her child horrified Ruby. Instead, she left Sabine sitting on the beach, playing with a shell, digging in the soft sand. “I’ll read your palm, ma’am. I’ll tell your fortune.”
The woman had looked at Ruby, looked at the baby playing on the sand. The annoyance quickly changed into worry. “No, thank you. But here.” She pulled five dollars out of a pocket. “Get your baby a meal.” She pulled her hand back before Ruby could take the money, reached into her other pocket, pulled out a ten. “And yourself.”
Ruby shakes the thoughts off. The dog has her paws on Ruby’s lap, her spaniel eyes downcast, the tip of her white tail fluttering in the hope that Ruby will snap out of it. At least she hasn’t had to steal dog food. Things are better. By the time Sabine was seven, Ruby had figured it out.
“Okay, enough for today.” Ruby folds up the sandwich board and the table, the two chairs. All in all, it hasn’t been a bad day; she’s got another $200 in her purse. Another inch of territory toward her goal. Best part, she hasn’t heard from Mrs. Cross. Maybe, if she’s able to eke out another week before the son shows up, she can make the goal and win the war. As Ruby gets into the van, she notices a yellow envelope under her windshield wiper. A parking ticket.
Polly Schaeffer is waiting for Ruby in Bull’s yard. She’s out of uniform, but she has an official expression on her face. A displeased expression. Out of uniform, Polly favors tent dresses, what might even be called caftans if they were less floral, espadrilles on her feet. As Ruby backs into her spot on the worn grass, Bull comes out of the house bearing a plate of uncooked hamburgers. The Hitchhiker licks her lips. The scent of charcoal fragrances the air and, like the dog, Ruby feels the urge to lick her lips. Her lunch of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich is but a distant memory.
“Join us for a burger, Ruby?” Bull flourishes his spatula, gives Polly a fretful side glance.
Polly stands her ground. “I got a call from Mrs. Cross.”
“Yes,” Ruby says.
Bull takes it as yes to a burger. Polly takes it as yes, she knows she’s been avoiding the inevitable.
24
Ruby slips her phone out of her back pocket. She’s resisted the temptation to check it to the point she’s nearly forgotten to. Unlocks the Do Not Disturb. Three missed calls, two of them with Mrs. Cross’s number. One from Sabine.
“If I had answered her call, would Mrs. Cross have reached out to you?”
“She did say that she couldn’t reach you. She’s apparently not the sort who likes to have to keep trying. Twice was enough she said.”
“Have I screwed myself over by not answering?”
“Ruby, I don’t know. She only said that her son would be on his way to pick up the dog.”
“Mrs. Cross told me I could buy the dog.”
“She didn’t say that.”
“She didn’t tell you our deal?”
Polly looks out to the middle distance, not meeting Ruby’s eyes. “She mentioned something about how you would like to buy the dog, but not that it was a done deal. Ruby, she thinks you aren’t able to keep her, keep her properly.” Polly hears herself and has the good grace to look distressed. “I told her that you were the perfect person.”
“I am. I thought we had an agreement. She promised me.”
“Did she?” Polly grabs Ruby’s hands. “Look, whatever you think she promised you, she’s changed her mind. You see, Mrs. Cross is fixed on the dog having a secure home. Fenced in yard, et cetera.”
“How does she know that I’m not planning on being that person?” Ruby feels herself break out in a cold sweat. “We agreed that if I could come up with the money, I could buy the Hitchhiker.”
Polly has heard enough of Ruby’s story to know that the promise of staying put is completely out of character. “She knows that you’re, how did she put it, nomadic.”
“Who talked to her? She was perfectly at ease with the situation a few days ago.” Even as Ruby asks the question, the answer comes to her. “How did Cynthia get involved?”
“I don’t know. Word gets around, you know how it is.”
“I don’t think I do.” Ruby makes herself keep her hands away from Polly. “How did Cynthia find out?”
“She was on my case about unregistered dogs. Yours might have come up.”
“I still don’t see how she made the connection to Mrs. Cross from that.” And then Ruby does see. A nervous Polly, an overbearing Cynthia. A slip of the tongue.
Ruby looks at Bull. “No thanks on the burger. Hitch, come.”
The dog, blatantly begging in front of Bull, ignores Ruby.
Bull ignores the dog. “Ruby, don’t say no to a real good dinner. I’ve made coleslaw.”
How Bull imagines coleslaw can heal a broken heart, Ruby can’t fathom. He’s been good to her. She can’t be rude. “All right. Let me just go freshen up.” Meaning sit alone for a moment to collect herself. The perfidy. The outright meanness of that woman, Cynthia. Who never even apologized for breaking Ruby’s teapot. Who just walked away from the table without a word, never mind bending over to help gather the pieces. Well, Ruby is in pieces now.
The dog follows, although she gives Bull a sorrowful look. She jumps into the van with Ruby, recognizes what her job is at that moment and gets to work trying to jolly Ruby out of this black funk. She rolls over, exposes her belly, pokes at Ruby with a hind leg; grabs Ruby’s wrist gently between her teeth. Her antics only serve to make Ruby lose the battle with tears. “What am I ever going to do without you?”
When Sabine was in first grade, Ruby had settled for the winter in a mid-sized city. She made sure that Sabine was dressed neatly every day for school, that she was clean and that she never told the officials that their home was a squat. Nonetheless, someone figured out that the little girl was wearing the same two outfits and that she had drawn a picture of that squat, complete with the gang that hung around the stoop. Ruby had never had any trouble with those men; they had made a pet of Sabine and occasionally slipped Ruby a sawbuck for Sabine’s needs. Drug money. Maybe. Welcome when the telling of fortunes was running dry, yes. A city welfare officer showed up. Two cops flanking her although the gang members had quickly vanished into thin air. Ruby didn’t answer the door. That afternoon she and Sabine hit the road again. The next town was smaller, and Ruby got a job waitressing so that their next home was acceptable enough to the next set of officials who worried about the little girl with two dresses.
When threatened, leave.
“Let’s go.”
* * *
; This was all wrong. My feeling has always been that we stay.
* * *
The dog jumps down and scratches at the closed sliding door. Whimpers as if she’s suddenly possessed with the urge to relieve herself. She throws Ruby a look over her shoulder, whines and scratches, whines and scratches.
“Go sit.” Ruby points to the passenger seat. She climbs into the driver’s seat. Drops the keys in her haste to get going. They bounce and go under the seat. She can’t quite reach them without getting out of the van to retrieve them. Stretching, Ruby bangs her cheek against the steering wheel which does nothing to make her slow down or stop crying. The dog jumps into the space between the seats and puts her paws up on Ruby’s knees. For the first time, Ruby looks the dog in the eyes and gets her message loud and clear. “Stay!”
“You don’t understand.”
“I do.” And to prove it, the spaniel licks Ruby’s teary cheek. Licks the other one. “Only prey runs.”
A knock on the slider. Bull’s shaggy head appears in the window. “Ruby, your burger is ready. Don’t let it get cold.”
“Eat first,” says the dog. “Meat makes everything better.”
Ruby wipes the dog-licked tears with the back of her hand like a little kid. Sniffs. Reaches for a tissue. “All right. But we’re not done here.”
As Ruby heads toward the grill, Polly comes up and takes her arm. Ruby flinches slightly, confused into thinking Polly is there to arrest her. “Ruby, I’m sorry. We can work this out, I just know it.”
They sit in silence as Bull serves up his surprisingly good coleslaw. He doesn’t own a picnic table so the three of them balance their paper plates on their laps, which only encourages the Hitchhiker to beg. Ruby points the dog to a safe distance and tells her to stay. They take turns tossing tiny fragments of food to the dog in return for her continuing to “stay.” Who is training who? Ruby wonders. For his part, Boy has positioned himself behind Bull, yellow muzzle just inches from Bull’s shoulder. He doesn’t have to work for his treats. Bull fingers nearly half of his juicy burger into the dog’s mouth. If the Hitchhiker resents the difference, she isn’t saying.
Her own aura bleak, Ruby cannot distinguish those of her dining companions. Or maybe it’s that they are all sitting within the same unhappy atmosphere. Half dread, half disappointment. The light is fading, the crickets tuning up. A cicada grinds out the day’s last alarm about tomorrow’s heat. In a moment Ruby will get up and dump her empty plate, say good night to these two, who have been good to her while she’s been in Harmony Farms. Polly’s loose lips notwithstanding, she’s been a good friend. Once Bull’s lights go out, she’ll drive away. It’s what she’s always done. It will feel good to get back on the road, to hear the singing of the tires beneath her, to look for a new place to park her van. North, she thinks, it’s late enough in the summer that the big agricultural fairs are starting. She’ll hook up with the Benini Brothers. And, as soon as she can, she’ll send Mrs. Cross the money for the Hitchhiker. It feels good to have a plan. She has lingered far too long in this town.
“Thanks for dinner, Bull.” Ruby doesn’t have it in her to say more than that, doesn’t want to tip her hand. “I’m done in. Good night, Polly. And it’s okay. I’m not mad.”
Polly pushes herself out of the low lawn chair, drops her empty plate on the ground where Boy grabs it faster than anyone can tell him not to. She throws her arms around Ruby, whispers in her ear, “Don’t be foolish.”
“Never.”
And over Polly’s shoulder Ruby sees a car slow down on its way by, pause, reverse, then stop. It blocks the driveway completely.
“You should have told me he was coming now.”
“I lacked the courage.”
As a large man climbs out of the car, Ruby wonders, if she had listened to Sabine’s message, would she have been warned to make her escape hours ago? It wouldn’t be out of the question that Sabine might have divined the imminent danger.
“Am I in the right place? I’m looking for…”
“Ruby Heartwood.” Ruby sees the man taking in the scrubby yard, the loose dogs, the paper plate sticking out of one dog’s mouth while the other, her dog teases him for it. Surely he’s noticing the lack of fencing, the rotted front porch, and the Westfalia parked like a fugitive against the scraggly hedges, its sliding door open, revealing her caftan flung across the back of the bench seat, the chemical toilet without its discreet daytime cover. “And you are?”
“Dougie Cross.”
A grown man who calls himself Dougie is going to take away her dog?
At this point the Hitchhiker has given up wresting the paper plate from Boy’s mouth and taken notice of the newcomer. In her typical fashion, she darts toward him, back end wriggling, and Ruby has to wonder if the dog remembers this guy, if she has had history with him. She is greeting him with the same unabashed exuberance she does every stranger, but then, perhaps he is not a stranger but an old friend.
Dougie bends over and scoops the dog into his arms, accepts her kisses and laughs. “Well, well, another standoffish Cavalier, eh?”
“I have almost all the money,” Ruby says, knowing that “almost” is a relative term. She is nearly $400 short—$425 short if she pays that parking ticket.
“Money? Oh, hey, Mom isn’t cool with that idea. She’s checked references, and, well, sorry. No go.”
“References? The ones I gave her?” Polly, the vet, Carrie Farr. Which one of them would say she wasn’t the best person for this dog?
“An outside reference. People always say nice things about friends.”
“Cynthia Mann no doubt.”
“Maybe, I don’t know. Just that she pointed out your, um, transience, and Mom takes that sort of thing seriously. Stability is everything.”
“I’m not a bum, if that’s what was implied. I have a business. Like any traveling salesman.” As if that profession still existed.
“But you call the dog the Hitchhiker.”
“And your mother called her Roundelay and sold her off when she wasn’t perfect in the show ring.”
“Gave her. Dotty was an old friend. She’d had a couple of Mom’s retirees over the years.” Dougie’s voice has yet to match the pitch of Ruby’s, he’s keeping a cool head. Probably has removed dogs before, she thinks. Probably enjoys it.
“She promised me if I could come up with the money…” Ruby lets her sentence trail off, recognizing the futility and the way she now sounds like a petulant eight-year-old.
Ruby and Dougie are still standing beside his car, Polly and Bull both keeping their distance from the scene unfolding in the twilight of a hot August day, but not their attention. Dougie sets the dog down on the ground. The Hitchhiker immediately moves to Ruby’s side, sits against Ruby’s feet, her feathery tail tucked around her own, her ears flattened. Ruby knows that if she puts a hand on this dog’s head, she will be cast into her thoughts, and the idea of never getting to do that again brings a fresh assault of tears to Ruby’s eyes. She fights them back. “She’s happy, Doug.” She won’t use his diminutive, neither will she address him as Mister Cross. “Don’t break her heart.”
“Cavs are happy wherever they are.”
“Then why did she come to me? Out of all the people she might have chosen? She chose me, Doug. Me.” Ruby is aware that her own aura is sliding from dull to brilliant. She can’t see it, but she knows the feeling. She’s had it half a dozen times when she has had to fight for what she needed. Leaving the convent. Cursing Buck into a future of despair. Keeping her child when sense would have suggested another path. Some would say that fighting for ownership of a small dog doesn’t compare to the last example, but Ruby would not. “Partnerships are chosen, and this dog chose me. I will not turn my back on that honor.” Ruby scoops the dog up into her arms. Leans slightly toward Doug. “Please take the money and tell your mother, with all due respect, that we had a deal. That her so-called reference has a vendetta against me for reasons that defy reason.”
&
nbsp; Dougie takes a half step back.
“I just need…” Her righteous anger begins to deflate. “A couple more days.”
Ruby is suddenly aware of Bull standing beside her. “Hang on for a sec. Don’t go anywhere.” He dashes back to the house, or more accurately for Bull, lumbers like a bull elephant heading for a fight.
Polly is also at her side. “It’s true, Cynthia Mann is weirdly antagonistic against Ruby. She’s also very persuasive, so I’m not surprised she could turn Mrs. Cross around from what is a perfectly reasonable decision.”
Dougie puts up his hands. “It’s not my decision, ladies. It’s my mother’s.”
Ruby is about to say something that she knows will not advance her case when Bull huffs back into the group. “How much you short, Ruby?”
“Give or take four hundred.”
“Here. With my compliments.” Bull fishes five hundred-dollar bills out of his pocket. They are pristine. He doesn’t wait for her to protest, he takes her hand and puts the folded bills into her palm. “Take it, Ruby.”
Ruby won’t even pretend to object. “Give me a moment, if you will.” Before Dougie can say anything that will blow a hole through her hope, the Hitchhiker glued to her heels, Ruby heads to her van, pulls her purse out from under the passenger seat, and finds the envelope containing $1,550. All of the money in it is well used, mostly twenties, tens, a baker’s dozen of fives, an even number of ones. Some filthy, some crumpled, one marked with graffiti, every one of them precious. She lays the five pristine hundred-dollar bills behind the smaller denominations. The Hitchhiker is up in the van, her curiosity about Ruby’s every movement evident in her eyes, in the tilt of her head, the wriggle in her little black nose. Ruby leans in and whispers, “Pinky to paw promise, you’re mine and I’m yours.” If Doug rejects the money, she’ll lock herself and the dog in her van until he leaves.