Ruby (11 page)

“Give me a minute, baby.” She disappeared into the back as Chauncy strode into the store, opened the glass cooler and retrieved a Pepsi-Cola. He studied his sister, Verde May, as he opened the bottle against the counter.

“Look like the canary drooling after the cat.”

Verde answered without looking up, “Look like yo’ fly is open.”

Chauncy quickly zipped up and slumped out to the porch.

Miss P reappeared with his items. She punched them into her ancient register.

“That’ll be four ninety-five, Ephram.”

Ephram glanced at his wristwatch, minutes melting, disappearing. He edged around Verde May to get to the counter. It was awkward with the cake. She shifted in an angry huff. He reached into his pocket and realized he’d left his wallet sitting on the corner of his dresser.

“Er-uh. Forgive me Miss P. I gone and left my wallet on my dresser. I’ll get them things tomorrow.”

“I wouldn’t hear it. You pay me tomorrow after church. Look like we getting a new Church Mother.” She winked at Ephram and smiled.

Verde cut her eyes at Ephram, put her money on the counter. “I’m gone take me a Crush out the cooler.” At that she rolled Billy Dee and all the other Pretty Black Men under her arm, grabbed a soda and sauntered out of the store and down the street.

Miss P smiled and her voice dropped low, “Verde’s just mad cuz she wants her mama to win instead of yours. Supra Rankin ain’t got a chance. Celia as good as Church Mother already.”

“Thank you for saying so, Miss P.”

“No thanks needed, it’s us need to thank her for all she do round here with her Sanctified Saids, her ministering to them drunks down at Bloom’s and sprinkling holy water over pit fire ashes fools been burning in them woods. Don’t know what we’d do without her.” Then Miss P looked at Ephram and then at the cake resting in his right hand. “Where she sending you this late with one a’ her cakes?”

“Mo Perty’s wife sick again.”

“Lord that dyspepsia can be a burden.”

“Yes it can Miss P. Thank you kindly.”

He crossed the doorway onto the porch of men and took care to edge past them. The game over, they were mid-conversation.

Ephram had successfully made his way to the bottom stair when there was a loud creak. All eyes on the porch turned to him.

“Hey Ephram,” Gubber called out, “where you going with that cake?”

“Mo Perty’s wife is sick.”

Moss Renfolk spoke out, “Naw she ain’t. I seen her take the Red Bus into Newton this morning.”

Gubber laughed. “Then you going nowhere but Hades fo’ lying. Bring your black ass up here so I can get a nose full.”

Such was the holy adulation of Celia’s cakes that the whole of the porch waited, so Ephram reluctantly walked up a few steps and lifted the cloth.

“Damn that shit smell good!” Gubber let out a wolf whistle. “How ’bout a little taste,” he half teased, half asked.

Ephram quickly covered the cake.

Chauncy instigated, “Ephram, put up yo’ dukes. I believe Gubber ’bout to tackle you for that confection.” Then, “What she making fo’ my Uncle Junie’s repast day after tomorrow?”

“One angel cake, two sweet potato pies and some of her fig preserves.”

“That’s why you and me gone be friends fo’ life Ephram Jennings.”

Charlie grinned. “I’m damn happy when I take ill, cuz I know Celia Jennings soon come knocking.”

Gubber said wistfully, “Woman can cook like a mule can piss.”

Ephram eyed the open forest and began his escape.

Percy tensed with unspent gossip. “Speaking of piss, did y’all hear what that Bell gal done yesterday?” He had their attention. “Sat up in the middle of the road and peed all over herself. Like all that midnight hooping and hollerin’ wasn’t enough.”

Gubber sneered. “Somebody need to put her out her misery.”

Chauncy leaned back in his chair. “I wouldn’t be so quick. Just cuz a toad got warts don’t mean he ain’t taste good when you fry him up.”

Ephram watched Moss draw the door to the store closed. He always did this when the talk turned unchristian.

Gubber spat back, “I don’t eat no toads.”

Percy nudged Gubber, winked at his brother. “Maybe you should start. Somebody tell me they got nice, long tongues and knows just how to use them.”

Moss shook his head. “I ain’t never heard such.”

“Mouths too …” Percy put a stamp on it.

Chauncy added the postscript, “A man ain’t no better than a fly, so what he gone do if a juicy frog come along and beg to lash him with her tongue? The Devil hisself wanna do that I’d be hard-pressed to say no.”

Moss shot out, “No suh! That happen, sho’ nuff?”

“May God strike me.”

Moss fell into wonderment—like he’d just watched his dog sit up and moo.

Percy added, “Just last Thursday night. I know cuz I was there.”

Moss mouthed, “Lawd-a-mercy.”

Ephram couldn’t move. He felt his legs growing into the rail on the step. His feet were the planks, nailed tight to the beams. He couldn’t walk away now, not if God had ordered him to. He stood on the stairs like solid wood until Gubber handed him a proposition.

“Play me a game.”

Ephram felt the wood in his legs tingle and walk up the stairs. A familiar dull ache began just above his knee. There was nowhere else to walk. No road to follow. No door to be knocked on and opened. Once he was sitting Gubber added, “Put yo’ money down. Fifty cent a game.”

Ephram felt his lips moving. “I ain’t got no money on me, Gub.”

The two had been fast friends at thirteen, but the memory of that had long since faded into the wallpaper. Now they grunted at one another if they happened to pass on the street.

“Then play me fo’ that cake.”

Percy interjected, “Cake worth more than two bits.”

Moss added, “I seen it go for as high as seven dollars at the Juneteenth auction.”

Gubber relented. “Hell, I’ll give you five whole dollars if you win, which you ain’t ’bout to do.” Suddenly Ephram wanted to be rid of the cake. Wanted it stuffed between Gubber’s large teeth, so he nodded yes and the porch leaned in to watch. Moss eased the store door open again and Miss P peeked out of the screen, ever grateful for Moss’s timely gallantry. It was almost closing time, but she would let the boys finish their dominoes.

The “cake game” lived in the mouths of men until suppertime. It wasn’t an event of great consequence, but it was something. Gubber Samuels had lain down the gauntlet and Ephram Jennings had picked it up. They’d had Moss hold the cake while the two men played. Gubber won the draw. They’d chosen their seven bones and quick as lightning Gubber slapped down a double six. Ephram hadn’t one single six and that fast had to
knock
. Gubber put down a blank/six combo. Again Ephram had to pass. So Gubber had started talking dirt about Ephram’s luck and added something about his flat feet. At one point Gubber was down to four bones before Ephram laid a single tile. Everyone talked about how steady and solemn Ephram had played Gubber, how even when they were down to one tile each, Ephram hadn’t once looked up from the game. When he laid out that four/two and Gubber had
to admit that he was beat, Gubber got so mad that he messed up his cussing. “Fucker-mother, bitches of sons.” Until the whole porch laughed. In the end after Ephram won, folks talked about how he walked from the porch in a kind of daze.

How Gubber Samuels had followed after him and whispered something that made Ephram yank away, cake teetering, then stomp down the road. How Gubber made his way back to his seat and grinned, “Don’t mess with a man ain’t wet his wick in twenty year.”

Charlie eased the door closed as Miss P counted out her register. He bent low. “Ain’t natural.”

“Been knowing his crusty butt too long,” Gubber expounded. “Lying, carrying angel cake, sweating aftershave? Mule out courting.”

Chauncy Rankin stated fact. “Nothing more pitiful than a grown fella lose track his manhood.”

Gubber added, “Shit so backed up he like to kill some poor bitch when he let loose.”

Charlie looked out towards the darkening woods. “Who he sparking out that’a way? Ain’t nothing but Rupert Shankle’s and a patch of headstones.”

A flash glinted in Chauncy’s eye. “And Ruby Bell.”

“Jesus wept.” Charlie blanched.

Miss P easily put the game away inside of the door, then walked out of the store and put her key in the ancient lock. Her movements ushered the men from the porch.

As he stepped onto the road Chauncy whistled and said, “Like collecting brimstone in hell. Man hit the jackpot.”

Gubber spit. “Waste a good cake, you asked me.”

The men gathered close like old hens for one last scratch of
sundown gossip—then scattered, each to his own dinner table to fill their bellies with the steaming, spiced handiwork of women.

F
OR EPHRAM
Jennings the game had been a kind of water torture of the mind. He remembered a picture book that Charlie and Lem passed around at Bloom’s some Saturday nights, of women doing all manner of things. It made him both ashamed and excited. Naked and twisting, mouths open, kneeling, waists bent, bodies like feed bags, fit to each man’s liking. Then he put Ruby’s face on each of those mind pictures and lost the fight against embarrassment, Devil lust and jealousy. And worst of all, fear. He knew in the moment that he could never, even in his dreams, fill the well of Chauncy Rankin’s voice, the gait of his stride, or the practiced slide of his touch.

So a hope that had lived in Ephram for thirty-five years against odds even Job couldn’t fathom died. Right there on the steps of P & K. With the sun yawning towards night and eleven grown men laughing around him.

It wasn’t that Ephram hadn’t sampled some bit of life for himself. When he turned sixteen K.O. had lied to Celia about a Young Men’s Bible Conference, and instead dragged Gubber and him down to Fair Street in Beaumont. He’d said it was something a boy’s daddy ought to do, but since neither boy had one, he had taken on the job.

The woman had been banana pudding yellow and as fat as a prize hog, with a pink corset pushing and shoving her flesh into place, but her face was smooth and sweet as a child’s doll, and her top lip had been painted into two little red triangles. She’d smelled like sweat, ammonia and Tootsie Pops. He’d fumbled and tumbled
until her impatient hand guided him to her soft center. The release had been magnificent. Almost as great as the shame that followed.

Many years later there had been Gubber’s cousin, Baby Girl, fast, young and shaped like trouble. His one true girlfriend. She never removed her panties but let him do whatever was possible with the benefit of loose elastic around her full, plump legs. He spent every dime he made on her, until they were discovered behind P & K, where Celia had followed him. She yanked them apart so hard and fast, Baby’s panties, at long last, fell to the ground. After a night of demons being prayed from his flesh by Celia and ten good church members, that was the end of that.

Ephram walked farther into the piney woods and felt a low ebb tickling his joints, his knees. As he crossed the clearing Ruby’s gris-gris slipped to the ground and was covered by a puff of dust.

This thing Chauncy had spoken of, like in Lem’s book—this deed. Ephram tried to push this new act away from the picture of Ruby he had hanging in his chest, the one with her rising like a wave out of a mud puddle. But it stayed like a scratch on polished wood, until she became all things in his mind. And being a simple man from East Texas, Ephram Jennings did what any man would do. He walked down to Marion Lake and had himself a sleep.

R
uby sat on the soft earth under the chinaberry tree and let her fingers strum the soil. She looked down the turn in the road. The evening shadows had stretched across the pathway and it seemed to fade into the black tourmaline of the forest.

Ruby had felt something coming through the pines all day. She knew it was not the Dyboù, it was not Chauncy Rankin, nor his brother Percy. It was something salted sweet like pomade and sweat.

So she had spent the day waiting. She had pushed back her hair as best she could. Gone to the pump, pulled the handle with all of her might and splashed the cool well water on her hands, then wiped it across her face. Her fingers came back dripping black, so she rinsed her face again. That was the best she could do.

Then she had pulled up a chair, wiped off the kitchen table with her forearm and sat. That day, the house was not unkind. She was used to the smell—the low dank sugar of rotting things and waste. It was a kind of comfort. The cicadas had been singing, too loudly outside her door in anticipation.

When the morning heated into afternoon Ruby had walked across the road and retrieved a fallen long dogwood branch. Back inside, her fingers slowly began pulling the leaves and peeling off the thin little squares of bark, as if she were plucking a chicken.
Ruby remembered her grandmother saying, before she died, that the dogwood had blood at the roots since it was used to crucify Jesus. Ruby figured that the scale of righteousness had long since broken, and one more little curse couldn’t do much harm.

By evening she had a mound of leaves and bark on the table. Some had fallen on the floor. A low hum had begun that had caused her fingers to tap on her legs. The little spirits in her belly shifted, causing an unsettled pressure on her diaphragm. Nausea spread to her stomach, wetting her mouth. She was grateful that today she did not regurgitate—but many days she did—and many days, in the tilt of her world, Ruby could not clean the waste and eventually it dried, hard as bark, into the floor.