County Line (29 page)

“It’s not okay!” His eyes flooded with wild terror. He pushed away from her and disappeared into the darkness beyond the hickory tree. She listened to him crash through the undergrowth in a circle around the depression. “Not okay, … not okay.” His voice was broken by sobs, punctuated by the snap of twigs and branches.

She dropped to the ground next to the hole, back to the hickory tree, and pulled her knees up to her chest. Her eyelids drooped and she breathed into her muddy jeans. It took her a moment to realize Jimmie’s footsteps were growing fainter.

“Jimmie!”

No answer.

The rain hissed through the leaves. Then, in the distance, a car started. She recognized the tell-tale grind of Jimmie’s clutch. A screech split the night as he bottomed out on the edge of the road. A moment later, the engine faded to silence.

She dropped back against the tree, resisted the desire to sag into the muck and cry. She wanted to leave it all here. Let Jimmie suffer the consequences.

But she knew she couldn’t. Because now she was part of it. She’d helped move the body, helped dig the hole. Accessory after the fact, they’d say. Maybe obstruction of justice. Phrases tossed around on the cop shows, but whose real meaning she’d learned in Mister Halstead’s class.

There was nothing left to do but finish, and quickly. Dale’s truck wouldn’t bear much investigation, and an errant flashlight beam could reveal where she and Jimmie had dragged the body off the road.

She jumped down into the hole, stabbed the ground with the shovel. The earth was hard, more gravel than dirt. Good drainage. Deep enough. She wiped her face on the sleeve of her sweatshirt and climbed out of the hole, paused near Dale’s motionless feet.

Something stirred. Through a gap in the trees Ruby Jane could see the clouds tearing apart in shreds. A three-quarters moon shone into the clearing. She heard a cough.

“Ruby? Is that you, baby girl?”

- 33 -

Post-Season, April 1989

Ruby Jane intended to skip the awards banquet. Bella went out early, billowy and brash in a red silk blouse and jeans applied with an airbrush after a day packing Dale’s clothes and delivering them to the Salvation Army drop box at the Germantown IGA. When quiet descended over the house Ruby realized how much she craved a peaceful night at home. It had been too long.

She went to the grocery for a pint of Häagen-Dazs and a chicken breast. She was chopping onions, carrots and celery when a car pulled into the driveway, an unfamiliar white Oldsmobile station wagon with fake wood side panels. She almost cut her thumb off when Gabi climbed out. She wore a white country girl dress and Mary Janes. A flush of peach blossomed in her cheeks.

“Your grandparents let you drive?” The lip gloss was even more surprising.

Gabi was all grins. “They said I’d earned it. I have to be home by ten.”

“You look ridiculously cute.”

Gabi giggled, but the laughter tapered off when she noticed the chicken on the counter, ready to go into the pan heating on the stove.

“What are you doing?”

“Fixing supper.”

“You’re not coming?”

Ruby Jane turned away to rinse her hands.

“Ruby, why not?”

She patted her eyes with a dry paper towel. “Oh. You know.” It had to be the onions.

“But, you
have
to.”

Ruby Jane leaned back against the counter. “I’m tired, Gabi. I need a break.”

“But you’re why we got as far as we did.”

“I’m the reason we came home early.”

“It was one shot.” Gabi’s eyes filled with tears. Maybe the onions were getting to her too. “You deserve this as much as anyone. At least as much as Clarice.”

From mousy walk-on to starter on a district championship team, Gabi saw the last year as success beyond her wildest dreams. She hadn’t been around long enough to feel the weight of expectation which came with being a Lady Spartan under Coach’s reign.

“No one blames you.”

“Clarice does.”

“Fuck Clarice!” Gabi put a hand over her mouth.

Ruby felt her eyes go wide. “Holy shit, girl.”

Gabi looked away and blushed. “You have to come. I need you there. I need someone who doesn’t act like … you know.”

The oil in the pan started to burn. She pulled it off the burner, waved her hand to clear the smoke. “I was going to watch HBO and eat ice cream.”

“Come to the banquet. Tomorrow we’ll go to a movie. My treat.”

Gabi’s need was a bubble growing behind her eyes. Ruby Jane felt helpless, ready to pop. “Okay. Fine.” She sighed. “We better hurry.”

She wrapped the chicken and dumped the veggies into a Tupperware bowl. Everything went into the fridge. She left the pan. Bella wouldn’t notice.

Gabi dug through her closet while Ruby Jane pulled a brush through her hair. “Don’t you have anything besides jeans and boy’s shirts?”

“I’ve got other things.”

“What did you wear to last year’s banquet?”

“I missed it.” Another emergency room trip: Dale had dislocated Jimmie’s shoulder.

Gabi blew through her teeth. Maybe she wasn’t as girlish as others on the team, but Ruby Jane didn’t think of herself as a tomboy. She ran, she played basketball, she wore comfortable shoes. Big deal. Gabi’s growing exasperation with Ruby Jane’s wardrobe was tempered by her excitement about the banquet. She settled on a straight black skirt and a white blouse with shoulder pads. Ruby Jane wanted to wear her denim jacket, but Gabi insisted on a dark blue poplin blazer—again with the shoulder pads—Ruby Jane had worn once, at Bella’s insistence, to her Grandfather and Grandmother Denlinger’s New Year’s Day brunch.

“I feel like a linebacker.” She hated shoulder pads.

Gabi didn’t hear. “All I can find are running shoes. How do you survive without at least a pair of sandals?”

“I have Tevas.”

“Naturally.”

“There’s a pair of flats in there somewhere.”

“Don’t you have anything with a heel?”

“What do I need with heels?”

“Flats it is.” She found them in the back of the closet. “At least they’re blue. They kinda match the jacket.”

“Is that okay?”

“It’ll have to do.”

Gabi drove to Germantown like she was running a break. Color rose up her neck and set her face alight. Ruby Jane gripped the armrest and smiled to herself, glad to reach the middle school intact. The wide, high-ceilinged corridors smelled of floor wax and decades of mimeographs. As she walked into the cafeteria, she realized the last time she’d been happy was during her time here. Basketball was new, still more game than competition. Her classmates were a little crazier, but less targeted in their cruelty. The discovery she didn’t have to spend her every waking moment in the house on West Walnut offered her first taste of a life free of Dale and Bella.

She sat with Gabi at one of the two starter tables. The centerpiece was a bowl made from half a basketball and filled with carnations dyed Spartan Blue. As Mister Unger welcomed them from the podium, Ruby Jane saw Ashley and Moira empty two pint bottles of rum into the punch. She spent dinner sipping water. Most tables were mixed, players and their families, but Gabi and Ruby Jane had no one. She liked it that way. She could prod her desiccated chicken—a sorry substitute for the stir fry she’d planned—and chat with Gabi. She clapped at the proper moments, and smiled blankly when Coach brought up the Dunk during a vapid speech about effort and the will to win. Smirked when the boys coach, Mister Minnis, did the same—the boys finished fifth in the league. The punch bowl drained so quickly someone’s mother complained she didn’t get a glass. Everyone spoke of next year, Clarice at her peak. No one mentioned Ruby Jane’s record three-point shooting.

Gabi never stopped grinning. She carried her letter and varsity pin like they were made of gold, and didn’t care no one said more than five words to either of them all evening.

After dinner, while the others stood in noisy huddles, Gabi and Ruby Jane slipped into the corridor. Every fourth overhead fixture was lit, and as they walked toward the front hall, their shoes tapped out an echoey rhythm through the silver darkness. Ruby Jane took comfort in the timeless emptiness, as though the building wasn’t quite anchored in the present. She felt its age wrap around her like a cloak.

“I don’t know if I could have done it without you, Ruby.”

“Don’t be silly.”

“I’m not. You’ve been a good friend.”

They stopped in the front hall. The fulvous light shining through the tall windows failed to illuminate the color rising in Ruby Jane’s face. She read the bulletin board on the wall outside the office. Field Day was coming. Permission slips for the Washington, D.C. trip were due. She hadn’t been allowed to go when she was in eighth grade. Too expensive.

“I never told you why I’m living with my grandparents.”

“It’s none of my business.”

She saw a glint on Gabi’s teeth as she smiled. “That’s you, isn’t it? Everyone’s secrets are sacred to you.”

“What do you mean?” Gabi didn’t seem to notice the defensive hitch in her voice. She hooked Ruby Jane’s arm with her own. Together they moved to the window ledge.

“Just, you know. You never pry. And you never tell.”

Ruby Jane turned her head and looked out the window. Daylight was failing. An orange pickup passed on Comstock Street and for a moment she thought it was Dale. A ghost. The truck went under a streetlight—a Ford, not a Dodge. She let out her breath.

“People keep things private for their own reasons. It’s not up to me to decide for them.”

“That’s one of the things I like about you.” She lowered her head onto Ruby Jane’s shoulder. “You’re safe.”

Not so safe
. An image from Preble County Line Road boiled through her mind and she suppressed a shudder.

“The thing is, I got into some trouble in Cleveland. I did something.” She inhaled. “My parents said it was the city’s influence.”

Ruby Jane felt a rising panic strobe behind her eyes. “You don’t have to tell me, Gabi.”

“They made a huge deal out of it, but I didn’t think it was anything. None of their business, really.”

“Gabi—”

“It’s not like it was illegal or anything.” Ruby Jane felt her squirm. “It shouldn’t be, anyway.”

A thickness gathered on Ruby Jane’s tongue.

“My grandparents came up with the big plan to get me away from the influence of those evil city girls—that’s what my mother called them.” She laughed, quiet and bitter. “Do you know what a miracle it was I even was allowed to play basketball this year?”

“I’m glad you did.”

“Me too.”

She was quiet. Was it her turn now, a secret for a secret? What could she say?
My father knelt in the mud—

“You’ve never gone out with Finn, have you?”

“No, I guess I haven’t.”

“Why not?”

She didn’t know. Jimmie had forfeited any right to make decisions for her. Still, she held back. Huck, she knew, was waiting for her to make up her mind.

“It’s hard to say.”

“You don’t have to explain it.”

Ruby Jane turned and Gabi leaned into her. Ruby Jane had a sudden awareness of the smooth curve of the skin on Gabi’s neck. In the creamy twilight, the pale, downy hairs took on a sudden clarity. She drew a sharp breath as their lips met. Gabi pressed into her, one hand snaking up behind her head. Gabi’s lips parted. Ruby Jane tasted punch.

In eighth grade she’d gone into the closet at Hardy Berman’s house with Oliver Mackenzie. Spin the Bottle. He’d jammed his mouth against hers, lips tight as a drum, and reached for her breast. She punched him in the belly and ran out. Everyone laughed at him. When Jimmie found out, he busted Oliver’s lip. Until now, that had been the extent of her love life.

Someone giggled. Ruby Jane jerked away from Gabi, backed up against the window. The Monster Squad stood a dozen paces away. Ashley had her fingers to her open mouth. Moira was the one giggling. Ruby Jane hadn’t heard the approaching footsteps.