The Loves of Ruby Dee (17 page)

A pretty young woman had joined Georgia. She had silky brown hair to her shoulders, tender green eyes and the kind of figure to turn men’s heads. She cast Ruby Dee a curious but friendly grin and nod and then poured those tender green eyes all over Lonnie.

“Hi, Lonnie...how’s it goin’?” The girl eyed Lonnie as if he were a great big chocolate sundae and she had been on a starvation diet.

Oh, dear, Ruby Dee thought. She happened to glance at Georgia, to see that woman read it all, too, and was none too pleased.

“Hey, Crystal,” Lonnie said, giving her the same charming grin he gave Ruby Dee and even Georgia.

He proceeded to make introductions, then explained that Crystal was Georgia’s sister. Ruby Dee noticed the resemblance, although Georgia was hard-ass wise and Crystal tender-reed green.

Crystal’s tender eyes clouded when she observed Ruby Dee, but Ruby Dee smiled at her, and the younger woman smiled back and said, “I hope you can help Hardy.” She meant it, because it wasn’t in the young woman to put on a face.

As Ruby Dee and Lonnie left, Georgia said, “Tell Will I said hello, Lonnie." But while she spoke to him, her eyes were aimed like bullets at Ruby Dee.

There were two sisters who were crazy for the Starr brothers, Ruby Dee thought as, half blinded by the sudden bright sunshine, she made her way around to the passenger side of the Galaxie. She and Lonnie set their bags in the back seat. He opened the door and waved her inside, as if he was a prince and she a princess. She felt self-conscious, because she caught sight of Crystal standing at the glass door and looking at them.

Lonnie slammed the door securely and flashed her one of his grins. Ruby Dee’s heart got heavy. The Lord had sure pulled a joke when he made people so they hankered after other people, she thought, jamming her hat on her head.

She wondered how serious things were between Will and Georgia. Lonnie might know, but she knew no way to ask him and not appear to be asking. Besides, it was none of her business, and she didn’t want it to be, either. It was hard enough to live her life, without trying to know about everybody else’s. Lonnie didn’t head straight for home but showed Ruby Dee the sights. The town consisted of the building at each corner of the crossroads and a number of small houses and mobile homes fanning out down the roads. To the west about a mile was the school, a combination of brick and steel buildings, elementary through high school housed in separate wings beneath the same roof.

The brick Baptist church boasted a small belltower and had a brick archway above its cemetery entry. Lonnie said the Methodist church was about four miles to the east. It was simple white clapboard and still possessed the original separate outhouses for men and women.

“Out in this part of the country, people are either Baptists or Methodists,” Lonnie said. “Any other persuasions are suspect, and to some Baptists even Methodists are suspect.”

“Are the Starrs suspect?”

He frowned thoughtfully. “Well, now, Daddy walked out of the Baptist church when he married Mama, whose family were nonpracticing Catholics from way back. He tried the Methodist church, but quit them, too, when they wanted money for indoor toilets. My Aunt Roe was a Methodist, and she made me and Will come along with her to church, but then she brought home her second husband from a missionary trip to Africa, and he was a Presbyterian lay minister, who started having services at their house, so we all quit the Methodist Church, too. My cousin J-Jean went away and came back a minister in the Church of Divine Love; she’s a circuit preacher down in Elk City and Clinton. My second cousin, Rollie, and his whole family were converted to some church on the television, and they ended up going to Chicago where the television church came from."

“You are all suspect, aren’t you?”

“Yes, ma’am, we are.”

A grin played at the corners of his mouth. He was just made to laugh and to make people laugh with him. And, boy howdy, he knew how to make a woman feel like a woman.

The rodeo grounds sat out in the middle of nowhere. There was already a sign up for the annual fall rodeo, in September. Someone had hand-lettered a big sign next to it that said, “Y’all Come!”

“Are you and Will gonna ride in the rodeo?” Ruby Dee asked.

Lonnie shrugged. “We did, a few years back.” His gaze came around to hers, and he reached out and took her hand and pulled it to the middle of the seat. “Maybe we will this year..
.
if you’ll be there.”

She didn’t know what to say, and mercy, his hand was warm over hers. “I don’t know if I’ll still be here. Your daddy will probably fire me when he gets on his feet again.”

Looking forward again, Lonnie lifted his hand from hers and returned it to the steering wheel, carefully directing the car to avoid the roughest ruts of the road that circled the rodeo grounds.

“Broke my arm the first time at this arena,” he said. “High school rodeo, ridin’ a bronc. I was sixteen.” His hazel eyes cut to her. “I won, though. I went to nationals for the first time that year.”

She could see him, high and wild on a horse. “And you’ve been ridin’ broncs ever since.”

“I did for a long time, until I discovered calf roping. I broke my arm once and my leg twice in bronc ridin’. I’ve only broken my finger in calf ropin’, and I have two cow ponies that generally make more money than I do, ‘cause so many of the guys are willin’ to pay to use ‘em. It’s a lot less work to rent out a horse than it is to ride him.”

Oh, my, how she liked it—riding around with Lonnie, listening to him, the way his eyes felt all over her.

What she could not have admitted to a living soul—didn’t even care to admit to Miss Edna and God—was the fantasy that flitted through her mind: the image of Lonnie pulling her across the seat of the Galaxie into his arms and kissing her face off.

The fantasy wanted to return, but she refused it, because it was stupid. It shocked her somewhat. She couldn’t look at it closely at the moment, since she was so distracted by Lonnie and all, but in instinctive defense of herself, she thought that she was a woman, one born with the normal weaknesses that threatened good sense.

And it would be difficult not to flirt with Lonnie, because doing it seemed to please him so much.

So they drove around and flirted as the sun grew hotter and little Sally drooled over the side of the car, while Lonnie showed her places and talked about them and ran his eyes all over Ruby Dee.

Over and above all the flirting, however, Ruby Dee suspected that another reason Lonnie kept driving around, thinking up places to show her, was that he wasn’t in a hurry to get back to the ranch. He didn’t turn toward home until Ruby Dee told him she needed to return, and then he drove a lot slower going back home than he had coming out.

When he turned the car beneath the Starr Ranch sign, Lonnie became downright quiet. Of course, it had gotten awfully hot. When she got out of the car, she found her dress sticking to the back of her thighs. Spreading her legs, she lifted her dress in the back and waved it, encouraging the air to circulate up her bare skin and over the nylon lace panties clinging to her rear. Whew! That felt good.

Then her gaze came up, and she saw Will striding toward her from the house. His eyes were straight on her.

For an instant she felt buck naked.

She dropped her dress in place and brought her legs together. She felt silly as could be. Silly and naked.

And then the brothers crowded around her, getting the groceries out of the back of the car. Ruby Dee would have moved, but they seemed to trap her.

Will was in front of her, snatching a bag right out of her hands. “I’ll get it.” He pulled another up from the seat, his forearm tanned and hard and straining below his brown denim shirt sleeve.

“I’ll get these, Ruby Dee.” Lonnie bent in front of her. His shirt stretched tight over his lean back.

Scents of fresh perspiration and warm after shave...and male virility. Lordy. It was unnerving. And exciting.

When she got to the kitchen, she grabbed the things she had brought Hardy from the bags and hurriedly left the room. She couldn’t really explain why, because she had no time to sort it all out, and besides, she didn’t really want to.

She didn’t want to think about it at all; she just wanted to be away from Will and Lonnie and the confused feelings that churned inside her. By golly, her thoughts were too embarrassing to be allowed to do more than flit through her mind, and she wouldn’t have let them do that if she could have stopped them.

She went to Hardy, thinking: Lordy, Ruby Dee, get a hold of yourself.

Miss Edna’s voice came to her:
“Straighten up!”

“Thank you, Miss Edna,” Ruby Dee whispered, breathing deeply, as calm returned.

Hardy Starr himself did wonders for taking Ruby Dee’s mind off its carnal bent. There he was—just lying in that bed, just as he had been when she left, staring out the window, all rumpled and with tobacco stains on his shirt. He looked so pitiful he probably would have made even Georgia Reeves cry.

Ruby Dee stopped in the doorway when she saw him. For a second she wanted to throw herself across his bed and wail, and at the same time she wanted to jerk him up by his shirt front and give him a good shaking.

“Mr. Starr, you are tryin’ me. You surely are,” she said, marching into the room. “I brought you some things to read.”

He looked at her, his pale eyes hard behind his glasses. “I never asked you to.”

“I know that. I was being kind. You have heard of it before, haven’t you—kindness? Here. I have today’s paper from Oklahoma City and the
Western Horseman
and the
Louis L’Amour Western Magazine—
it has lots of western stories in it—and the
Farm and Ranch Trader.”

She had hoped especially to delight him with the last one, which had lots of pictures of items for sale.

“It doesn’t matter if you can read any of them, because I’ll read them to you, and you’re gonna learn.”

But he didn’t so much as glance at any of them. He said, “Did you happen to get me some Skoal?” Of course he didn’t think she had.

With great pleasure, Ruby Dee pulled the small tin from her dress pocket and waved it in his face. “Lonnie said you liked spearmint. Ha!”

Thankfully that got a reaction. He stared at her in surprise, with his mouth hanging open. Ruby Dee dumped the newspaper and magazines in his lap and dropped the tin of chewing tobacco on top of them.

“You are gonna have to change that shirt, Mr. Starr.” She went to his closet, flipped through the few that hung there and chose a pale green plaid.

On a second thought, she took all the shirts out of his closet, tossed him the plaid one and left with the others over her arm, saying, “I’ll have your lunch in half an hour.”

With relief, she found Lonnie and Will gone, and she was left alone to load the washer, put the groceries away and ponder ways to make Hardy Starr want to be alive. Considering all that didn’t leave her time to think about the stirrings inside herself.

Chapter 14

By the following day, Hardy gave up completely on trying to die, although he wasn’t really trying to live, either. He just lay there because he didn’t know what else to do and didn’t feel like doing anything else.

He did feel like getting a drink. He felt it powerfully, but the opportunity to go into the kitchen and get the bottle of Jack Daniel’s in the cabinet beneath the sink never presented itself. His need for the whiskey was outweighed by his need to keep all of them thinking he couldn’t get around. It depressed the hell out of him.

And the gal kept pestering him. He thought that no man, even one who was reaching for Saint Peter, would have been allowed to die with that gal around.

She came popping into his room, her steamy brown eyes falling all over him, her smoky voice nagging him—change his shirt, eat his lunch, read, watch television. She read to him for thirty minutes at a time, and she pestered him to read for her, which he wouldn’t do.

Not being able to read very much at all embarrassed him, but he didn’t like to think about that, and he didn’t appreciate the gal making him think about it.

And she kept asking him questions. What did he think of her Mexican omelets?...What did he think of the President?...
How did he like the drink she had made him in her juicer?

He told her he didn’t want to read and he didn’t want to watch television. He liked eggs fried, period; he’d never liked any of the Presidents; and he wasn’t gonna drink anything that was the color of snot.

He told her that unless she wanted to bring him a bottle of whiskey, to leave him the hell alone. He threw the magazines on the floor and turned off the television. She picked up the magazines and turned the television back on.

She moved around him, slinging her womanliness so that it seemed like it scattered all over the room and hovered even after she’d taken her little body sashaying out of there. Her movements stayed in his memory, and he realized she moved like Jooney, graceful and fluid.

It startled Hardy when he realized he was watching her move, mostly watching her breasts bobbing as she adjusted the roll underneath his ankle. The idea that he could be his age and looking at a woman’s breasts with even a whisper of lust confused him. Hardy had not looked at a woman with lust since Lila had walked out on him. He had taken lust and all other passions out to the trash barrel and burned them right along with his and Lila’s marriage certificate and a nightgown she had left behind.

He was thinking about all this, when he suddenly heard Woody Guthrie singing through the house: "...dust storm comin’...
from Oklahoma City...to the Rio Grande...”

It took him a few minutes to realize it was Woody Guthrie singing. He hadn’t heard Woody Guthrie for...well, he couldn’t remember when he had last heard Woody Guthrie.

When it came down to it, Woody Guthrie’s voice wasn’t something Hardy figured anyone would miss. Woody’s voice was similar to the sound of a saw biting through wood and sending sawdust flying, at least in Hardy’s opinion.