Way Down Deep (11 page)

“I won't stay any longer than I have to,” Ruby said, not even considering the possibility that she might like her kin. “Surely they will not want me to stay if I'm unhappy there.”

Neither she nor Miss Arbutus had mentioned that perhaps Ruby would not have a choice about the matter. The old grandmother had the law on her side.

“Ruby's grandma has mourned for her all these years,” Uncle Chris had told the judge. “She lost our dad when Jo was a baby. Then she lost Jo and Ruby within a few
months of each other. All that grief aged her before her time.”

Rain started in small splatters against the windshield. Uncle Chris threw his cigarette butt out and rolled the window up. In the distance Ruby could see patches of clouds quivering in the hollows.

H
OW DO YOU THINK
I
GOT FROM
Y
ONDER
M
OUNTAIN
to Way Down, Uncle Chris?”

“I have no idea, but it stands to reason that somebody took you.”

“I don't remember anything about it now, but they say I told everybody I had come on a horse.”

“I heard that from the sheriff. But it don't seem likely, does it? I can't think of a soul who had a riding horse at that time, and besides, I don't think a horse could travel that far in one night.”

“A car could do it easy,” Ruby said. “It must have been a car.”

“It
had
to be a car,” her uncle said. “But we were all poor folks up on that mountain. We had no cars. To this day, you can't even drive a car up there. Somebody who wanted to take you would have to walk up the mountain in the middle of the night, steal you off the porch and haul you down the mountain without making a sound, put you in his car, and then drive you to West Virginia and dump
you out. I reckon it could be done, but who would do that? And why? It don't make a bit of sense to me. Not a bit.”

“Who else was in the house that night?” Ruby asked.

“Your grandma, me and my wife, and our six kids.”

“So that's who the other kids were on the porch? Your kids? How old were they?”

“They had some size to them. I was lots older than Jo, you know, so I already had my family half raised before she got started. That night y'all slept on the porch together was ten years ago, and my three oldest ones, all girls, are married now, two of them with kids of their own. The three boys are still at home with me and the wife. They are Jeff, Sam, and Sidney, all teenagers.”

“And who lives with my grandma now?” Ruby asked.

“Nobody. My wife and me took the kids and moved out a few years ago.”

“Where do y'all live?” Ruby asked.

“Down at the mouth of the holler at the foot of Yonder Mountain. Where you're going is way up to the top of the mountain.”

“How on earth does a little old lady live up there on the top of a mountain all by herself? She must be afraid!”

“Afraid of what?” Uncle Chris bellowed so loud, Ruby was startled. “There ain't nothing on that mountain meaner than she is!”

And he laughed like he had told a very funny joke. Ruby watched him with puzzled eyes. This was his mother he was talking about.

“What I mean is—” Uncle Chris abruptly changed his
tune and took on a serious face. “I mean she's a brave woman, always has been, not afraid of anything.”

They both lapsed into silence. The
WELCOME TO VIRGINIA
sign rose up before them. Ruby stared at it until they had passed. Then she turned around and looked behind until it faded away. The mountains were a hazy blue in the pouring rain.

“Tell me how my mama and daddy died,” Ruby said at last.

“It was during the war.” Christian began his story. “Clay missed the draft because of his asthma. Word came to the hills from the shipyards in Norfolk, Virginia, that any able-bodied man who was not in the war and wanted work would find it there in Norfolk. I reckon they couldn't keep up with the wartime demand.

“Clay and Jo jumped at the chance to leave the coal mines behind. By this time you had come along, and I reckon they thought you would have a better future out there. So they packed up their belongings and took the train out to Norfolk with only a few dollars in their pockets.

“We figured they'd be back hungry and broke in a matter of days. But we were wrong. Clay found a good job, and they rented a pretty decent apartment, a nicer place than they had here anyhow, and they stayed. And they bought themselves an old rattletrap—a Ford, I think it was.

“I don't recollect exactly when they went or how long they were there, but sometime in February of 1944 we got
a telegram from the police in Norfolk that Jo and Clay both had been killed. The roads were slick with snow and ice, and the tires on that old car were plumb bald. They had skidded into a moving train.”

Uncle Chris stopped there. Ruby closed her eyes and pictured that long-ago February.

Snow. Lots of snow. Her memory of being rocked could have come from that same day her parents were killed! Suddenly she also remembered icicles hanging from the gutters. Yes, there was a bitter cold outside, while warm arms cradled her inside. A deep sadness came over her.

“Where was I?” she said. “Why wasn't I in the car, too?”

“As I understand it, your mama went to pick your daddy up after his shift ended. It was close to midnight, and she didn't want to take you out in the weather. So she left you with an old woman who lived in the next apartment.

“I didn't have a car myself, but I borrowed one and drove out to Norfolk to get you and your family's stuff. The old woman was real attached to the three of you, but I've forgot her name now. Still, I do remember what she told me were the last words your mama said to you.

“Jo was all bundled up in her heavy clothes, and she bent over and kissed you and said, ‘Ruby, you wait right here for me. I'll be back soon.' ”

Woo-bee is right here waiting for you.

“Then you came to live up on the mountain with your
grandma, and me and my wife and our six kids, for the next four months, until you vanished in the night.”

The rain had stopped, and a sign by the road read,

YONDER MOUNTAIN ↑

The arrow pointed up a gravel road that snaked through the hollow between the hills. Uncle Chris turned the DeSoto onto the road.

“That's where I live,” he said, pointing to a white frame house beside a small country store that stood in the crook of the intersection. The store had Chesterfield cigarette ads tacked all over the outside.

He drove right on by.

“Me and the wife bought the store a few years back. She's looking after it today, and the boys are at football camp.”

Ruby wondered why her uncle hadn't stopped and introduced her to his wife, but she didn't ask.

“What's your wife's name?”

“Maxine. You can call her Aunt Max.”

Going up the holler, they drove by only two houses, which were spaced far apart. Then her uncle pulled the car over to one side, where a path curled up the mountain and vanished into the trees.

“This is the path to your grandma's house,” Uncle Chris said as he jerked the hand brake into place and climbed out of the car.

He unlocked the trunk and removed Ruby's suitcase.
Ruby opened her door, placed her feet on the ground, and studied the path. It was even steeper than the one leading to Way Up That-a-Way. Her uncle walked ahead of her, carrying the luggage.

The trees were dripping from the recent rain, and there was mud on the path. Ruby picked her way carefully so she wouldn't mess up the new white moccasins that Miss Arbutus had given to her before she left The Roost.

“They are either an early or a late birthday present,” Miss Arbutus had said. “Just wear them back to me soon.”

The sun began to speckle the ground through the trees. Ruby breathed in deeply, as she had always loved the smell of the earth after a summer rain.

They had not gone far when Uncle Chris began wheezing with the effort of climbing the hill. He stopped to rest and leaned against a tree.

“I can carry the suitcase,” Ruby offered.

“Oh, no, I've got it.”

They repeated the same ritual several times. Ruby was not as tuckered as her uncle was, and finally he did hand the suitcase to her.

He mopped his brow with a handkerchief. “It's not much farther.”

W
HEN THEY REACHED THE TOP OF THE MOUNTAIN
, R
UBY
saw a wood frame house ahead at the edge of the woods. It was not made of polished logs like Granny Butler's house but of rough boards, weathered gray. There was no nice slate walkway, nor flowers or green grass, only a plain dirt yard with a few chickens scratching about.

The porch was as long as the house, and wide, certainly roomy enough for seven children to bed down on a hot night. So this was where it had happened, Ruby thought. Then why did none of this look familiar to her? Why did she get no feeling, no sense of having been here before?

Uncle Chris stepped up onto the porch and opened the door for Ruby. She went inside. The main room was a kitchen and living room—dark, lifeless, colorless, bare. Ruby set her suitcase down on the floor as her uncle went into a room that appeared to be a bedroom.

“Did you bring the girl?” someone said.

Uncle Chris motioned Ruby to come into the room.
Lying in the bed, with a ratty sheet tucked under her chin, was a rather large-boned unkempt woman with wiry gray hair. A few wrinkles lined her eyes and mouth, but she did not seem as ancient as Ruby had imagined.

Standing before her grandmother, Ruby was slightly ashamed that she felt no affection for the woman in the bed, and hoped she would not be asked to kiss her cheek. She was not.

The pale blue eyes studied Ruby for a long moment before the old woman spoke.

“You can thank your Grandpa Combs for the hair. You favor him, just like your mama did.”

Ruby did not know what to say.

“Can you cook?” the old woman asked.

Ruby nodded, thinking what a strange question it was to be asking a grandchild you had not seen in ten years.

“Who learned you to cook?”

“I learned by helping Miss Arbutus,” Ruby said, not knowing whether she should explain who Miss Arbutus was. How much would Uncle Chris have told his mother?

“The boardinghouse woman.” Uncle Chris spoke up.

Grandma Combs didn't even glance at him. She kept her attention on Ruby.

“Jolene, you sound like your mama, and you look like her, too.”

“I prefer to be called Ruby Jo,” Ruby said.

The old lady glared at her.

“I mean if it's okay with you,” Ruby added.

Uncle Chris cleared his throat nervously and said,
“Well, I gotta be going. Y'all get acquainted, and I'll come back tomorrow to see how you're doing.”

Grandma Combs turned to him then and roared, “Liar! You won't come back until delivery day!”

Ruby was alarmed. When was delivery day? It sounded about as far off as Judgment Day.

“Oh, n-no,” he stammered. “I'll be b-back tomorrow to see if Rub—Jolene needs anything. Then I'll bring up your groceries and mail as usual on Saturday.”

“Huh!” Grandma Combs snorted.

But Uncle Chris was gone.

“Well, don't just stand there, Jolene!” Ruby's grandma barked at her. “Pull up a chair and tell me about yourself.”

Ruby glanced around. There were two straight-back kitchen chairs against the wall. She pulled one of them to her grandma's bedside and sat down.

“Well, I—” Ruby began.

“Did they tell you I'm a sick woman?” her grandma interrupted.

“Yes. What's wrong with you?”

“What do you mean, what's wrong with me? I'm sick! That's what's wrong with me.”

“I know, but I mean sick with what? Do you have a heart condition or a disease . . . or something?”

“I'm sick of living, that's what!” the old woman declared. “I'm old! I'm old and sick of living.”

“You don't look old. Your hair is gray, but your face is not wrinkled up too bad.”

“Is that right? Well, I wouldn't know. I ain't seen a
looking glass since your mama broke it the year she was fourteen!”

“How old are you, anyhow?” Ruby asked.

Her grandma glared at her again.

Ruby stared at her hands and muttered, “Sorry.”

“I don't rightly know how old I am,” Grandma Combs said. “I've lost track of time. I know I was born in 1894. Can you cipher?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

Ruby did a quick mental calculation. “You're only sixty years old, Grandma.”

Her grandma seemed surprised. “Are you sure? You did that awful fast. What year is it?”

“It's 1954. Don't you have a calendar?”

“What for? One year's like another up here on the mountain.”

“Do you know when my birthday is?”

“Yeah, it's the same as mine, October 2.”

Ruby felt a small thrill. She had a real birthday.

“So what year was I born?” she asked.

“Nineteen forty-one,” her grandma said. “And that makes you how old?”

“I'll be thirteen,” Ruby said. “It's nice that we have the same birthday.”

“When your mama told me that
you
were my birthday present the year you were born, I told her not to give me no more presents, thank you very much. Last thing in the world she needed was a baby. And then I'm the one left holding the bag when . . . she . . .”

Grandma Combs didn't finish her sentence, but lay staring into one corner of the room, as if she saw ghostly memories lurking there in the shadows.

“Jolene, how did you get to West Virginia?”

“I don't know. I don't remember.”

“Are you lying to me?”

Ruby was insulted. “I don't lie,” she said.