Way Down Deep (7 page)

“And how does sleeping help?”

“Because, according to Miss Arbutus,” Ruby said, “God is in that place where sleep takes us. Way down deep inside, where all the answers lie.”

“**!!^^##**!!~~**!!”

Ruby had heard a few bad words in her day, but nothing to compare with this string of offensive language coming from somewhere on the trail behind them. It made her ears burn.

She and Peter were approaching a clearing at the top of the mountain, where a patch of new corn was growing. Now they stopped to look back at a clump of scrubby trees they had just passed under.

“Uh-oh,” Peter said glumly. “I should have known he would follow me.”

“Who?” Ruby said.

At that moment a barefooted, shorter version of Peter appeared on the path. He was tugging angrily at his clothing.

“**!!^^##**!!~~**!!” He repeated his litany.

“Cedar!” Peter scolded him. “Will you watch your language? There's a nice girl here.”

“It's these **!! beggar-lice!” Cedar shot back. “They are all over my britches!”

He came up beside Peter and Ruby, pulling the prickly burrs off his raggedy pants. “And every **##!! time I pull two off, three more pop up someplace else!”

“What are you doing here?” Peter asked heatedly.

“Pulling off these @@**!! beggar-lice!” Cedar replied. “What are you doing?”

The two brothers stood facing each other, both seeming plumb put out.

“Who is looking after Bird and the kids?” Peter asked.

“Daddy, that's who.”

“You should be helping him,” Peter scolded.

“And so should you!” Cedar responded. “You slipped off from me last night, and I didn't say a **!! word. So I was hoping you'd ask me to go with you today. Why didn't you?”

“Because I don't want to hear your mouth!” Peter said angrily. “You embarrass me with your cussing!”

“Maybe I won't cuss today,” Cedar said nonchalantly as he looked Ruby up and down. “Who are you?”

Ruby opened her lips to answer, but Peter stopped her by saying, “We're not going to tell you until you promise!
Maybe
is not good enough.”

“Okay,” Cedar agreed sulkily.

“Okay what?” Peter said.

“I promise.”

“This is Ruby June,” Peter said grumpily. “Ruby June, my brother Cedar.”

“I know she's not your sweetheart,” Cedar said. “She's too pretty for you.”

“I oughta wop you a good one up the side of the head!” Peter hollered.

Cedar just laughed. “Where y'all going to, anyhow?”

Peter was too aggravated to answer. He continued walking, and Ruby fell in behind him, Cedar behind her.

“Where y'all going to?” Cedar repeated, but nobody answered him.

Now the corn grew on both sides of the path. Ahead of them under a giant tree sat a picturesque cabin, built from the pale wood of the surrounding hills. A slate walkway led to the front door.

Before they could reach the entrance of the cabin, the door opened, and Granny Butler stepped out, wearing a frilly apron over a blue gingham dress. She was short and thin, with skin as pallid as cream.

A pair of thick wire-rimmed spectacles balanced on Granny Butler's small nose. As they drew near her, they could see that the whites of her eyes were somewhat pink, as Ruby had said, while the irises were a very light blue.

“!!—” Cedar started to swear at sight of the lady, but instead clamped both hands over his mouth, and held them there.

Granny Butler seemed not to notice.

“Ruby June!” she said, grinning all over. “I knew you were coming!”

“How did you know, Granny Butler?”

“Aristotle told me last night when I was trying to go to sleep. He told me that somebody's coming to see me tomorrow. Then he said, ‘Guess whoo? Whoo?'

“And I said to him, ‘I can't imagine. Whoo? Whoo?'

“And he said back to me, “Rooo-beee Jooo-oon.' ”

“But I didn't know myself until this morning,” Ruby said.

“Well, what can I say? Aristotle is the wisest of the wise.”

“Who's Aristotle?” Cedar wanted to know.

“He's a smart old white owl,” Ruby said.

Granny Butler adjusted her glasses and squinted at the boys. “Who you got there with you?”

Ruby introduced Peter and Cedar to Granny Butler, and she motioned for the three of them to follow her around to the back of the cabin, toward the springhouse, where she kept her honey cool.

A narrow path snaked through tall tufts of broom straw and dropped out of sight over the edge of the hill. Ruby, Peter, and Cedar followed Granny Butler single file.

“And where y'all from?” she called over her shoulder to Peter and Cedar.

“Yonder Mountain in Virginia,” Peter replied. “We just moved to Way Down Deep yesterday.”

“Oh, I reckon it was your daddy who tried to rob the bank?”

Ruby could see Peter's ears turning red.

“He wadn't serious or nothing,” Cedar explained. “He had a toy gun.”

“I know it,” Granny Butler said. “Ripple the red fox told me all about it. He was stealing eggs from Mayor Chambers's henhouse when he overheard the mayor and his wife through the open kitchen window, talking. Ripple got so excited, he streaked away and forgot the eggs. So he came to me begging for supper that night.”

“A **!! fox told you?” Cedar cried out with disbelief. “Owls telling you stuff. Foxes talking to you. That's the stupidest thing I ever heard!”

Granny Butler came to an abrupt standstill, causing the threesome to tumble all over each other. The old woman swung her body around to face Cedar. For a long moment she gazed at him, and Cedar seemed to wilt like a morning glory at high noon.

“Young man, you are going to meet somebody,” Granny Butler said to him, “who will set you straight about your bad mouth. And you will be wise to listen.”

Then she went on as if nothing had happened. Cedar followed with his chin on his chest.

Granny Butler's springhouse was located down in a small hollow under a cluster of trees. When she opened the door, a whiff of cold air rose up from inside, laden with the odor of wet earth and toadstools. She carefully descended three broken steps and tiptoed around the edge of the spring inside.

“How much you want today?” she said to Ruby.

“Eight pints,” Ruby said.

“I'll reach them up to you,” Granny Butler said, “so you won't have to come down in here.”

She took a pint of honey from a shelf in the wall and handed it up the steps.

“The bees send their greetings. They made this special for Ruby June. And lucky for you, I'm running a sale this week—buy one, get one free.”

“That's good news,” Ruby said as she removed an empty jar from Peter's rucksack and replaced it with the full one. “A quarter a pint, right?”

“Oh, no,” Granny replied, as she peeped around the doorframe, holding the second jar. “I had to go up to fifty cents a pint. That's the only way I can afford to run a buy-one-get-one-free sale.”

As Granny Butler ducked back inside for another jar, Ruby and Peter looked at each other. They both smiled, then looked away quickly and bit their lips to keep from laughing out loud.

Cedar sat down on a rock to watch. Ruby loaded honey into the pockets of the rucksack on Peter's back. When his pack was full, Peter began to fill Ruby's.

At last Ruby and Peter had four pints each, and the empty jars lay on the ground. Granny Butler would clean them and refill them with honey. Granny Butler came out of the springhouse, and Ruby gave the honey money to her.

“Thank you, Ruby June. You can tell Miss Arbutus I appreciate her business, and pretty soon I'm gonna start making and selling molasses.”

“Okay. How much will you charge for it?”

“One pint for thirty cents, three pints for a dollar.”

A
FTER ENJOYING A COLD GLASS OF BUTTERMILK WITH
Granny Butler on her front porch, Ruby, Peter, and Cedar said goodbye to her and started back the way they had come.

But before they had gone far, Granny Butler called out, “Ruby June, let me have a private word with you.”

“Go ahead,” Ruby said to the brothers. “I'll catch up.”

The two boys continued toward the corn patch.

“Aristotle told me something else about you,” Granny Butler said softly to Ruby when they were alone.

“Really? What?”

“He said, and I quote, ‘The mystery of Ruby June is about to unravel.' ”

Ruby's blue eyes grew round and large. “No! He didn't!”

“Yes, he did. I would not tell you a lie.”

“Oh, I know you wouldn't. I'm . . . well, shocked, surprised. I don't know how to take it.”

“Just take it as it comes, and don't let it worry your pretty head,” Granny Butler said.

“How does Aristotle know so much?”

“He is older than the hills, and he knows everybody and remembers everything.”

“Is that all he said?”

“To tell you the truth, Ruby June, getting information from Aristotle is like trying to eat soup with a fork. Just ever' once in a while he gives you a morsel. He wouldn't say more than that, but he did say he heard it all from a panther.”

“A panther! There aren't any panthers in these hills!”

“No, but there usta be, my girl. There usta be.”

Granny Butler abruptly disappeared into her cabin, leaving Ruby alone, her mind racing with questions. She hurried along the path through the corn, only to find Peter and Cedar quarreling.

“**!!^^##**!!~~**!!” Cedar was hollering.

So much for promises.

Later Ruby could not recall much of the trip back down the mountain. She did vaguely remember Peter asking her once more why she lived in a boardinghouse, but she said she didn't feel like talking about it.

“It's okay,” Peter said quickly. “Some things are personal, and I didn't mean to get nosy.”

Back in the kitchen of The Roost, Miss Arbutus unstrapped the rucksack from Ruby's back, then Peter's. Cedar had stayed outside. Peter was saying goodbye at the
door when Miss Arbutus tried to press a quarter into his hand.

“No, ma'am,” he objected. “After that big breakfast I can't take money from you.”

Finally he agreed to take one pint of honey home to his family, and he was gone. Ruby felt a moment of regret that their time together was over, but she couldn't think of that right now because Granny Butler's words were going around and around in her head.

The mystery of Ruby June is about to unravel.

Miss Arbutus was studying her face. “What is it, Ruby June?”

“Just a headache,” Ruby said. It was true that her head had started to hurt. “Too much sun.”

She went to her room and lay down on the yellow-and-white ruffled bed. The pansy curtains moved slightly with the breeze, and outside she could hear some small children playing May I? on the sidewalk. She was reminded of past days when she was just a child herself playing that game. There were many such sweet memories of growing up in this fine old house with Miss Arbutus.

“Take two baby steps.”

“May I?”

“Yes, you may.”

“Take a giant step.”

The mystery of Ruby June is about to unravel.

“Uh-oh! You forgot to say
May I?
You have to go all the way back to the start line.”

Heard it from a panther.

“What am I afraid of?” Ruby asked herself. “Haven't I always wanted to know who I am, where I came from? Why else did I think of my parents all those nights and say to them, ‘Don't forget me. Woo-bee is right here waiting for you'?”

Sometimes she did feel like she was waiting for someone to come and get her. Someone who had just gone to the store or to the movies, leaving Miss Arbutus to babysit.

What would it be like to have a father? Some fathers were strict. Would he boss her around? Would he change everything?

She thought of the woman in the rocking chair who had haunted her in the wee hours of so many mornings. Yes, she had felt secure and loved when that woman was near because she was sure it was her mother, but now she felt threatened. Someone might take her away from all that she had grown to love. That was why she was afraid.

Later, as they manicured their nails, Ruby debated with herself about telling Miss Arbutus what Granny Butler had said. It would be nice to share it, she thought, but then again, maybe this was Granny Butler's imagination working overtime. Already the news had given Ruby a headache, so why worry Miss Arbutus with it?

T
HE NEXT DAY, AFTER COMPLETING HER ERRANDS
, R
UBY
was pulling the Radio Flyer up Busy Street toward home when she met Cedar Reeder walking in front of the doctors' office.

“Hey there, Cedar!” she greeted him. “Where's Peter?”

“Oh, he's looking after Bird and the kids. Daddy started working for Mayor Chambers today at the A&P.”

“And what are you up to?” she asked him.

“I was just walking down Ward Street minding my own business when this real old woman tried to kill me.”

“What!”

“I'm not foolin'. Lookee here!”

Cedar pulled his T-shirt aside, revealing a small red spot on his shoulder.

“That **##~~ old hag hit me with a rock, and I didn't do a thing to her!”

“It was only Mrs. Rife,” Ruby said. “She throws itty-bitty rocks. They don't hurt much.”

“Well, I'm gonna throw one back at her next time!” Cedar declared.

“Cedar! Don't you dare!” Ruby scolded him. “She's ninety years old!”

“I don't give a—”

But Cedar did not get a chance to finish because someone interrupted by yelling, “Hey there, Ruby June! Who're you talking to?”