There was a hole in the sleeve of her bathrobe, and her elbow got stuck in it while he was trying to get the bathrobe off.
“What’s wrong with your elbow?” he asked, as they were doing a sidestep toward the bedroom.
“Nothin’, it’s just an elbow,” Ruby murmured, between kisses.
28
“I saved to buy those curtains,” Ruby said, pointing. “I saved to buy these pillowcases. I saved to buy Dempsey’s coat.”
Charley smiled. “You was always the practical one, honey,” he said.
Ruby sat up in bed, turned, and smacked him hard. “Don’t call me honey when you ain’t even listening to what I’m trying to say,” she said. “I was tellin’ you what I went through to see that Dempsey had a decent life. You can’t walk in here and screw me, and just make up for five years.”
“Maybe not, but I gave it a good try, didn’t I?” Charley said.
Ruby tried to smack him again. Charley covered his head, and let her pound on his arms for a while.
“I bet you saved for this mattress, too,” he said, between blows. “That was real thoughtful of you. When a fella’s only got one shot, it’s nice to have a decent mattress, don’t you think?”
Ruby gave up, finally, and lay back down beside him, as close as she could get.
“You never did listen to me, Charley,” she said. “If you did, nothin’ bad would ever have happened, and we’d have six kids by now.”
“You might have six, but not me,” Charley teased. “I’d arrange to take a powder before I’d get stuck raisin’ six brats.”
Ruby raised up on one elbow and gave him a stern look, though she knew he was teasing her—they’d often talked about having a big family, before he’d gone off to St. Louis and then to jail.
“You better consider bein’ less cocky if you expect me to run off with you,” she told him. “Why would I run off with you anyway? It’d mean leaving everything I saved for.”
“I thought we’d go to Arkansas,” Charley said, putting his hands behind his head and looking up at the ceiling. “They got a real sleepy attitude toward the law, over in Arkansas. We could get us a house in Fort Smith somewhere, and eat a lot of catfish.”
“You better answer my question, Charley,” Ruby warned. “The fact we’re in this bed at this moment don’t mean quite as much as you think it means.”
“Shut up fussing, Ruby, my God,” Charley said, exasperated. “We belong together—you know it and I know it. I don’t care how many damn pillowcases you saved up for, that’s all in the past. We got the future to think about now.”
“Well, I’m gonna think about mine and Dempsey’s, that’s for sure,” Ruby said, testy. “You best give yours some thought, too.”
“I have,” Charley said, reaching for her. “Let’s enjoy a little more nooky, and when Dempsey gets home, we’ll head for the Arkansas line.”
Ruby couldn’t resist him—it was so easy with Charley—it was honest pleasure, something she had missed for so long she could hardly believe she was having it again.
Afterward, though, she felt sad for Lenny. Lenny was real sweet, and it wasn’t bad; it was just that she always knew she had to try, whereas with Charley, the pleasure came, unbidden and unstoppable.
When she told Charley she wanted to go say goodbye to Lenny face-to-face, Charley got real edgy.
“Naw, don’t do that, honey, just leave him a note,” Charley said, as they were packing the car. “It’d be easier for him that way.”
“Macaroni,” Ruby said. “Easier for you, maybe. You’re afraid he’ll talk me out of it.”
“He might,” Charley said. “After all, he’s a saint, and I ain’t. You could decide you’d rather have a saint.”
Ruby continued to fill the car with her things and Dempsey’s.
“We’re packing this car—I’m going with you,” Ruby said. “I’m going with you, and I ain’t gonna look back.”
“Then why not just leave the man a note?” Charley insisted. “After all, you told me in a letter you was divorcin’ me.”
Ruby stopped packing, and turned to him, hands on her hips and fire in her eyes.
“I ain’t a coward, Charley,” Ruby said, looking at him hard. “I done the best I could. This man was decent to me, and he was a good, kind father to Dempsey. Lenny never once laid a hand on our boy—if he needed to be spanked, I spanked him. I owe him an honest goodbye. It’ll kill him, but I can’t help it.”
Charley didn’t say anything—what could he say?
“I’m gonna do it face-to-face—not with no note,” Ruby said, again.
They finished packing the car. When Dempsey got home from school and realized they were leaving with Charley, he lit up like a Christmas tree. Ruby hurried him into the back seat of Charley’s car, and they left.
Then they drove downtown, and parked about a block from the bakery where Lenny worked. Charley let Dempsey sit in his lap and pretend to drive, while Ruby walked down to the bakery.
“Is Lenny coming?” Dempsey asked his father.
“I don’t think Lenny’s coming, son,” Charley replied.
“Daddy, are we going far away?” Dempsey asked. He had a sense that a big adventure was about to take place.
Lenny was covered with flour when Ruby walked into the back room of the bakery. He was kneading a huge, forty-pound lump of dough. Ruby strode in briskly, trying to feel businesslike. But she didn’t feel businesslike at all; she just felt sick to her stomach. She and Lenny had never had a bad fight. Once in a while, she would get up on the wrong side of the bed and try to pick one with him, but Lenny wouldn’t fight back hard enough to make it interesting. The worst he would do was bicker a little bit and look hurt.
The second Lenny looked at Ruby, he stopped kneading the dough and just stood there—he had something rabbitlike in his look that made Ruby want to club him on the spot, even though she loved him for his sweetness and his gentle ways. She made herself look him right in the eye.
“Charley came back,” she said. Then she took a deep breath and said the rest, all at once.
“Dempsey and me are going away with him. They’re in the car now, waiting. It ain’t fair, Lenny. You’ve been as sweet to me as any man could be, and you’ve been just as sweet to Dempsey. I hate having to hurt you, but I can’t help this. I belong with Charley, that’s just the way it is.”
Lenny stood there, his hands in the dough up to his elbows. He looked at Ruby with the rabbit look, a dull, numb anguish in his eyes.
“I thank you for all you’ve done,” Ruby said, her voice shaking.
“I don’t want your goddamn thanks, Ruby,” Lenny said, a shaking in his own voice. “I wanted to live with you the rest of my life.”
“I know, honey,” Ruby said softly. “I know.”
She gave him a little kiss, then she turned and left. Lenny never took his hands out of the dough.
When old Mr. Crocker, the owner of the bakery, came into the back room a little later, Lenny was sobbing. Tears ran off his cheeks and down his arms, right into the dough. The surface of the dough was shiny with tears; they were even dripping off the kneading bench, onto the floor.
Old Mr. Crocker was shocked: he would never have expected such behavior of Lenny—he had always been a steady man.
“Why, look here, son!”he said, in his shock. “Now you’ve ruint that whole batch of dough. We’ll be behind all day.”
Lenny took his hands out of the dough, turned his back on Mr. Crocker, and dropped to his knees. He sobbed so hard that Mr. Crocker could see his back shaking.
Old Mr. Crocker hardly knew what to do. His wife was in the beauty parlor next door, getting a permanent—he had a sudden urge to run and get her. She was better in such situations than he was. His wife was from a crying family and had experience, since her mother and all six of her sisters would cry if they popped a button, or dropped a nickel through a crack in the floor. His wife would know what to do with Lenny. But she was in the beauty parlo
r, and she wouldn’t appreciate being disturbed. They had been married forty-six years; Mr. Crocker thought he could make that judgment with confidence.
Finally he decided against disturbing Ella. Lenny wasn’t sobbing quite as hard now; perhaps he would be able to calm down of his own accord. Mr. Crocker had no idea what was wrong. Perhaps the boy’s appendix had burst, or perhaps he had just learned that his ma had shot his pa, or something. Such catastrophes were not uncommon, and either one would explain the sobs.
Old Mr. Crocker walked around the kneading table and looked at the forty pounds of ruined dough. It looked as if Lenny might have punched it a few times with his fists, as well as crying all over it.
He decided that despite the ruined dough, his first comment might have been too harsh. What was a lump of dough, if the boy’s father had been shot and killed by his mother?
“Now, that’s all right, son,” old Mr. Crocker said. “That’s all right. We can always make up some more dough.”
29
Ruby was dead silent for almost a hundred miles. Charley and Dempsey tried to josh her, but it didn’t work. She looked straight ahead down the road, not responding to either one of them, not speaking. Dempsey jumped up and down in the back seat, something that would usually have brought an immediate reprimand. His mother just ignored him.
“Ain’t you gonna make him stop jumping?” Charley asked.
Ruby said nothing.
“He oughtn’t to jump in the car. Sit down, son!” Charley finally yelled.
Dempsey sat down for five minutes, and then started jumping again.
“Honey, say something,” Charley pleaded. “I can’t do nothing with this child.”
“Start learning, buster—you’re his pa,” Ruby said, taking a nail file out of her purse. Charley looked over at her nervously. She was stony. Maybe she was planning to stab him with the nail file. A man he knew in prison had an eye gouged out by a nail file, and it had been wielded by the man’s wife.
“What’d I do?” Charley asked. “What’d I do?”
Ruby turned, and looked at him coldly. You idiot, you know what you did, was what Charley construed the look to mean.
At supper, in a little cafe just across the Arkansas line, Ruby finally broke her silence. They ordered catfish, and Dempsey started throwing hush puppies at a little boy sitting next to them. When he threw the third hush puppy, Ruby grabbed him and gave him a hard shaking.
“I’ve taught you better, Dempsey,” she said. “We don’t throw food.”
“He was looking at me!” Dempsey protested.
“Go apologize to that couple, Charley,” Ruby instructed.
Charley was taken by surprise. “Me?” he asked.
“Ain’t your name Charley?” Ruby whispered, through clenched teeth.
“Why me? I didn’t throw nothing,” Charley said.
Ruby looked at him.
“You haven’t got any easier to live with, you know that?” Charley said. He was getting hot under the collar.
“Lenny didn’t have much trouble living with me,” Ruby said. “If I’m too hard to deal with, you can take us back to Coffeyville.”
“No, Mama—I want to stay with Daddy,” Dempsey said.
“Then you two go and apologize to that nice little boy and his ma and pa,” she said. “Go on, before I lose my patience with both of you.”
“Let’s go, bud—Ma’s mad at us,” Charley said.
Charley led Dempsey the three steps to the other table. The little boy, a redhead, was eating one of the hush puppies. His parents, both tired, looked up wearily.
“Sorry, folks,” Charley said. “My boy’s been cooped up in the car all day, I guess he couldn’t hold his mischief in no longer.”
“Where you folks from?” the tired woman asked. Her husband was mad at her because the food was taking so long to come, although it was her husband who ordered.
“Sallisaw,” Charley said. “We’re bound for the Arkansas flats.”
“I didn’t know it was flat around Fort Smith,” Ruby said. “I had the notion it was hilly.”
“It is,” Charley said.
“Then why did you tell that woman we was bound for the flats?” she asked.
“Can’t I say anything right?” Charley asked. “Every time I open my mouth, you jump down my throat.”
“If you said something true, maybe I wouldn’t,” Ruby informed him. “It doesn’t have to be smart … just true.”
“I feel like hanging myself in the barn,” he said.
“What barn? You ain’t got a barn!” Ruby pointed out emphatically.
“I guess I could find a goddamn barn and hang myself in it if I tried—there’s thousands of barns in Arkansas!” Charley said, so loudly that everyone in the restaurant jumped.
Dempsey burst into tears, and so, after a moment, did the little redheaded boy who was eating Dempsey’s hush puppies.
Ruby smiled.
“Got your goat, didn’t I?” she said.
Charley threw some money on the table to pay for the catfish, and stormed out the door.
“Mama, Daddy left!” Dempsey said, upset. “Go get him, please? Please?”
“It’s all right, honey, he won’t go far,” Ruby said, calmly. “Put your coat on.”
Charley stood behind the car, smoking, when Ruby and Dempsey came out. Dempsey looked worried, until he saw Charley—then he beamed.
“Hi, Daddy,” he said.
“Hi, bud,” Charley replied. He let out a sigh.
“Charley, stop feeling sorry for yourself and get in the car,” Ruby said. “I may let up on you. The worst may be over.”
Charley got in the car, but he continued to look stiff.
“Daddy, can I help drive?” Dempsey asked. “I like sitting on your lap.”
“It’s getting dark, son,” Charley told him. “You can help me drive tomorrow.”
By the time they reached the Arkansas River, Dempsey was sound asleep, curled in the back seat under his little coat.
“Let’s get a house with an upstairs, when we get to Fort Smith,” Charley said. “Remember how we used to talk about how we’d raise our kids in a two-story house?”
“I remember,” Ruby said, in a friendly tone. Then she scooted across the seat, and leaned her head against Charley’s shoulder.
“I remember all that stuff we used to dream about,” she said. “Reckon there’s a chance some of our dreams can still come true?”
“Well, we can get a two-story house,” Charley said. “That’d be a start.”
Suddenly, Ruby felt a great tiredness come over her—it was as if she’d had to stay awake for five years in order to guard her child. But now, Charley had come back, and she could rest. She took Charley’s free hand in both of hers.
She started to tell him she loved him, but before she could get the words out, Ruby fell sound asleep.
BOOK THREE
1931–1933
1
Ruby was painting their new name on the mailbox when she saw a policeman pull in the driveway across the street from them. The sight unnerved her, but she went on painting the name on the mailbox anyway. After much discussion, Ruby and Charley had decided to call themselves the Hamiltons. They even told Dempsey that he had to remember his new name.
“Okay,” Dempsey said. Both his parents looked solemn when they made the request, so solemn that he felt he shouldn’t ask why his name had to be Hamilton when they moved into their new house. Dempsey didn’t really care what his name was. He had a room of his own, and it was upstairs, and there was a swing in the back yard, and his father had promised to take him fishing in the river.
The policeman noticed Ruby painting the name on the mailbox—she smiled at him; he tipped his cap to her briefly, and then went on into his house. He was a heavy man, and walked slowly, as if he were tired.
Ruby forced herself to finish painting the name on the mailbox, but the minute she got back in the house, she shot up the stairs two at a time
to wake Charley. He had been putting one of their new beds together, but had lost interest and was taking a nap on the mattress.
“Charley, wake up, there’s a cop next door,” Ruby said.
Charley had just gone to sleep. He sat up, his hair tousled, and tried to collect his wits.
“Next door which way?” he asked, wondering if he had managed to get a pistol up to the second floor. He and Ruby had put Dempsey in his new school, and then spent a whole day buying furniture, and kitchen stuff, and whatnot. The whole two-story house was filled with beds and couches and lamps and frying pans and rugs and curtains, most of the stuff not yet fully unpacked. Charley had gotten a big kick out of seeing how happy Ruby looked while they were buying the furniture, but he got far less of a kick out of unpacking it and arranging it. He had several guns with him, but he had no idea where they were—still in the car, probably, and the cops were next door.
“Not next door, across the street,” Ruby corrected. “It scared me so bad I got mixed up.”
“How many are they?” Charley asked, digging in a box of soap and washrags, hoping he might have stuck a pistol in it for some reason.
“How many what?” Ruby asked, confused.
“How many cops are next door? Get a grip,” Charley said.
“You get a grip, you ain’t even got your shirt on,” Ruby said. It always ticked her off when Charley told her to calm down. The least little upset, and he acted like she was a raving maniac.
“How many cops are next door?” he demanded. “You started this conversation, what do you think it’s about?”
“Don’t yell at me,” Ruby said. “There’s just one cop, and he’s across the street. I think he may live there.”
Charley sighed, and then he flopped back onto the mattress.
“Why’d you wake me up, then, if that’s all the news?” Charley asked. But he wasn’t really mad. He was barefoot, and he stuck his foot up under her skirt, and tried to feel her with his toes.
“Don’t do that!” Ruby said, jumping back. “Your feet smell. What are we gonna do about the policeman?”