A Virtuous Ruby (12 page)

“I’ll have to figure this out.”

Adam pushed the half-empty plate away from him. Now he wasn’t eating and her stomach clenched. That was her fault too. “He’ll never let you continue your studies. Not in any way.”

“Why do you say that? I can do it.”

Adam gave a short laugh and wiped his mouth with a napkin. His pink lips had been all shiny from the pork chop and the shininess made them so appealing. “He’s not an educated man, no matter how much he told the congregation. I did some looking into him. He has no diploma. He told you all some far away, fairy story, never imagining someone from the real Tennessee would come and check him out.”

Ruby shook her head. “I can’t say I am shocked.”

“People like him don’t want to see anyone else get an education either. Were you to become Mrs. Dodge, there would be an end to all of that. He doesn’t strike me as kindly either.”

“I think that’s part of the deal. My shame is covered up, I get to be seen as a good person and he does whatever he likes when we are alone.” A chill went up Ruby’s spine as she thought of the implications. Her life, which seemed so full of promise and wonder before, like Uncle Arlo told, and the doctor made her feel with nursing school, stretched out before her like an eternity.

Remembrances of her encounter with David came back to her mind, and the thought of having to live out the attack every day made her quake with fear. God was a kind, and protective force.

Had He turned His back on her again?

As He did in the day in the cotton field?

God would not ignore her cries for help, but she couldn’t deny he seemed displeased with her. She didn’t know what the truth was anymore.

Chapter Eleven

Loud, thunking noises woke Adam early in the morning a few days later, and raised alarm. Fear shot up his arms in horror and he sat straight up in the bed. Had another lynching occurred in the night? His heart began to pound. He didn’t want to have to see another bloody face like Travis’s again.

The noise was more than usual for Sunday morning. He pulled on his shirt and a pair of pants and made himself presentable enough to open the door. The noise came from Lona and Mags in the kitchen, rushing to prepare a meal. Mags smiled at him, but Lona did not. “Good morning, ladies.”

“Good morning, Dr. Morson,” Mags said. “I’m sorry if we woke you, but we got a lot to do today what with church in the morning and then the town picnic and fireworks and all at night. So we in here rushing around now. I hope we didn’t wake you.”

Adam held up a protesting hand. “I’ll be fine. And I want to help you in any way I can.”

“If you want to be of help, you need to marry my daughter.” Lona stuck a long fork-like implement into a piece of frying chicken with extra special attack. Some juice ran out of the chicken and hit the pan with a resounding sizzle.

“Mama, stop,” Mags begged. Mags’s humiliation at her mother’s remarks appeared as a russet undertone under her maple-colored skin.

Adam gave Mags a small smile and stepped over into the larger front room where the family was all in a bustle. The younger girls had dressed in navy blue middies and skirts. John had gathered himself to put on his best brown suit.

No Ruby. His heart sank just a little bit, wondering.

He sat down at the table next to Delie. “Miss Delie.”

“Dr. Morson,” Delie said, in the grown-up way she could talk. “Ruby is in our room feeding Solomon if you wanted to know.”

“Can’t I just sit here with you?” Adam smiled down at her.

“You could, Doctor, sir, but I know you wanted to know.” Delie gave him her usual admiring glance. Adam reached for the jug of milk John had drawn from their cows that morning.

Was his admiration for Ruby so transparent? Even to a five-year-old? His regard showed too much. He should go to Ruby and just tell her they should get married, but Ruby would balk to any kind of heavy handedness. She had enough to deal with in thinking about her strategy to reject Dodge’s proposal.

As Adam sipped slowly at a glass of milk, Ruby brought in Solomon to sit with them at the breakfast table. She dressed him in a little navy blue sailor suit. He looked so cute and welcoming, Adam couldn’t compress a laugh at how eager he seemed. The baby held his arms out to him and Adam perched him on his knee. “He looks hungry.”

“I know. I keep nursing him and nursing him.”

“Remember, he needs food. As he grows, his stomach grows too. He needs something more substantial. Try breaking off some of the biscuit to give to him with some ham cut up fine.”

Lona came out and slapped another pan of biscuits on the table. Adam’s heart twisted a bit to see one or two of the fine, light biscuits leap out of the pan and land on the table. He had to admit, there were none lighter or finer. Adam picked up the ones that had landed on the clean table and put them on his plate.

“We ain’t having ham this morning, we having bacon,” Lona muttered.

As if on cue, Mags came right behind Lona with a plate of bacon. Typically, the family used the biscuits to make a sandwich for themselves. It would hold them until lunch.

“Bacon then, just avoid the fat.”

Lona came around the table with a butter dish in her hand. “Ain’t no fat on my bacon. I fry it out.”

Adam cleared his throat. Lona was in rare form this morning. He thought of the pressures she was under and tried to be more understanding. “Of course.”

Ruby went to reach for the baby but Solomon was quite comfortable on Adam’s lap. Adam reached for one of the biscuits and crumbled it onto the plate before him. He gave some of the pieces to Solomon, who made some funny faces but ate greedily. Seeing Lona was right about the bacon, he gave some to the baby who smacked his little lips between each bite. Adam had such a good time feeding Solomon he didn’t notice Ruby. When he adjusted Solomon on his lap, he looked up and a hangdog expression was etched across her freckles. “Are you okay, Ruby?”

He certainly hoped so. Was she still upset at the events of last night? Why couldn’t he provide some reassurance that all would be well? Instead, he was making everything worse and more confusing for her. He longed to be the one to take the worry from her, and to let her know everything would be fine. Adam stopped feeding Solomon and gave Ruby his full attention.

This did not sit well with Solomon and he began to protest by kicking out his little legs with strength and vigor, much to the delight of his aunts and grandfather. Adam crumbled up a little more biscuit to give to him. “I just never seen him taking food from someone’s hand, instead of me. He growing up,” Ruby mused. “He won’t even need me for food no more.”

“I told you it was going to happen,” Lona bit into her bacon sandwich with more gusto. “You would rather listen to some fancy doctor man than to your mother.”

Ruby held out her arms for the baby and Solomon went into them. There were crumbs on Adam’s pant leg and he absently began to brush them off. “Let me help you,” Ruby said and gathered up a white napkin. She started brushing but stopped and blushed when she realized where she was brushing. Forbidden territory. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Adam whispered. He felt very stirred by Ruby’s intimate gesture. He wanted her to help him, but knew where she was brushing was trouble.

“It wouldn’t matter if he were your husband,” Lona harrumphed.

“I would love a brother,” Delie said out loud into the room, which had grown quiet at Lona’s declaration.

Adam reached over and made a quick sandwich out of a split biscuit, peach preserves and bacon. “Excuse me, I’m going to make sure the car is ready to go this morning.”

He sat down with his sandwich on the porch. Consuming the sandwich in equal quarters he thought of his mother, who, in many ways was Ruby’s twin in fate and fortune. She too had been compromised by someone she knew. His mother, Matilda, had been a maid in the Winslow household in back in Tennessee. She was only fifteen when she started working there when the youngest son, Paul, began showing an interest in her.

What must she have gone through? Mattie was a smart girl, and an aunt of hers, Lizzie, had told him Matilda got the job to save money to go away to high school. None in the family wanted her to work in that house. However, Matilda, tempted by the ease of the money and the work, did her job well. She even knew how to do the maid work in an efficient and productive way. In her extra time, she accessed the library in the house, to keep up her studies.

Paul must have known this. Adam’s gooseflesh came up when he thought of how Paul Winslow must have tempted her with those books, the very instruments of learning she so desired, and lost when she became pregnant.

People thought the pregnancy an absolute scandal and they cast Mattie out. The heartbreak of being treated so shabbily led her to let go of life just after having him. After his Aunt Lizzie told him the story, Adam became convinced he should make medicine his life’s work, and sought to help others avoid such a sad and miserable end. Of course, the money Paul Winslow provided helped him as well as assuaging his own guilt over how he must have lured Mattie, however indirectly, to her demise.

Finishing his sandwich, he sat back and sighed, thinking it would be a very busy day. The Bledsoes began to trickle outside and he stood up to go back in the house to put on his church clothes. He hoped he would have time to explain to Ruby what he wanted to do with his life, so she could understand he had to help her and Solomon. He promised his mother’s memory.

Knowing what the day held, Ruby dressed almost like her sisters in a navy blue skirt and a lightweight white middy so she looked like a feminine duplication of a sailor. She had a small boater of natural straw she wore, instead of one of her usual big hats. The naval look toned her down. She didn’t need to call attention to herself with her plan.

When the Bledsoes arrived at First Water, everyone was very cordial to her.

Too nice.

Did they know Dodge proposed to her? Or was it because of the way Adam had returned?

She glanced over at Lona, to see if her mother knew anything at all about this warm embrace of her, and her sin, but Lona’s face was wreathed in sorrow. Her posture was as if she were at a funeral instead of a regular Sunday morning church service. Tears slid openly down her cheeks.

Ruby wanted to cry too, cry at the pain of being a constant reminder of the horror her mother had endured, but Ruby had to live her own life. She could do nothing to change her origins.

Dodge, of course, was giving her his best smile, and Ruby cringed. She had promised him an answer by the end of today, and she just didn’t know how she was going to reject him. He had to see, somehow, being married to her would make his life worse, not better. Was he so infatuated with her?

She looked up at him once more.

He was.

He couldn’t even keep the text straight on the prodigal son and did more of his improvising of the story. “Just because you have done something wrong doesn’t mean God doesn’t love you,”

“Yes, Lord,” Lona echoed.

“God loves you.”

“He does, yes He does.” Lona would be his support today.

“I want to hear someone give a testimony today,” Dodge went down in front of the church and spread his arms wide. “Somebody, talk about the love of God. Somebody, testify.”

Ruby managed to refrain from doing so. What kind of daughter was she not to want to comfort her mother in her distress? What kept her from helping her mother, from being moved at seeing Lona’s shoulders shaking from weeping, and John rubbing her back trying to comfort her?

Fear. At becoming Mrs. Dodge. She had wetness of her own collecting underneath her arms and in her bosom at the thought of it.

“I want someone to talk about the goodness of God. I want someone to say, Amen,”

Everyone in the church said it, but no one came forward. A whoosh of air went up in front of her. Now she couldn’t see. Her view was partially blocked because Adam stood up. Why was Adam standing up in front of her? Why was he the only one standing? Oh no.

All of the clapping, whispering, praying out loud in the church ceased. Even Lona’s sobs calmed down. Everyone focused on Adam, expectantly, and even Dodge had the good grace to look shocked.

“Yes, Brother Morson?”

Dodge didn’t call him doctor.

“I want to talk about God’s goodness in how he gives life. I’m a doctor. I’ve seen many things during my training where the situation seemed hopeless, and the person finds a way to pull through. It’s a wonder and a blessing,”

“Amen,” Doris Bomead said.

“There was a time when, a few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of taking care of little Solomon here. He was mighty sick. God led me to know how to take care of him. And I just want to say I’m thankful.”

“Amen, amen,” Doris Bomead said, supporting Adam and the emotion in the church shifted. To Adam.

“When he was sick,” Adam warmed to his words, “he needed prayer. Some here, they didn’t want to pray. Didn’t want to visit such a child.”

Not a sound echoed in the church.

Had First Water ever been really quiet with folks in it? Ruby could never recall someone who had the audacity to confront everyone in First Water. Or when the normally noisy church had been so quiet.

“Maybe they knew who his father was. But one thing,” Adam intoned, gripping a pew in front of him, warming further to his task, “even if we don’t know who his biological father is, we know who his Heavenly Father is.”

“Amen,” Mags nodded her head and giving Solomon a squeeze on his little leg.

“And it’s his Heavenly Father who matters. That’s who matters now, and everlastingly. This child.”

“Yes!” Delie said aloud, urging Adam on. Some laughed.

Ruby didn’t.

“This child is a blessing. We must never, ever forget it. He’s here because of God’s goodness to us.”

The church quieted once more as he laid a hand on Solomon’s little nearly hairless head.

“Amen,” Adam sat down. To Ruby, he looked spent.

“Praise him!” Doris Bomead yelled, and the whole church joined her as they clapped. Clapping? Ruby squeezed her eyes shut. Things got loud at First Water all the time, but people very rarely clapped.

Adam, located a whole pew away from her, stared off into nothing and would not meet her eyes. He had sat next to Mags and not to her. He chose to sit so far from her today, which made her sad, but he must have had his reasons.

Yet, the distance gave her the space to contemplate him, to see him sitting there, looking pristine and crisp in his tan linen suit. Even as he sat back down, he took out a kerchief and wiped his forehead. On the edge of the row, people behind him clapped him on the shoulder as he folded the kerchief and put it back into his suit pocket.

“Yes, well, we sure thank our guest, Brother Morson, for his words, yes we do,” Dodge said haltingly. Ruby could tell he was not pleased at just having been upstaged and laid out all at the same time. She wanted to put a hand up to her mouth and giggle, but today of all days, she must have the correct reaction and approach. She couldn’t react like Delie, as her imp of a sister down the row, giggled just for her.

Ruby reached over, lifted Solomon and kissed the little wisp of light-colored hair on his head. As she situated Solomon on her lap, she wished Adam would look at her and see her as someone who was worthy of him. She wasn’t proper nor was she an elegantly dressed doctor’s wife, leading high society.

A doctor’s wife would need to be educated and have pretty clothes. And to be that, it would take years to get her high school diploma, and nursing school. By the time she had her education, he would probably be long gone elsewhere.

Her best and only option was Dodge. He wanted her the way that she was now. She wouldn’t have to change anything.

Ruby shivered. She didn’t want Dodge or to be a minister’s wife. And she wasn’t going to change no matter how people wanted it, including Lona.