A Virtuous Ruby (23 page)

“I never said I would.”

“Who else would do it? You’re perfect.”

“I haven’t done no baptism in years.” Brother Carver’s round face was a puzzle. “Ain’t got no robe.”

“You don’t need no robe, old man,” Sister Jane said. “I’ma be right there to hold up the Bible for you.”

“It’s a fine idea.”

“Only one to baptize in the creek is Reverend Dodge,” Lona drew out.

“Then we should do it while Brother Carver is still here,” Ruby said and the whole room turned toward her. “It’s the best time. When?”

“I’m ready right now.”

“Now?” Ruby asked him in a small voice.

“Now.” Adam faced her. “I need you to come with me to wash all of my sins away, will you? Help me?”

The room was silent. And the first brightness appeared on her face. “I will. I will help.”

“Let’s go then!” Delie shouted and the room became a whirl as breakfast dishes were cleared away. “We going to the creek for a baptism party! Praise God!”

The entire room laughed, but Adam watched Ruby’s face, willing her brightness to stay there with him, present and strong.

Chapter Twenty-Three

The group went into the small woods and creek behind the Bledsoe farm. They were all happy and celebrating. Ruby knew she should have gladness in her heart, but the sight of David in the woods made her want to grip something and hold it tight. Instead, she carried Solomon and kept kissing his forehead, while he happily babbled on her shoulder. The gladness bubbled inside her at seeing Adam, looking satisfied despite his prison gear that was too tight and small, and showing off his bulging muscles to a great advantage.

Her sponsor him? How was it possible?

The Bledsoes and Sister Jane lined up on the side of the small creek while Brother Carver and Adam waded in, only thigh deep for Adam. Ruby watched while kissing Solomon and holding him tightly, her hands clammy and cold.

“Ruby Jean? You got to come in.”

Lona reached for Solomon and tried to take him but Ruby held on.

“I don’t think I’m the right sponsor. What about Daddy?”

“He didn’t ask for me, Ruby. He asked for you.” John Bledsoe shook his head.

“It’s chilly. I might catch cold in that creek and pass it on to the baby.”

The celebratory chatter stopped and everyone looked at Ruby. She knew why. For her to say that she didn’t want to be in the creek? Something was wrong.

Adam held his hand out. “Please. Come.”

The kindness on his handsome features was so welcoming, Ruby nearly believed that she could be clean in that creek water. “Come on, Sister Ruby. In the creek with you.”

Sister Jane took Solomon up into her sure arms. “Go on, honey.”

Ruby stepped forward slowly with the small pebbles in the creek stabbing at her feet until she stood next to Adam.

“Brother Adam. Do you take up God’s promise to man that to be baptized is to be washed clean in his word?”

“Say, I do,” Ruby cued him.

“I do.” Adam reached over and palmed her hand in his big one.

“Then in the word of God, you are born again, and are clean. Come over and be baptized anew,” Brother Carver boomed out and Adam kneeled down to receive the water on his forehead, but Brother took him over backwards and he laid out in the small creek. Adam sprang up wet from head to toe, glasses still firmly in place, but laughing joyfully.

The entire bank of Bledsoes laughed and cheered at the sight. Even Ruby smiled at the creek water dripping down off of the tall doctor. He stepped over to her. “Doesn’t the sponsor give a kiss at the baptism?”

“Yes,” Ruby shook a little.

He reached down, quite a task for the tall doctor and kissed her on the cheek with a chaste protectiveness.

“That wasn’t no real kiss!” Sister Jane shouted out and Solomon gurgled, as if he agreed with her.

“It was a sponsor kiss,” Ruby shouted back, catching some of their gladness.

“And what about you?” Adam spoke into her ear.

“What do you mean?”

“You should be clean too.”

“I was only here to watch you. I’m not trying to be wet.” Ruby started to make her way out of the creek to the baby and Adam grabbed her by her wrist, pulling her back. She was jerked off her feet and in the creek before she knew it. The water surrounded her and she began to breathe as she knew to, under the water, where everything was distorted and felt so clear and clean.

Clean.

She popped up out of the water and cleared it from her face. “What? What was that?”

Adam’s face was serious and grim. “You’re washed clean too, before God, Ruby. I’m washed of my sins. So are you.”

He reached down and gave her a real kiss on her lips and his sudden actions and the stones in the creek cutting at her feet threatened to sweep her away.

“What is going on here?” The sound of a different male voice broke them apart. Dodge.

“We having a baptizing party,” Delie’s little voice piped up in the warm July air.

“Only one to be having any baptizing parties is me. I’m the ordained minister at First Water. I does this. Not no traveling preacher men.”

“Beg pardon, Brother Dodge. I been doing this before you was born, I believe,” Brother Carver said with the genuine insult in his voice. It hurt Ruby to hear his hurt feelings.

“And I asked him to do it.” Adam faced Dodge and put Ruby firmly next to him.

“Well, then. I don’t mind telling you that it didn’t take. You still a sinner in God’s eyes. Even if you’re clean of the dirt of the chain gang.”

“Well now. It isn’t for you to say who is a sinner in God’s eyes,” Adam shouted.

“I don’t agree with you, Doctor. I am what I say. And to dip her in that old creek water. Well now. She’s the one who is unclean in God’s eyes.”

John Bledsoe was about to speak, in a not nice way, but Lona put a hand on him. “Is there something we can help you with, Reverend? We just having a picnic on this beautiful day.”

“I come by to make sure everything fine since the doctor got on the gang, but I see he got off again. Slippery fellow, isn’t he?”

“You see I’m here. You can go now.”

“And that’s what I come to tell you all. I’m leaving. Going back to Tennessee. Where I come from.”

“Good,” Adam said. “Tell all the home folks I said hello, ’cause I’m never going back there.”

“Not so sure you be welcome.”

“I wouldn’t want the woman who is to be my new wife,” Adam put an arm around her shoulders, “to be uncomfortable in such a place. I’ve shed Tennessee for good. God’s traveling mercies on you to go back there.”

Brother Carver made his way back to the creek bank. “Amen to that.”

Their nonchalant attitude at his leaving seemed to make Dodge even angrier. He was such a sad person, Ruby resolved as Dodge walked to his horse in a huff. Being in Adam’s arms, the dip in the creek, seeing Dodge ride away, should have lifted everything from her, but it did not. As Adam helped her from the creek, she wondered—what would?

Adam knew Ruby was still thinking of the attack and how it made her unsuitable to be his wife. There was nothing he could say or do to make it right for her. He could tell her all day long about how wonderful and virtuous she was to him, and she still would feel as if she was less than deserving.

He resolved just to stay by her side in whatever way possible for strength. It was all he could do, he realized as they all sat down. Everyone laughed and smiled, but they could still see Ruby wore her shame like a garment she refused to shed. Could Lona tell her something to make her understand? Sister Jane? He didn’t know. Shame was a jail. He had found his way free of it, and he could only hope she would as well.

He would never have thought it possible a month ago, but he felt better to go to revival later. He and Ruby held hands as they drove to the tent together and sat in the uplifting service. It was truly a miracle, how much these people found joy in their faith, even as they lived hard lives. Their joy in living made him feel ashamed as to how long he carried his own shame around.

At the revival that night, people were especially joyous at his return. As Brother Carver and Sister Jane took down the tempo from one joyous hymn, a shuffle stirred in the back of the tent.

He turned around and David Winslow came down the aisle. The sheen of sweat he had seen on him that morning was thicker and more pronounced. Adam longed to go to the man to help him. David staggered to the front. People might have thought he had been drinking, but Adam knew better. David was ill. He stood up and watched his brother and, as loud and joyous as the tent had been, it was quiet now.

“Brother, I—” David tripped up the aisle and stood in front of Brother Carver. “I used to come in here when I was little.”

“I remembers you, sir,” Brother Carver said in a sympathetic way.

“I’ve sinned.”

“We have all sinned. That’s why we are here.”

Ruby’s hand was on her mouth with tears streaming down her face. Adam put a hand on her shoulder to comfort her.

“Please, Brother, you don’t understand.”

“I understands you. You looking for God’s forgiveness.”

“I did wrong. I did wrong in his eyes, and I want him to know.”

“He knows. He knows and forgives you.” Brother Carver pressed a hand to David’s shoulder, something as a Negro, he wouldn’t have dared to do anywhere else. Here, in the revival tent, Brother Carver’s power came from a higher source.

David fell to his knees under Brother Carver’s touch. “Please, help me. I need for God to know, I’m sorry.”

“Amen,” Adam heard Lona say.

A wail right next to him made his spine tingle. Adam hadn’t realized it, but it was Ruby. She stood next to him and wailed from right under his arm.

David wailed too, and his body folded in front of Brother Carver, who uttered words of forgiveness over and over again, blessing David. Adam folded Ruby into his arms even deeper and held her as she wept loudly and copiously. All of his attention was on comforting Ruby until Sister Jane’s voice came, sharp and loud, “Something’s wrong. Doctor, quick.”

He handed the sobbing Ruby to her mother, where they both began sobbing together. He went to where Sister’s voice had stirred him, over to David. David had folded over in supplication before, but now his body was stick straight, his eyes glassy, almost as if he were having a fit. “I need my ba—” Adam gestured over his shoulder and he imagined Delie or one of the Bledsoe sisters would bring it to him. One of them did, but it was Ruby.

“What is the matter with him?”

“He looks as if he’s having a fit.” Adam snapped his eyes up. “I need to get him into an open place. He needs some air.”

Bob stood up. “We can take him on up to the house. Something wrong with Mr. David, Miss Mary be wanting him at home.”

Bob lifted David’s thin body into his arms and Adam followed him. Ruby hovered at his elbow. “You go on. I’ll help treat him.”

“I’ll come with you,” Ruby said quietly.

“Are you sure?”

“Whither you goest, I will go,” Ruby quoted, so determined.

Gladness rose in his chest, but he didn’t want her to feel worse about herself. “It may take a while.”

“That is what a wife does, when she helps her husband.” Ruby fitted her hand in the crook of his arm. “Let’s go.”

Had Ruby just accepted his proposal?

As he brought Ruby forward to the car, he walked with a lighter step and flexed his hands as he focused on doing what he had to do to help David.

He had a home. What a treasure it was to be able to have a home. Even in his doctor’s mindset, his heart and his life had changed.

Thank you. Please be with me as I help this man—my brother.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Ruby sat up front in the car with Bob while Adam tended to David in the back. She asked in a loud voice, “What do you think is wrong with him?”

“He might have tuberculosis.”

“The galloping consumption?” Ruby asked and Bob blinked his eyelids more quickly and drove up the road a little faster.

“Lawd a mercy, I can’t get no TB and take it home to Agnes and the girls.”

“And the baby,” Ruby said to him.

“What about your baby?”

“Solomon will be fine. I got to help Adam.”

“The consumption’s catchy.”

“I know. My place is with him now.” Ruby patted Bob’s arm. “It’s going to be okay.”

They encountered the front of the Winslow house first, but Bob, as dutiful as ever, drove around the back and prepared to carry David into the back door.

“What’s wrong with him?” one of the cooks called out.

Bob called back, “Get Miss Mary and tell her Mr. David fell out at the revival.”

“Praise, God. He got saved?”

“He got saved, but this is after. He sick.”

They went through the kitchen into the front of the house and Bob prepared to climb the stairs with David in his arms. As Ruby came through the kitchen carrying some supplies Adam needed from his car, Mrs. Winslow screamed. She went into the parlor where Mary Winslow was and Bob had her son in his arms.

“Let them take him to his room,” Ruby put a hand on Mrs. Winslow’s lace-covered thin arm to stop her. As she touched the papery skin under the lace, Ruby realized it was the first time she had ever touched this important woman.

“What’s going on? What’re you all doing here?”

“David came to the revival tent, and he fell out. He has lost consciousness,” Ruby said.

“I didn’t even know he had left the house. What’s wrong with him?”

“Take him upstairs,” Adam directed Bob.

Mrs. Winslow sat down in Paul Winslow’s big overstuffed chair.

“He hasn’t gone to revival since he was little. Why did he go? He’s probably caught some dreadful disease from you people.”

Ruby breathed, unable to take in this woman’s irrational hatred. She calmed herself and tried to think about it from Mary Winslow’s perspective. What if it were Solomon?

A short time ago, it had been Solomon.

She took a breath. “Dr. Morson thinks it may be TB, the galloping consumption.” Ruby nodded her head at him and he disappeared up the stairs, following Bob.

“Then he got some dread disease from going around to those camps looking for the doctor. Now he’s sick. How can this happen?”

“I’m sorry, ma’am. I came with Adam to see how I could help.”

Mary Winslow looked at her and gave a laugh. “You’re just an ignorant colored girl. What can you do to help?”

“I can nurse him.”

Mary Winslow stood up. “I’ll nurse my son. And I’ll send to get a real doctor in town.” She gathered her skirts to prepare to go up the stairs.

Ruby stood up and matched her, toe to toe. “You can do whatever you want. The doctor can help until the other doctor gets here. And I intend to help him.”

“Get out of my way. You’re nothing but trouble, and have always been nothing but trouble. Get out of this house and get out of my parlor.” Mrs. Winslow swept past her and went up the stairs.

Ruby sank down in the chair. She should leave as she had been told, because she did not want to cause any trouble, but she could not abandon Adam. She
would
not abandon Adam. She got on her knees and prayed.

Bob came downstairs and spoke to her in a shaky, soft halting voice at seeing her on bended knee in the parlor, like she was invited company. “Miss Mary wants me to fetch a doctor.”

“Do what she say.”

“Don’t she see Dr. Adam is up there, working hard? He done given him something to help him wake up. He talking now.”

Thank you, God.

“I guess she’s concerned about her son.”

Bob gave a snort. “She concerned about herself is all. I’ll go send a telegram for Mr. Paul and get the doctor.” He stopped and turned on his heel. “He been saying your name, over and over.”

Ruby stood up. “Adam?”

Bob shook his head. “No, Mr. David. He asking for you.”

Her place was next to Adam, but she hesitated, remembering Mary Winslow’s words telling her to leave. Just then, Mrs. Winslow came down the steps, wringing her handkerchief. She stood over kneeling Ruby. Her breaths seemed to catch and Ruby wanted to make sure she was okay. She stood. “He wants to see you. He asked for you. Not me.”

“I didn’t know if I should go or not.”

“By all means.” Mary Winslow gestured up the stairs. “He wants you.”

“I’ll go, but only because he asked. I don’t want to interfere.”

Mrs. Winslow sat down on the davenport. “How could I deny my only son his dying wish?”

Ruby’s heart beat faster, and she eased herself onto the davenport next to the woman. “You think he’s dying?”

“He told me so. Just now,” Mrs. Winslow voice was steady and calm.

“Have you prayed, ma’am?”

“Prayer? What for?”

“To help him.” Ruby took her hands in hers, touching her for a second time. “To help you. Let’s pray together. God, please, look out for David. Please, help him to be well. Help him to receive your healing power.”

“And, if he cannot be well, take him into your loving arms,” Mary Winslow choked out. “Go to him, Ruby.”

Ruby rose and went upstairs, turned right and went down the hall. She had known where to go because of all of those Saturdays when she would help Lona bring the clean laundry back to the Winslows and put fresh sheets on David’s bed.

When she stood in the doorway of his room, the room looked the same as when he was young, except all of David’s spinning tops were gone, replaced with tennis rackets. He must really like tennis. Adam and David turned towards her as she emerged in the doorway. “Ruby.” David reached out his hand. “Come here.”

His voice was strong. Mary Winslow had been mistaken. Even so, her heart raced, and threatened to explode inside of her.

Please, God, give me courage
. Ruby moved closer to the bed where he was resting. “I can leave.” Adam’s mouth pressed into a thin line.

“No, I want you to hear. It’s about you too.” David took in a labored and ragged breath.

Adam’s mouth relaxed a bit and she was glad to see it. He said, “Fine, but don’t expend all of your energy.”

“I don’t have much time,” David insisted, “and I have to tell her.” He turned to Ruby. “I’m so very sorry. That’s what I want to say to you. I’m sorry for what I did. My life has been made empty, meaningless, over this year because of it.”

Ruby closed her eyes and moaned. What was he saying? Why was he telling her this now? “I don’t understand.”

“I wronged you.”

Ruby opened her eyes and looked over at Adam. His handsome features reflected strong disapproval of David, or his confession, she didn’t know which. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“You do. I took terrible advantage of you. Ever since it happened, my heart. I mean who I am. I’ve been lost. And I stayed up here in the house, not wanting to listen to what the cooks said in the kitchen about you, that you were having a baby. Or when I first came and the baby was here. I wanted to come and say something to you, to help. I just didn’t know how. Forgive me.”

“Forgive you?” Ruby croaked out. She had not expected him to ask for forgiveness.

“Yes.” David laid his hand on his chest. Ruby glanced over at Adam and the thin line of tension in his beautiful lips was still there.

“I’m so sorry. That’s what I wanted to say.” David Winslow’s eyes were fixed on her, waiting.

What she wanted to hear. The words seemed so small and piddling, yet, the weight of them was heavy on her shoulders. She was overwhelmed by them. He had put it all on her, in this moment, to let it all go and be free of it. She didn’t know what to say.

“I can’t. I don’t know,” Ruby whispered her uncertainty. What was the matter with her? Why couldn’t she say it? Here he was, her childhood best friend, the one she splashed into the creek with, played in the mud with, played house with, and ultimately had a beautiful little boy with. David was sorry. He tried to fix it by helping with Solomon and helping Adam. Now he was dying. She would never see him again, and never talk to him again. Solomon would not know his father. Ever. The thought melted the hard icicle in her heart.

“Please think about it, Ruby. Please.”

“Ok.”

David fixed his empty eyes on both of them. “Please, take care of each other. And Solomon.”

It was the first time the name of their son had come from his lips. David struggled to reach his hand toward his nightstand. “Save your energy,” Adam admonished him.

“There’s something,” David’s speech came halting.

“Yes?” Ruby said.

“Here in the drawer.” David pointed with a weak hand. “There’s a letter about his future. I wrote it a while ago. He’ll want for nothing. I want you to use everything I would have gotten to help him. If it means sending him away to a school where they don’t know who he is, there’ll be money for him.”

Adam squeezed Ruby to him and said in a firm voice that caused her to turn around and look up at him. “We’ll help him to be proud of who he is. Thank you.”

When had Adam become Frederick Douglass? A rush of warmth stirred in her limbs.
Thank you, God
.

“I’m tired.” David closed his eyes.

“Rest then,” Adam directed. “Your mother’s doctor will be here soon.”

“I don’t want another doctor. I don’t want to be here anymore,” David’s eyes slid away into the back of his head.

“Life is a gift, David.” Ruby insisted. “A precious gift from God. Don’t throw it away.”

David opened his eyes to look at her. “I have already thrown away so much. It seems foolish to hope you would overlook my sins.”

“Don’t worry about what I say. God forgives. You just have to ask him.”

“I know I’ll pay for what I’ve done.”

Adam squeezed her shoulders and they stepped away from the bed together. They moved to the small loveseat couch in the first part of David’s large bedroom. “Let’s rest here. We can stay with him while he sleeps.”

“Yes, you and me.” Ruby rested her head on his shoulder and they sat on the couch together to watch over David as he rested in the bed, with the possibility of forgiveness in the air. It was all on her to let it go.

The town doctor insisted nothing else could be done for David. “He doesn’t want to be here,” he told Mary Winslow in a no-nonsense way. “The best to be done for him has already been done. He’s comfortable. He may hold on until his father gets here—he may not.” He put a hand on her arm. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Winslow.”

He ushered Mary Winslow out of the room and Ruby and Adam kept watch. Ruby napped on and off throughout the night. At some point, Adam rose and went to the bed. She shook the sleep from her eyes and moved to join him with jerky movements.

“Ruby, please,” David rasped out grabbing her fingers with a familiar fierce strength. A trickle of sweat slid down her neck.

She swallowed. “God bless you, David.”

“Say the words, Ruby, please. I am so so sorry.” Tears bathed his face.

“I can’t forget what you did. Solomon is there every day of my life.”

“I know, but, just please….”

Just to keep him quiet. She would say the words. “I forgive you.”

At the three little words, a light went out of his face. Ruby covered her mouth with her fingertips, cutting off a startled cry.

By speaking the words, she was free. Painful tears pricked from behind her eyes and rolled down her face. Adam came around the side of the bed and held her to him. His warmth and closeness were next to her heart because the weight was gone from her shoulders.

Adam listened for his breathing and touched David’s face. The July sun shone through the curtains in the room with an extra fierce intensity. “He’s gone.” Adam pulled the bed sheet over his face.

“Just a second.” Ruby stayed his hand. Her former childhood playmate. Her former best friend. Her attacker. Solomon’s father. Adam grasped her hand and their fingers interlaced.

“You are free to live your life as you want to.”

“With you.”

“Always.”

“Thank you.” Ruby had never felt such gratitude.

Adam kissed her on the forehead. Then, together, they moved the sheet over David’s face.

“I have to go tell Mrs. Winslow,” Ruby said, hurt. What if Solomon had died? It seemed hard to imagine moving her lips to tell another woman her son was dead.

“I’m the doctor of record,” Adam said. “We’ll go together.”

“Together.” Ruby repeated and they walked to the doorway, hand in hand. Suddenly, the front door slammed and loud steps echoed up the stairs.

“Mr. Winslow is here,” Ruby said.

Adam stepped ahead of her to the stairs, ready to tell his father that his son, his youngest son, was dead.

Everyone had always known the Winslows had no feelings. This had been a bonding principle between she and David when they were younger. He liked to come over to the Bledsoes because at least there was love in the house. He said the food tasted better too. Of course, the Bledsoes knew Claudia, the woman who was then head cook at the Winslows, would be offended but they resolved never to tell her. Lona would just smile and take in the praise of young David. Only when David was gone, only when he had departed the earth was when the Winslows could finally show emotion and feelings about their loss.

But when Adam drove her back to the farm, she never thought she would get the sound of Mary Winslow’s keening out of her mind. Then she cried, only feeling genuine sorrow at the death of Solomon’s father and genuine empathy for Mary Winslow.

As she came down the stairs with Adam, she wanted nothing more than to hold Solomon in her arms. It was hard to sit there in the parlor, while Adam did his job as a physician, finishing up some paper work and beginning the process of issuing David’s death certificate. He would finish it up later when he had an opportunity to further question the Winslows.

Adam’s eyes gazed on the Winslow family Bible on the Bible stand and opened it. He carefully wrote in the date of death for David and closed it. All that was left of the Winslow line to go forward, after Adam was Solomon.