Chapter 35
Gunnar had a funny look on his face. Not his usual executioner glare or the Bible-thumping one either. I tried to pop open my eyes bigger to get a better glimpse, but they were too heavy, swimmy-like. He talked funny, too. “Go to town and telephone Doc,” he was saying, smacking my cheeks.
Clipped voices crawled across the air, buzzing.
“RubyLyn, RubyLyn,” he hummed, pushing my head toward the toilet. “That’s right, get it all up. Up.”
Abby’s voice floated atop his. “RubyLynnn.” And Rose’s over hers. I pulled a wet towel off my neck. The pink company’s-coming towel. For me?
Gunnar smacked my cheeks again, called out, “Hurry, go to town and telephone him.”
Their voices bumped like angry snakes. “RubyLynnn . . . Hon-eee . . . Telephone-ph-phone.” Are they talking on my old telephone toy?
Someone lifted me up, carried me away. Daddy. But how?
“M-m-m.” I tried to speak, but my drug-soaked voice climbed through raw, tight pipes. “My—my . . . Da-ddy.” I reached out my arm, grasping for him.
A perfumed Rose leaned in close, grabbed it, and clasped me in a hug.
Commotion.
Then I saw old Doc Sils bent, his face blurring over mine. “All we can do is let her rest now,” he said before I sped into blackness.
A pounding in my head finally stirred me awake. Night had fallen and the table lamp cast shadows across the face of my bedside clock and Gunnar’s slumped body. I grabbed the top of my head, plucking off a pink towel.
Gunnar sat in a chair, perching his elbows on tall knees, hands fisted over the State Fair candle cross in prayer.
I squeezed my eyes shut. Anything to do with Gunnar and God would mean punishment.
Gunnar must’ve seen me move. He jumped up from the wooden chair beside my bed. “RubyLyn, you’re awake. It’s been fourteen hours . . . O thank you, Merciful Lord!” He grabbed the headboard, looked up at the ceiling, his wild-eyed expression scaring me.
I tried to get up. Weak, I slumped back down.
“Stay put. I’ll bring tea.” He left the bedroom.
In a few minutes, I pulled myself up and swung my legs out of bed. My feet sank into the worn rug. Shaky and a bit fuzzy, I made my way to the bathroom. I’d barely finished washing my face when I became light-headed again. I shuffled back to bed and collapsed onto the pillow.
When I stirred awake, Gunnar was there again.
“Let me warm your tea,” he fussed.
In a bit he came back with the tea and some toast. “Sip slowly. And here”—he set the plate of toast beside me—“try a bite of this.”
Gunnar hovered over me as I took a swallow of the hot liquid. Watching him, I nibbled on the toast, drank more tea, and soon felt less shaky.
“I-I’m fine,” I trembled, pushing the plate away.
He pulled up the chair and sat down. “I’m not.”
I swallowed, waiting for his hard words.
“RubyLyn, you gave me a scare . . . I have failed you and Rainey with my secrets.”
“Secrets,” I shivered, everything flooding back.
“Some that should’ve been shared. Sins . . . Mine and Abigail’s. . . We’ve always loved each other, even as youngsters. But the times say you stay put with your own . . . No different than now. My weakness.”
I stared at Gunnar. Weak. Nothing about him was weak. He was like the hundred-year oak in our side yard.
As if claiming my thoughts, he went on. “I’m ashamed to say, I was. No excuse for what I’ve done. Knew after Gus passed, it would be an even harder road for Rainey here if folks found out about us. Still would. Being colored and being a bastard in this world is damning . . . damning the already damaged that folks see and pick on. Do you understand that?”
My thoughts had pulled to it. “Yes,” I barely whispered and knew he was right. At least Rainey could claim a namesake, a daddy, though it weren’t the right one.
“RubyLyn,” he said, “I’ve prayed on this every day. . . . Every day. I couldn’t protect my women—Claire or your mama, or do much about Rainey . . . and you were my last chance. Lord knows I’d been given a few. That’s why I picked you up at the orphanage. Hoping for that chance I didn’t get.”
My eyes widened. Gunnar never talked about this—or Mama.
“I’ve heard you cry out in your sleep plenty over the years,” he said. “Cry out for them—for your pa. Didn’t know quite what to do about it, except pray some more. I’m truly and deeply sorry for not doing right by you—for not being enough of a man . . . the father you needed.”
Embarrassed, I looked away.
“Maybe if you know the whole truth, the nightmares will leave you be.”
I squirmed. What else?
Gunnar gripped my hand, rubbing it, something he hadn’t done but one other time that I could remember: the day we walked out the orphanage together. I couldn’t help holding right back despite knowing it would fade as sure as his declarations.
“RubyLyn, you need to know that your pa died protecting you. He loved you.”
“What do you mean, Gunnar?” I asked, wadding up the bedsheet in my other hand. “It was because of the drinking. You’ve said it a hundred times.” I untangled our hands.
He shook his head. “It was more . . . Your folks had come in late from one of their revivals. He was spent and your mama poured him a stiff drink, and after it all happened, I said the drinking killed him, when it really was the snake.”
“Snake . . . But—”
“I couldn’t tell you. I had to protect you. Couldn’t have you blaming yourself for his death.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, the fear stacking up like bricks. I pushed myself up straight.
“The men helping him at the revival didn’t knot the snake bag tight when they delivered it back to your parents’ house . . . Left the damn church snake sitting on the porch instead of putting it back in its glass cage out back in the shed . . . You picked up that old telephone you were so fond of—”
“Telephone.”
He rubbed the swollen burls on his knuckles. “You were just a baby, not yet five, how could you have known? You wandered onto the porch, took the toy and banged it on the sack, playing.”
The long-ago memory burst into my brain new and bright. “Talk, talk, talk,” I’d hissed long ago, tapping the plastic receiver on the brown cottonseed bag. “Talk to Daddy!”
“Didn’t take much.” He grimaced. “The snake wriggled out and was getting ready to strike, when your pa shoved you out of the way and saved you. The snake struck his arm.”
My hand flew to my mouth, tears gathered behind my closed lids. “I remember now.”
“Your pa was a good man and had a strong faith. He believed God would heal him. Refused the doctor, calling on Mark . . . Mark 16:18.”
I racked my brain for the Bible verse.
“He believed that verse was the word of God. ‘They shall take up serpents and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them,’ ” Gunnar recited. “And I’d argued with him about it.”
That’s why Mama didn’t sketch him on our fortune-teller. Her, saving the last flap for my memory. Frantic, I scanned the room, searching.
Seeing my distress, he lifted up the teacup. “Here, have some more.”
I pushed it away. “My things—”
“I put your purse and the other things over on the dresser by those new stack of books Rose brought by this morning. She changed you into your gown.”
“Rose was here?” I looked down at myself, hating that she saw me in this troublesome way.
“I couldn’t keep her away.”
I stared at the dresser. The crinkly fortune-teller I’d made with Mama sat unfolded beside her lipstick. The penciled sketches showing. Deep down, I must’ve known all along: I’d drawn the broken heart and the snake down its center to remember he’d died saving me. The memories flooded back, battering my heart.
Gunnar followed my gaze. “That damn snake . . . Too much for your young, pregnant mother. Her heart plumb busted after that. And when she got the pains in her seventh month, she wouldn’t let me fetch the doc for her. Said the same thing as your pa, that the Good Lord would heal her . . . I sent for the doctor, but twice she turned him away. Never had much dealings with pregnant women. Sorry for not seeing it all then.”
He wiped his own leaky eyes. “I was so busy trying to mend my own damn heart to help with her healing . . . I’m sorry.”
He’d tried to save her, but her faith believed only Jesus could.
“I’ve been too hard on you. I can see that now. Stacking my failures on your fine art like that . . . A sore reminder of what I couldn’t do. And I hated their religion. Sickened that it took them, and was hell-bent on protecting you and giving you a proper upbringing. So much, I stuck mine on you, and it’s done nothing but drive you away.”
Gunnar took his thumb and gently wiped a fat tear off my cheek. He stood. “Every day I pray for His forgiveness. Give me yours . . . I lost them. I can’t lose you,” he whispered hoarsely, and his eyes showed the troubled miles of his past and the promised road to regret. “We can start new with our land.”
He flicked his hand toward the window. “It’ll be tough going, but we’ll get through the winter, and the fields, our fields, will rest and be better for it. We’ll grow good crops. You’ll make your art.”
I looked past him. “And Rainey?”
“I’ve sent Rainey on to Louisville where he’ll be safe. Become a fine soldier . . . It wasn’t your fault or his. It was mine, and if you give me one more chance, I’ll spend the rest of my life seeing that you have a good home and future here.”
Slowly, I shook my head. “There’s nothing here but useless land—worn womenfolk.” I sniffed the tiredness of the house, us.
“It can happen.”
“It didn’t for Henny, Lena. Or Ada and Baby Jane . . . and there’s Abby. Darla Clark . . . and Dirty and Dusty . . .” I said.
Gunnar swiped a hand over his eyes and walked over to the door. “There’s us. Family. And, I love you,” he said thickly. “Just one more chance to make it right—one more chance to be the father yours meant you to have.”
He worked his knuckle over a wooden spot on the doorframe and knocked twice. “One more,” he pleaded, rapping it a third time.
I looked away.
“Rest up,” he called softly.
When he was gone I buried my face into the pillow and wept for the family I’d lost—wept for Rainey and the nothingness I had left.
Exhausted, I fell asleep and dreamed of a clanky Ferris wheel spinning round and round in shimmering green fields popped with tilting sunflowers and golden-eyed daisies.