Every Monday, after Charley Paulson’s creaky wagon whisks away boarders, Ruby sets a fire under the giant iron kettle back behind the inn and pumps water from the well until her arms ache. Jericho rises up abruptly just past her hotel, and from there to the foothills it’s as rough a town as any with a hodge-podge of dwellings built one atop the other, like they’re on stilts. Any day, all of Jericho could tumble into a heap, and don’t think Ruby hasn’t thought about that.
Ruby ducks in and out of guest rooms and leaves doors wide open to air out the quarters. She strips beds and gathers up armloads of soiled bedding and towels for the week’s washing. Road agents, miners, cowhands, and the odd drifter who has enough cash can book one of the spartan rooms on the first floor for a dollar a night or six for the week, meals included. No ladies—of any kind—are allowed in ground floor rooms. The sheets are messy enough as is.
“Wink!” Ruby calls to the older man she lets stay in the shed out back in exchange for help around the inn.
“Damn good lodgings,” he says as he spreads his arms wide toward the Catalinas. He’s not short, but not tall, with dirt in the creases around his eyes. Under the armpits, there are gaps in his coat. Where there might have been a remnant of a shirt that, too, is ripped, leaving a shock of grey hair between man and sky. “‘Night’s candles are burnt out and jocund day stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops,’” Wink recites.
Must be Shakespeare, Ruby thinks. Again.
“Romeo and Juliet. Act 3, Scene 5,” Wink says.
“And ‘jocund’ means?”
“Delightful. Like you, Miss Ruby.”
Ruby snorts. “Not likely, Wink. I wager a thousand men from here to the River Styx would take issue with that. Mistress of heaven, I am not.”
Wink steps toward Ruby, his clothes bordering on rank. The smell alone could fell an ox. But his boots gleam in the morning sun.
“Washing day?” he asks.
And could I wash yours, just once, Wink?
“Doesn’t take a hawk to see you’re needing some help around here, woman help, Miss Ruby.” He gestures toward the washing. “And maybe raise your prices. I checked your rate sheet. You won’t get rich on what you charge. And free liquor.”
“Free whiskey is good for business, but, then again, it’s not good for business. Some people can really put hooch away.”
“If someone wants a whiskey bad enough, he can pony up another nickel per shot.”
“I’ll think on it, Wink.” She watches the older man walk toward the town dump behind the sheriff’s office. Harmless old coot, but I sure like having you around.
As the water warms, Ruby soaks dirtied bed sheets. She sweeps her hair into a low bun, yellow hair poking out every which way. She reties her apron and stokes flames under the rusty kettle. Using a long wooden paddle, Ruby raises linens, beats them, and dips them back into the soaking pot. Three times she does this. Just as the water boils, she swirls in lye soap and briskly stirs the laundry. Sweat drips from her brow. With the back of her sleeve, Ruby wipes perspiration and pushes hair away from her face. Yes, a laundress would be nice.
When Ruby opened the inn in 1900, she was twenty-seven. At thirty-two, she doesn’t look much different, short and thin and blonde and flat-chested, although her arms are stronger now. She’s making do at the inn, although there are always repairs.
Lists, lists, there are always lists, too. Between stirring and resting, Ruby makes mental notes. Tea, she needs. And sugar. The basics she can afford, nothing more. She takes a swig of tepid tea and throws the dregs onto the dirt. One by one, Ruby lifts heavy sheets from the soaking pot with the long paddle and transfers the sopping load to her cold tub. Twice she rinses the load before hanging sheets to dry on a line strung between the house and a metal pole staked into the ground behind the inn.
After bed linens, it’s towels—heavier still—and today, the added burden of trying to salvage a pair of curtains that a guest mistook for what? A washcloth? If she had all week, Ruby could wait until tomorrow to tackle family laundry. But who has tomorrow? Dirty clothing mounds on the porch as Ruby empties the soaking pot and starts over with kettle after kettle of boiling water. In go undergarments and thin wash bodices, blouses and boys’ shirts. Once the whites are finished, Ruby attacks skirts and trousers. By now, the soaking pot is a dark shade of brown and the cold tub just a shade lighter.
Ruby props up the sagging clothesline with a stick so hems of linens don’t touch dirt. Peg up, count to a hundred, and underthings dry as your back is turned. Into baskets they go, a heap of them. Peg up, peel down, up, down, up, empty pant legs, flapping blouses, split skirts.
As the last of the laundry dries in the beating sun—no rest for the weary, Divina says—Ruby returns to guest rooms to dust furniture and scrub floors. From one of the second-floor rooms, Ruby spies Harvey Burton delivering her weekly supplies. He bounds up the back stoop into the kitchen. Ruby stops and throws her dirty rag into a wash bucket and goes to the kitchen to get perishables put away. She nearly collides with Burton as he rounds the corner out of Ruby’s bedroom, his hands stuffed into his pockets.
“What the hell?” Ruby asks. “What were you doing in my bedroom?”
“I was no more in your bedroom than you’ve been in mine. Didn’t get tea in this week and thought you’d want to know. Was looking for you, is all.”
“No tea?”
“You heard me.”
Ruby hastens to put away anything that might spoil and leaves tin cans, glass bottles, and sealed boxes on the counter until later.
It only took one meeting to dislike Harvey Burton when he and his wife, Mae, first came to Jericho. Ruby had been poring over the generous shelves at Burton’s General Store when Harvey asked if “the little lady” needed any assistance. Ruby is long past tired of being called that. Yes, she’s short, petite, blonde, no fault of her own. But there’s no shred of “lady” in her, never has been. Every time someone calls her “the little lady,” her hackles go up.
Ruby’s not that fond of Mae, either, for an entirely different reason. Mae gave Virgil the side eye the first time she met him, and Ruby hasn’t forgotten, or forgiven. Virgil can’t help that he has a significant limp. But with only one general store in town, an innkeeper can’t be making enemies. No one said they had to be friends.
When the linens are crisp and dry, Ruby retraces her steps through the roadhouse, arms laden, and remakes all the beds. She nestles her nose into freshly laundered linens and inhales the echo of sunshine. Last, Ruby heads into the small bedroom off the roomy parlor where her boys sleep on two bunks squeezed into a space once used as a storage closet. She tucks fresh sheets on top of tick mattresses and layers two thin blankets on top. By the time she’s done, she’s wicked thirsty.
Ruby goes through a set of double doors off the parlor into the communal dining room, the heart of the roadhouse. Every night, the table is full and noisy, with enough food to feed Jericho twice over. Mismatched chairs scrape up the table, come one, come all. Ruby never turns anyone away.
The kitchen is at the back end of the hotel, and in it, a six-hole cast iron stove, complete with firebox, hot water reservoir, baking oven, warming pit. The cookware closet overflows, tin ware stacked on shelves, hung on hooks. On the counter, there’s an oversized sink with a window overlooking the Santa Catalinas. Smack in the center of the room, a large table, and, just beyond, a squeaking screen door that opens to a weathered porch and patchy garden where Ruby grows potatoes, lettuces, beans, and melons. The root cellar, bathhouse, and outhouse are adjacent to the back of the inn, with a rough shed out at the back of the lot where Wink sleeps off most nights surrounded by old tools and dust motes and a braided horsehair lasso he swears keeps snakes away.
Ruby gulps a glass of tepid water that tastes faintly of dirt. She slathers a slice of sourdough with butter and rummages for the saltcellar—damn if she forgot to add salt to her grocery list. Ruby stands with her back against the dry sink and gnaws the heel of bread. After sloshing down another half-glass of water, Ruby walks the short block to Burton’s General Store to buy salt. Hopefully, they haven’t run out of that.
Ruby strides past shelves of dry goods, groceries, sundries, and tobacco. Two steps ahead of the matron behind her, Ruby grabs the last 10-lb. bag of salt and mutters a prayer of relief. If she had wanted produce today, she would have been sorely out of luck.
Later in the afternoon, Ruby cracks an egg inside the lip of a small blue enamel bowl with one hand and whisks it smooth. She sets it aside and mixes flour and water and lard and a hefty pinch of salt in another bowl and rolls out the crust for two pies. Out comes the pastry brush to slather egg mixture on the fluted crusts. A cockroach scuttles across the countertop and she swats it with the end of her dishtowel. As she pulls the oven door open, Ruby scorches her fingertips. Big Sue used to put hot embers on her fingertips and pour water over them to draw out the heat. Ruby plunges her fingers into the vat of lard instead to take the heat out and sucks on her fingers as she closes the oven door with her hip.
From the corner of her eye, Ruby watches Sam play in the dirt outside the open kitchen door. He is never far from the dog. He throws a stick over and over and pats Roger every time the pup retrieves it. When Sam leans down toward Roger’s ear, Ruby wonders if Sam talks to him. Sam hasn’t said a word aloud to anyone for six years now, not since Ruby shot his pa.
Ruby half-heartedly flips through a magazine as she watches Sam. When she calls Sam in for supper, he’s dirty in all the boy crevices, so she has him strip down and dumps a bucket of water over his head on the back stoop, nearly naked. Roger gets a dousing, too.
A new houseful will arrive tomorrow, and after that, Ruby is in for another week of hard work, up at five to get coffee on and bake biscuits, and then fry potatoes, eggs, and bacon. Breakfast bell’s at eight, and after the washing up, bake six loaves of bread and begin the makings for dinner, served at noon sharp. After boiled beef, turnips, beans, or whatever’s on the menu that day, there’s always pie. Then it’s the long run up to cold supper: cold meats, hash, bread and butter, more pie.
That’s the only slice of time Ruby has to herself, the mid-afternoon. She clears her mind with brisk walks. There are plenty of hills in Jericho and plenty of proverbial hills muddling her mind: never enough cash for upkeep, never enough help to do it all. And no time for anything else. It all grates on her, as if she’s a potato under the knife and all that’s left is a lumpy, sallow bulge waiting for the boiling pot.
Ruby will take it up with Divina; she’s as good as a real mother and her words are always spot on. Other than Divina, Ruby doesn’t have a close friend in Jericho, except for Sheldon, but Ruby can’t risk encouraging him. Dog Webber has it out for her, doesn’t he? Or does he have it out for everyone in Jericho? Enough of what goes on at Ruby’s hotel finds its way into the Courier-Journal. So no, not him. The doctor? Too private. A tavern owner? No, although her pop did say they were good listeners. Forget about talking to Mae Burton. And not the new parson’s wife; she looks like a frightened child. The schoolmistress? That one seems like a clamped book, even if she is one of the only other women in town who isn’t married or shares a bed for a living. But I could use a friend …
Ruby pulls up a stool to the worn kitchen table and scribbles out a quick postcard instead. She owes Vi a letter—a long letter—but a postcard will have to serve tonight. Other than Divina, Vi is Ruby’s only thread to Big Burl. Ruby was born at Vi’s boarding house in Tucson after all, and it’s there that her momma bled to death after her birth. Vi is the only person Ruby can think of to ask.
Vi—
I’m needing help bad here at the inn. Got any girls in the family way? Can’t promise more than room and board. Don’t worry, I’d send the girl back, after. Leave all the other details to me.
—Ruby
After a quick cold supper, Ruby checks guest rooms for the last time before tomorrow’s guests arrive. She straightens bed linens, plumps up pillows, tosses a blanket over the crest rail of a high-back chair. She runs her fingers over the lace on the bedstead and centers the washbasin. She pulls back curtains, secures them behind a hook, and moves on to the next room.
Before bed, Ruby checks on Wink out in the shed. Tonight, he’s snoring atop a burlap sack, his hat over his head. He didn’t come to claim his plate after supper. Maybe whiskey was dinner. Is the man ever sober? Ruby doubts it. Crazy as popcorn on a hot skillet, people call him. But they should know better. In the end, it’s the poets who have the most to say. What you’ve got to do is peel away the surface, ask the real questions. What do they want? What do they need? Who do they love, and why? What else matters, in the end?