On this third Saturday of the Farmers’ Market and Makers Faire, it’s hot in the tent, the air decidedly summer-like, so Ruby moves her table under a small canopy she’s rigged up so that the breeze keeps her cool, that plus not wearing anything beneath her caftan but undies. It’s too hot to knit so she just keeps shuffling her cards, fanning them out, fanning herself and then reshuffling the cards. By eleven-thirty, the crowds have thinned out, the flower vendors are making bouquets out of the leftover stems, the pie bakers have sold out, and the guy selling the artisanal coffee is dozing in his camp chair, hardly a good advertisement for strong coffee. These things are sometimes better in lousy weather. Best if the morning starts out iffy and plans for the outdoors are put off till afternoon. Stragglers pass her booth, barely giving her neatly chalked board a look. Palm Readings, Tea Leaves, Tarot. Animal Communication. Some people, Ruby has noticed over the years, won’t look her in the eye, as if she can read their minds and seduce them into sitting down, learning something about themselves that they don’t want to know. Others scoff. Those are the ones most likely to circle back if they can ditch the husband or the kids. One teen tried to drag her girlfriend into speaking range, but the other girl balked with such actual terror that Ruby waved her away. “I don’t read anyone under eighteen.” Not exactly true, but not a bad policy. She watches the pair of teens slope off toward the scented candle tent. With adolescent girls it is like trying to catch sunbeams to get a read on their auras. Clearly the girl has some serious trepidations. Probably religious. While with carnivals, lo those many years ago, she’d had Bible thumpers praying over her immortal soul while she was in the middle of a reading. According to some, Ruby is in league with the Devil. After fleeing from the convent school, Ruby almost believed it of herself. Almost. Until the perfection of her imperfectly conceived child.
As hard as it was being a teenage mother, Ruby never once felt that Sabine had been a punishment. Motherless, Ruby had poured all her heart into making sure that her baby would never feel the lack that she herself had grown up with, even if it meant slipping away in the night to avoid child welfare services, even if it meant pretending to be her daughter’s babysitter to avoid scrutiny.
As if she senses Ruby’s thoughts, the Hitchhiker gets up from her little bed, stretches fore and aft, and shakes. She noses Ruby’s clenched fist. Ruby strokes the Hitchhiker’s silky head, presses a thumb in the declivity between the dog’s black eyes. Finds a quietness.
“You should look.”
“I should introduce you to my daughter.”
“You have her. You need the other.”
These interior conversations are becoming almost routine. Like thinking about men landing on the moon, suddenly a new normal flattens out the magic. Of course men had once been on the moon; of course the Hitchhiker has an opinion.
The Westfalia is still in the shop, a hard-to-get part keeping Ruby stuck in Harmony Farms for at least another few days. When the mechanic had said that, yes, it was the starter, not a big problem, Ruby had a flash of hope, until he went on to say that he’d subsequently diagnosed six other problems for the geriatric foreign car. Ka-ching. Ka-ching. Ruby has had three other calls for canine interpretation, but she only charged one of them her top rate. The second one was just a little kid with a puppy. She accepted his two dollars for advice with grace. The last one, she actually gave away for free. The elderly dog asked ever so clearly to be allowed to die. Everyone cried.
Ravi at the Dew Drop Inn has been kind enough to offer her a discounted rate as a “regular” customer. She wonders if he knows what she does for a living. This morning Polly transported Ruby and her tent and table to the green. “He got turned in, just like you predicted. The Great Dane.”
“I wish they’d kept him.”
“Interestingly enough, they asked me if I would ask Mrs. Turcott if she’d keep them in mind if she ever wanted to re-home him.”
Ruby smiled, pleased. Hopeful.
It’s been a fun morning. We got a ride in a truck that smells of dogs, but there weren’t any in it, so I think that they are now all happy back with their people. There was another scent in there too, an objectionable scent of feline. Then we met lots of people. My job is to greet them and bring them closer to Ruby’s tent so that they can talk about deep things while holding hands or sipping stinky tea. Sometimes they cry, and then I have to comfort them.
It’s really too hot to be sitting out here. The air beneath the canopy is almost hotter than outside, trapped by the impervious nylon. “Want to pack it in, Hitch?”
The dog wags her plume of a tail, yips.
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
Closing the tent flaps, Ruby does a quick change of clothes, puts her cards in their case, and wraps the teapot in its protective Bubble Wrap. She’s got to wait for Polly to come back, so she’ll close up shop but not fold up the tent. They’ll head to the Country Market and get an iced coffee and then sit in the library park where it’s nice and shady. Polly, working on a Saturday, has planned on meeting Ruby at two, so she’ll head back a little before then. Sometimes just making a little decision feels like a conquest.
“Oh, are you leaving?” The voice is that of one of the teenagers who had passed by earlier.
“I don’t have to.”
“I’m eighteen, so, it’s okay, right?”
“Sit.” Out of the corner of her eye she sees the Hitchhiker sit, as if she’d been given the command, not the girl. That makes Ruby smile, and the girl, who is visibly nervous, smiles back. Ruby, no longer dressed as a fortune-teller, asks if the girl wants cards or palm. The teapot is packed away and she won’t be brewing more.
“Palms?”
“Okay. Hold out your hands.” Ruby places her hands palm up under the girl’s. It’s a hot day, and it’s no surprise that the girl’s hands are hot to the touch, but this is a different sort of heat. A pulsing heat. The heat of distress. Ruby can feel the heat of the girl’s aura, the flicker and flash of being female, of being young. Of being sexual. Ruby can’t bring herself to incant the usual long lifeline, meet a man, success in business claptrap she gives those with whom she has no actual connection. This girl warrants something like the truth. A guarded truth. She needs to find actual help. Ruby closes her eyes and lets the wash of connection take over. It has been such a rare event in the past year, and she knows that this is only possible because of the girl’s agitation, her distress. It’s more similar to how she’s been interpreting the dogs, images flood across her mind’s eye, grayscale, but vivid. Ruby sinks into a borderline trance. “I see a shadow behind you. Is someone following you?”
“Sometimes.”
“Someone who is familiar to you?”
“Yes.” The girl’s pulse quickens and the image in Ruby’s mind clarifies. Hardens.
“There is a predator in your life.”
A tear slides out from the corner of the girl’s left eye, traces a path on her ruddy cheek. She nods.
“Someone close?”
She nods again and Ruby’s angry heat rises, flushing her cheeks and bringing her back to a moment in her own young life when she was prey. She turns the girl’s hands over and grasps them in her own. “I’m not speaking as a psychic now. I’m speaking as an adult who also suffered at the hands of someone I knew. You must promise me to go to a trusted adult.” She shakes the girl’s hands, makes her look Ruby in the eye. Then Ruby releases her grasp and turns the girl’s hands over again. She traces a line. “This line tells me that you are a strong woman.” She touches another, close to the thumb. “You will act, and in acting on this, not just survive but thrive. No one can take your future away from you if you don’t let them.”
“Who should I talk to?”
Ruby lets the last image in her mind fade before answering. “You have an aunt. Go to her.”
“How did you know?”
“It’s what I do.” Ruby lets go of the girl, waves off her proffered twenty-dollar bill. “Just talk to her. Now.”
“Thank you, um, Madame Ruby.” She shoves the twenty into her pocket, a lock of hair falling over her eyes. She shoves it away and looks at Ruby. There is a flicker of resolve in her expression. “I will.”
Ruby reaches out to touch the dog, gathers a handful of fur between her fingers. She’s too shaky to get to her feet. The images coming from the girl overlay her own memories of being young and vulnerable and alone. And afraid. The Hitchhiker jumps into Ruby’s lap, shoves her head beneath Ruby’s chin, and a long strand of taste and scent fill Ruby’s mind with calm. If you suckle you are filled with good feeling. To the dog, the memory of being a puppy is her comfortable place. The dog’s memory comforts Ruby.
“Come with me and I’ll help you use that weird skill of yours.” Maggie Dean looked like a helpless old woman doomed to freeze to death on the streets, but in fact, she was a bit of a Fagan among the children that lived in those Hartford projects. A kind enough Fagan, and her criminal encouragement wasn’t to become deft pickpockets, but to introduce them to certain gentlemen who could make good use of their fleetness of foot and innocent eyes. As a former teacher, she also expected them to learn to read and do arithmetic.
Ruby followed Maggie home, home being a squat in the projects. The only comfort in the room, which had no running water or electricity, was a fetid armchair. But it did have books. Hundreds of them, stacked like dolmens blocking the windows, serving as stools or footstools. The pervasive scent of kerosene, which Maggie used for her lantern, and a touchy space heater. Ruby closed her eyes and saw tragedy. Old tragedy. Tragedy to come.
“Over there, second stack from the left. Third book down. Fetch it.”
Ruby did as asked, pulling a how-to book on tarot from the pile.
“And that one, top book.” Maggie pointed to the tallest stack. “You should know a little astrology. I have nothing on the more occult art of reading tea leaves, but this will get you started. You do read, don’t you?”
“Yes.” Ruby had smiled. “I read secrets.”
“You’ve already got it figured out, don’t you? The mystique of the psychic.”
There was no longer any point in lying. “It’s not fake, you know. I really do see things.”
“What you need is an act, or maybe it would be better to call it a performance that frames your talent. Carerra Brothers Carnival is back here from Florida in about a month. I bet they’d be interested in a psychic. A young, very young, psychic.”
A wave of cold fear dried out Ruby’s mouth. Then anger. “Are you a white slaver?” The term had been a useful warning to the young girls at Sacred Heart, what would happen to you if you should speak to strangers. Abducted, enslaved. Of course, no nun ever said what they would be enslaved to do. They all pictured farm work in rags.
“No. I just try to find purpose for kids like you, a safety net, if you will. Otherwise, you might be taken up by the wrong kind. There are plenty of predators out there, but if you can make your own way, you may stay alive.”
Predators indeed. And Maggie Dean’s tutelage into the psychic arts and subsequent introduction of Ruby into the carny world almost guaranteed that Ruby would encounter just such a man.