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The phone rang late on Sunday evening. Even before she reached for the receiver, Ruby picked up a pencil and opened her appointment book to the next week’s calendar. Most calls dealt with hair appointments, even those that came at night and on weekends because she made it clear to her customers that she was there to accommodate their needs. In her opinion, it didn’t take an MBA to figure out that the customer came first in a service industry. Because she took pride in being a professional businesswoman, she had even come up with a positioning statement for her business card: When Your Hair Gets U Down, Let Ruby Smarten U Up. Hours: 24/7.
Recognizing the voice on the phone now, she smiled. She could use some extra money, and this caller promised an extra booking. She listened for a minute, then dropped the pencil onto the counter. Hanging up the phone, she stood stock-still, staring into space.
“Who’s calling this time of night?” Sister asked. “It’s going on nine o’clock.”
“Tootsie Turner.” Ruby did not move from the phone.
“She need to change her hair appointment for tomorrow?”
“Tootsie’s appointments are on Friday,” Ruby mumbled. “She’s had a standing appointment for twenty-some years now.”
“That’s so she’ll look good at the Eastern Star meetings on Saturday. Tootsie always did like to put on the dog. She and Grace would spend hours primping in front of the mirror.”
Ruby gave Sister a sharp look. “Now, how would you know that? And what’s with all this talk about Grace? I never heard you talk so much about her before.”
Sister returned the look. “Did you forget which box your brains are in? I’m talking because I can, that’s why. Pa never allowed us to speak of her before, you know that. But he’s not here now, so I’m talking.”
Ruby sighed. “I suppose that’s right.”
“Well, anyways, Grace and Tootsie were best friends.”
“My goodness, in all these years, Tootsie never mentioned that.” Ruby shook her head slightly. “She never talked about Grace at all.”
“Why’s she changing to Mondays? Her hair will be a mess by the weekend.”
Ruby tried to quell the tension building in her chest. “She’s not changing to Mondays.”
“What’d she want then?”
“To cancel her appointment.”
“Then why’s she calling tonight,” Sister said irritably. “Plenty of time before next Friday, it’s close to nine o’clock—”
“No Sister— Tootsie’s canceling her appointment for good.”
“For good . . .” She stared at Ruby. “Why’d she go and do that for? She’s had a standing appointment twenty-some years now?”
“I don’t know, Sister, I don’t know!” Ruby began to wonder what had transpired between Mack and the Turners. To wonder if Mack had insulted them again as he had done after Will died. To wonder if that was the reason Tootsie had canceled her appointments. That’s it, she decided, it’s Mack, he’s the cause. Stomping to the back porch, she fetched the picnic basket and removed the dirty dishes. Squirting dish soap into hot water, she began to scrub them with a vengeance.
“Want I should dry,” Sister asked.
“No, sit there and rest. You got to be tired. I know I am.”
“How could I be tired? Been sitting on my butt all day.”
Ruby breathed deep, reaching for a measure of patience. “You have a good time visiting with the cousins?”
“No, I didn’t. Bessie Anderson’s deaf as a post. Had to yell to make myself heard. She didn’t even know we were looking for Bill and Jack. She remembers them well enough.”
“You told Bessie . . .” Ruby’s shoulders sagged. The story would be all over the county before morning.
“And Bessie’s older sisters was dull as dirt, always have been. I had to do most of the talking. Tired me out altogether.”
“Well then, go to bed. I’m gonna wait up for Mack, see what happened out there.”
Sister paused. “What happened out where?”
Ruby mentally kicked herself. She had deliberately not told Sister where Mack was going and now she had let the cat out of the bag.
“I misspoke,” she said hurriedly. “Mack had some errands to run in town.” Lord help, she thought, now I’ve given over to lying.
“Errands on a Sunday?” Sister said. “Can’t buy much on a Sunday, what with them Blue Laws that make you sign a piece of paper swearing what you’re buying’s a matter of life or death. Like buying a Coca-Cola’s gonna save somebody's life. Who do they think they’re fooling? Just another way to keeps tabs on us. Blue laws. Tapping our phones. Spies in the sky. If people would keep the Lord’s Day, wouldn’t need dumb laws.”
Ruby reached deeper. “They did away with those laws years ago, Sister. You just forgot.”
“They did? Well, doesn’t matter. Supposed to keep the Lord’s day on Sunday, not fiddle fart around buying Coca-Cola. Shouldn’t Mack be home by now? Stores are all closed up.”
“He’ll be home directly. You go on now, I’ll be in soon to check on you.”
“Thought we got everything there was to get yesterday at the Walmart. Don’t know what he’d be shopping for—”
“For God’s sake, Sister—would you shut up!” Seeing the startled look on Sister’s face Ruby wished she’d been born mute. “I’m so sorry, Sister, I didn’t mean that.”
Sister’s voice sounded thin. “I was just trying to understand why Mack needed to buy Coca-Cola when we got soda pop in the fridge. Is that too much to ask?”
“No, of course not.” Ruby felt a tightness in her throat. “This thing with Tootsie’s got me upset, that’s all. Why do you think she would cancel out on me that way? She was my oldest and best customer.”
Sister scratched at a mole on her arm. “Tootsie always was one to go off half-cocked. Grace, too.”
Ruby considered this. “Tootsie does have a temper. I’ve seen it from time to time.”
“What one couldn’t think of, the other would.”
“But she tipped good, Tootsie did. Real generous. Five dollars for a color-and-cut, ten for perm.”
“I’d be glad she’s gone, was me. We’ll get by, always have.”
Ruby nodded. “We have now, haven’t we?”
“You’re looking tired, Ruby. You should get to bed yourself.”
“I will directly. You go on.”
After Sister went to bed, Ruby went back to scrubbing dishes, wishing she could scour her life as clean so easily. Here she was, keeping things from her sister just as her son was keeping things from her. She began to question why she hadn’t just told Sister where Mack had gone. It was that call from Tootsie, she decided. It had caught her off guard.
And what was the truth, the real truth, behind that call? Why would Tootsie act that way? Was there a secret there, too? Like the one Mack was keeping? What had made him go north at the Y in the road instead of south? All these secrets were bound to be at a price.
Wondering how her life had become a shamble, Ruby decided it was because of one person’s fool request. And the upshot was that person was her father, the man who had been the underpinning of her life since her husband had died and her son had moved away. Pa had been the one to set these dominoes falling around her with that fool affidavit, not caring one bit about the consequences such a thing would bring.
Hadn’t it begun already? Tootsie Turner’s canceled appointment might be the first of many dominoes to fall. And then what? How would she and Sister get by now that Pa’s Social Security check had been signed away and Mack’s construction job wasn’t bringing in as much money?
As Ruby dried her hands and started for the front room to work on mailbags, she thought of Nonny, how she had gone over to the other side—actually volunteering to help find those mules. Remembering the events of the day, she felt her face flush hot as if it were August instead of November. Mack and Nonny had taken the entire matter right out of her hands, leaving her to look like a foolish old woman in front of all those men.
Suddenly, she felt a sinking in her chest, and in the next minute, she was overcome with fatigue. Leaning against the wall to rest, she speculated on what Mack might have said to make the Turners so angry. She wanted to pin his ears to the wall the minute he walked through the front door, demand he apologize to the Turners, one and all . . .
Ruby’s mind stumbled as she remembered that she’d done that once before. Mack had stayed out with his high-school friends and she and Sister had driven all over McAlester looking for him. They found them at two o’clock that morning, pushing a car run out of gas down the highway, laughing and talking as if it was the most ordinary thing in the world to do. He had not argued when she called him to the car but had smart-mouthed her as he crawled into the back seat. She had popped him a good one on the ear, she remembered.
Suddenly, Ruby was overcome with remorse, recalling the one and only time she had laid a violent hand on her son, on anyone for that matter. But when all was said and done, he’d apologized. Not just to her but to Sister as well.
“I’ll do it again, too,” she said. “And after he apologizes to the Turners, I’ll march him down to the nursing home to talk some sense into his grandfather about this Bill-and-Jack thing.”
Oh Lord, she thought, what if it’s too late. What if Wash Turner told him where to find those mules?
Ruby envisioned laying her father out between two long-eared, soulless creatures in an unholy piece of ground and knew, should it come to that, she would have no choice but to comply. For her own father had made her the Assignee in that affidavit and she could not break the law, now could she?
“Loopholes,” she mumbled breathlessly, “I need more loopholes.”
She hurried to the bedroom where Mack kept his things, feeling an urgent need to look again at the affidavit her father had drawn up. Nonny was smart, she thought, but she might have missed something. Like a revolving door, Ruby‘s mind went again to the way Nonny had changed her allegiance. Could a person that would do such a thing be trusted, she wondered, even if she did bring them persimmons and paid them well for piecework?
“Why, I doubt she read the blamed thing at all.” Entering her son’s bedroom, Ruby turned on the light and scanned the dresser top for the affidavit. Not finding it there, she rummaged through dresser drawers, closing them when the document did not surface.
“Where is it? I don’t remember Mack taking the blamed thing with him today.” Ruby brushed fingertips across her forehead, recalling that the only thing he had in his pocket was the picture of his grandfather with his mules, which got passed around the table like it was a postcard from Disneyland. Remembering the picture, she thought about the photo album and wondered if Mack had left the affidavit inside it by mistake. She opened the closet door, looked at the shelf where the album lay, and saw a manila envelope.
“Why, where’d that come from?”
Knowing the envelope could only be Mack’s, Ruby hesitated, for she did not want to jeopardize the trust that had grown between her and her son over the years. Then, reminding herself that she was the Assignee on the affidavit and so had every right to look for it, she reached to the top shelf.
Ruby walked into the living room where she could rest in her rocker and look for loopholes. She studied the return address on the envelope a full minute before the significance sunk in.
“A realty in Henryetta? But Henryetta’s north . . .”
Opening the envelope slowly and with trembling fingers, Ruby pulled a legal-looking document from the envelope and began to read.
*****
Sometime later, she did not know how long, Ruby saw headlights through the front window. When Whitey let out a yelp, she knew it was Mack come home. By that time, she had read most of the way through the listing agreement and felt no need to finish it. She got up out of the rocker, picked up the manila envelope, and replaced the agreement inside. Walking back to her son’s bedroom, she quickly returned it to the closet shelf where she had found it.
She did not check on Sister as she made her way to her own bedroom. She pulled off her day clothes as she went and pulled on her nightclothes in darkness. She was in bed when she heard Mack and Whitey walk through the front door and made no sound as she listened to the night noises of a man preparing for bed or respond when her son walked to her bedroom door.
“Mama?” Mack whispered.
Ruby slowed her breathing to that of a sleeping person, waiting out the minute that elapsed as her son stood in the doorway and the next as he made his way to his own room. Unaware of time, she stared at the pitch-black ceiling, refusing to allow a single thought inside her head. Then she felt a presence.
Whitey’s breathing was as familiar as her own. She was not surprised to find him beside her bed, to feel his moist nose nudging at her arm, for it was his way to do such things, especially when he sensed that she was troubled with thoughts or fretting with worry.
But Ruby found no solace in his presence this night. So she rose from her bed and led the dog to the doorway and closed him out, closed Mack out, closed everyone out. For she was not her father and could not bear the thought of being alone in the infinite darkness with soulless creatures.
