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Ruby adjusted the hood on her parka and stared at the clutter in the living room. Mack had pushed the davenport, chairs, and tables together and covered them with a blue poly tarp so he could paint the walls and ceiling. He’d also decided to give the kitchen a fresh coat, to get rid of the smell of permanent wave lotion, so another blue tarp covered things in there. He’d worked late and, not one to sit on her hands, Ruby had picked up a brush. She’d been up most of the night and her head hurt.
“I like this color better than that Denver White at the duplex.” Sister was dressed in long pants, zippered coat, and a stocking cap. Except for a face lined with wrinkles and eyes distorted from triple bifocals, she could have been mistaken for a girl.
“Dover White,” Ruby said. “It was called Dover White.”
“Oh. What color you say this is?”
Ruby read the label on one of the paint cans. “Warm Butter. I swear, who comes up with these names?” She set the can down and looked at the walls. “But it is warmer than that other color. Reminds me of the rinse I put on Betty Winslow’s hair. Honey Gold. She wanted to go redhead but I talked her out of it.” She wagged her head. “Some people work overtime looking for ways to make themselves the laughing stock of the county.”
“You get too worked up over things. Betty wanted to go red, you should’ve let her.”
Ruby frowned at her. “You think I should let my friends make fools of themselves? Besides, I’d get the blame for it. They’d say, Ruby talked me into this fool color, it was all her idea. You know they would.” She sighed as she slipped on driving gloves. “You sure you want to go? That rain cooled things down considerable.”
“I’ll stay in the car if I get too cold. All I know is I want to get out of this smelly house. Besides, I’m tired of working on those mailbags. My fingers are so raw, I had to dope them up with bag balm last night.”
“I’ll air out the place while we’re gone.” Ruby cracked a window. “Mack said he’d put the rooms back together when he got up. He knows I have two haircuts later in the day.”
Sister studied the map Nonny Folsom had brought. “Looks like we can circle around to the left or right, end up back here. Which way you want to go?”
“You decide.” Opening the door, Ruby found the old white dog waiting on the porch, anticipation in his eyes. “Oh, all right,” she said. Retrieving an afghan from the davenport, she spread it over the back seat of the car. Settling Whitey in the backseat and Sister in the passenger, she started out.
“Go left,” Sister said at the country road. “Mack said he got three places looked at while you was fixing supper last night. I figure we can do three this morning, we work at it.”
Ruby turned left and looked out over trees the color of gray suede and a cold blue sky. “You really like the place we looked at yesterday? Or were you just saying that because Mack was standing there?”
“He’s a good boy,” Sister said. “Most kids these days move off and never give their folks a second thought.”
“That’s what I thought,” Ruby snapped. “You were lying through your teeth.”
“No such thing! You hear him come right out and ask me if I liked the place? I just didn’t volunteer my feelings. That’s not telling a lie.”
“It’s not being honest.”
“So? Did you tell Betty Winslow she’d look like the fool if she colored her hair red?”
“Well, no.” Ruby laughed, then sobered. “What are we gonna do with ourselves if we move there . . .”
“Slow down,” Sister said, directing Ruby to pull off the road. “This here’s the place. I’ll get the gate. We can drive around this one. It’s nice and flat.”
Sister tugged on the piece of jagged wire bent into a circle and strung over the gatepost until she worked it loose. Throwing the gate aside, she climbed back in the car.
“Didn’t see any signs of cattle, so I left the gate down. This pasture’s been overgrazed real bad. Shouldn’t be hard to spot that doubletree, it’s here.”
Ruby picked up where she left off. “I can’t do hair there at that place, you know.”
“We still got the mailbags, can do those anywhere. You can sew up the sides and put on the snaps, and I’ll embroider them—if Nonny still wants us to do the bags, that is. I never saw her as upset as she was night before last. Didn’t even say goodbye when she left. What’d you two get into it over anyhow?” She glanced at Ruby. “And slow down, that doubletree might be laying flat on the ground.”
Ruby felt her face turn warm as she thought about Nonny’s visit. “Well, basically she told me I was being ungrateful. Seems everybody’s trying to put me in my place these days. I swear, I had the money I’d just buy the home place off Mack and tell him to butt out of my life.”
Sister pointed toward something in the grass. “There, does that look like a doubletree? Stop so I can get a look.” Over Ruby’s protest, Sister stepped out of the car, followed by Whitey.
Ruby watched the old dog snuff around a log, her sister poke with a stick in a clump of grass, then head back toward the car. Sister let the dog into the back seat, filling the car with the smell of wet dog hair, and took her seat again.
“An old wagon axle,” Sister said, “but we’re on the right track. That doubletree would have metal rings attached to it, metal caps on the end, too. How much you figure it would it take to buy the place?”
“What?” Ruby gave Sister a look. “I wasn’t serious, Sister, just doing some wishful thinking.”
“Well, maybe between the two of us, we could swing it.”
Reaching the back fence line, Ruby circled the car around. “Nothing here, at least I didn’t see anything that looked like a doubletree.” She stared out the window, making no move to retrace their path. “I told Nonny I thought she was a lesbian.”
“You did what?” Sister’s eyes were round saucers. “Well, hell’s bells, I would’ve left mad, too. What got into you?”
“I don’t know. It’s just that she’s so pretty and smart, but she lives alone and never married.”
Sister rubbed her glasses on her coat lapel to clear away the fog. “Is that what you think about me?”
“You? Lord have mercy, no. Women in our day that couldn’t marry, stayed maidens. Women these days don’t stay maidens—”
“Couldn’t marry.” Sister glared at Ruby. “You saying I wasn’t pretty enough to catch someone? Or too dumb? You saying that’s why I never married?”
Ruby rubbed her aching head. “I don’t know what I meant. Things are just, I don’t know . . . out of control. I can’t seem to make sense of anything.”
“I didn’t marry ‘cause I let myself get spoilt.”
“Wha—what?”
“Remember Sonny Stovall? Happened before he went off to work the oil fields down in Texas. Damned fool got himself blown to smithereens.”
Ruby’s face reddened. “Why are you telling me this after all these years?”
“‘Cause I can, that’s why,” Sister snapped. “Couldn’t talk about such things back then for the shame. That’s what kept a lot of women single, you know it was. And now . . . well, I’m old and Pa’s not here to clamp the lid on things. And I have to say, it feels good to talk.”
The force of Ruby’s sigh caved her chest. “Well, women don’t look on things the same these days. Nonny wouldn’t have let getting spoilt stop her from getting married.”
“I’m sure you’re right on that score. I figure Mack took care of that business while they were in high school.”
Getting more information than she wanted, Ruby said, “Let’s just let this thing go, Sister. I’m sorry I ever mentioned Nonny.”
“Hmm . . .” Sister grew pensive. “She might not have let getting spoilt stop her from marrying, but that doesn’t mean something else she’s ashamed of didn’t.”
Ruby sat quiet, considering the implication. “Are you saying Nonny did something she’s ashamed of? Why that girl’s got a heart of gold. She’d give you the shirt right off her back.”
“I’m just speculating, nothing more than you did when you called her a lesbian.”
“Yeah well, that’s what I was doing. Speculating.”
Sister raised her eyebrows. “Well, I’m speculating we’re not gonna get through this list, we don’t move faster.”
Still, Ruby did not step on the gas. “Does this make sense, Sister? What we’re doing, I mean?”
Sister threw her hands in the air. “Would you make up your mind! First, you don’t want to find those mules. Then you do. Now you’re back to don’t.”
“No, not that. I still mean to find those mules. I mean if Grace is buried with Bill and Jack, don’t you think Pa would‘ve visited her grave now and then, even if it was on someone else’s property? I just can’t believe she was here all this time and we didn’t know it.”
Sister blinked slowly. “Always was good to let us know what he was about, wasn’t he? He’d say, ‘Going to the feed store in McAlester, be back in an hour.’ Or, ‘Gotta plow that forty over on the north fork of the Canadian, take most of the day.’” She paused. “Now I think on it, he’d disappear from time to time, never say a word about where he was going.”
“Was never gone long, was he?” Ruby eased the car back down the track. The car bounced over the rough ground like a hoochie dancer bumping and grinding her hips. “So what do you think?” she said.
“I think you hit a sore spot with Nonny, that’s why she got mad. If it wasn’t the lesbian crack, it was something else. What else did you say to her?”
“I wasn’t talking about Nonny. I was asking what you thought about Pa visiting Grace’s grave.” Sister’s response, however, caused Ruby to backtrack on her conversation with Nonny. “I think she got mad because of something I said about the house.”
“The house?”
“She said I ought to be grieving for people, not a house.”
Sister turned thoughtful. “That girl’s grieving for someone.”
“What?”
“That’s the sore spot you hit.”
As they neared the gate, Sister picked up a former thread. “Pa wouldn’t be gone for more than a half hour those times he was gone. If he was visiting Grace’s grave, he wasn’t traveling too far . . .” Her words trailing off, she pointed toward the county road. “Thought I left the gate open.”
“You did. Who would’ve closed it— Oh, no. Someone’s waiting for us.”
“That Billy Joe Turner?”
“My Lord, it is. We can’t tell him why we’re here. What am I gonna do?”
“Only one thing to do,” Sister said. “Lie.”
Ruby sputtered, “I can’t lie!”
“Then just tell him Whitey got out and we went looking for him.”
“Sister, Whitey’s in the back seat!”
“I know that! Tell him we found him and we’re bringing him home. You don’t slow down, you’re gonna run him down.”
Ruby hit the brake so hard, the new tires on the Chevrolet bounced like rubber balls.
Billy Joe Turner walked up to the driver’s side door. “Ruby Barlow, that you?” He looked inside the car and said, “Hey, Sister.”
“Why’d you close the gate, Billy Joe?”
“What you doing trespassing on our land? Leave gates open, cattle get out.”
“Didn’t see any cattle,” Sister said, “or I would’ve closed the gate behind me. Don’t treat me like I’m the dullest knife in the drawer, Billy Joe Turner. I picked up plenty of cow pies in my day.” She pointed to the dry cow plop in the field. “Those are a good thirty days old, maybe older.”
He took a step back. “I wasn’t insinuating anything like that, Sister.”
“Then I’ll thank you to open that gate.”
He unhooked the gate, then stopped. “What’d you say you were doing?”
Ruby hesitated seconds, at best. “You see Whitey there in the back seat? Or have your eyes gone bad?”
“Yes ma’am. I mean, I see him.”
“We’ll take him back home now, you’d be so kind as to open that gate.”
Billy Joe hesitated briefly, then pulled the gate open.
“I’m glad your eyesight’s not failing,” Ruby said as she pulled past. Turning right onto the county road, she turned to Sister. “How was that? I didn’t really lie, did I? I just didn’t tell the truth.”
“No, you didn’t,” Sister said, talking slow. “But Billy Joe’ probably wondering about now why you headed the opposite direction of home.”
Ruby looked into her rearview mirror. “That would account for why he’s standing in the middle of the road, staring at us.” Suddenly, she began to laugh and when Sister joined in, she stepped on the gas, not even trying to account for the joyful feeling in the car. Sometimes it was best to accept goodness without question.
“Why do you figure Billy Joe’s checking on the properties?” Sister asked a minute later. “That’s his daddy’s job since he left off working at the pen.”
Ruby looked into the rearview mirror again. Billy Joe Turner looked like a bowling ball stuck in the middle of the road. “Well, old Mr. Turner got old. He’s ever bit as old as Pa. And Junior Turner’s ever bit as old as me. He quit his job at the pen to manage things. Maybe it’s time for Billy Joe to take on the family business.”
Sister snorted. “You don’t really think that’s why Junior Turner stopped working at the pen.”
Ruby gave Sister a glance. “You think otherwise?”
“Hold up. Next piece of property’s on the left. Let’s close the gate behind us this time so we don’t have any surprises waiting when we leave.”
Ruby pulled left into another dirt track, pulling through quickly so Sister could close the gate behind them.
“Those downed leaves should hide our tracks,” Sister said, settling into her seat again. “Thick as a carpet. Kinda looks like that rug at the duplex, don’t it. What was that color again?”
“Sierra Gold. Leaves are a lot prettier than it was. Cheap carpet, too. Wouldn’t hold up long.”
“I figure Billy Joe’s daddy left the pen because of that suspension.”
“What?” Ruby jammed the brake.
“Don’t stop here,” Sister said. “Pull into those sugar pines or you-know-who will be after us again.”
Ruby pulled inside a grove of pine trees that shielded them from the road. “What suspension?” she asked, staring at Sister.
“It’s right there in that newspaper article.”
Ruby tried to concentrate. “I don’t remember reading anything about that. Why didn’t I see that?”
“Because you were grieving. People that’s grieving wear blinders, don’t see anything but what they want to.”
“Mack tried to tell me something was fishy, that Junior knew more than he was telling, and I wouldn’t listen.”
“Well, don’t kick yourself too hard. The paper didn’t mention Junior’s name, and right then you couldn’t add two plus two. Understandably, of course.” Sister reached for the door handle. “Kill the engine, let’s walk this one.”
Ruby did as Sister instructed and followed Sister and Whitey into the thinly wooded pasture. “What do you mean blinders? Sounds like you’re saying grieving is selfish, like you would know anything about it.”
“What?” Sister spun on her heel. “Just because I never had a husband or child to lose, you think I don’t know about grieving? You are selfish, Ruby Barlow.”
“Now, I didn’t mean that, Sister. I’ve seen how you’ve grieved for Grace, and I know you don’t understand why I don’t. But I just didn’t know her like you did and it’s hard to grieve for someone you never knew.”
“I’m not talking about Grace. There’s other kinds of grieving, you know.”
Sister took off again and Ruby hurried to catch up. She pulled up short again as Sister came to a stop.
“Oh my Lord,” Sister murmured.
“What is it?
“I just figured it out. Nonny’s grieving for herself.”
“Herself?” Ruby hurried along, trying to catch up.
Sister stopped when she reached the back of the field and pointed toward the left. “We’ll cover more ground if I go one way and you go the other. Meet me back at the car.” She took off on her own, the white dog behind her.
“But, you could get lost,” Ruby called out, hurrying after her. “I’d feel better if we stayed together. We could lose our way.”
“Get lost? Oh for goodness sake, take Whitey with you so you don’t get lost.” Before Ruby could object, Sister sent the old dog back and went on her way. Poking with a stick into clumps of grass, she disappeared into the gray morning light like a specter in a fog.
Ruby called out, “So Nonny’s grieving for what she never had, is that what you’re saying?” Her voice fell flat, as though it had run into an invisible barrier. Turning around, she followed after Whitey as he snuffed around holes and under logs. As she did so, she came to a realization that stopped her in her tracks.
“Pearl Anderson,” she whispered. ”You weren’t just talking about Nonny. You were talking about yourself.” She paused, then said, “Lord help, how could I have been so selfish.”
