| |
Ruby sat in the driver’s seat of her car, shivering even though she was bundled in a wool coat, stocking cap, and mittens. She glanced at her sister who sat beside her, looking like an Eskimo. “You warm enough, Sister? I hate to start the engine. Could get carbon monoxide poisoning with the windows rolled up.”
“I’m fine. What’s the plan?”
Ruby pulled a long breath. “Well, I called Betty Winslow and she told me the Eastern Star meetings usually last about an hour and a half. So I figure we need to catch up with Tootsie right after it ends, corral her in a room there in the basement where the meeting’s held, and have our talk with her there.”
Sister looked at her. “That’s the best idea you could come up with?”
Ruby returned the stare. She’d spent all afternoon thinking about how to handle tonight. “You got a better one?”
Sister turned thoughtful. “Well, Tootsie came by herself, so we could head her off on the road back home.”
“She’s not alone. Wash was in town with her earlier. I figure she dropped him off at the country club and plans to pick him up after the meeting.” She reached a rag from under the seat and wiped the windshield. “All this talking’s fogging up the windows.”
Sister gave her another look. “You’re the one doing all the talking.”
Ruby sighed. “I’m just trying to fill the time.”
Ruby focused on the silence, wanting its curative power to calm her nerves. Though the streets were empty, she could hear the throaty snarl of traffic from the turnpike. Television sets in the windows across the street flickered, but with the windows rolled up, the sounds were muted. It was a different silence than she was accustomed to. Alien. A silence that needed to be filled in order to keep it at bay.
“You glad Mack’s changed his mind on that duplex business?”
Sister rolled her eyes. “Goes without saying.”
Ruby rubbed at the windows some more, then reached over and turned the key in the ignition so she could check the time on the dashboard clock. “Eight-fifteen. They should be letting out pretty quick.”
“This isn’t the right place,” Sister said. “Too many people.”
“Well . . . where then?”
“Country Club road is a lonely one, can head her off at that S-curve and force her into that wide spot where the kids make out.”
Ruby stared at her sister, wondering where she had learned of the local teenager’s make-out spot. Then she considered maybe she didn’t want to know how Sister would know that. “You really think that’s a better plan?” she asked.
“No way we’ll catch Tootsie alone here. She’ll be palavering all the way to her car. You know how she is, likes to play at being high-n-mighty. She’s probably the Grand Dame or Duchess whatever it is they call the head honcho. Gotta be the Country Club Road.”
“Maybe you’re right . . .”
Ruby paused, watching the back door of the Masonic Temple open and a troupe of women walk outside. Laughing and chattering, they traipsed after a shriveled-up piece of woman in a bright red coat like a brood of chicks after a mother hen. When the last of the women walked away, leaving Tootsie alone and unlocking a long sleek Lincoln, she turned the key in the ignition.
“We’ll just ease up behind her and follow her out,” she murmured.
“Leave a few cars between us. These other gals will drop out before we get to the Country Club Road. I speculate most of them live close by.”
Ruby did as Sister instructed and within a few minutes found that she was the only car on the road with Tootsie Turner. “I don’t drive this road often, not sure I know where that S-curve is.”
“Just watch for the road sign.”
Within another mile, Ruby saw the sign ahead indicating a sharp curve.
“You got to get closer, Ruby. That pull-off’s just ahead.”
Ruby stepped on the gas. “This is insane, Sister.”
“It’s now or never.”
Ruby pulled across the double-yellow stripe in the road, caught up with Tootsie, and passed her. Wheeling in front of the big sedan, she slammed both feet on the brake. Holding her breath, she listened to the squeal of brakes and waited for an impact. She was surprised when she ended up in the turn-off, Tootsie’s car wedged in behind her, without contact being made.
“Good Lord, it worked,” she said. “Just like on the TV.”
Sister began waving her hands, gesturing behind her at Tootsie’s car. “Get out of the car, Ruby. She’s doing something. She probably has one of those mobile phones. Let her know it’s us before she calls the cops.”
“Oh, right.” Ruby stepped into the cold air and saw her sister following suit on the other side. She saw the lights come on in Tootsie’s car and the driver door open, then the flash of chrome as the frowzy-headed woman stepped to the ground. Recognizing what it was, she reached behind the front seat.
“I’ve got a gun,” Tootsie Turner yelled from behind her car door.
“Yeah, but mine’s bigger,” Ruby said, leveling the long gun at Tootsie.
“Ruby Barlow? What the hell you think you’re doing?”
“What are you doing, Ruby?” Sister hurried around the car. “You brought Pa’s gun? We didn’t talk about this . . .”
“Need to talk some business, Tootsie.” Ruby’s voice wavered and her knees trembled. She had practiced what she would say to Tootsie all afternoon as she sat with her father so the words would become a script. But now, all she could see was the long barrel of the gun bouncing in the air as though it had come down with Saint Vitas Dance.
“What kind of business,” Tootsie drawled. One hand rested on a cocked hip, the other waved a small gun.
“I wouldn’t push her, I was you,” Sister said. “She’s stretched pretty thin, ‘bout as thin as I seen her. I didn’t know she brung Pa’s gun with her.”
Ruby listened to her sister’s words and felt a sudden calmness engulf her. She slid off the safety, listened to the click resonate through the cold night air, and grinned at the woman across from her.
Instantly, the cockiness left Tootsie’s face and skin sagged into folds around her mouth. “You saying that’s the same gun— Hellfire, you’re as crazy as that mother of yours.” Tootsie pitched the small revolver into the car seat. “Now, what kind of business?”
“Land deal,” Ruby said, walking closer. “Beulah Land deal.”
“Beulah Land . . .”
Ruby watched Tootsie’s jaws go slack.
“Hurry up Ruby,” Sister said, giving Ruby an elbow to the ribs. “Lay it on her before she pulls herself together. We got ‘er on the run.”
“We want Beulah Land back,” Ruby said, raising her voice.
“We’re taking Beulah Land back,” Sister yelled. “Was ours all along, Pa’s anyways.”
“You forgot your pocketbook, Sister,” Ruby whispered. “Go get the check.”
“Oh, yeah.” Sister hurried back to the car. She pulled her purse from the front seat and out of it, a crumpled check. She walked back to where Ruby stood, waving the check in the air. “Me and Ruby figured that all you deserved for Beulah Land was what you paid for it. One . . . thousand . . . dollars.”
“No way in hell.” The snort Tootsie let out was ugly. “So Grover told you about Beulah Land, huh?”
“We did more than that,” Ruby said. “We found Beulah Land—and Bill and Jack.”
“And Grace too,” Sister said. “You remember Grace?”
“Yeah,” Ruby said, noticing the shaken look come over Tootsie again. “You remember the woman you gave a hundred-dollar bill to, then dumped off on the side of the road to get killed?”
“Wasn’t like that.” Tootsie took a step forward, waving a finger in front of Ruby and Sister’s faces. “I did not drop her off on the side of the road.”
“Then what?” Ruby stepped forward too, feeling her blood pressure rise. “What’re you hiding, Tootsie Turner? What were those big tips for all those years? Pay-off money? Leaving that five-dollar bill on the edge of the table like I was nothing more than a cleaning lady in a motel you never met face to face. Never once a ‘Thank you, Ruby.’ Not once in twenty . . . some . . . years.”
“And what about those slugs in Bill and Jack’s doubletree?” Sister said. “All Pa ever kept was a shotgun, that very one Ruby’s holding in her hands right there. You seen that gun before, Tootsie? Something tells me you seen that gun before.”
Tootsie’s knees buckled and she began to stagger.
“Oh Lord, grab her.” Quickly, Ruby propped the shotgun against the front bumper of the Lincoln and made a move to catch the older woman before she fell. Tootsie slumped against her shoulder like a rag doll.
“You know what I think,” Sister said, standing up close to Tootsie’s face. “I remember my mother as well as anyone does ‘cept Pa, and you being her best friend and all. I figure Grace wasn’t the one shot those mules. My mother didn’t have the spunk to do it. But you did. I heard tell how you carried a gun in your pocketbook.” She pointed to the front seat of the Buick. “Proof of the pudding’s right there.”
“Oh my God.” Tootsie Turner cupped her face in trembling hands and leaned against the car.
“You think that’s what really happened?” Ruby whispered to Sister.
“Get the bill of sale out of my purse.” Sister gave Ruby a nudge in the ribs. “She has to sign that bill of sale.”
Ruby let loose of Tootsie, stumbled to Sister’s purse, and pulled out a wrinkled, hand-written bill of sale with a line drawn at the bottom for a signature.
“Here,” she said, laying the paper on the hood of the Lincoln. “Sign right here, Tootsie.”
“Use this.” Sister pulled a ballpoint pen from her coat pocket.
As soon as Tootsie finished scrawling her name on the bottom of the document, Sister pulled it from her hands. “I’ll take charge of this. Ruby, give her the check.”
“Oh, right.” Ruby forced the check into Tootsie’s hand and watched the woman stare at it dumbly.
“It wasn’t supposed to happen like that.” Tootsie’s voice quivered as badly as her hands. “Things got out of hand, you see.”
Ruby swallowed hard, not sure she wanted to find out more, but she had come too far down a long, dark road to turn back now. “So,” she said, “what happened after Pa beat up Grace?”
Tootsie looked startled. “You know about that, too?”
“We figured it out. Go on, what happened?”
“Well,” Tootsie said, talking slow. “Grace settled down too young . . . Hell, she didn’t even know enough to practice birth control. Parents died young, she grew up with a widowed aunt that didn’t teach her such things.” She turned to Sister. “You wasn’t planned for, in case you ever wondered.”
“Never gave it any thought,” Sister said.
“You neither, for that matter,” Tootsie said, looking at Ruby. “Always felt short-changed, Grace did. She said Grover was more married to that piece of land than he was to her. He was a good-looking man but poor as a church mouse and didn’t have an ambitious bone in his body. All he ever wanted was just a little piece of land.” She laughed, sounding bitter. “But not Grace. She wanted to live in town, join the Eastern Star, own a little dress shop.”
“Dress shop,” Ruby said. “She wanted to own her own business?”
“Yes, she was a good seamstress.”
“Well, I swan,” Sister said. “I never knew that.”
“Grover wouldn’t have none of it though, refused to live in town.” Tootsie paused. “Then after the war, he come back . . . I don’t know, changed.”
“The nightmares?” Ruby said.
“Nightmares? Well, don’t know about that. Grace said he’d go crazy. She’d come whining to me and I’d tell her to leave him. Just hop a Greyhound and go back to Georgia, I’d say. She was from over round Marietta, you see. But she was too lily-livered.”
“The war caused those nightmares,” Ruby said. “He wasn’t like his sister. Ida was crazy as a bedbug.”
“All I know is he used to hit Grace in the middle of the night and she just got fed up. When I come over that last time, she looked like the devil. Busted lip, black eye, mad as hell and swearing she was gonna get even. I tried to get her to listen, but . . .” She shook her head. “Things just got out of hand. She took that double barrel and walked out to Beulah Land, found those two mules tied up to a couple of hickory saplings. Grover did that when he wasn’t using them. She unloaded both barrels on them, right in the head.”
“Oh my Lord,” Ruby murmured. “She did kill Bill and Jack.”
“No, only wounded them. She slung that double barrel to the ground when she realized what she’d done and took off running down the road. Y’all was living at that old place on Tannehill Road back then, next door to Bessie Anderson. That’s where you kids were. I finished Bill and Jack off with my pistol.”
Tootsie nodded toward the chrome-plated twenty-two pistol on the front seat of the Lincoln. “That big revolver I used to tote, not that pea-shooter there. It was awful. Mules hurt bad—blinded ‘em, you see. Squealing at the top of their lungs. Jumping around so’s I couldn’t get a good bead. Blood everywhere. Lord help, I never seen so much blood.”
“It was the right thing to do,” Ruby said. “End their suffering, I mean.”
“Explains the slugs in the double tree,” Sister said. “That when Grace run off?”
Tootsie nodded. “She was beside herself, just knew Grover would put her in the ground when he found out. And who’s to say he wouldn’t have? He loved those mules most near as much as you kids, maybe more than Grace. So the short end of the story is I drove her up to Tulsa there on the highway where the Greyhound picks up, give her all the money I had in my purse, which was enough to get her to Georgia. It got late and she began to worry about me getting back home, told me not to wait around. I didn’t see no need to either, so I left.”
“And the bus hit her,” Ruby said.
“And the bus hit her,” Tootsie repeated. “That’s what the paper said. She was crazy out of her head that night, probably got scared it wasn’t gonna stop.”
“That when you decided to buy Beulah Land from Pa? So he could buy a coffin and headstone?”
“What?” Ruby faced Sister. “Tootsie bought Beulah Land?”
“I figure that’s what Tootsie was implying at the nursing home today when she said we’d be taken care of like always.”
Ruby faced Tootsie. “It was you bought Beulah Land, not the old Mister?”
“Had to! I wanted to give Grover the money flat out, but Wash has a miserly soul. Insisted Grover sign over the deed.” She shook her head as if trying to dislodge something too ugly to look upon. “Grover didn’t have money to bury Grace proper, you see. Nice casket’s what I told him to get. I figured he’d bury her out there at Hugh Low Cemetery. But the damned fool buried her right next to those mules and put up that tombstone with that saying on it. I just couldn’t bring myself to allow Wash to run cattle over her grave. I put my foot down on that one. Land’s just laid there fallow all these years . . .”
Tootsie’s voice faded and Ruby stood for a good bit without saying anything, long enough to grow chilled. She noticed the needles on the pines beside the road had curled in on themselves from the cold and realized Sister and Tootsie were doing the same thing.
“We’ll catch our death, we don’t get someplace warm,” she said.
“Guess all’s said can be said.” Sister folded the bill of sale into her coat pocket and looked at Tootsie. “I aim to take this here paper to the lawyer first thing in the morning, make sure the deed’s transferred to Ruby and me proper like.”
“Let’s get you inside your car.” Ruby took Tootsie’s arm. “We’ll follow you to the Country Club so you can pick up Wash.”
“What? How do you know these things . . .”
Tootsie’s voice trailed off as Ruby helped her into her car. She studied the old woman sitting dumbly in the front seat, then tapped on the window. As the glass rolled down, she leaned forward. “You come by the house next week, I’ll fix that hair. A little green tint will do the trick. You look like hell, you know.”
“I know.” And as she rolled the window up, Tootsie whispered, “Thank you, Ruby.”
