I walked along the road watching my feet. My sneakers were wet with dew. The morning mist still hovered over the ground like a cloud of smoke. Somewhere up in the trees a bobwhite called his own name out. “Bob White!” I tried to answer him but I couldn't do it nearly as good as my brother Vernon.
Just before I got to Uncle Beau's, I stopped. I was afraid to look up. Afraid that things had been so crazy and mixed up the day before that if I looked up, the store might be gone. But I did look up and the store was still there, same as ever. Still, I had a strong feeling that, inside, things were different. As I walked, I chanted to myself, “Please, Lord, let Rupert be gone. Please, Lord, let Rupert be gone.”
When I got closer, I saw the “Open” sign and the bargain table. I heard Jake's tail thumping same as always. Then
Rupert Goody came around from behind the store, carrying a bucket, and I felt like somebody punched me right between the eyes.
When he saw me, he smiled and waved like I was his friend. Water sloshed over the sides of the bucket.
“What you doing here?” I said, mean as I could.
“Washing milk crates.”
“What you washing milk crates for?”
“Uncle Beau told me to.”
“He ain't your uncle.”
I stood between him and the door and gave him my best glare, but it didn't seem to faze him a bit.
“How long you planning on staying?” I said.
Rupert lowered his head and looked down at the bucket in his hand. I leaned over and looked up into his face.
“You hear me?” I said.
He lifted his shoulders and let them fall back down. He had on the same grimy T-shirt as yesterday Smelled like tuna fish.
“Is that you, Jennalee?” Uncle Beau called from inside the store.
“No, it's Gravel Gertie,” I said real low through my clenched teeth. When I got inside, first thing I saw was the doughnuts already on the plate on the counter.
Uncle Beau looked at the doughnuts and back at me.
“Jake ain't had his yet,” he said.
I dropped my backpack and sat on the bench by the
checkout counter. I looked down at my wet sneakers. Pulled my sock up. Licked my finger and wiped dirt off my knee.
“You and I need to talk, Jennalee,” Uncle Beau said.
“About what?”
“About Rupert.”
I could hear water splashing on the porch and Rupert making grunting noises. I kept my eyes on my feet.
“Rupert is my son, Jennalee.”
I made myself look at Uncle Beau. He had those droopy-dog eyes of his. I watched him rubbing Jake behind the ears.
“What you talking about, Uncle Beau?” I said. “You talking about that black man out there on the porch?” As far as I was concerned, it didn't take a genius to see that Rupert Goody didn't have one little bit of Uncle Beau in him. Sure, Uncle Beau's name was Goody, too. Beauregarde Goody But having the name Goody didn't mean nothing. Shoot, anybody could call theirselves Goody if they wanted to.
“I had a woman once,” Uncle Beau said. “Sweetest woman this side of heaven.”
“Aw, hell, Uncle Beau,” I said. “I don't want to hear this.” I set a bit of a smile on my face cause I knew Uncle Beau didn't like it when I cussed.
He pushed through the curtain that hung over the door to his room and disappeared inside. For one scary minute I thought he wasn't going to come back out. Thought that
was the end of this conversation. But he came out holding a picture and handed it to me.
“This here is Hattie Baker,” he said.
I looked at the wrinkled black-and-white picture. A young black woman in a sundress sat on a blanket in the shade. She held a bunch of wildflowers in one hand and smiled. No, more than smiled. Laughed. She was laughing and I swear I could almost hear her.
I studied everything about her. Her hair pulled back tight. A necklace of tiny pearls. No shoes. White socks with lace around the edges. Her skin dark and smooth.
I looked at Uncle Beau. He was staring off into space, still rubbing Jake's ears. I shook my head, trying to get my scrambled-up thoughts to fall into place. Uncle Beau and this Hattie woman was a bit more than I could digest.
I looked at the picture again. Hattie looked back at me. She wasn't pretty, but I have to admit she had a look of goodness to her. I tried to imagine Uncle Beau sitting on the blanket beside her. His arm around her. Handing her those flowers and maybe telling one of his corny jokes to make her laugh.
“So what happened to her?” I said.
“Just up and disappeared,” Uncle Beau said. “Took my heart with her.”
I never heard Uncle Beau talk such talk before and it was making my head spin. Why didn't he just hush up and go wait for Howard Harvey to bring the produce?
“I tried to find her.” Uncle Beau stopped rubbing Jake
and scratched the whiskers on his chin. Jake put his head on the floor and sighed a big dog sigh. “I begged her kin to tell me where she went, but they wouldn't give me the time of day,” he went on. Then he chuckled. “I didn't have no truck back then, so I drove my John Deere lawn mower clear over to Asheville looking for her. Took me nearly two days.”
“You find her?” I asked.
Uncle Beau shook his head. “Never did.”
“So what makes you think that man out there's your son?” I jerked my head toward the porch.
“Ever since Hattie left, I been waiting,” Uncle Beau said. “Not waiting for Hattie. I knew she wasn't coming back. Didn't know what the hell I was waiting for. Just a feeling that left me thinking my life was all vines and no taters. You know what I mean?”
I squirmed on the bench and bounced my foot real fast. Jake jerked his head up and looked at me, then flopped back over on his side.
“Maybe,” I said.
“Well, anyhow,” Uncle Beau went on, “when Rupert walked in here, that waiting feeling oozed right on out of me and out the door.”
I looked at Uncle Beau. His bushy eyebrows were drawn together, making him look a little too earnest for my taste at the moment.
“So you saying that you and me is just the vines and you and Rupert is the taters,” I said.
Uncle Beau's eyebrows dropped and his body sort of sank. He put his hand on my knee and jiggled my leg. “You taters, too, Gravel Gertie,” he said.
“Then where's Hattie?”
“Died.”
My stomach did a flop. I watched Uncle Beau's face, hoping like anything he wasn't going to cry or something. But he just looked kind of dreamy-eyed. Being a curious person, I went on. “How'd she die?”
“I'm not too clear on that,” Uncle Beau said. “Rupert said she must've took one look at him and keeled over from the ugly shock.” Uncle Beau chuckled and shook his head. “The boy can make a joke, I'll give him that.”
“He don't look like no boy to me,” I said. “Looks like a full-grown man. Ought to at least know how his own mama died.” I rubbed Jake's stomach with my foot. I could feel my face sagging with a frown.
“I figure I'll just take things slow,” Uncle Beau said.
“Plenty of time to fill in the particulars.” He patted my knee and put his face in front of mine. He smelled like Old Spice. “That face of yours gets any longer, it's gonna hit the floor,” he said.
I looked away. I knew he was smiling, but I didn't smile back.
“So,” I said. “This Rupert person just waltzes in here and takes over the place. That right, Uncle Beau?” My stomach was churning up a storm by now. I kept bouncing my foot and trying to swallow the lump in my throat.
“That ain't right at all, Jennalee,” Uncle Beau said. He leaned over and whispered, “You were right about them bottle caps. I should've done like I said I would and let you do 'em, cause he flubbed it all up. You take care of that after school, okay?”
I snatched my backpack off the floor and threw it over my shoulder. On my way out, I stopped and looked down at Rupert Goody washing milk crates on the porch. Dirty water sloshing all over everything. His fly was unzipped and he looked like an idiot.
“Barn door's open,” I said.
But he didn't even know what I was talking about. Just kept washing milk crates like he didn't know he was messing up my life. Taking the only predictable thing I ever had and mixing the vines up with the taters.
I walked across the gravel parking lot. When I got to the road, I turned and looked back at the store. Rupert on the porch with his barn door open, sloshing water everywhere. I picked up a handful of gravel. Uncle Beau stepped out on the porch and waved at me. I threw the gravel at the ground and headed off to school.
Now, when I got up in the morning, the day that lay ahead of me was a mystery. Some days, I got to Uncle Beau's and everything seemed like before. Produce to sort through, boxes to open. Other days, Rupert would be sitting there mixing up the apples with the tangerines. Forgetting to put the soda-machine key back on the hook by the door. Making me wonder what was gonna happen next.
After school, I'd sit on the porch and listen to the same old grownup nonsense as before. Only now, with Rupert hanging around, I could swear there was a tension in the air. Uncle Beau told everybody about his son, about Hattie's boy, patting Rupert on the back and grinning from ear to ear. I saw the raised eyebrows, but Uncle Beau never did.
Claytonville's so small you can't spit without hitting somebody Everybody knows everything worth knowing
about everybody else. Least, they thought they did till Rupert come. I wanted somebody to say, “What you talkin' about, Uncle Beau? That black man ain't no son of yours.” But nobody did.
A couple of the old folks remembered Hattie. “You mean this here's Hattie's boy?” they'd say Then they'd stare at Rupert and say, “Well, I'll be.”
Some of the black folks give Rupert the once-over. Every now and then, one of them said something like, “Looks every bit of Baker, don't he?” But mostly they just give him the once-over.
I tried to put on an I-don't-give-a-hoot face, but the subject of Hattie Baker made me fidget a bit. Rupert, on the other hand, didn't bat an eye. Half the time he just sat there all glassy-eyed like he didn't understand a thing. Usually, he was caught up in some chore Uncle Beau had him doing. Rolling coins or checking the expiration date on the milk or something.
First couple of days, I'd find Rupert doing my jobsâthe price stamping and shelf stocking and all. Ticked me off big-time.
“You trust him with them pickle jars?” I'd say to Uncle Beau. Or: “Don't know who can read them labels, the way he's put them canned tomatoes out there.” I guess Uncle Beau knew how to take a hint, cause after a while Rupert was mostly doing other stuff. Stuff I didn't like doing anyways.
Uncle Beau got Rupert set up in the shed out back.
Wrote his name on the door with a black marker. “Rupert B. Goody” in Uncle Beau's wiggly writing. “B for Beauregarde,” Rupert told me. “Same as Uncle Beau.” I figured he was saying that just to get my goat, which it did, but I just said, “Yeah, right. Whatever.”
I went in that shed one day while Rupert was picking up litter in the parking lot. Nothing but a dirty old sleeping bag on an air mattress. A couple of shirts hanging on nails. Cardboard box full of socks and overalls and stuff. When I recognized the grocery sack Rupert had brought with him that first day he come to Claytonville, I couldn't stop myself from looking inside. What I saw convinced me more than ever that Rupert was plumb off his rocker. A stack of Monopoly money in a rubber band, a box of Fig Newtons, some tiny knitted booties, shoe polish, rusty pliers, and a mayonnaise jar full of buttons and bird feathers. That was it. I was beginning to think maybe Rupert Goody'd escaped from the loony bin.
I thought about it awhile before I decided to bring the subject up to Uncle Beau. Finally one day I said, “So, Uncle Beau, what you think is wrong with Rupert anyways?”
Uncle Beau was sitting on his lumpy old couch by the magazine rack. Had a portable heater setting right smack in front of him going full blast. It was nearly June and didn't feel a bit cold to me, but Uncle Beau, he got cold a lot. He scratched his whiskers. “Just a mite slow, I reckon,” he said.
“Slow?” I let out a little “Hmmmf” and shook my head.
Uncle Beau raised one eyebrow. “Speak your mind, Jennalee,” he said in a tone I didn't much like.
“Seems a tad more than slow to me, is all,” I said.
Uncle Beau looked at me for a bit too long before he spoke. “Sometimes what's in a heart means a hell of a lot more than what's in a head.”
I jabbed at the floor with the toe of my sneaker. “Maybe he ain't really your son.” There, I said it. I listened to the heater whirring and waited. I hoped Rupert didn't come barging in. Uncle Beau pushed hisself up off the couch with a grunt. He walked in that shuffling way of his to the front door and squinted out into the parking lot.
“Looks like that storm is headin' our way,” he said.
That shut me up. I felt about as low as a slithery ole snake in the grass. Then, just as I was scrambling for a way to redeem myself, in came Rupert, waving a paint scraper in the air.
“That old paint come off the door real good, Uncle Beau,” he said. Little flecks of green paint stuck to his face and arms.
“That's good,” said Uncle Beau. “What color you think we ought to paint it now?”
Rupert looked at me. “What you think, Jennalee?”
I looked at Uncle Beau, but he wasn't doing nothing to help me feel any better. “Whatever,” I said.
“I think I got some paint out in the shed,” Uncle Beau said, disappearing out the door.
I looked at Rupert. He smiled at me and I set my frown even harder.
“I reckon your family over in Fletcher must be worried about you,” I said.
Rupert shook his head and looked down at his hands, fiddling with the paint scraper.
“Ain't your family looking for you?”
Rupert shook his head again.
“Must be somebody looking for you.” I peered into Rupert's face. “Who'd you live with before you come here?”
“All them people,” Rupert said.
“What people?”
“Nana June and Miss Sophie and Mr. Reuben and Anna Lee and ⦔
“Who're they?”
“Them people I lived with.”
I squinted harder at Rupert. “Them people you lived with where?”
“In the homes,” he said.
“You mean the home? Like an orphanage?”
“He means the foster homes,” Uncle Beau said behind me.
I jumped. “Oh,” I said, feeling my face burning.
“Maybe we should head on over to Cherokee on Saturday,” Uncle Beau said. Was he talking to me or Rupert? My stomach was nothing but a ball of knots till he added, “Must be about ruby-mine time, don't you reckon, Jennalee?”
I felt a smile spread across my face. Nothing I like better than going to the ruby mine with Uncle Beau. It ain't a real mine. They just call it that. They got these long troughs with water running through them. You buy yourself a
bucket of dirt. Five dollars for a regular bucket. Eight for a giant-size. You put a scoop of dirt in a sieve and slosh the sieve around in the water till all the dirt is washed away and ain't nothing left in the sieve but rocks. Then you pick through them rocks and see if you got yourself a ruby Course, it ain't a shiny red ruby like's in a ring or nothing. It's just a reddish-looking rock's got to be cut and polished. I been collecting rubies for years. Got me a whole bunch in a Whitman's candy box. My sister Marny's all the time telling me the ruby mine is a rip-off, that them rubies ain't worth nothing, but I know she'd love to get her grimy old hands on them if she could. Good news is she can't, cause I keep my box at Uncle Beau's.
So, anyway, when Uncle Beau said that about going to Cherokee, I felt my spirits lift. “Yeah, that'd be good,” I said.
“You ever been ruby mining, Rupert?” Uncle Beau said.
Rupert ran his thumb over the paint scraper and stuck his tongue out of the corner of his mouth. He squinted his eyes up like he was thinking real hard about whether or not he'd ever been ruby mining. Way I saw it, either he had or he hadn't, but I kept quiet.
Finally, he looked at Uncle Beau and shook his head so hard his cheeks jiggled. “No, I ain't,” he said.
“Well, now, that's okay,” Uncle Beau said. “Jennalee's bout the best ruby miner in North Carolina. I bet she'd give you a tip or two if you asked her.”
Rupert scratched at the paint flecks on his arm. “You help me, Jennalee?” he said. “You give me a tip or two?”
I shrugged. “I guess.”
“Okay, then,” Uncle Beau said. “That's what we'll do.” He pulled his pocket watch out and flipped it open. “Hoooeee,” he said. “Where'd this day go?”
“What time is it, Jake? Quittin' time,” Rupert said. “Button the door, Jennalee.”
Uncle Beau laughed so hard he had to sit back down on the couch.
“You beat all, Rupert,” he said, wiping his eyes with a handkerchief. “Don't Rupert beat all, Jennalee?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Rupert sure beats all.”