Authors: Carolyn Wall
In silence, we pulled on our boots, coats, scarves, and mittens,
and we trekked down the road toward Ruse’s in the early dark. We were late; Pap would be waiting for us.
“You will not mention this to your father,” she huffed, her breath forming clouds.
“Why?” I said. “Are you afraid he’ll think you’ve gone crazy again? That he’ll send you back to Buelton?”
We turned to cross the stone bridge, and she snorted. “If I were you, young lady, I’d watch my step. There are places for disobedient children, homes for unruly girls. They sleep on bare mattresses and get bread and water to eat. They work their fingers to the bone and are beaten every day of their lives.”
It was an icy night, and the road slickly polished. I kept to the side, where the snow had been thrown by traffic and my boots found purchase. “I never heard of such a thing.”
She looked at me. There was still a slight imprint where my hand had laid into her cheek. “Your father and I have talked about this. Believe me when I tell you—you are on the edge.”
W
e crossed over to Main Street where the lights were on in Ruse’s window. There was no one out—not a single horse, nor a wagon. When we pushed open the door and went in, we were the only customers. Ida pulled off her cap and put on a sunny expression. “Mr. Ruse, are we too late for supper?”
Ruse, the elder, looked up from behind the counter where he was reading a newspaper. “You’re sure not, Miz Harker. Olivia. You two go on and take a seat, and I’ll bring you a menu.”
“Thank you, sir,” Ida said as though she were a fine lady and he had offered to carry her across a river. I wanted to gag.
The cafe was L-shaped, the remaining space being taken up by the barbershop next door. Mrs. Ruse stayed pretty much in the kitchen while her husband presided over a counter with seven stools, and five wooden tables with chairs. Each table held salt and pepper, a sugar bowl, and a small covered dish of Mrs. Ruse’s homemade chili sauce. There was a high glass counter by the door, and a cash register where Ruse rang up bills owed and sold Chiclets and peppermint patties wrapped in waxed paper.
Ida chose a table by the window, as if she wanted to be seen by any passers-by. She sat smoothing the front of her dress, in case Big Ruse hadn’t noticed the shape of her.
He brought two glasses of water and menus. She laid a hand on his arm. “Can you tell me, please, what time it is.”
“Six-thirty,” he said, blushing slightly. I guess he wasn’t used to being touched by any woman other than his missus.
I shook my head and studied the menu.
“How are you, Olivia?” he said.
“I’m guess I’m fine, Mr. Ruse. I’d like—”
But Ida shushed me with a flutter of her hand. She looked up at Big Ruse and smiled. Her teeth were so white I could have read by them.
Ruse smiled back, curving the bottom half of his face. He looked plain silly.
“I’ll have a cup of coffee while I’m makin’ up my mind,” she said. “And milk for the girl.”
She had taken to calling me “the girl” lately, like she had forgotten my real name. I knew what I wanted to eat, but as often happened when Ida was around, no sound came out of my mouth.
When Ruse came back with our drinks, Ida laughed and patted his leg with her menu. “It’s my birthday, and my husband was bringing me here as a treat—but it seems he’s been detained. I think, dear Mr. Ruse, that we’ll go ahead and order.”
“No problem, Miz Harker,” Big Ruse said. “If Tate don’t make it, he can settle up later. And I’ll include a slice of pie for each of you as my birthday gift.”
“Why, aren’t you the sweetest thing,” she said, smiling.
If Ida kept this up, her face would crack, or I was going to throw up on the table, one.
“Well, what do you recommend?”
“Turkey pie’s done to a turn, Miz Harker. Fix you up with two a them.”
“I want beefsteak,” I said, because that’s what Pap would have ordered. “Cooked lightly, please. Red inside.”
Ida waved her menu. “The girl doesn’t know what’s good for her. We’ll have two helpings of turkey pie.”
I watched through the window, praying Pap would come. But he did not, so I looked around, although I knew the place like the back of my hand. On hot summer days, Big Ruse often had set a glass of cold water in front of me on the counter. He was also famous for his biscuits and honey, which Pap had sometimes treated me to on Saturday mornings. I knew his son, a few years older than me and homely as dish soap. His first name was actually Cornelius—no wonder he never used it. We called him Little Ruse.
Just now, Little Ruse was scuttling around, wiping off tables, filling salt shakers, and unable to take his eyes off Ida.
Wedges of turkey pie came, with thick gravy and a biscuit on the side and pats of butter. And so did Mr. French, and Mr. Andrews who had just closed his barbershop. They sat together, ate slabs of chocolate cake and drank coffee, looking in our direction and talking in low voices. I hunched over my plate. Ida sent them smiles that were both brilliant and quivery. I spread butter on my biscuit and stuffed half in my mouth.
Little Ruse wiped the table next to ours. “Hey, Olivia,” he said.
I could hear his mama in the kitchen, banging pans and spoons. “Hey,” I said around the bread.
He grinned at me, and Ida saw it. She put down her fork. “Olivia Harker,” she said, “I won’t have this boy makin’ eyes at you. If you are doin’ anything a-moral with him …”
I was mortally embarrassed. Little Ruse, with his flapping-big ears and his quarter-of-an-inch haircut, darted away to the kitchen. I did not see him again that night.
“Oh, Mr.
Ru
-use,” Ida called, and he came with the coffee pot and refilled her cup.
I wished with all my heart that Pap would show up. Then I could have a bite or two of his steak, and he would tell me about the Nailhows’ cat, and the news from the settlement. I hoped there was somebody out there to give him a ride. Otherwise, Pap might not be home for a long time.
Ida had her hand on Big Ruse’s leg. “Goodness, I admire a man who runs his own business. It takes such courage.” To my astonishment—and probably Ruse’s—she hooked his leg with her hand and pulled him close so that she was talking directly into his belt buckle.
Ruse kept looking off to the kitchen. I wondered what he thought about Pap’s wife playing up to him. But Ruse obviously was not thinking at all. His own flopping ears had turned red as Christmas bulbs, and his eyes were coming out of his head. I couldn’t wait to tell Love Alice that I’d seen Big Ruse nearly breathing smoke with his need to stick his business into Ida. If Love Alice was right, he’d blow up into a toad any minute. I wanted to crawl under the table.
Ida looked up at him. “Here I am talking on and on. If you’re ready to bring our pie, Mr. Ruse, I’d love it if you’d join us.”
I never heard his reply. I jerked my coat from the rack and ran out of the cafe as if wildcats were after me. I had witnessed Ida whoring with Big Ruse, and I would never come back.
I was no more than two steps into the road when a shiny new truck came roaring along under the streetlamps. Through the windscreen I could see Alton Phelps’ face, and I guessed that was his brother, James Arnold, with him. They fishtailed on the ice, and by the time they opened their doors and fell out, I was miserable over not having run for my life.
Too late, I dodged.
But Alton was already reaching for my arm, and he slammed me up against the truck. “All right, girlie,” he said, sounding like his tongue was too big for his mouth. “You go on and leave us alone with Ida Mae now. We’ll fetch up with you when it’s time.”
I wrenched free, cut between buildings, and set off across the field. Before long, the stumpy ice slowed me down, but at least I could no longer see, or be seen from, Main Street, the dark hotel, or the bakery with its kitchen light on. It was bitterly cold. After a while, my boots filled with snow, and the wind whipped so fierce that it froze my ears. They hurt clear to the middle of my head, and I clapped my hands over them, but my fingers already ached like rows of bad teeth. I was not going back to Ruse’s for my scarf and mittens. Instead I would find Pap, and when I did I’d tell him what happened.
But I could not remember which was the turnoff to Lansing. After a while, I began to cry with the cold. The cold wind howled. I longed for the trousers I’d given up in the fight. Worse, I could no longer feel my feet, and before long fell into a deep snowbank. Whimpering for Pap, I spotted faint light far away, and I cut through a field, struggling over the frozen stalks of last summer’s corn, and sinking into blown drifts.
Finally I just lay there and closed my eyes. If I was going to die here, I hoped Pap would find me and be sorry he’d ever brought Ida home. But there were three sets of lights, and one of them not too far off. I hobbled along, hearing dogs bark and fearful of being eaten alive. It was likely dogs would drag my bones off for burying, and then nobody would know how I’d suffered at all. Maybe they’d have an all-out search with great weeping when they found me. If that happened, I hoped it was not Big Ruse who found my frozen body. On the other hand, if he did, maybe he’d
remember what a fool he acted on the night of Ida’s birthday, and be mortally sorry.
On my knees, I slid down an embankment and across a creek where the ice was jagged but did not break under me. Then I made my way across a yard and knocked on the first door I came to. Mrs. Nailhow opened it.
I fell into her arms. Then Pap was there, the cat’s blood on his shirt, and he carried me to her sofa and laid me down. Mrs. Nailhow took off my boots and stripped away my torn stockings. My legs were clotted with blood, and burned like fire. My hair stuck out in frozen spikes and Pap cautioned her not to touch it, for fear of it breaking off. She set to rubbing my feet, and several of the Nailhow children rubbed, too, until I cried out with the pain, and I stumbled to the kitchen to where Pap sat on the floor beside the poor mewling cat.
Poor thing, she was worse off than I. Pap had muzzled her and bound her paws so that she could not claw him. With one hand he kneaded her swollen belly, and with two fingers of the other he probed inside her.
“How one cat can have so many ass-backward kits—” he said, looking at me, but not seeing. He was thinking about Mrs. Higgins’ innards. He’d rescued three kittens already. If I’d been the fourth he’d have seen me better, and bandaged my hurts. He laid the kittens beside their mother.
Suddenly I was embarrassed by my bare and wounded legs, and I pulled my knees up under my skirt so Pap could not see the mess I was.
“I count two more,” he said. “Gotta take ’em slow, or she’ll bleed to death.”
I suspected Pap hadn’t remembered Ida’s birthday dinner at all, and I was not going to mention it. He’d hear about that soon
enough. I wondered if, by now, Mrs. Ruse had come out of her kitchen and beaten Ida to death with a frying pan. Sitting there in the warmth of the Nailhows’ kitchen, it occurred to me, further, to ask Pap about this home for wayward girls. But I held my tongue. And I watched the cat. One thing was sure—if having babies amounted to this, I’d never let a man have his way with me. He could keep his trousers buttoned. And it was all the same to me if he swelled up and exploded all over Pope County.
O
ne night toward the end of winter, Pap came home, banging his boots on the porch and shouting for Ida.
“Lord love a duck, Tate Harker, what’s the matter with you?” She came out of the bedroom with a wool shawl around her and her hair mussed from sleeping.
“Put your coats on,” he said, looking from one of us to the other. “Come on out and see this.”
“I can’t see nothin’ in the dark,” she said.
But Pap shooed us down the steps and around the house, and there, pulled up against a snowbank, was a pickup truck. Its front end was beat in so bad, it looked like the Phelps boys had used it to pound out their meanness. Only one headlight worked, laying its beam crookedly across our yard. The passenger door was roped shut.
“Sweet Sonny Jesus,” said Ida. Then her hands flew to her face. “Look what you’ve gone and made me do—taking the Lord’s name in vain. This thing is an abomination.”
“No, it isn’t,” Pap said, running his hand down the fender. “It’s just been rode hard.”
“Well, I will not ride in it—do not ask me.”
“I’ll ride,” I said, and I got in on the driver’s side.
He ruffled my hair.
“It’s the devil’s machine!” Ida shouted after us. “And the ugliest one I ever saw!”
Pap loved the truck, and was prouder than anything when he drove to town, or out to a farm to pay a call. He was still selling firewood and again peddling moonshine on the sly. After that I grinned ear to ear when we rolled into a yard, the window wound down and my elbow stuck out like I was the Queen of Sheba.
For a long time, Ida would not ride, but after a while she put on her coat and instructed Pap to back the truck out onto the road. Then she climbed in and sat up straight as a rake. The county had cleared the highway of snow, so with me in the middle, Pap drove us up north to Paramus and back. He was smiling so wide I thought his face would split. By then he’d lost two teeth on the right side, but it did not spoil his handsomeness, and after that we drove into town on Saturdays and parked in front of the cafe while Ida shopped. I sat in the truck and looked at the empty buildings up and down the street. Then Ida would come out, and Pap, who’d been watching, would trot up from the hardware on the corner, and we’d arrange ourselves on the seat and go home. We did this week after week while the icicles melted from our eaves and the grass came up thick and green in the yard.
By early summer I was begging Pap to let me get behind the wheel of the truck. In the matter of driving, Ida was the opposite, and it created a constant argument between them. Then one morning, she tired of the fight, buttoned on her sweater, and took the truck out by herself. She came home in a fume.
“Tate Harker!” she called from the top of the cellar stairs. “I nearly kilt myself, and it’s all the doing of that infernal vehicle!”