Winter Loon(77)

I told him how she’d spent her days since, closed up in her room. I’d heard sounds through the door and the wall at night. Not sniffling or crying. It was all exhale, nothing drawn in, only despair of some sort letting out. I told him, too, how she’d stood up to Burt Rook, though in my mind that had been the wrong thing to do. What it was, I would soon discover, was that she’d backed herself into a corner. Those exhales were Ruby exorcising her fear so she could lash out at all comers she suspected were lying in wait.

When I got home, the tomato box was next to the door. Ruby was sitting at the table, drinking a beer.

“Here you go,” I said, handing her the cigarette carton. “What’s that doing there?”

“You get matches? Told you I was out.”

“Yeah, here. So what’s with the box?”

“I want you to take your stuff and get out.”

I pulled out the chair next to her and turned it around, straddling to face her. She looked away and fumbled with the red pull tab on the pack. “What now?”

“What took you so long, huh?” she asked. “You down at the bank? The police station?”

“I stopped to talk to Lester. What’s got into you?”

“I want you out, is all. Take your shit, all of it. Take that box. And get out.”

“Let’s get you something to eat, Ruby. You’re not thinking straight.”

She slammed her hand down on the table, jiggling her coffee cup and the centerpiece basket of rubber fruit. “I don’t want you here anymore. I don’t trust you. I don’t need your help. I don’t need anything from you. And I got nothing left to give. I’m sick of you. I’m sick of your Indian friends. I’m sick of talking about Valerie. I’m sick of all of it. I want you gone. Today. Now. Don’t leave anything here you want to see again. I won’t let you back.”

Her jaw locked behind her sunken lips. She stared at me, her eyes squinting, shifting. She went back to her beer without saying a word.

“So that’s it?” I asked. “You’re going to throw me out just like that. Where do you expect me to go?”

“Find a couch somewhere. Sleep on the sidewalk for all I care. You’re not my problem anymore,” she said, and emptied the can into her toothless mouth.

As much as I wanted away from that house, I was also scared of what would happen to me next. She steeled her mouth, blinked frantically. If it was a bluff, I would call it. I hit both my hands on the table, called Jolene while Ruby sat there, told her I was moving out and asked could she help me with my stuff. All the while I stared at Ruby. She looked like an animal capable of chewing off its own foot to escape a trap.

I knew the contortions of Ruby’s face—so much of her was carved into those lines. She had a scowl cleft that extended from the bridge of her nose to the part in her hair. The cracks around her mouth, smoking fissures, puckered up to her nose. Bags of worry hung beneath her eyes. But right then, I saw her face at rest, cast in mud, as if any expression would crackle it to pieces.

I took the duffel from the back of the closet. I stuffed in the few things I needed, realizing it wasn’t much. My mother’s high school picture, books I wanted to keep, a newspaper photograph of me, Lester, Jolene, and a few other kids after a football game that I took down off the wall, folded into a square, and tucked in next to my clothes. Last, I retrieved the hunting knife from under the bed, feeling again that knobby handle rib the palm of my hand. After what Ruby told me, I’d put it back in the slats where I found it, a resting place of sorts. Fear and suspicion had been sweat into the bone first by that squirrel skinner, then by my grandmother, then my mother, finally by me. I considered for the briefest moment giving it back to Ruby but thought better of it. Was she capable of hurting herself or me? I tossed it in the bag along with the rest. The house rumbled like a pot set to boil as the freight train approached. I closed my eyes and let it pass, then looked at the clock. Right on time.



RUBY STOOD UP FROM THE table when I came down the hallway. She mashed out her cigarette. “You got everything you want, right? Because I mean it. I don’t want you coming back.”

“Yeah, Ruby. I got it.”

“And you take that tomato box. You take it, hear?”

I flung the duffel over my shoulder. Ruby grabbed me as I was about to stoop for the box. She held onto me, squeezed me like a child clings to her mom. She pulled back and her calm face cracked wide open, a breached dam. Tears flowed out of her, down her cheeks, spring melt in a dry creek. She wiped her face with both hands. “Go on, now.”

“Ruby.”

“You heard me. Go. I want you out. And take that box.”



OVER DINNER, MONA ASSURED ME that this was Ruby’s way of grieving, that some people needed to be alone. The thing I couldn’t understand was how Ruby could run Gip down on purpose and feel bad about it at the same time. How she could want him dead, but then grieve when she got what she wanted. Mona dragged out, “Can’t live with ’em, can’t live without ’em,” then punched Troy in the arm when he said, “Apparently you can run ’em over, though.”

I left most of my things, including the tomato box, with Jolene, then went to Lester’s to sack out. I figured I’d give Ruby a few days to settle down, then go check on her again.