Yarrow House

Ruby

He was walking through the bus station looking maybe for the men’s room, not aware of anyone, although she was aware of him in an abstract, there’s nothing left to do but watch people, bus station kind of way. She was an old song and dance girl, sometime hooker, age untold. Her hobby was bus stations. She could tell you about the bus stations in three-fourths of the towns on the coast and had opinions about those in the other fourth.

Now she wasn’t dancing anymore for anyone but herself, having found a two-room house on a couple of rundown acres, outside of town too far for commuters to drive every day, near a corner crossroads that used to be a community but now was only a tavern and grocery store and some dying farms. A place with not much hope anymore but quiet and slow. She liked it, liked its brushy pastures and rusted fences, liked the rundown, rained in unpretentiousness. It fits me, she said sometimes to her stove. She talked to her stove, or to the ancient Guernsey cow that gave only a quart of milk a day and ate more than two good producers but who had eyes that told stories and such a trusting moo. Yes, it fit her own state, hanging onto the edge and going nowhere and not caring, taking each day as it came and glad it didn’t bring any more than it did.

He was a tired and graying country-western singer and guitar player at all the little crossroad taverns, playing for a beer and gas money, one night stands. He noticed her on his way out of the John, noticed first, she wasn’t waiting for a bus and second, she had fine legs.

•

They were sitting there where they had met, both of them worn, but not worn down; still dreaming, still ready to take up the promises that life was always handing them. They circled each other like the old fighters they were, both knowing all the opening moves, wary, not wanting to show their hand until they got the lay of the land; neither willing to make the first move nor back out from a tangle. “Well, why don’t you take me home and feed me?” Brashness scored more dinners than breakfasts, but he was too tired to think up a new line. She ignored him, finished her coffee. Got up to leave. He went along, to see how she handled turning him down, or to follow up his advantage, whichever it was. He still wasn’t sure when they’d left town in her old Dodge, she driving, quick and easy down the road.

“You sure don’t talk much, lady.”

“I want you to know I’m only taking you home because...”

“Of my body.” She pulled the car to the side of the road and stopped. “Get out.”

“Oh, now, wait a minute. I was only joking.”

“Now you know I don’t like jokes. Get out.”

“Ah, now...” he trailed off. She stared out the window. “Now ma’am. I really am hungry, and I’d hate to start walking back to town. Whyn’t you give me breakfast like you said. and I’ll promise no more jokes. Even chop some wood for you—if you need wood chopped.” Another long pause.

“The name’s Ruby. Ruby Dawn.”

“Well, that’s a real pretty name. You could make a song about that.” He was wheedling her along. But she liked him, the him that flashed every once in a while from behind his hungry dog act like a sun gleam from a cloud.

“So, what’s yours?”

“Mine what?”

“Your name. What’s your name?”

“Early.” He looked at her with a broad innocence, waiting, baiting. She just kept driving. “So, what do you do?”

“Oh, I’m just an old, rusty guitar player.”

“Huh.”

“You don’t think much of what I say, do you?”

“I think it’s mostly bullshit.” He had class, and probably brains, although with a good line it’s hard to tell. Well no telling about a guy you pick up in a Greyhound bus station, especially one with lines old as the hills. Never can tell, might be a good one for a change. “How are you in bed.?”

He was sidetracked from his cigarette lighting. “First you get pissed ‘cause I joke about making it with you, and then you want to know how I am in bed. You sure are changeable.”

“Wel1?”

“I’ve been told I’m pretty good.”

“Isn’t everybody?” She was dry, not quite sure what she was looking for, trying mostly to get a feel for him, for what was underneath his brashness. He was shaking his head.

“You know, lady, you’re just going to have to find out from experience, I guess. Don’t guess you’ll be persuaded any other way. We could just pull over right now, down that little dirt road there, and I could show you. Then you wouldn’t have to worry ‘bout wastin’ the gas to take me all the way back to town if I don’t turn out right.” He was expecting her to nail him again. She just turned down the dirt road.

Taking into account that it’d been some time since she’d made it with anyone, and truth be known, some time since he had, too, and the extra pzazz of making love on a hot morning in a fir grove where anytime someone just might walk by and say what you doing there, taking all that into account, they still got off more than either had for a long time.

“Long time since it’s been that good. For an old lady, you sure do fuck fine.”

“Lots of experience to go with the age.” She was being ironic but was pleased, was like her name, glowing and feeling good being alive. “For an old man, you sure do fuck fine.”

“Lots of experience.” They lay together, exhausted and content. “Real nice to be with you when you aren’t talking, Ruby."

She didn’t say anything.

•

"Wel1, I guess I’ll chop a little wood for you, too,” he said, looking at the wood pile, bigger almost than the house; and did until she came out, handed him a beer and sat watching him while he finished chopping two more blocks of wood and stacked them with the others. She nodded her head like, yes, I approve of you.

“I pass, huh?”

“Yep,” she drawled and smiled, half smiled.

“First smile I’ve seen on you ‘cept for this morning. You look real beautiful when you smile.” He’d found her weak spot, hooked her with a kind of innocent honesty. She’d fall for tenderness every time.

“Well, I’m not going to turn sour,” she’d say to her stove, “not going to get bitter and give up just because of some peculiar dude now and then doing me wrong.” The stove never answered so she’d stop there. On the other hand she didn’t fall for much bullshit either, mostly having a good ear for a fast line. “You get really good,” she’d tell the stove, “really good at telling the real thing from a fake.”

“Well, don’t get yourself too hopeful; this is just provisional.” No use letting him get ahead of himself. “But you can stay for a couple of days, anyway.”

“Never catch you off guard, do I ?” he asked patting her ass and holding her close as they walked inside.

•

The next day together was okay until the afternoon.

“Hey, lady?"

“The name’s Ruby.”

“Ruby,” distracted from his unasked question, “say, what’s your real name?”

“What’s yours?”

“James Earl Winters. Montana born and bred.” He lifted his hat, exaggerating. She went on with her kneading, bread dough puffing out between her fingers as if it were breathing.

“Well, I shared with you.” He held her around the waist and tickled her neck with his breath, teasing and gay, home cooking fattening his ribs and humor. “Hmmm?”

“Harriet. Harriet Rubella Jones. Plain as dishwater. I changed it when I was fourteen. Changed my age at the same time. Said I was eighteen. I was well developed.” She was embarrassed at revealing herself, hard edges growing softer. He cupped her breasts in his hands.

“Harriet,” tasting it. “Kids used to call you Harry, I bet.”

“Umm. Sometimes I’d cry about it.”

“Harriet Rubella. Say, Rubella, that’s a kid’s disease, isn’t it? Like measles or something...” By then she’d exploded from his arms.

“You mother, you get out of here. Kid’s disease! God damn it. I take you in and then...”

“Lady, Ruby, wait. I was only teasing.” She was after him. He backed toward the door.

“You get out of here. Leave. And take your stuff,” she was yelling out the door at him by now. He headed for the back of the pasture and sat on a log there for a long time, not thinking. Then he sat there for a long time, thinking. The sun was starting down behind the alders, turning their leaves to flakes of gold. He wished he at least had his guitar but figured going in and getting it would be like going through fire. Then he heard her calling at the front of the pasture.

“Listen, you, don’t you ever tease me about my name, never. I told you, I don’t like jokes.”

“How come you’re so God damned touchy?” yelling at her across the pasture.

“I don’t expect nothing from nobody except shit.”

“Well, I’m tryin’ to be nice to you, if you’d only let me.”

“Your nice isn’t my nice.”

"Well, what am I supposed to do now, come back and let you lay one on me?”

“Well, why don’t you try coming in for dinner.”

He stood up, feeling stiff and confused. Women, damn, women, they get you coming and going. By the time he got to the house he was fuming angry, banging the screen door, stomping in.

“Now you listen to me.” She stared at him, her mouth half open. He was watching her eyes. “Never got angry at you before did I? You were scared, weren’t you?” She turned to the stove, started to say something. “Now don’t go saying nothing smart. You were scared, weren’t you, just a bit?” Giving her some leeway. He turned her toward him. She was brushing away tears.

“I was feeling good and getting myself together and then some dude comes along and breaks my head up again. I don’t want a lover, damn it. I just want a good friend.” He was holding her, smelling her hair, feeling the shape of her against him, half listening to the outpouring, more words than he’d heard from her at any one time before, figuring like all the other ladies he’d known she had to get it out, whatever it was, the energy rather than the words being most important.

“Now, babe, we got a choice. We can eat or go make love. Always good after a fight to go make love.” Using a tried and true calming technique.

“Don’t treat me like all your other broads,” pulling away.

“There you go again.”

“Let’s eat."

“You’re not through fighting are you?” He was leaning over his plate challenging her. “What do you want?”

She looked up at him; she looked him up and down. “I don’t think I want you.”

He got up and stomped out. This time he took his guitar.

•

He told the bartender his woes, bemoaned his fate that mixed him up with crazy women, got philosophical about the nature of the world, speculated about the sanity of God, swore to stay away from women for the rest of his life, and got drunk because of how sexless his life was going to be.

He sang a mournful song about some luckless lover, remembering Ruby’s unreasonableness, wondering—oh, hell, what did she want? You couldn’t please her, not for anything and she didn’t have one frog’s hair of humor about her, never laughed in her life prob’ly. Always going ‘round serious like she was planning to blow up the world any day and just wasn’t sure where she was going to drop the bomb first and if you said one more word, she’d decide to drop it on you. God damn, what did she want? He liked her cooking, and she was still good in bed for being an old woman and hell if you couldn’t joke around a little, what good was being alive. Shee-it.

To sidetrack him from his monologue, the bartender asked him to play his favorite song and from that he went on to a couple other of his especially good numbers. By then the evening crowd was drifting in and more requests kept him going ‘til closing time. By which time he’d been stood for enough drinks to get drunk and sober up a couple of times and enough praise for his singing to have him walking out a lot taller than when he’d first walked in. Too bad that woman don’t know what she’s missing. Missing, hell, losing more like it. I don’t plan to take no more of that shit from her. She wants me around, she’ll just have to put up with a little high living humor.

His audience was commending him with beer-high praise. “You gotta come back tomorrow. I gotta friend who’ll want to hear you. Shit man, why you playing in these backwater bars? How come you ain’t making records?”

“Wow, you ever do make a record, I’m going to buy it. Hell, I’ll by two so’s I’ll have an extra when I wear out the first one.”

“What’s your name? You come back tomorrow, hear,” And the bartender herding them out, wanting to close up, saying, “You heard them. Come back tomorrow. They’ll have you wearin’ out those guitar strings for sure.” And flipping the lights off as he closed the door behind them.

“Need a ride, man?”

“Naw, just walking down the road a ways.” Cool night air reviving him, reviving a certain anxiety, and the road stretching out pale in the dark night and darker trees, Ruby’s Dodge glinting faintly by the house. He hesitated by it, not wanting to find out if the door was locked, not wanting to find out if it was unlocked, half expecting her to come bursting out at him at every sound he made, wanting her to, hoping even, anything to rescue him from having to try the door himself. She didn’t.

She was waiting inside, or maybe she was just sitting there, not waiting, drinking some wine, rocking, hardly even turning her head when he came in, hardly even pausing in her rocking. She took another drink of wine. He, grasping for any straw, decided the swift glance and half pause were enough to hang onto and kissed her.

“We do all right when we aren’t talking,” he said later after they’d made love and were lying under only a sheet on the beat up old bed. She didn’t say anything.

•

There was an uneasy peace between them. He didn’t leave. She didn’t ask him to. On the other hand, she didn’t ask him to stay either. He played his guitar a lot, did some repairs around the house, took his turn at the dishes, played for beers and spending money at the corner tavern. It wasn’t bad. He was used to a lot worse. She, however, wasn’t taking anything but the best anymore, liking her peace and solitude more than any two-legged company. The old push-on restlessness was building.

“Think it’s about time you were moving on, Early.” This said one morning over coffee, sun bounding off the dust in the air and turning layers of the room white; silence in between as dark as the unlit air.

“Well....” he drawled it out, slowly leaning back in his chair, getting a feel for the situation, hearing the definiteness in her voice. “Anything in particular bothering you? Seems like things been goin’ real well; we haven’t even been yellin’ at each other. Sex maybe not how you like?” He was running through the old familiar complaints, ready even, surprising himself, willing to give a little here and there. She was sitting still, not moving even to breathe. “Never seen a woman sit so still as you, Ruby,” trying to lighten the tone, the room growing darker with the sun’s shift and her mood.

“Early, it’s time for you to leave. It’s not that anything’s wrong in bed or being around you. It's just not good enough to give up my solitude for.”

“I’m not good enough?” He was getting pissed.

“No, you’re a good man in a lot of ways.” Her voice was soft and sure. She wasn’t trying to make him feel better, nor particularly bring him down. “I just don’t want to be spending all this time going nowhere with you.”

“Now you tell me where you’d be going without me. Or am I supposed to turn into some famous guitar player and take you away from here?”

“No, god damn it, if I’m going to live with someone, I’m going to live with them and not this half life we have.”

“Half life!” Voices were rising. “What’s so bad with this life? What you mean ‘live’, isn’t that what we’re doing? Woman, you drive me up the wal1. You don’t make sense.”

“That’s what I’m talking about. We don’t even talk about the same things.” Intensity growing in her. “You never hear me.”

“I hear...”

"Not to know what I’m saying. You just cross me off as making no sense, and then you don’t have to think about what I’m saying.”

He was getting more confused. Backing off from her intensity. “Well, I’ll tell you what. I’m goin’ to take care of some stuff, think about what you’re sayin’, maybe get started on fixing your roof. Now, wait,” silencing her before she could start talking. “If I’m going to leave, there’s some things I want to finish up, and you need to get that roof on while it’s still dry. So...” And he left the table.

She was busy for the whole day, and they didn’t talk at all to each other except for once when she came out and yelled up at him on the roof. “What I mean is I don’t know you and the way things are going now, it looks like I’m never going to know you, and we’re always going to be talking to each other like some soap opera couple and never say anything worth saying or anything real. I can do without that.”

“How come talkin’s so important to you? It’s the fastest way to get confused,” yelling back at her from the top of the roof. She set a beer on the gutter and went back inside.

He worked through the day, finished half the roof, sat for a long time on the roof peak watching the fields, and the old cow amble to the ditch for water, watching the sun grow larger and sink, feeling the air cool. “Nice sunset from up here,” he called. She came up the ladder, walked up the roof, stretched and sat beside him. “Start to get a feel for where you learned to be so still, sitting up here in the quiet and all.” She nodded. He slipped his arm around her. They were comfortable together, he feeling her back and side, feeling the side of her breast. He kissed her neck.

“Are you trying to make up to me?”

“You don’t ever give up.” She shook her head. “Okay, what do you want, aside from me leavin’,” quickly throwing that in. “I’ll have to say I really would hate to leave. Feels like home here. And well, I guess I have some feelings for you, too. Sure would hate to have to leave.”

She was watching him, her knees drawn up and her arms around them, watching for that something she’d been waiting for all along and not even knowing what it was, only that she’d know it when she saw it.

“After all this time you know, after all this time never knowin’ a decent woman, and I meet one, and she kicks me out. I’m just not ready to be pushin’ on; feel like hangin’ up my hat for a while. Share expenses with you. So, what do you want, Ruby? You tell me, and if I can give it to you I sure will, ‘cept gettin’ married. But I never figured you’d want to be tyin’ yourself down with legal strings and all that, and I guess if you wanted that I could see my way clear.” He was just rambling on, only trying at the same time to get out into words how he felt. She just watched, as still and empty as a cat. He grew more and more uneasy. “Well say something, lady. I can’t tell what you’re thinking... and I sure would like to know.”

“I’m not thinking.”

•

“Well, what do you want?” They were fixing dinner. “For a woman who wants to talk, you sure don’t say much. You say you want to know who I am but lady, Ruby, I don’t know nothin’ about you. All the time I’ve been here, I haven’t hardly heard one thing about you. You’re as quiet as this country. Course,” talking more to himself than to her, “this country’s not too quiet when you start listening.” A long pause, then he turned her to him, looking at her face. They were both still. “Now I don’t know if I have the energy to listen that close.”

“You wanted to know what to do.”

“Why don’t you start telling me some of it in words? I mean it.” Sharp, stopping her from turning away. “I figure you have to give some, and that’s what I want.”

“The listening quality in this room has about doubled.”

He didn’t say anything.

So she started telling him, over dinner, around dishes, late into the night. And words she’d never said for years flowed out. She had stories to tell, and pain and fear and strength. She talked around wine, through the hazy light of her kerosene lamp, rocking in her chair, holding her arms about herself to ease the ache of memories, striding the length of the room as intense as a wolf, stalking the past. And he listened to her face and her hands; he listened to the bewildered child and the angry girl; he listened to the woman, strong and bitter, tender and mocking; and he listened to her eyes. And finally, early morning, birds saying it was morning, not the still dark sky, they sat quiet. She was empty; she had emptied herself. He was sure of what he wanted, sure that he wanted her and her intense demanding honesty. And he waited, still as she, listening to the soft hiss of the burning lamp, listening to the emptiness and watching her for some sign that she had reached her peace. She laid her head back on her chair, let it roll to the side, watched him.

“Well, Ms Dawn. I guess I don’t know what to say.”

“Don’t go saying some TV speech.”

He laughed and scooped her out of her chair, and kissed her a great wide-sky Montana kiss. “What would I say if I didn’t talk TV?”

“You’d say,” and her voice was soft on his shoulder, “you’d say, Yes, I do believe I’d like to stay, Ruby. And you’d say, I heard you, Ruby. I’ve stopped listening to all the shadow ladies in my past, and I hear you. And you’d say...” She trailed off. He had a vision of the fields outside half asleep, still as a dream, and the birds waking one by one and beginning to sing.

Published in Chaos Magazine, 1975.

Like what you're reading? Don't keep it to yourself.

One-time reproduction for non-resale purposes permitted with the following credit line: by Judith Yarrow, © 1975