Under a Cloudless Sky Page 5

  “Did she pass?”

  “No, ma’am. She’s still living, but she doesn’t get out. Her health has gone downhill. I miss those trips to the store, so this brings back good memories.”

  Ruby smiled. “Well, this is about the only reason I go out anymore. I go to the FoodFair and back. And my children don’t like it much.”

  “Why not?”

  “They think I’m some kind of invalid. Tell me I’m going to kill somebody. I keep telling them I’m no different than I’ve always been. I may be a little slow, but I’m not decrepit.”

  The girl laughed. “No, ma’am, you’re certainly not. What else is on your list? It looks like you’re baking for an army.”

  “Not an army. I just bake for the fun of it. Give people in the community the fruit of my labor. Cakes are my specialty. I was going to make a German chocolate one for the mailman. He brings packages to the house and rings the bell, and I like to give him something every now and then.”

  “So you probably need flour, right? And baking soda?”

  Ruby pointed out what she needed from the baking aisle, then led the way to the dairy section for milk and eggs. She forgot the coconut flakes, so they retreated to the baking aisle and made sure they didn’t get the shredded coconut but the flakes.

  “Aren’t you getting anything?” Ruby said when she was through.

  “I just came in for a cold bottle of pop,” the girl said.

  “Well, let me treat you!” Ruby said. “They have a cooler up front by the cashier.”

  “You don’t have to do that, ma’am.”

  “I want to. And after all the hard work you’ve done, you at least deserve a cool drink. Now I just need to get a mess of green beans and then we can go to the front. You can help me lug this to my car, if you don’t mind.”

  When they arrived at the front, the cashier smiled and said, “How are you doing today, Miss Ruby?”

  “Not bad for being over the hill and up the other side.”

  The cashier laughed. “Looks like you got yourself a helper. Is this your granddaughter?”

  “Why no, this . . . We met in the baking aisle and have been friends ever since. What did you say your name was, honey?”

  “Charlotte,” the girl said.

  “Charlotte. Right. She was a big help. I was only going to get enough to get me to the weekend, but I told her to load up the cart.”

  “Looks like you’re going to do a lot of baking,” the cashier said.

  Ruby told the cashier exactly what she was planning to bake and who she was baking for and two customers pulled in behind her before she got the hint that she needed to pay and move along. She made sure Charlotte got her soda and gave the cashier her credit card. When everything was loaded in the cart, the bagger offered to accompany Ruby.

  “I’ll help you, Mrs. Freeman,” Charlotte said.

  As Ruby took her cane from the cart, something clicked. Charlotte pushed the cart down the ramp and straight to Ruby’s car.

  Ruby finally caught up with the young woman. “How did you know this was my car?”

  Charlotte turned, red-faced.

  “I never told you my last name, did I?”

  “No, ma’am. I’m sorry—”

  “You were at my door earlier, weren’t you?”

  Charlotte dipped her head. “Yes, ma’am. But I don’t mean you any harm. I thought if you met me face-to-face, we could talk. And you’d come to trust me. I think you’d want to help.”

  “I told you at the house: I don’t talk to strangers.”

  “And we’re not now. I helped get your groceries. I don’t want a thing from you but your story. I’d be glad to drive you over to Beulah Mountain to see the museum. If you come for the grand opening, you’ll be the guest of honor.”

  Ruby unlocked the car and opened the back door. She grabbed one of the heavy bags but couldn’t lift it.

  “Let me do that for you, Mrs. Freeman.”

  “You leave it alone. I’ll do it myself.”

  “Ma’am, these are too heavy.”

  Ruby pointed the cane at Charlotte and narrowed her gaze. “I said I’d do it myself. I’ve got people all around me telling me what I can’t do. I don’t need any more on the list.” Her voice rose in intensity and emotion. “I have family who tell me not to drive when I’m fully capable of doing everything they do and then some. I’m tired of it. And I don’t talk to strangers. Now go on home.”

  Ruby grunted and groaned and managed to get the five-pound bags of sugar in the backseat, then the rest of the groceries. When the cart was empty, Charlotte reached for it to return it to the corral.

  “I said I’d do it myself,” Ruby said.

  Ruby passed her and focused on getting the cart situated. When she came back, Charlotte was still there.

  “I apologize for intruding, ma’am. I came up here with good intentions—”

  “Good intentions, my eye. You came up here to scam me.”

  “No, I came to talk. To find out what really happened. Because there’s things being told that I don’t think are true. But I won’t trouble you anymore. I thank you for the pop.”

  Ruby opened the front door and began the long process of putting her purse into the passenger seat with her cane, then turning to wedge herself in behind the steering wheel.

  “You’re lucky I haven’t called the police,” Ruby said, reaching her cane out to close the door.

  “I suppose I should be grateful for that kindness, ma’am. Where I’m from, people open the door and hear others out. But then you’re not from Beulah Mountain.”

  Ruby squinted at her and was about to say something, but Charlotte walked toward her little black car. When she got inside, Ruby could swear the girl was crying. But that was no doubt an act.

  Ruby started her car and pulled away, wondering how in the world she would get all those groceries into the house.

  8

  RUBY LEARNS WHY HER FRIEND IS CALLED BEAN

  BEULAH MOUNTAIN, WEST VIRGINIA

  AUGUST 1933

  “Why do they call you Bean?” Ruby said as they sat in her room above the company store leafing through a Sears catalog. “Did they shorten ‘Beatrice’ to ‘Bea’ and just add an n to the end?”

  “No, there’s more to it than that.”

  “Then what is it?”

  Bean hovered over the catalog like she’d found hidden gold, her mouth open wide. “Look how pretty this material is. My mama would die just looking at it.”

  “Does she make your clothes?” Ruby said, hoping this question might be answered fully.

  “She tries to.” Bean pulled the sleeve of her dress and put it between her thumb and index finger. “But she don’t have much to work with. Hand-me-downs from people we don’t know that gave some dresses to the church.”

  “Can’t she buy some at the store?”

  “I reckon she could if my daddy didn’t spend his scrip on other things.” She flipped some pages. “Now here’s a coat I’d like to see my daddy wear. He gets awful cold in the wintertime.”

  Ruby couldn’t understand why Bean would care about her father if he did things like spend all their money. She moved toward safer territory. “But why did your parents name you Bean?”

  Bean sat back and slumped her shoulders with a sigh. “Well, you might think it was because I’m long and skinny, like a beanpole, but she named me before I had my growth spurt. We was living over at Rossmore by Island Creek. My daddy was working a different mine. My mama had just lost a baby to stillbirth. And the midwife said because of all she’d gone through, she shouldn’t have any more children. That meant I would be the only one in the family, which vexed my mama to no end. She wanted lots of kids. I was something like four when I took sick. They didn’t know what was wrong and the mine doctor gave me medicine I threw back up every time. It tasted like cod liver oil and smelled worse. You ever take cod liver oil?”

  Ruby shook her head.

  “Count yourself lucky. That’s
what Mama gave for everything. I can still taste it to this day.”

  Ruby leaned forward, waiting. Finally she said, “But why did she name you Bean?”

  “You don’t have to get snippy. Mama says when I tell a story, I take the roundabout, like a horse and buggy will go the long way when you could just walk over the hill? I got to follow my own trail.”

  Ruby stifled a smile and put her hands in her lap to listen.

  “I wouldn’t eat nothing they put in front of me. I plumb lost my appetite. I lost weight. I was skin and bones. Like a skeleton walking around with my cheeks sunk in. My daddy would come back from the mine with food from somebody’s lunch box. Corn bread and buttermilk? Nothing doing. Biscuits and gravy? Nope. Don’t want it. I got to where anything I put down my gullet would just come back up. So I didn’t want that awful feeling and I give up on eating. And my stomach hurt like the dickens.”

  Ruby waited, becoming accustomed to this wild-natured girl with her tall tales.

  “One day these people on a farm brought us a poke filled with green beans. Half-runners. Mama didn’t grow those in the little garden out back, so it was a treat. She cooked them up with some fatback in a pot on the stove—”

  “What’s fatback?” Ruby said.

  Bean rolled her eyes. “It’s what it sounds like. It’s the fat from the back of the pig. Don’t you know anything? It looks like bacon but it’s just white—there’s no meat to it at all. Kinda like lard. They sell fatback in the company store. It’s over by the—”

  “Okay, go on. So you liked it?”

  “Would you let me tell the story?” Bean turned another page in the catalog and sat transfixed by the shoes. “Can you imagine me wearing a pair of these in the mud and the muck by our house? I’d sink to my waist and they’d never come out. But they sure are pretty, aren’t they? One day I’m going to live in a house with a paved road right to the front door so I don’t ever have to set foot in the mud. Wouldn’t that be something?”

  “I know where there are some pretty shoes,” Ruby said.

  Bean waved a hand. “All you got downstairs is work boots for men and oxfords for women.”

  “You haven’t seen the ones I’m talking about,” Ruby said. “These are special.”

  She flipped the catalog closed. “Show me.”

  Ruby hesitated. “Finish your story.”

  “All right. Where was I?”

  “The beans were in a pot on the stove.”

  “Right. For some reason the smell of those beans drew me like a fly to honey. I stood there watching the pot bubbling and boiling with the top on—my mama told me this later, I don’t remember it. Evidently the smell of those beans made me interested. You wouldn’t think a little kid would like vegetables, and to this day I don’t know why they drew me, but when Mama ladled out a bowl full of those beans with the fatback in the middle and a pat of cow butter melting on top and a pinch of salt all around, I’ll tell you what, I went to town. I inhaled that whole bowl and asked for another. Just shoveled them in. And Mama stood at the stove and cried and I asked her what was the matter and she said they were happy tears. She was glad I was hungry for something.”

  “You didn’t throw it up?”

  Bean shook her head. “No. It all stayed down until I tried something else the next day.”

  “Why didn’t she name you ‘fatback’?” Ruby said.

  Bean laughed. “There weren’t no fat to me. The beans did the trick, though. Saved my life. My daddy walked clear over to that family to buy some more from them, and when they heard the story, they just handed him a poke and said to pick all he needed.”

  “And they called you Bean from then on?”

  “It kindly stuck. Now show me the shoes.”

  Ruby took the catalog and put it on the coffee table. “I don’t think I should. My father would be upset.”

  “Why?”

  “Because of where they are.”

  “Where are they, on top of the store?”

  “No, they’re in a room he told me not to go in.”

  “And how would you know what’s in there if you didn’t go in?”

  Ruby frowned. “I peeked.”

  “So let’s peek again,” Bean said. “I won’t tell nobody.”

  “All right, but we have to be quiet. I’m not supposed to even have you in our apartment, let alone take you up there.”

  “I’ll be as quiet as a mouse.”

  Ruby led Bean to the front room of the apartment and listened at the door. The store was closed on Sundays and her father was having lunch with the other owner of the mine, a man named Thaddeus Coleman that Ruby disliked the moment she met him. Ruby’s father had laid out the plans for the mining community, designing and building the homes that dotted the valley. The company store was his creation as well, designed to accommodate miners and their families for everything from canned goods to tools to clothing. Blueprints were drawn to include an apartment on the second floor with an exterior entrance as well as a “hidden” back stairway.

  Ruby waved Bean through the door and led them up the smaller set of stairs that curved, the steps getting closer together, until they reached the third-floor landing.

  “You have to promise not to tell anyone what I’m about to show you,” Ruby said.

  “I promise.”

  She tried to open the door but it was locked.

  “Don’t you have a key?” Bean said.

  Ruby shook her head. “But there’s another way. Come on.”

  They retreated to the apartment and Ruby took Bean through the kitchen area to what looked like a large cabinet built into the wall. She opened the door and inside was an empty box big enough for one of them to fit inside.

  “Get in,” Ruby said.

  “I’m not crawling in there.”

  “Silly, it’s a dumbwaiter. It won’t hurt you.”

  “I’m not dumb enough to crawl in.”

  “You know the kitchen they have downstairs?”

  “You mean the restaurant?”

  “It’s not really—well, right. They put food in here for us and send it up. Or to the third floor.”

  Bean’s mouth dropped open. “It’s like a supper elevator?”

  Ruby giggled. She’d never thought of it that way.

  “You go first,” Bean said.

  “Okay, I’ll send it back down to you and bring you up.”

  Ruby crawled inside and sat with her legs crossed. She showed Bean the button to push. The gears engaged and soon Ruby rose out of sight. Bean leaned into the opening and watched the chains swaying from Ruby’s weight. Light flashed inside the shaft and Bean saw Ruby step out, then the dumbwaiter descended and stopped. She took a deep breath, crawled inside, and the machine took her up.

  The first thing she noticed when she stepped into the room was the darkness. There were big windows that looked down on the town and toward the mine, but heavy curtains covered them and only a single shaft of light peeked through. There was also a heavy smell of cigar smoke that seemed baked into the walls. When her eyes adjusted, she noticed a maple table and chairs in one corner and what looked like a half-open chifforobe, but instead of clothes hanging, there were bottles of amber liquid and glasses stacked on top of each other. In the other corner was a stuffed chair and a couch that Bean wondered how they ever lugged up to the third floor. The hardwood floor had two thick throw rugs that felt like velvet beneath her feet. She’d never seen such exquisite colors and patterns.

  “Look here,” Ruby said.

  Ruby opened the curtain as Bean turned to see a shelving unit attached to the wall. The shelves were lined with women’s shoes. Some were just like in the catalog with elegant straps. Others had laces that tied. Most had heels. Bean’s mouth dropped. It was the most beautiful display she had ever seen, the quality much better than the shoes downstairs. She picked up a pair and closed her eyes as she smelled the leather.

  “They’re so soft. They must cost a fortune. But there’s no price ta
g.”

  “I’m not sure how much they are,” Ruby said. “I’ve never been able to figure out why they put them up here. But sometimes I’ll hear noises in this room.”

  “What kind of noises?”

  “Men’s voices. The company men have meetings here, I think. Mr. Coleman has some of the bosses over and they’re here late at night. And sometimes . . .”

  “Sometimes what?”

  “I hear women’s voices, too. Sometimes they’re laughing. And sometimes they cry.”

  There was a noise downstairs—perhaps a door closing. Ruby held a finger to her lips. Bean’s heart beat wildly and Ruby’s eyes flashed what looked like fear.

  Ruby led Bean the back way and unlatched a window. “Go down the fire escape. And come see me tomorrow, okay?”

  “Are you going to get in trouble?”

  Ruby shook her head. “Just go.”

  Bean stepped onto the steep stairwell and climbed down backward. The feeling she’d had in the room was a mixture of awe and dread. She loved looking at the shoes and finely upholstered furniture. But something was off in there. Something dark clouded the room. What was it?

  When she got to the ground, she looked up. Ruby was at the window waving and smiling. Below her, on the second floor, was a figure looking out another window straight at her.

  9

  RUBY GETS ANOTHER UNWANTED VISIT

  BIDING, KENTUCKY

  TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 2004

  Ruby was putting her third cake of the day in the oven, singing jauntily with the radio, when sunlight glinted through the window and flashed on the ceiling. The radio was up loud and she didn’t touch the volume. She walked to the front door and peered through the window. A car sat in the driveway.

  It was that girl again, probably, back for another round of questions. Painful questions that had brought about a sleepless night. But if she hadn’t lost sleep, she wouldn’t have heard the repeated message by Pastor Franklin Brown. There was something about listening the second time that burned the message about forgiveness into her soul.