Whiskey, Schemes, and Victory

Ruby took the blackberry cobbler out of the oven. It was a beautiful June morning in 1965. She stood back and admired the bubbling blackberry juice seething over the flakey crust. She sure could cook. Of course, being raised in a big family and having her own big family helped her practice her skill. It wasn’t even seven a.m. and she had her cobbler baked and a pot of beans on the stove. All she needed to do was go out and kill one of the chickens and she would be on her way to having most of supper prepared. Benny, her husband of twenty-six years, had left for work, and the house was quiet.

She looked up and saw her thirteen year old twins Danny and Dora walking out to the milk barn. Dora reached up and flicked Danny on the ear and took off running. Danny grabbed his ear with a loud, “Ouch,” and went after her, but she swung herself under the gate and was in the barn before he could reach her. What was she going to do with that girl, Ruby wondered. Danny had always been like a little workhorse around the farm, but Dora constantly aggravated and taunted her way out of work.

“Dora, you leave your brother alone and help him get the milkin’ done. You slept in this mornin’ and got the cows off their schedule, so straighten up and fly right, or I’ll be gettin’ a peach tree switch for your legs,” Ruby yelled out the opened window over the kitchen sink.

“Yes, Mother,” came Dora’s insincere reply from the shadows of the barn. Ruby could feel the child’s eyes rolling and wanted to shake her.

Ruby turned from the window and looked over at the bassinette sitting in the double doorway between the kitchen and living room. Her three month old baby girl Tessa was starting to squirm. The baby hadn’t slept much the night before. Ruby looked at her while pushing a strand of her red hair that had escaped the bobby pins she had placed over her ears to keep her hair out of her face. Here she was forty-one years old with another baby. Good grief. Then she had to smile.

Yep, she and Benny were doing better now. When he came home off the road from his trucking route the night Tessa was conceived, he was charming and swirling Ruby around the kitchen making her laugh like a school girl. Little did Ruby know that he was going to tell her he had just returned from St. Louis with his walking papers from his trucking job. He had been late for delivering one too many loads because he was passed out and drunk in his cab rather than driving. Of course, Benny kept that from Ruby until after their clandestine escape to the milk barn to get in a quick fun poke. “But Benny,” Ruby cried, “what are we gonna do?”

“I’ll get another job, Rubes. Don’t ya worry,” he told her, pushing her red locks back from her face and holding her cheeks. She didn’t feel confident, though. At the time, they had been married twenty-five years, and he had never kept a job very long because of his drinking. Her family wondered why she ever married into that scandalous, trashy bootlegging family. It’s true, she had run off with Benny when she was 15 and he was 19. Her family ran a respectable general store on the town square. His family had been notorious bootleggers in the twenties and started running a laundry mat and gas station after Prohibition. Each family was respected and liked in their own circle, but neither liked each other. Ruby came from a long line of Baptist ministers, and falling in love with a scoundrel like Benny was not acceptable. But, Lord Almighty, he was handsome with his blonde hair and blue eyes. And, looking back, she knew his bad boy reputation was a lure she couldn’t resist, and still couldn’t. Even though he was balding now, she still saw that young rascal she fell in love with. Once they were married, though, Ruby’s mother mourned her oldest daughter’s absence, but finally she and Ruby’s father helped them get set up with household items. Not to be out done, Benny’s family gave them a small farm to live on. It was rumored that the farm was taken from old Mr. Simmons because he couldn’t pay Benny’s father for a gambling loan. Mr. Simmons died in the state mental hospital several years ago, but Ruby was too young to understand anything but the deep, romantic love she had for Benny.

Ruby felt like a queen in the beginning. Little did she know the hard road ahead. Drinking, women, beatings, and a mother-in-law who would never accept her, but Ruby loved Benny. She romanticized her situation so her family and the whole town couldn’t call her a failure. The jig was pretty much up when she would show up at the general store at closing with her children in tow and a black eye, a fat lip and/or bruised arms and neck. She couldn’t count how many times her mother and daddy had taken her and the kids in after one of Benny’s drunken tirades. He would show up the next day, hat in hand, and beg Ruby to come back. Divorce was unthinkable, so she would return just for the vicious cycle to happen again. Sometimes, to avoid her shame and to hide the frequency of Benny’s binges, she would take the kids and hide in the field until Benny had passed out after destroying much of the house by kicking and throwing the furniture. His drunken anger had to be taken out on someone or something, and she figured better the furniture than her or the kids.

Tessa seemed to be settling down. Ruby looked in the living room and saw Tommy, her five year old, still wearing his night shirt playing with his Lincoln Logs in the middle of the floor on the old braided cloth rug. “How’s my Sugar Man this morning?” Ruby asked him. He just smiled up at her. Just then her two grandchildren, six year old Roxy and five year old Pete, came running from the bedroom and kicked the logs, destroying Tommy’s creation. They loved torturing Tommy. Tommy's face turned red as they laughed, and he got up and was ready to pummel them both. Ruby quickly walked to him and pulled him back. “Now, why’d you two have to go and do that? I’ve a mind to blister your little bottoms.”

“Sorry, Mother,” came her twenty-four year old daughter Kay’s voice from the bedroom doorway. “I was trying to keep them with me while I got dressed.” Turning to her two little brats, “Roxy! Pete! I told y'all to stay in the bedroom with me.” They looked at each other, giggled and ran out the front door letting the screen slam behind them.

“They need a good spankin'. Where’s Ray?” Ruby asked. Ray was Kay’s husband who was ten years older than her. He and Kay met in St. Louis when Kay had run off with some of her friends one weekend. Ruby and Benny had whipped her with the belt when she got back home, but to no avail. Ray showed up on and off for a month. Benny had found out he had just gotten out of the pen after serving five years for armed robbery. Ray was a handsome man with dark, piercing, brown eyes, black hair, and dark skin. A total opposite to Kay’s strawberry-blonde hair and blue eyes. He seemed to like it that Kay’s parents didn’t care for him and seemed to always wear a triumphant smirk. Within a month of that weekend, Kay had run off and married Ray. She was only sixteen at the time. Ray and Kay lived in St. Louis then and found that not many would hire an ex-con, so they began moving from one odd job to another. Finally, after having two kids and nearly starving, an unhappy Kay had convinced Ray to take her home and to try to find work in town.

“Now, Mother,” Kay started, “You know Ray is goin’ to town this mornin’ lookin’ for work. He needs to be rested.”

Ruby simply shook her head and told Tommy to go get dressed. Eleven year old Jeanie walked in fully dressed with an old copy of Gone With the Wind under her arm. Jeanie was the only one of Ruby’s kids that she could not seem to reach. Jeanie was stand-offish and quiet. She loved her daddy, but she seemed to have a simmering resentment for her mother. Ruby tried to be kind, but inevitably she was more of a nuisance to Jeanie than a mother. In turn, Ruby had no time to make things right with Jeanie, so she stopped trying.

“Jeanie, you go see where Roxy and Pete got off to then come back in and make sure Tommy and them get a good breakfast,” Ruby commanded. Jeanie indignantly placed her book on the lopsided coffee table that had been repaired too many times after Benny’s binges. “Kay, I need you in the garden today.”

“Oh Mother, I can’t. I promised Ray I would go with him to town today,” Kay said. “You know how people look at him with his dark looks and all.”

Ruby looked at her daughter for a moment wanting to knock some sense into her and tell her to get away from this man who would never be any good. Instead, she said, “Kay, if you are gonna stay here, you are gonna have to help out. I never went to my Mother and Daddy’s without helping them and making my kids help, too.”

“I know, Mother. I promise to come back and work in the garden for you,” Kay stated as if the matter were closed. Ruby knew she and Ray would just waste the day in town. “Oh and could I have three dollars so we can get lunch?”

“No, Kay, you cannot have three dollars to buy your lunch. You can buy your own lunch after Ray has a job to make his own three dollars to take care of his own family,” Ruby snapped.

“Oh, you mean like Daddy has always done for you and all of us,” Kay sarcastically snipped back.

“We have always made ends meet…” Ruby began with a raised brow.

“Yeah, by livin’ offa Grandma Pearl and Grandpa Fred. How many times did we show up at their store and house? Hmmm?” Kay said in a simpering, sing-song tone.

Before Ruby could say anything else, the phone rang. She went to the kitchen wall and picked it up, “Hello?”

“Ruby, it’s Kaylene,” as if Ruby wouldn’t know that high pitched hateful voice that her mother-in-law squealed out every time she talked to Ruby. “Where’s Benny?”

“Why Kaylene, you know he’s workin’ this mornin’. Have you tried the dealership?” Ruby said in her most respectful voice. Jeanie had just walked back in dragging the two squirming Roxy and Pete with her and looked at her mother with disdain. Ruby irritably waves them into the kitchen.

“No, I haven’t tried there. I figured you hadn’t gotten him up on time while you lay your fat ass in the bed,” Kaylene said. “I didn’t see his car there when I went to the laundry mat.”

Ignoring her mother-in-law’s typical, slanderous jabs, Ruby asked, “Well, sometimes they tell him to park his truck up at the grocery store because it’s so old they don’t want it to be seen near the lot.” Since they had been married, they could never afford anything but old jalopies that broke down on them nearly every other week.

“Maybe if you'd stop tricking Benny into havin' all those kids you would have somethin’. He works so hard to provide for you and you just spend it up,” the old woman retorted.

Hearing her grandmother’s screechy voice, Kay grabbed the phone when she saw her mother turning red. “Hi, Grandma Kay. How ya doin’ this morning? Ya know, Ray and me are comin’ to town today so Ray can get a job. He may even try the dealership where Daddy works. How would ya like it if we dropped by to see ya?” Kay asked with words dripping honey running from her mouth.

“Now, honey, ya know the dealship ain’t gonna hire no con,” Kay came back with equally sweet words. “He better try the dime store your Grandpa Fred runs. At least he has a chance with family.” Kay’s face fell.

Ruby had thought naming her oldest daughter after her mother-in-law would help their relationship, but it only made things worse by making her a grandmother before she turned forty. Kaylene never mistreated her grandchildren in a way that they would notice, but Ruby knew her children were only second class citizens to the old bitty just as she had always been.

Before Kaylene could say anything else to Kay, Ruby snatched the phone from Kay’s hand. “Now, Kaylene, I'll let Benny know you were lookin’ for him. I have to run now, my cobbler is ready to come outta the oven,” Ruby lied then hung the phone back on the wall. She was sure Kaylene was mad as a hornet, but she didn’t care. The woman made her blood run cold with her mean-natured behavior.

“Why do ya let Grandma Kay get away with sayin’ those things to you, Mother?” Kay demanded.

Ray walked in dressed and ready to go. He looked like a dandy with his pressed white shirt and black tie. He wrapped his arms around Kay’s waist and kissed the back of her neck. “Let’s go, Baby.” He had Kay’s purse in his hand and gave it to her then pulled her to the door. Ray seemed to know when to get out when things started getting tense.

Relieved that they were gone, Ruby turned back to a crying Tessa. Tommy came out of the bathroom. Pete gave him a shove as he passed, and Jeanie promptly gave him a smack up side his head. “Oww!” he wailed.

“Shut up and get back in the kitchen,” Jeanie pushed him.

“Jeanie, I’m gonna feed Tessa then go out and kill a chicken for supper. You watch the kids and let me know if Tessa wakes up, ya hear?” Jeanie gave an obligated nod. After breast feeding Tessa, Ruby put her sun hat on her head and walked out the back door knowing that Jeanie was glaring a hole into her back.

Around one o’clock Ruby came back in to the phone ringing again. She knew it was Kaylene. The ring had a hateful tone to it. “Ruby, you stupid cow, why’d ya let Ray and Kay come into the dealership? Benny is mad as a hornet and walked off the job. He came here for a bit then took out with a bottle of shine.”

Oh, no, Ruby thought. She knew when Ray and Kay showed up with their kids that it was going to mean trouble. Benny hated the thought of his baby girl being married to a con, and he was often in a foul mood when they were in the house together. Ray had some gall to go to that dealership. What was he trying to do, show Benny up in his already disgraced position as janitor? She heard Kaylene’s voice still shooting through her head, “And not only did he get the job, but they gave him a salesman’s position. I won’t be responsible for what happens.”

Ruby thought, “As if you ever were when it came to your son.” She asked Kaylene where Benny went, but true to her cruel nature, Kaylene retorted, “He’ll be home whenever he is good and ready. You really did it this time. I swear, ya don’t have a brain in your head, always makin’ my Benny feel bad about himself.”

All Ruby knew was that she had to get the kids out of this house before Benny got home, especially after he had been with his mother who filled his head with spiteful trash talking about her and her family and how Ruby would never think he was as good as her daddy and his store. “I have to go,” and she hung up, not caring if the old witch was stewing.

“Jeanie,” she called, “Get the kids, we gotta go.”

Jeanie knew the drill, but she asked, “Are we going to the field? Ray and Kay have the car.” Ruby had forgotten they were stranded there. Just then she heard a car coming down the road and prayed it was them. It was.

“Jeanie, get the little ones, I’ll go get Danny and Dora.” She yelled for the twins and ran to pick Tessa up and then flew out the front door.

When they all got to the car, Ray was smiling. He knew he had shown Benny up and was satisfied with himself. “Get in the car,” Ruby shouted. “All of you get in the car.”

Oblivious to what was going on, Kay questioned, “Mother, what is it?”

“Just get in the car!” Ruby shouted. Kay knew then what it was all about. They piled in, Ruby holding Tessa, Kay holding Pete, Dora holding Tommy, Danny holding Roxy, Ray driving, and Jeanie sitting squished in the middle in the back seat.

As they pulled out of the driveway, Ruby saw the dust flying over the top of the hill at the Watkins’ place. It had to be Benny. Just as they were about to reach the Watkins’ house, Ruby saw Benny’s truck round the curve and swerve for them. She could see his face and knew he was drunk and literally ready to kill. All of a sudden, his truck side-swiped the tail end of their car sending it into a spin. They landed in the ditch in front of the Watkin’s house. Ray tried to get it out, but it was stuck. Ruby looked back and saw Benny turning the truck around. “Get out! Run for the house!” she shouted.

They all got out of the car just as Benny was laying on the gas barreling down the road towards them. The twins and Jeanie got the little ones behind the house, Ray and Kay followed. Ruby had a hard time getting out of the car with a screaming Tessa in her arms. She got to the middle of the yard and heard the truck pop up over the ditch and into the yard. Not daring to look back, she ran behind the big oak. The truck slammed into the tree pushing it forward and shoving Ruby to her knees shielding the baby with her body. She waited for the kick that was bound to come when Benny got to her, but it didn’t come. Had Ray gotten to Benny first? She got to her feet and looked at the truck and saw the bloody wind shield and Benny’s head resting on the steering wheel.

“Benny!” She screamed, and ran to him.

Kay yelled at her as she rounded the corner of the house, “No, Mother, No!” She ran to Ruby and put her arms around her mother trying to pull her back. Ruby’s years on the farm gave her an advantage over Kay and she pulled away, but then turned to put the screaming Tessa in Kay’s arms. The kids were all peaking around the corner of the house. Tommy had wet himself, and Danny put his hand on his shoulder understanding. Dora was sitting in the grass swaying back and forth and methodically pulling small strands of hair from her head. Jeanie ran to her, grabbing her hands then putting her arms around her older sister. Roxy and Pete wailed in the background while Ray tried to quiet them by promising them candy.

Ruby reached the truck. To her relief, Benny moved his head, but when he raised up and saw her, like a shot, his fist came through the window and slammed into Ruby’s face and she went down into darkness.

When Ruby woke up, Mrs. Watkins was washing her face with a cool wash cloth, and she saw the sheriff pushing Benny’s head down into the squad car. Ruby looked at Mrs. Watkins who said, “I called the sheriff, Honey. Your Benny ruined my rose bushes, and I cain’t have it.” Ruby shut her eyes, but she could hear Benny screaming.

“I’ll get you for this! I will kill you!” he screamed in a drunken slur.

Benny was in the county jail for three months. Ruby tried to go see him, but she was told he wouldn’t see her. She wrote him letters telling him how she loved and missed him and that Ray and Kay had taken their kids and moved to Chicago to be with Ray’s family, and everything was going to be normal when they could be back on the farm together. He never wrote back.

Ruby went to see Kaylene. When she pulled up, she saw the big door was open and could see through the screen. When she got to the porch, the door was closed. “Kaylene, I know you’re in there. We need to talk about how to help Benny.” No answer. Ruby put her hands in her coat pockets, walked to the car then went home. She knew Kaylene wasn’t going to help her.

After Benny’s three months were up, Ruby heard a car pull in. She ran out the door and cried, “Benny!” She was smiling and as she was about to reach him and throw her arms around him, Kaylene stepped into her way. In a low, stilted voice that would freeze molten lava, she said, “I want you to get yourself and your brats and move offa this farm. I will give ya two days. Since they are my grandchildren and I am not a harsh woman, I will let you move into the farmhouse that me and Benny’s father started up in.” The place she referred to was a shack, and it was two miles down the road and nearly impossible to get in and out of in the winter.

Ruby looked at Benny, who kept his head down staring at the ground. He didn’t say a word. Kaylene’s voice piped in, “Do ya hear me, Heifer? You called the sheriff on my boy and had him locked up. I ain’t lettin’ you stay in my farmhouse. Now get your things and get out.”

Ruby was in shock. “I didn’t call the sheriff on you, Benny. I love you. I would never call the sheriff on you.” She wouldn’t even speak to Kaylene.

“Come on, Boy, get into your Mother’s car,” Kaylene said to Benny. He turned and got in the car. Who would have thought he was a forty-five year old man as he minded his mama. Ruby didn’t say another word and went in to pack. Just as she walked in the door, she could have sworn she heard Jeanie say, “You stupid fool.”

Four years later, Ruby got out of her car with little Tessa holding her hand, nearly grown Dora and Danny came around from the other side and dignified Jeanie and excited Tommy were sliding out of the back seat. She looked at her newly built house.

She didn’t move into the old shack Kaylene offered. She caved into a humiliated child and called her daddy. He and her brothers came and loaded her stuff and the kids up and put them into a small rental by the town’s elementary school. She worked there as a cook while her mother took care of Tessa. Then a new factory came to town that made all kinds of fan motors. Yep, FASCO Industries saved her life. She got a job on the assembly line and started putting back some money. She qualified for an FHA loan and had her small but quaint three bedrooms, one bath, and one car garage house built. She received no help from her parents or Benny. Now, she knew she could stand on her own.

Across town Benny sat with his heels propped up on his mama’s coffee table with a glass of whiskey in one hand and his wedding ring in the other. His mama told him Ruby was doing just fine without him and was probably “sparkin’” another man. Kaylene’s voice pierced through the air, “Benny, get your feet off my coffee table! I keep tellin’ ya…”

She was abruptly cut off as Benny jumped up and walked to the front door and roughly pushed her aside. He left, but Kaylene was not feeling right. Her left arm was numb, she was nauseated and dizzy. She tried to get to the chair but fell in the process. She lay there with her eyes staring out at the bottle Benny left behind on the floor next to the chair.

Ruby looked with pride at her new house and kids, and said, “Come on, Kiddos, let’s go inside our new home.” She finally had a victory she could call her own.

© sholland10 2011. All rights reserved.