Shiloh and Other Stories - Bobbie Ann Mason [107]
Ruby liked his distance. He didn’t act possessive. He called her up from Tennessee once to tell her he had bought a dog and named it Ruby. Then he sold the dog before he got back to town. When it was Ruby’s birthday, he made nothing of that, but on another day at the fairgrounds he bought her a bracelet of Mexican silver from a wrinkled old black woman in a baseball cap who called everybody “darling.” Her name was Gladys. Ruby loved the way Buddy got along with Gladys, teasing her about being his girlfriend.
“Me and Gladys go way back,” he said, embracing the old woman flamboyantly.
“Don’t believe anything this old boy tells you,” said Gladys with a grin.
“Don’t say I never gave you nothing,” Buddy said to Ruby as he paid for the bracelet. He didn’t fasten the bracelet on her wrist for her, just as he never opened the truck door for her.
The bracelet cost only three dollars, and Ruby wondered if it was authentic. “What’s Mexican silver anyway?” she asked.
“It’s good,” he said. “Gladys wouldn’t cheat me.”
Later, Ruby kept thinking of the old woman. Her merchandise was set out on the tailgate of her station wagon—odds and ends of carnival glass, some costume jewelry, and six Barbie dolls. On the ground she had several crates of banties and guineas and pigeons. Their intermingled coos and chirps made Ruby wonder if Gladys slept in her station wagon listening to the music of her birds, the way Buddy slept in his truck with his dogs.
The last time he’d come to town—the week before her operation—Ruby traveled with him to a place over in the Ozarks to buy some pit bull terriers. They drove several hours on interstates, and Buddy rambled on excitedly about the new dogs, as though there were something he could discover about the nature of dogs by owning a pit bull terrier. Ruby, who had traveled little, was intensely interested in the scenery, but she said, “If these are mountains, then I’m disappointed.”
“You ought to see the Rockies,” said Buddy knowingly. “Talk about mountains.”
At a little grocery store, they asked for directions, and Buddy swigged on a Dr Pepper. Ruby had a Coke and a bag of pork rinds. Buddy paced around nervously outside, then unexpectedly slammed his drink bottle in the tilted crate of empties with such force that several bottles fell out and broke. At that moment, Ruby knew she probably was irrevocably in love with him, but she was afraid it was only because she needed someone. She wanted to love him for better reasons. She knew about the knot in her breast and had already scheduled the mammogram, but she didn’t want to tell him. Her body made her angry, interfering that way, like a nosy neighbor.
They drove up a winding mountain road that changed to gravel, then to dirt. A bearded man without a shirt emerged from a house trailer and showed them a dozen dogs pacing in makeshift kennel runs. Ruby talked to the dogs while Buddy and the man hunkered down together under a persimmon tree. The dogs were squat and broad-shouldered, with squinty eyes. They were the same kind of dog the Little Rascals had had in the movies. They hurled themselves against the shaky wire, and Ruby told them to hush. They looked at her with cocked heads. When Buddy finally crated up four dogs, the owner looked as though he would cry.
At a motel that night—the first time Ruby had ever stayed in a motel with a man—she felt that the knot in her breast had a presence of its own. Her awareness of it made it seem like a little energy source, like the radium dial of a watch glowing in the dark. Lying close to Buddy, she had the crazy feeling that it would burn a hole through him.
During The Tonight Show, she massaged his back with baby oil, rubbing it in thoroughly, as if she were polishing a piece of fine furniture.
“Beat on me,” he said. “Just like you were tenderizing steak.”
“Like this?” She pounded his hard muscles with the edge of her hand.
“That