“The nursery? Why? I ain’t done nothing wrong.” She studied his slicked-back grease spill of hair, the sleepy eyes and rounded shoulders, but they held no clue.
“For safe keeping. Listen. I’m gonna put you in the nursery, then right at midnight, I’ll let you out and take you to the auditorium.”
“What’s in the auditorium?” she asked, suspicious.
His lips parted in a smug grin, and she felt another blast of his stinking breath. “A birthday present for you. What do you think about that, Little Miss Priss?”
“What is it?” she asked.
“What is it?” he mimicked her, then laughed. “Can’t tell you that, little gal, or it wouldn’t be no surprise.”
She edged toward the door. “I have to go.”
He put an arm out, blocking her. “Now wait a minute. Just hang on.”
“What?”
“Let me get a hug before you go.” He bounced on his toes in anticipation. “Just one little hug. I promise I’ll be sweet.”
He reached for her, but without even thinking, she slapped his hand away. He caught her wrist and pushed her back. Hard, cracking her spine against the wall. She’d been lucky up until now, always managing to get away from him. But today Singley seemed possessed with a new determination. He pressed against her, determined and quite a bit keyed up, judging from the thing poking into the side of her stomach.
“It’s fine work, holding on to your virtue,” he said, releasing her. “But I’m telling you . . . one day you’re gonna have to mind me.”
She mustered up a saucy look and gave it to him, even though she was quaking inside. “Well, all right then. Get on with it.”
He ducked his head, suddenly shy.
“I said get to it, pecker! Give me that hug.”
“Don’t you be giving orders to me. I give the orders.” He kicked the doorjamb. “Anyways. What I come to say is my uncle Robert from Enterprise has come to visit for a few days at my mother’s house. And what do you know, turns out he’s a preacher!”
“What about my present?” There was no doubt that whatever he had up his sleeve wasn’t good, but she thought it was better to know sooner rather than later. So she could be prepared.
“Hold your horses, gal. We were having supper the other night at my mother’s house and I ask him, ‘Do you only do preaching?’ And he says, ‘That’s what preachers do, ain’t it?’ And I say, ‘Preachers do weddings. Do you marry folks?’ And he says, ‘Why sure, now and then.’ And then he says, ‘You figuring on getting married, Jimmy? You got yourself a girl?’”
Singley laughed a nervous laugh, and Ruth got cold all over.
He puffed his chest. “So I say, ‘Sure I do, I got a girl prettier than you ever seen. She’s got hair like red silk and eyes like the sky. I say, you ain’t never seen nothing like my girl, not in all the places you’ve traveled.’”
She might’ve been cold, but Singley felt like an oven. He felt like a radiating sun, shooting out molten tongues of burning hot fire.
“And then he says, ‘Well, Jimmy, she’s gotta be a grown woman. She’s gotta be of age or I can’t marry you.’” Singley could barely contain himself. His lips split into a wide, gap-toothed grin. “And you are! You’re of age—thirteen years old, as God’s my witness. So your birthday present, Miss Ruth Lurie? Well, it’s the Reverend Robert T. Singley, right here at Pritchard, declaring us man and wife.”
For the first time since she’d been a bitty little girl, Ruth felt pure terror. It wiped her mind clean and locked up her limbs. And for a moment, she believed she was going to piss the floor right where she stood. But she hadn’t, and eventually, Singley let her go.
Now, out in the hot yard beside the bloom-wreathed hawthorn tree, the Major was still mumbling his song. Ruth gave the old man’s shoulder a reassuring pat and squatted down beside Dell. The boy knuckled down with his big blue shooter, squeezed one eye shut, and surveyed the marbles in the circle of dirt.
“Put ’em up, dead duck,” he said.
The shooter clacked, making two marbles spin out past the line.
“Couldn’t find nobody to play?” Ruth asked.
He grinned over at her with his one open eye. It was the exact color of the shooter, a soft cornflower blue. Just like hers. When she was younger, she used to pretend she and Dell were brother and sister. She’d let him crawl up in bed with her and scratch his back. To get him to sleep, she’d describe the house where they would live together one day. A room for you and next door’ll be mine. But that had stopped, in time, as the attendants didn’t let the boys and girls mix past a certain age. She missed him, especially on cold nights. His little body had been hot as a furnace next to hers.
Now he waggled his eyebrows at the hollow knot in the tree behind him, just a few feet up from the roots. It was where he hid the marbles he won off other patients. It was also a place where they liked to hide little gifts for each other and the Major: A wrapped toffee from Ruth. A broken celluloid comb from Dell. A double acorn from the Major.
“Couldn’t find nobody else who wanted to lose their aggies.” He looked up at her. “You want a go?”
“Aw. I don’t reckon I feel like making a little boy cry today.”
He stuck his tongue out at her. “Skeered,” he muttered and went back to his game.
The Major kicked a foot over his knee. “Better watch yourself, girl. He’ll be taller than you next week.”
“And I’ll thrash you,” Dell added.
“It’s a date.” She ruffled the boy’s hair and went off to find another attendant, Mackey, who was watching a group of men play horseshoes.
“Can I pick blackberries?” she asked him.
He glanced at her, disinterested.
She held up her apron. “I won’t go far. Just around the edges of the wood. I’ll take ’em straight to the kitchen.”
He grunted an assent, and she ran around the far edge of the building, toward the kitchen door. She slipped in, past the bustling cooks and patients in charge of chopping onions and washing dishes, and let herself into the laundry. The room was clouded with steam and rang with the chatter of patients and the clanking of the metal wringers. She sidled to the big glass-paned door that led out to the corridor and untied her apron. With her teeth, she tore one string and stuffed it into the hinges of the door. Then she turned back, leaving the way she’d come.
Half an hour later, back in the yard, she found Betty hunched over the Major. Betty liked to smear her poop on the windows, and now she’d removed the old man’s cap and was in the process of poking her crusty fingers into the crater on the top of his head where a Union ball had smashed into his skull. Ruth marched up and pushed her away. Betty howled, but Ruth didn’t pay her any mind. She carefully smoothed what remained of the Major’s white hair over his ruined scalp and replaced his cap.
She kissed his cheek. “Goodbye,” she whispered.
Chapter Five
Tuscaloosa, Alabama
Present
“There are things known and unknown, and in between are the doors.”