I walked to the lot thinking I’d take a look in the rusted old iron fountain. Maybe there were still coins in there, thrown by long-ago patients or visitors. Wishing for things beyond their control. Wishing for freedom.
And then a thought occurred to me. Griff had lost his phone and planned to get a burner in the morning. He couldn’t have texted me.
Suddenly, I felt a sharp pain on my scalp, and someone yanked me backward by my hair. I gasped and clawed the air, trying to keep myself upright. The person tightened their grip, tilting my head back. I cried out, just as a hand closed over my mouth.
“Hello, Eve,” a low voice hissed in my ear. “Welcome to Alabama.”
Chapter Six
Tuscaloosa, Alabama
1930
Ruth woke to the sound of a bolt sliding back from the heavy door. She sat up, promptly banging her head against the wooden slats of the crib. She winced and rubbed the spot.
Watery moonlight spilled between the bars of the lone window set high in the wall. The nursery. That’s where she was. After supper, Singley had made a fuss about how she didn’t clean her table properly, dragged her down here and locked her in one of the wooden cribs. Now she realized the bolt she’d heard belonged to another door, one far down the long hall. She might have to wait an hour before Jimmy came.
The nursery smelled of old baby piss and doo. She’d lived there until she was about three years old. After that they let her stay in a dorm, chained by her leg to her mother’s narrow cot. Then her mother hanged herself. That was when she was six or seven; she couldn’t quite remember. Memories were strange here at Pritchard. They tended to fade, leaving a gray blank in their place.
The nighttime sounds of the ward floated around her from down the hall. Shouts. Sobs. The muffled thump-thump-thump of human bodies hitting walls and floorboards and straw pallets. The last was a sound that had become like a part of her, the music of the inmates as they lulled themselves to sleep by beating their heads.
At long last, Singley slid back the bolt on her door and unlocked the crib. He led her down the hall, and she told herself to keep calm. She didn’t know when her chance would come, but when it did, she’d know. If she jumped the gun, she’d end up Mrs. Jimmy Singley, and she’d be good gravy goddamned if she was going to let that happen.
Jimmy looked down at her, his face as red as a tomato. “Let’s step lively. Don’t want to keep the preacher waiting.”
When they pushed open the double doors of the auditorium, she saw a tall, broad-shouldered man standing in the center of the stage. He wore a black felt hat with a rolled brim. It was tilted jauntily to one side. His black suit jacket, vest, and pants had a sheen to them, like they were very old. When Singley deposited her at the man’s feet, he swept off his hat and eyed her. His hair was black as coal and gray around the edges, his skin thick and pocked with scars.
His face wasn’t badly shaped, and he may have been handsome at one time, dashing even, but his eyes flashed with something dangerous. He smelled like oranges and clove and it nauseated her. The sight of her seemed to take him by surprise.
Singley ducked his head. “Evening, Uncle Robert. This here’s Ruthie.”
“Evening, miss.”
He replaced his hat, but his dangerous eyes never strayed from Ruth. He cracked a large set of knuckles, held out his massive hand, and Singley slapped a wad of bills into it. Ruth’s eyes widened. How much money had Singley paid for the man to say a few quick words? That must be some racket.
“James,” the man said in a sonorous preacher’s voice. “Do you take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife?” He was still gazing at Ruth.
Ruth stayed stiff as a board. She had a bad feeling about this black-vested, behatted beast, with his glittering eyes, rough face, and hands the size of frying pans.
Singley looked slightly confused. “Yessir, I do. But ain’t you gonna say a few words before—”
“And Ruth, do you take this man to be your husband?” The preacher’s lip curled into a barely discernible smirk, but he didn’t say what he might have found amusing.
Singley’s mouth unhinged in shock, and he looked from his uncle to Ruth, then back again. “Hey, now. You can’t—”
“It’s my turn to talk,” Ruth said to Singley, then locked her gaze on the reverend’s eyes. “I can’t marry this man, sir. Not without telling the truth first. So he knows what he’s getting.”
The reverend Robert T. Singley reared back the slightest bit, like a horse that had encountered a rabbit. “You don’t say?”
“You see, sir, I’ve been used poorly. By another man.”
Singley gasped, a wet, desperate sound. “Ruth! You didn’t tell me.”
“You never asked,” Ruth snapped.
“My goodness.” The reverend’s eyes burned into her. “What a little spitfire you are.”
“And a slut, no two ways about it,” Ruth said matter-of-factly. “So I figure we better postpone this ceremony until another day. Until we can settle things with the other party. I expect he’ll have something to say about who’s marrying who.”
The younger Singley sputtered and flapped and rubbed his double chin. “She’s my girl. Mine.”
“And that other fella’s,” Ruth said.
The reverend’s lip curled into a smile. He seemed to be enjoying his nephew’s anguish. He eyed Ruth, as if a new idea had occurred to him.
“Well, what do you want to do?” the reverend asked in his deep, growling voice.
Singley looked from him to Ruth in confusion. “I can’t marry her now.”
“Sure, you can, you idiot.”
“I can’t! She ain’t no virgin!”
The reverend laughed, then looked at Ruth, his face gone grave. “Oh, you can, nephew, and you must. She’s been soiled and it’s up to you to salvage her. It’s a man’s duty to protect the woman, you know that.” He extended a finger and lifted a strand of her hair off her cheek. He then ran it along the slope of her jaw.
That’s when Ruth knew it was time.
She turned and ran—up the aisle of the auditorium, through the double doors, and all the way to the stairwell. Three flights down to the laundry, she pushed open the glass-paned door she had rigged earlier that day. She scurried across the room and slipped behind the big sinks, letting herself into the underground passageway that the attendants and nurses used to deliver the dirty linens to the back building. It ran all the way past the fields at the back end of the property.
She ran as fast as she could, barefoot over the packed dirt, her blue-and-white dress rippling as she went. Halfway down, she came to a small crevice between two rocks. She squeezed into it and shimmied her way up a couple of feet, coming to a rotted board. She punched at it until the outside latch sprung open and she could push the trapdoor up. It was just wide enough for her to wriggle through.
She’d done this before, on a few rare starry nights in the summer when she needed to see the sky. Those times, she’d never realized she could’ve run. Or that she even wanted to.
But oh, how she wanted to run now.
She was only a couple of yards from the blackberry bushes, still heavy with unpicked fruit. She stood for a half second, sniffing the air for the scent of the Warrior River. The bluffs were due south of her. The trusty Alabama sky enveloped her like a blanket. She started running again, the Major’s marching song keeping time in her head.