Ruth Ann is a slut.
A convoy of log trucks was parked along the street, diesel engines running, several drivers asleep on their steering wheel. Ruth Ann walked along the sidewalk, a chain-link fence to her right, beyond it the SuperWood paper mill. Dirt-gray smoke plumed from two concrete stacks, dispersing an odor of Pine-Sol and manure.
Ruth Ann is a slut.
At a distance inside the plant, a Tigercat track loader grabbed logs on a truck and placed them on a conveyor belt that ran up and disappeared into a large white building. An aluminum chute stretched out the opposite side of the building and spewed a mountain of sawdust.
Ruth Ann is a slut.
The blisters on her feet hurt like hell and the sun, though starting its descent, braised her exposed skin. T-shirt and jeans felt hot and sticky. Sawdust irritated her eyes. Yet the most uncomfortable thing at the moment was those five words Shirley had told Lester.
Ruth Ann is a slut.
She hadn’t considered what Shirley had said until she’d started walking, and now couldn’t stop thinking about it. Why not whore? Ruth Ann wondered. Whore would have inflicted the same slap to the face, delivered the same blow to the gut.
The other word sounded so mean… so nasty… so… so slutty. I’m not a slut!
She slowed her pace, ugly words floating in her head, sapping her energy.
Think of something else! Think of something else!
The paper mill behind her now, she wondered where she was headed. She lifted her T-shirt, exposing her midriff, and wiped the sweat off her face and neck.
A white man driving an old red-and-white truck stopped ahead of her and she waved him off. She wasn’t a slut; she didn’t just jump in a truck with any-old-body. The truck was the exact model, color and make Lester had owned a long time ago.
Back then, the truck was Lester’s and her only vehicle. Whenever she needed to drive it, Lester would sneak out and jot down the mileage. Three miles away from the house she would stop, reach under and up the dash and unplug the odometer. She’d had big-time countrified fun in Lester’s old truck… chasing bucks in a truck… until the accident.
Which changed everything!
She remembered the night she stepped into the juke joint on the outskirts of Greenville, Mississippi. Marijuana and cigarette smoke hovered in a cloud below the ceiling, an antique jukebox blasted Marvin Gaye’s Sexual Healing, the sound of men and women laughing and talking louder than the music. Far more men than women. She could feel their eyes on her, prying for insight into her yellow, short, skin-tight leather skirt, desiring her.
She sat in a booth in back and watched. Simply watched, declining three invites to dance. Someone sent a rum and Coke to her table… and then another… and another.
Computer Love played on the jukebox… and she lost it, utterly lost it, hypnotized by Roger Troutman’s seductive lyrics and the synchronized beat, and found herself on the dance floor, eyes closed, limbs in-synch with the music, her mind in a faraway place, a sensuous place, absent a facially scarred husband whose idea of a great Friday night was a rented movie and microwave popcorn.
She sensed someone dancing before her and opened her eyes… A tall, light-skinned, freckle-faced man in blue jeans and a green hospital shirt stood before her, nodding his head to the beat. Handsome, with the whitest teeth she’d ever seen. Computer Love faded and was followed by If Loving You Is Wrong.
He pulled her to him, and she buried her head in his chest. He smelled of Vicks Vapor Rub, though she didn’t think it odd. They danced again and again, slow songs, fast songs, rap songs, until they were exhausted.
After two more rum and Cokes, he and she were on the bed of Lester’s red-and-white truck parked in back of the juke joint, dogs barking, the December air cool though bearable, under a sea of stars, her yellow skirt bunched up around her waist, her knees against her shoulders, panties hanging on one ankle, with him bouncing on top of her.
Ten weeks later she returned to the juke joint, this time with something more important on her mind than having a good time. She was pregnant. The tall, light-skinned man with freckles needed to help cover prenatal expenses. He wasn’t there.
She described him to a group of gray-haired men playing dominoes. Two of them laughed. Yes, they knew him, Drew Tubbs. He’d gone home, they told her. Where’s home? Little Rock, the oldest-looking man said. Roger’s Hall, the state hospital, he added. He wouldn’t be coming back. He’d escaped, and a doctor and the police had come and taken him back.
Drew Tubbs, they told her, had snipped off his own tongue with wire cutters after smoking marijuana and watching Benny Hinn, which partly explained why she couldn’t remember what he’d said to get her to the truck.
She threw up on the juke joint floor and needed assistance to Lester’s truck; then drove home in a fugue and threw up again after calling the state hospital and looking up schizoaffective disorder in the medical dictionary.
A loud moo startled her into the present; she was walking along the fence to the sale barn, filled with cows and bulls. The stench smelled similar to the paper mill. Where the hell am I going? A mile or so she’d be on the outskirts of town. The only stop before here and Hamburg was the park. Aunt Jean lived in Hamburg, but she didn’t take kindly to company, family or no.
Lester had known all along Shane wasn’t his.
All those years he hadn’t said a word. The day she came out of the hospital she took four-day-old Shane to her mother’s house and left him.
Every day, for three long weeks, Ida would bring Shane back to her, railing she needed to take care of her own child, and then, before Ida could drive back home, Ruth Ann would take him right back and leave him with her father. Shane got colicky from all the back-and-forth so Ida stopped dropping him off. And not once did Lester utter a peep.
Ruth Ann is a slut.
“No, I’m not!” she said, and looked to see if anyone noticed. No one was around; nothing here except smelly cows and stinky bulls and the long, empty road before her.
How could she have known Drew was a bona fide bozo? Yes, Property of the State Hospital was stenciled on the back of his shirt, but never in a million years would she have guessed his was the real deal. The hospital should have been more specific: The Nut Wearing This Shirt Is An Escaped Fruitcake. Hello!
Somehow, someway, she would make it up to Shirley. And Lester. And Shane.
She would… what? What could she do? Then she remembered Shane occasionally camped out in the Boy Scout campground. He wasn’t at her mother’s so more than likely he was there.
Yes, she would go and spend time with her son and let him know she cared about him. The campground wasn’t too far away, a country mile at the most. She picked up her pace.
When she made it to the parking lot of Count Pulaski State Park, it was dusk and her eagerness to reunite with her son had waned. The woods looked spooky. Shane could wait, she thought. After all, he’d been waiting for his mother seventeen years—one more day wouldn’t hurt.
But where else could she go? Now she wished she’d maintained at least one girlfriend.
No, you can’t trust women. Turn your head one minute and your girlfriend’s sleeping with your man.
Nowhere else to go, she realized her only option was Shane or the highway.
Soon it would be dark; she needed to make a decision. What if Shane isn’t there? She’d be in the woods, alone, in the dark, with snakes and bugs and all sorts of creepy critters.
She turned and walked away. A few steps, she imagined herself running on the highway just ahead of a truckload of intoxicated white boys. She turned and walked back. Stopped. Said a prayer. Took a deep breath and started up the trail.
A few feet in she was enveloped in darkness. She slowed to a shuffle, occasionally veering off the trail, bumping into trees and bushes.
Don’t let your mind play tricks on you.
No problem she was a woman alone in the woods, searching for a son she’d given up at birth. No fucking problem! If only her heart thought the same and stopped thumping loudly in her ears.
What if Shane held a grudge? What if he’s on medication and forgot to bring it with him?
Wekeeee! Wekeeeee!
Ruth Ann froze solid. What the hell was that? She stood there listening intently, her imagination racing. To hell with this! The highway was probably safer, and if a truckload of intoxicated white boys chased her, they wouldn’t catch her. No way, not on an open highway. Here anything could sneak up on her.
Wekeeee! Wekeeee!
Don’t run! A cricket, all it was. Didn’t sound like a cricket, though, a little too loud. A super cricket. A super cricket in heat.
Wekeeee! Wekeeee!
From which direction she couldn’t tell. She whirled around, took a step, whirled again and bumped into something… something human… She let out a shrill scream.
“It’s me,” a voice said.
“Shane! Is it you?” Too dark to make him out, only shades of darkness.
“Yeah, it’s me.”
“It’s me, Shane. Your mother.”
“I know who you are. What you doing out here?”
A good question. “I-I don’t know. I guess I wanted to see you, baby.”
“Baby! I’m not your baby. You never wanted to see me before. You and Chester never came to see me when I was living with Pa-pa. Why you want to see me now?”
“Lester,” she corrected him. “His name is Lester.”
“Lester, Chester, Molester, all the same to me.”
“He’s your father!”
“Ha! The one time he come to the house to see Pa-pa he wouldn’t even look at me. My father lives in Little Rock. He sent me my bow and a picture of him in a Houdini jacket. Somebody lied to you.”
“Shane! Don’t you dare talk to me like that! I’m your mother. Don’t you ever talk to me like that! You hear me? Never!”
He didn’t respond, and she wondered if now, at night, in the woods, was the ideal time to teach him manners.
She lowered her voice: “How are you getting along out here?”
He didn’t answer and started giggling. She’d never heard him giggle before. It sent a chill down her spine. “What’s so funny?”
He stopped giggling. “You want to see where I live? I fixed it up all myself.”
“Yes, Shane. Sure, why not,” though not particularly desiring to do so, especially if he started giggling again. Men, especially young men meeting their mother in the woods after a seventeen-year absence, shouldn’t giggle. She would tell him that. Tomorrow, when the sun came up.
Shane took her hand and started up the trail, a little too fast to her liking. What’s the rush?
“There’s a buncha ways to get up here,” Shane said. “The trails are the easiest, but usually I go through the trees. This way you can really get the feel of the surroundings.”
“Great. I’ll remember my next visit.”
The ground leveled and Shane stopped. “Home,” he announced. “You can’t see em now, there’re two cabins up here. Lightning struck a tree and it landed on one of em. I don’t live in it, though. C’mon.” He led her inside a cabin and released her hand. “Right here,” patting on something, “is my bed. I made the frame out of pinewood. The pillow out of rags and quail feathers.”
“Nice.” She heard him moving across the room.
“This here’s the couch.”
“What you make it out of?”
“Nothing. It was here when I got here.”
“Is it what I’m smelling? Sorta stale, isn’t it?”
“Naw,” and giggled. God, she wished he’d stop that. “It’s not the couch, it’s me. I haven’t had a bath since I been here. Too much trouble.”
Too much info. “No big deal.”
“You want something to eat?”
“No!”
“I got some turkey, squirrel and possum meat drying out back. Got turtle eggs, too. Think I got a little rabbit meat left over from the other day. You like rabbit meat, don’t ya?”
Yes, from the store and refrigerated. “Thanks, I’m not hungry.”
“You sure? Won’t be no trouble. Rabbit meat and turtle eggs, don’t it just make your mouth water?”
Yes, to spit. “No, thank you, Shane, I’m fine. I’d like it if you turn the lights on.”
“No lights out here. If I start a fire it’ll be too hot. You staying the night? You can take my bed. I’ll sleep on the couch.”
Ruth Ann couldn’t speak. Maybe it was the lack of inflection in his tone, the casual way he’d said it. She didn’t know him, had never taken the time to get to know him. Yet here he was in the woods alone, living in a manner unfit for a grown man, roughing it—and he offered me his bed.
Her legs went weak, eyes welled up. She sat down on the floor.
“Guess you can have the pillow, too,” Shane said.
That broke the dam and she started crying.
Shane said, “You can take the couch.”
She couldn’t stop crying long enough to tell him that wasn’t the problem.
Shane crossed to her. “Don’t cry.” He knelt beside her and wrapped an arm around her shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry. Please don’t cry! I apologize what I said about Luther. Stop crying, please!”
She tried to tell him the name was Lester, not Luther, but the words wouldn’t form. Her entire body shook, and she was aware she hadn’t cried like this since she was in grade school.
Shane patted her back… her head… shoulder. “Don’t cry! I’ll start a fire out front and it’ll shine a little light in here. If you want I’ll push the bed onto the porch. Stop crying, please!”
She tried to stop… couldn’t.
Shane got up, and she heard him padding across the room and then a ruffling sound. He returned and said, “You can have this… if you stop crying.” Something furry brushed her face and she jumped. “It’s all right. It’s my lucky rabbit foot. You can have it.”
Ruth Ann shook her head and pressed both hands firmly over her mouth, successfully stifling the noise but not the ache.
“Thank goodness!” Shane said, utterly relieved.