A Plain Leaving by Leslie Gould

Author:Leslie Gould
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Contemporary Fiction;FIC053000;FIC042040;FIC042000
ISBN: 9781493411955
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2017-08-03T04:00:00+00:00

12

Ruby

Ruby didn’t feel right about Duncan traveling that far by himself. He’d have to take the wagon to be able to bring Zachary back. If a wheel or axle broke, it would be nearly impossible for him to fix it. And Ruby wasn’t sure if he’d know how to care for Zachary either.

But she couldn’t leave Mamm. She considered trying to hire a local girl, but she feared Mamm might be dying and felt it too much to ask of another person. There was the matter of the chores too. There weren’t any older boys and young men left—they’d all been conscripted as soldiers or had fled.

The next morning, Mamm opened her eyes but didn’t seem to focus on Ruby, although she managed to say, “Trust the Lord, dear one. Pray that His will be done.”

She didn’t speak, nor did she eat after that. Ruby asked Duncan to wait a couple of days before he left. She couldn’t bear the thought of being alone if Mamm died.

Ruby sat beside Mamm’s bed as much as she could, moistening her mother’s mouth with a damp cloth and reading to her from Dat’s Bible. She prayed silently for Mamm and Zachary, too, throughout the day.

That evening Mamm’s breathing grew raspy. Ruby sat up with her, leaving the lamp burning, feeling destitute at the thought of her mother passing. At some point, toward morning, she dozed, and when she woke, she realized her Mamm was gone. She sat until the sun rose and then staggered over to the Wallis farm, overcome with sorrow, and asked Duncan to go fetch the minister. There was no reason, with most of the congregation gone, to wait to bury Mamm. The ground was only going to grow colder and would be harder to dig.

While Duncan was gone, Old Man Wallis did the milking and Ruby washed Mamm one last time. When Duncan returned, saying the minister would arrive soon, he and his uncle made a pine box from boards they found in the barn. By the time the minister arrived, Duncan, Old Man Wallis, and Ruby had managed to get Mamm’s body into the box.

The minister was ill, but he went with Duncan to the small plot on the edge of the farm where Ruby’s Dat and her siblings who had died young had been buried and dug another hole for Mamm. At least the weather was warm enough and the ground still soft. Old Man Duncan said he could feel it in his bones that a cold snap was coming though.

Ruby hitched the workhorses to the wagon, and when Duncan and the minister returned, they all managed to carry the box, with Old Man Wallis’s help, out to the wagon and then transport it to the burial plot. The minister said a few words and led them in a silent prayer. Then the four of them lowered the box into the ground. Duncan worked at shoveling the dirt on top and then Ruby took a turn, saying she wanted to have a part in it, but honestly she was afraid it was all too much for Duncan.

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