Ruth’s Journey by Donald McCaig

Author:Donald McCaig
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Atria Books
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

Jack was somewhere in North Georgia when Penny’s fever came back. The doctor said, “She has the great advantage of youth” and “Most unusual.” Ham drove Frances to Broughton Plantation, where she found Dolly nursing in the infirmary. Frances was blunt. “Mammy Ruth wants to die.”

“Le Bon Dieu want Mammy Ruth?”

“I suppose . . . I suppose we’d have to ask Him.”

Impatiently, “No, missus. We asks spirits so they asks Le Bon Dieu. They interferes for us.”

Frances thought Dolly meant intercedes, but perhaps not. “Can you . . . ?”

Stoutly, “I good Christian, Missus. I don’t heed no conjurin’.”

“My Penny . . . I . . .” As if someone else, some spirit, spoke in her voice, Frances said, “If Ruth dies, my daughter will die. I know that as fact.”

In the end, Dolly sighed and said she’d do what she could.

Ham drove the woman into town for certain purchases and borrowings and they didn’t return until dark. With a pungent, nose-wrinkling flour sack of mysterious bulges tucked under her arm, Dolly asked Frances, “You wants to help?”

This gap-toothed smiling woman chilled Frances Ravanel’s Protestant soul.

“I needs someone help.”

“Ah . . . why not Ham? One of your . . . your own.”

“Ham.” She dismissed the man. “Ham want love potion. That only thing he want. Make he wife act the fool.”

After Ham’s unfoolish wife, Martha, closed the door behind the two women, Frances, who sometimes drank a glass of sherry at Christmas, filled a tumbler to the brim with the dark sweet whiskey Colonel Jack brought from Kentucky.

The second tumbler shut her ears to the very odd sounds behind that door, which as a Christian she didn’t want to think about, neither the singing nor the chants nor the multiple voices.

She betook herself to Penny’s bedroom and fell asleep in the chair beside her daughter.

The morning sun tinted the river mist pink, and a beam found the window of the old farmhouse. Frances jerked awake to touch her daughter’s cool forehead. Penny’s blue eyes opened wide. “Momma? Water?” Frances poured from the pitcher at her bedside and helped Penny drink.

“I had the strangest dreams . . .” Penny said. “But I can’t ’member . . .”

A tear tracked Frances’s cheek.

She helped her daughter into a clean nightshirt. “Whew.” Penny giggled. “I smell bad!”

Frances opened the shutters to the river breeze. “I’m so grateful,” she said.

Penny made a face. “Why are you grateful for that?”

“We’ll get you washed after a little while.”

Frances took a pot of tea upstairs and knocked on Ruth’s door. She heard a rustle inside. A grunt. Feet hit the floor.

Dolly’s shirtwaist was pulled out and her braids were undone. Her face was soft, as if she’d spent the night making love. Behind her, the room was dark with drawn curtains and shutters. Odd things hung from wall sconces, and Dolly smelled powerfully of pungent, musky spices. Frances couldn’t tell whether one woman or two lay in Ruth’s bed. “It be ’nother morning, don’t it,” Dolly announced.

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