Night

Abstract

Night Karen Salyer McElmurray (bio) Excerpt from "Wanting Inez," a novel: Night On that night I have tried to forget, Ruby lit candles and incense. She draped red scarves over the lamps, played a record that still spins in my memory. Hold me in the morning, hold me at night. Hold me, Inez honey, until long past sweet daylight. Some woman, Ruby's favorite, singing about a lonely, single heart. Those bluesy words still slip into the shadows of any place I stay too long. We lived back then in a trailer alongside the highway into Smyte, behind a diner called the Black Cat. Some nights I headed over to the Black Cat, stayed there until late so Ruby could bide her time reading cards and hands and nudging futures. That night I stood outside awhile, watching as she pulled the sheer curtains across the trailer windows. Her shadow was like hands making the shapes of angels and foxes on a blank wall. I could imagine her dancing a little, dipping and turning and holding out the wide skirts of a thrift store dress, its tiny waist and wide, wide skirts. I settled into the green metal chair at the side of the yard near a big tree, a mulberry, where I'd played when I was little. From one side of the Diner I heard the slam of the screen door and the start of cars as customers headed out. Voices drifted over. Y'all come on. I'm ready to go. I thought about sitting in a booth and ordering a grilled cheese with pickles on the side. Della would come over and sit with me between things to do. I would ask her again. Della. How long have we been around these parts, Ruby and me? Della would tell me stories about her and Russell instead. About nights he'd taken her out dancing the fox trot and how her feet ached from all that fun. I sat listening to the rusty give and take of the metal chair as the window curtains opened and shut. From the field lightning bugs blinked, on, off, on, the night coming in slow. A pickup truck passed by on the highway, slid to a too-fast stop, then scooted over into the roadside gravel. Jangley rock 'n' roll collided with the other music voices, my sister's and [End Page 30] that woman singer's voice sliding out our trailer's open windows. Inez, honey, hold me in the morning, hold me at night. The truck door slammed and leaves crackled in the trees out back. After awhile boots thudded their way up our back steps. Some nights there were women, ones with their plump bellies, their too many swept floors. They wanted to see how it felt to sit across a table from a woman with hands as wise as my sister's, her eyes full of future times and the foreign places they believed she'd seen. These women came looking for the husbands they were afraid Ruby knew how to seduce with candlelight and visions. Most often, though, Ruby's fortune seekers were men with hard faces and deliberate hands. They took what little she had, whether she knew their futures or not. That night a man's shadow sat at our kitchen table as the curtains blew back and down. His big hands were palm down, and he leaned in toward Ruby. I still imagine his question, easy as liquor spilling from his lips. You think you can just say that and get by, woman? I imagined her red scarf falling against her shoulders and across her arms, how she waved it aside. Honky-tonk music rippled the door screen and their shadows bent together. For years I will see her like in an old movie, standing beside the table with her one arm held out, her hand fanned open, a card in its palm. Maybe, I still tell myself, that card was a good one. Lovers. Two cups, spilling sweet wine. And him. This much I know. He was a tall man, a taller shadow rounding the table, touching her, both long arms circling her...