Red Ruby's

Aside from church, the only social gathering spot in the Mt. Prospect, Louisiana, of 1938 was Rufus Caine’s Grocery and Feeds, the general store. After buying their supplies, area wives lingered to talk while the younger children played kick-the-can in the dirt parking lot and the older children engaged in adolescent boasting, horseplay, and flirting with the opposite sex.

While his three-year older brother Wayne splurged on Baby Ruth candy bars and tins of Beech-Nut chewing tobacco, 14-year-old Jeff Caldwell contented himself with lemon drops, five for a penny. The only other extravagance he allowed himself was a bottle of Nehi orange soda, which he didn't particularly care for but which he knew was the favorite of Mary Frances Branson. Jeff had a crush on brown‑haired, blue‑eyed Mary Frances, and he liked to curry her favor by offering to share his drink with her. Mary Frances would sit on one of the rough benches outside the store while her mama shopped and gossiped. Jeff would pluck his soft drink from the galvanized tub filled with ice and water and toss his nickel into the cash basket. Then he would saunter out onto the porch, his every move calculated. He would lean up against the porch rail, mop his sunburned forehead with the back of his wrist, take a swallow of the sweet orange drink and casually, as if he'd just thought of it, look over at Mary Frances and offer her a swallow, too. She always accepted, so he'd wipe the mouth of the bottle with his shirt tail and pass the drink to her. And she'd wipe the mouth of the bottle again on the hem of her dress before taking a sip. He wondered if she noticed that he never wiped the bottle when she passed it back to him.

Aside from the pennies he spent on lemon drops and the occasional nickel for a Nehi, Jeff saved all the money he earned, or at least that portion of his earnings his father didn’t deduct for Jeff’s “room and board.” Jeff’s father was without work since the saw mill closed, so the whole family labored in the cotton fields that summer right alongside Negroes, a fact that infuriated his father. Jeff hoarded his money in a sock hidden in a hole on the underside of his mattress.

When school started, and his work in the cotton fields ended, Jeff asked Mary Frances to a Saturday‑night movie in Dry Fork. He wanted to buy her some popcorn and a Coca-Cola and afterwards share a malt at the Rexall. Jeff wasn't old enough yet to drive legally, so he had to persuade Wayne to double-date with him in their father’s rusted pickup. It would be crowded, with the four of them in the cab together. But that was OK because Mary Frances would have to ride in his lap, his arms wrapped securely around her waist so the jouncing of the truck over the rutted gravel road would not send her flying against the window or into the dash. Thus existed the exquisite possibility that an awaiting pothole would bounce her so violently that his hands, unavoidably and guiltlessly, would slide across her breasts.

But without informing Jeff, Wayne located Jeff's hiding place and discovered that Jeff had amassed an astonishing treasure of over four dollars. When Jeff broached the subject of a double date, Wayne, thinking he could wangle free tickets and refreshments, agreed immediately and without his usual surliness. He hjust smiled lewdly and punched Jeff lightly on the arm. "I know what you're looking forward to, little brother. I’m glad to accommodate. Four of us together in the cab, you get to squirm all the way to Dry Fork with Mary Frances Branson on your lap. I wouldn't mind that treat myself. Specially if she don't wear panties 'cause it's so hot. I’ll take Becky Price who might not wear panties either and maybe just drive down the road a piece and then let you get behind the wheel once we're out of sight of the house."

"You gotta drive,” Jeff said, alarmed. “Daddy would kill us both if you let me drive and I got a ticket.”

Wayne laughed and punched Jeff again, still not hard. "You are so easy to rile, little brother. You buy my tickets and a big Coke to share with Becky, and I’ll be your chauffeur.”

At lunch one day after school started, Jeff asked Mary Frances for the date, but her reaction was so blasé that Jeff found it unsettling. "Oh, sure," she said without additional comment. "That's fine." She didn't ask what movie or for any other details.

But then Wayne thought of a better way to spend Jeff’s money. And on the Friday evening eight days before the scheduled double date, after chores were finished, Wayne sat down beside Jeff who was sitting on the back-porch steps reading a library copy of Oliver Twist. The sky was yellow and fading, and a blue‑black line of thunderheads could be seen thumb-smudged on the horizon. Wayne was dressed in jeans, but shirtless. He had just come out from the washing shed, and he mopped with a towel at his hair, neck and underarms.

"You planning on playing bookworm all night?" Wayne asked Jeff.

Jeff shrugged and kept on reading. So Wayne draped his towel over Jeff's book.

"Stop that, dang it," Jeff said.

"I want to ask you something," Wayne said.

"What?" Jeff replied, handing the towel back to Wayne.

"Want to go out riding with us tonight?" Wayne said. "Johnny's got his daddy's truck, and me and him’re going over to Dry Fork High School’s sock hop in the gym this evening."

"I don't know," Jeff said. He was surprised to be included on such an outing and did not really want to go. Johnny was Wayne's friend, not Jeff's, and Jeff always did his best to avoid him. But he didn't want to say no straight out because he didn't want to queer his arrangement with Wayne for the next weekend. So he said, "I don't know anybody at Dry Fork."

"Aw, come on," Wayne implored. "Maybe you'll meet you a girl you like even better than Mary Frances Branson."

Such a notion was preposterous, of course, but Jeff finally agreed to go with them. "You better go on and wash up then,” Wayne said. “Johnny will be by here in a half hour.”

In the wash shed, Jeff undressed and dipped a tin pail into the wash tub. He set the pail on a warped wooden table where a bar of soap lay still tacky from being used by Wayne. Jeff studied the soap suspiciously, always concerned that Wayne might have done something foul with it, which Wayne would later reveal for the purpose of disgusting Jeff. Satisfied with the soap, Jeff soaped up the communal wash cloth, rubbed it vigorously against itself and rinsed it over the hole in the middle of the floor that let the water drain to the ground below. Finally, he washed himself, lathering with his hands and using the wet cloth to wipe away the soap. Afterwards, he dressed in clean clothes and went to wait with Wayne on the front porch.

When Johnny arrived, Wayne immediately climbed into the cab which two huge bags of feed stacked in the center of the seat. So Wayne thumbed Jeff into the gritty bed in the back. The moon was just coming up, a huge orange disk that shone through the trees. The wind was cool and pleasant as it whipped through Jeff’s wet hair, and life seemed delectable as he mused about bouncing along this same route a week hence with Mary Frances Branson perched on his lap.

When they reached the parish road into Dry Fork, however, Johnny passed it by and eventually turned east off the highway rather than west. As the truck rattled out onto a narrow gravel road, Jeff hammered on the rear window of the cab and yelled out, "Where we going?" The boys inside responded with laughter.

Wayne stuck his head out the window and yelled back, "You'll find out when we get there, won't you?"

Jeff shook his head in resignation. He knew he should have stayed at home. He might have finished his book. He made no more inquiries while they drove, just sat back against the cab to watch the central Louisiana landscape slide by. The night was bright, and he could make out the star‑shaped leaves of sweet gums growing along the roadside ditch.

Shortly, Johnny turned onto an ungraded, rutted drive and slowed to less than ten miles per hour as he steered the dark lane canopied with by oaks, bald cypress and magnolias. Carried on a breeze smelling of damp earth, night-blooming jasmine and muscadine, Jeff could suddenly hear the sound of music, the tinkling of piano keys, he thought, and the low wailing notes of a saxophone accompanied by the beat of drums. Jeff could smell slow‑moving water; they were coming down to a bayou or a swamp pond he guessed. The music grew louder, and now Jeff could hear the murmur of voices.

The truck eased into a clearing, and its lights flashed across a building awash in the glow of a hundred kerosene lamps. A dozen vehicles of various kinds -- a lumber truck, a milk van, and a hearse, along with several pickups and black sedans -- were parked haphazardly in front of an unpainted two‑story wood building erected on pilings out over the water of a bayou. Steps from the front porch came down on land. At the foot of the steps someone had spread fresh wood shavings over a bed of gravel.

"What is this place?" Jeff asked as he climbed out of the bed and the other boys exited the cab.

"Come on and find out," Wayne said, and led the way toward the building. As they drew closer, Jeff could see in the flickering light people standing on the porch in small groups, mostly couples, some with their arms around one another. Inside, the music started up again, fast music with a hard beat, and some of the couples moved inside. It wasn't until Jeff started up the steps that he realized everybody on the porch was black. Some of the people were dressed in work clothes, the men in loose cotton T-shirts under coveralls and the women in loose‑weave shifts. But many were dressed like no Negro he had ever seen, not even the black‑suited Negro preachers and funeral directors in Dry Fork. Here many of the men wore shiny, striped suits and bright shirts with colorful ties. Most of the women wore clingy, satin dresses with plunging necklines. This was a place from outside any world that Jeff had ever encountered.

Perhaps it was just the loud music which drowned out the sound, but Jeff felt as if all conversation on the porch stopped and all eyes followed the three white boys. Tobacco smoke hung heavy in the air, and Jeff felt disoriented, alien. As the boys reached the level of the porch, a full‑figured, red‑haired black woman of maybe forty or so came out from inside on the arm of a tall, thin black man wearing a wide‑brimmed hat and smoking a cigarette in a long white holder. The woman wore a red lace dress with a flared bottom trimmed in black satin, black, ribbed nylons and open-toed shoes with very high heels. On her head she had a small black hat, like a skull cap with four points. Its veil reached down toward the arch of her eyebrows which were plucked to the width of a pencil lead.

When she noticed the three white boys, she said to the man at her side after sizing them up, "Now looky what we got here." None of the boys made a response, and the lady in the red dress stepped over to them, leaving the thin man standing in the doorway. "You boys know where you are, now do you?" she asked, sidestepping to look each one frankly in the face. Jeff had never known a black person to relate to a white person, even a white child, with such brazenness. Unable to meet her gaze, he stared down at his shoes.

"Red Ruby's," Wayne said, and the lady in the red dress turned her eyes to him.

"Why I do believe some people use that name," she said, licking her lips and smiling.

"If this is Red Ruby's," Johnny said, "then I guess we come to the right place."

"Oh, have you now, honey?" she said.

"I guess we have," Johnny replied.

"And what would be bringing you all out to this dark place?" the lady in the red asked, and the man in the doorway behind her snickered and regarded the boys with unconcealed amusement. "What would be bringing you white boys out in this black night?" the lady in red said, and all the Negroes on the porch guffawed. Not one of the boys had any idea what they were laughing about.

Bouncing his right fist on top of his left, Wayne said, his voice slightly quavering. "We heard we could get some action here." He rubbed the left fist with his right palm.

The lady in the red dress twisted on her heel and moved directly in front of Wayne. She cocked her weight onto one leg and rested her hand on her hip, lifting her opposite leg to brush against Wayne's calf with her toes. "Now are you the leader of these boys?" she asked Wayne. "Are you the one they followed into this inky holler?"

"I guess," Wayne said. "It was my idea. But they all wanted to come."

Not me, Jeff thought. He had no idea what was going on.

"So you want some action for these boys," she said. "Is that what you want, leader man?"

"I guess," Wayne said. "Yes."

The lady in the red dress turned again and walked to where Jeff was standing. "Even for this baby?" she said to Wayne. "Even for this baby who probably ain't even got any hair on . . . " She reached out and brushed a curled forefinger under Jeff's face " . . . his chin?" The people on the porch laughed loudly again.

"I'm fourteen," Jeff said, somewhat indignantly. "I shave sometimes. Over my lip.”

"I'm sure you do, honey," the lady in red said, and caressed Jeff's face with an open hand. Then she walked back to Wayne. "Action ain't free, leader man; I'm sure you know that."

"I got money," Wayne said.

"Good," the lady in red said. "And what about your buddy and my baby boy? Do they have money, too? For their action?"

"I got money for all of us," Wayne said.

"Why, you all want to follow me then," the lady in red said, smiling broadly. She turned and moved toward the doorway, the boys falling in behind her single file. Jeff brought up the rear, perplexed about what was going on. He suspected Wayne was going to buy moonshine, and if so, Wayne had another think coming if he thought Jeff was going to drink any of it.

As the lady in red swept through the doorway, she said to two men in the doorway, "These fine young white boys have come to Red Ruby's for some action." The two black men seemed to think that was the funniest thing she had said all night.

The downstairs room at Red Ruby's was a dark sea of ripe humanity. The room was thick with cigarette smoke under which hung a smell of perfume and body odor and another smoky smell, sweet and green, that Jeff could not identify. The space was very warm. The top‑hinged shutters to all the windows were propped open with wooden slats, but little of the heavy outside air stirred inside. Showers of yellow light from kerosene lamps standing on every window ledge illuminated wooden tables strewn with liquor bottles and overflowing ashtrays. In the far corner of the room, a pianist, a bass player, a drummer and a saxophonist, played their narcotic music as if in a trance.

The lady in red led them through a gyrating throng of dancers and up a staircase to the second floor into a room with two sofas facing each other and two hard‑backed chairs closing off the square. She directed that Johnny and Jeff sit down on one of the sofas and that Wayne accompany her back into the hall. Jeff could hear them talking, but he could not hear what they were saying. A few minutes later, Wayne returned and sat.

"Y'all ever gonna tell me what the devil's going on?" Jeff inquired.

Johnny snickered, and Wayne said, "You ain't gonna have to wait no time at all to find out, little brother. So just hold your horses."

"Somebody else about to hold his horse," Johnny said. He socked Jeff in the arm and laughed. "If he's got hisself a horse, that is.”

Jeff winced and started to complain but quickly decided not to give Johnny the pleasure.

The lady in red opened the door and came back in. Trailing behind her were four young Negro women. Each was dressed in a long, white cotton smock that hung just below her knees. The lady in red lined them up opposite the boys.

"OK, girls," the lady in red ordered. "Show them what you got."

The girls lifted their smocks up around their necks. Underneath they were completely naked. Jeff was shocked and offended in a way. It was so indecent making the girls display themselves like this. But he couldn't take his eyes away. He looked at each of the girls in turn, at their breasts and at the tufts of black hair between their legs. Jeff knew exactly what was happening now. He had heard Wayne and the other boys talk about whorehouses, and he'd even imagined going to one, although never one with Negro girls and never with this lineup thing, but only just him and a pretty white whore in a room all alone. But this was so raw he felt ashamed even as he became utterly aroused. He wondered if the girls could see that his pecker was hard.

"Now turn around, girls," the lady in red ordered. "In case one of these boys is a backdoor man." She laughed. "Just remember, reverse action costs twice as much." Jeff had no idea what she was talking about. The girls turned around and gathered the backs of their smocks. After a moment, the lady in red said, "Okay, y'all turn back around. But keep your dresses up until three of y’all are chosen."

The girls faced forward, and Wayne said, "I'll take the yellow one." He pointed out the lightest skinned of the four women. Her hair was a reddish brown, and she had freckles all over her body.

"I want the one with those big titties," Johnny said. She was the tallest and had the second darkest skin, and Jeff was glad Johnny picked her. So Jeff picked the one he wanted all along, the one he thought was the prettiest. She had pigtails and looked at most 15. Her being close to his age was part of the attraction. He didn’t care that she was so dark her skin was almost blue or that she hadn't any breasts at all to speak of, just a little puffiness on either side of her chest and two long puckerings of nipple. She didn’t look at him, but just stared straight ahead with stony eyes.

“Your brother is some dumb stupid,” Johnny said to Wayne. “Picked the one ain’t got no titties at all.

"You boys got yourselves thirty minutes of action," the lady in red said and laughed. "Not that it should take any of you nearly that long."

The room Jeff entered with the dark‑skinned girl was tiny and bare. A lamp on the window ledge held out the night and lit the room in flickering gold rings. Underneath the window was a hard‑back wooden chair and next to that an iron single bed with open springs and a thin cotton mattress. There was no top sheet, and the bottom sheet was gray with age and stained with yellow splotches. On the chair, a tin bowl full of water sat next to a bar of soap and a folded yellow hand towel. There was nothing else in the room. "What's your name?" Jeff asked the dark‑skinned girl.

"Lila," she said without smiling. She sat at the head of the bed her legs next to the chair.

"I'm Jeff." He sat at the foot of the bed. He did not know how to begin and wasn't sure he really wanted to. His erection had disappeared.

"I got to wash you," Lila said. "That's Miss Ruby's first rule."

"You don't have to," Jeff responded. "I already washed before I left home."

"I ain't got to wash nothing but your peter," Lila said. "But I got to wash that or we cain't do nothing. Some men’s likes the washing part."

"I guess I can wash it myself," Jeff said. "Maybe I ought to just do that."

"I don't know," Lila said. "I'm supposed to. Miss Ruby showed us the right way and all.” Jeff was thoroughly uncomfortable, but he stood up and started to unbutton his fly. "You can just poke it out if you want. But I likes it better if you takes your britches all the way off.”

Jeff looked at her, but she refused to meet his gaze. "Why's that?" he asked, not sure he wanted to pull his pants off.

"I just likes it better," Lila said. "You can leave your drawers on if you want."

"What difference does it make?" Jeff said. Leila didn't answer. "I'll do it however you want, I guess, but I don't know what difference it makes."

"If you just poke it out your pants," Lila said finally, "then I gets hurt up some by the buttons." Jeff untied his shoes and took off his pants. "Those buttons feels mighty hard, when the mens gets to pounding."

"I won't hurt you," Jeff said.

"Yeah," Lila said.

"I promise," Jeff said. "If I start hurting you, you just tell me, and I'll stop."

"Yeah," Lila said. Jeff laid his pants across the bed’s iron foot rail and sat back down. He was wearing just undershorts, his T‑shirt and a dingy pair of white cotton socks. "Well," Lila said, "I guess you better come on. Miss Ruby don't like it taking longer than it should."

"We don't have to, I guess," Jeff said, surprising himself because, in fact, he did want to.

Lila looked at him now, her face immobile but her eyes wide pools of black fire. "What you mean, you don't want to do it now? I ain't done nuthin. I just told you to come on and let's get started. That's all."

"I just thought maybe you didn't want to," Jeff said. "If it hurts you sometimes and all."

"I didn't say it hurt. Don't you go telling Miss Ruby I said that.”

"Don't get riled up," Jeff said. "I'm not gonna tell Miss Ruby anything."

"I'm not riled up," Lila said. "Don't be saying that neither." Her eyes were glistening now, and she turned her face away from him back toward the window. "Now just come on up here and poke your thing out so I can wash it and we can get started."

Jeff got up, stood in front of, her and pulled himself through the fly in his boxers. She washed him with the bar of soap, rinsed him with wet hands and then used the little towel to pat him dry. He was hard by the time she finished. Then she pulled her smock over her tiny breasts and up under her arms and lay down on her back in the middle of the bed. Jeff got on his knees between her legs, and she took him in her hand and guided him inside her. He looked into her face, but though her eyes were open, her gaze would not interlock with his. And so he began, rocking himself in and out of her. She lay still beneath him, save once to open her legs wider. He was determined to remain mindful of her concern about pounding, and he tried to go slow, but then he closed his eyes and lost himself in a vast blackness.

*

When Jeff came back to himself, Lila was staring at him with hot black eyes that were no longer wet. He lowered his face to hers, meaning to kiss her lips, but she turned her head away. Jeff eased out of out her and sat back on the end of the bed to pull on his pants and lace up his shoes. Her head still turned to the side, she lay as he had lain upon her, immobile except for a pulsing bulge of muscle in her jaw. After a few minutes, there was a knock on the door, and Jeff could hear Miss Ruby's voice from the hall. "Time's up in there, baby.”

Jeff looked one last time at Lila who still lay unmoving on the bed. He wanted to say something to her, but he had no words. So he rose and left the room and closed the door gently behind him as if he were leaving her sleeping and taking care not to disturb her.

Two days later, Jeff learned that Wayne had used Jeff’s savings to pay for the encounters with Red Ruby’s girls. The money he had planned to use for movie tickets and a shared malt with Mary Frances Branson was gone. He had no choice but to cancel their date. When he told her how sorry he was Mary Frances just shrugged and said, “Ain’t nuthin. I never thought you could take me to the movies no how.”

But the humiliation Jeff felt at Mary Frances’s indifferent response and the fury he felt toward Wayne for stealing his savings were not the things that lingered longest in his memory. He thought of Lila through the rest of high school, his scholarship years at L.S.U., his half decade at the Baptist Seminary in New Orleans and the years of his career afterwards as a community organizer, Freedom Rider and C.O.R.E staffer. He would never learn what happened to her, of course, but he felt Lila’s black eyes burning into him for the rest of his life.