By six o’clock the people began to arrive. It wasn’t a large crowd, but this was only the first night. The Preacher always stayed three days in a new town in order for the word to spread, and it always did.
There were a total of nine people in the caravan in those days.
The Preacher learned that, when they were in small towns, poor towns, by the second night he had gotten what money he could get from the people. It was then that the Preacher instituted his From Thy Bounty nights, encouraging the people to bring food as offering, instead of money. He would hold an abbreviated service, and donations of money would of course be accepted, but mostly people would come with home-baked breads, smoked meats, jams and preserves, and homemade pies.
They always ate well after that.
When the caravan reached New Martinsville they were joined by a man named Carson Tatum. Carson was in his mid-fifties, a kindly widower with more money than faith. Carson Tatum had sold his small chain of hardware stores at a tidy profit, it was said, and dedicated his life to the Word as revealed by the Preacher.
The Preacher needed a driver to haul the ever-increasing amount of gear, and a bargain was struck. The gatherings had grown from an average of fifty or so people to well over two hundred, expanding as word of the Preacher’s healing powers spread.
Carson, who had never had children of his own, took immediately to Ruby, and they became fast friends. Many times she would ride in the front seat of his F-150, and he would delight her with stories of his time as a merchant marine, making stops in faraway places like Singapore, Shanghai, and Karachi.
A few months later they stayed at a rundown motel outside Youngstown, Ohio. The entourage had grown to eleven people by then.
Ruby had not been feeling well, and another girl, a year or so younger, had taken over the care of Abigail and Peter.
The new girl was blond and pretty, but withdrawn, and had about her many of the ways Ruby had had when she first joined the caravan. She revered the Preacher, could barely look his way when he spoke to her.
Ruby’s illness began with a sour stomach every morning, which many times led to her vomiting. More than once she could not make it to the Porto Sans that were always set up near the tent for the people who attended the meetings.
In her third month Ruby began to show, and despite her efforts to hide the presence inside her, she knew what was happening. She came to the Preacher’s RV one night to tell him the wondrous news, but she was turned away.
Before she went back to bed she saw the new girl, Bethany, playing with Abigail. They were playing a game of hide and seek among the tangle of rusted Fords and pickups.
Bethany was wearing Ruby’s pink dress.
On the way back to the tent, tears streaming down her face, Ruby thought she heard a growling sound nearby, a low keening coming from just beyond the edge of the forest. As she approached the wood, she saw two black dogs, big males by the cast of their shadows.
As she stepped into the tent Ruby saw the dogs lope forward, heads lowered, then lay down on either side, their heedful black eyes like shiny marbles in the growing dusk.
Two weeks later, outside Coshocton, Ruby helped set up chairs. When she was finished, she stepped outside the tent for a cup of water, and caught sight of something moving at the edge of the field. When she stopped and looked closely, the sight made her heart jump. It was the two black dogs she had seen in Youngstown, nearly seventy miles away. They had followed the caravan.
When the dogs approached, tails between their legs, Ruby felt something stir inside her.
Five months later, in early spring, on the evening of Holy Saturday, the Preacher put them all up at a motel in Morristown, Pennsylvania. Ruby had her own room.
In the middle of that restless, sleepless night, the baby said it was time to be born. Ruby barely made it to the door of her room before her water broke. She opened the door, hoping she could make it to the next room where Carson Tatum was sleeping.
What she saw in the parking lot stole her breath.
The caravan, and everyone in it, was gone.
Ruby awakened in a clean room. She would soon learn it was a family clinic in Waynesburg, Pennsylvania. When the doctor came to speak to her, she found she had no voice. They brought the baby boy to her. He was beautiful.
After a week, she bundled the boy, took his medicines, and lit out. The first three nights they slept on the side of the road.
The dogs were never far away. Sometimes they would bring food to them, food they had found in the Dumpsters and back lots of diners.
It was warm enough so that Ruby did not yet have to worry about the boy catching his death of cold. In those next months they moved at night, taking refuge in daylight.
Before long they would come to know the darkness.
By the time the boy was three, Ruby had flowered. They had been taken in by people they met along the roads. For nearly two years she and the boy were the boarders of a man and woman who ran a general store in southwestern Pennsylvania. One of her employers along the way was a small community college in Ohio, and Ruby, sleeping only a few hours a night, would wander the stacks of books in the library. She spent a good deal of time gathering food scraps from the cafeteria, but most of her free time she would spend in the library, reading everything she could. She discovered early that she had a facility for memory. She read to the boy from the time he was six months old.
A year later she saw the man at a diner in Romansville, Pennsylvania. Ruby and the boy were staying at a bed and breakfast where Ruby was performing housekeeping chores in exchange for room and board.
He had gotten heavier, the flesh of his neck grown flabby. His shoulders had acquired a weight that only time and sadness could build. But there was no mistaking him. When Ruby and the boy approached the booth, Carson Tatum looked up. For a moment he looked as if he had seen ghosts. Then his face softened, and he was Carson again.
They got their pleasantries out of the way.
‘Let me look at you,’ he said. ‘You are a sight, Ruby Longstreet.’ He reached out and touched the boy’s shoulder. ‘And your boy is quite the man.’
‘He is my joy,’ Ruby said. ‘Is the caravan nearby?’
Carson nodded. ‘Just over in Parkesburg,’ he said. ‘It’s just down to the Preacher and three others now.’
Three others, Ruby thought. She said nothing.
Carson stirred his coffee for the longest time, even though there wasn’t but an inch in the cup, and probably cold at that. ‘It was wrong what he done,’ Carson finally said. ‘Just wrong.’
Ruby had no reply to this. None that she would say.
Carson looked over his shoulder, then back at Ruby. ‘The Preacher has thrown in with a traveling midway. It’s the only way he can draw people anymore. I want you and the boy to come this afternoon.’ He reached into his pocket, took out a pair of billets, along with a tight spool of red ride tickets. ‘You come about three o’clock. I’m going to have something for you.’
‘Something from the Preacher?’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
Ruby chose her words with care. ‘There’s something else I need you to get from him,’ she said. ‘If he’s still got it. Can you do that for me?’
Carson Tatum just smiled.
The carnival was small, worn out. It smelled of axle grease and spun sugar and despair. Whatever it had once been, it was no longer. In fact, it was not much of a midway at all. There was a small Ferris wheel, a carousel with painted horses, a track with only four little cars, along with the usual games of chance. There were a half-dozen food stands offering elephant ears, funnel cakes, caramel apples. Fireworks were promised.
Ruby had been here before. She knew this the moment she stepped onto the field, and the knowledge electrified her senses.