A Virtuous Ruby by Piper Huguley

sob.
    There was something in a doctor’s training about remaining calm. Stay apart from the situation. But the sight of her pretty face and rearranged freckles hurt him to his core and he slipped an arm around her shoulders. “I’m sorry. I’ve tried to make him as comfortable as possible in these last hours. He shouldn’t linger long or be in pain.”
    “What kind of place is this where a man can’t even come to a friend’s house to hear about improving himself?”
    That was the question wasn’t it? “Ruby, I haven’t been here very long, but it seems to me that you have some choices. You don’t have to stay here. You can go somewhere else. There can be other places where Solomon might have a better chance in life, better educational opportunities. These terrible murders, and your circumstance, it’s a way to control you so you don’t disrupt things.”
    Ruby took her hands from her face. “What other place? We were born here. Our Daddy has farmed this land. It’s his. He’s one of the most prosperous Negro farmers in Becker County. Where we going to go that’s better than that?”
    He had no answer for her.
    “Something has to be done here. Change got to happen. Paul Winslow is your daddy. Maybe you can do something to help.”
    “I don’t know him that well. And frankly, after some of the things I’ve seen and heard, I don’t know if I want to.”
    She stiffened and he slipped his hold off of her shoulder.
    “God brought you here to help us. We need help and you, his Negro son, you can talk to him, make him see.”
    “I’m a doctor, Ruby. I treat people’s bodily injuries, not their work circumstances.”
    She lowered her hands to her sides and went to the other side of the bed. “I thought you would say that.” She moved to her knees next to Travis and grasped his hand. “Trav. I’m sorry. I didn’t think they would go for you. They should have gone for me, and they didn’t. I’m sorry.”
    His presence was a sudden interruption into a conversation that he had no part of, but then she clasped her hands together and prayed in a firm, sure voice: “Dear God. Please help us. You give me this boy to raise. Help me to raise him right in your ways. Help me to provide for him, so he could get a good education. Help me to make this a better world for him here in Winslow. Please. And help bring Travis into your arms. Peacefully.”
    She lowered her head onto Travis’s arm and cried some more. As uncomfortable as her outburst made him, Adam’s job was to stay and tend to Travis. The man’s breath began to slow. It seemed as if Ruby was going to get her wish. Even though Travis had been sleeping very peacefully, suddenly his body jerked and went limp. Adam went to him and pressed the points of his body where his pulse should have been, checking for signs of life. Nothing. “I’m sorry, Ruby. He’s gone.”
    “I’ll go get Mags.” Ruby sprang up and wiped at her face.
    As she left, Adam pulled one of the bedsheets up onto Travis’s body. Ruby and Mags came into the already cramped back room crying, leaning on one another and Adam stepped back. His function here as a doctor was done, but seeing the death of this Negro man was sobering. How could someone be gone on the basis of what someone else had said? Too much time had passed, too many things had happened. Something had to change.
    And then the idea came to him. Ruby could change. She could be educated and learn how to be clean and come away from midwifery.
    He needed a nurse. She could help him.
    If she wanted to.
    She and her sister were so distraught now, they probably wouldn’t even know or understand what he proposed. Still, he was a light, literally and had to be that for her. Again, a shadow passed in his mind. He had been so distant from God for so long, but was his hand in this? Was this why he had come to Winslow? To make his father understand?
    Travis had no family. He had worked to get one, though. The poor man had been