A Piedmont Porchlight Story
The first indication that something unusual was happening in Piedmont came on a Tuesday morning when a red 1959 Cadillac convertible rolled down Centre Avenue with its top lowered, its radio playing Louis Armstrong, and a man behind the wheel wearing a Panama hat that probably cost more than my first automobile.
Now, Piedmont has seen its share of unusual automobiles.
We’ve had pickup trucks with three different colored doors, cars held together by baling wire and prayer, and one gentleman who drove a Volkswagen Beetle for seventeen years without ever getting around to replacing the passenger-side window.
But a red Cadillac convertible?
With Louisiana license plates?
That was enough to get folks out of their chairs.
The driver pulled up in front of the Coffee Cup, switched off the engine, and climbed out with the careful dignity of a man whose knees had recently begun filing formal complaints.
He was tall, broad through the shoulders, with a magnificent head of silver hair and a mustache that looked as though it had been trained by a French barber.
He surveyed the street.
Took a deep breath.
And announced to nobody in particular, “Well, I’ll be damned. They ain’t moved a thing.”
That was Dink Rhinehart.
And Piedmont hadn’t seen him in forty-six years.
Now, before we go any further, I ought to explain something about Dink.
His Christian name was Delbert.
His mama had named him after an uncle who’d been a respected member of the Congregational Holiness Church and who’d once preached an entire revival while suffering from a kidney stone.
But nobody had called him Delbert since the second grade.
He’d acquired the name Dink after falling into Terrapin Creek while attempting to impress a little girl named Ruby Roundtree.
He’d climbed onto a slippery rock, announced that he was going to jump clear across the creek, and immediately disappeared beneath the water.
Ruby, who was eleven years old at the time, had watched him emerge, coughing and sputtering.
“Well, ain’t you a little dink,” she’d observed.
And that was that.
Names have a way of sticking in Piedmont, particularly when bestowed by a girl with a sharp tongue and an excellent memory.
Dink had been in love with Ruby ever since.
Unfortunately, Ruby had never been particularly impressed.
It wasn’t that she disliked him.
She liked him fine.
She just didn’t consider him marriage material.
“He’s got more schemes than Carter’s got liver pills,” she told her best friend in 1980. “And I ain’t spending my life wondering whether he’s gonna come home with a paycheck or a circus elephant.”
Dink took this criticism rather badly.
He’d been planning to open a business, marry Ruby, and build a little house with a screened porch.
Ruby had been planning to finish school, get a job at Lawtex, and marry somebody who understood that paying the electric bill was considerably more important than owning a pet alligator.
Their plans did not coincide.
So, at twenty-one, Dink packed a suitcase, borrowed fifty dollars from his daddy, and caught a bus to New Orleans.
He told Ruby he’d come back when he’d made something of himself.
“Well, don’t rush on my account,” she replied.
He didn’t.
For forty-six years.
Dink’s adventures in New Orleans had been considerably more successful than anybody in Piedmont expected.
He’d started washing dishes at a restaurant in the French Quarter, graduated to tending bar, and eventually purchased a little establishment on Bourbon Street that had previously been known as The Thirsty Pelican.
Dink renamed it Ruby Red.
Now, you’d think a man who’d been rejected by a girl in Alabama would eventually get over it.
Particularly a man living in New Orleans, where opportunities for romance were available in greater abundance than mosquitoes after a summer thunderstorm.
But Dink never married.
He had girlfriends.
Several of them.
One was a jazz singer who could hit notes high enough to frighten bats.
Another was a French woman who taught him to cook étouffée and left him after discovering that he put ketchup on his oysters.
There was even a brief romance with a woman from Baton Rouge who owned three beauty salons and a small collection of poisonous snakes.
But none of them lasted.
And every night, when Dink locked the doors of Ruby Red and counted the day’s receipts, he looked at the name painted above the bar.
Ruby.
Red.
He told people he’d chosen the name because it sounded good.
Which was true.
But it wasn’t the whole truth.
Ruby Roundtree, meanwhile, had remained in Piedmont.
She’d gone to work at Lawtex shortly after graduation, inspecting quilts before they were packed and shipped.
For forty-two years, she examined seams, stitching, binding, and fabric.
She could spot a crooked hem from across the room.
She could identify a loose thread at twenty paces.
And she could tell whether a quilt had been properly finished without ever putting on her reading glasses.
Her supervisor once said Ruby could find a defect in the Lord’s own bedspread.
Ruby replied that if the Lord wanted it shipped, He’d better make sure the corners were square.
She never married, either.
Oh, she’d had opportunities.
There was Earl Ponder, who proposed to her after three dates and then spent the next six months trying to borrow money.
There was a schoolteacher from Jacksonville who talked so much about himself that Ruby once fell asleep during supper and he didn’t notice until the waitress brought the check.
And there was a widower named Clyde who seemed promising until Ruby discovered he expected his next wife to continue doing everything his first wife had done.
Including ironing his underwear.
“Not unless he intends to wear ’em on the outside,” Ruby announced.
And that was the end of Clyde.
By the time she retired, Ruby had a comfortable little house, a respectable savings account, a vegetable garden, and a cat named Napoleon who considered himself the rightful owner of all three.
She was perfectly content.
Or so she told everybody.
The trouble began at the Coffee Cup.
Dink had barely settled into a booth when Curtis Pope came through the door.
Curtis stopped so suddenly that the bell above the entrance nearly struck him in the back of the head.
He stared at the man in the Panama hat.
“Dink?”
Dink looked up.
“Curtis Pope, you old horse thief!”
They embraced with the enthusiasm of two men who’d spent half a century accumulating stories and were anxious to discover which ones the other had forgotten.
Within fifteen minutes, Dink’s return was common knowledge.
Within thirty, somebody had reported that he’d made millions in New Orleans.
By lunchtime, the figure had increased to twelve million, and he’d supposedly returned to Piedmont to purchase the old Dixie House hotel and turn it into a casino.
By two o’clock, the casino had acquired dancing girls.
And by three, somebody claimed he’d brought three of them with him.
Piedmont has always had a remarkably efficient communications system.
It simply doesn’t require electricity.
Ruby heard the news at four-fifteen.
She was standing in the Piggly Wiggly examining a cantaloupe when Mabel Jane appeared beside her.
“Ruby, honey, have you heard?”
“Depends. Has the price of eggs gone down?”
“Dink Rhinehart’s back.”
Ruby dropped the cantaloupe.
It hit the floor with a sound like a small explosion.
Mabel Jane looked down.
“Well, I reckon that one’s ripe.”
Ruby stared at her.
“Dink?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Delbert Rhinehart?”
“Unless there’s another one.”
“From New Orleans?”
“Driving a Cadillac convertible.”
Ruby bent to retrieve the remains of the cantaloupe.
“Well, good for him.”
Mabel Jane smiled.
“That’s all you’ve got to say?”
“What do you want me to do, Mabel? Wrestle a Baptist preacher over the last deviled egg?”
“I thought you might be interested.”
“Why?”
“Because you two used to be sweet on each other.”
Ruby straightened.
“He was sweet on me. I was trying to graduate high school.”
“Well, he’s back.”
“Then I hope he’s got somewhere to sleep.”
And with that, Ruby marched toward the checkout.
Unfortunately, she’d forgotten her shopping cart.
Mabel Jane watched her go.
Then smiled.
“Oh, she’s interested.”
The reunion occurred two days later.
Ruby was working in her garden when a red Cadillac pulled up in front of her house.
She recognized the car immediately.
And she recognized the man who climbed out.
Even after forty-six years.
Dink stood beside the Cadillac holding a bouquet of red roses.
Ruby straightened slowly.
She was wearing gardening gloves, an old straw hat, and a faded T-shirt bearing the words I’M NOT ARGUING. I’M EXPLAINING WHY YOU’RE WRONG.
Dink removed his Panama hat.
“Hello, Ruby.”
She stared at him.
“Well, I’ll be switched.”
He smiled.
“You look wonderful.”
“You’re a liar.”
“Still got that sweet disposition, I see.”
“Still got that big mouth, I see.”
Dink laughed.
And Ruby felt something happen inside her chest that hadn’t happened in a very long time.
And she didn’t appreciate it.
Not one bit.
“What’re you doing here, Dink?”
“Thought I’d come see you.”
“After forty-six years?”
“Traffic was terrible.”
She tried not to smile.
Failed.
Then recovered.
“What’s with the flowers?”
He looked at the roses.
“Thought you might like ’em.”
“Roses cost money.”
“I noticed.”
“You could’ve bought me a sack of fertilizer.”
“Ruby, I’ve been back in Piedmont forty-eight hours, and you’re already discussing manure.”
“Well, somebody’s got to be practical.”
He held out the bouquet.
She took it.
Their fingers touched.
And for one brief, ridiculous moment, Ruby Roundtree was seventeen years old again.
She remembered the boy who’d walked her home from school.
The boy who’d carved their initials into a sycamore beside Terrapin Creek.
The boy who’d kissed her behind the gymnasium and then spent the next ten minutes apologizing because he wasn’t sure he’d done it properly.
She looked at the roses.
Then at Dink.
“Well,” she said, “you might as well come on in the house.”
Dink grinned.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And wipe your feet.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And don’t go getting any ideas.”
He paused.
“Ruby, honey, I’ve had the same idea for forty-six years.”
She looked at him.
And for once in her life, Ruby Roundtree couldn’t think of a single thing to say.
Now, I wish I could tell you that everything proceeded smoothly after that.
But this is Piedmont.
And we’re talking about two people who’d spent the better part of half a century learning to live without anybody telling them what to do.
Trouble was inevitable.
It started with supper.
Dink invited Ruby to a restaurant in Jacksonville.
She agreed.
Then he arrived wearing a cream-colored linen suit, a silk shirt, and shoes that looked as though they’d been polished by angels.
Ruby opened the door wearing a perfectly respectable blue dress.
She examined him from head to toe.
“Where’re we going?”
“Supper.”
“Or are you fixing to sell me a used Cadillac?”
Dink looked down at his suit.
“What’s wrong with it?”
“Nothing, if you’re planning to testify before Congress.”
He laughed.
She didn’t.
“Go change.”
“Ruby!”
“I ain’t walking into a restaurant with a man who looks like he’s fixing to propose a timeshare.”
So, Dink changed.
Then came the restaurant.
He ordered oysters Rockefeller.
Ruby ordered fried catfish.
He requested a bottle of wine.
Ruby asked for sweet tea.
He began describing the merits of Creole cuisine.
Ruby informed him that she’d been eating perfectly well for sixty-seven years without anybody putting crawfish in her rice.
By dessert, Dink was beginning to wonder whether returning to Piedmont had been a mistake.
Then Ruby reached across the table and took his hand.
“You know something, Dink?”
“What?”
“I’m glad you’re home.”
And suddenly the oysters, the wine, and the forty-six years didn’t matter quite so much.
Their courtship became the principal entertainment in Piedmont.
Dink sent flowers.
Ruby complained about the expense.
Dink took her dancing.
Ruby informed him that his knees made more noise than the band.
Dink cooked jambalaya.
Ruby tasted it, drank two glasses of water, and accused him of trying to burn down her digestive tract.
He bought her a necklace.
She made him return it.
He brought her a pecan pie.
She kissed him.
Dink immediately went out and purchased three more pies.
And somewhere along the way, something changed.
They began spending their evenings on Ruby’s porch.
Not doing anything particularly exciting.
Just sitting.
Talking.
Remembering.
Sometimes Dink told stories about New Orleans.
About Mardi Gras, jazz musicians, tourists who’d consumed considerably more alcohol than good judgment permitted, and the night a woman from Ohio attempted to purchase his bar with a personal check written on a napkin.
Ruby told him about Lawtex.
About the women she’d worked beside for decades.
About the endless rows of quilts passing beneath her hands.
About the friendships, the arguments, the practical jokes, and the afternoon somebody accidentally shipped a quilt with a ham sandwich sewn inside the binding.
Dink laughed until he couldn’t breathe.
“You’re making that up.”
“Hand to God.”
“What happened?”
“Customer sent it back.”
“Because of the sandwich?”
“Because it was missing a corner.”
They laughed together.
And for the first time in many years, Ruby discovered that the evenings didn’t seem quite so long.
One night in November, Dink arrived without flowers.
Without candy.
Without anything at all.
He sat beside Ruby on the porch swing.
For a long time, neither spoke.
Then he said, “I sold the bar.”
Ruby turned toward him.
“Ruby Red?”
“Yep.”
“When?”
“Before I left.”
“Why?”
“Because I wanted to come home.”
She studied him.
“Dink, you’ve got a whole life down there.”
“Had.”
“Friends.”
“Still do.”
“A business.”
“Sold it.”
“A house?”
“Sold that, too.”
Ruby stared.
“Good Lord, man. What’d you do, put everything in a suitcase?”
“Two suitcases.”
She shook her head.
“You’re still as crazy as you were when you jumped into Terrapin Creek.”
Dink smiled.
“Probably.”
“Why’d you really come back?”
He looked out toward the street.
A car passed slowly.
Somewhere down the block, a dog barked.
Then he turned to her.
“Because I finally figured out something.”
“What’s that?”
“I spent forty-six years building a place named after a woman I couldn’t forget.”
Ruby looked down at her hands.
“And?”
“And one day I realized I’d rather have the woman than the place.”
She swallowed.
“Dink…”
“I know. I’m an old fool.”
“Yes, you are.”
“I know you’ve got your own life.”
“I do.”
“And I know you don’t need anybody.”
“No, I don’t.”
He nodded.
“Well, I reckon that’s that.”
He started to stand.
Ruby caught his sleeve.
“Sit your ass back down, Delbert Rhinehart.”
He sat.
She looked at him for a long moment.
Then she said, “I spent forty-two years inspecting quilts.”
“I know.”
“Every day, I looked for mistakes. Loose threads. Crooked seams. Things that weren’t quite right.”
Dink waited.
“And I reckon somewhere along the way, I started looking at people the same way.”
He said nothing.
“I found something wrong with every man who ever asked me out.”
“Ruby…”
“Too poor. Too rich. Too talkative. Too quiet. Too this. Too that.”
She looked at him.
“And you?”
He smiled faintly.
“Too crazy?”
“Lord, yes.”
They laughed.
Then Ruby grew serious.
“But I never did find anybody who made me laugh the way you do.”
Dink reached for her hand.
She let him take it.
“And I never found anybody who made me feel seventeen again.”
He looked at her.
“Ruby, I don’t want you to be seventeen.”
She frowned.
“You don’t?”
“No, ma’am.”
He squeezed her hand.
“I want you exactly as you are.”
For a moment, Ruby couldn’t speak.
Then she leaned toward him.
And kissed him.
Not the uncertain little kiss they’d shared behind the gymnasium.
Not the hurried kiss of two children who didn’t know what they were doing.
This was the kiss of two people who’d lived long enough to understand what mattered.
When they finally separated, Dink smiled.
“Well.”
Ruby smiled back.
“Well.”
“Reckon I’ve improved since high school?”
She considered the question.
“Marginally.”
He laughed.
She kissed him again.
Three weeks later, Dink Rhinehart proposed marriage.
He did it properly.
Got down on one knee.
Presented a diamond ring.
And asked Ruby Roundtree to become his wife.
Unfortunately, he’d forgotten that his left knee had been giving him trouble.
When he tried to stand, he couldn’t.
Ruby looked down at him.
“Dink?”
“Yes, honey?”
“You stuck?”
“Appears so.”
She sighed.
“Lordamercy.”
He tried again.
Nothing.
Ruby fetched a kitchen chair.
Dink grabbed it.
The chair slid.
He toppled sideways into a flowerpot.
And Ruby laughed so hard she nearly wet herself.
By the time she helped him upright, both of them were crying.
Dink brushed potting soil off his trousers.
“Well, that wasn’t exactly how I planned it.”
Ruby wiped her eyes.
“No, but it was considerably more entertaining.”
He looked at the ring.
Then at her.
“You haven’t answered me.”
She smiled.
“Ask me again.”
He took her hand.
“Ruby Roundtree, will you marry me?”
She looked at the man who’d loved her since they were children.
The boy who’d fallen into Terrapin Creek.
The young man who’d gone away to make his fortune.
The old fool who’d come home wearing a Panama hat and carrying forty-six years of unfinished business.
And she said, “Yes.”
Dink stared.
“Yes?”
“Yes, you idiot.”
He kissed her.
Then stopped.
“Ruby?”
“What?”
“Can we get married sitting down?”
They married the following spring.
Nothing elaborate.
A little ceremony at the church.
Flowers from Ruby’s garden.
A reception with enough fried chicken, potato salad, and deviled eggs to cause a minor theological dispute.
Curtis Pope served as best man.
Mabel Jane cried through the entire ceremony.
And Brandon from Elevated Grounds provided the coffee and pastries, which caused several people to remark that weddings had certainly become more sophisticated since their day.
Ruby wore a simple cream-colored dress.
Dink wore a dark suit.
And when the preacher asked whether anybody knew a reason these two should not be joined in holy matrimony, Curtis leaned toward the fellow beside him and whispered, “Well, we’ve got forty-six years of evidence.”
Fortunately, nobody heard him.
Except Ruby.
Who gave him a look that nearly parted his hair.
The ceremony proceeded without further incident.
Mostly.
When the preacher told Dink he could kiss the bride, Ruby grabbed him by the lapels and demonstrated that nearly seventy years of living had done absolutely nothing to diminish her enthusiasm.
The congregation applauded.
Somebody whistled.
And Curtis Pope announced, “Well, hell, I reckon that’s settled.”
Now, I could end the story there.
A wedding.
A happy couple.
Everybody going home with leftover cake.
But there’s one more thing you ought to know.
Six months after the wedding, Ruby and Dink took a trip to New Orleans.
Dink wanted to show her the city he’d called home for nearly half a century.
They walked through the French Quarter.
Listened to jazz.
Ate beignets at Café du Monde.
And one evening, Dink took Ruby to Bourbon Street.
They stopped in front of a handsome little bar with polished windows and a bright red sign.
RUBY RED.
Ruby stood looking at it.
For a long time, she said nothing.
Then she turned to Dink.
“You really named a bar after me?”
He nodded.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“All those years ago?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She looked back at the sign.
“Well, I’ll be damned.”
Dink laughed.
Ruby took his hand.
“You know something?”
“What?”
“I reckon I ought to have married you forty-six years ago.”
Dink considered that.
Then shook his head.
“No.”
Ruby stared at him.
“No?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Why not?”
“Because forty-six years ago, I was a fool.”
She raised an eyebrow.
“And now?”
He smiled.
“Now I’m a fool who knows what he’s got.”
Ruby looked at him.
Then kissed him.
Right there on Bourbon Street.
With tourists passing, music spilling from open doorways, and the city carrying on around them.
When they finally separated, Ruby glanced at the sign once more.
“Come on, Dink.”
“Where we going?”
“Inside.”
“What for?”
She smiled.
“Well, honey, I’ve spent my whole life being Ruby Roundtree.”
She squeezed his hand.
“And I reckon it’s about time I found out what Ruby Red tastes like.”
Now, I don’t know what they ordered that evening.
But I do know they stayed until the band finished its last set.
And when they returned to Piedmont, Ruby told everybody she’d had a wonderful time.
Except for the oysters.
She still didn’t trust those things.
And Dink?
Well, Dink finally got what he’d been looking for all those years.
Not a fortune.
Not a bar.
Not even a red Cadillac convertible.
He got to sit on a porch in Piedmont, Alabama, holding the hand of the girl he’d loved since he was eleven years old.
And if you ask me, that’s a mighty fine return on forty-six years of waiting.
Because sometimes love doesn’t come back around.
Sometimes it just takes the long way home.
