Ruby's Harvest

by Caleb A. Deveraux

May 12^th, 2014
**Please leave comments! Your criticism is highly desired! The option is available on this page, as well as the page containing the Epilogue. Enjoy!

Prologue

Chloe sat at her computer desk in the complete dark.  Well, almost in the complete dark; the light from her computer illuminated her face, overexposing her features.  It was obvious that Chloe was focused completely on what she was doing. Her fingers hammered away at the keys on her Macbook Pro, hitting them so feverishly their squeals spread through the room as wails of protest. Her eyes were steady on the screen, completely focused, and her back hunched over.  Determination was evident on her face: the tightness of her mouth, the furrowing of her eyebrows, the intense look of her eyes. Nothing was going to inhibit her from finishing her Masters thesis on Black Folklore in Oklahoma- or so she thought.

Chloe was working ferociously on her last revision, but she was nowhere near finished.  Her advisor had stressed more than once that if she missed this deadline, or had to rewrite again, her thesis would not be approved and would have to be retired.  She had six hours left to finish her edits, and she’d only managed to complete an eighth of the work that needed to be done.

For the past three months, Chloe and a group of her friends from the Westboro College of Anthropology were conducting an independent research study on the culture and history of the modern-day Ruby, old Haven. She and her friends had decided to take the summer to explore the Oklahoma town and its people. The town had become renown for maintaining an all-black community for over a hundred years, making it rich with black culture and folklore. However, Chloe’s interests rested on the town’s history of violence.

Previously known as Haven, the town eventually re-named itself after the murder of a young girl named Ruby. In order to preserve her essence and their mission of sustaining a safe environment, the town took on her name. The murders did not stop there though. As legend tells it, in 1976, five women who stayed ~20 miles outside of the town in a convent—what is now the boarding house Chloe and her friends are staying at—were found dead, murdered by someone from the town. The people of Ruby gossiped about what happened, spreading truths and half-truths, fables and misconstructions. No one knew what really happened that night, or which parties were involved. At least, no one alive. Or that was as it seemed. When gathering information for her paper, Chloe had attempted to ask the people of Ruby questions about what had happened to these women. None of the adults wanted to talk to her about it, responding to her questions with darting eyes, looks of condemnation, and a uniform statement: “I’ont know wha ‘tis ’cha talkin about. We’sa peaceful people cary’in on da vision of our granddaddys.”

The only real answers she got from the people came from the children. They all spoke of an urban legend, so to speak, of Terrible Granddaddy Steward who would come to punish the kids if they misbehaved. They said their parents taught them that bad boys and girls would see the punishment Terrible Granddaddy Steward gave to those who disrupted Ruby’s community standards.

Chapter 1 -->