didn’t take her eyes off Red Jack. “Rue’s the finest dancer.”
Red Jack raised his brows, feigning at being impressed. “That so?”
“Show him.” At Varina’s urgings Rue got to her feet, feeling the slosh of the whiskey and the slide of the earth as she did so.
Red Jack led her out with the briefest tap on the small of her back. The music was already at its swell and, bidding her to watch him, Red Jack strutted to the foot-stomping rhythm that was taking up the whole of the cabin. Feeling loose, she rocked with him, then bent her knees and hopped from foot to foot as he did. Their arms wheeled in large, free circles in the air like they might any minute take off into flight. They caught elbows and spun past each other, not certain where they’d end up.
Rue laughed breathlessly as Red Jack aimed to outdo her with his own enthusiasm, throwing back his elbows, launching himself forward in wild skillful imitation of a hot-footing chicken. Rue found herself clapping, dancing in improvised whirls ’til she couldn’t draw a blessed bit of breath and had to break free of Red Jack and sit herself back down. She fanned herself at Varina’s feet and caught her daddy smiling at her from his own side of the dance floor.
“Really such fun.” Varina clapped gaily but she didn’t seem to mean it. She kept her eyes on Red Jack pivoting and twirling in the midst of all the others, light as air, his two feet gifted with springs on the bottoms.
“We best get back before you missed, Miss Varina,” Rue said.
Varina got reluctantly to her feet, made her way around the dancing to the door. “G’night, Miss Varina,” folks were saying with ingratiating smiles stretching their faces, and they looked more than glad to see the back of her as Varina and Rue went out into the night. “An’ Merry Christmas.”
Full-on dark seemed to have taken over the evening. Rue could have cussed with the trouble they’d be in if anyone noted that Varina’d been gone so long.
“Oh, Jack.”
Rue jumped. She hadn’t known Red Jack had followed but there he was, slinking behind them. “Mightn’t you escort us back?”
The boy could not be so foolish as to keep getting close to this girl so near to being a woman, and a white woman at that. Rue answered for him. “We be alright. We know the way.”
Red Jack echoed her. “You be alright, Miss Varina. It ain’t so far.”
“Yes, if you say so,” Varina said. “G’night then.”
“A Happy Christmas to ya.”
“And say g’night to your sweetheart.”
Rue balked. Whose sweetheart?
“G’night, Rue,” he obeyed.
“It’s alright,” Varina said. She bared her teeth. “You may kiss Rue if you like. I won’t tell.”
Red Jack leaned in. Rue didn’t know whether she could pull away. In her face his whiskey breath was a visceral thing; it had manifested itself in the cold night air and clung between them, as good a barrier as any cloud was, ’til Red Jack got up his courage and kissed Rue through it, leading, lizard-like, with his tongue. When he pulled back, it was not to check on Rue’s pleasure but on Varina’s.
“Good night,” their mistress said again. “And a very Merry Christmas.”
Rue’s lips felt wetter for the cold. She wondered then if Red Jack was so dull after all, or if he’d just devised a way early on to seem to dance to the white folks’ tempo.
Varina and Rue walked side by side back to the House. Rue aimed to put the kiss far from her mind, found she was thinking instead of her daddy and the easy way he’d rattled those spoons.
“Have you ever kissed anybody before, Rue?”
“No’m.” She hadn’t and had never found that she’d particularly wanted to.
“I have,” Varina said, dreamily.
Rue reckoned she ought to ask who but she wasn’t sure she really wanted to know the answer. They were coming up onto the House, preparing to