Losing Battles (10 page)

“Not only that, a bird had built a nest in it.”

“Oh, we know how to make things dangerous around here!” cried Uncle Noah Webster. “And she was setting!”

“ ‘Am I going to have to forgo examining that safe in the face of a nesting robin?’ That’s the Judge,” said Uncle Percy.

“Well, it was spring!” Aunt Nanny interrupted. “That’s what Curly got for leaving the safe out front with the door wide open to show the passing public what had happened. I’d been surprised if there
wasn’t
a nest in that safe, by the time it comes to the trial.

“Jack says, ‘Judge Moody, I hate to come in the courthouse and act like I know more than you do, but that’s a purple martin.’

“ ‘What kind of a
safe
is that?” says Judge Moody. ‘And I want the best answer I can get from the owner.’

“Curly tells him it’s a Montgomery Ward safe with a Sears Roebuck door.

“ ‘You kept it locked?’ says Judge Moody, and Curly says he didn’t have to just exactly lock it if he leaned on it good. ‘Can you tell me why you don’t keep it locked?’ says Moody, and Curly says it’s because every time he locks it it costs him another sack of coal to get Mr. Willy Trimble to stop his horses and open it again. And he says when that door is leaned on good, it’s stuck so tight nothing will open it but a good rain of blows from his own fist in just the right tender spot on top, and that’s where he keeps his lamps setting.”

“To me, that safe looked as poor an excuse for something to make a big fuss over as anything you could hope to see at a trial,” Uncle Curtis said.

“Oh, the safe was on show, the coffin was on show, everything was on show but the ring! The only thing in the world that would have told the true story and spoken for itself!” screamed Miss Beulah. “That’s missing!”

“That safe was the evidence, Beulah,” said Uncle Noah Webster. “And was that little rooster martin loud!”

“Hen never budged, either,” Uncle Percy whispered. “Not for something as unparticular as a wagon-ride to Ludlow and a courthouse trial and the same ride home again. She set right through it all.”

“Don’t you know she got hungry?” cried Aunt Nanny.

“She hatched ’em, too, later on,” said Aunt Birdie. “It was Ora’s cat that finally made a meal of ’em.”

“Well, they couldn’t blame Jack for that!” Aunt Beck said. “He was too far from us all to save baby birds by that time!”

“It’s money they worry about in town,” said Uncle Curtis.

“Curly had ’em sized up! He give a song and dance about how poor he stayed, never getting paid like he ought by the poor farmers, then to lose his safe, only to get it back full of chinaberries. I’m surprised he didn’t show ’em the chinaberries,” Uncle Percy said. “But finally he’s through and it’s Jack’s turn.” Uncle Percy lifted his hand for quiet and went into falsetto. “ ‘I’m going to question this boy myself,’ Judge Moody says, and bangs till the family’s all in their seats and the dogs from Banner gives up on their barking. Then says to Jack, ‘All right, you heard the charge. Now did you do all that to Marshal Stovall?’

“ ‘Yes sir, and a little bit more.’

“ ‘Well, what did you do it for?’

“Jack says, ‘Well, it’s because he’s aggravating.’

“Judge Moody cracks down with the gavel. ‘No clapping and stamping in the courtroom while I’m on the bench!’ he calls to the congregation. Try and remember you all are in Ludlow, and in this room on sufferance,’ he says, and asks Jack, ‘What’s “aggravating” mean in your book? Give me one example,’ he says.

“ ‘He’d just have to show you himself,’ says Jack.”

“Well, Jack’s a bashful boy,” said Aunt Birdie loyally.

“Sure-enough?”

“You’d been bashful too, Sister Cleo,” said Aunt Beck, “if you’d been a boy no more than eighteen years old and just got married the night before by Grandpa Vaughn to your schoolteacher, and woke up in jail in Ludlow to be tried by a hard-to-please stranger sitting over you and in front of all your aching family and a pretty good helping of the public. And if you was the only one of ’em standing up.”

“What’s the trouble, couldn’t Jack put up a good story?” Aunt Cleo asked. “That’s what he’s up there for.”

“He’s twenty-one country-miles from home!” Uncle Noah Webster cried.

Miss Beulah came out drying her hands on her apron. “And we knew full well he wasn’t going to stand up in front of the public and tell ’em any of our business. Wasn’t going to call his sister’s name, even! Though she did keep standing up and setting down and standing up again, waving at him, like she’s trying to tell him go ahead.”

“Felt cheated, didn’t she?” grinned Aunt Nanny.

“Just hungering to get up there herself and cry for a crowd of strangers!” Miss Beulah marched off again.

“Vaughn felt mighty put-upon too. Jack had told us the best place for Vaughn Renfro was setting on the steps outside and holding the dogs. Vaughn was there, boo-hooing,” Aunt Nanny said with a grin.

“Judge Moody says, ‘Hush that crying! Why aren’t these children in school?’ Then he asks Jack how many times along the way did he drop that safe, and Jack says he hadn’t kept count. ‘I just dropped it to mop my neck, like you’re mopping yours now, sir,’ he says. ‘I reckon it’s even hotter in Ludlow than it is in Banner.’ ”

“Of course it was! I could see it rolling off of both of ’em,” said Aunt Birdie.

“And I was sweating right along with ’em! Pouring! Oh, I wouldn’t live in a paved town for all you’d give me!” cried Aunt Nanny.

“And the flies!” Aunt Birdie said.

“Judge Moody says to Jack, ‘The storekeeper aggravated you, so you carried off his safe. Was it your idea to rob him?’ ‘No sir,’ Jack says, ‘just to aggravate him.’ ‘Yet all that was in the safe managed to get out, vanish, disappear, melt away, never to be found,’ says the Judge.”

“Ain’t Percy grand? He gets ’em all down pat,” said Aunt Birdie. “I wish I was married to him,” she told Uncle Dolphus. “He’d keep me entertained.”

“Oh, I wish you could have been there, Cleo!” Uncle Noah Webster cried again into her face.

“I’d been sitting with Mr. Stovall and pulling for the other side,” she reminded him.

“ ‘The picture I get’s a familiar one,’ the Judge says. Sounds
not far from mournful about it, though. ‘You folks around Banner trade at Stovall’s store, vote him into office, and raise the roof when you feel like it.’ “ Uncle Noah Webster smiled.

“And keep coming back some few miles to do it,” aded Uncle Percy. “Though the Saturdays now is few and far between.”

“And if you
don’t
give Curly your vote, what happens to your store credit? I don’t know what could be easier to understand,” said Uncle Dolphus.

“ ‘Baiting the storekeeper and thumbing your nose at the peace officer,’ Moody says. ‘Blessed with Excell Stovall, Banner is able to accomplish both at the same time.’ ”

“Moody didn’t know any of that for sure—how could he?” said Uncle Dolphus. “He just makes a living off of guessing. Gets paid for it. Bound to be lucky some time.”

“And then it all comes out—what Moody’s up to,” quavered Uncle Percy.

Miss Beulah in her kitchen yelled, “I’ll tell you! He made a monkey out of Jack.”

“That’s right, Beulah. I can hear his voice right now.” Uncle Percy prettily piped: “ ‘How long will it take people to start showing some respect for those they have raised to office?’ ”

“Whoa, I don’t know as I go along with that,” cried little Aunt Birdie.

“Look first!” cried Aunt Nanny. “And see if it’s Curly Stovall!”

“
Or
Judge Moody!” they joined in.

“Judge was bound to miss the gist, and he’s missed it now,” said Uncle Curtis.

“That Judge Moody’s whole battle cry was
respect
. I don’t believe any of that courtroom was too well pleased. They wasn’t prepared for anything they hadn’t come to hear,” whispered Uncle Percy.

“Why, I saw
Curly
baffled!” Uncle Noah Webster cried, and let out a laugh that sounded like reckless admiration.

“ ‘You-all go right ahead taking things in your own hands. Well,’ says Moody, ‘I’m here today to tell you it’s got to stop.’ He says, ‘You can’t
go
knocking the law down if it gets in your way, you can’t keep
on
packing up the law in the nearest crate big enough to hold it’—nods at the coffin—‘and go skipping out the store with a safe, so-called’—nods at the mother-bird—‘and all without offering this court any better reason than “He’s aggravating.” Aggravating!’

“ ‘Judge, I reckon to do justice to Curly, you got to see him in Banner,’ says Jack. ‘The best place is his own store, and the best time is Saturday.’

“ ‘I’m doing the justice around here,’ says Moody. ‘When I need outside help, I’ll ask for it. What if he is aggravating!’

“ ‘I’d like you to see him try cutting off your shirt-tail and nailing it to the beam before you make up your mind, sir,’ says Jack, still polite about it. He just gets the gavel.”

“But didn’t you-all have a lawyer furnished to pull a better story out of Jack?” asked Aunt Cleo. “You can get those free.”

“If that’s what you want to call the fellow,” said Uncle Curtis. “He was not there on my invitation, and I think I speak for the family. He got as much in the way as he knew how, I imagine. A good deal of what he said was drowned out. Never caught even his first name, doubt if I’d know him again if I was to see him coming.”

“Well, when Moody finally pounds ’em quiet, he leans out over Jack,” said Uncle Percy, “and says, ‘Tell me one last thing: would you do it again?’ ”

“Why, Jack’s as dependable as the day is long!” Aunt Birdie cried out.

“And Jack gives a great big smile to Gloria and says, ‘Well, sir, I’m a married man from now on. And I reckon my wife would have to pass a law about that.’

“Bang bang and thump thump thump, says the gavel. Judge Moody tells Jack, ‘Come on back here. Don’t you realize the jury hasn’t been charged and brought in a verdict and I haven’t passed sentence yet?’ Jack had been about to sit down with his family. ‘I’m about to make a living example out of you, young man!’ And there’s a groan you could hear from one end of the State of Mississippi to the other, I bet—it’s this family. ‘You’re going to be a lesson to the rest,’ says Judge Moody, and gives the jury a strict piece of his mind too, like they’s no better than the rest of us poor humans, and sent ’em out. They turned right around and came back, while Jack’s still puzzling over it.”

“How’d you-all like the verdict?” asked Aunt Cleo.

“Of guilty?” everybody cried, while Uncle Noah Webster sank back in the seat of his chair and opened both arms to them all, as if to bring in the word once more.

“And what of?” he begged them.

“Aggravated battery!”

“—whatever that is!” called Miss Beulah in the suddenly gay, sharp voice of the cook whose pan is ready to come out of the oven no matter what happens, and she ran feverishly onto the porch with a pan of hot gingerbread clutched in the folds of her apron.

“And robbery,” said Elvie solemnly, coming behind her mother to serve the buttermilk.

At Granny’s chair first, they found her with head bowed in sleep, and tiptoed past her.

“Aggravated battery and robbery, I bet you fainted,” said Aunt Cleo in congratulatory tones, biting into a hot square.

“Jack all but did!” cried Aunt Birdie.

“Pole-axed is a little more like it,” Aunt Nanny said, cradling a thick brown square in both hands before the big bite.

“What surprised us was the courthouse didn’t fall down.” Uncle Curtis reached for his portion. “When the judge says, ‘Two years in the state pen, time off for good behavior.’ ”

“Then Grandpa Vaughn put his head right down on his cane in front of him,” said Uncle Percy, his wary eye on Granny.

“We did our share of helping out his groans!” cried Aunt Nanny. “Homer Champion didn’t do so bad himself. He was ever’where at once, begging ’em all for their sympathy.”

“Vaughn come in with the dogs in time to hear Moody say the pen. And I saw Vaughn—he bit himself. Just turned away from Jack and took a big plug out of his arm,” said Aunt Birdie.

“Bet Curly kicked up his heels,” Aunt Cleo said. “Wasn’t he well pleased?”

“In hog heaven. Invited everybody there but us to a fish-fry the next Sunday, told Judge Moody to come too and bring his wife if he had one. He didn’t come and didn’t send any wife either,” said Uncle Noah Webster.

“Good. I’d hate the rankest stranger to get their notion of Banner hospitality from Curly’s fish-fry. Stovalls fry their fish with the hides on,” grinned Aunt Nanny.

Miss Beulah cried, “The rest was all in Damascus that Sunday listening to Grandpa heal our hearts by telling us of Heaven to come. We could smell Curly’s smoke the whole sermon long. He’d dance on your grave.” She whirled fiercely with the hot pan. “If I’d known what that Judge was fixing to do to Jack, I’d stood up in the courtroom right quick and told him a thing or two to his face he’d still remember! After all, I’m the boy’s mother!”

“Beulah, I bet you could have!” They helped themselves in quick turn as she passed them the pan.

“For two cents I’d a-done it, too!”

“The way you know how to let fly, Beulah, if I’d been Judge Moody you’d have silenced
me
,” said Aunt Birdie.

“Oh, I’d silenced him,” said Miss Beulah, and she ran out and ran back with her second panful. “I’d silenced him, all right. Let ’im try it again, he’ll never ruin my boy but once.”

“My eyes see a sunbonnet coming this way,” said Etoyle, chewing.

“Little Mis’ Comfort, coming all this way up?” asked Aunt Nanny.

“It’ll just be to peep at us,” said Miss Beulah. “She’ll just come far enough up our road to count us. She’ll turn around in a minute and trail home.” She laughed. “She said she’s having a hen and cooking a mess of collards for Aycock, and I bet not a bit of that’s so.”

“You think Aycock’s coming home too?” Miss Lexie asked.

“Jack’s coat-tails is where he lives. He couldn’t stay anywhere by himself,” she said.

“Why isn’t she home, then, and preparing?” cried Aunt Birdie.

“I doubt you she’s even set bread,” said Miss Beulah.

“Hasn’t she called on kin to come be with her when he walks in?” asked Aunt Beck. “Help hold her up?”