Losing Battles (12 page)

Aunt Nanny headed off Lady May, and breathing hard she crouched and scooped up the baby in her arms. “I’ve come to steal you!” But Lady May squirmed free and charged up and down a little path that kept opening between their knees, over their patting feet.

“Well, in case anybody forgets how long Jack Renfro’s been gone, feel the weight of
that
,” said Miss Lexie, and stopping the baby with a broom, she caught her and loaded her onto Granny Vaughn’s lap.

Even before her eyes opened, Granny had put both arms out. Lady May, the soles of her feet wrinkling like the old lady’s forehead, went to the weakest and most tenacious embrace she knew. They hugged long enough to remind each other that perhaps they were rivals.

“And what’s Jack know about his baby?” asked Aunt Cleo.

“Not a thing in this world. She’s his surprise!” cried Aunt Birdie. “What else would she be?”

“Yes sir! I’ve already started to wondering when she’s going to talk and what she’s fixing to say,” Miss Lexie said.

Lady May made a dart from Granny to Gloria, and Gloria took her up on her lap and began to make her a hat from the nearest plant stand within reach. She pinched off geranium leaves, lapping them over the child’s head, fastening them with the thornless stems from the pepper plant and the potted fairy rose that she bit to the right length. Some little girls drew near in a ring to watch, their hair falling beside their cheeks in pale stems, paler across the scissors’ slice, like fresh-cut lily stalks. Now Lady May had a hat.

“But where’s she going, where’s she going so soon?” Uncle Noah Webster teased Gloria.

“That’s for the future to say,” she replied.

Aunt Birdie said staunchly, “Well, a son can do something that’s a whole heap harder to bear than what Jack did.”

“That’s right, he could’ve kilt somebody,” said Aunt Cleo. “And been sentenced to die in the portable electric chair—they’d bring it right to your courthouse. And you-all
could
be having his funeral today, with a sealed coffin.”

They cried out at her.

Aunt Beck said in shocked tones, “Now I’m not
blaming
the boy!”

“Find fault with Jack? I’d hate to see the first one try it,” said Aunt Nanny.

“I’d hate to see anybody in the wide world try it!” Aunt Birdie cried.

“It’d be the easiest way to kill him,” said Miss Beulah.

“If ever a man was sure of anything at all, I was sure I had to give this house a new tin top to shine in Jack’s face the day he gets home,” said Mr. Renfro. “That roof speaks just a world, speaks volumes.”

“Mr. Renfro give up just about all we had left for that tin top over our heads,” said Miss Beulah. “He had to show the reunion single-handed the world don’t have to go flying to pieces when the oldest son gives trouble.”

“You hammer that tin on by yourself?” protested Aunt Beck. “Since he wasn’t even here to help you? Cousin Ralph, I’m more than half surprised you didn’t crack at least your collarbone for today.”

“He had so-called help. And I’ll tell you what I got tired of was Mr. Willy Trimble scurrying and frisking around like a self-appointed squirrel up over my head,” said Miss Beulah. “He was neighborly to offer, but he’s taken liberties ever since. It’s still our roof!”

“Paid for with what?” the new Aunt Cleo asked in complimentary tones.

“Take comfort. Our farm ain’t holding together a great deal better than yours, Mr. Renfro,” said Uncle Curtis. “Maybe me and Beck did raise a house full of sons, and maybe not a one of ’em had to go to Parchman, but they left home just the same. Married, and moved over to look after their wives’ folks. Scattered.”

“Why, of course they did,” said Aunt Beck softly.

“But all nine!” said Uncle Curtis. “All nine! And they’re never coming home.”

“I’m thankful they can still get back all together at the old reunion,” said Uncle Percy, looking over at the ball game in the pasture. “Who are they playing—their wives?” But as he stood looking, he exclaimed in his faint voice, “Look where the turkey’s walking.”

The Thanksgiving turkey, resembling something made on the farm out of stovepipe and wound up to go, walking anywhere he pleased with three months yet to stay alive, paraded into a grease-darkened, grassless patch of yard with a trench worn down in the clay, an oblong space staked out by the stumps of four pine trees.

“I
thought
there’s something about the place that’s unnatural!” said Uncle Noah Webster. “Beulah!” he hollered. “Where’s Jack’s truck, Jack’s precious truck? It ain’t picked up and gone to meet him, has it?”

“One guess.”

“Oh, the skunk!” the uncles shouted, all rising.

“Now you Beechams might as well sit down. It was nothing but a dirty piece of machinery,” Miss Beulah said.

“Curly didn’t even let Jack get home first to make it go,” said Uncle Noah Webster.

“Jack was so purely besotted
with
it, I’d been more greatly surprised to learn something hadn’t happened to it,” Uncle Dolphus said.

“But a truck? How did Jack ever get hold of such a scarcity to start with?” asked Aunt Cleo. “You-all don’t look like you was ever that well-fixed.”

“It fell in his lap, pretty near. Jack’s just that kind of a boy, Sister Cleo,” said Aunt Beck.

“The last time I seen it enthroned in your yard, Beulah, it was still asking for some little attention,” said Uncle Curtis. “I don’t guess it improved a great deal with the boy away.”

“I hadn’t let the children touch it!” she declared. She put up her hand. “And listen, everybody, don’t let on to Jack about his filthy truck—not today. Don’t prattle! Owing to the crowd, he might not see it’s gone any quicker’n you did. Don’t tell him, children!” she called widely. “Spare him that till tomorrow.”

“Just lay the four stumps with some planks, like it’s one more table. And Ella Fay can have it covered up with a cloth. That wouldn’t be a hard trick at all,” said Aunt Nanny. “I’ll eat at it!”

“And there’s another thing that’s gone he’ll come to find out.” said Uncle Curtis. “That’s the Boone County Courthouse. It burned to the ground, they don’t like to think how.”

“How many here got to see it?” asked Aunt Cleo.

Aunt Nanny said, “Me and Percy got invited to ride over with our neighbors and wait for the roof to fall in. And guess who come in sight with the fellows bringing things out, the water cooler and such as that. My own daddy! I hadn’t seen him in five years, and then he was too busy to wave back. He was rescuing the postcard rack with all those postcards of the courthouse.”

“It burned right at commodity time,” said Uncle Percy.

“And whenever I think of it going up in smoke, I think of all that sugar!” said Aunt Nanny.

“Never mind. With the welcome he’s got waiting, he won’t ever start to count what’s gone,” said Aunt Beck.

“If he tries, then that roof ought to be enough to blind him,” said Aunt Birdie, “the sweet trusting boy. It blinded
me
.”

“And then when he sits, Brother Bethune will forgive him here at the table for his sins,” said Aunt Beck. “I just hope
he
won’t disappoint everybody. I know he’s got your church now, all you Baptists—”

“Beck, if you can’t forget you’re the only Methodist for a mile around, how do you expect the rest of us to forget it?” said Miss Beulah. “It don’t take a Methodist to see Brother Bethune as a comedown after Grandpa. Who wouldn’t be?”

“There must be a dozen other Baptist preachers running loose around the Bywy Hills with their tongues hanging out for pulpits,” argued Aunt Beck.

“There’s a right good many who’d be tickled to steal Damascus away from him this very day,” Miss Beulah granted her. “Brother Yielding of Foxtown would dearly love to add it to his string. But Brother Bethune is the one who grew up in Banner, and you’ve got to put up with him or explain to him that there’s something the matter with him, one. So he can’t be touched.”

“I just feel at a time like this he won’t be a match for us,” Aunt Beck said with a sigh.

“Yes, it’s Grandpa we need, and Grandpa’s in the cemetery. It was a year ago tonight we lost him,” said Uncle Curtis.

“Well, but if you had one to die, Jack could have got a pass home,” said Aunt Cleo. “Ain’t that good old Mississippi law?
They’d let him come to the funeral between two guards, then be led back. Handcuffed.”

They cried out again. Only Granny was peaceful, head low.

“Sister Cleo, we didn’t tell him about Grandpa. Jack’s got that to learn today, it’s part of his coming home,” said Miss Beulah. “It’s what’s going to hurt him the most, but I can only hope it’ll help him grow up a little.”

“He’s already a father,” said Uncle Dolphus.

“He don’t know that either,” said Aunt Nanny.

“That’s right. We’ll bring out that little surprise just when he needs it most, won’t we?” Aunt Birdie cried.

“She’s my surprise to bring,” Gloria said.

“Well, ain’t
you
about ready to cry a little bit about everything, while you still got time?” Aunt Cleo asked, pointing to Gloria.

Gloria shook her head and set her teeth.

“What we say here at home is,” said Miss Beulah, “Gloria’s got a sweet voice when she deigns to use it, she’s so spotless the sight of her hurts your eyes, she’s so neat that once you’ve hidden her Bible, stolen her baby, put away her curl papers, and wished her writing tablet out of sight, you wouldn’t find a trace of her in the company room, and she
can
be pretty. But you can’t read her.”

“She can roll up her hair in the dark,” said Elvie devotedly.

“There’s
a sweet juicy mouthful singing!” Aunt Nanny told Lady May, when just then the mourning dove called. “It won’t be long before the boy gets home who’ll treat you to a morsel of that.”

“I wouldn’t let her have it,” said Gloria. “She’s a long way off from eating tough old bird.”

“Listen! But I’ve seen ’em when their mothers’ backs was turned, and they’d be sitting up eating corn on the cob!” cried Aunt Cleo.

“Stop, Sister Cleo. Gloria don’t want to tell her business,” Aunt Beck gently warned.

“Well, ain’t you a little monkey!” Aunt Cleo laughed at Gloria, but nobody laughed with her.

Mr. Renfro counted them and then one by one he took the torpedo-shaped watermelons and loaded them carefully back into the cool cave underneath the porch.

Aunt Birdie suddenly asked, “Where is Parchman?”

“A fine time to be asking,” said Uncle Dolphus.

Uncle Curtis said, “Well, only our brother Nathan’s ever seen
for himself where it is, I believe I’ve heard him say.”

Vaughn, at the water bucket, pointed straight through them. “Go clean across Mississippi from here, go till you get ready to fall in the Mississippi River.”

“Is he in
Arkansas
?” cried a boy cousin, raising a baseball bat. “If he is I’m going over there and git him out.”

“Arkansas would be the crowning blow!” Miss Beulah cried. “No, my boy may be in Parchman, but he still hasn’t been dragged across the state line.”

“Jack’s in the Delta,” said Uncle Curtis. “Clear out of the hills and into the good land.”

They smiled. “That Jack!”

“Where it’s running with riches and swarming with niggers everywhere you look,” said Uncle Curtis. “Yes, Nathan in his travels has spied out the top of its water tower. It’s there, all right.”

“The spring after Jack went, General Green about took over your corn, remember?” Uncle Dolphus said to Mr. Renfro, who at last came hobbling up the steps and bowing into their company. “And today, your whole farm wouldn’t hardly give a weed comfort and sustenance.”

Uncle Noah Webster clapped Mr. Renfro on the back and cried in the tones of a compliment, “Looks like ever’ time we had a rain, you didn’t!”

“And the next thing, everything’s going to dry up or burn up or blow up, one, without that boy. Is that your verdict, Mr. Renfro?”

“While Jack’s been sitting over there right spang in the heart of the Delta. And whatever he sticks in the ground, the Delta just grows it for him,” whispered Uncle Percy.

“I’m sorry I even asked where it was,” said Aunt Birdie. “I wonder now how early a start he made, if he’s got all that distance to cover.”

“He better start hurrying,” Uncle Dolphus said. “Busted out of jail in Foxtown in less than twenty-four hours—I see little reason why he can’t make it back from Parchman in a year and a half.”

“Hush!” cried Miss Beulah.

“You can’t get out of Parchman with a pie knife,” cried Uncle Noah Webster.

“Men, hush!” ordered Miss Beulah. “He’s coming just as fast as he can. He ain’t going to let it be the end of the world today—he’ll be right here to the table.”

“And a good thing Jack knows it. Because the truth of the matter is,” Aunt Beck murmured, gazing at the old lady in her rocker, “if we had to wait another year, who knows if Granny would’ve made it?”

There came a sound like a pistol shot from out in the yard. All heads turned front. Ella Fay had cracked the first starched tablecloth out of its folds—it waved like a flag. Then she dropped it on the ground and came running toward them, screaming. Dogs little and big set up a tenor barking. Dogs ran from all corners of the yard and from around the house and through the passage, streaking for the front gate.

Aunt Nanny grabbed the baby from Gloria’s knees and ran to hide her in the company room, screaming as if she herself had nearly been caught in her nightgown. Miss Beulah raced to Granny’s side. The barking reached frantic pitch as a whirlwind of dust filled the space between the chinaberry trees. As even those chatterers on the back porch and those filling the house started up through the passage, the floor drummed and swayed, a pan dropped from its nail in the kitchen wall, and overhead even the tin of the roof seemed to quiver with a sound like all the family spoons set to jingling in their glass.

Riding a wave of dogs, a nineteen-year-old boy leaped the steps to a halt on the front gallery. He crashed his hands together, then swung his arms wide.

“Jack Jordan Renfro,” announced Miss Lexie to the company. “Well: you brought him.”