Losing Battles (16 page)

“Look. He already worships her,” said Aunt Beck.

Then he tumbled over, as if toppled by the baby.

“Now look at the smile he’s brought to that little face! Jack’s a real artist!”

Now he squatted before her, face to face. “Come here, baby, come here, baby,” his lilting voice said. “Bring me what you’ve got.”

The baby passed and re-passed him.

“He’s winning her.”

She kept returning him looks of her own, steady and solemn, like a woman trying on a hat. When she stood still, he laid his arms out on the air, and she walked in. He gave her a hug that looked strong enough to break her bones.

“Look at her go right to him. Look at her give him her own play-pretty!” It was her mother’s comb.

“Where’s mine?” one of the cousins teased the baby, but Aunt Beck said, “Hush, there’s been enough of that.”

Jack flicked the comb through his own sopping hair and sawed it down through the starch of his shirt pocket and put it out of sight. Lady May’s mouth opened round as a plum.

“That fourteen-month-old thinks Jack is
her
surprise,” said Aunt Birdie.

“Hi, Lady May,” said Jack. “Lady May Renfro, how do you do?” He gave her a kiss, which she returned.

“Listen. Listen at that—he called that baby by her name,” Aunt Nanny said.

“Gloria told!” cried Aunt Birdie.

“Gloria told him what she had.”

“That baby’s no more surprise than I am!” cried Aunt Nanny.

“
I’m
not afraid of pencil and paper,” said Gloria.

“I caught her going to the road and giving letters to Uncle
Sam!” cried Etoyle. “Plus the fresh egg for the stamp!”

“Lady May all along was supposed to be his surprise.
Now
what is she?” cried Aunt Birdie.

“She was my surprise to tell,” Gloria said.

“You’ve been just the least little bit sneaky, it seems to me,” Aunt Nanny said, starting to grin.

“And where do you suppose Gloria ever got her such a dress?” cried Aunt Birdie.

Lady May’s first real dress was not made of Robin Hood flour sacks, it was not handed down from Elvie. It was solid blue and had pockets—starched till the pocket flaps stood out like little handles to lift her by.

“I cut it out from mine,” Gloria said. “That’s the dress I wore the day I came here.”

“At least I’m glad you didn’t let Curly Stovall cheat you with it at his store,” said Aunt Beck sympathetically.

“Look, now it’s made that baby cry. She’s caught on! She’s no surprise at all! She heard you, poor little old thing!” said Aunt Birdie.

Jack picked her up. “Whitest little biddy!” he said softly.

“She’s without blemish,” said Gloria, reaching for her. “Her skin’s like mine, tender tender. Till now, I’ve kept her pretty well shielded in the house.”

He lifted the leaf hat to see what was under it, and the baby’s red cockscomb sprang up like a Jack-in-the-box. Then here came his smile. It was as big as a house.

“Welcome home from the pen!” roared Uncle Noah Webster.

Lady May in her mother’s arms put out a little crow.

“Laugh, baby! Ladybird, laugh, that’s right!” cried Uncle Noah Webster.

“And now let’s us get going!” cried some boy cousins.

While his big arched smile, gratitude and gratification in equal parts, still held on his face, Jack dropped to the floor and laced on his shoes that Gloria had scrubbed ready for him.

“Oh, ever’thing happens at once!” Uncle Noah Webster cried and almost kissed Aunt Cleo. “I wouldn’t take a pretty for still being alive and able to come today!”

“All right, Homer Champion, see what you accomplished, bringing in that story!” raged Miss Beulah.

“Ain’t you coming with us, Homer?” teased Uncle Noah Webster.

“Now listen here, bunch of idiots!” cried Miss Beulah.

“Good-bye, Granny,” Jack whispered to her nodding head. “Good-bye, Mama, all my sisters and aunts and girl cousins! Good bye, Gloria—you can play with our baby girl till I get back. Keep dinner waiting!”

“Your mother is going right ahead and spread dinner when the shade gets to those tables in the front yard!” cried Miss Beulah. “And if you’re all still alive, you’d better be right back here and ready to eat it! Jack, watch these idiots and don’t let ’em do anything more foolish than they can help in honor of you coming home, and you lead ’em right back here, do you heed me?”

There was a general surge of men and boys departing from the house. Bird dogs, coon dogs, and squirrel dogs were jumping and pawing the air and racing for the gate, every one giving his bark.

“Let every one of you come back to your seats,” came the uplifted voice of Gloria. “I don’t want man or boy to leave this house, or budge an inch till Jack gets back. This is Jack Renfro’s own business. And nobody’s coming with him but me and the baby.”

They all stopped where they were. A long shout travelled all the way down the scale. Gloria lifted her old teacher’s satchel from among the plunder on the floor and hung the strap over her shoulder.

Jack’s blue eyes had opened nearly to squares. He was the one to move first—he ran and brought her a dipper of water.

“No thank you,” she said. “I never have got used to Banner water, and try to do without it.”

“Are you really braving it?” asked Aunt Birdie in a faint voice. “Tagging along through the broil behind Jack?”

“Now I know she’s addled,” said Aunt Cleo.

“Waiting is the hardship,” Aunt Beck said gently. “That was her part.”

“But it’s over! Now it’s all over! Don’t she know her hardship is ended?” asked Aunt Birdie.

The uncles had fallen back onto chairs as though Gloria had blown them all down with a puff of her breath.

“Just sit tight and hold my dogs, boys,” Jack ordered his cousins.

“She ain’t even going to let the dogs go?” they cried.

“Just one,” said Gloria.

“Sid, I reckon your day has about come,” said Jack.

“That dog ain’t good for a thing but friendship. And you ought to learned that by now, Jack,” said Uncle Dolphus as Sid rose on his hind legs.

“Oh, please wait, son!” shrieked Miss Beulah. “You haven’t even had a word from your father yet!”

“Well, the roof wasn’t exactly lost on him,” said Mr. Renfro.

Granny opened her eyes and said, “Who now? Who’s trying to sneak away from Granny?”

Jack ran to her. “I still got a little bit to do to finish getting myself home, Granny,” he told her. “But it can’t take long, not with the help I got.” He hugged her and whispered, “You’ll see us all back together again at the table.” Then he swung the baby up against his hip.

“Jack’s going to make a wonderful little mother himself,” predicted Aunt Beck.

“Tell ’em good-bye, Lady May!” said Jack. “Wave at ’em!” Lady May, from under his arm, waved like Elvie, quick-time. He laid the palm of his other hand between Gloria’s shoulder blades, pivoted her around, and they skimmed together down the steps.

Ella Fay, in the yard with all her tables spread, watched them go. “Bring me something!” she called after them.

“Even if the reunion was to stop this minute, it would have been worth coming through the dust for,” Aunt Birdie said.

“You just can’t read her!” Miss Beulah exploded. “It’s Gloria I’m talking about. Why, I reckon this minute is all in the world she’s been waiting on.”

Part 2

T
he dust Uncle Homer had made still rolled the length of the home road, like a full red cotton shirtsleeve. Jack led off through the fields. Lady May was riding his shoulder, Gloria with her satchel marched right beside him on the narrow path.

“I hated to go off and leave the rest of ’em if it hurt their feelings,” Jack said. “But they’ve all growed old, that’s the shock! If they’d come, we’d had to find a place for ’em all to sit down.”

The farm was as parched now as an old clay bell of wasp nest packed up against barn rafters. As the roar of the reunion grew faint behind them and even the barking toned itself down, heat, like the oldest hand, seized Jack and Gloria by the scruff of the neck and kept hold. They marched through the cornfield, all husks, robbed of color by drought as if by moonlight, through the cotton that had struggled no higher than halfway to Jack’s knees. Jack dropped on one knee and thumped a melon his father had overlooked.

“Don’t crack Lady May one,” said Gloria. “I’m not anxious for her to start on common ordinary food.”

“What’re you trying to tell me, Possum?” he asked, turning his head to look at her.

The mule stood waiting by the pasture gate, as if thunderstruck at some idea that was floating around in the air.

“Want to see if Bet can carry us all three without any nonsense?” Jack cried as if inspired.

“I never had the wildest dream of going on a mule,” said Gloria.

“She’s still better than nothing and she knows it herself, bless her old black heart!” He went and hung his free arm around her neck. “She’s getting a little scrawny, I’ll have to feed her.”

Under the shade tree shaped like a rising bird, two cows stood nose to nose in the cow-brown pond, motionless; the water in the middle was deep enough to cool their bags, but just barely. The rest of the pond baked its bottom like a mudpie made by Elvie last summer. They walked through waist-high spires of cypress weed, green as strong poison, where the smell of weed and the heat of sun made equal forces, like foes well matched or sweethearts come together. Jack unbuttoned his new shirt. He wore it like a preacher’s frock-tailed coat, flying loose. They passed the cane mill and came to the top of the rise where a crop of spears, old iron spikes man-made and man-high, made a hollow squarish circle like a crown, and an old oak tree standing within it poured black shade over it. Inside lay buried old Captain Jordan under a flat tablet black as a slate, like a table that he had all to himself. A bushel of Granny’s red salvia gushed from a churn on top of it. Bees were crawling like babies into the florets. Beyond this was the last fence, and there the bantam flock pecked, like one patch quilt moving with somebody under it.

Jack helped Gloria through the fence after him. Then side by side, with the baby rolled next to Jack’s naked chest, they ran and slid down the claybank, which had washed away until it felt like all elbows, knees, and shoulders, cinder-hot. Bare Banner clay was the color of red-hot iron. The bank pitched them into the bed of a rusty sawmill track, overgrown like the bed of an untended grave. A stinging veil of long-dead grass flowed to meet their steps and hid cow-pats dry as gunpowder. Keeping time with each other they stepped fast without missing a tie—domino-black, flat-sunk, spongy as bread, sun-cooked, all of them. Sumac hung over the way ahead, studded with long heads like red-hot pokers. On the curve they mounted their rails and walked balancing, each with an arm arched overhead. Gloria slipped first. Jack reached for her and led her over the trestle, bleached like a ghost-trestle, then he soared into the creek bed, caught the baby from her arms, hopped Gloria down, and beat their way along a strip of path slick as leather. It was like walking through a basket.

“Lady May,” Jack said, “you have to remember that when the old Bywy backs up in Panther Creek, it’s an ocean where we’re stepping.”

“And right now it’s extra-mosquitery,” said Gloria.

Jack tucked the baby inside his shirt.

The high shoulders of the Bywy Hills rose ahead, near but of faint substance against the August sky. They looked no more than the smudges Lady May might have made on the pages of the Renfro Bible, turning through them with her fast little hands.

They climbed up past the old chimney that stood alone.

“But I know this is snakey,” said Gloria, pulling back a little as Jack led her over the old hummocks, deep in vines too thick to see the ground through, where Grandpa Vaughn’s own early home used to be, like breastworks for some battle once upon a time. Then, on the well path, piney shadows, falling soft about them, slid down their arms and sides into the early-fallen pine needles. The path was a carpet that threw off light like running water. They began to run, Gloria in front—Jack had the baby. A pack of courting squirrels electrified a pine tree in front of them, poured down it, ripped on through bushes, trees, anything, tossing the branches, sobbing and gulping like breasted doves, and veered the other way. Gloria slid on the straw, tripped on a root, and was thrown to her knees. Jack sank to his right there on the spot, and released the crowing baby. The final glare dropped from them like a set of clothes. The big old pine over them had shed years of needles into one deep bed.