Losing Battles (22 page)

A line of grown men and boys was coming over the crest of the road headed in the Banner direction. They kept the same distance apart from one another, and might have all been mounted on a single platform, some creeping flatcar, that moved them upgrade as a body by a pulley under them. They were all eating watermelon, their eyes raised to Banner Top.

“They’re
not bringing any help,” said Mrs. Moody.

“The Broadwees are still living!” said Jack, and at his wave they made a rush for the roadside stand, where the first-comers took seats as if their names were on them.

“Hey, Jack. Hey, Aycock. Where you been!” the various ones began in hooting voices.

“Well, look whose car that is!” said the biggest Broadwee. “How about a good push, Jack? What you studying about?”

“There’s a sample. There’s what’s wrong with this end of Boone County,
right there
,” said Mrs. Moody, pointing her finger along the double row of Broadwees.

“Watch what you’re saying, boys,” Jack called. “There’s ladies present.”

“Hey, Teacher,” cried one to Gloria. Then “Boo!” they all said at once to the baby, who had anticipated their greeting by starting to cry.

“You all be careful around my baby, it’s a girl. She don’t take to seeing roughnecks or hearing slang language,” said Jack.

“Boo! Boo! Boo!” the Broadwees called systematically and in unison at the baby, like some form of encouragement practiced in their family.

“If you-all got nothing to do but sit and wait, start showing some manners!” Jack shouted. “And look out for your feet in front! Somebody may come out of my road in a bigger hurry than you are.”

“A bite on the hook already, Jack,” called Aycock. “Somebody’s putting dust in your road.”

“It’s Uncle Homer for sure! He’s yielding to the day!” Jack came scudding down the bank. “Judge Moody, here comes Uncle Homer and a load of helpers!”

Gloria caught him by the hand. “Uncle Homer’s never come to your help yet,” she said. “If he comes now, I’ll have to take back my opinion of him.”

Dust like a flapping blanket appeared back among the trees. A wall of dust rose on the farm track and toppled downward, there was a bang at the ditch, and a light delivery van came into view struggling to get up into the road.

“Am I to be towed by that?” asked Judge Moody.

“And just as church would be letting out at home!” cried his wife.

The van, as it pulled up its last wheel and turned toward Halfway Forks, showed its panel side painted with a big chicken dressed up in a straw hat, bow tie, and cane, while down over its head swung an axe of Pilgrim Father’s size. It skidded, something was thrown out, and it ripped past them all. So empty of a load was it that its
rear half danced all the way down the road, dust rising like a series of camp tents going up on the zigzag behind it. Tied onto its back doors, like an apron on backwards, there’d been a strip of oilcloth lettered “Let Homer Do It. There Is No Substitute for Experience.”

“Didn’t even wait to bring his own dog,” said Jack. “Something about the way he handles himself makes you believe he’d be part-willing to take the joy out of life. Well, there’s only one of Uncle Homer.”

“I was right about him, anyway,” said Gloria.

“Not a hundred percent,” said Jack. He picked up what Uncle Homer had thrown at them—a length of chain, a little shorter than the length of Jack’s arm. He held it up, to the Broadwees’ cackle.

“Well, this means they know. That’s how I read this chain,” said Jack. “So help is still forthcoming, somewhere behind.”

“They’re all up there just sitting and listening to ’emselves talk, Jack,” said Gloria.

“Recounting for Granny some tale or another about me?” he wondered.

“This is going to be another one if you aren’t careful.”

“There’s another cloud of dust coming from the other way,” said Mrs. Moody.

“And a whopper!” said Jack. “What that means is Better Friendship has turned ’em loose and a lot of hungry Methodists are headed home for dinner.”

“Church people! Now they’ll be my answer,” said Mrs. Moody. “They’ll stop and help.” She composed a long face and moved forward.

“Watch out for your feet, Mrs. Judge,” cautioned Jack.

Mrs. Moody raised Judge Moody’s hat and started to wave it at the line coming, buggies and some wagons and a clacking Ford coupe all in one cloud of dust.

“What are your Methodists
like?
” Mrs. Moody cried, as one after the other they went driving past her.

“Well, Aycock is one,” said Jack.

“Why won’t they stop for a fellow worshipper, at least?” she cried, still waving Judge Moody’s Panama.

“His attendance has been middling-poor,” Jack answered. “For the last year and a half it’s been down to nothing. His church may have forgotten what he looks like.”

“I’d just like to see a bunch of Presbyterians try to get by me that fast!” said Mrs. Moody.

“There went Preacher Dollarhide, I believe. He must have worked up a fairly decent appetite,” observed Jack, as the Ford coupe rushed the length of Jack’s ditch and got past a buggy.

“Why, you didn’t even help me make ’em stop!” Mrs. Moody exclaimed. “I believe you waved ’em on by!”

“It’s my wife and baby Judge Moody saved, Mrs. Judge,” Jack told her gravely. “And I feel right particular about my help.”

“Now watch out—there’s something else coming down that funny little road,” warned Mrs. Moody.

Something that resembled a fat moon drawn in pink chalk had popped up on the rise of the farm track. It just sat there for the moment, as if waiting to be believed. It was the Banner school bus with the dust of all summer on it. It looked empty. Then Elvie’s little face could be made out, framed in the lower half of the steering wheel.

Judge Moody jabbed a finger. “That child going for help?”

“It’s her opinion she
is
the help!” said Jack.

“I object to being at the mercy of a school bus fully as much as my husband objects to a chicken wagon,” Mrs. Moody said, as it waited there above them, with its jawless face, every metal part below the headlight sockets gone. “Now that’s just not going to tow me.”

“Not towed! Not with the Buick still trying so hard to go the other way!” cried Jack. “You’re about to be one end of the best tug-o’-war ever seen around Banner!”

“Under no circumstances!” exclaimed Judge Moody.

“Judge Moody, I ain’t going to hear No!” cried Jack. “Ears Broadwee, you and Emmett get up and give Judge and Mrs. Moody your seats on my syrup stand. Show some manners! You forgotten all you know while I been gone?”

They scrambled to their feet, strung themselves out along the foot of the bank, elbowing their way in with the cosmos.

“Judge Moody, they wouldn’t make school buses if they couldn’t stand their share of punishment,” said Jack. “Take heart, because this is the one I used to drive myself.” He hollered, “Let ’er come!”

“Clear the way or be run over,” came Elvie’s serious voice, and the school bus came dropping toward them, not running on its engine. It came like an owl on the glide, not quite touching the banks
on either side. Scraped-up and bulging like the Ark, it slammed into the ditch, then on one bounce was elevated onto Banner Road, in perfect starting position to go to school. “I coasted!” she shrieked at Judge Moody, who sank to a seat on the stand to let her coast on past him, headed down the hill. Queenie, Pete, and Slider tore after it barking, Queenie on her way frisking wildly around a Broadwee, nipping him and then running off with his cut of watermelon.

“Keep a hold, Elvie!” Jack was running alongside. “Begin thinking where you’ll stop.”

“It’s a relic, that’s all it is!” called Mrs. Moody after all of them.

“Elvie Renfro, can you stop?” called Gloria, and the bus swerved at last and gave a big crack as it put itself back in the ditch again nearly at the bottom of the hill. The signal arm flipped out and, bright as a bunch of nasturtiums, rusty water spurted from the capless radiator.

Elvie sprang out into Jack’s arms, carrying her water bucket.

“Oh, I always said I was going to drive one of them things before I died,” said Elvie, raised in the air. “I wisht it’d been full of all the little girls I know, that’s all.”

“That was real sisterly, Elvie. Thank you,” said Jack. “Who give you the first push?”

“Nobody. I pulled out the chunk and run for it,” she said. “Say, will it crank?”

Jack had scrambled into the driver’s seat. His foot beat the floor.

“What you fixing to do with it?” called Elvie adoringly. “Give Moody a last push?”

“Whoa, Elvie! I’m fixing to save him!”

She shrieked and ran for home.

The engine turned over once and died. Stomp as he would, Jack got no more sign out of it. “One more vacation has ruined one more battery,” he said. “Every year, this old bus needs a little more encouragement to go. I feel sorry for this year’s driver.”

“Then feel sorry for your own brother,” said Gloria.

“Vaughn Renfro?” he yelled.

“Instead of the most popular, the best speller gets it now,” Gloria said.

“Well, he’s already let a seven-year-old girl get the thing away from him!” Jack cried.

“I hate to see the next piece of help that comes out of
that
little road,” said Mrs. Moody.

“You’re about to see it now,” called Aycock.

There was a clopping and a jingling, and Etoyle came riding down the track astride the mule, bareback, loaded with trace chains. She was barefooted, sawing Bet’s ribs with her heels. When she fetched out onto the road, she bent over in a fit of laughter, and everybody could see her little flat chest ridgy as a church palm-fan, naked and quivering inside her dress.

“What’s the word from home?” Jack greeted her over the barking.

“ ‘Don’t let that baby fall.’ ”

“Ain’t they been brought more up to date than that?” He took the chains, helped giggling Etoyle to the ground, then he sat up sideways on Bet and scratched her forehead. The mule wagged him up the road and onto the path up Banner Top, between fallen fence posts, through the plum bushes onto the clicking limestone. His shoulders were jolted as if by hard sobs, but when Bet turned him around at the tree they could see his face shining with pleasure.

He dropped to the ground and went fast to work with the chains. Bet posed sideways to the road; her markings were like the brown velour swag that goes over the top of a Sunday School piano. Then he slid astride her.

“Come on, Jack boy! Now!” shouted one of the Broadwees.

“What’s the matter with Ren-fro?
He’s all right!”

the Broadwees sang.

“Jack’s not playing basketball any longer,” Gloria broke out. “He’s got his diploma.”

“He’s hitched that chain around that tree and the car, yes. But when the unknown quantity starts to pulling?” Judge Moody stood up.

“That tree’s gonna give,” chanted the Broadwees, and Mrs. Moody turned and commanded them: “Suppose you just pray.”

Jack spoke into Bet’s ear. But, drooping a long, kid-white, white-lashed eyelid, she balked.

“You want me to swap you for a chain-saw?” cried Jack.

There was an explosion, and he all at once sat on empty air. The trace chains flew in two as Bet shot, in a rippling cloud of pink,
madly down to the road. Jack pounded down the face of the bank to head her off. The Moodys rose to the plank of the syrup stand, where they stood with uncertain footing, and the Broadwees had already scattered. Gloria hugged Lady May tightly and hid the baby’s face, while Jack ran to throw out his arms to guard them, and Bet went picking her way up the home track, as if to tell her story.

“Did you hear that bang?” Mrs. Moody asked her husband. “It sounded almost like a blowout.”

“The one thing it couldn’t be,” he said.

“Yes sir,” Jack called when he returned to the car. “Mrs. Moody’s right. A blowout—that’s what Bet was objecting to. It was your spare.”

The baby, hearing the Broadwees laugh, wailed very loud, and the Broadwees helped her by bellowing, “Boo, boo, boo!”

“Just keep on,” Gloria addressed them. “Boo some more. I want you to show our visitors just how ill-behaved Banner can be. Do your most, Emmett, Joe, VanCleave, Wayne, T.T., and Ears Broadwee. I expect it of you.”

“Sorry, Teacher. Sorry, we’re sorry,” they said, drooping.

“All right, boy, when’re you going to start getting the kind of help that’ll do us some good?” Mrs. Moody asked Jack, pointing her finger at him.

“Don’t be downhearted, Mrs. Judge! I’ve got a full reunion still to draw on!”

“And not one is going to do you a bit more good than your little seven-year-old crybaby sister,” cried Gloria.

He scudded down to the road. “Sweetheart!”

“The most they ever do for you is brag on you.”

He bent to search her face, while the baby placed a tear-covered hand against his cheek and patted it.

“Gloria,” he said gently. “You know all the books, But about what’s at home, there’s still a little bit left for you to find out. Not all of ’em brag so foolish—here comes Papa right now.”

“Well, I rather your papa than your mama,” called Aycock.

Mr. Renfro had come into sight on the farm track. Elvie came with him, singing:

“Yield
not to temptation
for
yielding is
sin,”

as she came down the steep track. Giving one skip to either side, she kept time to the homesick, falling tune in a sweet voice like plucking strings. Little by little, like a pigeon stepping down a barn roof, Mr. Renfro stepped his way behind her, then together they made the high step out of the ditch onto the road.

Mr. Renfro lifted his old felt hat to Mrs. Moody and Gloria, acknowledged Lady May’s stare of recognition with one of his own, then came in a Sunday manner up to the Judge.

“Old man, are you connected to the telephone?” asked Judge Moody before he could begin. “Excuse me, but I believe I’m in a bigger hurry than you are.”

With his drill shirt and pants Mr. Renfro had put on a mended dark blue suit coat, tight on his body as a boy’s or even a girl’s jacket. His shirt was still buttoned tight to his Adam’s apple, and a pinch of traveller’s joy had been freshly poked into his lapel.