Losing Battles (24 page)

“He has,” she said. Closer now a chirping as from a load of baby chicks was added to the grinding.

“My truck! Or I’ll eat it! I can just look in your face and read how right I am!” he gasped. “Curly’s got it on the road without me!”

“Life don’t just stop!” she cried.

“Holy Moses!” he yelled, and the baby clapped her hands over his mouth, opening her own wide.

At first only two yellowed globes, that caught light from the sun, could be seen through the dust, set like the eyes of a locust in the roof. Then a pair of oxhorns could be made out pushing up the road toward them, with a spread wider than the fenders behind them, all but scraping the banks.

“Why, here comes the very thing!” Mrs. Moody exclaimed.
“Like it sprung right out of the ground! Providence sent that. My husband only had to turn his back.”

Jack pulled Lady May over his head as he would pull off a tight undershirt and set her on the ground, and staggered for a minute.

“I hated to break it to you—I waited till it was the last minute, before you’d find it out for yourself,” Gloria said.

“You was just being the best little wife you knew how,” he agreed in a painful voice. Then all of a sudden he shouted, “Mrs. Judge! Now I’m going to save your car by hook or by crook! Honey, you and Lady May get back from the road, about as far as the well,” he cried to Gloria.

“But Jack, you know what we are here for!”

“Then put your heads down!”

“To think you would ask me to hide,” she said sadly, going behind the syrup stand into the goldenrod and cosmos and down on mulberry leaves with her baby.

“Go home, Queenie! Go home, Pete and Slider! Go ask Aycock’s mama for your bone. There ain’t going to be nothing here for you!” Jack told the dogs. They skidded in their tracks, then turned and loped off down the road. Gloria from her hiding place let out a cry—in Queenie’s mouth were both of Lady May’s shoes. “And you lean back, Aycock, just look straight ahead where you’re going! Old Curly’s rolling right here in my truck, never dreaming.” He whirled and disappeared up the farm track.

Mrs. Moody was already advancing into the center of Banner Road. She stood waving her purse, as steadily as a train brakeman with a lantern, guiding the truck to a stop. Strips of adhesive tape rayed sunset style from a hole in the middle of the windshield, but a large red face showed itself around it and advanced out the window and held itself there cheek up, as if waiting for a kiss. It was slick and jowled as a big vine-ripe bell pepper.

“Lady,” said the thin voice of a fat man, “is that your car gone through the fence up there?”

“Of course it’s mine!” she said. “Can’t you see me flagging you down?”

“Then what’s it doing on Banner Top? Can’t you read? Every one of those signs along that fence says ‘Keep Off.’ I You’re trespassing.”

“Trespassing! On as wild and forsaken a spot on earth for a
hot and breathless Sunday as I ever saw in my wildest dreams?” she cried. “Don’t make me indignant!”

“Who told you you could run a pleasure car up yonder and leave it, lady? That’s a spot just waiting to give trouble. Full of temptations of all kinds. You know what that car’s asking for?”

“Listen here, I want to talk business with you, mister,” said Mrs. Moody. “Do you know who I am?”

A head of cosmos wagged, and Jack came down the home track with his spring-heeled walk.

“Can you tell a stranger which is the quickest way to Banner?” he asked.

“Huh?” Then the deacony voice changed into a roar. A two-hundred-pound man in the prime of life rocked out of the cab, his boot heels striking the road and reviving the dust. He threw out both red arms. Jack at the same moment charged on him, and they began pumping on each other’s backs.

“Thought you wasn’t due till hog-killing time!”

“Trying to run off with my truck, you skunk!” Jack cried. “Giving her the last lick behind my back!” He scooped up a chunk from the ditch and ran to lay it under a front wheel.

Curly Stovall’s curls were stacked like three-pound scale weights across the breadth of his forehead; they bounced with his laughter. Behind him, the truck’s hood, fenders, and the railings around its bed all jumped too under their thatches of dust with the commotion of the motor. Some fishing canes lashed to the cab roof sawed on one another, and the open door danced on its single hinge.

“Yeah, I did that truck a favor, Jack!”

“She sure stuttered hard enough getting up this hill,” said Jack, and ran up the hood. The engine stormed in all their ears.

“I want to talk business,” Mrs. Moody called, raising her voice against it.

“Curly, I’m holding my judgment till I see her tested!” cried Jack.

“Wait till you see her going down,” said Curly Stovall. “I’m on my way home now.”

“How’s Miss Ora, and how did you get away from her?” asked Jack. “How’s the old store? Falling to pieces?”

“Jack, times is no better since you left. Nearly all my trade’s trying to get me to starve to death, I can’t get a bit of satisfaction.
Ain’t hardly a Banner soul going to make a crop again.”

“Whose troubles am I here to listen to? Yours or mine?” called Mrs. Moody, standing close.

“There wasn’t but one answer, Jack. Run for office,” said Curly.

“I hate for poor, hard-working Miss Ora to see how bad you’ll get beat,” said Jack.

“By Homer and that rattle-trap, shimmy-tail chicken wagon of his? Wait for Tuesday’s explosion! This truck is my answer to Homer. A solid-built, all-round, A-one, do-all truck!” Curly Stovall’s voice rose to a tenor yell over the clamorous motor. “It’s ready for anything and everything, you name it—from hauling in their hay for ’em to pulling ’em out when they get stuck, before they go out of sight in Banner mud. Any act of neighborly kindness a justice of the peace can offer will be furnished cheap at the price.”

Mrs. Moody pinched each one of them by his shirtsleeve. “Look at my car!” she cried.

“That’s where I been this morning, doing a few little neighborly acts of kindness. I been to see the bedridden,” said Curly Stovall. “And the shut-ins. Promised ’em I’m coming back on Tuesday and carry ’em every one to the polls. Old Mr. Hugg clapped his hands!”

“What you fixing to do right now, Curly?” asked Jack.

“It’s a big all-out fish-fry on the sandbar! It’s my last Sunday and I’m showing my hospitality.”

“Look at my car!” Mrs. Moody cried, shaking her purse at him.

“Go a step further and you’re going to be in badder trouble,” he said.

“I have no intention of going a step further!” she cried.

“Why, do look at that car up there. Like a ladybug on a red rose!” said Jack. “How did a lady driver ever find her way up by herself?”

Curly Stovall squinted, then suddenly pointed his finger. “Not by herself! She’s got another one in that car right now. Yonder’s a man’s head.” He raised his prim voice another octave. “Hey, blooming idiot! This is the law! We discourage fools from riding up there on dangerous ground, you hear me? Bring that Buick back down here and set it in the road!”

Aycock was now holding an imaginary steering wheel in front of him, giving it some fast spins.

“Curly, squint harder. That fellow’s in the
back
seat. He’s nothing but just a harmless passenger,” said Jack. “Don’t let him fool you.”

Curly turned to Mrs. Moody. In a voice beginning to sound almost respectful he asked, “How long a while you had that Buick and him up there, lady?”

“Forever is what it seems like!” she cried.

“Well, tell your blooming passenger to step up front and grab the wheel and pitch on down here,” Curly Stovall cried. “We don’t tolerate showing off like this from the passing public.”

“Now listen,” Mrs. Moody said with spirit. “It’s my car. That idiot or any other idiot is not to touch that wheel, not for love or money.”

“Then I got something to tell you. If you don’t make him drive it off there in a pretty big hurry and of your own sweet accord, lady, I’m going to go up there and
haul
it down
for
you. Tied to the tail of my truck,” Curly Stovall said primly, as Jack slapped both knees.

“The very thing I wanted!” cried Mrs. Moody. “If men would ever stop long enough to heed what’s being told ’em! Now hurry! Before my husband gets back, hear? Wait till he finds I stayed right in one place and and without budging accomplished twice as much as he could.”

“It’ll be a dollar,” said Curly Stovall. “In cash.”

“Now wait, are you somebody reliable?” she asked at the same time.

“Reliable?” cried Jack. “Lady, this is old Curly Stovall. Everybody knows him! He’s the storekeeper in Banner and he’s a rascal and a greedy hog and a few more things—you can rely on him for all of ’em. Go ahead and show her, Curly—start riding!” He slammed down the hood of the truck. When he muffled the motor as he did, the soft lisp of the Buick engine went floating over their heads.

A thin little cry came from Curly Stovall’s deacony mouth. “You trying to tell me that car’s sitting out on the edge of nowhere with nobody to the wheel and nothing in front to stop it, and running on its engine?”

“Just breaking its heart to go over,” said Jack.

“Then what’s it waiting on! What’s been holding it back?” Curly shouted at him.

“The Lord is looking after me and my husband,” said Mrs. Moody in a sharp voice. “That’s what’s been holding it back! Now, then!”

“Cut that engine!” cried Curly Stovall.

“The fellow’s arms ain’t long enough, unless he grows ’em longer, waiting on your help,” said Jack. “You heard this lady pass the law he can’t move from where he’s riding.”

“Let him try budging one inch,” said Mrs. Moody.

“Oh, I know better than budge,” said Aycock at once.

“Wait,” Curly said. “That voice had a Banner ring.”

“Open them coon eyes a little wider,” said Jack. “Ain’t there the least little bit about that pumpkinhead to remind you of somebody you know?”

Aycock screwed his head clear around and grinned out the back window like a Jack-o’-lantern.

“Aycock Comfort!” Curly Stovall yelled. “What’re you doing home and in a Buick car on Banner Top?”

“Just sitting,” said Aycock.

“You didn’t get there by yourself!” Curly whirled on Jack. The curls rolled down on his forehead as he lowered his head and said,
“Now
things is taking on the complexion of the rest of your tricks, Jack Renfro. Now it’s starting to look natural and sound natural and feel natural around Banner! I feel like I just had a good dose of tonic! All right, what’s been your hand in this?”

“I’m the Good Samaritan! And I’ve been it just about all day!” Jack hollered.

“You run this lady’s car up on Banner Top yourself and for my benefit, didn’t you, and just waited till I come along?”

“Honestly!” cried Mrs. Moody.

“Curly, I be dog if I did!” said Jack. “And this poor lady, I’d had her down long ago and she knows it, only I got the news broke to me this morning that even before you stole my truck you already went off with my horse!”

“How did your mule handle it?”

“About the way you reckon!”

“I wouldn’t have your mule for all you’d pay me!”

“Is anybody listening to me?” cried Mrs. Moody.

“Lady, I just went up a dollar on you,” said Curly Stovall, not moving from where he stood, gazing upward.

“As long as that Buick’s holding to the same spot, Curly, she’ll behave,” Jack told him. “She’s reposing in the sweetest balance you ever saw in your life, with her frame sitting right on a hickory sign donated to Banner Top by my Uncle Nathan, and not a minute too soon.”

“I wouldn’t trust any of his work, he lives without a penny,” said Curly Stovall.

“You just wouldn’t hardly believe what’s the case up there. You wouldn’t hardly believe the balance she’s in, without giving her a little rock to test her yourself,” said Jack. “There she sits, singing along, good as gold, fighting along against the laws of gravity, and just daring you to come near her. But the lady wants her down and you want her down—”

Curly Stovall leaned back against the truck, his purpled arm resting on the cab window. “Jack, I swear I don’t know what I been doing without you.”

“I’d been here the whole time, had the sayso been mine.”

“No sir, there ain’t nobody upped to start a blessed thing under my nose, not since you been gone. Banner just as well been dead!”

“It won’t take long to wake it up now!” Jack said. “Me, you, and Aycock all doing our part!”

“Start, then!” cried Mrs. Moody. “Get busy! And remember! Don’t get on the inside of my car, don’t scratch the outside finish, and don’t be in too big a rush coming down and tip over my chocolate cake—”

There came a loud report from the Buick.

“What was that?” asked Curly Stovall in a thin voice.

“Blowout number three,” Jack told him. “I’m betting it’s the other front wheel.”

“Hurry, mister!” Mrs. Moody cried, as Curly made a lunge toward Jack and put up a fist. They both began weaving with their feet.

“Lady, how Jack prevailed on you to run your own car up there to start with, I still ain’t made up my mind. How Aycock’s keeping it from taking off the ground, it’s a little early to ask him. All I got to tell you is Jack Renfro’s home again and it’s starting to get away too natural around Banner!”

“But aren’t you going to keep your word?” Mrs. Moody cried.

“You ain’t caught me as easy as you think, lady,” said Curly,
dancing on his toes. “Because listen to me—I don’t do Sunday business! ’Tain’t the law and ’tain’t Christian!”

“And that’s all I’m waiting for!” Jack shouted, and made a leap for the open cab door.

Curly was ready for him, spun him around, and climbed up and rammed himself in behind the steering wheel.

“Have I spoken of Providence too soon?” Mrs. Moody cried.

“Hitch over! Either move your carcass or get out!” Jack yelled.

“What’re you trying to do now, steal my truck?” Curly yelled back. The engine was still pounding, the sheaf of fishing canes arching above the cab roof and hanging over the sides quivered their length like the whiskers of some oversized store cat.

“I’m taking the wheel! I’m going up and get this lady’s suffering Buick down, what do you reckon?” yelled Jack. “I’m going to fire up this truck and save that Buick right in front of your eyes!”