Losing Battles (32 page)

“I missed getting my good-bye present of new shoes,” Jack told Gloria a little apologetically. “But I’ll donate those whole-hearted to whoever would rather say good-bye to the pen tomorrow than today. I had to get me back for Granny’s birthday Sunday!”

Aunt Birdie again shook her spoon at Judge Moody. “What was
he
doing on Banner Road, then?”

“Now we won’t ask him for his story,” said Miss Beulah. “The man’s been tackling our roads, and at the first little bump and skirmish he lands himself in a ditch, and here he is. I think that’ll do.”

“Why, it won’t do at all,” Mrs. Moody began, but Etoyle set down her melon, joined her hands at her breast, and cried, “In the ditch? Judge Moody’s car’s gone straight up Banner Top!”

“Tisn’t so!” said Miss Beulah fiercely to Mr. Renfro, who sat there at Judge Moody’s elbow with pleasure in his face.

“On Banner Top? Out on the flirting edge of nowhere? Is that right?” Aunt Nanny cried to the Moodys. “And don’t know how to get down?” She shook with laughter.

Mrs. Moody pointed her finger across the table at Gloria’s bright crown. “Give credit where credit is due,” she said. “She’s the one ran out of the bushes and right under our wheels, calling us by name. She’s the one drove us right up that wall!”

Mrs. Moody said more but it was drowned out in the cheering that rose from the table.

“Look who’s set here quiet as a mouse for two years! Bless your heart!” Uncle Noah Webster jumped off the stepladder and kissed Gloria, leaving cake-crumbs on her face.

“Gloria Short! I declare but you’re turning out to be a little question mark! I’m wondering what you’ll do next!” cried Aunt Birdie.

Aunt Nanny cried, “Now that’s what I call trying to make yourself a member of the family. Stopped ’em right in their tracks? Sent ’em skywards?”

“Don’t! Please don’t brag on me,” Gloria begged them. “Or at least, if you’re going to start, don’t brag on me for the wrong thing.”

“I’ve been telling Gloria she should’ve stayed home with the ladies, but I eat my words this minute,” said Aunt Beck, rising and coming to kiss her as if to make amends in public.

“Just let ’em have a little pleasure out of it, honey,” Jack bent and said into her ear.

“She only gets the credit for not knowing no other way to stop. She had up too much steam!” cried Etoyle.

“I fell on my knees! I’m ashamed of what happened,” Gloria cried, with her face almost as flaming as her hair.

“First time that young lady ever said she done anything to be ashamed of in her life, ain’t it?” exclaimed Aunt Nanny with a broad smile.

“And I’ve listened,” agreed Miss Beulah.

“I might have been killed! And my baby in my arms!” cried Gloria.

“And who saved you from it? Jack Renfro,” said Miss Beulah, leading a chorus of answerers, some of whom were still trying to reach Gloria to hug and spank her.

“I was doing my best to
save Jack
,” Gloria corrected them as she worked free.

They laughed, loud with affection, at Jack. He’d risen up still holding his watermelon to his cheek, harmonicalike. He had eaten it down so close to the rind that the light of the sky shone through it now. “You
what
, honey?”

“That was what I started out to do!” Gloria cried. “I was going to save him! From everybody I see this minute!”

“Miss Gloria! I believe you’re getting to be a little bit more of a handful than this family had bargained on!” Uncle Noah Webster sang out in pure hilarity.

“I’m keeping on trying! I’ll save him yet!” she cried. “I don’t give up easy!”

Aunt Beck said, “You know, I reckon there’s nothing too much for a schoolteacher to try.”

Jack shouted, “It’s thanks to Judge Moody we still got her! He saved my wife and baby!”

“How in the wide world did you come to let Judge Moody save your wife and baby for you?” Miss Beulah cried. “With all this saving, where were
you?
”

“I was making such haste after Lady May that I sent Jack spinning in the ditch,” said Gloria. “But if Judge Moody hadn’t come along just at that minute, we would all have been all right and jumped right back on our feet.”

Jack bent his brow on her.

“It was Judge Moody’s own fault he had to save us,” Gloria told them all clearly.

Judge Moody was heard saying to his wife, “The real culprit is that baby, of course. She ran between them—she was a moving target.”

“That’s right, blame a little suckling babe,” said Mrs. Moody.

Miss Beulah blazed, “There’s nothing you can say about that baby that’s any fault of her own.”

“But this is the first I realized that
all
plans has miscarried,” said Auntie Fay Champion.

“And the car sitting this minute on Banner Top. You just come off and left it, Judge Moody, at the first crook of the finger?”

“I don’t believe it’s still there, Beulah,” said Uncle Dolphus consolingly. “And I ain’t going to take a hot walk yonder to prove it, either.”

“I took the walk, saw it for myself,” said Mr. Renfro. “And as far as the car goes, the car’s up there and running in pretty good tune.”

“And it’s got somebody in it to hold it down! One guess! Aycock!” Etoyle screamed.

“Oh, for a minute I thought you was going to say ‘Jack’ once more,” gasped Aunt Birdie.

“Aycock Comfort’s deposited in your car and still behaving himself?” Miss Lexie Renfro asked Judge Moody coolly, speaking to him for the first time. “Well, I’m gratified to hear it. I expect Parchman did Aycock that much good. I wish you could find and send his daddy.”

“Mama, as long as Aycock stays put, he’s safe as we are,” Etoyle said. “Jack says so.”

“And if he budges, he’s a gone gander. What about the rest of it?” screamed Miss Beulah. “These boys, these men, they don’t realize anything!”

“Realize what, Mother?” Mr. Renfro asked her.

“What makes you think that’s the end of the story? Somebody’s still going to have to coax that car
down
. Suppose you never thought
of that, any of you?” Miss Beulah cried. “What goes up has got to come down! Regardless! I declare there’s no end sometimes! So you’re elected, Jack.”

“The home team might want me, all right,” Jack said. “But the last I heard, Judge and Mrs. Judge are holding out together for old Curly.”

“Curly Stovall and that brace of wore-out oxen? I declare, Judge Moody, that booger’ll find a way to horn in on all you’ve got,” said Miss Beulah.

“That baby may still be baby enough for what she’s up to, but if she’s old enough to wear pockets!” exclaimed Aunt Cleo.

Gloria, down low as she was, almost too low for it to be seen across the table, had opened her dress behind the screen of one hand.

“All the same, that baby’s had some little threads of white meat, some crumbles of hard-boiled egg, a spoonful of cornbread soaked in buttermilk, and a pickle,” said Aunt Nanny. “From her father. And I saw her waving his drumstick in her little fist.”

“Give us some more, Brother Bethune,” called Uncle Noah Webster. “You can’t give up yet.”

Brother Bethune called that the prize for being the oldest here today went to Granny Vaughn. “Now the prize for the youngest!” he called, and up was rolled this year’s new baby, lying bound around the middle to a pillow in a wheelbarrow, hands and feet batting like two sets of wings. “Now the prize for having the most descendants after Miss Granny Vaughn herself—stand up, Curtis Beecham!” Aunt Cleo was named the prize winner for being the newest bride, Uncle Percy for being the thinnest, Aunt Nanny for being the fattest.

“Grandpa never gave a prize in his life for being fat,” said Miss Beulah. “You had to
do
right. And if you
did
right, you were considered having prize enough already. Weren’t you, Granny?”

The old lady’s head drove back from her plate for a minute, as though buggy wheels had started rolling under her chair.

“And now poor Jack! Judge Moody comes along Banner Road and right on time for him to put that truck to proof. And no truck,” said Aunt Nanny.

“Yes, Judge Moody, we all know better’n you do what you
stand in need of,” said Uncle Percy in his whisper. “Too bad you picked the wrong day to get it.”

“If Jack ever gets through today alive, then gets back that truck and makes it go, I hope I for one am still on earth that day and with the eyesight left to see it perform,” Uncle Dolphus said. “Jack’s all but convinced his family it could even plough.”

“What ever happened to bust it in the first place?” asked Aunt Cleo. “Running over some fool in the road? I don’t think Jack’s too careful with what’s his.” She looked at him with his second half of melon.

“Until it was busted, it never got to be Jack’s,” said Aunt Nanny, winking.

“Has there been something wrong with it?” asked Mrs. Moody.

“It started away from Curly’s store in Banner on a Saturday morning, and the Nashville Rocket comes up the track. We was sitting there on the store porch, telling each other our woes, when there comes quite a crack,” said Uncle Dolphus.

“It got hit by a train?” cried Mrs. Moody.

“It stopped the Nashville Rocket on the crossing, yes’m.”

“This truck is something that had to be picked up out of the cinders of the railroad track?” asked Mrs. Moody.

“Jack picked it up. Had to wade to get it. There’s a river of hot Coca-Cola and a mountain of broken glass trying to stop him—it was a Coca-Cola truck,” said Aunt Birdie.

“Jack could have sliced an artery and no woman the wiser at home,” said Aunt Beck.

“The only Cokes left standing for a mile around was the ones old Ears Broadwee had just finished delivering to Curly,” Uncle Percy whispered.

“That was one sticky cow-catcher,” said Uncle Dolphus.

“I’m surprised at the Coca-Cola people. It sounds to me like one more case of a careless driver,” said Mrs. Moody to her husband.

“Watch out! That’s my kin,” said Aunt Nanny.

“I reckon there wasn’t enough left of him for you-all to pick up and bury,” said Aunt Cleo. “Have his funeral with a sealed coffin?”

“Didn’t get a scratch. That was Ears Broadwee. He’d just been in the store, swapping yarns with Jack and Curly and the boys. Claims he ain’t heard that train yet,” said Aunt Nanny. “Ears was
glad to be furnished an excuse to find him a job that would keep him nearer home. He’s still looking, you-all. He may have to go to the CC Camp if something more to his liking don’t come along.”

“His touch is pure destruction, all right,” said Uncle Noah Webster. “That truck wasn’t much better than a chicken crate that’s been waltzed around by a cyclone. The Nashville Rocket was right on time.”

“The Coca-Cola people were a good deal put out. They sent one fellow here from Alabama to look at it. He just turned around and went back,” said Uncle Dolphus. “Well, they can afford it.”

“So it’s pretty well scattered there on Curly’s store yard, laying on his property. ‘Who you reckon’s going to make me the right offer for that International truck, Jack?’ Curly says. ‘Look there, not a part in it is over a year old.’ Well, that got ’em all to drooling.”

“It still looks to me like Curly ought to have thanked Jack for just hauling it this far off his premises,” said Aunt Birdie. “Instead of charging him out of his corncrib. Hear, Jack?”

“Jack’s trying to eat! He’s got to catch up with you, not listen to you,” said Miss Beulah. “To make a long story short, that truck, or what was left of it, ended up right here in our yard. Jack didn’t ask his mother first, just started bringing it. Scrap!”

“Well, Mother, there’s the old forge down yonder in the back,” said Mr. Renfro. “And there’s a raft of lumber standing on end in the barn, well seasoned, waiting on somebody to find good use for it. I told Jack what I’d do, faced with his problem, was finish taking it to pieces first. And start from scratch.”

“How did Jack get the thing up to the house from the store yard? Did it have a steering wheel?” asked Aunt Cleo.

“Sister Cleo, he pounded him a sled together and loaded on and drug up this part and that part, Dan and Bet both pulling. And it all went right over yonder,” said Miss Beulah, turning around to point with her long horn-handled fork. “There was four young pines growing just right to suit him. He chopped ’em off equal and mounted the frame of that truck with its corners sitting where you could see the stumps, if anybody’d get up and move away for a minute. It was a sight!”

“It was beautiful to Jack,” said Aunt Nanny, grinning. “Oh, Jack was in a big hurry for that truck.”

“I still wonder what he needed it for. You-all are clear off the
highway or even a good gravel road,” said Aunt Cleo. “What did he have that was so much to haul? I haven’t seen it yet.”

“It was his dream to provide,” said Aunt Beck, though her eye was still on Brother Bethune, who had announced he was preaching on the subject “Be Humble.” “And then to get hauled away like that himself!”

“And wouldn’t it have done a perfect job of carrying a load of us to church and not let our shoes get nasty? And all winter long, from where we lived in mud, he could’ve been picking us up and carrying us to see him play basketball for Banner! Tore away like he was, he couldn’t even be on the team!”