Losing Battles (35 page)

“I wish I’d had a penny for every time I’ve listened to this one,” Mr. Renfro told Judge Moody, but Miss Beulah drove on, and everybody listened except Gloria.

“She did more than marry Euclid Beecham, she made him give up being a Methodist too. And Granny and Grandpa took him in hand and made a pretty good farmer out of him, to boot. Oh, Ellen and Euclid’s wedding! That’s the one I wish I had a picture of!” she cried. “Rival preachers to marry ’em—Grandpa Vaughn
and the Methodist. And the time of year when everything was all bowery. Wasn’t it, Granny?”

“Time of locust bloom,” Granny admitted.

“And it was two rings to that wedding,” Miss Beulah went on. “She gave hers to him, he gave his to her.”

“I reckon they did have a plenty more of everything in those days,” said Uncle Percy in a whisper. “Long Hungry Ridge must have been a fair prospect then.”

“And all this countryside hitched in the grove at Damascus Church and there was singing you could hear for a mile, and Mama and Papa was young and known to all around, and everybody said it was the prettiest couple ever to marry in Banner. Said they could hardly wait to see their children.”

“Thick and fast we got here! Nathan the oldest, then Curtis, then Dolphus, then Percy, then me, then Beulah, and then Sam Dale the baby,” said Uncle Noah Webster.

“Euclid got what he bargained for,” said Mr. Renfro.

“And every last one of those children good as gold, bright and sweet-natured and well-mannered,” continued Miss Beulah, still speaking as if from hearsay, or from beyond the grave.

“Well, we know what happened,” said Aunt Cleo.

“Papa couldn’t help it if he’s good-looking beyond the ordinary,” said Miss Beulah. “He couldn’t help it if he’s baptized in the cradle. Couldn’t even help it if they named him Euclid, poor little old soul.” Suddenly she folded her arms and cried, “I just wish he’d learned how to stop a runaway horse a little better! That’s what I wish!”

“Maybe he’d done better if his wife hadn’t been holding the reins,” said Mr. Renfro.

“I’m going right ahead and tell it!” cried Miss Beulah. “You can’t stop me. Now of all the children, Noah Webster was the one awake and was here on the spot to witness ’em go.”

“
This
Noah Webster?” Aunt Cleo asked.

Miss Beulah raced on. “He run out when he heard the barn door open, run out in his little gown with a ‘Stop, Papa and Mama! Wait a minute!’ Almost catches onto the horse but just not high enough. So he just hollers ‘Granny!’ instead. Well, they was going right on, straight out to the gate, and Granny comes running to stop ’em and nearly got caught and mashed to pieces between the buggy
shaft and the tree—” She jabbed her finger at the section of cedar down in the yard. “She run-run-run down the hill after ’em, calling ’em back here.”

“Granny
running?
” Vaughn yelled out in horror.

“She jumped on her horse and whipped him up and followed behind ’em trot-a-trot, trot-a-trot, galloping, galloping, but her smart horse stopped dead at the bridge when he got her there. Because he smelled the danger and seen the hole, and there’s the buggy-horse kicking down under, and the top of the buggy out in the water, standing up like a sail.”

Uncle Curtis, Aunt Nanny, Uncle Percy, all but Uncle Nathan, with single accord flung up their arms in the air, and Uncle Noah Webster held his transfixed wide over his head.

“The beginning of the bridge was just a big hole, and nobody saw fit to tell ’em, and it throwed both of ’em out and drowned ’em in the Bywy River and left us orphans all in the twinkling of an eye,” said Miss Beulah. “The Bywy was running high, was full that spring, and I don’t know how far downstream they put up the struggle, or what may have tore ’em out of each other’s arms. They wasn’t found too almighty close together.”

“Did they ever find the horse?” yelled Vaughn.

“He didn’t manage to hit the water. Had to shoot him.”

“Poor Noah Webster always tries to put in that he blames himself for that trouble. And it does look like there ought to been a wide-awake boy could have got his father and mother to hear him when he opened his mouth,” said Miss Beulah, striking her own breast.

“Somebody was running away from us children, that’s what I believed at the time and still believe,” said Uncle Noah Webster. “If I hadn’t believed it, I wouldn’t have stationed myself in the road and waited for ’em. I’d have been in the bed, tumbled in with the rest of you. Because unless I dreamed it, I didn’t know yet about the Bywy bridge getting a hole in it, didn’t know any more than they did. I just knew I was in pretty bad danger of losing ’em.”

“If they hadn’t been who they was, his own mother and father, they might have done different. They only thought he was trying to go with ’em, I reckon. Didn’t even turn their heads. If it’d been anybody but a Comfort out gigging on the river! And of course
Granny
couldn’t do anything to stop ’em!” said Miss Beulah in anguish.
“Papa was fished out by evening, right where he went in. But where was Mama?” she cried at the company.

“I stood on Banner Top and watched ’em dynamite for her. Two days,” said Mr. Renfro. “Old river was running by me faster than I could run, trailing its bubbles.”

“But at Deepening Bend, she came up by herself, Mama did. Beulah’s too little to remember it, she says,” Uncle Dolphus said, sadly teasing.

“It’s a wonder to me that river didn’t swallow a whole lot of other people that morning who was behaving just as mule-headed,” said Aunt Birdie, giving a deep sigh. “That’s what still scares me.”

“Old bridge has seen some progress. We keep the floor patched at
our
end, and keep driving spikes in the runners to hold ’em from flapping. But give it high water, or a little mischief, and it’s still sure death,” Uncle Curtis said to Judge Moody. “From my own bed, I’ve heard it sing all night and with nobody on it, when a north wind blows.”

“Take me back to the bridge a minute. What errand was they both so bent on when they hitched and cut loose from the house so early and drove out of sight of Grandpa and Granny, children and all, that morning?” It was Aunt Beck with the gentle voice who prodded.

“Now that’s a deep question,” said Aunt Nanny.

“Beck, that part of the story’s been lost to time,” said Uncle Curtis, looking over at his wife. “I think most people just give up wondering, in the light of what happened to ’em on the way.”

“Something between man and wife is the only answer, and it’s what no other soul would have no way of knowing, Cousin Beck,” said Mr. Renfro, and he climbed to his feet and made his way back to the lemonade tub.

“At any rate, by patience and waiting they was able to hold a double funeral,” said Aunt Beck to Mrs. Moody. “That’s always a comfort.”

“At the double funeral,” said Miss Beulah, her eyes burning at her grandmother, “it was the same church, with the same two rival preachers, but Grandpa Vaughn overpowering, and with all the little children lined up—that was us—bawling like calves in a row, I’ll be bound, though I don’t have a speck of recollection.”

“So before it’s too late,” said Aunt Nanny, “those that’s bringing comfort make up their minds to take one of them two rings off.
Not let ’em go in the ground taking just all there was of them. They taken Ellen’s for the reason she was the most pitiful.”

“And who got it?” asked Aunt Cleo.

Miss Beulah’s warning hand came up and fixed itself in the air. The skin on her fingers was swollen and silvered until it was like loose, iridescent scales. Her own wedding band would never come off unless and until she lay helpless in her turn, for it was too deeply buried in the flesh.

“It went in Granny’s Bible,” whispered Aunt Beck, shaking her head.

“I thought it right to bury the ring with my daughter.” Granny spoke, and their voices hushed for hers. “I thought it seeming. It was callers to the house saw fit to meddle. With Ellen in her coffin, they came circling round and stripped the ring from her finger. I never saw a one of ’em’s face before.”

Aunt Nanny winked once at the other aunts.

“That’s it. That’s the way of it, Granny,” Aunt Beck said, and the women rose, came around Granny and said, “So often the way. The world outside don’t respect your feelings, even to the last.”

“And it’s the ring Ella Fay carried to school that morning? Are we back around to that?” Aunt Cleo asked.

“It’s the same gold ring, and all the one sad story,” Miss Beulah said, patting Granny’s shoulder, smoothing out the lace collar. “You didn’t hear but the Renfro part this morning.”

“Sit patient,” Mr. Renfro said. “That’s all you had to do.”

“Oh, yes, it takes Ella Fay
one day of school
to come home crying without it. It’d take her a mighty long year to learn the way to scrub and hoe and milk and slop the pigs and the rest of it wearing a wedding band of her own and not lose it!” Miss Beulah laid her own ringed hand on the table. Aunt Beck and Aunt Birdie raced to lay their hands down with it and Aunt Nanny slapped hers down on top, and suddenly they all laughed through their tears.

“So to finish the story, Granny just tied on her apron, dusted off her cradle, and started in all over again with another set of children,” Uncle Percy said.

“Yes, then it was our blessed little Granny that licked us all into shape,” said Uncle Curtis. “With Grandpa towering nearby to pray over our failings. We would have been a poor sort today if we’d had to raise ourselves, wouldn’t we, Granny?”

“We didn’t believe in letting anybody go orphans in our family,” said Miss Beulah.

“They might have even tried to separate us!” cried Uncle Noah Webster.

“That was surely acting a Christian twice in a lifetime!” Aunt Beck called to Granny. “Bringing all these up!”

“We was all fairly good children,” said Miss Beulah. “Sam Dale was the best of all, being the baby.”

“All except curly-headed Nathan,” said Uncle Percy. “I can hear Grandpa saying it to Granny now, behind closed doors. ‘Conquer that child! Stand over him, whip him till he’s conquered!’ Didn’t he, Granny?”

“Come around from behind me,” Granny said, “you who I’m guarding back there.”

“This forty-pound melon is so good and sweet I believe even you could be tempted, this go-round, Brother Nathan,” said Mr. Renfro. He stood offering him the heart on a fork.

“Don’t be too hard on yourself, Nathan dear,” said Miss Beulah. “You’re here only one day and night in the year—all of us wish you wouldn’t spend every minute of it standing up and not taking a bite at all.”

Uncle Nathan put up his hand and said, “No, Brother Ralph, I’d be much obliged if you’d give it to one of the children.”

“Hey!” Aunt Cleo cried. “Ain’t that a play hand?”

Uncle Nathan’s still uplifted right hand was lineless and smooth, pink as talcum. It had no articulation but looked caught forever in a pose of picking up a sugar lump out of the bowl. On its fourth, most elevated finger was a seal ring.

“How far up does it go?” asked Aunt Cleo.

“It’s just exactly as far as what you see that ain’t real,” said Miss Beulah. “That hand come as a present from all his brothers, and his sister supplied him the ring for it. Both of ’em takes off together. Satisfied?”

“For now,” Aunt Cleo said, as they all went back to their seats.

“I’ve just been to wake Sam Dale,” said Granny. “He’ll be along in a little bit.”

Their faces were stilled for a moment, as though the big old bell standing over them in the yard had laid a stroke on the air.

“Who’s Sam Dale?” asked Aunt Cleo.

“Jack’s the nearest thing to Sam Dale we’ve got today,” Miss Beulah said in a voice of urgent warning.

“Though Sam Dale left us before he ever got himself sent to the pen for something, I’ll tell you that!” Aunt Birdie said in a voice helplessly gay. “If I hadn’t married Dolphus, I’d
married
Sam Dale! I believe he was sweet on me.”

“Yes, he was sweet on a plenty, but not as many as was sweet on him,” said Miss Beulah. “Every girl in Banner was setting her cap for Sam Dale Beecham, and Jack went through the same hard experience.”

“Sam Dale got out of marrying any of ’em—the hard way, though,” said Mr. Renfro.

Then suddenly Miss Beulah folded her arms and said in a flat voice, “In all our number we didn’t have but one with the looks to put your eyes right out, and that was our baby brother Sam Dale.”

“Uh-oh,” said Aunt Cleo. “Something happened to
him
, I bet.”

“Will you try not to pull it out of us?” Miss Beulah cried, still standing with folded arms.

Aunt Beck said, “His is one story I wish we never had to tell.”

“Handsome! Handsomer than Dolphus ever was, sunnier than Noah Webster, smarter than Percy, more home-loving than Curtis, more quiet-spoken than Nathan, and could let you have a tune quicker and truer than all the rest put together,” said Miss Beulah.

“He sounds like he’s dead,” said Aunt Cleo.

The shade was deep and widespread now. The old bell hanging from its yoke on the locust post was the only thing in the yard still beyond shade’s reach. The wisteria that grew there with it looked nearly as old as the bell; its trunk was like an old, folded, gray quilt packed up against the post, and the eaves made a feathery bonnet around the black, still, iron shape.

“He’d better come to the table in a hurry now, or miss his treat,” Granny said, her finger trembling above the cake plate. “A fool for sweets ever since I put the drop of honey on his tongue to hush his first cry.”

Uncle Noah Webster offered Aunt Cleo the dripping heart of his melon, and she took it in bites from the point of his knife, but still she said, “Are you all going to humor her? Just because she’s old?”

Miss Beulah threw open her arms and brought her hands fast together in a clap. “Come,
children!
” she yelled.

Then an avalanche of the waiting children came down on Granny. “I’m not a baby,” she said, putting out her little hands. One hand closed around a bag of red-hot-poker seed, and in the other was set a teacup quaking in its saucer. At the same time she was asked to unwrap a can of talcum powder.