Losing Battles (38 page)

“I thought I saw her throw herself down on the dictionary once, when it tried to get away,” said Aunt Birdie. “But I didn’t believe my eyes.”

“Where was
you
?” Aunt Cleo pointed at Auntie Fay. “You started this.”

“I was out on the schoolhouse step, hollering ‘Let me in!’ ” she said. “And it seemed to me like they was trying a good deal harder to keep me out. Till Miss Julia herself got the door open and grabbed for me. And the wind was trying its best to scoop me and her and all of ’em behind her out of the schoolhouse, but she didn’t let it. She had me by the foot and pulled me in flat. She pulled against the wind and dragged me good, till I was a hundred percent inside that schoolhouse.”

“Finally we got the door shut again, and Miss Julia got on her knees and leaned against it, and we all copied her, and we held the
schoolhouse up,” said Aunt Birdie. “Every single one of us plastered with leaves!”

“And that chair—that’s when this house was delivered that school chair, the one you’re holding down this minute, Judge Moody. It blew here,” said Miss Beulah, pointing at him. “And the tree caught it—Billy Vaughn’s Switch did. If it hadn’t, it might have come right in the house through that window into the company room. That chair’s the only sample of the cyclone this house got. I reckon Grandpa was pretty strongly praying.”

“What did it do to the store?” asked Aunt Cleo. “Stovall’s store?”

“It was Papa’s store then. Well, sir, the roof took off and it was just like you’d shaken a feather bolster and seen it come open at the seam,” said Mr. Renfro. “I was watching the whole thing get away from Papa. Everything that’d been inside that store got outside. Blew away. And the majority of our house went right along to keep it company.”

“What happened to the bridge?” asked Mrs. Moody.

Auntie Fay rattled her little tongue.

“No it didn’t. It didn’t even wiggle. I was paying it some mind, I was under it,” said Mr. Renfro to his sister. “I was going a little tardy to school that morning, and when I heard the thing coming, the bridge is what I dove under. And it wasn’t in the path, that bridge. No, the storm come up the river and it veered. The bridge stood still right where it was put, and a minute away, the rest of the world went right up in the air.”

“It picked the Methodist Church up all in one piece and carried it through the air and set it down right next to the Baptist Church! Thank the Lord nobody was worshipping in either one,” said Aunt Beck.

“I never heard of such a thing,” said Mrs. Moody.

“Now you have. And those Methodists had to tear their own church down stick by stick so they could carry it back and put it together again on the side of the road where it belonged,” said Miss Beulah. “A good many Baptists helped ’em.”

“I’ll tell you something as contrary as people are. Cyclones,” said Mr. Renfro.

“It’s a wonder we all wasn’t carried off, killed with the horses and cows, and skinned alive like the chickens,” said Uncle Curtis.
“Just got up and found each other, glad we was all still in the land of the living.”

“You were spared for a purpose, of course,” said Mrs. Moody.

“Everybody made it the best way they could till Banner got pieced back together. Grandpa Vaughn did a month’s worth of preaching on destruction—it was all Banner but the Baptist Church. And if you want to count the bridge,” said Uncle Curtis.

“It made another case of having to start over. You just don’t quite know today how your old folks did it,” said Mr. Renfro.

“Miss Julia was as wrong as you could ever hope about the best place to be,” said Miss Beulah. “If it hadn’t been for the children holding it up, that schoolhouse would have fallen right on top of ’em, and her too!”

“And in return, did we get a holiday out of that cyclone? Why, no,” said Uncle Curtis. “That same day, and the first thing anybody knew, Miss Julia made all the fathers around here get together and give the schoolhouse the first new roof in Banner, made out of exactly what they could find. And she never quit holding school while they was overhead pounding. Rain or shine, she didn’t let father or son miss a day. ‘Every single day of your life counts,’ she told ’em all alike. ‘As long as I’m here, you aren’t getting the chance to be cheated out of a one of ’em.’ ”

“Everybody went off that morning and left me,” said Miss Lexie.

“Yes, Lexie elected to stay home by herself and the whole house blew away and left her in the frame of the front door, standing in her petticoat and all come out in spots. Wasn’t that forlorn?” teased Aunt Birdie.

“Well, you’ve been going from one’s house to another’s ever since, Lexie,” Miss Beulah pointed out. “You’ve made up for it now.”

“I remember another time, when the river was high and Miss Julia Mortimer asked us how many in the room couldn’t swim,” said Uncle Curtis. “And at the show of hands she says, ‘Every child needs to know how to swim. Stand at your desks.’ And with us lined up behind her she taught us how to swim.” Uncle Curtis flailed his arms. “The river was lapping pretty well at the doorstep at the time. The last thing she’d have thought of was send us home. When she thought we could swim, she went back to the history lesson.”

“Foot. Nothing fazed her,” said Aunt Nanny.

“She was ready to teach herself to death for you, you couldn’t get away from that. Whether you wanted her to or not didn’t make any difference. But my suspicion was she did want you to
deserve
it,” Uncle Curtis stated.

“How did she last as long as she did?” marvelled Aunt Beck.

“She thought if she told people what they ought to know, and told ’em enough times, and finally beat it into their hides, they wouldn’t forget it. Well, some of us still had her licked,” said Uncle Dolphus.

“ ‘A state calling for improvement as loudly as ours? Mississippi standing at the foot of the ladder gives me that much more to work for,’ she’d say. I don’t dream it was so much palaver, either,” said Miss Beulah. “She meant it entirely.”

“That’s what comes of reading, bet your boots,” said Uncle Curtis.

“Full of books is what she was,” said Aunt Beck.

“Oh, books! The woman read more books than you could shake a stick at,” said Miss Beulah. “I don’t know what she thought was going to get her if she didn’t.”

“She’d give out prizes for reading, at the end of school, but what would be the prizes? More books,” said Aunt Birdie. “I dreaded to win.”

“And memory work! Every single ‘and’ and ‘but’ in the right place. I’d like to know if her own memory lasted as long as she did,” said Aunt Nanny.

Uncle Dolphus, tilting his chair back, crossed his legs at the knee. “ ‘Hark, hark the lark at Heaven’s gate sings!’ ”

“Dolphus, you dog,” they cried back at him.

“I love coffee, I love tea, I love the girls and the girls love me!” shouted Uncle Noah Webster as the handclapping stormed.

“If it was Miss Julia Mortimer taught you to recite that, I’m a billy goat,” grinned Aunt Nanny.

“Yes’m, she taught the generations. She was our cross to bear,” said Uncle Dolphus as the laughter died away. “ ‘Hark hark.’ ”

For the moment after, the only sound was that of Brother Bethune hitting the tobacco can he was shooting at somewhere behind the house.

“I’d got over there sooner, and found Miss Julia Mortimer Sooner,” Mr. Willy Trimble then said, “if she’d ever been persuaded
to give a morning yell. I listen for Captain Billy Bangs, listen for Brother Bethune, and they listen for me—”

“What’s a morning yell for?” interrupted Aunt Cleo.

“Mainly to show you’re still alive after the night,” he told her.

“You’ve got Noah Webster now,” Miss Beulah told her. “You can afford to keep still.”

“It’s the time-honored around here, for us old folks left dwelling to ourselves. A chain of ’em—one hollering across to the next one. So then if somebody breaks it, we know what it is,” said Mr. Willy, putting his tongue into the corner of his smile. “ ‘Sound travels over water,’ I told Miss Julia. “You can holler ’cross the Bywy. I’ll hear.”

“She wasn’t dwelling to herself, I was right there to watch her till this morning,” said Miss Lexie. “But I didn’t want to fail the reunion. I’d get myself talked about.”

Mr. Willy did not cease regarding them. His eyes, where the whites showed above the rounds, were wary as a feeding rabbit’s.

Aunt Nanny cocked her head. “Come on, tell it. There’s some more. You found her: she hadn’t drawn on her hose?”

“Did she speak to you?” Aunt Beck in a voice of dread asked.

“Yes’m. Before I got her picked up. She said, ‘What was the trip for?’ ”

“The trip?” several of them chorused.

“But she hadn’t been anywhere, had she?” asked Aunt Beck.

“We was equals. I didn’t come with any answer,” said Mr. Willy. “Well, she picked the wrong one to ask. It’s the chance you are always taking as you journey through life. I just raised her up and carried her to her bed. But she didn’t even know that. She was past it.”

Granny was glaring up at him from the head of her table.

“And now they’re all moving in on her and they’ll set up with her all night,” he told her.

“Granny’s not scared of old Willy Trimble,” said Miss Beulah, there at her side.

“She’s sized him up,” said Granny.

“Granny’s not scared of Satan himself, is she?” cried Uncle Noah Webster.

“She’s pretty venturesome,” said Granny.

“And they’ll bury her in the morning,” Mr. Willy told them at large. “Want to go?” He smiled for them like a little girl. Then he
pulled a chair quick under him and sat on it as if modesty had captured it for him. It was Brother Bethune’s, only one chair away from Granny’s own. “Now I didn’t come to the table to catch your bites,” he declared.

“Will you take a slice of cake in spite of yourself?” Miss Beulah cried at him, glaring. “Then take some of Lexie’s pound cake that’s going begging.”

“I ain’t choicy,” he said, using both hands.

“Well, Gloria, if you hadn’t changed your ways, an end like that was what might’ve been in store for you,” said Aunt Birdie. “Glad you’re married now?”

Aunt Cleo pointed at Gloria. “What makes me wonder is the school system. How’d it ever get ahold of
her?
”

“Gloria Short won the spelling match from over the whole state when they held it in Jackson and she was twelve years old. In the Hall of Representatives in the New Capitol. Schoolchildren against the Legislature—Miss Julia Mortimer’s idea. And an orphan spelled down grown men. It gratified Miss Julia’s soul, she said,” recited Miss Lexie Renfro. “She coached that child so she could go to Alliance High School and keep up with ordinary children, till she got a diploma like they did, and she boarded her in her own home while she did it. She put her on the bus after that and sent her to Normal, headed to be a teacher. Miss Julia Mortimer was given to flights like that.”

“How did she get to be so rich?” asked Aunt Cleo.

“A teacher? Not by teaching,” said Mrs. Moody. “Ask one.”

“She sure didn’t have anything of her own? In that case she’d have quit,” said Aunt Cleo.

They laughed at her. “Miss Julia Mortimer quit?”

“Taught to put herself through school in the first place,” said Miss Lexie. “Just like anybody else.”

“The year she boarded me and sent me to high school, she had Banner School to keep open herself. And she said she’d do that if she had to walk over the backs of forty supervisors. That’s when she put some cows in the back and fenced her pasture,” Gloria related. “And we milked them, before school and after.”

“I never milked for her,” said Miss Lexie, and Mr. Willy Trimble laughed. “Contending with a pasture full of cows takes about the same amount of strength out of you as teaching a school-room
full of children, I’d judge. But she contended—because she was of the opinion nothing could lick her.”

“Then she had fruit bushes and flower plants for sale, and good seed—vegetables. She had a big yard and plenty of fertilizer,” said Gloria. “She’d sell through the mail. She wouldn’t exchange. But she’d work just as hard trying to give some of her abundance away.”

“Well, you have to trust people of the giving-stripe to give you the thing you want and not something they’d be just as happy to get rid of,” said Miss Beulah.

“She put her lists in the Market Bulletin. She had letters and parcel post travelling all over Mississippi,” Gloria said.

“I don’t imagine she ever made her postman very happy,” said Aunt Birdie. “Carrying on at that rate with that many poor souls makes work for others.”

“One year, she sent out more little peach trees than you can count, sent them free,” said Gloria, and they laughed.

“Her switches?” Uncle Noah Webster teased.

“These were rooted,” said Gloria. “Came out of her orchard. She wanted to make everybody grow as satisfying an orchard as hers.”

“I believe you. Listen! I got a peach tree from her, travelling through the mails. And so did everybody on my route get one. Didn’t ask for it,” said Uncle Percy. “Why’d she waste it on me? I’m not peach-crazy.”

“I remember too. I only supposed it was from somebody running for office,” said Aunt Birdie. “And voted accordingly.”

“I give her peach tree room, and saw it get killed back the second spring. Didn’t remember it was hers. Don’t know how it would have eaten,” said Uncle Curtis.

“It would have eaten good and sweet,” said Gloria. “She wasn’t fooling.”

“I plain didn’t plant mine,” said Uncle Percy.

“Good ole blood-red Indian peach will ever remain my favorite,” said Aunt Nanny. “I could eat one of mine right now.”

“Did she keep you trotting?” asked Aunt Cleo of Gloria.

“She expected me to do my part,” Gloria replied. “I hoed. And dug and divided her flowers and saved the seed, measured it in the old spotted spoon. Took the cuttings, wrapped the fresh-dug plants in fresh violet leaves and bread paper—”

“You sound homesick,” said Aunt Beck. “Or something almost like it.”

“And packed them moist in soda boxes and match boxes to mail away. I wrapped her directions around the peach trees and tied them with threads and bundled them for the postman.”

“You was trying to keep on like Miss Julia herself? With those dreamy eyes? Honest?” asked Aunt Birdie.