Losing Battles (41 page)

Gloria cried out, “It’s the grave that looks ready to go slip-sliding down the hill and into the Bywy!”

“That’s right,” said Miss Beulah. “And by this time the whole tribe has pretty well followed suit and gone to the grave behind her. I reckon what keeps Captain Billy Bangs alive is purely and solely trying to outlive Granny.” Then she took a step toward Gloria. “I ought to have known you on sight, girl. The minute you walked in my house with your valise and satchel and the little setting of eggs for the teacher’s present, and unsnapped the elastic on your hat. You might have been poor, frail, headstrong little-old Rachel Sojourner all over again. Why didn’t I just stop in my tracks long enough to think a minute?” She looked at Granny. “Why, that day, when Granny came in from the garden with a bushel of greens in her apron, she stopped in front of you and said, ‘Aren’t you under the wrong roof, little girl?’ ”

“ ‘No ma’am,’ I told her. ‘
I
haven’t made a mistake—I’m the teacher.’ And her greens fell right down on the floor, for us to pick up,” said Gloria.

Miss Beulah put a hand on the old lady’s shoulder and told Gloria, “You might’ve been the very same, the one that used to come to this house and help sew and stay a week at a time in our company room, sleeping with the teacher. Maybe it was hoped Miss Julia Mortimer’s head on the next pillow could talk some sense into her head!”

“Miss Julia Mortimer,” Miss Lexie retorted to Gloria before she could speak, “is exactly who
found
Rachel Sojourner, when that girl was fixing to die. Quivering and shaking she was, cm the Banner bridge. Miss Julia was driving across in her flivver, late leaving the schoolhouse, and it’s changing—turning cold, and getting dark. There’s Rachel! Her sewing pupil, that couldn’t learn mental arithmetic. Miss Julia stopped and commanded her to halt right there and stop giving the appearance of being about to jump in the river and climb in the car instead, and backed all the way back across the bridge, turned around in the school yard, and headed for Ludlow, lickety-split. ‘You’re on your way to a doctor, girl,’ she said. ‘No
time to waste sitting down and waiting for
him
. You’re blue!’ she said. ‘Have you got any stockings on? What do you mean, walking out without stockings—it’s icy!’ The thermometer’s dropped about forty degrees at a gallop—it’s April. Miss Julia stopped the flivver in the middle of the road, tore off her own stockings, put them on Rachel struggling, and wrapped her up in her own cape too, I wouldn’t put it past her, and rode her to Ludlow. By the time Miss Julia’s blowing her horn at the doctor’s front door, Rachel’s an icicle. But Rachel tells the doctor, when she can chatter, ‘I don’t care if it kills me, I wouldn’t be caught dead in Miss Julia’s old yarn stockings.’ She’d taken ’em right off again—using, I reckon, the last ounce of strength she had left. Then she went into a hard rigor. She wasn’t going to wear Miss Julia Mortimer’s old yarn stockings to Ludlow, and the cold got to her bones. That’s how she got pneumonia. She died when her crisis came.”

“I bet Miss Julia didn’t even catch a cold out of it,” said Aunt Birdie, shivering.

“Oh, she’s iron,” said Aunt Nanny.

All went quiet, except for those somewhere at the outer edges who were singing a round, “… 
gently down the stream. Merrily merrily
 …”

“Lexie, how is it you can furnish such a story?” asked Miss Beulah. “You must have picked that up from Miss Julia herself.”

“On one of her sunny days, back when, when she had confidence in my nursing, she let me have it,” said Miss Lexie. “But if there was a baby anywhere in it, she left it out for my benefit.”

“Well, Rachel had already had the baby,” Aunt Beck divined. “Do you reckon Rachel told Miss Julia some of her story on that long freezing ride?”

“No, not if she wouldn’t wear her stockings,” Aunt Birdie said.

“She’d just left her baby, and felt like it was a good time to come on home,” said Aunt Beck. “She could stand, and no more, I feel sure. Just put one foot in front of the other. And when she got to Banner—”

“The Easter Snap got her,” said Aunt Nanny, chopping at Beck with her hand.

“It dovetails perfect,” Aunt Beck said to Gloria. “Just too perfect.”

“I firmly believe the Sojourners wouldn’t let Rachel back in the house when she tried ’em. That was one tale,” said Aunt Birdie.
“Remember, now? What else drove her out on the bridge for Miss Julia’s eagle eyes to find?”

“Old Man Sojourner, when they sent for him to come after her at the end of it, had to take his wagon all the way to Ludlow. And he had another long ride back to Banner, bringing her home to bury,” said Miss Beulah. “That would have given him time to think.”

“That’s what brought forth the lamb,” said Aunt Beck to Gloria.

“Well, she’d long since left our house, and good riddance!—Oh, she came back once. She came back once, I knew as soon as I’d got the words out of my mouth. To help Granny out when I was busy fixing to marry Mr. Renfro,” said Miss Beulah. “Still sewing she was, then. Do you remember her being here, Mr. Renfro? I expect you don’t—just the groom.”

“Oh, without a question. I remember the dewberry-picking race,” he said.

She gave a short laugh. “Oh, yes, that came to try our nerves,” she said. “That was Rachel and one of these boys.”

“That was Sam Dale Beecham,” said Mr. Renfro. “Sam Dale and Rachel, each of ’em claimed in front of the whole table to be the best and fastest and most furious dewberry picker in the world. So nothing to do but for each to take a bucket and set on out to prove it. When each one’s bucket got full, they’d scamper back to the house here, empty the buckets in the big washtub, then scamper out again. Every trip, they’d just meet each other again back at the tub. They picked from first thing in the morning till last thing in the evening, when it was still a tie—am I right?”

“Don’t remind me of any more,” said Miss Beulah.

“They filled the tub and every bucket on the farm, and Sam Dale finally had to hollow him out a poplar log and fill that and come carrying it in over his shoulder. And Rachel still showed her bucket full to match him.”

“It must have been a plentiful year,” said Aunt Nanny.

“It was more than that, it was a matter of each of ’em vowing they could beat the other and neither being willing to give in,” said Aunt Birdie.

“They
called
it a tie,” said Miss Lexie.

“Blessed Sam Dale let her tie him,” said Aunt Beck sweetly.

“And where did all that carrying-on leave the rest of us?” Miss Beulah cried. “Poor Granny was back in the kitchen up to her elbows
in dewberries. What was she going to do with so much blooming plenty, and with a wedding right at her heels? She put up forty-nine quarts of dewberries that night before she give up and went to bed. Or was it sixty-nine, or ninety-six?”

Granny replied with a nod to all these numbers.

“Well, it may have been a tie the way you tell it, but I think Granny come out ahead,” said Aunt Nanny.

“By the time you was ready to be born, Gloria, looks like the dewberries had come around again,” said Aunt Birdie.

Gloria cried, “I wish you-all wouldn’t keep on. I know I’m better than Rachel Sojourner and her lamb. Nobody here or anywhere else can make me believe I’m in the world on account of any fault of hers.” She threw back her mane.

“Oscar, can’t you do ’em some good?” asked Mrs. Moody. “That would make some of this worthwhile.”

“Things that should be a matter of record in Boone County just aren’t,” said Judge Moody. “I can’t remedy that, Maud Eva.”

“There ain’t no more records. Not now, Judge Moody. They went,” said Mr. Renfro.

“I know about the courthouse fire,” said Judge Moody drily. “We’re still holding court in the Primary Department of the First Baptist Church.”

“Squatting on Sunday School chairs,” said Mrs. Moody, with a short laugh for him in the chair that held him now.

“Yes. I didn’t have to come to Banner to find out what happened in Ludlow,” said Judge Moody. “But what about the doctor who attended this girl? There’d be his record—or if that’s thrown away, he might come up with it out of his own memory, if he was tantalized long enough.”

“I think Rachel had that baby
by herself
” said Aunt Birdie, with a storyteller’s snubbing look. “Did the best she could, gave it away to the one who’d know best what to do with it, and let the good Lord take her.”

“Oscar, you know full well they could never get a doctor to plough his way up here,” said Mrs. Moody. “You’d have to go down on your knees to one and beg him!”

“Well,” said Mr. Renfro, with a warm eye cocked on Judge Moody, “I didn’t know that, and so when we had one ready to be born—” Miss Beulah gave a short laugh, and he went on. “I hopped to the store and took the phone and asked ’em to put me in
touch with a doctor in Ludlow, and the doctor said all right, he’d come. ‘Come to the old Jordan house,’ I says. ‘Everybody can tell you where that is.’ Well, it was already darkening up considerable by the time I got back here, and I see there’s a storm rising I never had quite seen the like of. I got a little anxious for fear a big tree might blow down right on the road and catch the doctor before he could get here. Lightning and thunder just flying! I was walking the gallery here, looking out for him. Never had seen the doctor and the doctor hadn’t ever seen me, but I told Beulah when a man said he’s coming he meant it, and for her just to hold on.

“Saw him coming, just burning the wind! He had a good horse under him, and the fire was just flying when the shoes hit down on those stones. First thing he did when he pulled up here was hand me down a great big gun he’d been carrying across his lap. I was the least bit surprised, I was half-expecting it to be his doctor bag, but that was the next thing he handed me. Then his saddlebags.

“ ‘You do a lot of hunting around here?’ he says, hopping down, and he wasn’t much older than I was, and I says, ‘I sure do, Doctor.’ ‘Well,’ he says. ‘I thought this sounded like a real good part of the world to go out and get squirrel. So tomorrow,’ he says, ‘if it clears and all, tell you what—let’s me and you go out and get us a bagful.’

“So the baby come that night, true to Beulah’s prediction, and the next day was clear—beautiful!—and me and the doctor went hunting. And that doctor, he didn’t go home for a week. Not till Grandpa invited him to come hear his sermon. He and I was out on the ridge every day of the world and we got all the squirrels your very own heart could wish for. Granny cooked all he could eat every night, and beyond that, when he finally told us good-bye, he had his saddlebags just loaded with pretty dressed squirrel. When he left me and Beulah and the baby and the old folks, he said he’d never had such a pleasant visit in his life. Carruthers was his name.”

“Gerard Carruthers?” protested Mrs. Moody.

“How much did he charge?” asked Aunt Cleo. “Plenty?”

“I’m sure it wasn’t too steep a bill for all he gave us,” said Mr. Renfro. “I reckon he knew when he started how little well we’d be able to pay it.”

“Grandpa Vaughn gave him something to put in his purse, I know,” said Miss Beulah. “No, we weren’t going to be thought beggars here!”

“So he’s been up here too,” said Judge Moody. “You got Gerard Carruthers too.”

“That’s Judge’s doctor,” cried Mrs. Moody. “Imagine getting him way up here!”

“It was some several years ago,” said Mr. Renfro. “Jack was the baby.”

“He even wanted to name the baby, on top of the rest of it,” said Miss Beulah. “I wouldn’t allow him. That’s Jack Jordan Renfro,’ I told him.”

“Try and get him to pay a house call today,” said Mrs. Moody.

“Lady May got here fine without a doctor,” said Gloria. “And I didn’t die either, like I might have, if I was a Sojourner.”

“You had Granny,” a chorus of voices rose to tell her.

“Beulah had Granny too,” said Granny. “Good thing.”

“But even Granny can’t prove I’m Rachel’s,” said Gloria. “Nobody can.”

“Then watch out—I can show you the proof right now,” said Aunt Birdie with fresh glee. “It’s coming right out to meet you this minute, and in front of our eyes.”

From under the skirts of the tablecloth Lady May came crawling out on hands and knees. Somewhere down there she had found a bone. She gave her mother a shout, as though she’d beat her to it. The bone had a live jacket of tiny ants.

“Like mother, like daughter! Isn’t that the old-timey rule? See there?” Aunt Birdie sang in a charmed voice.

Gloria opened her mouth but stood speechless.

“Go back, Red Roses,” Aunt Beck warned Lady May.

“Come here, Britches!” cried Aunt Nanny, and with a red arm she swept the child up. “Yes, you was a pretty good little secret yourself, wasn’t you?” she asked her.

“And don’t you wish she was yours?” The other aunts stood up around Lady May, opening their arms. “Come be mine!” “Come be mine!” They took her bone.

“Gloria, we didn’t come here to cry,” Aunt Beck said. “If we’d wanted to do that, we could’ve just stayed home, couldn’t we, everybody?”

“There’s two now,” said Aunt Nanny, as Lady May, from there in her lap, joined her mother in tears.

“There, let her go. I’ll tell you who it is she likes, it’s the men,”
said Aunt Birdie. “She’ll grow up to be a heartbreaker too, just watch.”

Lady May, down on her feet, ran past the uncles too, all sweeping their arms out to catch her, and saddled herself on Judge Moody’s foot in its city shoe. At once it stopped swinging, though she belabored his silk-clad ankle with her little hand.

Miss Beulah had been raising her voice at the aunts. “Birdie Beecham, and every one of you, now I want you to know something: I taught my boys to do the right thing, do you hear me? Jack Ren-fro never gave Banner community the first cause for complaint! He’d treat a girl strictly the way he’s been everlastingly told! And if something’s wrong,
she’s
to blame.”

“I always told myself the same thing you do, Beulah,” said Aunt Beck soothingly. “About my nine boys.”

“Hey! You mean to tell me Gloria here jumped the gun?” exclaimed Aunt Cleo.

Gloria stood straight and defied them, the same as when she had had to tell them her birthday was April Fool’s Day.