Losing Battles (45 page)

“There you give a perfect little picture of the battle of nursing,” said Aunt Cleo.

“But it was only if I’d hold out her pencil to her that she’d come quiet.”

“A pencil?” cried Aunt Birdie. “A common
pencil?
”

Gloria drew breath. She was turned to face the deep blush of distance, out of which the cows were coming in now, the three in a line. Their slow steps were not quite in time to the tinkling, as though their thin-worn bells rang for what was behind them, down the reach of their long, back-flung shadows, back over Vaughn’s shoulder and his shadow as he drove them home.

“Yes’m, pencil! And you want to see the way she wrote?” asked Miss Lexie, and she showed them, while her hands went on sewing.

“Wrote with her tongue spreading out?”

Miss Lexie smacked her lips at them. “Like words, just words, was getting to be something good enough to eat. And nothing else was!”

“Lexie, you’re about to ruin this reunion in spite of everything, giving out talk of death and disgrace around here,” exclaimed Miss Beulah. She cried to the others, “Take away her needle, if that’s what sewing brings on.”

Granny’s eyes raced from one face to another, as though here at her table she had somehow got ringed around by strangers. She breathed in shallow gasps, striving hard to hear the voices.

“I wouldn’t have wanted to be shut up with Miss Julia Mortimer too long, myself. She might have brought up with something I wasn’t inclined to hear,” said Aunt Birdie.

“She was just doing harm to herself, wearing herself out like that,” said Aunt Beck.

Miss Lexie cried out, “I didn’t think just writing letters could hurt her! But reckless? She’d tell ’em! Let ’em know she’s afraid of nothing! Speak out whatever’s the worst thing she can think of! Holler to the nurse for tablet and pencil! Lick and push! Lick and
push! Fold it and cram it in the envelope till it won’t hold one word more! Bring up the stamp out of hiding! And say, ‘Mail it, fool!’ ”

“Oh, were those real letters?” asked Aunt Beck.

“Is there some other kind?” asked Judge Moody from his same school chair. The ladies paused at his voice, and Gloria’s hands let fall her handkerchief and reached up to her cheeks.

“I’ve heard that licking an indelible pencil was one sure way to die,” Aunt Birdie said.

“I’ve seen her wetting that pencil a hundred times a day—it wasn’t very sharp. Opened up that old Redbird school tablet and up would come her pencil and out would go her tongue and away she’d fly,” said Miss Lexie. “And send that old purple pencil racing, racing, racing.”

“Didn’t you tell her it’d kill her?” asked Aunt Nanny.

“For the thanks I’d get?” Miss Lexie dipped back to laugh.

Gloria said over her head, “She wouldn’t have quit writing just for your satisfaction. I’ve known her to correct arithmetic papers with a broken arm. But I never knew her to lick a pencil before.”

“What’d you do with those letters, Lexie? Throw ’em in the pig pen?” cried Miss Beulah.

“I don’t want to say.”

“You threw ’em in the pig pen. So I guess it didn’t make any difference who they was to.”

“I said, ‘Listen, Julia. If you’ve got something this bad to say about human nature,’ I said, because I skimmed one or two of ’em over, ‘why don’t you go ahead and send it to the President of the United States? What do you want to waste it on us for?’ ”

“And I’d believe it of her! My, she was vain! Was vain!” Miss Beulah cried, in a voice of reluctant admiration. “To the end, I should say?” she asked Lexie.

Miss Lexie replied without a sound—only opened her mouth as for a big bite.

“Yet, the littler you wish to see of some people, the plainer you may come to remember ’em,” said Miss Beulah, with some darkness. “Even against your will. I can’t tell you why, so don’t ask me. But I can see that old schoolteacher this minute plainer than I can see you, Lexie Renfro, after your back’s turned.”

“In the long run, I got her pencil away from her,” said Miss Lexie, speaking faster. “I could pull harder than she could.”

“What’d she do then?” asked a voice.

“She just wrote with her finger.”

“What’d she use for ink, a little licking?”

“Yes’m, and wrote away on the bedsheet.”

There was a stifled sound from Judge Moody. Aunt Beck said with a sigh, “I’m glad for you you couldn’t tell so well by then what she was saying.”

“And I pulled off the hot sheet and she wrote on, in the palm of her hand.”

“Wrote what?”

“Fuss fuss fuss fuss fuss, I suppose,” Miss Lexie cried.

The chorus of locusts came through the air in waves, in a beat like the brass school bell wielded with full long arm, all the way up to the yard, to the forgotten tables, to the house, to where the setting sun had spread its lap at that moment on the low barn roof.

“Lexie, will you please quit going around on your knees and with your tongue hanging out?” asked Miss Beulah. “There’s some may not be able to appreciate that.”

Even when it was Miss Beulah, Granny gave each speaker a bewildered look, her little head shaking as it turned from one to the other.

“I was tacking in my hem,” said Miss Lexie, staggering to her feet.

“Well, we’re all getting there, I suppose. And it won’t be long before the baby of us all—!” Aunt Beck murmured.

“Oh, I could tell it wouldn’t be long,” said Miss Lexie. “I hid her pencil, and she said, ‘Now I want to die.’ I said, ‘Well, why don’t you go ahead and die, then?’ She’d made me say it! And she said, ‘Because I want to die by myself, you everpresent, everlasting old fool!’ ”

“She didn’t know what she was saying,” said Aunt Beck.

“That’s just what she did know!” said Miss Lexie.

“Take away her needle,” Miss Beulah commanded.

“Some things you don’t let them make you say,” said Miss Lexie. “And I don’t care who they are.”

“But does that mean it’s better to just come off and leave ’em?” asked Aunt Beck, and slowly one of her hands went in front of her face to shield it.

“I had the reunion to come to, didn’t I?” Miss Lexie retorted.

The barn was a gauzy pink, like a curtain just pulled across a window, and Vaughn was coming in now with the cows and the dogs. With the sun as low as where the cows swung their heads, the brass nubs on their horns sent a few last long rays flashing. Then all marched slowly into the folds of the curtain.

“One thing I didn’t hear, if you told it,” Aunt Cleo said. “I’d like to know what disease was eating of her. Did anybody ever find out, or did they tell?”

“Old age,” said Miss Lexie. “That do?”

“Now are you satisfied, Lexie? Now will you set?” cried Miss Beulah.

“You don’t get over it all that quick—what some of ’em make you do,” returned Miss Lexie. “But I’m
through!
” she said to Gloria, as though the girl had cried out. She dipped her head close to Gloria’s leg and bit off the thread. “It was nothing to hurt you, now was it?” She lifted the girl, roughly enough, and set her down on warm ground.

“At least we know who it is, can see who you are now, Gloria,” said Aunt Birdie.

“Look at those skinny little legs, everybody, like a sparrow’s,” said Aunt Nanny, coming to tie on her sash.

“Petticoat shows now,” said Auntie Fay.

“And remember from now on,” Aunt Beck said, “every little move you make, Gloria, is still bound to show on that sash. Every little drop you spill. Every time you get up or down, it’ll tell on you.”

“Hey, Gloria,” said Aunt Cleo. “With all those scraps and without half trying”—she pointed to them, organdie scraps as pale as the scraps of tin that still lay around from the roofing, ready to cut open a foot—“you could make Lady May a little play wedding dress, just like yours.”

“
Where is my baby?
” Gloria cried.

Aunt Nanny barred Lady May’s path with a big quick arm. She caught the child up and hugged her. “And you was a pretty good little secret yourself, wasn’t you?” she asked her.

Lady May struggled, got free of her, ran from her and from her mother too, and vanished behind the althea bush with its hundreds of flowers already spindling, like messages already read and folded up.

Miss Lexie gathered up the scraps and balled them, to drop into her own gingham pocket.

“Last reunion, it was Mr. Hugg. And we had it all to hear about him,” said Auntie Fay.

“I knew you’d say that, Sissie.”

“Hugg? Thought he had the Ludlow jail,” said Aunt Cleo.

“Jailer had a daddy, didn’t he? This is his daddy,” said Miss Lexie.

“Isn’t
he
worse than
her?
”

“I sit there and he lays there, Fay. When I see his eyes fly open, I get ready for him.”

“Sister Cleo, Lexie first took care of an old man in the bed named Jonas Hugg, kept house for him, fed him and his frizzly hen. And the old man’d just as soon pitch the plate of grits back in her face if she tried to get him to eat it,” giggled Auntie Fay.

“Looking back, I don’t mind Mr. Hugg one bit,” warned Aunt Lexie. “I don’t mind him any longer.”

“And if she went for more grits, peed in the bed to pay her back for it.”

“I’m above it,” sang Miss Lexie. “I’m above it. Him and his money belt too. He’s just exactly one hundred percent what he seems. Bad Boy.”

“Why did you ever bother to leave him for her? They’re all the same,” Aunt Cleo told Miss Lexie.

“No. Mr. Hugg cries. And the
first
day, he clapped his hands together just to see me coming!” said Miss Lexie. “He was glad to see me at first and didn’t hide it.”

“The thing to remember is they change,” said Aunt Cleo, with a nod toward Granny. “And you and me will do the same, I hate to tell you.”

From the moving swing above them, El vie pointed to far away, to the edge of what they could see. There stood the moon, like somebody at the door. One lop-side showing first, the way a rose opens, the moon was pushing up through the rose-dye of dust. The dust they’d breathed all day and tasted with every breath and bite and kiss was being partly taken from them by the rising of the full, freighted moon.

“When I first went to Miss Julia, I loved her more than Mr. Hugg, now I love Mr. Hugg more than her—wish I was back with him now! These are his socks,” Miss Lexie said, cocking her ankle for them. “I’m still busy wearing out some of his socks for him.”

A thrush was singing. As they all fell quiet, except for Miss
Lexie dragging her own chair back to the table, its evening song was heard.

Granny heard that out too. Then she whispered, and Miss Beulah put her head down.

“I’m ready to go home now.”

Miss Beulah put her arms around her. Granny, as well as she was able, kept from being held. “Granny, you
are
home,” said Miss Beulah, gazing into her grandmother’s face.

“What’s she getting scared of?” asked Aunt Birdie.

“Granny’s not scared of anything.”

“Afraid we’ll all go off and leave her?” asked Aunt Beck.

“Please saddle my horse,” Granny said. “I’d like you to fetch my whip.”

“Granny, you’re home now.” Miss Beulah knelt down, not letting the old lady with her feeble little movements escape out of her arms. “Granny, it’s the reunion! You’re having your birthday Sunday, and we’re all around you, celebrating it with you just like always.”

“Then,” said Granny, “I think I’d be right ready to accept a birthday present from somebody.”

Miss Beulah moved a step back from Granny’s chair, and there she sat where everybody could see her. Her lap was holding a new white cup and saucer, and on the ground around her rested everything else she had untied from its strings and unshucked from its wrappings, all their presents—a pillow of new goose feathers, a pint of fresh garden sass, a soda-box full of sage, a foot-tub full of fresh-dug, blooming-size hyacinth bulbs, three worked pincushions, an envelope full of blood-red Indian peach seeds, a prayer-plant that had by now folded its leaves, a Joseph’s-coat, a double touch-me-not, a speckled geranium, and an Improved Boston fern wrapped in bread paper, a piece of cut-glass from the mail order house given by Uncle Noah Webster, a new apron, the owl lamp, and, chewing a hambone, the nine-month-old, already treeing, long-eared Blue-tick coonhound pup that any of her great-grandchildren would come and take out hunting for her any time she was ready. And there behind her, spread over her chair and ready to cloak her, was “The Delectable Mountains.”

“You’ve had your presents, Granny. You’ve already had every single one,” said Miss Beulah softly.

Granny covered her eyes. Her fingers trembled, the backs of her
hands showed their blotches like pansy faces pressed into the papery skin.

“Just look around you,” said Miss Beulah. “And you’ve thanked everybody, too.”

Then Granny dropped her hands, and she and Miss Beulah looked at each other, each face as grief-stricken as the other.

By now, the girls’ and boys’ softball game had gone on, it seemed, for hours. But now the teams trailed in, Ella Fay Renfro in front tossing a sweat-fraught pitcher’s glove. Children too tired to sing or speak could still blow soap-bubbles through empty sewing spools, or hold out their arms and cry. Little boys raised a ring of dust around them too, galloping on cornstalk horses and firing a last round of shots from imaginary pistols over their heads. A hummingbird moved down the last colored thing, the wall of montbretias, as though it were writing on it in words.