Losing Battles (51 page)

Again Judge Moody groaned.

“Judge, I believe you’ll make up your mind to forget this blood-kin business,” Mrs. Moody said.

“What? Now, just a minute, don’t go so fast, Maud Eva!” he said. His face grew darker as the blood ran into it. “I would just like a little evidence. My kind of evidence.” He scowled around at the family. “Though as far as that goes, there’s very little of that left now for any of us—that we were ever born, were married, had children—that any of our family have died, where they’re buried.”

“You’ve got your family Bible, haven’t you, with it all down on the page?” cried Miss Beulah.

“No deeds to say whose the land is. No tax receipts, no poll books. There’s no written proof left that any of us at all are alive here tonight. We’re all in the same boat.”

“What kind of people would burn down a courthouse?” cried Mrs. Moody.

“Varmints,” said Granny. “They’re all around us.”

“Well, go on from there,” said his wife impatiently to the Judge.

“And here,” he said, with his eye on her, “they’ve told a patched-together family story and succeeded in bringing out no more evidence than if their declared intention had been to conceal it. Now this cousin story may be fact, but where is the present proof of it?” he asked the company. As Miss Beulah started to speak, he shook his head at her. “I saw there was a postcard,” he told her. “It was signed ‘Your loving husband.’ That could have been their manner of speaking, you know, calling themselves husband and wife, real enough to them—meaning to make it a lawful union when he got his soldier’s leave. But a postcard isn’t the same evidence as a license to marry, or a marriage certificate, and even that—”

“It’s better! There’s a whole lot more of Sam Dale in that postcard, if you know how to read it!” Miss Beulah cried. “And Granny
saved it from destruction, kept it in her Bible, showed it to you! Granny’s word is as good as gold, don’t you believe it? She’s better than any courthouse, anywhere on earth.”

“Oh, yes. Yes ma’am, I believe her word,” Judge Moody said, moving his weight a little, leaning forward to let Granny hear him. “But I’m not wholly persuaded that this lady is always saying exactly what you think she’s saying. Be reminded it’s her birthday. She’s a privileged character.”

Granny’s eyes moved along their slits and fixed on him. She still didn’t speak. The others looked at him too, except for Jack, Gloria, and the baby, who clung together all one.

“Look at ’em, all hugging. They’s victims of justice, all three,” Aunt Birdie said, pointing. “I love ’em more than ever. What’s ever going to become of ’em?”

Miss Beulah glared at Judge Moody. “Well, you don’t have long to enjoy your little bit of foolish hope, do you?” she said. “But we’ve got to look after that little scandalous, haven’t we?” She came to meet Judge Moody eye to eye, just as when he came breaking in at the dinner’s start. “And with you to listen, and Granny not moving to stop me, I guess I’m going to have to tell it. And save ’em myself.”

“Now, Mother,” said Mr. Renfro.

“I believe to my soul we’re misjudging one, and him not here tonight to stand up for his own innocence, and that’s Sam Dale Beecham. And so I’m just going to silence you, everybody!” said Miss Beulah.

“Mother, I believe I’m going and put up the evening bars,” said Mr. Renfro, leaving them.

“I know good and well I punished the poor little fellow when he was in dresses and I was too little to know better how to watch over him!” cried Miss Beulah. “Judge Moody, Sam Dale wasn’t no more likely than you are now to be responsible for Gloria being in the world.”

“Don’t, Beulah,” Aunt Beck pleaded. “We didn’t come here to cry, I keep on telling us.”

“Something happened earlier than anything else to Sam Dale Beecham, and the main reason I’m in torment when I think about him is they all blame me. Yes sir, you do!” she cried to Granny, whose expression did not change.

“Mama,” said Jack, “you wouldn’t do harm to your own little brother. Now that’s something you ain’t going to make us believe.”

“Then try listening,” she said harshly. “Sam Dale’s a little fellow sitting up close to the big hearth—still in dresses. I was supposed to be minding him but I don’t know and can’t ever remember what I was doing instead. Coal flew out of the fire and hit in his lap. Oh, it was a terrible thing! Granny called for some slippery elm for it and I said I’d go, I’d go! And instead of settling for the first elm I could find—instead of settling for the closest-to, I had to send myself farther and farther and farther, hunting for the
best!
For what’s good enough to help what I’d done? They thought when I came running back late with that slippery elm that I’d dawdled along the way.”

“Wasn’t all your fault, Beulah,” said Aunt Beck, as the silence lengthened itself. “No big sister nor anybody else could tell a spark to keep from flying out of the fire.”

“Grandpa whipped me himself. The only time in his life. Granny still lives to blame me,” Miss Beulah told Judge Moody, bending forward to see into his averted face. “They had me to grow up in torment for little Sam Dale.”

“Jack’s stricken, Beulah. Jack can’t stand to hear ’em cry,” said Aunt Beck.

“Neither can Oscar,” said Mrs. Moody.

“Beulah always feels like she has to tell some of that story to the old folks before she lets us go,” Aunt Beck said, sighing. “But I never heard it come out sounding any sadder than today, now that she’s given us all of it.”

“Is it evidence?” Mrs. Moody asked her husband.

“Hearsay. Hearsay,” Judge Moody’s voice rumbled, and when it stopped there was a silence of fresh amazement.

“Well, I don’t know what the whole
world’s
hanging on by!” cried Aunt Birdie in a voice of indignation. “While it’s waiting to get proved it’s there according to Judge Moody!”

“This one’s a sadder story. But not for that reason does it stand up any better as proof,” said Judge Moody quietly to Miss Beulah. “They didn’t have a doctor, I suppose,” he said, and waited for what seemed a long time.

When Granny spoke, she said to Miss Beulah with shaking
lips, “They’ve just carried me the message. He didn’t last through the crisis.”

“God takes our jewels,” came the soft response from the porchful.

Judge Moody said over them in a heavy voice, “Never mind any more. I’ve succeeded only in worrying another old lady.”

Granny said, “Far from home. Under Georgia skies …”

“It’s that baby. I think we’ll have to close one eye over that everlasting baby,” Judge Moody said in the same heavy voice. “You end up doing yourself the thing you hate most, the thing you’ve deplored the loudest and longest,” he said to Uncle Nathan, the one who was looking at him now, with fixed eyes, over Granny’s bowed head. “Here I am, taking the law into my own hands.”

“Well,” said Uncle Percy in a remote whisper, “that ain’t such a poor idea. It’s a whale of a lot better idea than going to Alabama.”

“Take the law in your own hands? These people have never let it
out
of their own hands,” Mrs. Moody said to her husband. “And I think that goes for your precious Miss Julia too. A tyrant, if there ever was one. Oh, for others’ own good, of course!”

“Hush, everybody,” Miss Beulah commanded. “Judge Moody’s standing up again. I think this time he’s going to do his part for the reunion.”

For a moment he stood silenced. “It’s that baby,” he said. “I think we’ll have to leave it that what’s done is done. That there was no prior knowledge between the partners. And no crime.”

“We can just bury it. With all else she knew,” said Mr. Renfro, walking back from just within the passage and standing beside him. “The schoolteacher.”

“Well, it’s wonderful the way the Lord knows how to work things out,” said Aunt Birdie brightly to Judge Moody.

“I hope that means the world’s all right again! And that Jack can stay home a little longer this time!” cried Aunt Beck.

“I knew that’s what you were going to have to do,” Mrs. Moody said to her husband. “You’d have saved time and caused fewer tears to do it when I told you.”

“I suppose, if I was the first of Miss Julia’s protégés, this girl was her last,” said Judge Moody with a sigh.

“She expected too much out of you too, Oscar,” Mrs. Moody
said, and he all at once sat down.
“Now
what have I said wrong?”

“Are you going to say ‘Thank you,’ Gloria?” asked Aunt Beck anxiously.

Mrs. Moody was holding Gloria’s eye. “You had a talent for spelling. And some early determination.” She granted her two short nods. “And what did you have besides?”

“She was an orphan child with nothing in this world and nobody knew who she was—” began Aunt Birdie.

“Youth,” Judge Moody said shortly. “Her life before her.”

Lady May opened her mouth and let out a long, welling cry.

Gloria said, “Miss Julia saw
promise
in me,” and opened her bodice.

“Poor little scrap of mischief!” Mrs. Moody broke out. “She can’t satisfy nature like that. And honestly, if a child is old enough to wear
pockets
—”

“She eats at the table too!” Gloria cried back at her. “She gets common, ordinary food just as well as this. What I’m seeing to is she doesn’t
starve
!”

Dead silence greeted her. Aunt Nanny grabbed Jack and seemed to hold him from falling. Miss Beulah came up to Gloria in measured steps. Then she said, “All I’m thankful for this late, Gloria, is that Grandpa Vaughn didn’t last long enough to hear that. Has a soul in this household ever been allowed to starve yet?”

“And when Jack jumps out in those fields tomorrow, he’ll resurrect something out of nothing. Don’t you know he will?” cried Aunt Birdie.

Aunt Nanny said, “And Jack will butcher the hog. You’ll tide yourselves over, one year more. And the cow will freshen—”

“I beg your pardon,” Mrs. Moody said to Gloria.

“Granted,” said Gloria, nursing.

“You see, Judge Moody, and Mrs. Moody, now that Jack has come home to stay, everything’s going to look up. It’ll all be on his shoulders,” said Uncle Curtis. “Trust him.”

“Young man!” cried Mrs. Moody. “Jack! Merciful fathers! Is my car still there where Judge left it?”

“Running in good tune,” said Jack, standing with his hand on the baby’s head. “Uncle Nathan’s piece of work is still holding. I went down and apologized for Aycock to his mother, and when I told her where he’s spending the night she gave the credit entirely
to me. And Aycock says he enjoyed his dinner and the same thing again for supper would be all right.”

“Then what took you so long?” cried Miss Beulah. “Too much tried to happen while you tarried!”

“I had to tell Aycock about the new teacher that’s come to board at their house, Mama,” said Jack. “Young, green, and untried, and just the right medicine for him. I’m going to get behind him and help him marry her.”

“I forgot all about what was pitched on the edge of a forty-foot drop!” said Mrs. Moody. “And oh, Oscar, where are we going to lay our heads tonight?”

“I very much fear that by this time that question’s been settled for us,” Judge Moody said.

“I think it’s about time for us to take a little prettier view of ourselves,” said Miss Beulah. “Go bring out my wedding,” she told Elvie. “Stand on a chair and reach careful.”

Elvie trotted inside, then there came from the company room a shattering noise. It sounded like handclapping. She came hurrying back with something made out of thin cardboard that had rolled up tight from both ends. Miss Beulah took it carefully and opened it out as if she uncoiled a spring, then carried it over to Granny’s chair to hold it where the old lady’s eyes might fall on it and where the rest might stand to see. It was nearly two feet long, seven or eight inches high.

“The only picture that ever was made of our whole family,” Miss Beulah said, while a crowd gathered behind her shoulders.

The earlier company had lined up three deep that day on the front porch and steps of this house where they themselves were now. They stood then in April light; the house stood dark, roof and all, as a woodsy mountain behind the water-splash of the bride.

“That’s me,” said Miss Beulah. “That’s you, Granny. And there’s Grandpa, Granny.”

At the apex of the group stood a medium-tall, upright lady with black hair showing under her hat, with her hand over the arm of the
man standing in a preacher’s stance; a crack in the surface had split his beard like lowered antlers.

The old lady didn’t say a word.

“Remember, Mr. Renfro? The man on the mule that happened along to take the picture? Cranked it off, packed up and rode away, never saw him or his mule again. You fished out and paid that fellow I never knew what, and it was a month coming! Rolled like a calendar! I remember how hard it was for fingers to get it unrolled. It’s been propped twenty-five years on its shelf with two flatirons to hold it, but it still likes to roll up on you—step on the wrong floorboard and see.”

“I give him a silver dollar for it,” said Mr. Renfro. “And never saw that man evermore.”

“Just one of life’s wayfarers, a picture-taker,” said Miss Beulah. “You was up on crutches before that picture got back to us.”