Losing Battles (63 page)

“We’re all going the same place, Mrs. Judge! Curly, I’m going to let you ride in my truck, all the way, sitting high to the wheel if you want to. And Judge Moody’s Buick’ll bring you in behind him.”

“Right under the nose of my trade?” he yelled. “My voters?”

“Curly, make up your mind to be towed,” said Jack.

“There’s always
something
to come along to shorten the tail of the rabbit. Remember that, Stovall,” said Miss Lexie Renfro.

Judge Moody had just backed the Buick into place.

“But I don’t hear it choking any longer, Oscar,” said Mrs. Moody.

“Neither do I. No, I can’t get another spark out of it, I’m afraid,” said Judge Moody.

“So you brought it here to me and that’s as far as you can go,” Mrs. Moody said to the Judge. “That was a short distance.—Stay out! Stay out! I don’t want to see you getting in my engine, even with my car on the ground!” she called at Jack’s back—he’d rattled up the hood. “Oscar, blow the horn at him!”

Jack put up his head. “Listen!”

It was another horn that blew. The flying school bus came down on them, around the mailbox and past the truck and the Buick, and Jack with a shout ran chasing it.

“Stop! Stop!” he hollered, until the stop-flag dropped down, the bus swerved, and he caught hold of it.

Vaughn put his head out the window.

“Scoot out and give me your bus,” said Jack.

“I fixed it easy. I’m on my way to school!” Vaughn cried.

“Just what we need, and just in time, and I hadn’t even missed it!” Jack said.

“It’s my first day to drive it,” Vaughn cried. “I ain’t even let my sisters in on it, to cramp my style—they walked the sawmill track.” The engine kept on with its excited, sibilant sound like uncontrolled whispering.

“Vaughn, it can be your first day tomorrow.” Jack with a still bleeding hand reached in and patted Vaughn’s scrubbed one. “Just
get it in line at the front of that Buick and hop out. I only wonder if you sparked that battery the way I would.”

“It’s no blooming fair,” said Vaughn, accepting it.

“The rain has washed that thing off some,” said Mrs. Moody, looking disapprovingly at where the headlight sockets were still empty and the grille and the front bumper were both still missing. This morning, dimples as big as children’s faces were visible, pressed into the yellow fenders. The metal of the body showed itself punctured and in places burned. The words “Banner Bob Cats” had come out across the front under the roof. “It’s bound to be the same bus. And we’re going behind it, Oscar?”

Judge Moody’s cheeks puffed out, holding in his reply.

“All right, Vaughn, you go hunt Judge Moody’s towline. Look under the jumping-off place, down on the ledge, if we still got a ledge,” said Jack. “I’m going to give his rope a fair try.”

“My tools and my towline are back in the car where they belong,” said Judge Moody. “Under the back seat.” He began to get them out again, while Jack went leaping up the other bank.

In a moment there came a kettle-drumming that went sounding on forever, it seemed, before it was swallowed up. “We got one sturdy fellow!” Jack said, running back to them. Stained red and black, and heavy as a live snake, it hung looped and dripping over his scratched, muddy arms.

“You let that bucket fall back in, Jack, and there went one thing you won’t get back just by asking for it,” said Miss Beulah. “That well goes to China, and your Great-great-granddaddy Jordan himself was the stubborn old digger. Might even be his bucket.”

“And that’s what you’ll use to pull a truck and a car both from here to Banner?” asked Miss Lexie. “Tied to the Banner School bus? It’s a well rope, is all it is.”

“If a thing didn’t have but one use to it, Lexie, I’d just let you have it,” said Miss Beulah. “Mind!” she cautioned Jack. “That soppin’ rope’s heavier than you are!”

“Mama, I believe this morning it’s wetter outside that well than in,” he told her, as the two brothers went hurriedly to work knotting, Vaughn doing just as Jack did.

“Still not enough to get us all in one!” said Jack. “Now what?”

“I brought along a rope of my own,” said Vaughn, with a glance up Banner Top. “In case what happened to him was to happen to
me.” From under the driver’s chair in the school bus he got out a neatly coiled rope with a big knot in it. Mr. Renfro’s axe and a length of chain were stowed there too. Jack had it all out of his hands at once.

Only a few moments later he hopped to his feet and asked Mrs. Moody, “Will you have a seat in the school bus now, Mrs. Judge? It’ll give you a front view of the road.”

“Not in my seat!” Gloria pleaded.

“Thank you, I’ll ride where I can keep the best eye on my car limping along in front of me,” she said.

“You choose the truck?” exclaimed Judge Moody.

“Then it’s a little bit careful with where you put your feet, Mrs. Judge,” Jack said, boosting her into the cab of the truck, “while I work you in from behind.”

Mrs. Moody screamed, “Why, there’s no floor!”

“Hook one foot onto that good two-by-four across the front end there, Mrs. Judge, and swing the rest of you over,” Jack said. “Mind out for biting springs.”

“She’s got a horse blanket to her,” Curly Stovall said, pointing.

“Curly, the only reason I’m letting you back in this truck one more time is my wife wouldn’t trust nobody but me to drive the school bus,” said Jack. “Judge Moody, I’d be obliged if you’d set between ’em, and while Mrs. Judge keeps her eye on the Buick, you keep your eye on Curly.”

“That is what I intend doing. I’ll keep my eye on everybody,” he said. He climbed in, Curly Stovall pushed in after him and threw his weight on the steering wheel, and Jack’s dogs and Curly’s dogs leaped into the bed of the truck together. “But I will not travel with those dogs—Bedlam on top of Bedlam,” the Judge said. “Dismiss those dogs.”

“And they’re wet in addition to the rest,” said Mrs. Moody.

Jack ushered the dogs out, and they split as if for a race, some of them pounding down the road and the rest trundling one another onto the path that started around Banner Top.

“Now, have you boys got all that hitched perfectly? I’m not sure yet I place what’s holding all that array in one piece, exactly,” Miss Beulah cried.

“Trace chains, well rope, Moody towline, fence wire, and Elvie’s swing, ma’am,” called Vaughn.

“Well, I’m not as sure as you are that Elvie was through with that swing. Jack, whatever happens, promise you come back with that swing to give back to Elvie. She’ll cry if you don’t,” said Miss Beulah, all agitation now, her hand already starting up as if to wave good-bye.

Now Jack whistled and was answered by a whinny.

“What do we need with that terrible mule?” Mrs. Moody exclaimed as Bet showed herself at the top of the farm track.

“All going in one,” said Jack. “And I believe Bet’s recruited me one extra on her own.”

The black mule and then a white mule came slipping down the home track, passing and re-passing each other.

“Brother Bethune’s mule has just been waiting to be shown the way home,” said Vaughn. “He won’t need to eat no more for a week.”

“By the time we’re loaded with children too, we’re going to need that extra mule power,” said Jack. “Add him on.”

“What children?” cried Mrs. Moody.

“The schoolchildren. Vaughn ain’t the only one. Mrs. Judge, we got to deliver all the poor little souls that’s starting to school this morning,” said Jack. “If they’re late, the teacher’ll give ’em a hiding.”

“Now there’s Vaughn on Bet, partnered with Brother Bethune’s mule, both heading up the school bus with Jack at the wheel, and the truck with Stovall and the Moodys inside, and the Moodys’ pleasure car tied on in the middle. Like a June bug about to be hauled home to dinner by a doodlebug and a yellow butterfly and a couple of ants,” said Miss Lexie. “There! I’ve got something to tell Mr. Hugg.”

“No, Vaughn! You hitched to the wrong end. You and the mules are going last!” Jack hollered. “You’re the brakes!”

“Don’t you know how to pull the emergency?” Vaughn said with scorn.

“I know how. But if there’s one thing in the world I wouldn’t put my faith in, Vaughn, it’s the emergency on the Banner School bus,” said Jack. “You’ve got two good mules. Each with their own good record of behavior. I trust one as much as I do the other.”

“But they’ve never worked together,” Judge Moody interpreted.

“And they won’t gee,” said Miss Lexie.

“I’m counting on ’em,” said Jack. “I want ’em right behind.”

“Here comes somebody else. But I don’t reckon he’s any help,” said Miss Beulah. “He’s just the letter carrier.”

“You can pass us right here if you whip your pony up fast and follow the tracks through my ditch, Mr. Wingfield!” Jack called.

“No letter for you,” said the mailman to Gloria. “You mailing one on the route?”

“I don’t ever have to write any more letters,” she told him.

“I’m glad
for
you.”

“If it isn’t the iceman too!” said Miss Beulah. “Look, coming the other way. Watch out, everybody, you’d hate to collide with that ice.”

“It’s my ride,” said Miss Lexie, handing her a wad of damp cloth. “I enjoyed wearing your pillowcase.” For the moment, she exposed to the rain Miss Julia Mortimer’s birdwing. After the ice wagon had maneuvered its way around, Jack ran back to boost Miss Lexie up.

“Miss Lexie? You still teaching the public?” asked the driver of the ice wagon as Miss Lexie rose foursquare into the air.

“If I said I’d given it up long ago, that make you any happier?”

“I heard they’re fixing to bury one now in Banner,” he said when she was up on the box beside him.

“Get a wiggle on,” said Miss Lexie. “Carry me till you can set me down at old man Hugg’s front gate.”

“There goes Lexie, back to something she knows,” said Miss Beulah, as the ice wagon banged on away.

Then Miss Ora Stovall stepped on the running board of the truck. “Hope you don’t mind if I slide in on your lap,” she said, and sat down on Mrs. Moody. She was the only clean, dry person left. White powder on her face gave her a complexion that seemed to have a pile, like cat’s fur. Her cheeks were burdened down with a pink like that of excitement, which extended all the way to her ears.

Mrs. Moody, with Miss Ora on top of her, put up one hand overhead, exploring. It stayed helplessly raised.

“It’s raining,” she told Judge Moody piteously. He reached and brought the curtained door shut on roofless, floorless space.

Jack leaned out of the bus. “Now, who’re we about to go off and leave if she don’t run for it?”

Gloria ran and hopped lightly up the steep iron step, swung
herself inside, and perched on the seat behind the driver’s, where she folded her hands over the back of his wobbly chair.

“Don’t let that parade get away from you, Vaughn! Vaughn can’t rob a hen’s nest without Jack to tell him, Vaughn is not Jack, and never will be,” Miss Beulah confided at the top of her voice into the truck.

“Oh, Jack,” Gloria sighed at the same time into Jack’s ear from behind him, “this is the way we started out. Our first day.”

They shot forward. Creaks, booms, gunlike reports, the rattling of bolts, splashings underneath, and the objections of mules from behind added themselves to the high-pitched motor of the school bus leading.

“We thought things was bad
last
year,” Miss Ora began to Judge Moody. “Thought we was poor
then
. Compared to now we was all millionaires and didn’t know it!”

There was not a close fit to the hood covering the truck’s engine. A piece of the motor was almost under their noses, glistening like a chocolate cake. Mrs. Moody peeped around Miss Ora and saw it.

“Suppose it starts working!” she exclaimed. “Oh, what’ll I do with my feet?”

“Hold ’em!” Jack called back.

The three big hulks ploughed their joined-up way down Banner Road, moving as they’d never been before and never would be again, in one another’s custody and in mule custody, above the ragged gullies and under the shaved clay hills that were shining as though great red rivers were pumping through their hearts.

The rain, that was falling on everything more gently than the rays of yesterday’s sun, had been just enough to spoil the hay and to part Sid’s hair down the middle. He was joining them now, going first, leading them all. As they came along faster he ran faster too, jumping over puddle after puddle, rocking himself like a little chair to jump over the big ones.

“I’m taking the liberty of unsnapping these rain curtains,” said Mrs. Moody. “If they were doing any good for the roof of my head, I wouldn’t object, but they are decidedly mildewed.”

“Don’t ask me to hold ’em! I’ve got all I can hold. All,” said Miss Ora. In her lap, besides the umbrella, was a big purse of black leather that was turning gray along the seams and around the corners, the same gray that hair turns in old age.

Mrs. Moody gave the curtains to Judge Moody to hold. She peeped again, ran her eyes up and down the claybanks and frowned at the sky on top. The procession dipped across a creek bridge, limber as a leather strap.

“It’s just some more of what was served to us yesterday,” she said.

“No, the world doesn’t do much changing overnight,” said Judge Moody.

“And this is the edge of nowhere, no two ways about it. Don’t try telling me there’s people living along here,” Mrs. Moody said, when big shepherd-type dogs ran out from where they guarded the entry to some little track, barking to greet Sid, trying to bite at the tires of the school bus, barking everything on past.

“Follow them buggy tracks back far enough and you’ll see houses for ’em. Oh, there’s plenty customers still hanging on.” Miss Ora laughed there on Mrs. Moody’s knees.

“Brakes, Vaughn!” Jack sang out, and the line of them jerked, tugged almost to a stop. A handful of children with schoolbooks held over their heads waited by the side of an Uncle Sam mailbox.

“To the back!” Gloria commanded as the children scrambled shrieking inside with her, while their dogs, the shepherd-type, like members of the neighborhood family, then tried to get on the bus.

“Get back in that road, Murph!” said Jack. “Get that tail out of here. Sid’s the only dog that knows how to ride with me.” He whistled and Sid entered and sat up by the gear box, panting. He sat as close to Jack’s foot as Gloria sat close to his head.