Losing Battles (65 page)

Once through Banner, the road climbed steep as a stepladder onto the bridge that was suspended narrow and dark as an interior hallway between the banks of the Bywy, somewhere down there out of sight.

“Why, we’re right back in mortal sight of
that!
” Mrs. Moody’s face, looking at the way they’d come, became mapped in pink. “For all we’ve travelled!”

“It’s never been any secret that on Banner Top they’ve almost got Banner in their laps,” said Gloria. “I’m glad it’s further than it looks, or nobody’d ever be out of everybody else’s call.”

“And is that the road we just came down?” Mrs. Moody demanded.

“The thing that looks like a sliding board is. That’s the straight part,” said Jack.

“Those same two churches!” protested Mrs. Moody.

“And here is Curly’s store, where you can ask for anything you want,” said Jack.

As he spoke, a busy-walking little person switched out of the store and down the steps. She popped her eyes and put out her tongue at Gloria.

“Hi, Imogene,” said Jack.

“Jack Renfro, listen-a-here, the first thing you do, I want you to climb up and scrub your name off that water tank where you wrote
it up there with mine,” she said. “You can leave my name up there
all by itself
. I evermore mean it.”

“Just as cute and bowlegged as ever,” Jack said to Gloria as Imogene Broadwee wagged herself away. “And the very one for Curly here to marry. I’m going to tell him a good way to go about it.”

“I’m going to use the telephone,” Judge Moody interrupted. “Better late than never.” He climbed the steps of the store. Nailed one to a post across the front were posters, each with its picture of Curly wearing a hat, and coming out from the crown on rays were the different words “Courteous,” “Banner-Born,” “Methodist,” “Deserving,” and “Easy to Find.” A hide was stretched and nailed on the wall over the doorway, where it appeared to hover, like a partly opened black umbrella not too unlike Miss Ora’s. Judge Moody stumbled over the scales as he found his way in.

The smells of coal oil, harness, cracker dust, cloth dye, and pickles clung about the doorway. Judge Moody could be only dimly seen where he stood at the telephone; among the boots and halters hanging from the beam above his head, shirt-tails of every description, old and new, were visible like so many fading banners of welcome.

“Hey, Curly, today is here at last!” Ella Fay Renfro cried.

There where the sawmill spur came out of the bushes into the railroad track, she and Etoyle and Elvie stepped off into Banner. Ella Fay piled her books on the little sisters and sent them dragging themselves inside the school. With a skip she came running across the road.

A fatuous look spread over Curly’s face and he said, “Well, look who they’re sending to pay the store!”

Jack punched him in the nose.

“And there go Brother and Jack again, not looking a bit different or a day older since the last time they was at it. But you do, and I do,” Miss Ora Stovall remarked to Gloria. “Just don’t bring it in the store!” she yelled at them, as Captain Billy Bangs drummed his heels on the porch floor and gave a clap once or twice with his hands.

Jack drove his fist again and Curly, losing his baseball cap, staggered backward until he fell against the open door of the truck and slid to the ground. Some whimpers began coming out of his mouth like small, squeezed tears.

“Jack, that hurt!” Gloria cried. “I hope landing that blow was an accident, not something you learned at Parchman.”

Ella Fay squatted down, put both her little white hands around the ham of Curly’s arm, and said, “I was only coming to ask him for a dime’s worth of candy corn.”

“Haul up, little sister!” Jack told her. “Didn’t you learn you a lesson when he took Granny’s gold ring?”

“I should worry, I should care!” said Ella Fay. “I made
him
give
me
something!” With all the haste her wet fingers could manage, she unlaced the throat of Gloria’s sailor dress, turned back the collar, and displayed what she wore on a calendar cord tied around her neck: a pearl-handled pocketknife an inch long. Both little fingers extended, she rapidly undid the knot behind, and with a brief scream of pleasure showed it to them in turn, laid on her sweet, horny, greedy little palm. “So we’re evens. We exchanged,” she said, blushing at last.

“Why, you little sneak!” cried Gloria.

“But that’s all we did,” said Ella Fay back. “So what if the old ring did go down the mouse-hole? I know who’d get me a new one. Hear, Curly?”

Curly Stovall laughed and sat up. Re-tying her calendar cord, dropping the knife expertly down her front while she gave a brimming glance around her, Ella Fay told Gloria, “Watch and see! I can be a bride too. You can’t always be the one and only!” She turned and pounded splashing into the schoolhouse.

“Curly! You threatening to marry Ella Fay? Curly! That’s coming into my family!” Jack said.

“Jack, you’re turning red all over,” said Gloria. “You’re going to pop.”

“Curly! Our battles’ll be called off before they start! We’ll all be one happy family!” Jack cried. “I’ll have to bow you a welcome into my own house where I can’t lather you!” He pulled Curly to his feet and yelled in his face, “With Uncle Homer out of the running, we’ll even have to vote for you from now on!”

“And you all vote as a family. That’s a hundred votes right there,” said Curly. He put his baseball cap on again, visor to the back.

“Curly, I’d give you something. I’d almost give you the truck, like it stands, not to marry into us. Want it for a present?”

Curly stopped laughing and put out his jaw. “I ain’t going to take no present off of you.”

“I’d just as soon give it to you as look at it,” said Jack hotly.

“Jack!” screamed Gloria, running to stand beside it.

“It’s yours! It’s yours, Curly, take it! I dare you!” said Jack.

“I ain’t gonna!” shouted Curly.

“It’s yours on a silver platter. Take it right now! And get out of my family before you get in it.”

Curly’s fist landed under his jaw. Jack rose on his toes as if about to fly, then toppled, and the foot of the telephone post cracked him on the forehead. He rolled over and spread out on his back. His good, wide, blue eye was still fixed where he had just turned it—the blue was nearly out of sight in the corner, as if something might still be coming around the edge of his cheek.

“Jack! Jack!” said Gloria. “Can you see day?”

“Now gimme that shirt-tail, boy!” Curly shouted. He whipped out his big hunting knife, and rolled Jack over and cut his shirt-tail off.

“Oscar, aren’t you going to referee?” cried Mrs. Moody, as the Judge reappeared on the porch.

“Maud Eva, I am not a referee,” said Judge Moody.

“Well,
I
am! Listen here, Buster, Jack was down there on the ground lying helpless as a babe!” Mrs. Moody cried to Curly. He ran with the shirt-tail past her into his store. “And you big bully you, you cut his shirt-tail off!” she called after him. “That’s no fair!”

“I knew it would happen some day,” said Gloria. She had Jack’s head in her lap, and sank back against the telephone post that rose like the gnawed pith of a giant stalk of sugarcane behind her.

“It’ll learn him! Trying to give me his truck! What’s he trying to call himself? Rich?” cried Curly, hammering the shirt-tail to the cross-beam with all the other shirt-tails.

“I can’t even get hold of the operator,” said Judge Moody through the blows.

“If anybody’s dead, she’s at the funeral,” said Miss Ora Stovall. “Gets her a crowd and
goes
. Try her about dinner time.”

“Just lie there,” said Gloria, stroking Jack’s brow. “You don’t know a thing that’s going on.”

“We’re stranded. Worse than yesterday. Stranded,” said Judge Moody to his wife. He pointed. “And what’s the boy doing down on the ground?”

“Didn’t you hear the crack to his head?” Mrs. Moody asked. “I don’t see why his wife doesn’t simply shake him.”

“Completely stranded,” Judge Moody said, and over the river a church bell rang. In the rainy air it was no more resonant than a bird call. Now, on this side of the river, from up the road, a car descended into Banner and ran through it onto the bridge.

The air rang as though anvils were being struck for a mile around. Before the bridge had stopped swaying, another car followed the first one down Banner Road, and two more, travelling close together as if keeping each other company, ploughed splashing up out of the crossroad coming from Foxtown, streaked and red-wheeled with mud, all of them. They all went the same way, onto the bridge, under the old tin sign saying cross at own risk. Miss Ora Stovall had already put her finger out and started counting them.

“These people don’t know it, but they’re lucky not to be meeting that funeral,” shouted Mrs. Moody over the racket. “It’s nothing but a one-way bridge.”

“They’re going to the funeral, I should say,” said Judge Moody, looking at his watch again.

“Oh, Jack,” Gloria said under the clanging, “you don’t even hear our bridge. When we were young we used to chase each other on it, back and forth, like running through a cat’s-cradle.”

Another car bounded past. “Not one soul looks this way. You’d think they’d inquire if there’d been an accident,” shouted Mrs. Moody.

“They’re from Ludlow,” said the Judge.

“Then I should be thankful they’re
not
looking.”

“They’re driving like they’re mad,” said Miss Ora Stovall, looking satisfied.

“I expect they’ve already tried every other road they can find,” said Mrs. Moody.

Finally there was only the barking of the dogs and the chirping of the truck in their ears. The truck motor, all by itself, still ran, having never been cut off. Mud still poured from it as it shook, thick drops like persimmons being steadily rolled out of buckets.

“Well, you only had to wait,” said Mrs. Moody, still speaking loudly. “It comes without being called, Judge. Here’s your wrecker.”

“Now
that’s
something
new
,” said Miss Ora.

A wrecker clattered up out of the crossroad and over the rail-road
track into Banner. It had had a coat of red paint, but the black hieroglyphics of a more recent soldering job overlaid the paint on most of the body parts. Rocking and splashing through the puddles, it made its way past the Buick and went straight for the truck. It backed up in front of it. On the driver’s door was lettered in black, as if by a burning poker, “Red’s Got It.”

The driver got out, hopped a puddle, landed in front of Curly Stovall, and said, “How much did you bet you’d never see me again?”

“Mr. Comfort!” said Curly.

“And look there. Who give him that souvenir?”

“He bumped his own head to make that rising. And his eye just got a kick from a dear little baby,” Gloria retorted. She held Jack’s head in her lap. His good eye was still rolled as if to see around the corner of her knee.

“You give us a shock, Mr. Comfort!” cried Curly. “Who’s letting you run around loose in that wrecker?”

“Started working for old Red this morning. First job he give me was come over to Banner and haul him in this truck.”

“Come back and see me day after tomorrow, Mr. Comfort. Better make it Saturday,” said Curly urgently.

“I may not have to work on Saturday,” said Mr. Comfort. “Hope not.”

“Oscar, aren’t you going to speak to him?” cried Mrs. Moody. “He’ll go off without my car if you don’t speak to him. He’s shifty-eyed.”

“Just a minute, there. Mister, do you see this Buick?” asked Judge Moody.

“Yes sir, looks like a booger’s had a fit in it,” said Mr. Comfort. “But I didn’t have no orders about a Buick. My orders was Stovall’s truck.”

“Well, it just don’t do any good to say good-bye to anybody,” said Miss Ora Stovall.

“But you can’t carry it off now!” Curly cried, blocking the older man’s way.

“Old Red got wind a while ago he better git it while the gitting is good,” said Mr. Comfort. “Make way, Curly.”

“What’s he want with your truck, Brother?” asked Miss Ora Stovall. “Is it a prime secret?”

“Wants the parts,” said Mr. Comfort. He ducked around Curly,
hopped puddles to the truck. He started thumping its sides as if it were a watermelon and he were a judge of ripeness. “Is it at all in good shape?” he asked with pursed lips. “Seems like I already smell a little smoke somewhere.”

“It’s most likely coming out from a thin place in your own hide,” Captain Billy Bangs said from the bench.

Curly was splashing around Mr. Comfort, who was trying to hitch a chain, while his dogs came and tried unsuccessfully to bite through Mr. Comfort’s boots.

“Hey, Jack!” Curly hollered. “Jack, are you dead, possuming, or what?”

“Wake him up, girl! Give him a slap!” Mrs. Moody called. “We need him quick.”

“He’s sleeping so trustfully,” said Gloria. She laid her ear to his chest. “His heart is beating right along with mine.”

“Do you want him to be
sorry?
” cried Mrs. Moody. “Listen, that rascal’s running off with his truck when he doesn’t know it—and won’t take the Buick to the shop like Judge told him. Swat him!” she cried to Curly, as Mr. Comfort put out a hand and cut off the truck’s motor.

“He’s an old man!” bawled Curly. “He’s Aycock’s long-lost daddy!”

Mr. Comfort wiped off his hands and vaulted the step into the wrecker’s cab.

“Mr. Comfort, ain’t you staying here even long enough to vote?” cried Curly.

“I’m voting in Foxtown now.”

“Mr. Comfort, I could tell you some news you might be interested in hearing,” called Miss Ora Stovall. “This very morning they’re burying another lady in your grave. Don’t you want to stay for that?”

“No, I’ll just be running on. I just come to git this truck while the gitting’s good. Tell my little family hello and to keep praying for me,” called Mr. Comfort.

The wrecker engine started with a sound as mild as a sneeze, then delivered a volley of backfiring. The two vehicles began moving together. The wrecker shook harder than the truck; it looked as if the pieces of the bed they had passed on Banner Road might have gone into making it.