Losing Battles (7 page)

“Oh, I’m beginning to feel sorry for Curly, I can’t help it,” Aunt Beck warned them. “It’s a human deserted from far and near.”

“Are you telling me Gloria wouldn’t cross a dirt road herself to help a human fight free of his coffin?” asked Aunt Cleo. “What was she doing?”

“Teaching,” spoke up Gloria. “Teaching ‘Sail on! Sail on!’ ”

“She was in her schoolroom where she belonged, trying her little best to hold down a flock of children she was just beginning to learn the first and last names of,” said Aunt Beck gently.

“I was getting through my first day about as well as I expected,” said Gloria from the yard. “Then when the storekeeper started making more noise than all seven grades put together, it was time to step out on the doorstep and speak to him.”

“Oh-oh!” cried Aunt Nanny.

“I called for his attention. I said this was the teacher! I told him he was interrupting the recitation of a hard-learned piece of memory work and not doing the cause of education any good. And I told him all that work to attract attention had better stop right quick, because my opinion of Banner was fast going down.”

“Oh-oh!” several exclaimed.

“He gave very little more contest till he heard my last bell,” said Gloria. “People will learn to measure up if you just let them know what you expect of them.”

“Where’d she get all that?” giggled Aunt Birdie, and Miss Lexie dipped her knees and rocked back to laugh.

“Green or not, if she’d been doomed to teach on, little Gloria might have needed to be reckoned with,” said Aunt Birdie. “Some day.”

“Don’t forget. She knew who to copy,” said Miss Lexie.

“Then I reckon Curly Stovall just had to wait for Jack to come on back to have enough mercy to pull him loose and finish the fight,” said Aunt Cleo. “Who won?”

“Know what? Jack never did get back to the store to so much as even untie him,” Uncle Percy put his head on one side and told her. “You can try naming your own reason.”

“Curly Stovall belongs to be tied. That’s one,” Aunt Birdie offered.

“It’s a plenty. But there was some reason why somebody did untie him,” Uncle Percy went on.

“It was Aycock Comfort and he don’t need no reason,” said Uncle Curtis.

“Who’s Aycock Comfort and what’s wrong with
him
?” asked Aunt Cleo.

“He’s a Banner boy and a friend of Jack’s. What’s wrong with him is he ain’t Jack,” said Uncle Noah Webster, with an expansive smile for his brothers.

“Had Aycock followed Jack over from school, like he follows him everywhere else? And straggling?” asked Aunt Birdie.

“Aycock ain’t even reported to school. Ain’t even heard there’s a new teacher. He’s just ready for a sour pickle. It’s just as Miss Ora Stovall finds it’s time to slice off some meats for her greens,” said Uncle Percy. “She walks in on the vision of Curly in the coffin and she lets forth one cackle. ‘I’m going to put that in the paper!’ she says. She writes Banner news for
The Boone County Vindicator
. ‘What happened to you?’ ‘School threw open this morning!’ he says. ‘Get me out of this harness!’ ‘Jack Renfro must have made up his mind mighty sudden to go on with his education,’ she says, seeing what kind of knots it was. “If you-all just wouldn’t bring it in the store!’ ‘If you could just get me loose!’ says Curly. So Aycock borries the knife out of the store cheese and saws through the clothesline with it. And Curly hollers, ‘Now who’s going to buy that, Aycock, after you been slicing on it?’ Pore Aycock, it looks like anywhere he goes he has a hard time finding him any gratitude,”

“One more way he’s a different breed from Jack,” said Aunt Beck.

“So Miss Ora says, ‘Take your pickle and go, Aycock, and stand out of busy folks’ way. Me and Brother don’t want to see this high varnish get scratched.’ Plants her feet. Takes a good hold of that brother of hers and she pulls. And she pulls. Till out he comes
like a old jaw tooth, hollering. She had to give the pull of her life to do it, and declares to the passing public she ain’t over it yet,” Uncle Percy said.

“And as soon as she’s out of the way, Curly whirls and cuts off Aycock’s shirt-tail. And if Aycock don’t pick up a little two-ounce popcorn-popper and come running at him while he’s nailing it up!”

Uncle Noah Webster said, “Percy, you don’t give Aycock no credit at all. I feel like it was at least a churn dasher!”

“Well, he’s running full-tilt with it. And right in time for the crack, in comes Homer Champion!”

“That’s my sister Fay’s husband,” Miss Lexie told Aunt Cleo. “I’m going to get you one person told before you ask.”

“And look out for him today,” said Uncle Noah Webster. “He’s a certified part of this reunion.”

“Well, Homer comes rattling up and bringing in his bucket of eggs—he’s on his egg route. ‘Homer Champion,’ says Curly, ‘you’re justice of the peace—why won’t you come to the phone? I been smothered, tied and robbed, pulled on by a hundred and seventy-five pound woman, and hit a good lick with a churn dasher! Made a monkey out of by who ought to be in school, talked back to by a eight-ounce schoolteacher! Everything but have my phone used free! Well, here’s Aycock by the ear—I caught you one of ’em. And you can catch you the other one. You grab hold of Jack, put ’em under arrest, and haul ’em off to jail, both of ’em.’ ”

“ ‘Did I understand you to say
Jack
?’ says Homer Champion.

“ ‘Now he’s a safe robber!’ says Curly. ‘You can catch him easy when he gets back to drive the school bus.’

“But Homer Champion says, ‘Curly Stovall, did you suppose you could trick me that easy into riding my own wife’s brother’s oldest boy through the country clear across Boone County all the way to Ludlow to put him in jail—the whole Banner School basketball team in one?’ ‘That’s what I want,’ says Curly. ‘I got a good mind to throw something at you,’ Homer says. Or so he tells it.

“ ‘Now will all three of you get out from under my feet so I can clean up the store?’ says Miss Ora, coming in to take the eggs away from ’em. ‘Before that tide of children floods in here when the last bell rings? I wish you didn’t have to act so countrified.’ She sends Curly to the pump to wash some of it out of him.”

“If I’d been Curly, I’d been mad at all of ’em, her included,” said Aunt Cleo.

“He wasn’t overly pleased,” said Uncle Curtis. “Now, it’s the last bell, and without a minute wasted in pours the whole horde of children for their penny stick of fresh gum to chew in the bus going home. Then they all pour out into the bus, and Jack ain’t quite back yet.”

“Didn’t the new teacher know enough to wait on him?” teased Aunt Birdie.

“She says, ‘Long skinny red-headed boy without any books, come here to me.’ That’s Aycock, standing there gawking at her. ‘What is your name and grade?’

“ ‘Aycock Comfort, and I thought I’d quit.’

“ ‘I’m putting you to further use,’ says she.

“ ‘Well, I’m not the one they generally calls on,’ says Aycock.

“ ‘You’re more than tall enough to see over the steering wheel,’ she says. ‘I’ll let you carry this load of children as far as they live.’

“ ‘If I can get it to crank, all right,’ says Aycock. ‘I rather drive a pleasure car, but slide in.’ The Comforts never says ‘Thank you’ for a favor. They say that’s because they’re fully as good as you are. But the teacher don’t slide in with
him
. ‘Just carry the children,’ she says. ‘I need to wait for the elected driver to get back here so I can give him his punishment. You are just the substitute.’

“Put Aycock right back in the seventh grade. He’d been out of school four years, but Jack had had to give it up for five, so as to give the little ones a chance to start. And now, for the new teacher’s sake, he’s determined to do everybody’s work and let her teach him too. The whole five months of it out of the year.” Uncle Percy’s voice failed him for a minute.

“Little did Jack know, when he started back to school that morning to try out the new teacher!” Aunt Nanny said with a wide smile.

“Little did Gloria know!” Aunt Beck said. “With the tumult over, I reckon she just sat down in the school swing to wait for him.”

“He had to ride her home on his horse, holding on behind him!” said Aunt Nanny.

“Why, Nanny, he sat her up in the saddle, and come home leading him,” said Miss Beulah. “And the cows had been calling to him since sundown.”

Gloria raised and let fall her shoulders in what looked like a
sigh. Out there with her flew the yellow butterflies of August—as wild and bright as people’s notions and dreams, but filled with a dream of their own; in one bright body, as though against a head-wind, they were flying toward the east.

“All right, did the ring ever turn up?” asked Aunt Cleo.

“Cleo, what in the name of goodness did you think we ever started this in order to tell? No’m!”

“Sure enough? How hard you look for it?” she asked.

“Listen! We
all
looked till the sun went down and we was putting our eyes out trying to see,” said Miss Beulah, coming to the head of the passage. “Combing the woods and pasture and that creek bank and the weeds and the briars! Here on this farm it was every hill of corn, every stick of beans—and Jack had those rows as clean as I keep this house, didn’t he? And this family knows
how
to look! If something’s trying to hide from us, we’ll find it! But the blessed ring fooled us.”

“Ha ha,” Ella Fay spoke from the yard.

“And I’ve got a good eye on you!” Miss Beulah called to her. “I want to see you twine Grandpa’s stand so thick with honeysuckle that Brother Bethune’ll have a hard time finding
it
.”

“Well, if you didn’t see the ring anywhere, I hope you got all the money picked up,” said Aunt Cleo.

“
What
money? Curly’s money?” Uncle Noah Webster was asking through their shouts of laughter. “Have you heard of anybody yet that pays that billy goat cash?”

“Will you tell me where on earth they elect to keep what they run the store on?” Aunt Cleo demanded to know. “They have to keep change.”

“In Ora’s purse I think you’ll find the majority of it today the same as then. Though I’m not trying to tell you she ain’t got a sugar bin too, if you want to go knocking down the door and tromping in the house to make sure,” said Miss Beulah. “I don’t. I don’t go
in
their house.”

“Sister Cleo,” Uncle Curtis said, “before Curly slapped in that gold ring, he’d put very little else in that safe worth taking out.”

Aunt Birdie said, “Miss Ora kept a thing or two of hers in
there that she don’t consider it nobody’s business to go through.”

“Her pincushion, her needles and thread, and her scissors are all things I’ve seen her reach out of there,” Aunt Beck said. “Her specs. Bah.”

“And there’s that big pot o’ rouge she piles on her cheeks on Saturday,” said Aunt Nanny.

“The only thing anybody ever found was the mortgages,” whispered Uncle Percy. “They was all together in one pile in the bed of Panther Creek. Hadn’t been a single drop of rain to fall.”

“Who found those? The mortgages?” Aunt Beck asked with a sigh.

“Vaughn Renfro, the little brother, and run to carry ’em straight back to the store—all Curly had to do was snap on a new rubber band. Ants had eat up the old one, but left the signatures alone. Sure is a pity the weather had been so dry.”

“Just pull me out of this chair. Lead me in your woods. If all you want’s that ring, I bet I could turn it up,” Aunt Cleo said with spirit.

Miss Beulah was back out here, holding an egg in her hand as if ready to crack it. “Sister Cleo, if you’re the one knows and can tell where that ring rolled to, you’ll get a more wholehearted welcome out of this family than you’ll ever know what to do with,” she said. “But the truth is you don’t know, nor I don’t, nor anybody else within the reach of my voice, because that ring—it’s our own dead mother’s, Granny’s one child’s wedding ring, that was keeping safe in her Bible—it’s gone, the same as if we never had it.” She returned to the kitchen, and hard, measured strokes began in a bowl of batter.

Granny spoke. “Time’s a-wasting.”

“There, Granny, never mind,” said Aunt Birdie. “We’re all remembering it’s your birthday.”

“Bring him here to me, will you?” said Granny. “Don’t keep Granny waiting a good deal longer.”

“That’s what we’re doing, Granny—we’re bringing him,” said Uncle Noah Webster, going over to pat her shoulder, fragile as a little bit of glass. “Just as fast as we can.”

“And next morning at the earliest,” Uncle Percy continued, “weaving up the road to the house comes Homer Champion’s chicken van from Foxtown. And when it bucks to a stop, it’s two of ’em hops out—Homer and Curly Stovall! Just like they’s buddies.

“ ‘Here’s your proof, Homer Champion! Here’s my safe, and Jack’s turned it over to babies to play with!’ says Curly. ‘If they won’t give it back, you can arrest him!’ And it’s Etoyle and Elvie and Vaughn, Beulah’s three youngest, playing store to their hearts’ content under a chinaberry tree. And they don’t do a thing but quick sit down on that safe in a pile. Precious children, they don’t get many play-pretties up this way.

“ ‘Climb off my safe!’ says Curly. ‘If you don’t, old Homer’ll carry you to jail, all in one load!’