Losing Battles (8 page)

“And Elvie don’t do a thing but open the safe and tuck her little self inside and slam the door on him.

“ ‘Quit, you little mischiefs. Give it back to him like he says,’ says Homer. The safe ain’t hurt none, Curly, just the door needs a little lining up and oiling so it don’t hurt your ears. Let’s don’t have hard feelings. Let’s all just be friends.’

“Old Curly scrapes the other two children off the safe and yanks that door open and shakes Elvie by the foot. ‘Hand me the money out!’ he hollers.

“ ‘We never had any money but chinaberries, we’re too little,’ pipes Elvie out of the safe.

“And Curly, the big bully! Has to haul out Elvie kicking and fighting, and he pulls that safe right out through their little arms that’s twined around it! Elvie cried for her safe till dark.

“Etoyle knows enough to holler Jack from the barn. Here he comes, straight from the cow, carrying two full buckets, calling to say it’s never too early for company, and asking if they won’t come sit on the steps and enjoy a glass of foaming milk and the sunrise.

“ ‘Jack, you’re under arrest!’ says Homer.

“ ‘Jack threw the first bucket so fast! All that new milk right in Curly’s face.”

“Why not Homer Champion’s?” objected Aunt Cleo.

“Sister Cleo, it’s Homer that’s arresting him, but he’s married into our family—Mr. Renfro’s and Miss Lexie’s sister is his wife. And you know how Jack holds the family. And all ladies especially he holds in terrible respect.”

“Drummed it into him as a child!” cried Miss Beulah.

“Jack, though, had to set one bucket down before he could throw the other one—he’s like anybody else—and before you know it, old Homer’s give it back to him, the whole thing plumb in the face. Blinds him! Curly and Homer acting in harness lifts him
blind-struggling right into Homer’s van with the chickens. Some-wheres they find room in there for the safe too, and Curly climbs in after it and sits on it—Etoyle was quick enough to see he was holding his nose. Homer slams ’em all in together and drives off, without ever giving this house the benefit of a good morning. Little Elvie has to go to the kitchen and cry, to break the news.”

“Hasn’t Homer Champion changed his tune?” asked Aunt Cleo.

“He’s a little bit primed this morning. And a good thing he didn’t catch any of that milk, because it ain’t the drink he’s most overly fond of,” said Uncle Curtis.

“I still don’t see why Curly Stovall couldn’t do his own arresting,” said Aunt Cleo. “A marshal’s got every right in the world and a justice of the peace is very little better than he is.”

“Curly knew better, that’s why! So off Jack’s carted to Foxtown and shooed in jail. And Etoyle said Homer warned him before they started that if he give any more trouble resisting arrest he’d get a bullet ploughed through his leg.”

“Etoyle embroiders. What are you doing sitting down with company now, Etoyle Renfro?” asked Miss Lexie.

“I love to hear-tell.”

“You slip in here for what’s coming next? In time to hear how your poor mother cried?” Aunt Beck reproached her.

“Now, I’m not going to try to tell the way Beulah performed that night,” Uncle Percy whispered. “I ain’t got the strength to do it justice.”

“And you wasn’t here to see it!” called Miss Beulah.

“Well, how did Gloria here perform?” asked Aunt Cleo.

“Cleo! Gloria hadn’t got to be a member of the family
that
quick!” The other aunts laughed, and Aunt Nanny called, “Had you, Gloria!”

Gloria sat without turning around or speaking a word.

“Has she got good sense?” Aunt Cleo wanted to know.

“No indeed, she’s addled,” Miss Beulah came out to tell her. “And there’s not a thing I or you or another soul here can do about it. It’ll take Jack.”

“I’m wondering by now why even Homer Champion don’t get here,” said Aunt Cleo. “Unless he’s waiting for Jack to get here first.”

“Oh, I can tell you exactly what Homer’s doing. He’s sitting
jammed in a hot pew somewhere, waiting on the final Amen so he can shake hands with the whole congregation when they’re let out the door,” said Miss Beulah.

“The biggest, fullest, tightest-packed Baptist church he can find holding preaching today,” said Aunt Beck.

“Then he’ll hurry to shake hands again in front of the Foxtown ice house,” said Uncle Percy. “He’ll catch the Methodists going home to dinner.”

“He’ll figure a way to jar loose a few Presbyterians before the day of worship is over, if he can find some,” said Miss Lexie.

“How’s Curly Stovall putting in
his
last Sunday?” asked Aunt Cleo.

“He’ll think of some such thing as a fish-fry to sew up all the infidels,” said Miss Beulah, going.

“He figures he’s got the Christians hooked like it is, blooming storekeeper!” recited Elvie, in her mother’s voice.

“What’re you doing here, child?” cried Aunt Beck.

“Keeping the flies killed.”

“Well, sweetheart, your Uncle Homer Champion and Curly Stovall is in eternal tug-of-war for the same office now,” Uncle Noah Webster told her. “You ain’t likely to understand all you hear till you get up old enough to vote yourself.”

“Both in the run-off?” asked Aunt Cleo.

“Why, of course. And I don’t know how in the nation old Homer’s going to cheat him out of it,” said Uncle Noah Webster. “Homer’s my age. He can’t keep a jump ahead of Curly much longer.”

“Now to me,” Uncle Percy was quavering, “what they ought to had sense enough to do was throw this case out that selfsame day in Foxtown.”

“Think of the trouble it would have saved!” Aunt Beck sighed.

“To me and the majority,” Uncle Curtis said, “Jack had acted the only way a brother and son could act, and done what any other good Mississippi boy would have done in his place. I fully expected ’em to throw the case right out the window.”

“With nothing but a good word for Jack,” said Aunt Birdie.

“Well, if Jack’s that lucky, then Curly’s just wasting his time trying to arrest him,” said Aunt Cleo.

“Well, Jack
wasn’t
, and Curly
wasn’t
. So don’t go home,” Aunt Nanny teased her.

“Well, they was mighty hard up for a spring docket in Ludlow if Jack’s the worst fellow they could get Foxtown to furnish,” said Uncle Curtis.

“All right, Sister Cleo, would
you
call that a case?” asked Aunt Birdie in sassy tones.

They cried, “We’re testing you.”

“Now wait, now wait,” said Aunt Cleo. “I might could.”

“Why, you could no more call that a case for court than I could call my wife flying!” said Uncle Percy. He put his hand on Aunt Nanny’s shoulder.

“I
might
could,” said Aunt Cleo. “Even if all Jack got home with was the empty safe, I reckon you could call that safe-cracking. I don’t know what else you could call it.”

The beating in the kitchen stopped again. Miss Beulah came out onto the porch. “If Jack had wanted to steal something, Sister Cleo, he could have run off with Curly’s fat pig and butchered it and done us all a little good at the same time! My son is not a thief.”

“If a boy’s brought up in Grandpa Vaughn’s house, and knows drinking, dancing, and spot-card playing is a sin, you don’t need to rub it into his hide to make him know there’s something a little bit the matter with stealing,” Uncle Noah Webster cried.

“Throwing his case out of court,” said Uncle Curtis, “was the only thing for Homer Champion to do, so he didn’t. He bound Jack over to the grand jury. Homer swore he couldn’t afford to do anything else. They’d call him playing favorites. And said Jack hadn’t done himself a world more good the way he treated the Foxtown jail,” said Uncle Dolphus.

“Started nicking his way in a corner, prizing his way out as soon as he’d cleaned up his first dinner plate,” said Uncle Percy. “He worked faithful. But Jack is a Banner boy, and how was he to know that if you dug your way through the brick wall of the Foxtown jail with your pie knife, you’d come out in the fire station? Chief looks up from the checkerboard and says to him: ‘Son, I don’t believe I ever seen you before. You better turn around and scoot back in till they make up their minds what to do with you.’ And helped him scoot.”

“Well, when they got Jack told they’d have to lock him up a little better now and keep him till spring, Jack just told
them
he’s a farmer,” said Uncle Curtis. “Jack told
them
just exactly who he was and just exactly where he lived. ‘I got my daddy’s hay to get in the
barn, his syrup to grind, his hog to kill, his cotton to pick and the rest of it,’ he says. ‘His seed in the ground for next year. And I got my schooling to finish. I can’t be here to sit and swing my foot while you scare up somebody to try me,’ he says.

“So they told Jack, ‘Go on, then.’ And one of the other prisoners says, ‘We don’t keep room in the Foxtown jail for the likes of you country boys.’ ”

“And they let him go?” cried Aunt Cleo.

“Look out, don’t start to saying something good about the courts, Foxtown or anywhere else!” yelled Miss Beulah. “Not when Homer had the further crust to tell Jack if he didn’t show his face in Ludlow Courthouse on the very stroke of the clock when they called his name, he could look forward to being arrested the same way all over again. Don’t thank Homer! And don’t let me hear anybody start thanking Curly Stovall for putting up that bail!” She went.

“Now that was right outstanding of a Stovall,” said Aunt Cleo. “Say as much.”

“How else did he think Renfros was going to live? How else did he figure he stood a chance of getting a penny out of ’em?” laughed Uncle Noah Webster. “Oh, Jack he did sweat, early and late. And just when we didn’t need it, rain. And court creeping closer and closer. So the time come when we couldn’t stand sight of his face any longer and we had to tell him, ‘Jack! Before you get drug off to be tried in Ludlow, what would you most rather have out of all the world? Quick!’ And quick he says, ‘To get married!’ Didn’t surprise nobody but his mother.”

“You couldn’t say Jack hadn’t been showing signs. Now the year before, our guess would have been the little Broadwee girl,” said Aunt Birdie.

“Imogene? The one that’s timid?” grinned Aunt Nanny.

“Yes and she’s sitting there still.”

“He’s chased ’em all some. But when he singles out who he wants to carry
home
, he singles out the schoolteacher!”

“Was that a pretty good shock?” asked Aunt Cleo.

“Being as she’s already living here in the house and eating at the table, no’m,” said Aunt Nanny.

“Gloria had a choice too, even if you leave Aycock out. Curly Stovall was right across the road from that schoolhouse, with nobody but Miss Ora to look out for, enjoying a job on the public. And in
his store carried all she wanted. But she turned up her little nose at him.”

“He didn’t make a good impression on me, from the first time I saw him,” Gloria called in.

“But that year it’s our turn to board the teacher, no hope of rescue,” said Miss Beulah, coming to the head of the passage. “We’d spent the summer highly curious to see what they’d send, after the last old maid give up the battle. Well, here she came. The old fella that got it for superintendent of schools carried her up here in a car that’s never been seen in my yard before or since—purse in both hands, book satchel over her shoulder, valise between her feet, and her lap cradling a basket of baby chicks for her present to whoever was to board her. I had a feeling the minute she pulled off her hat—’Here’s another teacher Banner won’t so easily get rid of.’ ”

All at once Lady May Renfro, aged fourteen months, came bolting out into their midst naked, her voice one steady holler, her little new-calloused feet pounding up through it like a drumbeat. She had sat up right out of her sleep and rolled off the bed and come. Her locomotion, the newest-learned and by no means the gentlest, shook the mirror on the wall and made its frame knock against the house front like more company coming.

“Who you hunting?” Aunt Nanny screeched at the baby.

Lady May ran through their catching hands, climbed down the steps in a good imitation of Mr. Renfro, and ran wild in the yard, with Gloria up and running after her.

“Where’s your daddy, little pomegranate?” they hollered after her flying heels. “Call him! Call him!”

Elvie came third, following solemnly with the diaper.

Lady May ran around the quilt on the line and Gloria got her hands on her. There behind the quilt she knelt to her, curtained off from the house; the quilt hung motionless, just clear of the ground. It was a bed-sized square that looked rubbed over every inch with soft-colored chalks that repeated themselves, more softly than the voices sounding off on the porch. From the shadow of an iron pot nearby, rising continuously like sparks from a hearth, a pair of thrushes were courting again.

The sugar sack Gloria pinned about her baby’s haunches blushed in the light and sparkled over with its tiny crystals that were never going to wash out of it. Around their shoulders the air
shook with birdsong, never so loud since spring. On all the farm, the only thing bright as the new tin of the roof was the color of Gloria’s hair as she bent her head over her baby. It was wedding-ring gold.

“Act like you know what you’re here for, Lady May,” she told the smooth, uplifted face.

The child looked back at her mother with her father’s eyes—open nearly to squares, almost shadowless, the blue so clear that bright points like cloverheads could be seen in them deep down. Her hair was red as a cat’s ear against the sun. It stood straight up on her head, straight as a patch of oats, high as a little tiara.

“Just you remember who to copy,” Gloria told her child.

She came leading Lady May to the house and through their ranks and inside the company room and out again, and this time the little girl was tiptoeing in a petticoat.

“Have a seat with us,” said Aunt Nanny. “That’s better.”

Gloria sat down on a keg and Lady May climbed onto her lap. She turned her little palms up in a V. Her eyebrows lifted in pink crescents upturned like the dogwood’s first leaves in spring. Her unswerving eyes looked straight into her mother’s.