Losing Battles

  “Now all it lacks is for Curly to tell me about it. How much notice do you think that gives me, Jack, to think up an answer and get it back to the population?” asked Uncle Homer.

  “Sir Pizen Ivy is what me and Aycock called that Judge every day alive at Parchman!” said Jack in a hoarse voice.

  “Then didn’t know him when you met him in the road,” said Aunt Cleo. “Sounds to me like a joke on you.”

  “Leave him alone!” every one of them hollered at her, all except Uncle Homer and Gloria.

  “I think it’s a joke on the whole reunion,” said Aunt Cleo.

  “Who’s that?” asked Uncle Homer. He told Aunt Cleo, “Lady, you don’t vote around here.”

  “She’s a Stovall’s widow. That’s a shock, ain’t it?” Aunt Nanny said to Uncle Homer.

  “No, Nanny Broadwee. Even a Stovall in with this reunion today don’t surprise me a whit.” Uncle Homer told Aunt Cleo, “And you’re about what I’d expect at this stage of the game.”

  Jack crouched forward in the chair, hands on his knees. Miss Lexie studied him. “Brother,” she said to Mr. Renfro, who stood with his chin in his hand, contemplating Jack too, “these children of yours are the least prepared to be corrected of any I ever ran up against. How they’ll conduct themselves on the Day of Judgment I find it hard to imagine.”

  “All I can say is, Jack, I’m glad you ain’t old enough to vote,” said Uncle Homer. “Or I believe you’d vote against me.”

  “Homer! That’s a terrible thing to say!” cried Auntie Fay. “Vote against his own family?”

  “And for Curly?” Uncle Dolphus cried.

  “Homer Champion, my boy would do anything for his family, anything in the world!” cried Miss Beulah. “Look at him! He’d vote for you if that’s what’s asked of him, and not even stop there!”

  “If it hadn’t been for this family,” Uncle Homer said, glaring around at the reunion, “I’d been no telling how high up now. Maybe even sheriff.”

  “Perish the day!” cried Miss Beulah. “Mr. Renfro, if you don’t find something to say to this boy, you’re going to have him feeling ashamed of himself in a mighty few minutes! Look at him biting his lip!”

  “Judge Moody didn’t make a single mistake to give himself away?” asked Aunt Beck, as if it might even then not be too late.

  “He just showed himself for a stranger,” said Jack. “Offered to pay me for my help. I told him I lived around here and it would vex me pretty hard to have to take his money.”

  “Oh, my boy sounds pitiful,” said Miss Beulah. “Pitiful!” She stamped her foot.

  “Mama!” cried Jack. “Listen: if that was the Judge and he’s so smart, how come he didn’t know me?”

  “That’s my boy!” shouted Uncle Noah Webster, and his brothers said, “He’s right!”

  “What good did it do him to make a living example out of me if he wasn’t going to know me the next time he saw me?” Jack cried.

  “And what business did he have in our part of the world anyway?” cried Miss Beulah. “Homer Champion, tell me that! What you need is a little more buttermilk to wash those crumbs down with!”

  “He’s politicking. That’s what everybody’s doing today and that’s what Moody’s doing. Politicking!” cried Auntie Fay. “He’s got to run for office the same as other people! The sands is running out for him as fast as they is for Homer!”

  “Judges ain’t elected, Sister Fay, it wouldn’t be safe,” said Uncle Curtis.

  “Where do we get so many, then?”

  “For aught I know or ever give thought to it, they’s self-appointed,” he said.

  “And that’s exactly what they act like!” cried Miss Beulah. “One in particular!”

  “If his memory’s gotten that poor since I been gone, then I ain’t much past letting him know yet,“ said Jack.

  “You mean you’d go hunt him?” Uncle Percy whispered. “Now?”

  “I’d know that Buick if I saw it a mile away,” said Jack.

  “Then what?” Uncle Noah Webster hollered.

  “I’d tell him who that Samaritan was, and no two ways about it!”

  “You got to do more than announce yourself in this world, Jack,” said Uncle Curtis. “We proved that in court. You’re going to just about need to run headlong into the man and butt him with it like a billy goat, to make him pay you heed. But we’ll be right behind you to a man. Won’t we, sons?” he asked.

  “Yes sir!” they cried, a chorus of uncles and boy cousins.

  “If you’ve already rescued somebody, he’s rescued,” said Miss Lexie Renfro. “So give up right now.”

  “Now Lexie, what we all want is a second chance!” Uncle Noah Webster cried. “That’s all we’re asking for, ain’t it, boys?”

  “You saved the wrong man, but you can always go back and make him feel bad about it. That’s still your privilege, I should hope,” said Aunt Birdie to Jack.

  “Jack, I just wish you could steal back and ruin his day,” said Aunt Nanny. “That would sure help my feelings more than a little.”

  “Jack, honey, you don’t know and never will dream what we’ve been through, just knowing where they had you,” said Aunt Beck, the gentlest of the aunts always. “Grieving for you! Then at last to see you come—and you’ve saved your Judge’s life before you even reached your door.”

  “Where you reckon he’s got to by now?” Aunt Cleo asked. “Timbuktu?”

  Jack shot to his feet.

  “Hold yourself in one piece, son,” said Uncle Noah Webster fondly. “And remember one blessed thing: he’s a man that ain’t at home around here. He won’t know one road from another when he gets to a forks, and it’s ten to one he’s already lost. Lost upon the face of the wilderness! That make you feel any rosier?”

  “Noah Webster, you act like you know where the man’s headed,” said Mr. Renfro, rocking on his feet.

  “And what’s him heading anywheres got to do with it?” cried Aunt Birdie loyally. “He’s on our roads!”

  “At least we’ve got bad roads!” Aunt Beck cried.

  “He’ll double on his tracks. These roads alone will see to that,” Uncle Curtis predicted.

  “And then I know what,” Etoyle said, turning herself in circles to make herself dizzy. Aunt Birdie beat her to saying it: “You-all could wait for him at a real good place and when he comes past, hop on him!”

  Jack made a sudden plunge for the water bucket.

  “Judge Moody could end up pop in the Bywy River!” said Auntie Fay. “That’s what I’ve been trying to get at ever since I walked in this house!”

  “Well, it ain’t going to be allowed!” cried Miss Beulah.

  “Or just start him out across our bridge, that may be all it needs!” Aunt Nanny cried.

  “The good old Banner bridge!” said Aunt Birdie. “That’d make an everlasting good drop. If it’s ever going to fall in now’s the day.”

  “No decent floor to it hardly at all,” Miss Beulah said to Mr. Renfro fiercely. “Speak, Mr. Renfro, tell him what he’s waiting to hear you say!”

  “The old Bywy ain’t deep enough in August to go over his head, Beulah. It’s just deep enough to give ’im a splash,” said Uncle Noah Webster with his face already beaming. “I feel like I’m getting younger by the minute!”

  “When do you suppose the supervisor we all voted for is going to fix our bridge?” Aunt Beck asked, pulling him back by the arm.

  “Not today!” Uncle Noah Webster cried gaily, jumping to his feet.

  “I’ve got that supervisor in my pocket, if you all get me elected. But take care of that bridge while you got it, boys,” Uncle Homer cried, pounding his fist on a barrel top. “Why does everybody think because it’s falling to pieces it’s a good place to have a big time on? You’re misinterpreting my remarks.”

  “Jack ain’t going to see a flea hurt, you know that!” Miss Beulah said frantically to her brothers.

  Jack looked over the rim of the dipper and said, “I’m feeli
ng harder and harder at Judge Moody. I don’t think nothing much could stop me from announcing myself to him and telling him who it is that’s back.”

  “That’s right, Jack. He made a monkey out of you. Now you can make a monkey out of him,” said Aunt Birdie. “That’s all the reunion is asking of you.”

  “I tell you not so fast!” Uncle Homer shouted, with biscuit crumbs flying from his tie.

  “Homer is so fickle,” Miss Beulah cried. “Sometimes I wonder if he knows whose side he’s on himself. He started this!”

  “Jack, you nearly messed me up last time—getting yourself sent to the pen,” said Uncle Homer. “Now you’re trying to mess me up again by coming home and reminding the voters we got one like you in the family.”

  “Oh, go to grass!” said Miss Beulah, and ran to the kitchen.

  “Homer,” said Mr. Renfro, coming forward, and leveling his forefinger at Uncle Homer, “if you’re speaking now of votes, my boy leaving home for the pen is just about what give you your margin in the first place. I can recall the day when you come in ninth for coroner. You wouldn’t have an office to be holding onto if it wasn’t for Jack.”

  “Liked on all sides as that sweet starving boy is!” cried Miss Beulah, running back in with a platter set around with hot biscuits opened and filled with melted butter in one half and pools of blackberry jelly in the other. “Yes, Homer arrested Jack, his own nephew-in-law, then electioneered for a fresh term as justice of the peace on how bad he hated to do it. Asked the voters to show they found it in their hearts to feel sorry for him. And voters is such fools! And I was one right along with ’em.”

  “Come on, boys!” cried Uncle Noah Webster.

  “Has he even had a decent breakfast?” Miss Beulah reproached them all, while Jack was shaking his head and opening his mouth at the same time.

  But before she could pop a biscuit in, the boy cousins cried:

  “Hey! Jack! Are we supposed to spend the whole day waiting on you to catch up at the table?”

  The men were all on their feet. At the same time the porch seemed full of liver- and lemon-spotted dogs. The barking had started over.

  “Nathan ain’t going to go exactly into raptures over this!” Miss Beulah cried despairingly at them. “Remember I’ve still got one more brother to come!”

  “Beulah, by the time Nathan makes it in, things is going to be all over,” Uncle Noah Webster said, “and skies clear.”

  “Now, then,” said Uncle Curtis, “how are we all going? I ain’t inclined to walk it.”

  At this moment Gloria rose, turned on her little white heel, and went inside the house.

  “Well, you can’t all load on one mule, can you?” Mr. Renfro said.

  “Well, want to trust that rattletrap of ours?” asked Uncle Curtis.

  “I got a slow leak in my gas tank,” said Uncle Percy. “It may not last me and Nanny back to Peerless like it is, but we can always start in our jitney.”

  “There’s a good old-timey Ford in my little family now that’ll go anywhere and do anything. It’s true the radiator’s boiled over twice since it started climbing hills on the way up,” said Uncle Noah Webster. “I ain’t yet tried it going down.”

  “Well, everybody can see the nigh front tire on my son’s contraption is down again flat,” said Uncle Dolphus. “What do you think of all going in it?”

  “You’ll have to go back to driving the school bus!” cried Elvie. Under the tree it stood headed downhill and first in line, with a chunk under the wheel. It was wrapped in dust as in a pink baby blanket.

  Vaughn said, “You can’t. You ain’t the driver, Jack, not any longer.”

  “I’m telling you all one thing! If I had my good truck finished now, there wouldn’t be any question! I wouldn’t hear no other offer!” Jack cried. “That is, if you-all wouldn’t mind riding like we do at Parchman, standing up! It’d block any man’s road—”

  Jack had turned himself around to look. Ready on the moment, Ella Fay raised her lovely goose-white arms and flung wide the last tablecloth and spread it over the vacancy there.

  “Jack,” Miss Beulah said, “ready for some more bad news?”

  “I think I’m about to guess it already, Mama,” he told her.

  “What’s this?” Uncle Homer demanded to know. “I don’t see that truck.”

  “Won’t you sit back down, Homer?” Miss Beulah cried. “You need a little more biscuit to come out even on your buttermilk.” She laid her hands on Jack’s arms. “There’s a little story about Stovall and that truck, Jack,” she said. “We had to mortgage it.”

  Jack looked without words from one face to another.

  “Curly hauled it right back to where you got it,” Etoyle told Jack. “Drug it with oxen.”

  “He’s looking almost pale,” Aunt Birdie said, and Aunt Beck tremulously called for him, “Gloria!”

  “I’m right in here, tending to some of my business,” she called out the window of the company room. “While I can hear every word being said.”

  “Hauled the whole thing away?” cried Jack. “The whole thing?”

  “Nothing left but that miserable spot of grease,” said Miss Beulah.

  “The skunk!” Jack cried.

  “Now choose between us!” said Uncle Homer Champion to the world.

  “Well, he’ll never get that engine to hitting without me, that’s one thing left to live for!” Jack shouted.

  “Saturday’s still coming!” Uncle Dolphus cried, to some cheers.

  “All right, Vaughn, pull Dan out of the pasture and shoot the bridle on him. I’ll ride ahead and the rest can follow. I’ll give Dan a treat he’s been going without for a long time,” said Jack.

  “Tell me something more easy,” said Vaughn.

  “Has he missed me too bad to thrive?”

  “We had to part with Dan too, Jack,” said Miss Beulah.

  “Whoa, Elvie!” he cried, as she burst into tears for him. He broke from them, hurled himself over the steps and started racing toward the pasture, the barn, turning everywhere at once.

  “Would you completely spoil his welcome?” Miss Beulah shrieked at Elvie and all the little girls. “You crybabies’ll do it yet!”

  “My! Who’s Dan?” asked Aunt Cleo.

  “It’s Jack’s stud, Jack’s stud,” they told her.

  “That Dan was a horse in a million,” said Uncle Noah Webster.

  “That horse was as good and spoiled as anybody in this family,” said Miss Lexie Renfro.

  “Fib to him a little bit!” pleaded Aunt Birdie.

  The cousins were chasing Jack and one of them called, “Come on back, Jack, Curly didn’t get your stud.” Jack stopped in his tracks.

  “We had to shoot him,” Aunt Beck compassionately called. “He’s still taking it hard,” she turned and said. “Look where he’s biting down on that lip.”

  “And you know, it seemed like he wasn’t hardly worth the powder it took,” Curtis Junior kept talking persuasively as the cousins crept up on him.

  “Lead me to his grave.”

  They grabbed him.

  “Jack! Watch out! Please don’t get your family to feeling so sorry for you before you go!” Aunt Beck begged him from the porch.

  “You can’t find his grave! He was drug off to the renderers,” said Etoyle, hands joined at her breastbone. “Clear to Foxtown! I watched him go.”

  “Gloria!” he hollered.

  “Be patient,” her sweet voice called back. “I’ll be with you when everything’s all ready.”

  “I always said my horse was going to be buried under trees,” Jack gasped out.

  “We had to have coal and matches and starch,” Miss Beulah listed for him. “And flour and sugar and vinegar and salt and sweet-soap. And seed and feed. And we had to keep us alive. Son, we parted first with a nanny goat, then a fat little trotter. Then the cow calved—”

  “Mama, I ain’t going to make you tell me any more of the tale,” said Jack. “Not in front of all of ?
??em.”

  “And how is old muley?” asked Aunt Nanny.

  “Bet’s been doing it all, if you’d like to see her stagger,” Miss Beulah replied.

  “I was reading the signal from that roof pretty well,” said Jack at last. “Judge Moody’s got a lot on his head. I got a lot more to tell him now besides my name. Bring me my shoes.”

  Then Gloria came out onto the porch with his shoes in her hand. At the same minute she released Lady May from her skirts into their midst.

  Jack came hurling himself up the steps. When he saw the baby aiming straight as a cannonball for him, he opened his mouth and gave a great shout. Then she veered and ran back to her mother. Jack threw himself over and stood on his head. As Lady May gazed at him, her eyes open all the way like vinca flowers at midday, he slowly pedalled his feet in the air.

  “Jack!” They all began talking at once, moving their circle closer around the three of them.

  “Jack! You’re home after nearly two long years away—and here’s your baby.”

  “Here’s your surprise!”

  “Here’s your reward.”

  “Hold it, Jack!” Uncle Noah Webster cried when he wobbled.

  “Don’t he appear a little small, though, for all he’s done and still got to do?” asked Aunt Cleo, her head on the horizontal.

  “He’s sparing—I never knew there to be a sin in that,” said Miss Beulah. “All Renfros is sparing, and they just about never wear out. Now us Beechams, when we go, we go more in a flash, call it a blaze of glory.”

  The new shirt turned over on its tails all in one piece, like a board on its hinges, uncovering the full stretch of Jack’s roasted back and the pair of pants he’d come home in—so worn and faded that they had no more color than skimmed milk. The frayed holes gaped like fish-mouths up both legs.

  Lady May drew closer to him, dressed in her first colored dress, her leaf hat, and sliding-new baby shoes buttoned tight with a frill of blue sock falling over the tops. She looked at the holes in Jack’s pants, all the way up, like a little buttoner, till her gaze was elevated to his feet. She moved closer, under those feet that were walking upside down on the air, dusty and with leaves sticking to the raw and bleeding toes.