“I’m glad for you and sorry for the rest of the prisoners going deprived.”
“Never mind about them. What they had was family coming to beg for ’em,” he said, fanning her and the baby with his shirt-tails.
“Beg for ’em?”
“The smartest they had, the pick of their family. That’s who’d be elected to come to Parchman and beg. Or else how would the poor lonesome fools ever get out of there? Renfros and Beechams and Comforts relied a hundred percent on me and Aycock’s own behavior to turn the trick. Now that’s the slow way.”
“How could I have got myself to Parchman?” she cried.
“They call it Visiting Day.”
“Coming afoot? All the way to Parchman?” Gloria cried.
“You could’ve brought me a bottle of Banner water. And a pinch of home dirt—I could have carried that around in my shoe. I’d be looking for you on Visiting Day. Uncle Homer’s got the surest transportation, but he wouldn’t have begged for me as hard as you. You got to beg pretty wholehearted before old Parchman will listen.”
“I didn’t know Parchman would behave like that,” said Gloria.
“You got to aggravate ’em until they do.” He fanned them.
“I had a baby. That’s exactly what I was doing!”
He looked at her over the baby’s little crop of hair. “And I wouldn’t have had you set your little foot in a place like Parchman for all you’d give me! You know that, Beautiful. I was trying to make you smile. Where I’m proud and glad to have you is right here at home in Banner, exactly the way you are.”
“Then why do you tease me?” she whispered.
“Honey, Judge Moody’s gone to Grinder’s Mill.”
“You went farther than Grinders Mill.”
“I’m back.”
“And look what you’re doing first thing.”
“Is she satisfied now?” he loudly answered her, for the baby just then dodged from her mother to complete a yawn. He jumped up. “I believe she’s sleepy. How sound does our baby sleep?”
Lady May’s little hand dropped like a falling star. More slowly, her eyelids fell.
“She goes to the Gates of Beyond, just like you,” whispered Gloria.
He took the shirt off his back and folded it and took up the limp baby in it and walked to where the shadow of the tree reached into the feathery plum bushes. He laid her down and wrapped her lightly in his sleeves, and saw that she had a little canopy of light boughs, with a plum hanging as if it might fall in her mouth.
He turned, and Gloria darted. Once more they were running as hard as they could go, Gloria in front, rounding the bank its whole way around, swiftly past the piecrust edge, streaking by the peephole, clicking across the limestone, bounding over the hummocks, taking the hollow places skip by skip without a miss, threading serpentine through the plum bushes, softly around the baby, and back to the tree, where he reached with both hands and had her. Catching her weight as though he’d trapped it, he lowered her into the seat that looked out over the drop and got in with her.
The tree trunk, as high up as the hitching limb, was well carved; it was wound up in strings and knots of names and initials as if in a clover chain. In the upper gloom of branches, two doves like two stars flew in, then flew out again, out over the unseen river.
“When will we move to ourselves?” Gloria whispered.
“I believe that’s what you was saying to me the last thing before I left home for the courthouse.”
“Our wedding day. It was those very words.”
“They sound a familiar tune.”
“And I wrote you the same words too, didn’t let you forget ’em all the time you were gone.”
“I so much rather hear your sweet voice saying ’em,” he gasped, and taking her by the hand he laid his mouth over hers.
When she could speak, she said, “Stop. What is the most important thing in all the world?”
“I reckon what we need right now is a scout,” he said without pulling his face off hers. “Now Vaughn would come if I’d give him another holler. Little fellow just sits there listening.”
“No, I want Vaughn to remember you later as a good example.”
“Or Aycock. Aycock’d do anything for me and I’d do anything for him. He’d keep a lookout—”
“Jack, I want you to give him up.”
“Give up Aycock?”
“He’s good-for-nothing and spineless. And now he’s back home with a prison record besides.”
“He’s an old Banner boy! He just ain’t had all the good things I have—has no daddy at home, no mama able to keep on the subject, no sisters and brothers to call on—no wife! Not to mention a sweet, helpful little girl-baby.’ ”
“I wouldn’t let Aycock touch the hem of her garment,” she said. “If it wasn’t for all the other people around us, our life would be different this minute.”
“Who wants it different?” he whispered.
“Your wife.”
He rolled closer.
“And here you are, going right back down in the road to more trouble, the minute you let go of me,” she said, as he clasped her close.
“Just because something may give me a little bit of trouble, you don’t see me go backing away from it, do you?” He rubbed his cheek against hers. “I’m beholden to the reunion to keep it running on a smooth track today, for Granny’s birthday to be worth her living to see. For Mama’s chickens not to go wasted, and for all of ’em that’s travelled through dust not to go home disappointed. It’s up to me to meet that Judge, Possum, sing him my name out loud and clear, and leave him in as good a ditch as the one he had before I saved him. That’s all.”
“Then it’s up to your wife to pit her common sense against you, Jack,” she said, catching her breath.
“Honey, Judge Moody’s gone to Grinders. And our baby’s lying safe where we can see her, in the Land of Nod.” His arms reached all the way around her.
“Oh, Jack, I ought to’ve hit you over the head with your mother’s cornbread irons, back when you first began! Beat you back over to your side of my desk with the blackboard eraser! Never kept you in after school to learn ‘Abou Ben Adhem’ by heart!”
“I like to never did learn it.”
“I couldn’t forget a word if I tried.”
“Don’t say it now,” he begged, short-breathed. “I doubt if they come any longer.”
Her face with a thousand freckles on it was moving from side to side like a tiger lily trying not to give out perfume.
“Possum!” he croaked.
She skinned loose from the knot of his arms and for a minute sat up over him. She brought down the sides of her fists on his naked chest as if it were solid oak, and his heart seemed to jump out of it, almost into visibility.
“Do you still think you’re going to pick up living right where you left off?” she asked fast.
“Did something put the idea in your precious little head I can’t?”
“This is the time I’ve been guarding myself against for a year, six months and a day,” she gasped, but if he heard more than the first words he didn’t show it, for the whole weight of his head rammed upward, blundered against her neck, and then moved in a blind way up her face, his cheek hot as a stove on hers, something hotter splashing between them that could have been tears.
“Oh Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack—now you’ve bumped my head on something hard—”
He had roiled over with her and stopped breathing. Without stopping to be sorry for her head he crammed kisses in her mouth, and she wound her arms up around his own drenched head and returned him kiss for kiss.
But almost at once three or four nervous hounds began licking the back of Jack’s neck and the sole of Gloria’s foot that lay outside its shoe.
“Boo!” said a sober young man who came stalking up onto Banner Top with a guitar under his arm. Jack and Gloria sprang apart.
“Aycock! Seems like it was a hundred years ago when I last saw you!” said Jack. ?
??How did you find your little mama?”
“Mad at me. What did they say when you come walking in?”
“They seemed to think it was right well timed,” said Jack. “They had a big welcome on their faces. Then the news started trickling from ’em.”
“Bet you had a sizable amount to listen to.”
“Grandpa Vaughn is gone, Aycock, been laid in the ground while they had me off yonder where I didn’t know it.”
“Well, at least you know where he is,” said Aycock. “Not like my dad. We don’t know what’s become of him at all.”
“He didn’t even take anybody with him? Your Uncle Earl?”
“Uncle Earl would rather do anything than leave Banner,” said Aycock. He had such a short face that all his life he must have looked as he did now, ready to cry. His hair was the rust of a cedar bush winter-killed, even had the bush’s shape and crinkly texture.
“Somebody watched me coming through the peephole. It was a red-headed baby,” said Aycock.
“If she hasn’t waked up and worked her way clear out of her harness!” Jack jumped up and ran to meet the baby, welcomed her, and swung her down in front of Aycock.
“Goodness-a-life. Which is it?” Aycock said.
“A girl! Wearing a dress to prove it!” Gloria said.
“Goodness-a-life.” Aycock folded down into a squat. “Whose big shoe are you carrying?”
“I wonder if Aycock brought one good excuse along for coming up here,” said Gloria.
“Mama said she heard gunfire overhead. So I come to see if you was still living, Jack,” said Aycock. “While you was hearing the bad news, did you hear anything about Poison Ivy Moody?”
“I was just fixing to break it to you!” Jack cried.
“How long did it take you to find it out?”
“Uncle Homer told me. He made it in right behind me,” Jack said. “Who told you?”
“I looked,” Aycock admitted.
“You sound like you was expecting to see him! If you was on the watch for a judge on your way home from the pen, Aycock, I wasn’t!” said Jack. “And when Mr. Willy Trimble merrily turned in front of his Buick and down he went, if that didn’t give him first marks of being a stranger! And I took him for one.”
“He looked the same to me as he done in Ludlow courthouse,” said Aycock. “Like a sinner, more or less.”
“Well, all I got to do now is shoo him back in a ditch just as good as he was in, and call it evens,” Jack said, buttoning on his shirt.
“Don’t one ditch satisfy ’em at home?”
“No, Aycock, he managed that much by himself. And I didn’t have the sense or stamina to leave him floundering!” said Jack. “My family is just about on the verge of having a fit over it.”
“How many you got up there today?”
“It’s the whole reunion!”
“Has that already come around again?”
“My little granny’s birthday come around again, and now it’s my welcome home. It’s going on right now.”
“They waiting dinner on you?”
“How could they eat till I get back?”
“Always glad I ain’t you,” said Aycock.
“They’ll wait,” said Jack. “For one thing, Uncle Nathan’s still got to come, from who only knows how far!”
“Jack, didn’t you see what’s right in your face? You bumped my head on it,” said Gloria. She pointed back to a little wooden sign staked low to the ground not far from the jumping-off place. Its black letters were still running with bright fishtails of paint.
“ ‘Destruction Is At Hand,’ ” Jack read off affectionately. “Bless Uncle Nathan’s heart, he has made it in!”
“They’ll soon be gobbling, Jack,” said Aycock. “I wouldn’t mind being one at the table.”
Lady May was creeping close on him, where he still squatted there. Tipping his sassafras-colored head to one side, Aycock laid the guitar over his knee. At the first chord he squinted an eye upward and his voice became a tenor.
“Bought me a chicken and my chicken pleased me
And I tied my chicken be-hind a tree
And my chicken said ‘Coo-coo, coo-coo, coooo!’
Anybody that feeds his chickens,
Feed my chicken too.”
Lady May opened her own mouth wide, held her breath. Her eyes followed Aycock’s sideburns moving with his singing—they were long as cat-scratches.
“Bought me a hen and my hen pleased me—”
“Aycock, you made her cry,” said Jack.
“Then Great Scots-a-life! Are you planning to try running that Judge in a ditch with a crying baby girl to be your partner?”
“She was having the time of her little life till Aycock Comfort came along,” said Gloria. She put up her arms, lifted her hair high to the crown and tied it furiously tight but didn’t bind it, so it flared from the ribbon like the petals of a flower. Her head was glary as a trumpet flower against the hot green cedar shade. Aycock didn’t look straight at her. His eyes went sleepy and even his ears turned gold.
With both hands, Jack worked the slipper back onto Gloria’s slick, hot little foot. “I don’t believe that shoe was ever made for serious hopping,” he said. “I’m proud my wife and baby got nothing more to do than sit in the shade and watch me.” Then he jumped up by Aycock. “Son, if what you’re trying to do is come in on it, I better save time and invite you now.”
“Jack!” Gloria cried out.
“Would make it seem like olden times, Jack,” said Aycock. “But you got a majority on it?”
“She’s my wife!” protested Jack. “How could Gloria be sitting here at my feet and not be for whatever I do?” And up she jumped.
“Then all we got to worry about is him. We can’t get old Poison Ivy by wishing. He’s got to come along, Jack,” said Aycock.
“He’s trying to get across the river to Alliance, that’s his aim,” Jack told him. “What his story is, I don’t know.”
“If he’s using Banner Road, ain’t nothing going to stop him. It throws him right on the bridge.”
“He don’t overly care for the looks of our bridge,” said Jack.
“That could be why he run up in our yard, skinned around the martin houses, and gone again like a lost soul,” said Aycock. “He was just using us to turn around.”
“In your very yard?” cried Jack. “What did your mother say?”
“She complained of the dust. Next thing, she complained of gunfire up over her head.”
“She heard Brother Bethune delivering judgment on a chicken snake. Before that, he talked Judge Moody into going all the way to Grinders Mill in the hope of a better-looking bridge. But he’s going to find that old covered bridge at Grinders is going without a floor. I don’t believe even the mill still calls itself in commission.”
“Jack, where did you learn so much about Grinders Mill?” Gloria objected.
“Parchman. Ask me about anywhere! I reckon for every spot there is, there’s somebody in the pen going homesick for it. Old trusty told me every inch of Grinders, the same as I told him Banner.” said Jack. “I only hope now there isn’t one of his kin standing there with little enough to do to tell Judge Moody he could bump three miles further on and be poled across the river at Wisdom’s Point. Aycock’ll guarantee that.”
“Be ready for a shock,” Aycock told him. “The ferry at Wisdom ties up on Sunday now. Uncle Joe Wisdom has been converted and spends the whole day in church shouting repentence. I’ll bring you that much from Mama.”
“Thank her for the best news she could have sent me. Now, unless they teach a Buick to swim, it’s Banner bridge or nothing for Judge Moody. And he’s going to make up his mind to it. He’ll come puffing along again, any time now, gritting his teeth for it. He’s more or less like me, not the kind to give up in the face of a little hardship,” said Jack.
“Jack, I hope you’re wrong,” said Gloria, while he capered to the front of the bank and hung over the road.
“We’ll land him in my own ditch kissing the mailbox!”
“That’s bringing it close to home,” said Aycock at his shoulder.
“It’s not a bad ditch, Aycock. It’s the ditch the school bus has deepened out for itself by eternally trying to get up out of our road and go to school.”
“But you know what?” said Aycock. “If it’s the second time he’s run in a ditch in one day, he might think it was being done on purpose with him in mind.”
“But that’s the whole blooming idea, Aycock! That’s the beauty of it,” said Jack. “That’s when I announce myself to him, the minute the dust starts clearing and he puts his head up!” He sprang onto Aycock’s back, the guitar wobbled in the air, and the boys began leapfrogging.
“Well, old Poison Ivy ain’t going to love me and you a bit the better for it,” said Aycock, tumbling and rolling over.
“Love us!” Jack cried, sitting on him. “Aycock, I’m going to a heap of trouble just to blooming well keep him from it!”
“A man as out-of-patience as the Judge might for all I know send me and you both back to Parchman for it! First thing Monday morning!”
“I ain’t ever going anywhere that flat again, and that’s all there is to it. Shinny up the tree, Aycock, and watch till you see him coming.
“She’s beating me to it,” Aycock pointed. “Which one was that?”
A Robin-Hood patterned dress was already halfway up to the first limb of the tree, with rosy arms reaching, sunburned feet tucking up behind.
“They’ve grown, every one of ’em,” said Jack. “Etoyle looks as broad as Ella Fay now, sitting on that hitching limb.”
“I’m here to see the look on Judge Moody’s face!” Etoyle sang.
“Well, you’ve got more society here than a little bit. And all girls,” said Aycock in polite tones. “Will I have time to enjoy my first sip of Banner water?”
“My eyes see dust!” sang Etoyle from the tree. “Somebody’s a-coming!”
Gloria snatched up the baby and followed Jack and Aycock to where the front of the bank overlooked the road. It dropped away on both sides below them, like a sash picked up in the middle on a stick. The ditch ran with it, sometimes on one side and sometimes on the other. Then both ends of the road went out of sight in identical blind curves.