“Too bad we boys had to ever leave Grandpa and Granny and the old farm,” Uncle Curtis said. “All we boys had to come away and leave the old place so as to get by. We all tried not to take ourselves too far.”
“I was the last of Granny’s boys to go. I stayed to be the last one, didn’t I, Granny?” Uncle Noah Webster asked from his ladder.
“Benedict Arnold,” she said.
“How come everybody moved away?” Aunt Cleo teased. “Hungry?”
“There’s only so much of everything,” Aunt Nanny said.
“Takes a lot of doing without,” Aunt Beck said serenely.
“Well,” said Mr. Renfro, “we was never going to move, me and Beulah. Granny’s got us. And now, Jack and his family—we got them.”
Everybody looked at Jack and Gloria, as they pulled a wishbone between them.
There came a louder report. Kneeling on the ground, Mr. Renfro had split open the first watermelon. He rose with the long halves facing outward from his arms, like the tablets of the Ten Commandments. He served Granny first, then around he started, cracking his melons, making his bows, putting down a half at each place.
Brother Bethune was going on, too, telling of the wanderings of his father and the one time he got help from an angel on Banner Road.
Aunt Birdie, unable to contain herself any longer, put her head around and said, “Jack boy, when Judge Moody finishes his dinner, you reckon he’ll arrest you? Is that his idea, you reckon?”
“Well, it couldn’t have been his idea when he started out, Aunt Birdie,” said Jack. Over his watermelon he gave a smile at Judge Moody. “He’d sentenced me himself and he can count. He’d know I wasn’t even due back here till tomorrow.”
“Explain a little something right quick to Judge Moody, son,” directed Miss Beulah, who was following Mr. Renfro, taking around the salt. “He looks like he’s getting ready to lay down his knife and go home.”
“I don’t want to hear any further,” Judge Moody said to Jack.
“Our reunion is one that don’t wait, sir,” Jack said at the same time. “Nobody, not even my wife, would have forgiven me for the rest of my life if I hadn’t showed up today.”
“You escaped?” Gloria cried out.
“Horrors!” cried Mrs. Moody.
“It was up to me,” Jack said. “What good would it have done anybody for me to get back here tomorrow?”
Aunt Nanny was already laughing. “How’d you get rid of your stripes, darlin’?” she called out. “Ain’t you supposed to wear striped britches? I don’t see any!”
“Sh!” came from Uncle Curtis.
“Scaled the wall, I suppose, then fell off like Humpty Dumpty,” Aunt Birdie said. “Or did you scoot right quick through the fence?”
“Out of Parchman? You couldn’t find a fence,” said Jack. “Aunt Birdie, Parchman is too big to fence. There’s just no end to it, that’s all.”
“You didn’t just walk out of Parchman,” muttered Judge Moody.
Jack said, “I come out on Dexter.”
“I don’t follow,” said Judge Moody.
“Get up on a horse and just ride him out of there on a Sunday morning, while it’s still cool—that seemed reasonable, and it was reasonable,” said Jack. “I rode Dexter. He knows me. There’s a overseer that rides him every day but Sunday. The kind of horse Dexter is, he’s almost an overseer himself. He took me overseeing all over those acres, and finally he conducted me out onto a little road that meant business.”
“Was Aycock riding on behind you?”
“Aunt Birdie, riding double could have caused somebody to look twice. Aycock come along behind the horse’s tail, crouching lower than the cotton.”
“Jack, you ought to have kept that a dim secret,” Gloria whispered to him. “But you don’t know how—somebody’s got to keep your secrets for you.”
“Roped my shirt and tied him to a shady cottonwood and talked to him and left him, and now if you’re ready to laugh, Aunt Nanny,” said Jack, “I don’t even know whose pants these are I jumped into.” She shrieked. “I traded with a clothesline. At first we couldn’t find but one pair of pants. Aycock nearabout had to wear a bedspread. But we persevered, and the first preacher that came pitching down the road, we jumped in the car with him. And the story he told us, to get us to Winona! How somebody’d burnt down our courthouse!”
“Well, you can just go and change those pants instead of telling it here,” said Miss Beulah.
“Keep on the pants you’ve got, Jack,” Aunt Birdie begged him. “We’re used to ’em now. Tell us the rest, do, please!”
“He just rode a plough horse out of Parchman,” said Judge Moody to his wife, who was looking at him.
“Being church time, the roads was fairly well packed with Good Samaritans. Judge Moody was one and didn’t know it.” Jack turned to the Judge. “For about as long as it takes to tell it, I was riding behind on your spare, sir, and so was Aycock. Then we all went in together into Mr. Willy’s ditch.”
Judge Moody sat with a fixed expression on his face, while Mr. Renfro looked at him with enjoyment.
“Reckon they might come after him yet—using bloodhounds? It’s a good thing we’ve got their equals!” Aunt Birdie squealed.
“I believe they’ll let well enough alone,” Mr. Renfro said to Judge Moody.
“If I was Parchman, I would,” Mrs. Moody vowed, while the Judge just looked at her.
“I missed getting my good-bye present of new shoes,” Jack told Gloria a little apologetically. “But I’ll donate those whole-hearted to whoever would rather say good-bye to the pen tomorrow than today. I had to get me back for Granny’s birthday Sunday!”
Aunt Birdie again shook her spoon at Judge Moody. “What was he doing on Banner Road, then?”
“Now we won’t ask him for his story,” said Miss Beulah. “The man’s been tackling our roads, and at the first little bump and skirmish he lands himself in a ditch, and here he is. I think that’ll do.”
“Why, it won’t do at all,” Mrs. Moody began, but Etoyle set down her melon, joined her hands at her breast, and cried, “In the ditch? Judge Moody’s car’s gone straight up Banner Top!”
“Tisn’t so!” said Miss Beulah fiercely to Mr. Renfro, who sat there at Judge Moody’s elbow with pleasure in his face.
“On Banner Top? Out on the flirting edge of nowhere? Is that right?” Aunt Nanny cried to the Moodys. “And don’t know how to get down?” She shook with laughter.
Mrs. Moody pointed her finger across the table at Gloria’s bright crown. “Give credit where credit is due,” she said. “She’s the one ran out of the bushes and right under our wheels, calling us by name. She’s the one drove us right up that wall!”
Mrs. Moody said more but it was drowned out in the cheering that rose from the table.
“Look who’s set here quiet as a mouse for two years! Bless your heart!” Uncle Noah Webster jumped off the stepladder and kissed Gloria, leaving cake-crumbs on her face.
“Gloria Short! I declare but you’re turning out to be a little question mark! I’m wondering what you’ll do next!” cried Aunt Birdie.
Aunt Nanny cried, “Now that’s what I call trying to make yourself a member of the family. Stopped ’em right in their tracks? Sent ’em skywards?”
“Don’t! Please don’t brag on me,” Gloria begged them. “Or at least, if you’re going to start, don’t brag on me for the wrong thing.”
“I’ve been telling Gloria she should’ve stayed home with the ladies, but I eat my words this minute,” said Aunt Beck, rising and coming to kiss her as if to make amends in public.
“Just let ’em have a little pleasure out of it, honey,” Jack bent and said into her ear.
“She only gets the credit for not knowing no other way to stop. She had up too much steam!” cried Etoyle.
“I fell on my knees! I’m ashamed of what happened,” Gloria cried, with her face almost as flaming as her hair.
“First time that youn
g lady ever said she done anything to be ashamed of in her life, ain’t it?” exclaimed Aunt Nanny with a broad smile.
“And I’ve listened,” agreed Miss Beulah.
“I might have been killed! And my baby in my arms!” cried Gloria.
“And who saved you from it? Jack Renfro,” said Miss Beulah, leading a chorus of answerers, some of whom were still trying to reach Gloria to hug and spank her.
“I was doing my best to save Jack,” Gloria corrected them as she worked free.
They laughed, loud with affection, at Jack. He’d risen up still holding his watermelon to his cheek, harmonicalike. He had eaten it down so close to the rind that the light of the sky shone through it now. “You what, honey?”
“That was what I started out to do!” Gloria cried. “I was going to save him! From everybody I see this minute!”
“Miss Gloria! I believe you’re getting to be a little bit more of a handful than this family had bargained on!” Uncle Noah Webster sang out in pure hilarity.
“I’m keeping on trying! I’ll save him yet!” she cried. “I don’t give up easy!”
Aunt Beck said, “You know, I reckon there’s nothing too much for a schoolteacher to try.”
Jack shouted, “It’s thanks to Judge Moody we still got her! He saved my wife and baby!”
“How in the wide world did you come to let Judge Moody save your wife and baby for you?” Miss Beulah cried. “With all this saving, where were you?”
“I was making such haste after Lady May that I sent Jack spinning in the ditch,” said Gloria. “But if Judge Moody hadn’t come along just at that minute, we would all have been all right and jumped right back on our feet.”
Jack bent his brow on her.
“It was Judge Moody’s own fault he had to save us,” Gloria told them all clearly.
Judge Moody was heard saying to his wife, “The real culprit is that baby, of course. She ran between them—she was a moving target.”
“That’s right, blame a little suckling babe,” said Mrs. Moody.
Miss Beulah blazed, “There’s nothing you can say about that baby that’s any fault of her own.”
“But this is the first I realized that all plans has miscarried,” said Auntie Fay Champion.
“And the car sitting this minute on Banner Top. You just come off and left it, Judge Moody, at the first crook of the finger?”
“I don’t believe it’s still there, Beulah,” said Uncle Dolphus consolingly. “And I ain’t going to take a hot walk yonder to prove it, either.”
“I took the walk, saw it for myself,” said Mr. Renfro. “And as far as the car goes, the car’s up there and running in pretty good tune.”
“And it’s got somebody in it to hold it down! One guess! Aycock!” Etoyle screamed.
“Oh, for a minute I thought you was going to say ‘Jack’ once more,” gasped Aunt Birdie.
“Aycock Comfort’s deposited in your car and still behaving himself?” Miss Lexie Renfro asked Judge Moody coolly, speaking to him for the first time. “Well, I’m gratified to hear it. I expect Parchman did Aycock that much good. I wish you could find and send his daddy.”
“Mama, as long as Aycock stays put, he’s safe as we are,” Etoyle said. “Jack says so.”
“And if he budges, he’s a gone gander. What about the rest of it?” screamed Miss Beulah. “These boys, these men, they don’t realize anything!”
“Realize what, Mother?” Mr. Renfro asked her.
“What makes you think that’s the end of the story? Somebody’s still going to have to coax that car down. Suppose you never thought of that, any of you?” Miss Beulah cried. “What goes up has got to come down! Regardless! I declare there’s no end sometimes! So you’re elected, Jack.”
“The home team might want me, all right,” Jack said. “But the last I heard, Judge and Mrs. Judge are holding out together for old Curly.”
“Curly Stovall and that brace of wore-out oxen? I declare, Judge Moody, that booger’ll find a way to horn in on all you’ve got,” said Miss Beulah.
“That baby may still be baby enough for what she’s up to, but if she’s old enough to wear pockets!” exclaimed Aunt Cleo.
Gloria, down low as she was, almost too low for it to be seen across the table, had opened her dress behind the screen of one hand.
“All the same, that baby’s had some little threads of white meat, some crumbles of hard-boiled egg, a spoonful of cornbread soaked in buttermilk, and a pickle,” said Aunt Nanny. “From her father. And I saw her waving his drumstick in her little fist.”
“Give us some more, Brother Bethune,” called Uncle Noah Webster. “You can’t give up yet.”
Brother Bethune called that the prize for being the oldest here today went to Granny Vaughn. “Now the prize for the youngest!” he called, and up was rolled this year’s new baby, lying bound around the middle to a pillow in a wheelbarrow, hands and feet batting like two sets of wings. “Now the prize for having the most descendants after Miss Granny Vaughn herself—stand up, Curtis Beecham!” Aunt Cleo was named the prize winner for being the newest bride, Uncle Percy for being the thinnest, Aunt Nanny for being the fattest.
“Grandpa never gave a prize in his life for being fat,” said Miss Beulah. “You had to do right. And if you did right, you were considered having prize enough already. Weren’t you, Granny?”
The old lady’s head drove back from her plate for a minute, as though buggy wheels had started rolling under her chair.
“And now poor Jack! Judge Moody comes along Banner Road and right on time for him to put that truck to proof. And no truck,” said Aunt Nanny.
“Yes, Judge Moody, we all know better’n you do what you stand in need of,” said Uncle Percy in his whisper. “Too bad you picked the wrong day to get it.”
“If Jack ever gets through today alive, then gets back that truck and makes it go, I hope I for one am still on earth that day and with the eyesight left to see it perform,” Uncle Dolphus said. “Jack’s all but convinced his family it could even plough.”
“What ever happened to bust it in the first place?” asked Aunt Cleo. “Running over some fool in the road? I don’t think Jack’s too careful with what’s his.” She looked at him with his second half of melon.
“Until it was busted, it never got to be Jack’s,” said Aunt Nanny, winking.
“Has there been something wrong with it?” asked Mrs. Moody.
“It started away from Curly’s store in Banner on a Saturday morning, and the Nashville Rocket comes up the track. We was sitting there on the store porch, telling each other our woes, when there comes quite a crack,” said Uncle Dolphus.
“It got hit by a train?” cried Mrs. Moody.
“It stopped the Nashville Rocket on the crossing, yes’m.”
“This truck is something that had to be picked up out of the cinders of the railroad track?” asked Mrs. Moody.
“Jack picked it up. Had to wade to get it. There’s a river of hot Coca-Cola and a mountain of broken glass trying to stop him—it was a Coca-Cola truck,” said Aunt Birdie.
“Jack could have sliced an artery and no woman the wiser at home,” said Aunt Beck.
“The only Cokes left standing for a mile around was the ones old Ears Broadwee had just finished delivering to Curly,” Uncle Percy whispered.
“That was one sticky cow-catcher,” said Uncle Dolphus.
“I’m surprised at the Coca-Cola people. It sounds to me like one more case of a careless driver,” said Mrs. Moody to her husband.
“Watch out! That’s my kin,” said Aunt Nanny.
“I reckon there wasn’t enough left of him for you-all to pick up and bury,” said Aunt Cleo. “Have his funeral with a sealed coffin?”
“Didn’t get a scratch. That was Ears Broadwee. He’d just been in the store, swapping yarns with Jack and Curly and the boys. Claims he ain’t heard that train yet,” said Aunt Nanny. “Ears was glad to be furnished an excuse to find him a job that would keep
him nearer home. He’s still looking, you-all. He may have to go to the CC Camp if something more to his liking don’t come along.”
“His touch is pure destruction, all right,” said Uncle Noah Webster. “That truck wasn’t much better than a chicken crate that’s been waltzed around by a cyclone. The Nashville Rocket was right on time.”
“The Coca-Cola people were a good deal put out. They sent one fellow here from Alabama to look at it. He just turned around and went back,” said Uncle Dolphus. “Well, they can afford it.”
“So it’s pretty well scattered there on Curly’s store yard, laying on his property. ‘Who you reckon’s going to make me the right offer for that International truck, Jack?’ Curly says. ‘Look there, not a part in it is over a year old.’ Well, that got ’em all to drooling.”
“It still looks to me like Curly ought to have thanked Jack for just hauling it this far off his premises,” said Aunt Birdie. “Instead of charging him out of his corncrib. Hear, Jack?”
“Jack’s trying to eat! He’s got to catch up with you, not listen to you,” said Miss Beulah. “To make a long story short, that truck, or what was left of it, ended up right here in our yard. Jack didn’t ask his mother first, just started bringing it. Scrap!”
“Well, Mother, there’s the old forge down yonder in the back,” said Mr. Renfro. “And there’s a raft of lumber standing on end in the barn, well seasoned, waiting on somebody to find good use for it. I told Jack what I’d do, faced with his problem, was finish taking it to pieces first. And start from scratch.”
“How did Jack get the thing up to the house from the store yard? Did it have a steering wheel?” asked Aunt Cleo.
“Sister Cleo, he pounded him a sled together and loaded on and drug up this part and that part, Dan and Bet both pulling. And it all went right over yonder,” said Miss Beulah, turning around to point with her long horn-handled fork. “There was four young pines growing just right to suit him. He chopped ’em off equal and mounted the frame of that truck with its corners sitting where you could see the stumps, if anybody’d get up and move away for a minute. It was a sight!”
“It was beautiful to Jack,” said Aunt Nanny, grinning. “Oh, Jack was in a big hurry for that truck.”