“Remember, there’s a South Mississippi too!” Uncle Noah Webster called when they were both up inside the cranked car. “It ain’t all that far on a pretty day!” He leaned out and looked back at them while he drove away. They could see the gleam of his homesick smile beneath the crossed-pistols mustache.
“Now we know that nothing in the world can change Noah Webster,” said Miss Beulah. “Even the one he’s picked.”
“Oh, Grandpa Vaughn, if only you’d lived to see!” Aunt Birdie said, hugging Jack. “Jack, listen, when you went to the pen, it’s just about what carried Grandpa off, precious!”
“Mr. Vaughn never knows when it’s bedtime. Have to go out there with a lantern and prod him again,” Granny said.
“Listen. Thunder,” said Aunt Beck. “Did I hear distant thunder?”
“I don’t believe it,” said Uncle Dolphus bluntly. “By now I’m not ready to be fooled by any more of folks’ imagination. It ain’t ever going to rain.” He shook hands with Mr. Renfro. “But your hay’s just aching to be cut. You’re about to realize you one crop in spite of yourself, Mr. Renfro.” The horn of the pickup was bleating out there; all the children were packed back inside. He hugged Miss Beulah and bent to say goodnight to his grandmother.
“Now I once thought I had a big family,” said Granny. “What’s happening to ’em?”
“Come see us!” came calls as the pickup started off on its freshly patched tire to Harmony. “Come before Old Man Winter’s broke loose and we all have to try to keep from going out of sight in mud!”
“Shame on ye. Shame on ye,” said Granny, as their dust began to rise.
“I’ve still got a craving under my breastbone for a little more of that chicken pie, Beck,” Aunt Nanny said as they parted.
“You’ll have to wait for next year.”
“Then good-bye, good-bye! Good-bye, Jack boy—kiss that baby for me. Good-bye, Beulah, and sweet dreams, Judge Moody in there! I’m too tired out from laughing to climb up in my car and go home. Help me, Jack,” Aunt Nanny gasped.
“All I need to do is start,” said Uncle Percy, holding up his new twelve-link chain he’d whittled. Then in their cloud of ghostly dust they were gone.
“Remember to look on Banner Top when you get to the road!” called Etoyle, running after them, waving. “If you want to see what’ll keep you laughing all the way to Peerless!”
“Granny will be all right in the morning,” said Aunt Beck, putting her arms around Miss Beulah. “When she thinks back on today she’ll wish she could have it to live all over again.” She smiled on Gloria. “And you don’t want to be another one any longer, not another schoolteacher, do you, Gloria? And change the world?”
“No ma’am, just my husband. I still believe I can do it, if I live long enough,” Gloria said.
Uncle Curtis hugged Granny without words. She kissed him—then saw him leave her anyway.
“I don’t know who I’ve thought about more times today than I have Grandpa. Blessed Grandpa!” said Aunt Beck, softly patting Granny’s cheek, then tiptoeing away.
“Don’t listen to him,” said Granny. “Listen to me.”
She watched the old Chevrolet hauler, loaded with so many people that it was almost dragging the ground, go down into the dust, the last one.
“Parcel of thieves! They’d take your last row of pins. They’d steal your life, if they knew how,” Granny said.
“Granny, don’t you know who dearly loves you?” Miss Beulah asked, clasping her. “Don’t you remember the hundred that’s been with you all day? Giving you pretties, striving to please you—”
“Thieves all,” said Granny.
Uncle Nathan kissed Granny on the forehead, the little vein throbbing there. He was to sleep outdoors under his tent. He declared he preferred it.
“But I don’t want to lose ye,” said Granny after him into the night.
After Uncle Nathan had gone, only Miss Lexie was left of all the day’s company.
“Would you stay with me, please?” Granny asked Miss Lexie. “My children have deserted me,”
But Miss Lexie seemed not to hear, staring at the old cactus where another and still another bloom drifted white upon the dark. “Yes, and those’ll look like wrung chickens’ necks in the morning,” she said. “No thank you.” She went inside.
“Now, many happy returns of the day, Granny Vaughn,” said Mr. Renfro, bending to her cheek, but she only let his kiss touch her little withering ear.
“Suppose something had happened to me while you gapped,” she said, and he bowed his way inside.
When nothing of them was left out there but their dust behind them, Granny still summoned them. “Thieves, murderers, come back,” she begged. “Don’t leave me!” Her voice cracked.
Jack knelt at the foot of the rocker and looked up at her face. Presently her head was brought down. Then she saw he was there. For a little while she gazed at him.
“They told me,” she said, her voice barely strong enough to reach him, “you’d gone a long time ago. Clean away. But I didn’t believe their words. I sat here like you see me—I waited. A whole day is a long wait. You’ve found Granny just where you left her. You sneaked back when nobody’s looking, forged your way around ’em. That’s a good boy.”
Jack held still under her eyes. Nobody made a sound except Lady May in her mother’s arms, who sent up a short murmur out of her dream.
Granny lifted both her little trembling hands out of her lap and took something out of her bosom. She held it before her, cupped in her hands, then carried it toward him. Her face was filled with intent that puckered it like grief, but her moving hands denied grief. Then, in the act of bending toward him, she forgot it all. Her hands broke apart to struggle toward his face, to take and hold his face there in front of her. It was the little silver snuffbox that Captain Jordan in his lifetime had come by, that had been Granny’s to keep for as long as anybody could remember, that rolled across the floor and down into the folds of the cannas.
Jack let her trembling fingers make sure they’d found him, move over his forehead, down his nose, across his lips, up his cheek, along the ridge of his brow, let them trace every hill and valley, let them wander. He still had not blinked once when her fingers seemed to forget the round boundaries belonging to flesh and stretched over empty air.
Jack rose and put his arms around her. Miss Beulah said, “It’s her bed she wants!” and swung up the lamp and led the way. Jack lifted the old lady to her feet, she gasped, and then he picked her up in his arms. He carried her, her bare head drooped quiet against his chest, down the passage to where Miss Beulah waited holding the lamp at the open door.
Later, an arm stretched out of the dark of the passage with some starched gowns and folded mosquito netting laid over a load of quilt.
“Thank you, Mama,” said Jack, receiving it.
Gloria sat in Granny’s rocker and undressed the sleeping baby. She raised the little arms one at a time and pulled her out of her sleeves. She shucked her out of her petticoat and little drawers and lifted her by her two feet and changed her.
“She’s a sweet, trustful little thing. I believe altogether she enjoyed this day more than anybody,” Jack said, gazing.
“Do you know what? You fell in love with this baby,” Gloria told him. “I watched you do it.”
“What a little hugger! And I believe she’s going to be smart too.”
“She’s our future, Jack. I wish you’d look at your baby’s bites! Her whole little body’s given over,” Gloria said. “She looks like she’s been embroidered in French knots. Those are what she got going through it all with her daddy.” She popped the baby’s nightgown over her head. When the little cockscomb came out at the top, Jack laughed.
“I see her new tooth in her little objecting mouth,” he said, and then kissed the baby good-night.
Gloria rose and stilled the rocker till it stood like a throne and laid the baby down in it. She opened out the length of mosquito netting an
d with one fling spread it over Lady May, chair, and all.
Then she took first turn undressing in the dark passage and putting on her gown, and while Jack did the same she ran on quick bare feet to the quilt, flung it wide, and spread it on the floor. Dropping to her knees she patted it perfectly free of wrinkles. It was ready by the time Jack in his gown came running out, catching all the moonlight down his front, and before she could get her hand over his mouth he had given his holler.
The pallet seemed thinner than paper, and was already the warmth of the floor underneath. Long since faded, blanched again tonight by moonlight, it showed a pattern as faint as one laid by wind over a field of broomsedge. It was the quilt that had baked on the line all day, and its old winter cleanness mixed with today’s dust penetrated their very skins with a smell strong as medicine. There was no pillow to spare for this bed, no up and down to it.
A female voice, superfine, carrying but thin as a moonbeam, strung itself out into the night: “Ay-ay-ay-cock!”
“I can’t help thinking about my luck,” said Jack in a hoarse whisper. “I’m a married man and Aycock ain’t. And suppose I was in his place!”
“Don’t let it go to your head,” Gloria said and laid her palm there. His forehead was as burning as Lady May’s, and under the bridge of her hand his eyes shone unevenly moonlit.
“Gloria, we won our day,” said Jack.
There was a secret sound, something that rasped on the ear over and over like the chirp of a late cricket. In the company room, Judge Moody was winding his watch.
“We’ve still got in-the-morning, Jack. The Moodys are in our bed,” Gloria reminded him in a whisper.
“They’ve beat us to that,” he said. “They got there first.”
“Your school diploma is nailed up over their heads. It’s all we’ve got, because our wedding license is burned up along with the rest of the courthouse.”
“Our courthouse caught afire?” he exclaimed. “Why wasn’t I home! I’d helped ’em put it out.”
“My son in the pen,” Miss Beulah’s voice said, travelling up the passage from the dark bedroom. “My son had to go to the pen.”
Jack’s head rolled away from Gloria’s. “Mama must’ve been up and at it today for ’most as long as I have,” he said presently. “She’s bone tired.”
“She’ll forget what she’s saying to your daddy,” Gloria promised him. “She’s old. She’ll soon be asleep, just like he will.”
“I wish I could do something for the boy,” Mr. Renfro’s voice said.
“Not something foolish,” said Miss Beulah’s.
“I’d do anything in the world to help that boy and his pride,” came Mr. Renfro’s voice.
“That didn’t keep you from putting-out for Judge Moody,” said Miss Beulah’s.
“I took a shine to the fellow, you’re right. I couldn’t tell you why,” Mr. Renfro’s voice agreed. “I just did, that’s all. If he’d stay a week, I’d take him turkey-hunting.”
“And call it helping Jack?”
“I’d like to help ’em both out, Mother. If I was a little younger, I believe I could help both of ’em at the same time.”
“I tried getting home before today,” Jack whispered, head still turned to the outdoors. “Don’t let on to Mama, to make her feel worse. The day I got there, I started trying finding a way. When I heard about our baby, I went out stooping, went through a watermelon field. Stooping—like I was thumping melons from row to row to find us boys a good one. At the last minute I stooped low out of there, but they knew that trick. Don’t tell Mama how easy they caught me—it would break her heart. I put in all my time and every bit of my thinking on the subject. I tried for the reunion last year. They caught me.”
“I don’t see how they charged all that up to good behavior,” Gloria whispered.
“Today was my last chance of making my escape. I took it. One more day, and I’d had to let ’em discharge me.”
“Of course the boy didn’t do what Nathan did,” said Mr. Renfro’s voice.
“I’ve got it to stand and I’ve got to stand it. And you’ve got to stand it,” said Miss Beulah’s voice. “After they’ve all gone home, Ralph, and the children’s in bed, that’s what’s left. Standing it.”
Jack turned to Gloria.
“Say now you’ll love ’em a little bit. Say you’ll love them too. You can. Try and you can.” He stroked her. “Wouldn’t you like to keep Mama company in the kitchen while I’m ploughing or fence-mending, give her somebody she can talk to? And encourage Ella Fay to blossom out of being timid, and talk Elvie out of her crying and wanting to grow up and be a teacher? You can give Etoyle lady-like examples of behavior. And on bad winter evenings, there’s Vaughn. All you need to do with him is answer his questions. Honey, won’t you change your mind about my family?”
“Not for all the tea in China,” she declared.
“Once it’s winter, Papa just wants to put up his foot and see pictures in the fire. You could crack his pecans for him, perched there on the hearth. And there’s precious little Granny—I asked her when I told her good-night if she wouldn’t love you and she said she would, she nodded.”
“You’re so believing and blind,” Gloria said. “About all of ’em—they don’t even have to be girls.”
“The whole reunion couldn’t help but love you—the prettiest one of ’em and still looking just like a bride.”
“They didn’t hesitate to wash my face in their sticky watermelon juice!”
“Poor face,” he said tenderly, drawing his hand down her cheek, turning her face to his.
“What they said was we’d been too loving before we got married!”
“And if we hadn’t, I’d like ’em to tell me when we’d had another chance at it!” he burst out.
“They tried making me your cousin, and almost did.”
“Be my cousin,” he begged. “I want you for my cousin. My wife, and my children’s mother, and my cousin and everything.”
“Jack, I’ll be your wife with all my heart, and that’s enough for anybody, even you. I’m here to be nobody but myself, Mrs. Gloria Renfro, and have nothing to do with the old dead past. And don’t ever try to change me,” she cautioned him.
“I know this much: I don’t aim to get lonesome no more. Once you do, it’s too easy to stay that way,” said Jack.
“I’ll keep you from it,” she vowed.
“And you’d better.”
“Jack, the way I love you, I have to hate everybody else.”
“Possum!” he said. “I ain’t asking you to deprive others.”
“I want to.”
“Spare ’em a little bit of something else,” he pleaded.
“Maybe I’ll learn after a long time to pity ’em instead.”
“They’ll take it a good deal harder!” he cried.
She drew still closer to him.
“Don’t pity anybody you could love,” whispered Jack.
“I can think of one I can safely pity.”
“Uncle Nathan? Love him.”
“Miss Julia.”
“I know she hated to breathe her last,” he said slowly. “As much as you and me would.” He took her hand.
“Are you trying to say you could do better than pity her?” Gloria asked him. “You never laid eyes on her.”
“I reckon I even love her,” said Jack. “I heard her story.”
“She stands for all I gave up to marry you. I’d give her up again tonight. And give up all your family too,” she whispered, and felt him quiver.
“Don’t give anybody up.” He stroked her. “Or leave anybody out. Me and you both left her out today, and I’m ashamed for us.”
“There just wasn’t room in today for it,” she said. “Or for feeling ashamed either.”
He said. “There’s room for everything, and time for everybody, if you take your day the way it comes along and try not to be much later than you can help. We could go yet, and be back by milking time. There’s
still the same good reason.”
She put her mouth quickly on his, and then she slid in her hand and seized hold of him right at the root. And so she convinced him that there is only one way of depriving the ones you love—taking your living presence away from theirs; that no one alive has ever deserved such punishment, although maybe the dead do; and that no one alive can ever in honor forgive that wrong, which outshines shame, and is not to be forgiven until it has been righted.
Moonlight the thickness of china was lying over the world now. The Renfro wagon stood all alone where the school bus used to stand, muleless, empty, its spoked iron wheels clear-cut as the empty pods of fallen flowers. The shadows of the trees stretched downhill, lengthened as if for flight.
“You’ll never get away from me again,” Gloria whispered, “Not in your wildest dreams.”
She reached for Jack’s hand. It was hot as the day, with calluses like embedded rocks. It was fragrant of sweat, car grease, peach pickle, chicken, yellow soap, and her own hair. But it was dead weight, with fingers hanging limp as the strands of wilted weed that dangled through the crack in Mr. Willy Trimble’s wagon. She stroked his lips and they moved at her touch and opened. He let out a snore. Everything love had sworn and done seemed to be already gone from him. Even its memory was a measure away from him and from her too, as apart as the cereus back there in its tub, that was itself almost a stranger now, having lifted those white trumpets.
Vaughn thought the house was asleep, but for a little distance as he rode away he listened behind him—he might still hear his name called after him. For a year and a half it had been “Vaughn! Vaughn!” every minute, though it would turn before he knew it back into “Jack!” again.
Or would it? Had today been all brave show, and had Jack all in secret fallen down—taking the whole day to fall, but falling, like that star he saw now, going out of sight like the scut of a rabbit? Could Jack take a fall from highest place and nobody be man enough to say so? Was falling a secret, another part of people’s getting tangled up with each other, another danger to walk up on without warning—like finding them lying deep in the woods together, like one creature, some kind of cricket hatching out of the ground, big enough to eat him or to rasp at him and drive him away? The world had been dosed with moonlight, it might have been poured from a bottle. Riding through the world, the little boy, moonlit, wondered.