Miss Beulah ran and caught up with her in the passage. “All right, New Shoes! I’m fixing to smack you hard right across those pones of yours, where you need it most,” she cried. “And for the rest of your punishment, you’re to come straight home from school today and tell me something you’ve learned.”
“Feed the stock. Lead the cows to pasture, Vaughn,” said Mr. Renfro. “You heard your mother. The reunion is over with.”
“I ain’t done anything,” said Vaughn.
“Then keep still,” said Uncle Nathan. He pointed a loaded fork at Vaughn. He ate something out of his pack for breakfast, with a little home syrup poured over it.
“Everybody is liable to get a surprise yet,” said Vaughn, as he struck off for the barn.
“Uncle Nathan, you ain’t leaving?” cried Jack, when a moment later Uncle Nathan began handing around tracts out of his pack—the one about the crazy drunkard that he carried the most of. “Are you trying to tell us you won’t stay for hog-killing time like you always do?”
“I must needs be on my way,” said Uncle Nathan. His patched sleeve still smelled of coal-oil and a little scorching from last night.
“Nathan, have you even set long enough under my roof to dry out a little?” cried Miss Beulah. “Let me feel your thatch.”
“Sister, I must needs not stop to take comfort.”
“You won’t even stop in Banner to help bury Miss Julia Mortimer?”
He shook his wet locks. “If the Lord has left me to outlast her, He must want me to go my road further than I ever gone it before,” he told her, and hoisted his pack.
“Then put a kiss on Granny’s cheek without waking her up,” she told him.
“Good-bye, good-bye, Uncle Nathan!” yelled the three girls’ voices from the barn lot, when Uncle Nathan’s footsteps were heard measuring their way through the mud. “See you next reunion!”
“There’s a chink of light out yonder now,” said Mr. Renfro.
“They can’t start till I get there!” Jack cried, jumping up. He laid a restraining hand on Gloria’s shoulder. “Honey, I wouldn’t have you get your little feet wet. Don’t you come traipsing after me. It won’t take long at Banner Top—it can’t!” He kissed the baby, who was holding a little ham bone in her lips like a penny whistle, kissed everybody, ran up the passage, shouted, “Milk for me, Vaughn!,” gave a warbling whistle, and ran splashing off with the dogs. They heard Bet thudding away with him.
Miss Beulah took off her apron.
“Now, Mother, are you ready to set down for the first time?” asked Mr. Renfro.
She cried loudly, “Set down? I’m going to Banner Top! Why, you couldn’t hold me! Stovall and Moody are about to come to grips with their two machines! If my boy’s ready to turn in the performance I think he is, it’s a mother’s place to be there and see it done right!”
“It’s raining like it almost means it,” said Mr. Renfro.
“I’m neither sugar nor salt, I won’t melt. And morning rain’s like an old man’s dance, not long to last,” Miss Beulah recited. “What I’m asking is, is anybody at this table coming with me?”
“Don’t believe I’ll venture from the house,” said Mr. Renfro in mild tones. “If you ladies will excuse me.”
“He’s got that old dynamite headache,” said Miss Beulah. “I’ll only say it one more time, Mr. Renfro, and I’m through: from now on, you let other folks go out in the night and blow things to pieces, and you stay home. There’s too much of the Old Boy in you yet.”
“He’ll shortly blow up something else. He won’t learn, he’s a man,” said Miss Lexie.
“Yes sir, your touch is pure destruction!” Miss Beulah told him and ran to her kitchen. “I’ll consider you were drunk on lemonade,” she said when she marched back, Mr. Renfro’s hat on her head.
“I really ought not to keep Mr. Hugg waiting,” Miss Lexie said. “Especially when I’m coming to be his surprise. Jack may have to do without me watching him.”
“I’m not going to beg you, Lexie Renfro,” said Miss Beulah. “You can take your stand at our mailbox and get carried off either of two directions. Elmo Broadwee can carry you on his route and when he gets to Mr. Hugg’s he can set you down with his nickel’s worth of ice. Or you can change your mind and go the other way with the mail rider. Then you could get put down at that funeral. Couldn’t she, Gloria?”
“If she’s ready for it. And not scared of Miss Julia any longer,” Gloria said, standing up in her church dress of deep blue dotted swiss with white piqué collar and cuffs.
“Still, I missed everything yesterday,” argued Miss Lexie, rising too, and shaking crumbs on the floor for someone else to sweep up.
“Nobody’s compelled to watch my boy’s performance that don’t want to,” said Miss Beulah.
“Ask ’em who’s going to stay home with me,” said Mr. Renfro to Lady May, and Gloria handed her over. Lady May went to him as good as gold and gave him her tract, too.
On the ridge of the new roof the mockingbird sat silent, all chest, like a zinc bucket filled to the top, all song contained. What looked at first glance like a herd of strange cows come up into the yard overnight were only the tables of yesterday, stripped and naked, gleaming like hides in their sheen of rain. It was a tobacco tin in the weeds that shone like a ruby; what crouched like a possum under the althea was somebody’s lost apron. A peashooter dangled from its sling down the back of the school chair. The night-blooming cereus flowers looked like wrung chickens’ necks. Miss Lexie, coming out onto the porch wearing a pillowcase over her hat, pointed them out.
Miss Beulah came pulling the old wool brim down squarely over her forehead and said, “Gloria Renfro, is all that hair you’ve got going to be enough to keep you dry?”
Gloria popped a blue straw sailor onto her head and snapped the elastic under her chin. “No ma’am, I’ve still got the same hat I came here in.”
There was a sudden fusillade of sounds at their backs. Vaughn was feeding the pig. They had only to turn their heads to see all the refuse of yesterday, corncobs, eggshells, chicken bones, chicken trimmings, chicken heads, and the fish heads, all jumping together in the blue wash of clabber, all going down. Rusty looked back at them, with tiny eyes. He had the old, mufflered face of winter this morning and fed sobbing with greed, champing against blasts he was never going to feel.
“That reminds me, I’ve thought of a very good way to fix Mr. Hugg, when I get back to him in a little while,” Miss Lexie said, hooking arms with the other two ladies on the slippery yard. “It’s to give him every single thing he wants. Everything Mr. Hugg asks for—give it to him.” She glared.
“All right, Lexie, go ahead,” said Miss Beulah. “Just so it don’t mean you cart him here to me.”
“He’ll get the surprise of his life, won’t he?”
“Now Vaughn!” Miss Beulah was calling over her shoulder. “After he’s gobbled that, turn the old sinner loose again. There’s still plenty he can root out, not very far away. But he did look sassy tied up there for the reunion!”
“Gloria Renfro, how did you ever switch that car away up there? If you told it yesterday, I reckon I was too busy to listen.” Miss Beulah stopped still in the middle of Banner Road and stared upward from beneath the row of rain beads on Mr. Renfro’s hat.
“I scared it up,” said Gloria, giving a skip over the ditch and arriving beside her. “I only wish it was in my power this morning to scare it down again.”
No Moodys were in evidence. Jack stood on Banner Top by himself, hands on hips, studying the scene.
The Buick seemed not to have changed its position at all, though there was a lick of scorch up the back of it and its back window had stars. But the tree was out of the ground and hanging top-down over the jumping-off place. All its roots had risen together, bringing along their bed of clay, as if a piece of Boone County had decided to get up on its side. The solid wheel of pocked and bearded clay looked like an old white summer moon, burnt out on the edge
of the world.
Miss Beulah was climbing the path up, making haste toward the Buick. “With a living Comfort inside it. I marvel,” she said. “Or is he inside, I wonder? Comforts generally acts by contraries, but you’d be nothing but a fool to count on it.”
“Sure, he’s in there, Mama,” said Jack, still studying the car. “Asleep on all fours, like a bird dog.”
“Right where you left him? Oho!” Miss Beulah scoffed. “If that’d been a Beecham or a Renfro so treated, do you suppose the world had been safe from us last night?”
“Never knew the world was safe,” hummed Miss Lexie, who had halted right at the mailbox, where she stood a head taller than Uncle Sam. “Well, the sight’s not a great deal different from the way I had it pictured.”
“Mr. Renfro was being modest for a change when he said he took a little nick out of that tree,” said Miss Beulah. “I don’t think it’s going to be with us very much longer.”
“It’s clinging,” said Jack. “Waiting to see what’s the next thing to come along.”
Nothing but memory seemed ever to have propped the tree. Nothing any stronger than memory might be holding it where it was now—some last tag end of root, that was all. There was just a round mass of clay, hanging with roots, like a giant lid raised and standing open, letting out an aromatic smell. There in the rain, its underside went on raining, itself, into the hole, the starved clay raining down dryness from the old, marrowless, pink-and-white colored roots.
“What do you think of it now, Jack?” called Judge Moody’s voice. He and Mrs. Moody came in sight from the top of the farm track, where they had been sheltering under a tree. They made their slow way down into Banner Road.
“I’ll tell you what I think,” said Miss Beulah. “It’s lacking very little. It’s a very nearly perfect example.”
“What of?” asked Miss Lexie.
“Man-foolishness,” said Miss Beulah. “Ever heard of it?”
“One of these days I’m going to have to agree with your mother about something, Jack,” said Gloria into his ear. “I hope she never finds out.”
“Papa was trying to help,” Jack said. “He’s got him a reputation that’s going to kill him one day yet.”
“I want a good answer,” said Judge Moody from the road. “What’s the size of the situation now?”
“Well, sir, my way down was already closed off north, south, and east,” Jack called. He made a step forward and went down up to his belt buckle. “And now Papa’s cut off my west. Well, it’s just a hole. Nothing but a hole,” he said, climbing out. “And I believe that big pleasure Buick’ll clear it! If she’s persuaded the right way—and I’m counting on my truck just as strong as I can count!”
“Where is it, then? Is that truck going to fail us too?” asked Mrs. Moody.
They all stared down Banner Road. In the row with them, the cosmos flowers barely stirring on their stems under the fine soft rain were washed bright as the embroidery on the pillowcase Miss Lexie wore over her hat. There came a sound like a swelling, heavier rain.
“Yonder’s your answer! Coming right now! Bigger and brighter than ever!” Jack hollered. He seized Gloria and Miss Beulah each by a hand and ran with them down to the road.
“Is that the same truck? It doesn’t look the same as yesterday,” Mrs. Moody greeted them.
“It’s backing,” Jack told her. “It’s been coming uphill from Banner.”
“It even looks to me like it’s got a dog driving it,” Mrs. Moody argued.
“Suppose you say no more, dear, and just give it a chance to get here,” said Judge Moody in heavy tones.
Jack stood in the middle of the road while the truck backed up toward him, holding a muddy chunk raised in his hand ready to brake the wheels on top. This morning, the fishing poles had gone, and draping the rear was a strip torn off a bolt of kitchen oilcloth, on which words written in red paint with a stick were now coming close enough to be read: “Excell (Curly) Stovall for Justice of the Peace. Leave It To Curly.”
“Rain curtains!” Jack hollered, as the truck drew closer. “Who parted with those?”
“Brother Dollarhide for a gallon of gas. Where’s he hiding—the fellow that belongs to that Buick?” came the muffled voice from within the cab.
“He’s standing right here with his wife, waiting on you. Whoa!” The truck drew even with his feet and Jack blocked the wheel. Ten or fifteen of Curly’s hounds at once poured out from the bed behind onto the road and surrounded Jack, Judge Moody, and the ladies, their tails like a dozen fairy wands all trembling towards trouble.
“Then tell him it’s going to be a dollar to go up and a dollar to come down. The whole business is going to set him back two dollars,” called Curly Stovall. “Cash.”
“If the fellow doesn’t know any better than that, let’s just keep him in the dark about what they’d charge in Ludlow,” Mrs. Moody murmured to her husband.
“I am not reassured,” said Judge Moody.
“It’s a bargain, Curly!” Jack sang out. “So stick your head out of them pretty curtains now, it’s time to see where you’re going.”
The curtains on the driver’s side parted. A yell came out. “Jack! Hey! Look yonder at Banner Top! Who got here first?”
“Papa,” answered Jack. “Don’t worry. It’s just minus one tree.”
“And what am I going to hitch to? Drat your hide!”
“Careful how you talk, Curly. We got a pretty fair crop of ladies scared up for a rainy morning,” said Jack. “And lined up here to watch us.”
“First and foremost his mother!” cried Miss Beulah, and as she spoke the cab door on the passenger side swung out and down stepped one more lady, with the only umbrella for a mile around already raised.
“Why, Curly, you brought Miss Ora! Who’s holding the store down—Captain Billy Bangs?”
Everything waited while the fat lady picked her way through the mud. “Granny Vaughn live through her birthday? Jack get his welcome without it leaving any scars? Get any surprise visitors?” Miss Ora Stovall asked Miss Beulah. “I believe Fm looking at two of those right now.” She edged in on the Moodys, so she could stand between them. “How’re you feeling?” she began. “I’m Ora Stovall, weigh more than I should, never married, but know how to meet the public, keep up with what’s going on. Enjoying your visit? What do you think of Banner? Like to hear about the biggest fish-fry that ever was?”
“All right, Jack Renfro and Curly Stovall!” Miss Beulah called over dogs, engine clatter, Miss Ora and all. “The visitors may have all day to talk, but the Renfros haven’t! Now get on up there and perform! And keep in mind a mother’s here to watch you.”
“I’m the owner of the car, if you please!” Mrs. Moody exclaimed.
Through the rain curtains, canvas that had come to be the texture of old velvet, slit with isinglass lights and a few peepholes, Curly’s voice called out, “Lady! This ain’t the same job I took on yesterday!”
Jack flung himself onto the running board. “Curly, things change overnight, you got to be ready for that. We got a job this morning as whopping big as both our reputations put together!”
“And how you think we’re going to do it!”
“By you sticking to the wheel and me doing the engineering!” He hopped to the road. “All right, Curly! Crawl! Back like you’re going, right on up the bank, just back on up to me.” He ran up the slippery clay, both arms beckoning.
“Shucks. Hindways?” Miss Beulah objected.
“Mama, in my truck, as long as you want your gas to feed steady, you got to pamper it on the upgrade. Give her the throttle, Curly! Don’t be bashful!” Jack called.
From the road they watched it. With a long chain of noises like a string of firecrackers set fire to, the truck began to plough its way upward. The rain had washed it, so now, in part, it was the old International blue. With the spots and circles of oil that had worked their way through the finish, it was iridescent as butterfly wings as it quivered its way u
p. On the brow of the cab the original wording had emerged, “Delicious and Refreshing.”
“What do those blasted horns mean?” Judge Moody asked.
“They mean I made a good trade out of Captain Billy Bangs! Who wants to know?” came Curly’s voice back.
Sid, having barked the truck off the road in spite of a dozen hounds, was still after it, and flung himself like a bullet at the windshield, already stuck up with adhesive like a cut face.
“Mind out for your bob-wire fence!” Jack sang, as something flew up from under the back wheels like a whip. “You strung it there—just to trip your own self up with the first time you tried for the top! And the next thing is you got to straddle a hole about the same size you are. Keep your eye cocked on me.”
“What caused a tree to just up and get out of the ground?” Curly hollered, over the hole.
“It was old and ready to fall—Lady May Renfro could’ve pushed it over with her little finger,” Jack cried. “All right, whoa!” He skidded to put a chunk in front of the truck’s front wheel. “Now! Pitch me your rope!”
The cab door swung open long enough for an arm-throw, and a black coil crossed through the air and slammed Jack wetly in the chest. He spun and crouched with it behind the truck, shoulders pumping as he worked with his knots. In a moment he’d jumped around to the back of the Buick. As he attacked that, a shaking of bells thrilled the air.
“Somebody, somebody for sure, climbed up here in the night and tied cowbells on this Buick!” Jack called. “Only the Broadwees would have had that little to do.” Then he rose and yelled into the car, “Wake-up-Jacob! Wake up! Ain’t you about ready to quit riding?”
“Is it daylight?” came Aycock’s sleepy voice from inside.
“And raining. All right, Aycock, you can get out now—I’ll count three. When I count three, Curly, you start pulling!” Jack yelled. “And when you do, remember yours ain’t the only engine that’s running! Once Aycock jumps and the Buick’s out of balance, she’ll start pulling against you! All right—ready?”