Losing Battles

  Hot tears coursed through the rain on Gloria’s face. “Oh, Jack,” she whispered to his heels. “I don’t see how you’ve stayed alive for as long as you have.”

  “He don’t know when he’s licked, That’s how!” said Miss Beulah.

  “I ain’t never licked!” cried Jack.

  The rope went singing in two. As it cracked Jack free he rose, spread his arms, and came down in the fallen tree. The Judge, his wife, and Miss Beulah were flung backwards to the ground, but Gloria dived the other way. Her hat popped off and went sailing down through space.

  “And there she goes after him again!” came Miss Beulah’s wild cry.

  Both Jack and Gloria were in the tree, tumbling toward each other. The cedar trunk rolled once, as if a wave came all the way up from the river and went under it, but it stayed attached, hanging onto its very last roots. Branches sharp-cracked at Jack’s and Gloria’s knees and shoulders and around their heads, and pitched them against each other, buoyed them up and dropped them. Like runaways caught in a storm and living through it, they drove out with their arms and legs and went down shouting. Still the tree held to its shape—like a summer’s-old nest that had itself fallen out of some greater tree or vine, with all its yesterdays tangled up in it now. The two of them fell together through what was once the roof of the tree onto the ledge, landing right side up, looking at each other, weak with accomplishment.

  Cowbells were still shaking a little, close to their ears.

  “Well, the auto evermore landed where it hurts, didn’t it?” Miss Beulah cried.

  The Buick stood on its nose on the nose-pink ledge.

  Jack was climbing back to his feet. “Curly! If you couldn’t bring a better rope than that, I’d just as soon you hadn’t brought none!”

  “It was a World Wonder Number Two Grade,” shouted Curly, still inside the noisy truck.

  “I think it was just a plowline with a little pitch on it!” Jack was tenderly lifting Gloria up out of the broken branches. He drew little twigs from her hair.

  “What’s wrong with the knots you tie!” Curly hollered back.

  “They’re still tied! They’re the same Jack Renfro knots they ever was! Curly, that rope of yours busted in the middle!”

  “Wasn’t ever used but once before. And that was to pull one little calf away from his mother.”

  “You brought the wrong rope.”

  “On its very nose. And it wasn’t for lack of me trying to see the thing done right,” said Miss Beulah. “Well, things could be a lot worse, though. Machines could both be piled up down at the bottom and two or three people with a leg or an arm or two broken.”

  “I suppose you’re happy,” Mrs. Moody said to her husband. “There it is. On that ledge.”

  “It brings some relief,” he said. “Of course it’s temporary.”

  “It looks to me just a whole lot like it’s permanent,” she told him.

  “Well, it’s temporary, Maud Eva,” he said.

  At that moment there came something like a thunderclap behind them, and a cloud of larkspur-blue swallowed up all of Mrs. Moody and a part of Miss Beulah. The truck sprang up like some whole flock of chickens alarmed to the pitch of lunacy, fell, bounced, bounced again.

  “Curly,” Jack was hollering, “I believe you must be driving over one of Brother Bethune’s snakes!”

  The truck came to rest ten feet away in some plum bushes, the dogs streaking circles around it, barking. Curly Stovall, as soaking-wet as if he’d been outside with other people, leaped the second time from the cab and stamped through mud back to the jumping-off place and yelled at Jack, “All right, what was that?”

  “Curly, you know Papa planted a little of his dynamite up here, trying to do me a favor,” Jack said. “And he did.”

  “We already heard from that once!” shouted Curly.

  “And now you’ve heard from it again,” said Miss Beulah, looking him in the eye. “Some folks’ dynamite blows up once and gets through with it, but you don’t reckon on that little from Mr. Renfro.”

  “He’s using dynamite that’s mighty old, then!” Curly stormed. “And there ain’t no guarantee on what old dynamite is ever going to do!”

  “If it hadn’t been good for one extra bang, I can think pretty fast where you’d be, Stovall,” said Miss Beulah. “Still in that hole! Well on your way to China! Oh, that smell, Mr. Renfro!” She cast up her eyes. “That smell! Worse than a whole roomful of Cape Jessamines at funeral time.”

  Mrs. Moody let out a cry.

  The tree had begun to move. It was leaving them. First it went slowly, and then it was bounding, rolling unevenly down on its wheel of roots and clay, diminishing under their eyes, firing off fainter sounds, until it was quiet and still—only a bundle in the grayness below, of no more size or accountability than a folded umbrella.

  “Mrs. Moody scared it down,” said Gloria.

  “Thank Mr. Renfro instead—it was that last bang shook it,” Miss Beulah contradicted her.

  “And now the Buick’s got a sweet path open in front of her,” said Jack. “Back to the road where she started.”

  “You call that a path?” asked Judge Moody, frowning down.

  “It finds its way out here from the road, threading down to the river,” said Jack. “Gloria, keep as far back from me as you can.” He picked her up and swung her around behind him.

  “Hold onto him, girl!” cried Mrs. Moody.

  “I’m only fixing to level you, Mrs. Judge,” Jack said.

  “With what?” Judge Moody demanded.

  “Nothing but my own main strength, sir, that’s the safest,” Jack said.

  “Don’t move. Wait for me,” ordered the Judge.

  The car stood with its underside exposed in full to face Judge Moody as he tramped around the fishing path onto the ledge. Away from the road, or even the sight of the road, rising up on a ledge by itself, with a clay wall going up on one side and the rain falling to the houseless distance down the other, it might have been some engine of mysterious invention, its past unknown, its function obscure, possibly even illegal—like some whisky still come upon without warning in a clearing in the woods.

  Judge Moody stood there in front of it, Gloria stood behind, Mrs. Moody and Miss Beulah overhead, and Curly Stovall was somewhere back there laughing.

  “As Jack’s wife, I would rather nobody breathed,” said Gloria.

  Jack stepped before the car and stood under it with his back turned, flexed his arms, squatted once, then squared his knees. He cleaned off his bloody hands on his pants, then, as slowly as if he were already lifting its weight, he pushed his arms upward and took hold of the car.

  “Now watch! Reminds me of Samson exactly!” Miss Beulah cried frantically—she was standing on the jumping-off place. “Only watch my boy show the judgment Samson’s lacking, and move out of the way when it starts coming!”

  Jack staggered and then jumped as if out from between a set of jaws, and the Buick came down like the clap of thunder after a very near strike of lightning.

  “And she’s ready to haul!” he yelled, as Judge Moody caught him.

  “My cake!” exclaimed Mrs. Moody.

  The Buick’s other doors one after the other fell open, like pockets being turned out, and up the path from under the ledge ran little spotty wild pigs, like the church carpet come to life, and they gobbled up the cake that had spilled out of the front seat into the rain. Bringing up the wild pigs from behind came Rusty, the pig from home.

  “All right, Stovall, now it’s your turn,” Judge Moody called.

  “I quit! I ain’t going to drag you no further and you can’t make me—I’m the law, mister,” said Curly.

  “Curly, Judge Moody’s the law too,” said Jack. “I hope you ain’t so ungrateful that you’d forget Judge Moody.”

  “What Judge Moody? That Judge Moody?” Curly cried. “I didn’t know I was ever going to see that Judge Moody again! Not around here.”

  “How many do you thin
k there are?” Mrs. Moody exclaimed. “Are you trying to suggest to me there’s some other Judge Moody? Don’t waste my time.”

  “Maud Eva,” began Judge Moody.

  But there was suddenly added to the throbbing of the truck a rattling sound. Curly whirled. Jack rushed the clay wall, grabbing at cedar roots, cedar sprouts, rose briars, his legs wheeling him finally over the top, where Miss Beulah spanked him on.

  The empty truck was jolting headlong toward the road, skating in and out of the tracks it had made backing up. It was held back only a little by its laboring engine and by the brief fingering of plum bushes. It banged into Banner Road, a puddle walling up in front of it, then through its shower limped on across the road as if pretending something was broken, and threw itself into the ditch, ushering a part of the syrup stand with it and still dragging a long clay tail behind, which was its end of the rope.

  “All right now, that splashed my dress,” Miss Lexie greeted it at the mailbox.

  “I’m staying right here with mine,” Mrs. Moody was calling.

  “All right, Jack, you done that. You jolted it. You shook Banner Top, letting that Buick down. This truck, the way it’s put together, it feels ever’ little shake and shiver,” Curly accused him.

  “Well, one thing leads to another, that’s all,” said Miss Lexie. “That’s why I stay out of it.”

  Each section of the truck stood just a jot away from its neighbors, like the plated hide of the rhinoceros on its page in the geography book. Everything about it seemed a little out of its place except the license tag, an ancient one turned gold, from Alabama, which still hung upside down. The back wheels were as solid with mud as the balled roots of a tree out of the ground, but the front wheels and both horns were dripping with thinner, fresher mud like gingerbread batter.

  “She’s a little whopper-jawed now,” Jack agreed, while he shouldered the truck back into the road and headed it toward the crowd of cosmos that concealed the fishing path. “But looks ain’t everything. I’ll do a little more tightening on her, the first chance I get.” He climbed into the cab. “Here’s hoping I didn’t crack the ledge with that Buick like I cracked my truck,” he said to Gloria as she reached the road still running.

  “Get back to the other one,” she said. “The Moodys are having a fit.”

  On the ledge, Judge Moody stood with his hand on the open car door, one foot on the running board. “I’m on my way out of here now, Maud Eva,” he said.

  She screamed again. “Jack, don’t let my husband set foot in my car! Where’s that truck? Drag it away from him!”

  “My truck is waiting on a little further encouragement to get her clacking again, Mrs. Moody,” Jack said. “I know what it needs, right now.”

  “Never mind,” Judge Moody interrupted. “I’m driving my own car out of this place, young man.”

  “Don’t let him, Jack. Look down under him!” cried Mrs. Moody. “If he tries, take the wheel out of his hands. Dr. Carruthers would faint!”

  “Wait in the road, Maud Eva. Will you young people help my wife to the road? If you don’t object, everybody please wait in the road till I come driving out.” He added more calmly, “I believe I can do better if you’re not standing over me. I may be peculiar that way.”

  “What you are is out of gas, sir,” Jack reminded him. “I’ll bring you back some of mine.”

  “Then I’ve had my say,” said Mrs. Moody. “I’m not going to offer another word, Oscar, until we get home.”

  Jack hunted up a chewed section of rubber tube in the bed of the truck, unstuck a rusty bucket from the ground under the syrup stand, emptied out the rainy leaves, and then sucked and siphoned into the bucket some gasoline out of the tank. “With the mileage he’s been getting, this ought to carry him to Banner,” he said, running back with the handleless bucket in his arms.

  “He owes me four bits more now,” said Curly Stovall.

  They heard cowbells before they saw it. Then, streaked with clay, hung with briars, the emblem gone from its radiator top, its bumper swallowed up, both headlights blinded, the Buick bumped its way into view, listing sideways and fanning up mud. Judge Moody was visible at the wheel in spite of the mesmerizing rainbows flashing through the drizzle from cracks in the windshield. It churned hard before climbing its way up into the road, and then coming out between bowed-over heads of cosmos, it bumped around to where Mrs. Moody was waiting.

  “You bring it to me covered with mud!” she cried,

  “And it’s got a few other serious things the matter with it,” said Judge Moody.

  “Her nose is a little bit out of kilter,” Jack said. “And that’s reasonable. She’s been standing on it.”

  “The first thing to do is remove those cowbells,” directed Mrs. Moody, and already Jack was pulling them off like so many cockleburs.

  “Listen to the engine, Maud Eva. The way it’s running leaves something to be desired,” Judge Moody said.

  “She’ll make it to Banner,” said Jack. “You could call it all downhill. Pull her up where I show you, Judge Moody, sir, in front of my truck—” He was shoving the truck, pointing it down the road.

  “Instead of you pulling me, now I’m pulling you?” broke out Judge Moody.

  “We’ll all go in one,” said Jack.

  “Rescuing some woebegotten homemade truck that couldn’t even get up the steam to rescue me?” exclaimed Mrs. Moody. “I can just see visions of that!”

  “We’re all going the same place, Mrs. Judge! Curly, I’m going to let you ride in my truck, all the way, sitting high to the wheel if you want to. And Judge Moody’s Buick’ll bring you in behind him.”

  “Right under the nose of my trade?” he yelled. “My voters?”

  “Curly, make up your mind to be towed,” said Jack.

  “There’s always something to come along to shorten the tail of the rabbit. Remember that, Stovall,” said Miss Lexie Renfro.

  Judge Moody had just backed the Buick into place.

  “But I don’t hear it choking any longer, Oscar,” said Mrs. Moody.

  “Neither do I. No, I can’t get another spark out of it, I’m afraid,” said Judge Moody.

  “So you brought it here to me and that’s as far as you can go,” Mrs. Moody said to the Judge. “That was a short distance.—Stay out! Stay out! I don’t want to see you getting in my engine, even with my car on the ground!” she called at Jack’s back—he’d rattled up the hood. “Oscar, blow the horn at him!”

  Jack put up his head. “Listen!”

  It was another horn that blew. The flying school bus came down on them, around the mailbox and past the truck and the Buick, and Jack with a shout ran chasing it.

  “Stop! Stop!” he hollered, until the stop-flag dropped down, the bus swerved, and he caught hold of it.

  Vaughn put his head out the window.

  “Scoot out and give me your bus,” said Jack.

  “I fixed it easy. I’m on my way to school!” Vaughn cried.

  “Just what we need, and just in time, and I hadn’t even missed it!” Jack said.

  “It’s my first day to drive it,” Vaughn cried. “I ain’t even let my sisters in on it, to cramp my style—they walked the sawmill track.” The engine kept on with its excited, sibilant sound like uncontrolled whispering.

  “Vaughn, it can be your first day tomorrow.” Jack with a still bleeding hand reached in and patted Vaughn’s scrubbed one. “Just get it in line at the front of that Buick and hop out. I only wonder if you sparked that battery the way I would.”

  “It’s no blooming fair,” said Vaughn, accepting it.

  “The rain has washed that thing off some,” said Mrs. Moody, looking disapprovingly at where the headlight sockets were still empty and the grille and the front bumper were both still missing. This morning, dimples as big as children’s faces were visible, pressed into the yellow fenders. The metal of the body showed itself punctured and in places burned. The words “Banner Bob Cats” had come out across the front un
der the roof. “It’s bound to be the same bus. And we’re going behind it, Oscar?”

  Judge Moody’s cheeks puffed out, holding in his reply.

  “All right, Vaughn, you go hunt Judge Moody’s towline. Look under the jumping-off place, down on the ledge, if we still got a ledge,” said Jack. “I’m going to give his rope a fair try.”

  “My tools and my towline are back in the car where they belong,” said Judge Moody. “Under the back seat.” He began to get them out again, while Jack went leaping up the other bank.

  In a moment there came a kettle-drumming that went sounding on forever, it seemed, before it was swallowed up. “We got one sturdy fellow!” Jack said, running back to them. Stained red and black, and heavy as a live snake, it hung looped and dripping over his scratched, muddy arms.

  “You let that bucket fall back in, Jack, and there went one thing you won’t get back just by asking for it,” said Miss Beulah. “That well goes to China, and your Great-great-granddaddy Jordan himself was the stubborn old digger. Might even be his bucket.”

  “And that’s what you’ll use to pull a truck and a car both from here to Banner?” asked Miss Lexie. “Tied to the Banner School bus? It’s a well rope, is all it is.”

  “If a thing didn’t have but one use to it, Lexie, I’d just let you have it,” said Miss Beulah. “Mind!” she cautioned Jack. “That soppin’ rope’s heavier than you are!”

  “Mama, I believe this morning it’s wetter outside that well than in,” he told her, as the two brothers went hurriedly to work knotting, Vaughn doing just as Jack did.

  “Still not enough to get us all in one!” said Jack. “Now what?”

  “I brought along a rope of my own,” said Vaughn, with a glance up Banner Top. “In case what happened to him was to happen to me.” From under the driver’s chair in the school bus he got out a neatly coiled rope with a big knot in it. Mr. Renfro’s axe and a length of chain were stowed there too. Jack had it all out of his hands at once.

  Only a few moments later he hopped to his feet and asked Mrs. Moody, “Will you have a seat in the school bus now, Mrs. Judge? It’ll give you a front view of the road.”