Losing Battles

“Not in my seat!” Gloria pleaded.

  “Thank you, I’ll ride where I can keep the best eye on my car limping along in front of me,” she said.

  “You choose the truck?” exclaimed Judge Moody.

  “Then it’s a little bit careful with where you put your feet, Mrs. Judge,” Jack said, boosting her into the cab of the truck, “while I work you in from behind.”

  Mrs. Moody screamed, “Why, there’s no floor!”

  “Hook one foot onto that good two-by-four across the front end there, Mrs. Judge, and swing the rest of you over,” Jack said. “Mind out for biting springs.”

  “She’s got a horse blanket to her,” Curly Stovall said, pointing.

  “Curly, the only reason I’m letting you back in this truck one more time is my wife wouldn’t trust nobody but me to drive the school bus,” said Jack. “Judge Moody, I’d be obliged if you’d set between ’em, and while Mrs. Judge keeps her eye on the Buick, you keep your eye on Curly.”

  “That is what I intend doing. I’ll keep my eye on everybody,” he said. He climbed in, Curly Stovall pushed in after him and threw his weight on the steering wheel, and Jack’s dogs and Curly’s dogs leaped into the bed of the truck together. “But I will not travel with those dogs—Bedlam on top of Bedlam,” the Judge said. “Dismiss those dogs.”

  “And they’re wet in addition to the rest,” said Mrs. Moody.

  Jack ushered the dogs out, and they split as if for a race, some of them pounding down the road and the rest trundling one another onto the path that started around Banner Top.

  “Now, have you boys got all that hitched perfectly? I’m not sure yet I place what’s holding all that array in one piece, exactly,” Miss Beulah cried.

  “Trace chains, well rope, Moody towline, fence wire, and Elvie’s swing, ma’am,” called Vaughn.

  “Well, I’m not as sure as you are that Elvie was through with that swing. Jack, whatever happens, promise you come back with that swing to give back to Elvie. She’ll cry if you don’t,” said Miss Beulah, all agitation now, her hand already starting up as if to wave good-bye.

  Now Jack whistled and was answered by a whinny.

  “What do we need with that terrible mule?” Mrs. Moody exclaimed as Bet showed herself at the top of the farm track.

  “All going in one,” said Jack. “And I believe Bet’s recruited me one extra on her own.”

  The black mule and then a white mule came slipping down the home track, passing and re-passing each other.

  “Brother Bethune’s mule has just been waiting to be shown the way home,” said Vaughn. “He won’t need to eat no more for a week.”

  “By the time we’re loaded with children too, we’re going to need that extra mule power,” said Jack. “Add him on.”

  “What children?” cried Mrs. Moody.

  “The schoolchildren. Vaughn ain’t the only one. Mrs. Judge, we got to deliver all the poor little souls that’s starting to school this morning,” said Jack. “If they’re late, the teacher’ll give ’em a hiding.”

  “Now there’s Vaughn on Bet, partnered with Brother Bethune’s mule, both heading up the school bus with Jack at the wheel, and the truck with Stovall and the Moodys inside, and the Moodys’ pleasure car tied on in the middle. Like a June bug about to be hauled home to dinner by a doodlebug and a yellow butterfly and a couple of ants,” said Miss Lexie. “There! I’ve got something to tell Mr. Hugg.”

  “No, Vaughn! You hitched to the wrong end. You and the mules are going last!” Jack hollered. “You’re the brakes!”

  “Don’t you know how to pull the emergency?” Vaughn said with scorn.

  “I know how. But if there’s one thing in the world I wouldn’t put my faith in, Vaughn, it’s the emergency on the Banner School bus,” said Jack. “You’ve got two good mules. Each with their own good record of behavior. I trust one as much as I do the other.”

  “But they’ve never worked together,” Judge Moody interpreted.

  “And they won’t gee,” said Miss Lexie.

  “I’m counting on ’em,” said Jack. “I want ’em right behind.”

  “Here comes somebody else. But I don’t reckon he’s any help,” said Miss Beulah. “He’s just the letter carrier.”

  “You can pass us right here if you whip your pony up fast and follow the tracks through my ditch, Mr. Wingfield!” Jack called.

  “No letter for you,” said the mailman to Gloria. “You mailing one on the route?”

  “I don’t ever have to write any more letters,” she told him.

  “I’m glad for you.”

  “If it isn’t the iceman too!” said Miss Beulah. “Look, coming the other way. Watch out, everybody, you’d hate to collide with that ice.”

  “It’s my ride,” said Miss Lexie, handing her a wad of damp cloth. “I enjoyed wearing your pillowcase.” For the moment, she exposed to the rain Miss Julia Mortimer’s birdwing. After the ice wagon had maneuvered its way around, Jack ran back to boost Miss Lexie up.

  “Miss Lexie? You still teaching the public?” asked the driver of the ice wagon as Miss Lexie rose foursquare into the air.

  “If I said I’d given it up long ago, that make you any happier?”

  “I heard they’re fixing to bury one now in Banner,” he said when she was up on the box beside him.

  “Get a wiggle on,” said Miss Lexie. “Carry me till you can set me down at old man Hugg’s front gate.”

  “There goes Lexie, back to something she knows,” said Miss Beulah, as the ice wagon banged on away.

  Then Miss Ora Stovall stepped on the running board of the truck. “Hope you don’t mind if I slide in on your lap,” she said, and sat down on Mrs. Moody. She was the only clean, dry person left. White powder on her face gave her a complexion that seemed to have a pile, like cat’s fur. Her cheeks were burdened down with a pink like that of excitement, which extended all the way to her ears.

  Mrs. Moody, with Miss Ora on top of her, put up one hand overhead, exploring. It stayed helplessly raised.

  “It’s raining,” she told Judge Moody piteously. He reached and brought the curtained door shut on roofless, floorless space.

  Jack leaned out of the bus. “Now, who’re we about to go off and leave if she don’t run for it?”

  Gloria ran and hopped lightly up the steep iron step, swung herself inside, and perched on the seat behind the driver’s, where she folded her hands over the back of his wobbly chair.

  “Don’t let that parade get away from you, Vaughn! Vaughn can’t rob a hen’s nest without Jack to tell him, Vaughn is not Jack, and never will be,” Miss Beulah confided at the top of her voice into the truck.

  “Oh, Jack,” Gloria sighed at the same time into Jack’s ear from behind him, “this is the way we started out. Our first day.”

  They shot forward. Creaks, booms, gunlike reports, the rattling of bolts, splashings underneath, and the objections of mules from behind added themselves to the high-pitched motor of the school bus leading.

  “We thought things was bad last year,” Miss Ora began to Judge Moody. “Thought we was poor then. Compared to now we was all millionaires and didn’t know it!”

  There was not a close fit to the hood covering the truck’s engine. A piece of the motor was almost under their noses, glistening like a chocolate cake. Mrs. Moody peeped around Miss Ora and saw it.

  “Suppose it starts working!” she exclaimed. “Oh, what’ll I do with my feet?”

  “Hold ’em!” Jack called back.

  The three big hulks ploughed their joined-up way down Banner Road, moving as they’d never been before and never would be again, in one another’s custody and in mule custody, above the ragged gullies and under the shaved clay hills that were shining as though great red rivers were pumping through their hearts.

  The rain, that was falling on everything more gently than the rays of yesterday’s sun, had been just enough to spoil the hay and to part Sid’s hair down the middle. He was joining them now, going first, lea
ding them all. As they came along faster he ran faster too, jumping over puddle after puddle, rocking himself like a little chair to jump over the big ones.

  “I’m taking the liberty of unsnapping these rain curtains,” said Mrs. Moody. “If they were doing any good for the roof of my head, I wouldn’t object, but they are decidedly mildewed.”

  “Don’t ask me to hold ’em! I’ve got all I can hold. All,” said Miss Ora. In her lap, besides the umbrella, was a big purse of black leather that was turning gray along the seams and around the corners, the same gray that hair turns in old age.

  Mrs. Moody gave the curtains to Judge Moody to hold. She peeped again, ran her eyes up and down the claybanks and frowned at the sky on top. The procession dipped across a creek bridge, limber as a leather strap.

  “It’s just some more of what was served to us yesterday,” she said.

  “No, the world doesn’t do much changing overnight,” said Judge Moody.

  “And this is the edge of nowhere, no two ways about it. Don’t try telling me there’s people living along here,” Mrs. Moody said, when big shepherd-type dogs ran out from where they guarded the entry to some little track, barking to greet Sid, trying to bite at the tires of the school bus, barking everything on past.

  “Follow them buggy tracks back far enough and you’ll see houses for ’em. Oh, there’s plenty customers still hanging on.” Miss Ora laughed there on Mrs. Moody’s knees.

  “Brakes, Vaughn!” Jack sang out, and the line of them jerked, tugged almost to a stop. A handful of children with schoolbooks held over their heads waited by the side of an Uncle Sam mailbox.

  “To the back!” Gloria commanded as the children scrambled shrieking inside with her, while their dogs, the shepherd-type, like members of the neighborhood family, then tried to get on the bus.

  “Get back in that road, Murph!” said Jack. “Get that tail out of here. Sid’s the only dog that knows how to ride with me.” He whistled and Sid entered and sat up by the gear box, panting. He sat as close to Jack’s foot as Gloria sat close to his head.

  Judge Moody pointed suddenly across the two ladies. “I believe there’s my ditch. There it is, Maud Eva! Take a look.”

  “Horrors, you made me see a snake in it about nine feet long,” said Mrs. Moody. “Dead, I devoutly trust.”

  “Yes sir, along here gets to be a fairly good-size dreen,” said Miss Ora. “Don’t it, Brother? Panther Creek gets in a hurry sometimes to get to the old Bywy.”

  “Brakes!” called Jack.

  “My opinion is we’re going to bang together so hard next time we stop that I’m going to spill somebody,” Mrs. Moody warned.

  “But Mrs. Judge, we got to gather up all these children regardless!” Jack called. “They’ve got one in every cranny, waiting in the rain, with nothing to their poor shaved little heads but a Schoolbook or two. You wouldn’t want ’em left behind and missing a day of school.”

  A sled, with a front guard like the foot of a little bed, stood hitched to a gray mule, waiting where there was no mailbox but only a clearing in the cut-over woods to let a track through. A little boy jumped off the sled from behind his father who stood to drive.

  “Patient as Job,” said Jack, throwing open the door to let the little boy in.

  “Now let that be enough,” Mrs. Moody prayed to the dripping sky.

  Judge Moody pointed again. “No, that’s my ditch! There it is, Maud Eva. This is the right one.”

  “You’ve already forgotten,” she said. “Well, that one’s got some kind of a warning planted down in there, plain to see. Take a look yourself.”

  It was a new sign, its paint shining wet in long black fishtails.

  “Where Will YOU Spend Eternity?’ ” Miss Ora read off for them. “I can tell you without a bit of trouble who to thank for that.”

  “I’m not going in again,” said Judge Moody.

  “Old Nathan Beecham. He’s a crank. He comes this way once a year and you never see the last of it,” Miss Ora told him. “I’ll tell you who else lives on that road, Mr. Willy Trimble. He’s a bachelor. Down yonder’s his chimney.” It was of mud, lumpy as an old stocking on an old leg. “He’s a pretty old fixture of this community.”

  “Well, just keep on twisting and winding,” said Mrs. Moody to her own car going in front of them. “I suppose we’ve got to get past everything there is before we’re there.”

  On top of the bank could be seen a roof and, higher than that, gourds hanging in rows, strung on lines between thin poles, like notes on a staff of music, each painted skull-white with a black opening.

  “All right, that’s Brother Bethune’s house,” said Miss Ora. “He’s a Baptist preacher and a moonshiner, and that’s his bluebird houses.”

  Now, election posters for races past and still to come embraced the bigger tree trunks. There were the faces of losers and winners, the forgotten and the remembered, still there together and looking like members of the same family. Every time there was Curly Stovall on a tree there was Uncle Homer on the next one, but only Uncle Homer’s qualifications were listed in indentation like a poem on a tombstone:

  EXPERIENCED

  COURTEOUS

  LIFELONG BAPTIST

  MARRIED

  RELIABLE

  JUST LEAVE IT TO HOMER.

  “It ain’t far now! We’re coming to Aycock’s house,” said Jack.

  Against the sides of the road bank, like the two halves of a puzzle, lay a parted bedstead, every iron curlycue of it a flower of rust.

  “Look what little Mis’ Comfort is trying to wish off on the public now,” said Jack. “I believe that’s Aycock’s own bed.”

  “No,” said Gloria. “That’s been rusting even longer than you and Aycock have been gone. It’s Mr. Comfort’s.”

  “If he ever is planning on coming home, he’s got one of the poorest welcomes I ever saw waiting on man. I almost hope he’s dead,” said Jack. “Brakes!”

  “What are we stopping for now?” protested Mrs. Moody, as they slowed down under a big blackjack oak that a little path climbed up under.

  “Aycock!” Jack hollered. “Where’s the teacher?”

  Over their heads was a house perched even with the edge of the bank, on struts. Aycock was visible sitting on the porch floor with his knees crossed and legs hanging over; he was crouched over his guitar. Without interrupting the rise and fall of his hand, he called, “She hoofed it. I told her the school bus wasn’t anything to count on.”

  “He’s happy right where he is. He’ll sit there serenading himself till he’s seen the train go by,” said Jack as the procession leaped forward.

  “The train?” repeated Mrs. Moody.

  “You know, Maud Eva, it’s due in Ludlow at ten fifteen,” said Judge Moody, looking at his watch.

  “Banner’s on the crossing,” said Miss Ora. “They call it a blind crossing.”

  “The train better stop for it,” said Mrs. Moody.

  “We’d better stop. The Nashville Rocket doesn’t know Banner’s on the map,” said Judge Moody. “Any more than you did yesterday.”

  “They know now!” Jack sang out. “Ever since he got stopped by my truck, Mr. Dampeer always blows for Banner about forty times! Don’t worry, Mrs. Judge, he won’t hit my truck a second time!”

  “On the last dip, I bet you a nickel we’re going to give ’em a free show, Brother,” said Miss Ora.

  “I swear you Bob we’ve risked life and limb every inch of the way since we left home, Oscar,” Mrs. Moody said. “And going on a mercy errand!”

  “Listen, now somebody’s coming up behind us,” Curly Stovall said.

  “Who?” objected Miss Ora.

  “I can hear ’em. It’s another horse or mule back yonder, crowding the two we got,” said Curly.

  Miss Ora stuck her head out. “I’ll tell you who it is, it’s old Mr. Willy Trimble,” she said, and yelled, “Willy Trimble?—Hope not! What’re you coming after us for?—He’s pulling a load of flowers in his old wag
on,” she told Judge Moody. “He’s funeral-crazy. I can tell you where he’s going.”

  “I know already,” he told her.

  “Well, excuse me,” Miss Ora exclaimed. “Excuse me for living.”

  For a straight strip downhill the road ran between equally high carved banks shining wet on either side and too close for comfort, like the Red Sea in the act of parting as pictured in the Bible. Two wooden churches hung over them from opposite sides of the road, as if each stood there to outwait the other and see which would fall first.

  “Methodist—Baptist,” said Miss Ora Stovall with a wag of her head. She asked Mrs. Moody, “I’m Methodist, which are you?”

  “I’m neither one, and gladder of it every minute.”

  Jack was waving his hand out of the school bus. Brother Bethune stood on the Baptist porch watching them go by, in a coat from which the pocket flaps stood out like stove lids, a sheltering dog under each drumming palm.

  “Looks like I’ve been stood up!” he called back. “Where’s my crowd?”

  Mrs. Moody gave a little shriek and, even under the weight of Miss Ora on her lap, she drew up her legs and held her feet. They were looking down a gap between banks red as live coals onto a streak of river with a bridge across it.

  “Brakes!” Judge Moody said loudly.

  “School bus goes down this hill every morning and crawls back up every evening!” Jack called as down they plunged. “If anything ever happens to put a stop to that, it’s going to be about twice as hard to get an education!”

  “It’s running away with us,” whispered Mrs. Moody. “With all of us!”

  “Now I can see it! Almost under my nose!” Jack called. “The blessed water tank that spells out Banner.” He let out a shout. “Brakes, Vaughn! Whip ’em just as hard as you can labor—in the direction of home!”

  “Oh, Jack!” said Gloria.

  “Blow my horn, Curly, if you’re coming that close behind!” yelled Jack.

  “Pray!” cried Mrs. Moody.

  And the children all with one accord began to sing,

  “O hail to thee, Banner School so fair,

  The fairest school in the land!”

  “I’m going to put it all in the Vindicator. Watch out, Freewill! Banner’s going to beat you this week! You won’t have as much as we have to toot your horn about,” bragged Miss Ora Stovall.