“He’s a little bit primed this morning. And a good thing he didn’t catch any of that milk, because it ain’t the drink he’s most overly fond of,” said Uncle Curtis.
“I still don’t see why Curly Stovall couldn’t do his own arresting,” said Aunt Cleo. “A marshal’s got every right in the world and a justice of the peace is very little better than he is.”
“Curly knew better, that’s why! So off Jack’s carted to Foxtown and shooed in jail. And Etoyle said Homer warned him before they started that if he give any more trouble resisting arrest he’d get a bullet ploughed through his leg.”
“Etoyle embroiders. What are you doing sitting down with company now, Etoyle Renfro?” asked Miss Lexie.
“I love to hear-tell.”
“You slip in here for what’s coming next? In time to hear how your poor mother cried?” Aunt Beck reproached her.
“Now, I’m not going to try to tell the way Beulah performed that night,” Uncle Percy whispered. “I ain’t got the strength to do it justice.”
“And you wasn’t here to see it!” called Miss Beulah.
“Well, how did Gloria here perform?” asked Aunt Cleo.
“Cleo! Gloria hadn’t got to be a member of the family that quick!” The other aunts laughed, and Aunt Nanny called, “Had you, Gloria!”
Gloria sat without turning around or speaking a word.
“Has she got good sense?” Aunt Cleo wanted to know.
“No indeed, she’s addled,” Miss Beulah came out to tell her. “And there’s not a thing I or you or another soul here can do about it. It’ll take Jack.”
“I’m wondering by now why even Homer Champion don’t get here,” said Aunt Cleo. “Unless he’s waiting for Jack to get here first.”
“Oh, I can tell you exactly what Homer’s doing. He’s sitting jammed in a hot pew somewhere, waiting on the final Amen so he can shake hands with the whole congregation when they’re let out the door,” said Miss Beulah.
“The biggest, fullest, tightest-packed Baptist church he can find holding preaching today,” said Aunt Beck.
“Then he’ll hurry to shake hands again in front of the Foxtown ice house,” said Uncle Percy. “He’ll catch the Methodists going home to dinner.”
“He’ll figure a way to jar loose a few Presbyterians before the day of worship is over, if he can find some,” said Miss Lexie.
“How’s Curly Stovall putting in his last Sunday?” asked Aunt Cleo.
“He’ll think of some such thing as a fish-fry to sew up all the infidels,” said Miss Beulah, going.
“He figures he’s got the Christians hooked like it is, blooming storekeeper!” recited Elvie, in her mother’s voice.
“What’re you doing here, child?” cried Aunt Beck.
“Keeping the flies killed.”
“Well, sweetheart, your Uncle Homer Champion and Curly Stovall is in eternal tug-of-war for the same office now,” Uncle Noah Webster told her. “You ain’t likely to understand all you hear till you get up old enough to vote yourself.”
“Both in the run-off?” asked Aunt Cleo.
“Why, of course. And I don’t know how in the nation old Homer’s going to cheat him out of it,” said Uncle Noah Webster. “Homer’s my age. He can’t keep a jump ahead of Curly much longer.”
“Now to me,” Uncle Percy was quavering, “what they ought to had sense enough to do was throw this case out that selfsame day in Foxtown.”
“Think of the trouble it would have saved!” Aunt Beck sighed.
“To me and the majority,” Uncle Curtis said, “Jack had acted the only way a brother and son could act, and done what any other good Mississippi boy would have done in his place. I fully expected ’em to throw the case right out the window.”
“With nothing but a good word for Jack,” said Aunt Birdie.
“Well, if Jack’s that lucky, then Curly’s just wasting his time trying to arrest him,” said Aunt Cleo.
“Well, Jack wasn’t, and Curly wasn’t. So don’t go home,” Aunt Nanny teased her.
“Well, they was mighty hard up for a spring docket in Ludlow if Jack’s the worst fellow they could get Foxtown to furnish,” said Uncle Curtis.
“All right, Sister Cleo, would you call that a case?” asked Aunt Birdie in sassy tones.
They cried, “We’re testing you.”
“Now wait, now wait,” said Aunt Cleo. “I might could.”
“Why, you could no more call that a case for court than I could call my wife flying!” said Uncle Percy. He put his hand on Aunt Nanny’s shoulder.
“I might could,” said Aunt Cleo. “Even if all Jack got home with was the empty safe, I reckon you could call that safe-cracking. I don’t know what else you could call it.”
The beating in the kitchen stopped again. Miss Beulah came out onto the porch. “If Jack had wanted to steal something, Sister Cleo, he could have run off with Curly’s fat pig and butchered it and done us all a little good at the same time! My son is not a thief.”
“If a boy’s brought up in Grandpa Vaughn’s house, and knows drinking, dancing, and spot-card playing is a sin, you don’t need to rub it into his hide to make him know there’s something a little bit the matter with stealing,” Uncle Noah Webster cried.
“Throwing his case out of court,” said Uncle Curtis, “was the only thing for Homer Champion to do, so he didn’t. He bound Jack over to the grand jury. Homer swore he couldn’t afford to do anything else. They’d call him playing favorites. And said Jack hadn’t done himself a world more good the way he treated the Foxtown jail,” said Uncle Dolphus.
“Started nicking his way in a corner, prizing his way out as soon as he’d cleaned up his first dinner plate,” said Uncle Percy. “He worked faithful. But Jack is a Banner boy, and how was he to know that if you dug your way through the brick wall of the Foxtown jail with your pie knife, you’d come out in the fire station? Chief looks up from the checkerboard and says to him: ‘Son, I don’t believe I ever seen you before. You better turn around and scoot back in till they make up their minds what to do with you.’ And helped him scoot.”
“Well, when they got Jack told they’d have to lock him up a little better now and keep him till spring, Jack just told them he’s a farmer,” said Uncle Curtis. “Jack told them just exactly who he was and just exactly where he lived. ‘I got my daddy’s hay to get in the barn, his syrup to grind, his hog to kill, his cotton to pick and the rest of it,’ he says. ‘His seed in the ground for next year. And I got my schooling to finish. I can’t be here to sit and swing my foot while you scare up somebody to try me,’ he says.
“So they told Jack, ‘Go on, then.’ And one of the other prisoners says, ‘We don’t keep room in the Foxtown jail for the likes of you country boys.’ ”
“And they let him go?” cried Aunt Cleo.
“Look out, don’t start to saying something good about the courts, Foxtown or anywhere else!” yelled Miss Beulah. “Not when Homer had the further crust to tell Jack if he didn’t show his face in Ludlow Courthouse on the very stroke of the clock when they called his name, he could look forward to being arrested the same way all over again. Don’t thank Homer! And don’t let me hear anybody start thanking Curly Stovall for putting up that bail!” She went.
“Now that was right outstanding of a Stovall,” said Aunt Cleo. “Say as much.”
“How else did he think Renfros was going to live? How else did he figure he stood a chance of getting a penny out of ’em?” laughed Uncle Noah Webster. “Oh, Jack he did sweat, early and late. And just when we didn’t need it, rain. And court creeping closer and closer. So the time come when we couldn’t stand sight of his face any longer and we had to tell him, ‘Jack! Before you get drug off to be tried in Ludlow, what would you most rather have out of all the world? Quick!’ And quick he says, ‘To get married!’ Didn’t surprise nobody but his mother.”
“You couldn’t say Jack hadn’t been showing signs. Now the year before, our guess would have been th
e little Broadwee girl,” said Aunt Birdie.
“Imogene? The one that’s timid?” grinned Aunt Nanny.
“Yes and she’s sitting there still.”
“He’s chased ’em all some. But when he singles out who he wants to carry home, he singles out the schoolteacher!”
“Was that a pretty good shock?” asked Aunt Cleo.
“Being as she’s already living here in the house and eating at the table, no’m,” said Aunt Nanny.
“Gloria had a choice too, even if you leave Aycock out. Curly Stovall was right across the road from that schoolhouse, with nobody but Miss Ora to look out for, enjoying a job on the public. And in his store carried all she wanted. But she turned up her little nose at him.”
“He didn’t make a good impression on me, from the first time I saw him,” Gloria called in.
“But that year it’s our turn to board the teacher, no hope of rescue,” said Miss Beulah, coming to the head of the passage. “We’d spent the summer highly curious to see what they’d send, after the last old maid give up the battle. Well, here she came. The old fella that got it for superintendent of schools carried her up here in a car that’s never been seen in my yard before or since—purse in both hands, book satchel over her shoulder, valise between her feet, and her lap cradling a basket of baby chicks for her present to whoever was to board her. I had a feeling the minute she pulled off her hat—’Here’s another teacher Banner won’t so easily get rid of.’ ”
All at once Lady May Renfro, aged fourteen months, came bolting out into their midst naked, her voice one steady holler, her little new-calloused feet pounding up through it like a drumbeat. She had sat up right out of her sleep and rolled off the bed and come. Her locomotion, the newest-learned and by no means the gentlest, shook the mirror on the wall and made its frame knock against the house front like more company coming.
“Who you hunting?” Aunt Nanny screeched at the baby.
Lady May ran through their catching hands, climbed down the steps in a good imitation of Mr. Renfro, and ran wild in the yard, with Gloria up and running after her.
“Where’s your daddy, little pomegranate?” they hollered after her flying heels. “Call him! Call him!”
Elvie came third, following solemnly with the diaper.
Lady May ran around the quilt on the line and Gloria got her hands on her. There behind the quilt she knelt to her, curtained off from the house; the quilt hung motionless, just clear of the ground. It was a bed-sized square that looked rubbed over every inch with soft-colored chalks that repeated themselves, more softly than the voices sounding off on the porch. From the shadow of an iron pot nearby, rising continuously like sparks from a hearth, a pair of thrushes were courting again.
The sugar sack Gloria pinned about her baby’s haunches blushed in the light and sparkled over with its tiny crystals that were never going to wash out of it. Around their shoulders the air shook with birdsong, never so loud since spring. On all the farm, the only thing bright as the new tin of the roof was the color of Gloria’s hair as she bent her head over her baby. It was wedding-ring gold.
“Act like you know what you’re here for, Lady May,” she told the smooth, uplifted face.
The child looked back at her mother with her father’s eyes—open nearly to squares, almost shadowless, the blue so clear that bright points like cloverheads could be seen in them deep down. Her hair was red as a cat’s ear against the sun. It stood straight up on her head, straight as a patch of oats, high as a little tiara.
“Just you remember who to copy,” Gloria told her child.
She came leading Lady May to the house and through their ranks and inside the company room and out again, and this time the little girl was tiptoeing in a petticoat.
“Have a seat with us,” said Aunt Nanny. “That’s better.”
Gloria sat down on a keg and Lady May climbed onto her lap. She turned her little palms up in a V. Her eyebrows lifted in pink crescents upturned like the dogwood’s first leaves in spring. Her unswerving eyes looked straight into her mother’s.
“Learn to wait,” said Gloria, pulling both baby hands down.
So the baby sat still, her lashes stiff as bird-tails; she might have been listening for her name.
“Honey, where did Banner School ever get you from?” asked Aunt Beck, leaning forward. “Has this reunion ever asked you and ever got a full reply?”
“Miss Julia Mortimer was training me to step into her shoes,” said Gloria.
“Whose shoes?” asked Aunt Cleo, and everybody groaned.
“The oldest teacher that’s living. She was giving me my start,” said Gloria.
“You meant to teach more than the single year?” exclaimed Aunt Birdie. “Never dreamed!”
“When I came, I could see my life unwinding ahead of me smooth as a ribbon,” said Gloria.
“Uh-oh!” said Aunt Cleo.
“All I had left to do was teach myself through enough more summer normals to add up to three years, and I could step right into Miss Julia’s shoes. And hold down Banner School forever-more.”
“But then she just happened to run into Jack,” said Aunt Nanny, with a strong pinch for Gloria’s arm.
“So I wonder what was everybody’s first words to Jack when he says he wants to marry his teacher?” asked Aunt Cleo.
Miss Beulah called, “I told him, ‘Jack, there’s just one thing you need for that that you’re lacking. And that’s the ring. Remember the gold ring Granny was keeping in the Bible? She might have spared it to a favorite like you, at a time like this, and where did it go?’ ”
“I reckon his mother had him there,” said Aunt Birdie.
“No she didn’t. Jack said, ‘Mama, I’m going to afford my bride her own ring, like she wants, and all I need is a little time.’ Time! He thought he had all the time he was going to need. You had to feel sorry for the child. Sorry for both of ’em.”
“Well, I see you got you one anyway,” Aunt Cleo said to Gloria. “What’d you have to do? Steal it?” She laughed, showing her tongue.
“Mind out, Sister Cleo, Gloria don’t like to tell her business,” Miss Beulah called, while Gloria laid her cheek to the baby’s. Lady May’s fast hands pulled the mother’s hairpins out, and the curls rolled forward over them both.
“Gloria taught Banner School a whole year long for that little ring, that’s what I think,” said Aunt Birdie, giggling.
“A teacher always gets a warrant she can trade with,” said Miss Lexie. “It means the same as a salary. And it just depends on the teacher—what she decides to use it for, if and when and how soon. If she don’t starve in the meantime.”
“If you used up your warrant for your ring, what’d you have left over for that wedding dress?” asked Aunt Cleo. “I only ask because I’m curious.”
“It’s homemade.”
“You just can’t see how much sewing there is to it, because of all that baby in her lap,” Aunt Nanny said.
“Just a minute! If it tore!” Gloria cautioned two little girls who had come up from either side to stare and were now holding her sleeves and the hem of her skirt between their fingers. “I rather you stood back a distance.” Her short puff sleeves were ironed flat into peaks stuck flat together and canvas-stiff, almost as if they were intended to be little wings.
“Full, full skirt and deep, deep hem,” said Ella Fay, bumping through them on her way into the house now. “Organdy and insertion, flower-petal sleeves, and a ribbon-rose over the stomach above the sash. That’s the kind of wedding dress I want.”
“You could almost wear hers. I can see now there’s a lots of material going to waste in that,” said Aunt Cleo. “Despite that baby taking up the most of her lap.” She laughed. “So you was here, ready, and waiting all this time?” she asked Gloria. “Well, where’d you hold the wedding? Your church right on the road? Or do you all worship off in the woods somewhere?”
“I’m surprised you didn’t see Banner flying by on your way here, Sister
Cleo,” said Uncle Curtis. “Didn’t Noah Webster show you which church was ours?”
“I keep my eyes on the driver,” she said.
“Listen, Grandpa Vaughn downed enough trees himself to raise Damascus Church. Hewed them pews out of solid cedar, and the pulpit is all one tree. And in case you’re about to tell us you still don’t remember it, you might remember the cemetery on beyond—it’s bigger than Foxtown’s got to this day.”
“How many came to the wedding? Church fill up to the back?”
“Stand up now and count!” Miss Beulah cried, clattering some pans together. “And you can add on the ones still to come today—Nathan, bless his heart, Fay and Homer Champion, Brother Bethune—”
“And Jack!” they cried.
“I’d call it a fair crowd,” said Uncle Curtis. “I seen Aycock Comfort propped in a window—that’s what room we had left for a Methodist.”
“Blessed Grandpa joined those two blushing children for life in Damascus Church on a Sunday evening in spring,” said Aunt Birdie. “If I forget everything else alive, I’ll remember that wedding, for the way I cried.”
“Oh, Grandpa Vaughn out-delivered himself! Already the strictest marrier that ever lived—and the prayer he made alone was the fullest you ever heard. The advice he handed down by itself was a mile long!” cried Uncle Noah Webster. “It would have wilted down any bride and groom but the most sturdy.”
“And Curly Stovall come down the aisle and clapped his hand on Jack’s shoulder in the middle of it, I’ve already guessed,” said Aunt Cleo.
“Sister Cleo! Curly Stovall would not dare, would not dare to walk in Damascus Church with Grandpa Vaughn standing up in his long beard and looking at him over the Bible!” Aunt Birdie cried. “And Curly ain’t even a Baptist.”
“Not even for the scene it’d make?” she asked them.
Miss Beulah marched in on her. “I just came to be told the name of the church you go to,” she said.
“Defeated Creek Church of the Assembly of God. One mile south of Piney.”
“Never heard of a single piece of it.” She about-faced and marched out again.