“What surprised us was the courthouse didn’t fall down.” Uncle Curtis reached for his portion. “When the judge says, ‘Two years in the state pen, time off for good behavior.’ ”
“Then Grandpa Vaughn put his head right down on his cane in front of him,” said Uncle Percy, his wary eye on Granny.
“We did our share of helping out his groans!” cried Aunt Nanny. “Homer Champion didn’t do so bad himself. He was ever’where at once, begging ’em all for their sympathy.”
“Vaughn come in with the dogs in time to hear Moody say the pen. And I saw Vaughn—he bit himself. Just turned away from Jack and took a big plug out of his arm,” said Aunt Birdie.
“Bet Curly kicked up his heels,” Aunt Cleo said. “Wasn’t he well pleased?”
“In hog heaven. Invited everybody there but us to a fish-fry the next Sunday, told Judge Moody to come too and bring his wife if he had one. He didn’t come and didn’t send any wife either,” said Uncle Noah Webster.
“Good. I’d hate the rankest stranger to get their notion of Banner hospitality from Curly’s fish-fry. Stovalls fry their fish with the hides on,” grinned Aunt Nanny.
Miss Beulah cried, “The rest was all in Damascus that Sunday listening to Grandpa heal our hearts by telling us of Heaven to come. We could smell Curly’s smoke the whole sermon long. He’d dance on your grave.” She whirled fiercely with the hot pan. “If I’d known what that Judge was fixing to do to Jack, I’d stood up in the courtroom right quick and told him a thing or two to his face he’d still remember! After all, I’m the boy’s mother!”
“Beulah, I bet you could have!” They helped themselves in quick turn as she passed them the pan.
“For two cents I’d a-done it, too!”
“The way you know how to let fly, Beulah, if I’d been Judge Moody you’d have silenced me,” said Aunt Birdie.
“Oh, I’d silenced him,” said Miss Beulah, and she ran out and ran back with her second panful. “I’d silenced him, all right. Let ’im try it again, he’ll never ruin my boy but once.”
“My eyes see a sunbonnet coming this way,” said Etoyle, chewing.
“Little Mis’ Comfort, coming all this way up?” asked Aunt Nanny.
“It’ll just be to peep at us,” said Miss Beulah. “She’ll just come far enough up our road to count us. She’ll turn around in a minute and trail home.” She laughed. “She said she’s having a hen and cooking a mess of collards for Aycock, and I bet not a bit of that’s so.”
“You think Aycock’s coming home too?” Miss Lexie asked.
“Jack’s coat-tails is where he lives. He couldn’t stay anywhere by himself,” she said.
“Why isn’t she home, then, and preparing?” cried Aunt Birdie.
“I doubt you she’s even set bread,” said Miss Beulah.
“Hasn’t she called on kin to come be with her when he walks in?” asked Aunt Beck. “Help hold her up?”
“Besides Mr. Earl Comfort, and nobody wants Earl, there’s just Mr. Comfort to call, and he’s been gone.”
“Mr. Comfort and little Mis’ Comfort, they didn’t gee,” said Miss Lexie comfortably.
“Does this mean Aycock went to the pen with Jack?” Aunt Cleo asked.
“How’d you get so behind! Yes’m, at least Jack had Aycock with him, to keep him from being so altogether homesick. We slept better at night for that,” said Aunt Beck.
“How come Aycock had to pay the penalty like Jack?” Aunt Cleo asked. “What had he lost?”
“Because when Aycock had his turn in court, he stood up and said he’s going too! ‘And how are you going to qualify yourself for the pen?’ says Moody. Aycock says he’d been in the store from the beginning, propped up behind the pickle barrel. He’d set still and let goods go flying over his head if they wanted to, let Jack have the gun pulled on him and Curly be boxed and tied, must have seen the safe get carted off, heard out all Curly’s racket. And hadn’t done a thing but enjoy himself and put away pickles.” Uncle Noah Webster slapped Aunt Cleo’s leg. “But the Judge comes down on his gavel and says, ‘Well, I see no reason why I can’t make a lesson of you too.’ Verdict was guilty as charged.”
“Goodness, that was over in a hurry,” Aunt Cleo said.
“Aycock goes to the pen as big as Jack. Whether he’ll come home as big is another question. The Comforts don’t know what the word reunion means,” said Uncle Curtis.
“Never did I have any use for those Comforts at all, they’re the nearest to nothing that ever did come around here. I’m sorry we have ’em. Even the mother is a failure,” said Miss Beulah.
“She’s gone now,” said Etoyle.
“She hadn’t the least idea how to put a face on it!” said Miss Beulah.
“And there you was, high and dry! Wouldn’t we all have hated to be in your shoes!” Aunt Birdie cried to Gloria.
“Had you finished your good-byes?” asked Aunt Beck sadly.
“No ma’am,” Gloria said. “But we got our promises made. We’re going to live for the future.”
“Bet that made you cry!” said Aunt Nanny.
“She hasn’t cried yet!” said Miss Beulah. “Not a single time when I was looking at her!”
Gloria closed her eyes. Everybody watched her cheeks. They were as speckled as sweet warm pears, but just as tearless.
“You was crying inside,” Aunt Beck told her.
“Didn’t you have anybody with good shoulders to cry on? Where’s your family?” asked Aunt Cleo.
“Sister Cleo, you’re asking that to the only orphan for a mile around,” said Aunt Birdie. “We’ll have to forgive you for your question this time.”
“Who was your mama and papa?” asked Aunt Cleo.
“Nobody knows,” said Gloria.
“Did they burn up, fall in, or what?”
“Nobody knows,” said Gloria.
“Gloria’s a little nobody from out of nowhere,” said Aunt Beck fondly.
“She’s from the Ludlow Presbyterian Orphan Asylum, if you want to hear it exactly,” said Miss Beulah. “And how she turns all that around into something to be conceited about is a little bit more than I can tell you.”
“Found on a doorstep?” cried Aunt Cleo.
“A little better than that. You may hear about it one day,” said Aunt Beck soothingly. “For right now, her new husband’s just been dragged away from her. And she still hasn’t cried.”
“What about the one that was trying to make a teacher out of you before it happened?” Aunt Cleo asked Gloria. “You could have cried on her. She’d have been the very one to offer.”
“I never went back to see Miss Julia Mortimer and give her the chance.”
“Well, excuse me! No wonder you’re sitting up on that powder keg in your wedding dress today!” cried Aunt Cleo.
“I don’t know today who I relish blaming the most—Judge Moody or old Curly Stovall,” said Aunt Birdie.
“Moody!” Miss Beulah cried. “Moody! For the name he laid on my son. I just hope Jack’s feelings get over it before mine do.”
“I’ll be glad to say Moody,” said Aunt Beck.
“And there Jack went, trusting him!” yelled Miss Beulah. “The poor fool, I reckon he thought he was safe because he’s needed. I learned my lesson then!”
Aunt Nanny said, “But it was Curly that took that ring like it was even change. I more than blame him, I look down on him. And more than that, I’m not going to vote for him Tuesday.”
“Curly’d do the same thing over again, it’s the only way he knows to behave at all,” said Aunt Birdie. “Blame him and he don’t care! Your votes is all he cares about. I swear he’s too mean to live.”
“And it’s not like Curly would have left a wife, had somebody hauled in the store and killed him. He’s too mean to marry! That’s what I told his own preacher, Brother Dollarhide, that was taking up half my seat at the trial,” said Aunt Nanny.
“Old Curly was baptized a Methodist to boot, if you can picture him being
just a month old,” said Uncle Percy. “A big bawler.”
“While I put Judge Moody down as a Presbyterian. For one good reason. The whole way through that trial, his mouth was one straight line. He didn’t look out on that crowded courtroom and smile once. Not one time.” Uncle Noah Webster laid a crumb-stuck hand on his wife’s leg.
“And if he never lets me see his Moody face again for the rest of his life,” Miss Beulah shouted, as if she were still the length of the passage away from them, “that’d be the first kind thing I could find to thank him for.”
“He’s through with us now, Mother,” said Mr. Renfro.
“Of course that judge never got it through his head what it was all about!” yelled Miss Beulah. “Born and bred in Ludlow, most likely in the very shadow of the courthouse! A man never spent a day of his life in Banner, never heard of a one of us!”
“I don’t think there’s a heap you can say on behalf of that jury,” said Uncle Curtis. “I wonder where they ever resurrected a bunch like that.”
“All right, if I had that jury back together before me, I wouldn’t mind taking a minute to skin ’em alive right now for my own satisfaction,” said Miss Beulah, passing her pan again fast. “All twelve of ’em quick just for doing what Moody told ’em.”
“Now and then I have to feel provoked with even Ella Fay for letting people suppose she’d trade treasure for a little bit of store candy—a precious gold band, the only one like it in Christendom!” Aunt Beck said, tears rising to her eyes.
“How long had she had it?” Aunt Cleo asked.
“A day.”
“Granny kept it in the Bible knotted to a good stout string,” said Miss Beulah, addressing her words to the chair where the sleeping old lady was cradled. “I thought all we had to guard it against was children swallowing it.”
“All of ’em striving as one, they succeeded. That’s how I look at it,” said Aunt Birdie. “They locked up the sweetest and hardest-working boy in Banner and Boone County and maybe in all Creation.”
“But he never got a whipping at home, I reckon, for all the trouble he caused you?” asked Aunt Cleo.
“We whipped Ella Fay,” said Miss Beulah.
“Hey, Ella Fay, did you cry, darlin’?” Aunt Birdie called.
“You could’ve heard me clear down to the store,” Ella Fay called from inside the house.
“Good.”
“But I’d stick that ring in his face again if I had it back right now,” she called sweetly.
“How many more chances do you suppose you’ve got coming to you?” called her mother sharply.
“Well, a lot grew out of one little ring, didn’t it?” remarked Aunt Cleo.
“Even Sister Cleo sees that! And I’ll tell you once more that’s exactly what old Judge Moody lost sight of!” cried Miss Beulah. “The ring itself!”
“Not having it there in front of his eyes to remind him,” said Aunt Beck sympathetically.
“Yes’m, it would’ve been a little mite different for Jack and us all today if he’d contented himself with spilling open that safe there in the store, and fishing out the ring, and carrying the ring home in his shirt pocket, and delivering it back to Granny. But he’s a man! Done it the man’s way,” said Aunt Nanny.
“He did his best,” Miss Beulah cried. “And it was a heap more trouble! For everybody!”
Mr. Renfro ran his eye over the parade of melons he had lined up there on the porch, then passing along them spanked each one. They resounded like horses ready to go.
“Oh, I’ve brought mine up on praise!” cried Miss Beulah, glaring after him.
“You get the credit, Beulah!” Aunt Birdie cried. “You get the credit for the wonderful children they are!”
“And I’ll keep it up to my dying day!” she shrieked in their faces. “Praise! With now and then a little switching to even it up.”
“It’s the girls that gets the switchings,” Elvie said, and bolted.
Aunt Nanny grinned and said, “And all this time, that ring may be laying down yonder in the Banner road in front of Stovall’s store, looking no more’n a little bit of tin, a piece of grit! Bet it is right now! But you’ve all walked on it a hundred times! And if it had teeth it’d bite you.”
“I tell you lost’s lost,” said Miss Beulah, and passed the pan with the last piece of gingerbread in it, which Miss Lexie didn’t mind taking. “And my son in the pen for the trouble he took to save it.”
“So here’s all these little sisters and a little brother, with a cripple daddy and with uncles that’s had to scatter, and Grandpa and Granny Vaughn and their broken hearts, and Beulah that’s beside herself for a spell, all doing without Jack. And after Jack had stayed out of school himself to give the little ones their chance, they had to pass up their own schooling half the time, smart as they was—” Uncle Percy was trying to get the story back from them.
“Well, Vaughn did Jack’s work and some of mine, and I did his, and the girls they scrubbed and hauled and fetched and carried, and did every bit of their own part, and that was the system we used,” said Miss Beulah.
“And Vaughn trying to trot even for little Mis’ Comfort when his mother told him,” said Aunt Birdie.
“I couldn’t let her accept charity!” cried Miss Beulah.
“She did it anyway, behind your back,” said Aunt Beck. “Our preacher carried her with him to the courthouse and they came back with a big box of commodities.”
“Pity her!” came cries.
“Our preacher says further there wasn’t anything worse served him in the United States Army than what he got at Boone County Courthouse last December.”
“And here was the baby put in her appearance. Lady May Renfro, bless her little heart, she come as soon as she could,” Aunt Beck said.
Lady May’s neck, like the stem of a new tulip, held poised its perfect little globe. She had heard her name. Throwing her arms wide, she jumped from her mother’s knee to the floor.
“Look how that baby can already fly!” said Miss Lexie in a voice of present warning, as Lady May ran about the porch sounding off louder than before.
“I’m going to catch you and run off with you, Britches!” Aunt Nanny called after her flying heels. “Who you hunting?”
“Pore little Lady May’s running in her petticoat and it reaches to the calf of her leg,” said Aunt Cleo. “Who made that!”
It had been made like a doll dress from a folded sugar sack, round holes cut for neck and arms, then stitched down the sides. A little flounce edged the bottom, a mother’s touch.
“It allowed for her to grow like she’s been growing—fast as a beanstalk,” said Miss Beulah. “Do you raise any objection to that?”
“No’m,” she said. “That’s nature, you got to accept it.”
“Well, we’ve been feeling mighty sorry for her!” Miss Beulah retorted.
The baby scrambled down the steps and out into the yard. In her shoes coated white with cornstarch, their high heels tipping her a little forward, Gloria went after her. She walked fast but didn’t quite run, the way a thrush skims over the ground without needing to use wings.
“Don’t fall down! Don’t rake your dress on the rosebush! You’ve got to both be ready for Jack, got to look pretty for him!” came Etoyle’s cry.
The baby ran behind the quilt again and Gloria caught her on the other side. But she was already sliding, slick as a fish, from her arms and running ahead of her mother again.
Aunt Nanny headed off Lady May, and breathing hard she crouched and scooped up the baby in her arms. “I’ve come to steal you!” But Lady May squirmed free and charged up and down a little path that kept opening between their knees, over their patting feet.
“Well, in case anybody forgets how long Jack Renfro’s been gone, feel the weight of that,” said Miss Lexie, and stopping the baby with a broom, she caught her and loaded her onto Granny Vaughn’s lap.
Even before her eyes opened, Granny had put both arms out. Lady May, the so
les of her feet wrinkling like the old lady’s forehead, went to the weakest and most tenacious embrace she knew. They hugged long enough to remind each other that perhaps they were rivals.
“And what’s Jack know about his baby?” asked Aunt Cleo.
“Not a thing in this world. She’s his surprise!” cried Aunt Birdie. “What else would she be?”
“Yes sir! I’ve already started to wondering when she’s going to talk and what she’s fixing to say,” Miss Lexie said.
Lady May made a dart from Granny to Gloria, and Gloria took her up on her lap and began to make her a hat from the nearest plant stand within reach. She pinched off geranium leaves, lapping them over the child’s head, fastening them with the thornless stems from the pepper plant and the potted fairy rose that she bit to the right length. Some little girls drew near in a ring to watch, their hair falling beside their cheeks in pale stems, paler across the scissors’ slice, like fresh-cut lily stalks. Now Lady May had a hat.
“But where’s she going, where’s she going so soon?” Uncle Noah Webster teased Gloria.
“That’s for the future to say,” she replied.
Aunt Birdie said staunchly, “Well, a son can do something that’s a whole heap harder to bear than what Jack did.”
“That’s right, he could’ve kilt somebody,” said Aunt Cleo. “And been sentenced to die in the portable electric chair—they’d bring it right to your courthouse. And you-all could be having his funeral today, with a sealed coffin.”
They cried out at her.
Aunt Beck said in shocked tones, “Now I’m not blaming the boy!”
“Find fault with Jack? I’d hate to see the first one try it,” said Aunt Nanny.
“I’d hate to see anybody in the wide world try it!” Aunt Birdie cried.
“It’d be the easiest way to kill him,” said Miss Beulah.
“If ever a man was sure of anything at all, I was sure I had to give this house a new tin top to shine in Jack’s face the day he gets home,” said Mr. Renfro. “That roof speaks just a world, speaks volumes.”
“Mr. Renfro give up just about all we had left for that tin top over our heads,” said Miss Beulah. “He had to show the reunion single-handed the world don’t have to go flying to pieces when the oldest son gives trouble.”