Losing Battles

  “You hammer that tin on by yourself?” protested Aunt Beck. “Since he wasn’t even here to help you? Cousin Ralph, I’m more than half surprised you didn’t crack at least your collarbone for today.”

  “He had so-called help. And I’ll tell you what I got tired of was Mr. Willy Trimble scurrying and frisking around like a self-appointed squirrel up over my head,” said Miss Beulah. “He was neighborly to offer, but he’s taken liberties ever since. It’s still our roof!”

  “Paid for with what?” the new Aunt Cleo asked in complimentary tones.

  “Take comfort. Our farm ain’t holding together a great deal better than yours, Mr. Renfro,” said Uncle Curtis. “Maybe me and Beck did raise a house full of sons, and maybe not a one of ’em had to go to Parchman, but they left home just the same. Married, and moved over to look after their wives’ folks. Scattered.”

  “Why, of course they did,” said Aunt Beck softly.

  “But all nine!” said Uncle Curtis. “All nine! And they’re never coming home.”

  “I’m thankful they can still get back all together at the old reunion,” said Uncle Percy, looking over at the ball game in the pasture. “Who are they playing—their wives?” But as he stood looking, he exclaimed in his faint voice, “Look where the turkey’s walking.”

  The Thanksgiving turkey, resembling something made on the farm out of stovepipe and wound up to go, walking anywhere he pleased with three months yet to stay alive, paraded into a grease-darkened, grassless patch of yard with a trench worn down in the clay, an oblong space staked out by the stumps of four pine trees.

  “I thought there’s something about the place that’s unnatural!” said Uncle Noah Webster. “Beulah!” he hollered. “Where’s Jack’s truck, Jack’s precious truck? It ain’t picked up and gone to meet him, has it?”

  “One guess.”

  “Oh, the skunk!” the uncles shouted, all rising.

  “Now you Beechams might as well sit down. It was nothing but a dirty piece of machinery,” Miss Beulah said.

  “Curly didn’t even let Jack get home first to make it go,” said Uncle Noah Webster.

  “Jack was so purely besotted with it, I’d been more greatly surprised to learn something hadn’t happened to it,” Uncle Dolphus said.

  “But a truck? How did Jack ever get hold of such a scarcity to start with?” asked Aunt Cleo. “You-all don’t look like you was ever that well-fixed.”

  “It fell in his lap, pretty near. Jack’s just that kind of a boy, Sister Cleo,” said Aunt Beck.

  “The last time I seen it enthroned in your yard, Beulah, it was still asking for some little attention,” said Uncle Curtis. “I don’t guess it improved a great deal with the boy away.”

  “I hadn’t let the children touch it!” she declared. She put up her hand. “And listen, everybody, don’t let on to Jack about his filthy truck—not today. Don’t prattle! Owing to the crowd, he might not see it’s gone any quicker’n you did. Don’t tell him, children!” she called widely. “Spare him that till tomorrow.”

  “Just lay the four stumps with some planks, like it’s one more table. And Ella Fay can have it covered up with a cloth. That wouldn’t be a hard trick at all,” said Aunt Nanny. “I’ll eat at it!”

  “And there’s another thing that’s gone he’ll come to find out.” said Uncle Curtis. “That’s the Boone County Courthouse. It burned to the ground, they don’t like to think how.”

  “How many here got to see it?” asked Aunt Cleo.

  Aunt Nanny said, “Me and Percy got invited to ride over with our neighbors and wait for the roof to fall in. And guess who come in sight with the fellows bringing things out, the water cooler and such as that. My own daddy! I hadn’t seen him in five years, and then he was too busy to wave back. He was rescuing the postcard rack with all those postcards of the courthouse.”

  “It burned right at commodity time,” said Uncle Percy.

  “And whenever I think of it going up in smoke, I think of all that sugar!” said Aunt Nanny.

  “Never mind. With the welcome he’s got waiting, he won’t ever start to count what’s gone,” said Aunt Beck.

  “If he tries, then that roof ought to be enough to blind him,” said Aunt Birdie, “the sweet trusting boy. It blinded me.”

  “And then when he sits, Brother Bethune will forgive him here at the table for his sins,” said Aunt Beck. “I just hope he won’t disappoint everybody. I know he’s got your church now, all you Baptists—”

  “Beck, if you can’t forget you’re the only Methodist for a mile around, how do you expect the rest of us to forget it?” said Miss Beulah. “It don’t take a Methodist to see Brother Bethune as a comedown after Grandpa. Who wouldn’t be?”

  “There must be a dozen other Baptist preachers running loose around the Bywy Hills with their tongues hanging out for pulpits,” argued Aunt Beck.

  “There’s a right good many who’d be tickled to steal Damascus away from him this very day,” Miss Beulah granted her. “Brother Yielding of Foxtown would dearly love to add it to his string. But Brother Bethune is the one who grew up in Banner, and you’ve got to put up with him or explain to him that there’s something the matter with him, one. So he can’t be touched.”

  “I just feel at a time like this he won’t be a match for us,” Aunt Beck said with a sigh.

  “Yes, it’s Grandpa we need, and Grandpa’s in the cemetery. It was a year ago tonight we lost him,” said Uncle Curtis.

  “Well, but if you had one to die, Jack could have got a pass home,” said Aunt Cleo. “Ain’t that good old Mississippi law? They’d let him come to the funeral between two guards, then be led back. Handcuffed.”

  They cried out again. Only Granny was peaceful, head low.

  “Sister Cleo, we didn’t tell him about Grandpa. Jack’s got that to learn today, it’s part of his coming home,” said Miss Beulah. “It’s what’s going to hurt him the most, but I can only hope it’ll help him grow up a little.”

  “He’s already a father,” said Uncle Dolphus.

  “He don’t know that either,” said Aunt Nanny.

  “That’s right. We’ll bring out that little surprise just when he needs it most, won’t we?” Aunt Birdie cried.

  “She’s my surprise to bring,” Gloria said.

  “Well, ain’t you about ready to cry a little bit about everything, while you still got time?” Aunt Cleo asked, pointing to Gloria.

  Gloria shook her head and set her teeth.

  “What we say here at home is,” said Miss Beulah, “Gloria’s got a sweet voice when she deigns to use it, she’s so spotless the sight of her hurts your eyes, she’s so neat that once you’ve hidden her Bible, stolen her baby, put away her curl papers, and wished her writing tablet out of sight, you wouldn’t find a trace of her in the company room, and she can be pretty. But you can’t read her.”

  “She can roll up her hair in the dark,” said Elvie devotedly.

  “There’s a sweet juicy mouthful singing!” Aunt Nanny told Lady May, when just then the mourning dove called. “It won’t be long before the boy gets home who’ll treat you to a morsel of that.”

  “I wouldn’t let her have it,” said Gloria. “She’s a long way off from eating tough old bird.”

  “Listen! But I’ve seen ’em when their mothers’ backs was turned, and they’d be sitting up eating corn on the cob!” cried Aunt Cleo.

  “Stop, Sister Cleo. Gloria don’t want to tell her business,” Aunt Beck gently warned.

  “Well, ain’t you a little monkey!” Aunt Cleo laughed at Gloria, but nobody laughed with her.

  Mr. Renfro counted them and then one by one he took the torpedo-shaped watermelons and loaded them carefully back into the cool cave underneath the porch.

  Aunt Birdie suddenly asked, “Where is Parchman?”

  “A fine time to be asking,” said Uncle Dolphus.

  Uncle Curtis said, “Well, only our brother Nathan’s ever seen for himself where it is, I believe I’ve
heard him say.”

  Vaughn, at the water bucket, pointed straight through them. “Go clean across Mississippi from here, go till you get ready to fall in the Mississippi River.”

  “Is he in Arkansas?” cried a boy cousin, raising a baseball bat. “If he is I’m going over there and git him out.”

  “Arkansas would be the crowning blow!” Miss Beulah cried. “No, my boy may be in Parchman, but he still hasn’t been dragged across the state line.”

  “Jack’s in the Delta,” said Uncle Curtis. “Clear out of the hills and into the good land.”

  They smiled. “That Jack!”

  “Where it’s running with riches and swarming with niggers everywhere you look,” said Uncle Curtis. “Yes, Nathan in his travels has spied out the top of its water tower. It’s there, all right.”

  “The spring after Jack went, General Green about took over your corn, remember?” Uncle Dolphus said to Mr. Renfro, who at last came hobbling up the steps and bowing into their company. “And today, your whole farm wouldn’t hardly give a weed comfort and sustenance.”

  Uncle Noah Webster clapped Mr. Renfro on the back and cried in the tones of a compliment, “Looks like ever’ time we had a rain, you didn’t!”

  “And the next thing, everything’s going to dry up or burn up or blow up, one, without that boy. Is that your verdict, Mr. Renfro?”

  “While Jack’s been sitting over there right spang in the heart of the Delta. And whatever he sticks in the ground, the Delta just grows it for him,” whispered Uncle Percy.

  “I’m sorry I even asked where it was,” said Aunt Birdie. “I wonder now how early a start he made, if he’s got all that distance to cover.”

  “He better start hurrying,” Uncle Dolphus said. “Busted out of jail in Foxtown in less than twenty-four hours—I see little reason why he can’t make it back from Parchman in a year and a half.”

  “Hush!” cried Miss Beulah.

  “You can’t get out of Parchman with a pie knife,” cried Uncle Noah Webster.

  “Men, hush!” ordered Miss Beulah. “He’s coming just as fast as he can. He ain’t going to let it be the end of the world today—he’ll be right here to the table.”

  “And a good thing Jack knows it. Because the truth of the matter is,” Aunt Beck murmured, gazing at the old lady in her rocker, “if we had to wait another year, who knows if Granny would’ve made it?”

  There came a sound like a pistol shot from out in the yard. All heads turned front. Ella Fay had cracked the first starched tablecloth out of its folds—it waved like a flag. Then she dropped it on the ground and came running toward them, screaming. Dogs little and big set up a tenor barking. Dogs ran from all corners of the yard and from around the house and through the passage, streaking for the front gate.

  Aunt Nanny grabbed the baby from Gloria’s knees and ran to hide her in the company room, screaming as if she herself had nearly been caught in her nightgown. Miss Beulah raced to Granny’s side. The barking reached frantic pitch as a whirlwind of dust filled the space between the chinaberry trees. As even those chatterers on the back porch and those filling the house started up through the passage, the floor drummed and swayed, a pan dropped from its nail in the kitchen wall, and overhead even the tin of the roof seemed to quiver with a sound like all the family spoons set to jingling in their glass.

  Riding a wave of dogs, a nineteen-year-old boy leaped the steps to a halt on the front gallery. He crashed his hands together, then swung his arms wide.

  “Jack Jordan Renfro,” announced Miss Lexie to the company. “Well: you brought him.”

  He might never have been under a roof from the day he left home until this minute. His open, blunt-featured face in its morning beard had burned to a red even deeper than the home clay. He was breathing hard, his chest going up and down fast, his mouth was open, and he was pouring sweat. With his eyes flared wide, his face smileless as a child’s, he stood and waited, with his arms open like gates.

  Then it seemed that the whole reunion at once was trying to run in.

  “Why ain’t you nearly perished?” Miss Beulah shrieked as she shouldered her way through the rest and smacked his face with kisses.

  “What did you bring me?” yelled Etoyle.

  “What did you bring me?” yelled Elvie. They both beat their fists against him. Elvie beat on his legs, crying with joy, then found a cockleburr to pull off his pants, and Etoyle with a scream of triumph pinched a live June bug that was riding his sleeve—the torn sleeve that flowed free from his shoulder like some old flag carried home from far-off battle.

  “Where’s mine?” teased the boy cousins. “Where’s mine, Jack?”

  Ella Fay ended her shrieks at last and ran to get her hug. Then Vaughn came across the floor in long strides, his heavily starched pants weighted down by the deep folds at the bottom. He had put on his print-sack school shirt, new and readable front and back, from which the points of his collar were damply rising. Jack lunged forward looking ready to kiss him, but Vaughn said, “I’ve got on your pants.” He had with him a pair of dried cornstalks, and offered them. Jack took one and for a moment the brothers jousted with them, shaking them like giant rattles, banging them about like papery clubs.

  “Was you a trusty?” Vaughn asked, then fled.

  “And oh but he’s home tired, limping and sore after all his long hot way!” screamed Aunt Birdie, pulling down Jack’s head to kiss his cheeks and chin, while Aunt Nanny bear-hugged him from behind.

  “Honey, you don’t know yet how hard we’ve been waiting on you,” said Aunt Beck, with great care ripping a briar away from his pants leg. “I wish you did.”

  “Never wrote your family once—I got that out of your daddy,” Miss Lexie was sweeping up the cakes of clay and strings of briars his shoes had tracked in. “Might as well be coming back from the dead.”

  “Don’t he get here fat and fine, though?” Aunt Nanny still squeezed him around the ribs. “Believe you put a little meat on your bones while you was away!”

  “But I venture to say they never did succeed in feeding you like we’re fixing to feed you today,” said Aunt Birdie, pulling him loose.

  “Well, did you bring us a rain?” Uncle Noah Webster was shouting at him as though from a rooftop.

  The uncles plunged forward to pull on him and pound him, while Etoyle and Elvie sat on the floor and each anchored one of his feet.

  “Where’s Gloria? Gloria, Glo-ri-a! Here’s him! You forgotten how to act glad? Girl, can’t you find him, can’t you fight your way through us?” It was the aunts screaming at her, while the uncles said to the aunts, “Hold back, then.”

  They divided and there stood Gloria. Her hair came down in a big puff as far as her shoulders, where it broke into curls all of which would move when she did, smelling of Fairy soap. Across her forehead it hung in fine hooks, cinnamon-colored, like the stamens in a Dainty Bess rose. As though small bells had been hung, without her permission, on her shoulders, hips, breasts, even elbows, tinkling only just out of ears’ range, she stepped the length of the porch to meet him.

  “Look at that walk. Now I’d know her for a teacher anywhere,” said Aunt Cleo.

  Jack cocked his hands in front of his narrow-set hips as she came. Their young necks stretched, their lips tilted up, like a pair of rabbits yearning toward the same head of grass, and Jack snapped his vise around her waist with thumbs met.

  “First kiss of their lives in public, I bet a hundred dollars,” Aunt Cleo observed.

  “Speak, Jack, speak!” shrieked his mother.

  “Speak, Jack!” they were crying at him. “You ain’t gone deaf and dumb, have you?”

  “A new roof! I could see it a mile coming!” His lilting voice came at last. “What’s happened?”

  “Bless his heart!” Miss Beulah thankfully cried.

  “Well, I believe it’s one thing that may be on tight, son,” said Mr. Renfro. He still stood back, with his arms hugged together in front and the prong of his chin in his
hand. But as Jack started parting his way toward him, Granny made a little noise of her own.

  “Look who’s been waiting, just a speck!” Uncle Noah Webster shouted, as Jack, spinning and sweeping her from her feet, brought Granny up to meet him, chin to chin.

  “Ain’t you got me a little sugar?” she inquired.

  “I didn’t quite hear Grandpa’s thunder as I came through the lot,” Jack told her after she’d got her kiss, still holding her up where he could see her. “Where have you got him hid, Granny?”

  “Jack, we’ve lost Grandpa,” Miss Beulah called up, hands frantic at her lips.

  “We lost Grandpa Vaughn, one year ago today,” Uncle Curtis said, and as all went quiet, like the rattle of tiny drums came the sound of one more kettle coming to a boil in the kitchen.

  “You never stopped coming for long enough to see if there’s a new grave in the cemetery with fresh flowers on it?” Miss Beulah asked, reading his face. “It would have been staring right at you.”

  “It was the last place I thought to look,” gasped Jack.

  “Yes, son. And oh but you know how an old lady grieves! We was all worried for fear we couldn’t keep her for you, either,” Miss Beulah cried.

  Granny, up in the air, only looked him back cockily in the eye. Carefully he lowered her down to the floor, and when she got her footing he brushed some of his dust off her sleeves.

  “Oh, Jack’s cheek is ready to wipe,” said Aunt Birdie.

  “We’ve got a mighty good little surprise ready for now,” Aunt Nanny said.

  “When people need it most! That’s the time to bring it out,” said Aunt Birdie.

  “Gloria! What have you got for Jack? Ain’t it just about time to show him?” The crowd caught up with her in the kitchen, clamoring to her.

  “I’ll be the judge,” said Gloria from the stove.

  Jack came plunging into the smoke and steam, turned her around, circled the table at a hop, counting his mother’s cakes out loud, stealing a wing from the mountain of fried chicken heaped on the bread board, and kissed the icing off the blade of a knife. Then, sinking into the kitchen rocker, he took off his shoes and held them out to the nearest sister.