I'll go back a little for a minute. Of course we're all good Presbyterians. Grandpa was an elder. The Beulah Bible Class and the Beulah Hotel are both named after Grandma. And my other grandma was the second-to-longest-living Sunday School teacher they've ever had, very highly regarded. My poor little mama got a pageant written before she died, and I still conduct the rummage sales for the Negroes every Saturday afternoon in the corner of the yard and bring in a sum for the missionaries in Africa that I think would surprise you.
Miss Teacake Magee is of course a Sistrunk (the Sistrunks are all Baptists—big Baptists) and Professor Magee's widow. He wasn't professor of anything, just real smart—smarter than the Sistrunks, anyway. He'd never worked either—he was like Uncle Daniel in that respect. With Miss Teacake, everything dates from "Since I lost Professor Magee." A passenger train hit him. That shows you how long ago his time was.
Uncle Daniel thought what he was wild about at that time was the Fair. And I kept saying to myself, maybe that was it. He carried my plant over Monday, in the tub, and entered it for me as usual, under "Best Other Than Named"—it took the blue ribbon—and went on through the flowers and quilts and the art, passing out compliments on both sides of him, and out the other door of the Fine Arts Tent and was loose on the midway. From then on, the whole week long, he'd go back to the Fair every whipstitch—morning, noon, or night, hand in hand with any soul, man, woman, or child, that chose to let him—and spend his change on them and stay till the cows come home. He'd even go by himself. I went with him till I dropped. And we'd no more leave than he'd clamp my arm. "Edna Earle, look back yonder down the hill at all those lights still a-burning!" Like he'd never seen lights before. He'd say, "Sh! Listen at Intrepid Elsie Fleming!"
Intrepid Elsie Fleming rode a motorcycle around the Wall of Death—which let her do, if she wants to ride a motorcycle that bad. It was the time she wasn't riding I objected to—when she was out front on the platform warming up her motor. That was nearly the whole time. You could hear her day and night in the remotest parts of this hotel and with the sheet over your head, clear over the sound of the Merry-Go-Round and all. She dressed up in pants.
Uncle Daniel said he had to admire that. He admired everything he saw at the Fair that year, to tell the truth, and everything he heard, and always expected to win the Indian blanket; never did—they never let him. I'll never forget when I first realized what flittered through his mind.
He'd belted me into the Ferris Wheel, then vanished, instead of climbing into the next car. And the first thing I made out from the middle of the air was Uncle Daniel's big round hat up on the platform of the Escapades side-show, right in the middle of those ostrich plumes. There he was—passing down the line of those girls doing their come-on dance out front, and handing them out ice cream cones, right while they were shaking their heels to the music, not in very good time. He'd got the cream from the Baptist ladies' tent—banana, and melting fast. And I couldn't get off the Ferris Wheel till I'd been around my nine times, no matter how often I told them who I was. When I finally got loose, I flew up to Uncle Daniel and he stood there and hardly knew me, licking away and beside himself with pride and joy. And his sixty cents was gone, too. Well, he would have followed the Fair to Silver City when it left, if I'd turned around good.
He kept telling me for a week after, that those dancing girls wore beyond compare the prettiest dresses and feather-pieces he ever saw on ladies' backs in his life, and could dance like the fairies. "They every one smiled at me," he said. "And yet I liked Miss Elsie Fleming very well, too." So the only thing to be thankful for is he didn't try to treat Intrepid Elsie Fleming—she might have bitten him.
As for Grandpa, I didn't tell him about the twelve banana ice cream cones and where they went, but he heard—he played dominoes with Judge Tip—and as soon as he got home from the Clanahans' he took a spell with his heart. The Ponder heart! So of course we were all running and flying to do his bidding, everything under the sun he said. I never saw such lovely things as people sent—I gained ten pounds, and begged people to spare us more. Of course I was running out there day and night and tending to the Beulah between times. One morning when I carried Grandpa his early coffee, which he wasn't supposed to have, he said to me, "Edna Earle, I've been debating, and I've just come to a conclusion."
"What now, Grandpa?" I said. "Tell me real slow."
Well, he did, and to make a long story short, he had his way} and after that he never had another spell in his life till the one that killed him—when Uncle Daniel had his way. The heart's a remarkable thing, if you ask me. "I'm fixing to be strict for the first time with the boy," was Grandpa's conclusion. "I'm going to fork up a good wife for him. And you put your mind on who."
"I'll do my best, Grandpa," I said. "But remember we haven't got the whole wide world to choose from any more. Mamie Clanahan's already engaged to the man that came to put the dial telephones in Clay. Suppose we cross the street to the Baptist Church the first Sunday you're out of danger."
So up rose Miss Teacake Magee from the choir—her solo always came during collection, to cover up people rattling change and dropping money on the floor—and when I told Uncle Daniel to just listen to that, it didn't throw such a shadow over his countenance as you might have thought.
"Miss Teacake's got more breath in her than those at the Fair, that's what she's got," he whispers back to me. And before I could stop his hand, he'd dropped three silver dollars, his whole month's allowance, in the collection plate, with a clatter that echoed all over that church. Grandpa fished the dollars out when the plate came by him, and sent me a frown, but he didn't catch on. Uncle Daniel sat there with his mouth in an O clear through the rest of the solo. It seems to me it was "Work, for the Night Is Coming." But I was saying to myself, Well, Edna Earle, she's a Sistrunk. And a widow well taken care of. And she makes and sells those gorgeous cakes that melt in your mouth—she's an artist. Forget about her singing. So going out of church, I says, "Eureka, Grandpa. I've found her." And whispers in his ear.
"Go ahead, then, girl," says he.
If you'd ever known Grandpa, you'd have been as surprised as I was when Grandpa didn't object right away, and conclude we'd better find somebody smarter than that or drop the whole idea. Grandpa would be a lot more willing to stalk up on a wedding and stop it, than to encourage one to go on. Anybody's—yours, mine, or the Queen of Sheba's. He regarded getting married as a show of weakness of character in nearly every case but his own, because he was smart enough to pick a wife very nearly as smart as he was. But he was ready to try anything once for Uncle Daniel, and Miss Teacake got by simply because Grandpa knew who she was—and a little bit because of her hair as black as tar—something she gets from Silver City and puts on herself in front of the mirror.
Poor Grandpa! Suppose I'd even attempted, over the years, to step off—I dread to think of the lengths Grandpa would have gone to to stop it. Of course, I'm intended to look after Uncle Daniel and everybody knows it, but in plenty of marriages there's three—three all your life. Because nearly everybody's got somebody. I used to think if I ever did step off with, say, Mr. Springer, Uncle Daniel wouldn't mind; he always could make Mr. Springer laugh. And I could name the oldest child after Grandpa and win him over quick before he knew it. Grandpa adored compliments, though he tried to hide it. Ponder Springer—that sounds perfectly plausible to me, or did at one time.
At any rate, Uncle Daniel and Miss Teacake got married. I just asked her for recipes enough times, and told her the real secret of cheese straws—beat it three hundred strokes—and took back a few unimportant things I've said about the Baptists. The wedding was at the Sistrunks', in the music room, and Miss Teacake insisted on singing at her own wedding—sang "The Sweetest Story Ever Told."
It was bad luck. The marriage didn't hold out. We were awfully disappointed in Miss Teacake, but glad to have Uncle Daniel back. What Uncle Daniel told me he didn't take to—I asked him because I was curious—was hearing spool-heels co
ming and going on Professor Magee's floor. But he never had a word to say against Miss Teacake: I think he liked her. Uncle Daniel has a remarkable affection for everybody and everything in creation. I asked him one question about her and got this hotel. Miss Teacake's settled down again now, and don't seem to be considering catching anybody else in particular. Still singing.
So Grandpa carried Uncle Daniel to the asylum, and before too long, Uncle Daniel turned the tables on Grandpa, and never had to go back there.
Meantime! Here traipsed into town a little thing from away off down in the country. Near Polk: you wouldn't have ever heard of Polk—I hadn't. Bonnie Dee Peacock. A little thing with yellow, fluffy hair.
The Peacocks are the kind of people keep the mirror outside on the front porch, and go out and pick railroad lilies to bring inside the house, and wave at trains till the day they die. The most they probably hoped for was that somebody'd come find oil in the front yard and fly in the house and tell them about it. Bonnie Dee was one of nine or ten, and no bigger than a minute. A good gust of wind might have carried her off any day.
She traipsed into Clay all by herself and lived and boarded with some Bodkins on Depot Street. And went to work in the ten cent store: all she knew how to do was make change.
So—that very day, after Uncle Daniel finished turning the tables and was just through telling us about it, and we were all having a conniption fit in here, Uncle Daniel moseyed down the street and in five minutes was inside the ten cent store. That was where he did all his shopping. He was intending to tell his story in there, I think, but instead of that, he was saying to the world in general and Bonnie Dee at the jewelry counter in particular, "I've got a great big house standing empty, and my father's Studebaker. Come on—marry me."
You see how things happen? Miss Lutie Powell, Uncle Daniel's old schoolteacher, was in there at the time buying a spool of thread, and she heard it—but just didn't believe it.
I was busy, busy, busy with two things that afternoon—worrying about what I'd say to Grandpa when he got back, and conducting my rummage sale in the yard. I might as well have been in Jericho. If Uncle Daniel had told me what he was going in the ten cent store to say—but I doubt strongly if he knew, himself, he's so sudden-quick—I could have pretty well predicted the answer. I could have predicted it partway. Because—Uncle Daniel can't help it!—he always makes everything sound grand. Home on the hilltop! Great big car! Negroes galore! Homegrown bacon and eggs and ham and fried grits and potato cakes and honey and molasses for breakfast every morning to start off with—you know, you don't have to have all the brilliance in the world to sound grand, or be grand either. It's a gift.
The first thing I knew of what transpired was two hours and a half later, when I was two dollars and ninety-five cents to the good of the heathen, selling away to the Negroes as hard as I could and dead on my feet in the yard. Then bang up against the hitching post at the curb pulls in that Studebaker. It honks, and the motor huffs and puffs, and the whole car's shaking all over like it does if you stop it too quick after running it too long. It's been going all day, too. I shade my eyes and who do I see but old Narciss at the steering wheel. She's the cook out at the place. She's looking at me, very mournful and meaning and important. She always does look like that, but I never in my life knew she knew how to drive.
"Oh-oh," I says to the rummage sale. "Don't anybody touch a thing till I get back," and march out to meet it. There in the back seat sat Uncle Daniel big as life and right beside him Bonnie Dee Peacock, batting her eyes.
"Uncle Daniel, dear heart, why don't you get out and come in?" I says, speaking just to him, first.
And Eva Sistrunk, the one that's a little older than me, just passing by with nothing to do, stopped in her tracks and politely listened in.
"Eva, how's your family?" says Uncle Daniel.
He was beaming away for all he was worth and shooting up his arm every minute to wave—of course Saturday traffic was traveling around the Square. Those people had just spent the morning waving him good-by, seeing him off to the asylum with Grandpa. By next time around they'd know everything. I look straight at Narciss.
Narciss is biding her time till she's got a big crowd and an outside ring of Negroes; then she sings out real high and sad, "Mr. Daniel done took a new wife, Miss Edna Earle."
You can't trust a one of them: a Negro we'd had her whole life long, older by far than I was, Grandma raised her from a child and brought her in out of the field to the kitchen and taught her everything she knew. Just because Uncle Daniel asked the favor, because the Studebaker wouldn't run for him the minute he got it back to where it belonged, Narciss hitched herself right in that front seat and up to the wheel and here they flew; got Bonnie Dee from in front of Woolworth's (and nobody saw it, which I think is worth mentioning—I believe they picked her up without stopping) and went kiting off to Silver City, and a justice of the peace with a sign in the yard married them. Uncle Daniel let Narciss pick out where to go, and Narciss picked out Silver City because she'd never been. None of them had ever been! It was the only spot in Creation they could have gone to without finding somebody that knew enough to call Clay 123 and I'd answer. Silver City's too progressive. Here they rolled back all three as pleased and proud as Punch at what they'd accomplished. It wasn't lost on me, for all the length Narciss had her mouth drawn down to.
I hadn't even had my bath! I just stood there, in my raggediest shade hat and that big black rummage sale purse weighting me down, all traffic stopped, and Eva Sistrunk with her face in mine just looking.
"So Miss Teacake's an old story," I said. "All right, Uncle Daniel—this makes you two."
"Makes me three," he says. "Hop out a minute, sugar, down in the road where Edna Earle and them can see you," he says to the child. But she sits there without a hat to her name, batting her eyes. "I married Mrs. Magee and I married this young lady, and way before that was the Tom Thumb Wedding—that was in church."
And it was. He has the memory of an elephant. When he was little he was in the Tom Thumb Wedding—Mama's pageant—and everybody said it was the sweetest miniature wedding that had ever been held here. He was the bridegroom and I believe to my soul Birdie Bodkin, the postmistress, was the bride—the Bodkins have gone down since. They left the platform together on an Irish Mail decorated with Southern Smilax, pumping hard. I've been told I was the flower girl, but I don't remember it—I don't remember it at all. And here Uncle Daniel sat, with that first little bride right on tap and counting her.
"Step out in the bright a minute, and see what I give you," he says to Bonnie Dee.
So she stood down in the road on one foot, dusty as could be, in a home-made pink voile dress that wouldn't have stood even a short trip. It was wrinkled as tissue paper.
And he says, "Look, Edna Earle. Look, you all. Couldn't you eat her up?"
I wish you could have seen Bonnie Dee! I wish you could. I guess I'd known she was living, but I'd never given her a real good look. She was just now getting her breath. Baby yellow hair, downy—like one of those dandelion puff-balls you can blow and tell the time by. And not a grain beneath. Now, Uncle Daniel may not have a whole lot of brains, but what's there is Ponder, and no mistake about it. But poor little old Bonnie Dee! There's a world of difference. He talked and she just stood there and took her fill of my rummage sale, held up there under the tree, without offering a word. She was little and she was dainty, under the dust of that trip. But I could tell by her little coon eyes, she was shallow as they come.
"Turn around," I says as nicely as I can, "and let's see some more of you."
Nobody had to tell Bonnie Dee how to do that; she went puff-puff right on around, and gave a dip at the end.
Uncle Daniel hollers out to her, "That's my hotel, sugar." (He'd forgotten.) "Hop back in, and I'll show you my house."
I could have spanked her. She hopped in and he gave her a big kiss.
So Narciss pulls out the throttle, and don't back up but just cuts the
corner through the crowd, and as they thunder off around the Courthouse she lets out real high and sad, "Miss Edna Earle, Mr. Sam ain't back yit, is he?" She was so proud of that ride she could die. She and Uncle Daniel rode off with what they had 'em—proud together.
Before I can turn around, Judge Tip Clanahan bawls down out of the window, "Edna Earle!" His office has been in the same place forever, next door up over the movie; but that never keeps me from jumping. "Now what? What am I going to do with Daniel, skin him? Or are you all going to kill him first? I tell you right here and now, I'm going to turn him over to DeYancey, if you don't mind out for him better than that."
Judge Tip gets us out of fixes.
"And hurt Uncle Daniel's feelings?" I calls up. De Yancey is just his grandson—young, and goes off on tangents.
"Come one thing more, I'll turn him over," Judge Tip bawls down to the street. "Where are we going to call the halt? Look where I'm having to send after Sam, none too sure to get him. I can't make a habit of that."
I left the whole array down there and climbed straight up those hot stairs and said to his face, "You ought to be ashamed, Judge Clanahan. I do mind out, everybody living minds out for Uncle Daniel, the best they can; it's you and Grandpa go too far with discipline. Just try to remember Uncle Daniel's blessed with a fond and loving heart, and two old domino cronies like you and Grandpa can't get around that by marrying him off to"—I made him a face like a Sistrunk—"and then unmarrying him, leaving him free for the next one, or running off with him to another place. That's child-foolishness, and I don't like to be fussed at in public at this time of the afternoon."