Delta Wedding

  "Look out for the bridesmaids!" warned Roxie. "Miss Dab, look out for your bridesmaids and fellas!" She giggled and ran out, ducking her head with her arm comically raised before Mr. Battle. It was the children that stalked in at the door, fancily bearing down on all the canes and umbrellas in the house, Ranny at the front, Bluet at the back, with India and Laura in starchy "insertion" skirts and satin sashes falling in at the last minute.

  "We're the wedding!" said Ranny. "I'm Troy! Oof, oof!" He bent over like an old man. "Shepherd crooks have come!" cried Little Battle, hooking Maureen with Aunt Mac's Sunday cane.

  "Stop, Ranny, you're going to get the chicken pox," said his mother.

  "Papa!" cried Dabney.

  There were further cries in the yard and in the back of the house.

  "Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Pinchy's come through!"

  Roxie rushed in a second time, but seriously now, bringing Vi'let and embracing her, with some little black children following and appearing and disappearing in the folds of their skirts, and Little Uncle marched in with his snowiest coat standing out, and stood there remote and ordained-looking.

  "Hallelujah," he said.

  "Well, hallelujah," said Aunt Tempe, rather pointedly. George smiled.

  Some open muffler roared in the yard.

  "Dabney!" cried a chorus of voices, and the real bridesmaids ran in, in a company, all in evening dresses ready to go to the Winona dance afterwards. The boys ran in, some in blazers, and started playing with the children, lifting Ranny to the ceiling, kissing Aunt Tempe, spanking Bluet, and pulling Laura's hair.

  "Oh, you all, the crooks haven't come! I'm a wreck," said Dabney in their midst.

  "They'll be here tomorrow, precious," said Aunt Tempe. "They won't disappoint you, ever in this world."

  "Shoo, shoo! All children git out!" shouted Battle. "We've got to rehearse this wedding in a minute, shoo!" But the children all laughed.

  "Who's that?" Dickie Boy Featherstone was asking.

  "Oh, Robbie," said Dabney, "this is Nan-Earl Delaney, Gypsy Randall, Deltah and Dagmar Wiggins, Charlsie McLeoud, Bitsy Carmichael," and she pulled all the bridesmaids forward with a fitful movement like flicking things out of a bureau drawer, "and then, there's Pokey Calloway, Dickie Boy Featherstone, and Hugh V. McLeoud and Shine Young and Pee Wee Kuykendall and Red Boyne. They're in the wedding. She's my aunt-in-law—isn't that it, Mama?"

  "Aunt?" said Red Boyne. "Aren't you going to the dance?"

  "And you already know the best man, Robbie," said Dabney, nervously smiling. "It's George."

  "Aunt Ellen," said Laura, kneeling at the love seat. "I've already had chicken pox."

  "All right, dear," said her aunt. But it did not seem to occur to her that now Laura might be slipped into the wedding in the place of Lady Clare. And Laura, staring at her, suddenly wondered where, truly where, the rosy pin was. She got to her feet and backed away from her aunt slowly—she wanted to know in what wave. Now it would be in the Yazoo River, then it would be carried down to the Mississippi, then ...

  "When's that dish-faced preacher of yours coming, Ellen? Did you remind him?" said Battle, sprawling gently on a mere edge of the love seat, as if to show them all he would not take up too much room.

  "This is his business, dear," said Ellen.

  "Where's Troy" cried some bridesmaid.

  "We could have a little wine now," Ellen said to Shelley. "With that excitement in the kitchen, there's no telling how or when or in what state our supper will get to us, when the rehearsing's done. Take my keys."

  "Mama, they're the heaviest and most keys in the world."

  "I know it! Some of them are to things I'll never be able to think of or never will see again," said Ellen.

  One of those inexplicable pauses fell over the room, a moment during which Aunt Shannon's voice could be heard in another part of the house, singing "Oft in the Stilly Night." Then Ellen pulled out a key. "This one's to your father's wine, though—to the best of my knowledge. Do you know that little door?"

  Robbie sat in the middle of the whirl. Where was George now—she thought she had heard his voice.... Something in her had taken note of every dress on Vi'let's arm even when she came storming through the door of Shellmound, and now she saw that Mary Lamar Mackey wore the Nile-green tulle that had the silver sash, and Aunt Tempe had on the Chinese coat of yellow velvet with roses and violets printed on it, the most dazzling bright spot in the room. Shelley wore the tea-rose silk dress with the gathered side panels, and Dabney the white net with the gold kid gardenia on the chest. Robbie herself had on a dress of Dabney's—a black chiffon one that felt no different from a nightgown. Mary Lamar Mackey was playing "Constantinople." The bridesmaids and groomsmen were dancing in the music room around the piano and across the hall and around the table in the dining room to cup up nuts in their hands.

  "Dabney, don't you ever drag Troy over the country to the dances with you?" asked Uncle Pinck, with Aunt Tempe pinning a Maréchal Niel bud in his lapel.

  "Troy wouldn't get up on the floor with me, Uncle Pinck, if it was the last thing he did on earth!" cried Dabney. She was dancing with Red Boyne. "I tell him I think he's just too big and clumsy to learn." It was a reason for loving him, but Uncle Pinck did not seem to understand this at once, from the bemused look that came on his face. Very daintily he took a little glass of wine—Shelley and Roy were passing it.

  "You can't drink wine and not eat cake!" said Battle. "Look here. What kind of house is this?"

  "It will spoil your supper afterwards, dear," said Ellen. "The rehearsal supper."

  "I say let's have cake!" said Battle rambunctiously.

  "Well ... somebody will have to get it then, it looks like," said Ellen with an uncertain movement, which Battle stopped. "Roxie! Howard! Somebody!" he shouted. George moved through the room and Ellen called, "Just bring that one in the glass stand, and a sharp knife—bring more plates, those little Dabney plates."

  "Are those the best?" asked Battle, falling back, and she said, "Well, they're from the Dabneys: yes."

  "I'm holding back my cornucopias," said Tempe flatly. "You needn't think you'll gobble those up till the proper moment."

  Mr. Rondo arrived, and not being able to make himself heard at the door, rapped on the windowpane, causing the bridesmaids to scream at that black sight through the wavery glass. Aunt Tempe insisted on his taking her chair and a little wine and even changed her mind about the cornucopias. She said she would go back and fill them with cherries.

  "I'm especially pleased to see you, Mrs. Fairchild," Mr. Rondo told Robbie. "I was inquiring about you earlier in the week," and she fluffed her hair a little and faint color came in her cheeks.

  "Now where's Troy?" asked Uncle Pinck. "Still, Primrose and Jim Allen haven't got here. Has anybody ever got here from the Grove less than an hour or two late?"

  "Here's Troy," said Little Battle, prancing up. "I'm Troy!"

  "Be Troy, Little Battle," said Battle. "Listen, Pinck. Ask him where he's from."

  "Where are you from, Troy?" asked Uncle Pinck, drawling his words and bobbing his distinguished white head.

  "Up near the Tennessee line," said Little Battle, in the voice of Troy. "Mighty good people up there. Have good sweet water up there, everlasting wells. Cool nights, can tolerate a sheet in summer. The land ain't what you'd call good.

  "Little Battle, Little Battle," said Ellen anxiously.

  "Isn't it lonesome, Troy?" prompted Battle.

  "Lonesome? Not now. One of my sisters married a supervisor. Now we enjoy a mail and ice route going by two miles from the porch. Just reach down the mountain."

  "Papa!" cried Shelley. "George!"

  "And the road's got a bridge in, and a little sprinkle of gravel on it now. And my mammy's health is good, got a letter from her in my pocket. I'll read it to you—Dear Troy, be a good boy. I would write more but must plead company. Have called in passing to mail this for me. Your ma."

  "The letter's too much!" cried Ell
en, extremely upset, and addressing herself to Mr. Rondo.

  But Dabney leaned on the mantelpiece, her cheek in her hand, and smiled at them all a moment; all their eyes were on her. Aunt Tempe, who had laughed till she cried, brought her the first cornucopia on the tray. "Here, dear heart." Dabney could see Troy's eyes open wide at the sight of Aunt Tempe tonight. Troy did venerate women—he thought Aunt Tempe should be home like his mammy, making a quilt or meditating words of wisdom, as he said his mother sat doing instead of getting lonesome. Dabney smiled at Aunt Tempe, who had been going to Delta dances for thirty years.

  She had never put on her grown-up mind, Dabney thought fondly—as if her grown-up mind were a common old house dress Aunt Tempe would never want to be caught in. She did not want to be venerated ... Dabney ran after her and kissed her soft, warm cheek. You never had to grow up if you were spoiled enough. It was comforting, if things turned out not to be what you thought....

  Dabney looked around the room, the big parlor where they all sat now, eating and waiting, with the western sun level with the windows now, and a hummingbird just outside drinking and suspending herself among the tall unpruned topknots of the abelias. Somewhere the dogs were barking fitfully at the guineas or the birds that had begun to fly over.... Her mother in a dress with a bertha was dutifully holding a tiny glass of cordial, sitting on the love seat beside her father who was leaning behind her, his brows contorted but unwavering, as though he had forgotten his expression. Maureen sat on the floor meekly bending her head to have her shining hair patted, and her mother's hand patted there. George came and stood in front of the mantelpiece, and looked out beside her. And the bridesmaids were only there to fill up the room ... "You're a genius, Tempe," said Battle, after he let her put a cornucopia in his mouth.

  Dabney gazed at them thinking, I always wondered what they would do if I married somebody they didn't want me to. Poor Papa is the only one really suffering. All her brothers would try to hold her and not let her go, though, when the time came actually to leave the house. Her mother had fainted—but Dabney had not believed too well that the fainting counted as a genuine protest—her mother did not have "ways." "Your mother lacks ways," Aunt Tempe always said to the girls, darkly.

  "Another new dress, Tempe?" asked her father, who admired Tempe very much while he ran from her voice. Aunt Tempe hit him with her fan. "This old thing? I had it before Annie Laurie died...."

  Battle, catching Dabney's eye, looked poutingly across the room. "He didn't do it for you, eh, Robbie?" he said teasingly. Dabney looked at George, where he stood there at the middle of the mantel, looking out, and she moved away, to take a bite of a bridesmaid's cake.

  It seemed to Ellen at moments that George regarded them, and regarded things—just things, in the outside world—with a passion which held him so still that it resembled indifference. Perhaps it was indifference—as though they, having given him this astonishing feeling, might for a time float away and he not care. It was not love or passion itself that stirred him, necessarily, she felt—for instance, Dabney's marriage seemed not to have affected him greatly, or Robbie's anguish. But little Ranny, a flower, a horse running, a color, a terrible story listened to in the store in Fairchilds, or a common song, and yes, shock, physical danger, as Robbie had discovered, roused something in him that was immense contemplation, motionless pity, indifference.... Then, he would come forward all smiles as if in greeting—come out of his intensity and give some child a spank or a present. Ellen had always felt this in George and now there was something of surprising kinship in the feeling; perhaps she had fainted in the way he was driven to detachment. In the midst of the room's commotion he stood by the mantel as if at rest.

  Robbie looking at him from across the room smiled faintly. "You were so sure of yourself, so conceited! You were so sure the engine would stop," she murmured, like a refrain, like one last refrain—they had had no time alone; here nobody had. So she spoke as though no one else but George were in the room. It was something not a one of them had ever thought of.... Battle groaned, then raised up on his elbow to hear more.

  George stood drinking his home-made wine by the summer-closed fireplace. A tinge of joyousness pervaded him still, for Ellen, he had a rampant, presiding sort of attitude. The others had all thrown themselves down, in the soft flowered chairs, or else they danced at the room's edges, in and out the door.

  "The Dog didn't hit us," George said, speaking with no mistake about it straight across them all, tenderly and undisturbedly, to Robbie. "I don't think it matters what happens to a person, or what comes."

  "You didn't think it mattered what happened to Maureen?" Robbie lowered her eyelids. His words had hurt her. Under Ellen's hand Maureen began to chug. "Choo—choo—"

  George was still a moment, then crossed the room and pressed Robbie's arms, pinned them to her side so that he seemed to hurt her more.

  "To me! I speak for myself," he said matter-of-facdy. Battle made a rude sound. "Something is always coming, you know that." For a moment George moved his gaze over the bobbing and shuttling bridesmaids to Ellen. "I don't think it matters so much in the world what. Only," he bent over Robbie with his look gone relentless—he was about to kiss her, "I'm damned if I wasn't going to stand on that track if I wanted to! Or will again."

  Perhaps he is "conceited," thought Ellen tiredly.

  "Ah! Doesn't that sound like his brother Denis's very words and voice?" cried Tempe, passing by with her little silver dish. "He would murder me if I contradicted him, and he loved me better than anybody in the world."

  George did kiss Robbie.

  "But you're everything on earth to me," Robbie said plainly. Mr. Rondo put his fingertips to his brow. With an extremely conscious, an almost brazen, power of explicitness that seemed to match George's, Robbie was leaving out every other thing in the world with the thing she said. The vulgar thing she said! Aunt Tempe cast her eyes simply up, not even at anybody.

  For Tempe, her young brother George, who pulled Ranny out of the path of mad dogs, was simply less equal to pulling Dabney out of the way of Troy Flavin, Mary Denis out of the way of Mr. Buchanan, or himself out of the way of Robbie Reid, much less of trains turned loose on the railroad tracks. Deliver her from any of them, she didn't care what mercifully got her out of their path. Of course if anything ever did bear down on her, Pinckney would be in Memphis, she knew that much. Nobody could really do anything about her ever except Denis. How idle other men were! It was laziness on men's part, the difficulties that came up in this world. A paradise, in which men, sweating under their hats like field hands, chopped out difficulties like the green grass and made room for the ladies to flower out and flourish like cotton, floated vaguely in Tempe's mind, and she gave her head a toss.

  Ellen leaned back against Battle's long bulk, sipping her cordial, and under her gaze her family, as they had a trick of doing, seemed to separate one from another like islands being created out of a land in the sea that had sprawled conglomerate too long. Under her caressing hand was Maureen. The Dog had stopped in time not to kill her. Here in the long run so like them all, the mindless child could not, as they would not, understand a miracle. How could Maureen, poor child, see the purity and dullness of fact, of the outside-world fact? Of something happening? Which was miracle. Robbie saw the miracle. Out of fear and possession, perhaps out of vulgarity itself, she saw. Not by George's side, but tagging behind, in the clarity of wifely ferocity, she had seen the true vision, and suspected it.

  For Robbie, a miracle in the outer world reflected the worse on her husband—for her it made him that much more of a challenger, a proud defier that she had to protect. For her his danger was the epitome of the false position the Fairchilds put him in. Ellen saw clearly enough that George was not a challenging man at all; was he "conceited"—Robbie's funny little high-school world? He was magnificently disrespectful—that was what Ellen would have called him. For of course he saw death on its way, if they did not.

  No, the family wou
ld forever see the stopping of the Yellow Dog entirely after the fact—as a preposterous diversion of their walk, resulting in lovers' complications, for with the fatal chance removed the serious went with it forever, and only the romantic and absurd abided. They would have nothing of the heroic, or the tragic now, thought Ellen, as though now she yielded up a heart's treasure.

  Here they sat—all dreamily now, each with a piece of cake to spoil his supper—their truest selves, like their truest aberrations and truest virtues, not tampered with. Here in the closest intimacy the greatest anonymity lay, and a kind of basking, a kind of special pleasure, was in it. She heard Jim Allen and Primrose coming in that old electric car, that they had a colored preacher to drive...

  Georgie had not borne it well that she called him heroic, as she did one day for something; but this, she saw now, was not for the reason that the heroism was not true, but that it too was after the fact—a quality of his heart's intensity and his mind's, too intimate for her to have looked into. That wild detachment was more intimate than desire. There was something unfair about that. Would Robbie's unseeing, fighting anger suit him better, then, than too close a divination? Well, that depended not on how Robbie loved him but on how he loved Robbie, and on other things that she, being mostly mother, and being now tired, did not know. Just now they kissed, with India coming up close on her toes to see if she could tell yet what there was about a kiss.

  The whole family watched them "make up." And how did George himself think of this thing? They saw him let Robbie go, then kiss her one more time, and Battle laughed out from the pillows.

  George wished it might yet be intensified. Inextinguishable, the little adventure, like anything else, burned on.

  In the music room Mary Lamar resumed playing "Constantinople" and the bridesmaids, rising a little blankly as if from sleep or rest, took the groomsmen and began to dance here in the room, and around George and Robbie there in the center. Aunt Tempe too, with her finger drawing little circles, kept time. While George was kissing Robbie, Bluet had him around his knees and kissed him down there, with such fervor that she sat down, sighing. Then George and Robbie were dancing too—how amazingly together they went. In and out wove little Ranny, waving a pretended shepherd crook, shouting "I'm the wedding!" and stamping the floral wreath in the rug.