Delta Wedding

  "You see! She'll have none of us!" said Shelley, in her light voice that had the catch in it.

  Mr. Rondo, probably remembering he had already been asked not to mention one thing, looked polite, taking the shortest glance at Virgie Lee. If he seemed to recognize her at all, it was as a Baptist. Shelley whirled off up the street and across the bridge, and they put Mr. Rondo down at the Methodist stile, where he thanked them and took out his watch, which, Laura told Shelley, seemed to have stopped.

  "Poor Ellen," said Tempe, clasping her softly, her delicate, fragrant face large and serious as it pressed Ellen's close. "This has nearly killed you. I know! But, child, it's what mothers are for." They embraced in the kitchen, with Ranny pulling his mother's skirt—only a baby still.

  "Tempe, I couldn't have done it without you." It was true, and she held Tempe the longer for being tired, from everything, from waiting—from mentally taking out shrubbery, from trying to make Howard love roses, from trying to make Bluet not want chicken pox or anything else because Lady Clare had it, from letting Aunt Mac get clear to the bank on a Sunday morning ... Look at me, am I sorry for myself? she thought, shaken, seeing a mist in Tempe's eye.

  Aunt Mac as a matter of fact had long since returned from her trip, without announcing whether it was successful or not. She came sitting as straight as she sat going out, in the pony cart under its wide flounced umbrella, and alighted at the carriage block without the slightest remark or notice of the world. She made her way into the house, Roy running up from somewhere like a flash, with a cut on his foot bleeding (he was the most courteous of her boys!), and escorting her, holding her elbow on the flat of his hand like a fine tray. No word would ever be said to her about money! Sunday money or any other kind.

  Battle woke up and called for her, Jim Allen and Primrose were driven home, and the boys left over from the dance last night ate breakfast and departed, Red Boyne leaving Shelley a wild note which India read out loud. George and Robbie—who had gone off hours ago to buy a little dress and hat—came back in two cars, with the joke between them that it was Sunday. "We bought a car, though!" said Robbie. "The man opened up everything for George, and sold him a Hudson Super-Six." Shelley and the children came in starved from Greenwood, but bringing groceries from some charitable man, thank goodness.

  Then Ellen was saying, catching the little girl in the hall, "Laura, there's something to tell you. We want you to stay, to live with us at Shellmound. Until you go to Marmion, perhaps.... Would you be happy? Your papa would listen to reason, he hopes you'd be happy too. India would be glad ... Something's got all the curl out of your poor hair!"

  The visit, the round-trip ticket on the Dog, had been just a premonition—now they told her what would really be. Shellmound! The real thing might always dawn upon her slowly, Laura felt, hanging her head while Aunt Ellen sadly stretched a straight strand of her hair out on her finger. That feeling that came over her—it was of having been cheated a little, not told at once. And so she answered overly soon, overly brightly, "Oh, I want to! I want to stay!" Then she cried, "But I don't want to go to Marmion!"

  "Marmion'll be yours, you know, when you want it. I reckon! Someday you'll live there like your Aunt Ellen here, with all your chillen," said Uncle Battle, looking around Aunt Ellen and stepping out from behind her.

  "I will?" said Laura. "It's big—isn't it?"

  "Now, Battle, that's all too complicated to think of now, here in the hall," said Aunt Tempe, passing by. "You let Dabney have Marmion now, she wants it!"

  "Besides—do you ever trust Virgie Lee not to flare up?" Aunt Ellen seemed to brood for a moment, her fingers went still in Laura's hair. "She'll have none of us now, but..."

  "Did you have a dream about Virgie Lee?" Uncle Battle laughed.

  Laura felt that in the end she would go—go from all this, go back to her father. She would hold that secret, and kiss Uncle Battle now.

  Uncle Battle laughed and gave her a little dressing on her skirt. "Big? You'll grow, Skeeta," he said. "But no need to hurry."

  And there was Aunt Shannon.

  "Aunt Shannon," said Battle gruffly, sent in. His softened voice was always hoarse; India listened, as she passed with her doll. "There's a plenty of everything. There's a plenty all around you. All in the world to eat, no need at all hiding bread crusts in your room. And nobody is dreaming they could get you or harm you. I'm here. See me?"

  She nodded her head, gently and then sharply, and regarded him; India leaned in the door. "My little old boy," she said, and patted him. "Oh, you have a great deal to learn. Oh, Denis, I wish you wouldn't go out in the world unshielded and unprotected as you are. I have a feeling, I have a feeling, something will happen to you...."

  "If it isn't the Reconstruction, it's things just as full of trouble to you, isn't it?" Battle said softly, letting her pat her little hand on his great weight, holding still. He changed the level of his voice. "I'll stay, Aunt Shannon. I'll stay. I'm here. Here I am."

  "Good-bye, my darling," she said.

  II

  It was the first night Dabney and Troy were back, and George's and Robbie's last night at the place. They would have a little family picnic.

  "I don't see a bit of use trying to sit down to a big supper tonight, after all we've been eating, wedding food, company food ... We'll just have a little picnic," said Ellen at the dinner table.

  "Come to the Grove!" cried Primrose. The aunts were on hand at Shellmound for the welcomes and good-byes, of course.

  "Marmion!" said Battle. "By God, it's not too hot for a barbecue. Not if we keep good and away from the fire."

  "Troy loves barbecue," said Dabney gravely. It was Tuesday. They had just been away three days, on account of the picking.

  But it was too hot for a barbecue, as could be seen by four o'clock, and they took a cold supper.

  "Let's try out your new car, Dabney," said Orrin. "See how it takes the ruts. I'll drive."

  "Oh, you will? Child, no. Robbie, you have a new car too." She turned an earnest look on Robbie.

  "We just got it in Greenwood, on Sunday," smiled Robbie.

  But they went in buggies and wagons when the time came, prevailed on for the sake of the tangles and brambles across the river.

  "You know, old Rondo's quite a fellow," said Battle. "Let's invite him on the picnic!"

  "No, then we'd have to go to church some Sunday," Ellen pointed out. She said she had better stay home and keep Aunt Mac and Aunt Shannon company, and poor Lady Clare, who would know something was going on, but Battle and George would not hear to that. Ranny and Bluet went nicely to sleep at dark (Bluet still wearing her wedding shoes in bed part of the night) never knowing about any of it, though Lady Clare tore some of her red hair as she watched them go, pulled it out by the roots to see a picnic start off without her, and screamed that she would tell her papa.

  It was a starry night—truly a little cool; that was hard to believe! Laura and India, in the back of the buggy with the food, rode at the head, Little Uncle, invisible, driving. A little black horse mule was pulling them. They dangled their feet over the track, looking at the rest of the procession. With them rode a freezer of ice cream, the huddled napkins of chicken, turkey, and sandwiches, the covered plates with surprises, the boxes with the caramel and the coconut cakes and Aunt Tempe's lemon chiffon pie. The jug of iced tea was somewhere—they could hear it shake and splash.

  It was a beautiful night. "Still powder-dry!" called Battle, out into it. "How much longer?" They were taking the plantation road into Fairchilds, to cross the river and follow the old track to Marmion. Cotton was everywhere, as far as the sky—the soft and level fields. Here and there little cabins nestled, far away, and dark as hen roosts. In some of the wagons they were singing "Some Sweet Day." Laura was sleepy, very sleepy. By night the Delta looked just like a big bed, the whiteness in the luminous dark. It was like the clouds that spread around the east for the moon, that the horses walked through and the buggies rolled over.

&nbs
p; "The bayou ghost didn't cry once at Dabney's wedding," said Shelley's voice as they went by trees. "Did you notice her not crying, anybody?"

  "If she held back, us Fairchilds consider that as lucky as you'd want." That was George.

  "Listen—is that the crying now?"

  But it was some night bird.

  Dabney kept telling of how they went to New Orleans, not Memphis, and fooled everybody.

  "We watched the river ... the sea gulls..."

  "It's the same river, Memphis and New Orleans," said Laura, opening her eyes and speaking from the back of their leading buggy. "My papa has taken me on trips—I know about geography..." But in the great confines of Shellmound, no one listened.

  The night insects all over the Delta were noisy; a kind of audible twinkling, like a lowly starlight, pervaded the night with a gregarious radiance.

  Ellen at Battle's side rode looking ahead, they were comfortable and silent, both, with their great weight, breathing a little heavily in a rhythm that brought them sometimes together. The repeating fields, the repeating cycles of season and her own life—there was something in the monotony itself that was beautiful, rewarding—perhaps to what was womanly within her. No, she had never had time—much time at all, to contemplate ... but she knew. Well, one moment told you the great things, one moment was enough for you to know the greatest thing.

  They rolled on and on. It was endless. The wheels rolled, but nothing changed. Only the heartbeat played its little drum, skipped a beat, played again.

  "Is all of this Shellmound?" called little Laura McRaven.

  "Remains to be seen!" called Battle gaily back.

  From the last wagon came a chorus that started at Dabney's high pitch and changed in the middle—

  "Ye flowery banks o' bonnie Doon,

  How can ye bloom sae fair!"

  They were crossing the river, rolling across the bridge, which groaned only lightly under their buggy wheels and the hoofs of the little horse mule.

  "Wi' lightsome heart I pu'd a rose

  Upon a morn in June,

  And sae I flourished on the morn,

  And sae was pu'd or' noon."

  They went through the tangles and brambles, singing, and India took Laura around the waist, they held each other in.

  "My secret is," India said in her ear, "I'm going to have another little brother before very long, and his name shall be Denis Fairchild."

  Another wagon began its soft singing.

  "Oh, you'll take the high road and I'll take the low road,

  And I'll be in Scotland afore ye."

  "My secret is," Laura murmured, "I've been in Marmion afore ye. I've seen it all afore. It's all happened afore." They leaned their heads together.

  "But me and my true love will never meet again..."

  They're singing to Uncle George that his wife has left him, Laura thought sleepily but open-eyed. And to Dabney that she and Troy will never meet again. It was a picnic night. All secrets were being canceled out, sung out.

  Uncle George's wagon came in view. Robbie and Maureen and George made a jolted but steady triangle, with little black boys hanging on and spilling off and catching up behind. And George was left still the adored one for the picnic, loved by the whole long procession with a love going further than the love for Dabney though she was the girl and the bride. The picnic was to tell Dabney hello but George good-bye. She gazed back at him, a figure in white clothes, face and throat dark by the starlight and in the brambly road—looking up at that moment, as if something wonderful might happen to him tonight, where he was going in the wagon. Maureen, now in all contrariness tame as a pigeon, squatted at his knee. She was mostly gentle, Laura dreamily realized. It was only now and then that she showed what she could do, just like most people. And Uncle George was singing—not "Loch Lomond," or "Some Sweet Day," but something ... He was not really singing any song that she knew. It was something different and playful. He could not carry the tune—or he was improvising. It was that. She listened to it.

  That picnic night she felt part of her cousins' life—part of it all. She was familiar at last with that wonderful, special anticipation that belonged to the Fairchilds, only to the Fairchilds in the whole world. A kind of wild, cousinly happiness surged through her and went out again, leaving her on India's shoulder.

  She heard Uncle George's soft tune climb and fall, learned it—and then he changed to a whistle, just like a bird.

  Marmion's grove rose up ahead, but Laura was asleep.

  They had eaten everything they could, everything there was, and lay back groaning on the plaids and rugs. Battle had indeed cleared all the brambles away, it was a picnic place now by the riverside. There was a smell of cut green wood. And a smell of smoke—Howard was wafting it gently over them from a distant fire, aided by six or eight. George lighted his pipe to drive away the mosquitoes Tempe could tell were still after her. The dogs had the bones, those good for them and not, and worked contentedly by the water, now and then lifting up, listening ... Overhead, showing it was the first cool night on the Delta, the Milky Way came out and wound like a bright river among the stars.

  Troy handed a muscadine to his wife, like a present, and she gave him a weak tap and lay still with it in her teeth. Troy wore a new seersucker suit whose stripes in the house had seemed vibrant as if lightning were playing around him, but out here he looked like any other man in an old costume. Somebody sighed deeply. Once somebody said, "Too bad Pinck had to go to Memphis today." Little Battle was asleep, his cheek on his fist. Roy sat wordless, his gaze passing with the pure contact of starlight over all around. Orrin wandered off, first one way, then another, whistling like a whippoorwill.

  "Did you all know Rowena wanted to be buried over here?" Jim Allen said once, out into the night. "Well, she did. But she wasn't."

  "Wake up, Laura!"

  "Oh, let her sleep."

  "George," said Battle from where he lay on Ellen's blanket, "did I ever hear you say what you'd do if you came back and took possession of the Grove again?"

  "Sure—I'd change things."

  The silence drifted.

  "Why, George," Tempe remarked, she alone sitting erect, and wielding her own little fan, "that's where Primmy and Jim Allen Fairchild are counting on living. If you came back, would you run your sisters away?"

  There were little sounds never far away—the river and the woods. Their picnic had scared up the peafowls and peacocks, very fierce, long since gone to the wild, and now and then they ran in the viny ways to the river. The tower of Marmion was there over the trees.

  "Let's go in," said Shelley, rising up. "Who wants to go in Marmion?"

  "Nobody!" said Battle. "You can't go in, I've had that door locked for just such as you."

  "Oh, if I took over, they could stay with us as long as they enjoy it," George said. "Or I could build them their own house near by. Or they could move in Shellmound—Dabney'll be here, and Orrin soon off to school—old Shelley'll not be long with us, I imagine," and he gave her ribbon a touch and it came off.

  "I think you'd be right to, George," said Primrose, trying to make her voice carry. "And it's been such a responsibility!"

  "Further than cotton, I might try fruit trees, might try some horses, even cattle," said George, smiling in the starlight.

  "You're crazy, man," Battle roared delightedly.

  "Who knows, I might try a garden. Vegetables!"

  "Vegetables!" They all cried out together. "What would the Delta think?" Tempe demanded.

  "And melons where all that sand was deposited on the bottom there."

  "Is it what Robbie wants?" asked Shelley.

  "Robbie wouldn't want it at all, I'm afraid," George raid. "Robbie's our city girl born."

  "I'd probably hate it," said Robbie dreamily. She laughed softly where she lay on her back beside him, looking up at the sky. The lady moon, with a side of her hair gone, was rising.

  "George," said Primrose, her voice shaking a little. "I forgot to
tell you until now—there are rats at the Grove."

  George laughed out. "Afraid to tell me!" He got up from Robbie's side and walked over to where Primrose sat on her little stool to keep "the damp" from her. "Primmy. Yes, I know, it has rats, and a lot of things—a ghost to keep you awake, and also it's the place Denis was going to come back to and enjoy a long, voracious old age and raise a houseful of healthy offspring. Now what if I want in, and others out, even you, Primmy?" He spoke softly.

  "Georgie!"

  "George said, What if he took the Grove?" Tempe called to Jim Allen.

  The Grove? Robbie was thinking. Well, for her, it would be that once more they would laugh and chase by the river. Once more she and Mary Shannon, well-known as that star Venus, would be looking at each other in that house. Things almost never happened, almost never could be, for one time only! They went back again ... started over...

  "Robbie," said India. "Are you going to have a baby?"

  "India!" said Ellen, shocked. "What do you know about babies?"

  "I won't tell you," said Robbie in a clear voice, still lying on her back, one arm flung out, looking up at the sky.

  Battle laughed uproariously.

  "Excuse my back, please, ma'am," said Troy to Tempe. He pivoted around and kissed Dabney. "Do we have to kiss in front of your whole family from now on, Dabney, now that we're married?" He set her up straight again like something he had knocked over and was putting back so no one would tell the difference.

  "Yes!" She looked on him beaming, maternally—to tease him.

  How quickly she had known she loved Troy! Only she had not known how she could reach the love she felt already in her knowledge. In catching sight of love she had seen both banks of a river and the river rushing between—she saw everything but the way down. Even now, lying in Troy's bared arm like a drowned girl, she was timid of the element itself. Troy set her up again, and she smiled, looking at him all over and around him, up at the two rising horns of his parted hair. They had fooled everybody successfully about their honeymoon, because instead of going to the Peabody in Memphis they had gone to the St. Charles in New Orleans. Walking through the two afternoons down streets narrow as hallways, they had had to press back against the curb, against uncertain dark-green doors, to let the streetcars get through. The streetcars made an extraordinary clangor at such close quarters, as they did in the quiet of night, and some of them had "Desire" across the top. Could that have been the name of a street? She had not asked then; she did not much wonder now.