Losing Battles Read online

  “If there’s anything I do abhor, it’s coming through the broad outdoors!” cried Aunt Birdie with elation. “New tin! Why, Beulah Renfro! What’d you give for it?”

  “Ask Mr. Renfro!”

  “And what’s the excuse?” Aunt Birdie cried, hugging her.

  “My boy’s coming! My boy’s coming!” cried Miss Beulah. “He’s coming to surprise Granny—we just somehow know it.”

  Aunt Birdie with a squeal of joy opened her arms and ran to Granny. She was faded but still all animation, as if long ago she’d been teased into perpetual suspense.

  “Happy birthday, Granny! Jack’s coming! Won’t that make up for everything?” she cried into the old lady’s ear.

  “My ears are perfectly good,” Granny said.

  Then the little Beechams came up and tried to present Granny with a double armload of dahlias, each stalk as big as a rag-doll, a bushel of plushy cockscomb, and cooking pears tied in an apron. Miss Beulah rushed to her rescue.

  Uncle Dolphus, the middle Beecham brother, walked heavily across the porch and put his black-browed face down close to Granny’s and kissed her. “All right, we’ll help you wait on him,” he told her.

  As his own grandchildren swarmed around, Granny put kisses on top of their heads like a quick way to count them. From the little girls’ crowns, the hair fell in sun-whitened strands as separate and straight as fork tines over the dark yellow underneath. The little boys’ heads, being shaved, were albino white or even a silver gray, like the heads of little old men. Every little mouth said, “Happy birthday, Granny Vaughn!”

  “Jack’s coming! Jack’s coming!” Miss Beulah was shrieking anew. With a sharp smell of leaking gasoline, another car had drawn up in the yard behind Uncle Dolphus’s old Ford. It was another old Ford, sagging with weight, but carrying only two people.

  “It’s Uncle Percy and Aunt Nanny, Granny!” yelled Etoyle.

  “I can still see,” said Granny.

  Aunt Nanny Beecham hauled herself up the steps as though she had been harnessed into her print dress along with six or seven watermelons, and only then did she try to speak. “Jack’s coming? For keeps?” She looked around, already winking. “Well, where’s Gloria?”

  “She’s over the ironing board, I reckon,” Miss Beulah said.

  “Wouldn’t you know it?” Aunt Nanny gave over to Miss Beulah a dishpan full of honey-in-the-comb robbed that morning, tossed in peaks and giving off a clover smell as strong as hot pepper. “Got a baby here for me?” she hollered.

  “Granny’s being so brave behind you,” Aunt Beck gently reminded her, and Aunt Nanny nearly fell over herself to hug the old lady, the cheeks in her big face splashed over red with blushes.

  Uncle Curtis’s sons and Uncle Dolphus’s grandsons helped carry in the new load. They brought in tomatoes and bell peppers, some fall pears, and a syrup bucket full of muscadines—all that set of children were now at large with purple hands. They brought dahlias with scalded leaves hanging down their stems like petticoats, darker and heavier prince’s-feathers that looked like a stormy sunset, and a cigar box full of late figs, laid closely, almost bruising each other, in the leaves and purple and heavy as turned-over sacks, with pink bubbles rising to the top and a drunk wasp that had come with them from Peerless. They brought watermelons. They brought one watermelon that was estimated to weigh seventy-five pounds.

  Uncle Percy followed it all silently. Because his voice was weak and ragged, he was considered a delicate man. He lifted up for Granny’s eyes a string of little fish, twitching like a kite-tail. “Happy birthday,” he said, his Adam’s apple trembling like one of the fishes.

  “You could fry all those in one skillet,” said Granny. “I’m planning a little bigger dinner than most of you seem to think.”

  “And won’t you be glad to see that big brother of yours come home?” Aunt Birdie cried to Vaughn.

  “I don’t care if he don’t get here till tomorrow,” said Vaughn.

  “That boy’s grown two feet higher since Jack’s been away,” said Uncle Curtis, as though that explained him.

  “But if he don’t get a little wider somewhere, we won’t be able to see him much longer or find him when we want him,” said Aunt Nanny, giving Vaughn a pinch at the waist.

  “I don’t care if he don’t get here till the next reunion,” Vaughn said.

  “All right, Contrary!” called Miss Beulah, coming in with a pitcher and a Mason jar packed tight with flowers. “Right now you can go to the cemetery in the wagon for me. There’s a foot-tub already loaded in it, and go get that churn of salvia for Mama and Papa Beecham. These dahlias go to Grandpa Vaughn. Sam Dale Beecham gets the milk-and-wine lilies in this fruit jar—I advise you to hold it steady as you can between your feet.”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  “And you know what to bring back with you! Don’t leave a solitary one.”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  “Go flying. And if you meet that blessed mortal in the road, turn right around and come back with him!” yelled Miss Beulah after Vaughn. “Give him the reins! Let him drive!”

  As Vaughn rattled off in the hickory wagon, Miss Beulah threw up her hands. “He’ll never be Jack,” she said. “Says the wrong thing, does the wrong thing, doesn’t do what I tell him. And perfectly satisfied to have you say so!”

  “Beulah, this may be Jack coming this minute,” warned Aunt Birdie.

  Vaughn had waited to let it by. An old Ford coupe, that looked for the moment like a black teakettle boiling over and being carried quick off the stove, crossed the yard. It bounced to a stop in the last bit of shade under the pecan tree, and Etoyle screamed prophetically, “It’s Uncle Noah Webster back in Banner! Bringing his new wife to show us!”

  The next minute, a big, mustached man with plugged watermelons under both arms and both his hands full took the force of Etoyle’s running against his knees. He laughed and kept coming, carrying her with him at a run. Etoyle grabbed the banjo from one fist, Mr. Renfro took the watermelons and laid them on the porch.

  “Now be careful, Sissy! That’s a pretty—it’ll break!” Uncle Noah Webster cried as he let Miss Beulah take the wrapped-up present out of his other hand. Then he kissed her with such a bang that she nearly dropped it. He flung his free arms around Granny, chair and all. “If you ain’t the blessedest!”

  “What are you doing here?” said Granny in a defensive voice. “Thought they told me you was dead.”

  He hugged her till she tried a smile on him, and then went all but galloping over the porch, the yard, hugging his brothers, kissing their wives, throwing their children up in the air and catching them. Clapping Mr. Renfro on the back, he roared, “Who you trying to fool with that new lid on the old house?”

  “Play ‘I Had a Little Donkey,’ Uncle Noah Webster!” cried Etoyle.

  “I’m looking for Jack!” Uncle Noah Webster hollered, with a swing of his banjo. “Ain’t he here yet?”

  “No, but he’s coming!” cried Miss Beulah. “He’s coming, to make Granny’s heart glad!”

  “Why, Sissy, I’m as sure of that as you are,” cried Uncle Noah Webster. “And I thought if Jack can make it, I can! Where’s that sweetheart of his?”

  “She’s putting the baby to sleep now,” said Elvie, looking solemn. “So that when she opens her eyes, Jack will be here.”

  “Uncle Noah Webster, look behind you!” said Ella Fay.

  Walking toward them came the new member of the family, Aunt Cleo, from South Mississippi, Uncle Noah Webster’s new wife. She wore a dress of shirting in purple and white stripes, with sleeves so short and tight that her vaccination scar shone at them like a tricky little mirror high in her powerful upper arm.

  “We try to be ready here for all comers,” Miss Beulah said, facing her. “Make yourself at home. I reckon you know who I am.”

  “Is that your husband? He take a nail in his foot already this morning?” Aunt Cleo asked as Mr. Renfro hobbled forward.

  “No’m, a litt
le piece of dynamite accounts for that,” said Miss Beulah.

  “A wonder it didn’t carry off more of him than it did,” said Aunt Cleo.

  “Well, don’t think he did it just for you,” said Miss Beulah. “He got on crutches just in time for our wedding day, twenty-four years ago. Here’s my grandmother and she’s ninety today!”

  “Oh, I’ve nursed ’em like you!“ said Aunt Cleo, bending down to see Granny closer. “Pat pat pat pat pat.”

  “Well, you needn’t come patting after me,” said Granny. “I’d just have to stop what I was doing and run you off, like I do some others.”

  “Here’s my daughters,” said Miss Beulah. “They’ve reached seven, nine, and sixteen.”

  “Three generations and all fixing their hair in the same pig-tails. You-all must be a mighty long ways from civilization away up here,” Aunt Cleo said.

  The girls ran.

  “It’s a bigger reunion than I ever dreamed, congratulations,” said Aunt Cleo.

  “Listen!” Aunt Nanny cried. “But it ain’t started yet, Cleo.” And as Aunt Cleo began again looking around her, Aunt Nanny cried, “You’ll know when it starts, all right, you’ll hear the bang! That’s when our boy makes it on back home. Jack Renfro!”

  “Where’s he?” asked Aunt Cleo.

  “In the pen,” came a voice that was all but a whisper—Uncle Percy’s.

  “The pen! The state pen? Parchman?”

  “What’s Noah Webster been doing all this time if he hasn’t told you all the sad story?” asked Aunt Birdie.

  “What did Jack do?” Aunt Cleo cried.

  “Not a thing,” came a chorus right on top of her.

  “That’s enough,” said Miss Beulah.

  “Then show me—who’d he marry before he went? Bet you he made sure of somebody, didn’t he, to come home to?”

  “Yonder she comes!” cried Ella Fay. “She likes you to wait as long as you can, then she comes out looking cooler and cleaner than you do.”

  “Who’s this streaking up behind me?” asked the old lady. “Declare yourself.”

  The young girl just stepping out of the company room came forward. Dressed up in white organdy, smelling like hot bread from the near-scorch of her perfect ironing, she said, “It’s Gloria.”

  All but Granny took a deep breath.

  “A redhead. Oh-oh,” said Aunt Cleo.

  “You’re standing on your tiptoes looking just about good enough to eat! Right this minute!” Uncle Noah Webster shouted. He ran up onto the gallery and gave her a big hug and kiss.

  “Don’t she look like somebody stepped out of a storybook?” exclaimed Aunt Beck in her compassionate voice.

  “You look good and cool as a fresh cake of ice, sure enough,” Aunt Birdie told her.

  “Don’t even all that hair tend to make you hot?” asked Aunt Nanny. “It’d roast me, just being the color it is.”

  “Well, in spite of even that hot dress, and curly hair, you contrive to look cooler right now than we do,” said Aunt Birdie. “We’re good and jealous, Gloria.”

  “When she wants to use it, Gloria’s still got the prettiest thank-you in the family,” said Aunt Beck in her gentle voice.

  “Well, and I’d just like to know why she wouldn’t have!” Miss Beulah said.

  Gloria sat down in front of them all on the top step, a long board limber as leather and warmer than the skin, her starch-whitened high-heeled shoes on the mountain stone that was the bottom step. In four yards of organdy that with scratching sounds, like frolicking mice, covered all three steps, she sat with her chin in her hand, her head ablaze. The red-gold hair, a cloud almost as big around as the top of an organ stool, nearly hid what they could peep at and see of her big hazel eyes. For a space about the size of a biscuit around the small, bony points of her elbows, there were no freckles; the inner sides of her arms, too, were snowy. But everywhere else, every other visible inch of her skin, even to her ears, was freckled, as if she’d been sprinkled with nutmeg while she was still dewy and it would never brush off.

  Ella Fay chanted, “Sit still, Sister Gloria, keep your hands folded, don’t let your dress get dirty. You just keep yourself looking pretty and be ready for your husband.” The two younger sisters chanted it after her, smiling, “Keep your hands folded!”

  “Yes sir, you’re still here!” Uncle Noah Webster jumped heavily to the ground, ran around in front of Gloria and looked up the steps at her, slapping his hands down on his knees. “Cleo. two years ago this little bride was just as green as you are.” The fading mustaches hung like crossed pistols above his radiant smile, and he cried to Gloria, “Did any of ’em ever succeed in making you tell how you ever decided to marry into this ugly family in the first place?”

  “Here comes somebody new, just in time to stop her,” announced Aunt Cleo.

  Vaughn was driving up into the yard with the tables from the church dinner grounds thumping in the back of the wagon and a passenger sitting up on the seat beside him; for a minute all they could see of her was a stylish hat with a quill slanting up from the crown. Then she put her leg over with the high white man’s sock and the winter shoe.

  “That’s Mr. Renfro’s old maid sister Lexie. Oh, ever at the wrong time!” cried Miss Beulah, running out.

  The lady got down from the wagon in her Sunday dress, and reached up for a big oilcloth portmanteau and pulled it down herself.

  “I stood for an hour! I’d already walked as far as across the bridge, and I stood there at the store waiting on an offer of a ride. Some of you went right by me,” said Miss Lexie Renfro.

  “It’s that gripsack you’ve got along with you. They might wonder if they’d have you to carry from now on,” said Miss Beulah. “I’m not sure you can find any room left to set it down here.”

  “Everything I’ve got will fit right in there together.” said Miss Lexie. “Then I can tell myself I don’t have to go back if I don’t want to.”

  “Don’t take a bite out of Lexie, that’s a nice dog,” Miss Beulah told one of the shepherds and faced Miss Lexie as she came walking up the steps.

  “I borrowed a little bit of this and a little bit of that from her pantry, and made my donation to the reunion,” Miss Lexie said, poking around in her portmanteau and then handing out a flattish parcel.

  “What is it?” asked Miss Beulah before she’d take it.

  “A pound cake. It won’t kill anybody,” said Miss Lexie.

  Miss Beulah unwrapped it from the sheet of The Boone County Vindicator, and it was tied again in an old jelly-bag darkened with berry stains. She held it up by the drawstring.

  “Don’t everybody look at me like I’m the last thing of all,” Miss Lexie said. “My sister Fay hasn’t come, or her husband Homer Champion, I beat Nathan Beecham, and Brother Bethune’s not yet in sight. None of which surprises me.”

  “No, and Jack’s still got to come!” cried Miss Beulah.

  “Now that would surprise me,” said Miss Lexie.

  “He’s coming! And you needn’t ask me how I know it,” cried Miss Beulah.

  “What kind of a postcard did he manage to send you?” asked Miss Lexie.

  “My oldest boy never did unduly care for pencil and paper,” Miss Beulah retorted. “But you couldn’t make him forget Granny’s birthday Sunday to save your life. He knows who’s here and waiting on him—that’s enough!”

  Miss Lexie Renfro dipped her knees and tipped herself back, one tip. She didn’t make a sound, but this was her laugh.

  “Take your hat off, then, Lexie,” said Miss Beulah.

  “When I saw that hat coming, I thought—I thought you were going to be somebody else,” Gloria told Miss Lexie.

  “I’m wearing her Sunday hat. I make no secret of it. She’ll never need a hat again,” Miss Lexie said. “Miss Julia Mortimer’s out of the public eye for good now.”

  Mr. Renfro came forward to carry in her portmanteau. “You just come off and leave your lady, Lexie?” he asked his sister.

&n
bsp; “I may be more needed here than there, before the day gets over with,” she answered.

  Granny poked her shoe.

  “You a nurse?” Aunt Cleo called, as Miss Lexie exchanged short greetings with the Beechams all around her and refused a seat on a nail keg.

  “Well, let’s say I know what to do just about as well as the next fella,” said Miss Lexie.

  “You’ve run up on the real thing now, sister,” Aunt Cleo said. “And I could tell you tales—!”

  Vaughn, having led the mule out of the yard, lifted out of the wagon bed the cedar buckets and milk buckets full of water drawn from Grandpa Vaughn’s old well, the only one that hadn’t run dry. He lugged them to the house, replenished the drinking bucket on the porch, lugged the rest to the kitchen. Then he let Mr. Renfro take an end of each of the tables he had brought up from the dinner grounds at Damascus Church in Banner, along with one or two of their better benches, and help him get them down out of the wagon.

  “Vaughn! Hurry up, and get your other clothes on! Don’t entertain the reunion looking like that!” called Miss Beulah.

  Now there was family everywhere, front gallery and back, tracking in and out of the company room, filling the bedrooms and kitchen, breasting the passage. The passageway itself was creaking; sometimes it swayed under the step and sometimes it seemed to tremble of itself, as the suspension bridge over the river at Banner had the reputation of doing. With chairs, beds, windowsills, steps, boxes, kegs, and buckets all taken up and little room left on the floor, they overflowed into the yard, and the men squatted down in the shade. Over in the pasture a baseball game had started up. The girls had the swing.

  “Been coming too thick and fast for you?” Aunt Birdie asked Aunt Cleo.