Delta Wedding Page 7

  There was nothing at all abstract in Uncle George's look, like the abstraction of painted people, of most interrupted real people. There was only penetration in his look, and it reached to her. So serious was it that she backed away, out of the library, into the hall, and backwards out the screen door. Outside, she picked up a striped kitten that was stalking through the grass-blades, and held him to her, pressing against the tumult in her fingers and in his body. The willful little face was like a question close to hers, and the small stems of its breath came up and tickled her nose like flowers. In front of her eyes the cardinals were flying hard at their reflections in the car, drawn up in the yard now (they had got back from Greenwood). A lady cardinal was in the rosebush, singing so hard that she throbbed between her shoulder blades. Laura could see herself in the car door too, holding the kitten whose little foot stretched out. She stood looking at herself reflected there—as if she had gotten along so far like an adventurer in an invisible coat, as magical as it was unsuspected by her. Now she felt visible to everything.

  The screen door opened behind her and Uncle George came out on the porch. They were calling him somewhere. She could see him in the red door, his hands were in his pockets and the letter was not showing on him.

  "Skeeta! Like Shelley's kitten?" he remarked.

  "No," she said, dropping it in the sheer perversity of excitement, because she thought that whatever had happened, he hoped Laura still liked Shelley's kitten. Now it chased the cardinals, which darted and scolded, though the lady cardinal sang on.

  "What do you like best of anything in the world?" he asked, lighting his pipe now.

  "Riddles," she answered.

  "Uncle George!" they cried, but he began asking her, "As I was going to St. Ives." One thing the Fairchilds could all do was to take an old riddle and make it sound like a new one, their own. "One," she said, "you. You were going to St. Ives, all by yourself."

  "Out of all those? Only me?" Then Dabney came out and grabbed him, and he looked over her head at Laura pretending he could not believe what he heard, as if he expected anything in the world to happen—a new answer to the riddle, which she, Laura, had not given him.

  While they were all still seated around the table drinking their last coffee, Mr. Dunstan Rondo, the Methodist preacher at Fairchilds, paid a noon call. They were all tired, trying to make Aunt Shannon eat.

  "Eat, Aunt Shannon, you've had no more than a bird."

  "How can I eat, child," Aunt Shannon would say mysteriously, "when there's nothing to eat?"

  They did not expect Mr. Rondo, they hardly knew him, but plainly, Ellen saw, he considered his dropping in a nice thing, since he was to marry Dabney and Troy so soon. Aunt Mac and Aunt Shannon vanished. The children started to run.

  "Come back here!" Battle shouted. "You stay right here. Mr. Rondo, there's a baby too, somewhere."

  "I'm afraid I'm not much of a Sunday School girl," Dabney told Mr. Rondo demurely as he took her hand, "But I'm the bride."

  "By all means!" said Mr. Rondo, his voice hearty but uncertain. He sat in Battle's chair. Battle sat down on a little needle-point-covered stool and gave Mr. Rondo a rather argumentative look.

  "I suppose you've met at some time or other my brother George, though he never put foot in a church that I know of. Fooling with practicing law in Memphis now—we're hoping he'll give it up and move back. He did plant the Grove over on the river, before he went to war."

  Mr. Rondo and George shook hands.

  "Why, I believe I married him," said Mr. Rondo.

  "Of course! You did—you did. They got you out of bed in the middle of the night—you knew about it before we did!" Battle laughed at Mr. Rondo as at some failing in him.

  "Is your wife the former Miss Roberta Reid from Fairchilds City?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Yes, sir. That's who she is," Battle answered, also.

  "And have they children?" asked Mr. Rondo, of Battle, as if that would be more polite.

  Bluet, who never carried less than two things with her, hobbled in burdened under a suitcase and a croquet mallet. She was wearing a pair of Shelley's gun-metal stockings around her neck like a fur. "I'm their little girl," she said.

  "They have not," said Battle. "And he loves them—eats mine up. He loves children and they love him. Look at Bluet kiss him." He scowled at Mr. Rondo.

  "They get along beautifully, George and Robbie," said Ellen in open anxiety, making her way around the table toward Mr. Rondo. "It's in their faces—I don't know if you pay much attention to that kind of thing, Mr. Rondo?"

  "In their faces?" Dabney asked, looking at her mother in astonishment.

  "I was thinking of one picnic night, particularly, dear." Ellen's voice suddenly trembled.

  "You mean when they put on the Rape of the Sabines down at the Grove?" asked Battle.

  "A family picnic." Ellen smiled at the preacher firmly. "You should have come to dinner." She offered her hand, seeming to reproach him for not being invited. But Battle had said when she spoke of inviting him to one meal before the rehearsal supper, "Who wants a preacher to eat with them?" Mr. Rondo was so nice and plump, he looked as if he would have enjoyed the turkey too.

  "A good deal, yes, a great deal in people's faces," he said.

  "Well, entertain Mr. Rondo. Tell him about George on the trestle—I bet he'd like that," said Battle. "You tell it, Shelley."

  "Oh, Papa, not me!" Shelley cried.

  "Not you?"

  "Let me," cried India. "I can tell it good—make everybody cry."

  "All right, India."

  "Very simply, now, India," said Ellen calmly. She sat up straight and held Ranny's hand.

  "It was late in the afternoon!" cried India, joining her hands. She came close to Mr. Rondo and stood in front of him. "Just before the thunderstorm!"

  Immediately in Shelley's delicate face Ellen could see reflected, as if she felt a physical blow now, the dark, rather brutal colors of the thunderclouded August landscape. "Simply, India."

  "Let her alone, Ellen."

  "What we'd been doing was fishing all Sunday morning in Drowning Lake. It was everybody but Papa and Mama—they missed it. It was me, Dabney, and Shelley, Orrin and Roy, Little Battle and Ranny and Bluet, Uncle George and Aunt Robbie—Mama, when's she coming? Soon? And Maureen. And Bitsy and Howard and Big Baby and Pinchy before she started seeking, and Sue Ellen's boys and everybody in creation."

  "And Troy," said Dabney.

  "Troy too. And then we didn't catch nothing. Came home on the railroad track, came through the swamp. Came to the trestle.

  "Everybody wanted to walk it but Aunt Robbie said No. No indeed, she had city heels, and would never go on the trestle. So she sat down plump, but we weren't going to carry her! We started across. Then Shelley couldn't walk it either. She's supposed to be such a tomboy! And she couldn't look down. Everybody knows there isn't any water in Dry Creek in the summertime. Did you know that, Mr. Rondo?"

  "I believe that is the case," said Mr. Rondo, when India waited.

  "Well, Shelley went down the bank and walked through it. I was singing a song I know. 'I'll measure my love to show you, I'll measure my love to show you—'"

  "That's enough of the song," said Dabney tensely.

  "'—For we have gained the day!' Then Shelley said, 'Look! Look! The Dog!' and she yelled like a banshee and the Yellow Dog was coming creep-creep down the track with a flag on it."

  "A flag!" cried Dabney.

  "I looked, if you didn't," said India. "We said, 'Wait, wait! Go back! Stop! Don't run over us!' But it didn't care!"

  "Mercy!" said Mr. Rondo. Bluet, who had never taken her eyes off him, laughed delightedly and circled round him. George watched her, a faint smile on his face.

  "It couldn't stop, India, it wasn't that it didn't care." Dabney frowned. "Mr. Doolittle was asleep. The engineer, you know." She smiled at Mr. Rondo.

  "Who's telling this? Creep, creep. Then it was time for Aunt Robbie to jump up in he
r high heels and call 'George! Come back!' But he didn't. 'All right, sweethearts, jump,' Uncle George says, and the first one to jump was me. I landed on my feet and seat in an old snaky place. I made a horrible noise when I was going through the air—like this.... I looked up and saw Dabney get Ranny in her arms and jump holding him, the craziest thing she ever did, but Ranny said 'Do it again!' Creep, creep. Of course Roy hung by his hands instead of jumping, and Little Battle had to climb back and do it too. Look how ashamed they look! They got cinders in their eyes, both of them. Uncle George threw Bluet off, and Shelley picked her up. I forgot to say all the Negroes had run to the four corners of the earth and we could hear Pinchy yelling like a banshee from way up in a tree. That was before she started coming through."

  "Go faster," said Dabney. "Mr. Rondo will get bored."

  "Oh, well: Maureen caught her foot. She was dancing up there, and that's what she did—caught her foot good. Uncle George said to hold still a minute and he'd get it loose, but he couldn't get her foot loose at all. So creep, creep."

  "It was coming fast!" cried Dabney. "Mr. Rondo, the whistle was blowing like everything, by that time!"

  Mr. Rondo nodded, in a pleasant, searching manner.

  "The whistle was blowing," said India, "but the Dog was not coming very fast. Aunt Robbie was crying behind us and saying, 'Come back, George!' and Shelley said, 'Jump, jump!' but he just stayed on the trestle with Maureen."

  "Path of least resistance." Battle beamed at Mr. Rondo fiercely. "Path George's taken all his life."

  "Hurry up, India," said Dabney. "Hurry up, India," said Ranny and Bluet, banging dessert spoons on the back of the preacher's chair.

  "Now be still, or I won't let India go any further," Ellen said, her hand on her breast. Then Bluet beat her spoon very softly.

  "Oh, well, Maureen said, 'Litt-la train-ain can-na get-la by-y,' and stuck her arms out."

  Battle gave a short laugh. "India, you're a sight—you ought to go on the stage."

  "Creep, creep." India smiled.

  "Hurry up, India."

  "Well, Maureen and Uncle George kind of wrestled with each other and both of them fell off, and anyway the Dog stopped in plenty time, and we all went home and Robbie was mad at Uncle George. I expect they had a fight all right. And that's all."

  Bluet whimpered.

  "Yes, that's all, Bluet," said Ellen. "India, you tell what you know about and then stop, that's the way."

  "Now wait. Tell what Robbie said when it was all over, India," said Battle, turning the corners of his mouth down. "Listen, Mr. Rondo."

  "Robbie said, 'George Fairchild, you didn't do this for me!"

  Battle roared with cross laughter from his stool.

  Dabney cried, "You should have heard her!"

  Shelley went white.

  "Robbie said, 'George Fairchild, you didn't do this for me!" India repeated. "Look, Shelley's upset."

  "Shelley can't stand anything, it looks like, with all this Dabney excitement," said Battle. "Now don't let me see you cry."

  "Leave me alone," Shelley said.

  "She's crying," India said, with finality. "Look, Mr. Rondo: she's the oldest."

  "Who is Maureen?" asked Mr. Rondo pleasandy. "Is she this little girl?" He pointed at Laura.

  "Oh, no, I wasn't there," Laura said, a little fastidiously.

  He was fully told, that Maureen had been dropped on her head as an infant, that her mother, Virgie Lee Fairchild, who had dropped her, ran away into Fairchilds and lived by herself, never came out, and that she wore her black hair hanging and matted to the waist, had not combed it since the day she let the child fall. "You've seen her!" Their two lives had stopped on that day, and so Maureen had been brought up at Shellmound.

  "Why, she's Denis's child!" they all said.

  "She's just as much Fairchild as you are," said Battle. "So don't ever let me catch you getting stuck up in your life." He gave Laura a look.

  "Is Maureen my first cousin?" Laura cried.

  "We're kin to Maureen the same as we're kin to each other," Shelley told her. "On the Fairchild side. Her papa was Uncle Denis and he was killed in the war, don't you remember?"

  "I forgot," said Laura. "When will she comb her hair?"

  "We'll let you know when she does." Shelley and Dabney giggled, looking at each other.

  "I guess I'd better be going," said Mr. Rondo. "Midday's a busy time to call."

  "But I know she won't comb it for your wedding, Dabney," said Battle. And he gave a hearty and rather prolonged laugh. "You might think your marrying Troy Flavin would bring anything about, but it won't make your Aunt Virgie Lee take the tangles out of her hair!" And he laughed on, groaning, as if it hurt his side.

  And Dabney suddenly left the table. She had to be called three times, but when she came down she looked rather softened at being teased about her love before everybody. Mr. Rondo had already taken his departure, promising to be back to the rehearsal and supper on Friday night; they said they would show him just what to do.

  Ellen stood at the foot of the stairs holding a cup of broth. George came out of the dining room lighting his pipe and went to her.

  "I know I should worry a little more about Aunt Shannon," she began, and he lifted the napkin and looked at the broth. "Have a taste," she said, sighing.

  "She's stubborn too," George said.

  "I sent Laura up with this—but she wouldn't even drink it for her. She sent the poor little thing back."

  He nodded. Aunt Shannon never wept over Laura, as if she could not do it over one motherless child, or give her any immediate notice. In her the Fairchild oblivion to the member of the family standing alone was most developed; just as in years past its opposite, the Fairchild sense of emergency, a dramatic instinct, was in its ascendancy, and she had torn herself to pieces over Denis's drinking and Denis's getting killed. Insistently a little messenger or reminder of death, Laura self-consciously struck her pose again and again, but she was a child too familiar, too like all her cousins, too much one of them (as they all were to one another a part of their very own continuousness at times) ever to get the attention she begged for. By Aunt Shannon in particular, the members of the family were always looked on with that general tenderness and love out of which the single personality does not come bolting and clamorous, but just as easily emerges gently, like a star when it is time, into the sky and by simply emerging drifts back into the general view and belongs to the multitudinous heavens. All were dear, all were unfathomable, all were constantly speaking, as the stars would ever twinkle, imploringly or not—so far, so far away.

  "You take her the broth, George. I believe she would drink it for you."

  "Maybe so. Some days she thinks I'm Grandfather—or Denis," he said without rancor.

  She still held on to the bowl, not able to worry enough about Aunt Shannon. How in his family's eyes George could lie like a fallen tower as easily as he could be raised to extravagant heights! Now if he was fallen it was because of his ordinary wife, but once it had been because he gave away the Grove, and before that something else. The slightest pressure of his actions would modify the wonder, lower or raise it. Whereas even the daily presence of Maureen and the shadowy nearness of Virgie Lee had never taken anything away from the pure, unvarying glory of Denis.

  "Tell her to drink it for you," she said, and held out the bowl to him very carefully. He took it with the touching helpfulness of her son Ranny.

  She watched him carrying it upstairs. Not for the first time, she wondered whether, if it had never been for Denis, George might not have been completely the hero to his family—instead of sometimes almost its hero and sometimes almost its sacrificial beast. But she thought that she could tell (as George turned on the landing and gave her a look as sweet as a child's of not wanting her to be anxious) that he was more remarkable than either, and not owing to Denis's spectacular life or death, but to his being in himself all that Denis no longer was, a human being and a complex man.

  B
attle came down the hall with a hangdog look, and she met him and comforted him for his impatience.

  "If I weren't tied down," he said. "If I weren't tied down! I'd go find little Upstart Reid myself, and kill her. No, I'd set her and Flavin together and feed 'em to each other."

  "Mr. Rondo came at the wrong time," Ellen said, kissing him. "It just wasn't a good day for Mr. Rondo."

  "Go to sleep, Bluet, go to sleep," said Ellen monotonously to her baby. The house was nearly still; from below came faint noises from the kitchen, and from somewhere one little theme over and over on the piano. Mary Lamar Mackey played all day, the whole of her visit—as if the summer must speak a yearning each day through, yet never enough could she bring it to speak. Nocturnes were her joy.

  "Go to sleep, Bluet, and I'll tell you my dream."

  "Dream?"

  Bluet was a gentle little thing, inquiring more gently than India, filled with attention, quick to show admiration and innumerable kinds of small pleasures—she was younger. All day she worked, carrying on, like a busy housewife, her loves and hates without knowing her small life was an open window where they all looked in and smiled at her. Now she lay in one of the big white-painted iron sleeping-porch beds with the mosquito net folded back against its head; it was like a big baby buggy that, too, would carry her away somewhere against her will. "Do you hear the dove, Mama?" Outside the summer day shimmered and rustled, and the porch seemed to flow with light and shadow that traveled outwards.

  In a low voice Ellen told her dream to put the child to sleep. With one hand she held down her little girl's leg, which wanted to kick like a dancer's. Gradually it gave up.