Losing Battles (18 page)

Brother Bethune pivoted on his gun and fixed him with his loving, gimlet eye. “It’s the Prodigal Son.”

“Yes sir, looks like I’m just about to make it,” said Jack. He blushed. On his skin shone the crystal tracks, like snail tracks at sunup, of Lady May’s confidences and kisses up to now.

“Hi, Ladybug,” the old man said gaily, coming to try Lady May again. “There now. Churning my finger to pieces with your little tongue? Can’t talk yet? When they going to carry you to church?” He gazed at Gloria; he didn’t look as sure about her. “Mother still living?” he asked in the tones of a compliment.

“I’m an orphan, sir,” she said.

He made a shaming sound back at her.

“And Banner is not my home.”

Brother Bethune struck a sudden attitude and fixed his eye on the jumping-off place. A small head protruded over it with the motion of a hen’s. Like a long black stocking being rolled out through the wringer, all of it came up over the edge and moved on into the open over the flag-red ground and the milk-white limestone in the direction of Banner Road. Brother Bethune showed an incredulous face, on which the old nose, dark as a fig in its withering days, dangled over a mouth as wide-open as a man’s who was hearing this told in a story. An instant later he’d brought his heels together and fired his gun. Glistening, the snake appeared for a moment at the heart of the dust that played like a whirly-wind at their feet, and kept playing.

Rocketing hooves seemed to cover all the countryside at the same time, and the figure of Vaughn appeared as if flying upright above the top of the bank opposite. He was standing up in the wagon and driving Bet as if all their lives depended on it. He whipped the mule down the farm track and jumped her and the rocking wagon over the ditch and only brought them to a halt halfway down the hill on Banner Road.

Brother Bethune, his finger and thumb both rainbow-colored with tobacco stain, pared away at the well-toothed brim of his hat. He reloaded. “Now bring on the next one,” he told Lady May. “You know they ranges in pairs.”

Lady May had not shut her wide-open mouth. She sat on Gloria’s arm staring at him.

Here came Vaughn running straight to the snake. “I’ll carry that man back with me to show to Granny!” he shouted, plunging his arm in and holding up the running, perhaps headless, coils.

“It’s an old story to Granny,” said Jack. “No call for you to go carrying ’em home anything but Brother Bethune by himself.”

“Didn’t first catch on he’s a rattler, sir!” Vaughn shouted.

Brother Bethune laid on his shoulder a hand that appeared weighty enough to sink him. “All poisonous snakes you can tell ’em because they crawls waverly, son. If a snake ain’t coming with the idea to kill you, he crawls straight.”

“In my judgment, you all ought to see the rattlesnakes at Parchman before you jump to a verdict,” said Jack. “Throw that thing clear away from here, Vaughn. Anywhere but our ditch.”

Vaughn squatted down, picked up the snake afresh with both hands under it, as if it were a fainting woman, and bore it slowly to the jumping-off place and threw it over the drop.

“Banner Top looks very natural,” observed Brother Bethune. He pivoted. “And round, Baptist faces even more so. Many another one waiting on my words at your reunion.”

“What lost you your bearings, sir?” asked Jack kindly.

“I’d like to tell you,” said Brother Bethune. “A great big pleasure car in a cloud of dust and pine cones like to hit me right in the middle of the road, and that’s what spooked my mule. Stranger asked me what road could he take to get him to Alliance and not have to cross the river on Banner bridge. He talked a little uncomplimentary about it.”

“Brother Bethune, I’d love to know what answer you had for him,” Jack said.

“Told him to turn around the first chance he got and go back to Halfway Forks and try it all over. ‘Don’t waver,’ I told him, ‘just keep to the straight and narrow, every opportunity comes along,’ I told him, ‘and you’ll get to Grinders Mill in a little while, and see a bridge. Or there used to be one when I was taken there as a boy.’ He didn’t look too well pleased. But listen, Tiny—he spooked my mule,” said Brother Bethune into Lady May’s still horrified gaze. “Oh, what a day for upsets, Baby Child! I’ll tell you where I hope my mule’s gone—home.”

“Thank you, Brother Bethune,” said Jack.

“You’re welcome, Prodigal Son.”

“Now Vaughn,” said Jack, “if you’re cleaned off good, carry Brother Bethune on up to the reunion. Why didn’t you bring Grandpa’s buggy?”

“That mule can’t learn Grandpa’s buggy,” said Vaughn. “She hitches to the wagon.”

“See that Brother Bethune don’t spill another time,” said Jack. “And tell Mama to keep holding dinner—Brother Bethune’s sent Judge Moody to Grinders Mill for me.”

“Is
that who that was!” said Brother Bethune over his gun shoulder as Vaughn took him by the trigger finger and led him down the bank to the wagon. “I declare it to be a small world.” He set his foot in its high-topped shoe into Vaughn’s hands and took the boost onto the wagon seat. He drew into his lungs a sweet, suspiring smell.

“I reckon you know you been breaking the Sabbath, son,” said the old man, with one long-legged maneuver transferring himself to the nest of new hay in the bed behind. As the wagon rattled up the home road, he raised his gun high, and Lady May broke her silence and let out a shriek at it.

“Brother Bethune’s going to drive all the snakes out of this end of Boone County if he don’t slow down,” said Jack. “Poor old chicken snake—I reckon he lived around here pretty close and was just paying his ordinary call for a sip of water.”

“Why can Judge Moody be trying to seek out Alliance?” wondered Gloria.

“Well, he’ll never start across at Grinders,” said Jack. “Not if he knows anything about a bridge at all. And if he’s gone all the way to Grinders on that road, he’ll reason it out: any road that looks like it’s working that hard against nature, it must have
somewhere
better to go than Grinders. He’ll take the fork that brings him on around and back into Banner Road by keeping up with Panther Creek every switch of the way, if he’s smart. I’m as sure as I am of anything in this world, Gloria, he’ll roll right past here about forty miles further on from now.”

Holding her hand, he had been leading her back toward the jumping-off place. Now he drew his finger down through the bow of her sash, and the whole dress stood away from her like a put-up tent. The sash itself slid down to her shoes. His arm went around her waist, and with her holding the baby they all sat down together.

Here in the best patch of shade, an apron of old cedar roots, long exposed to the elements and rubbed smooth as horn, was spread out under them.

Lady May had lost her hat, but she still had her little shoes on. “Carry Jack a secret,” said Gloria. She whispered into the baby’s
ear and sent her tiptoeing. Lady May wrapped Jack’s head in her arms and made humming sounds into his ear.

“I got it! Take Mama this’n from me!” he cried.

But when Lady May came to blow in her ear, Gloria reached for her, took her on her lap, and opened her own bodice.

Jack jumped to his feet, then suddenly crashed to the ground again as though the baby had tripped him.

“Possum, that’s the last thing in the world I was picturing you doing,” he broke out.

“Maybe it’ll do you good.”

“She’s got teeth!”

“That’s to show you how long you stayed gone. And let me tell you she’s proud of those little teeth, too, every single one.”

“Holy Moses!” He propped up on one elbow and looked at Gloria’s sweetly lowered face. She raised her eyes and appraised him back.

“Get used to being a father, please kindly.”

“She could eat a plateful, the same as you and me. Why, she’s going to wear you out. She’s a little pig, ain’t she?”

“When you got your first look at her this morning, you weren’t scared of a baby.”

“Then, she made me feel right at home. She cannonballed in like a little version of Mama.”

“And you stood on your head for her.”

He couldn’t take his eyes away. “She’s such a sweet, helpful little thing, now ain’t she!” he exclaimed. Lady May set a sidelong gaze on him while she held Gloria’s breast in both hands, like a little horn blower whose hoots and peeps were given mainly with the eyes. “I reckon she can do everything in the world, next to talking.”

“Don’t criticize her!” cried Gloria. “If she could talk now, she would tell you you can’t just prance back like this and take it for granted that all you have to do is come home—and life will go on like before, or even better.”

“Trust your dad,” he told the baby.

“The system you’re trying won’t work,” Gloria said. “I wouldn’t need to bring you down to earth if I wasn’t your wife.”

He smiled at her.

“I feel like you missed my last letter by coming home today,” Gloria said.

“That’s all right—you already had all the other letter writers in the world licked.”

“I’m glad for you and sorry for the rest of the prisoners going deprived.”

“Never mind about them. What they had was family coming to beg for ’em,” he said, fanning her and the baby with his shirt-tails.

“Beg for ’em?”

“The smartest they had, the pick of their family. That’s who’d be elected to come to Parchman and beg. Or else how would the poor lonesome fools ever get out of there? Renfros and Beechams and Comforts relied a hundred percent on me and Aycock’s own behavior to turn the trick. Now that’s the slow way.”

“How could I have got myself to Parchman?” she cried.

“They call it Visiting Day.”

“Coming afoot? All the way to Parchman?” Gloria cried.

“You could’ve brought me a bottle of Banner water. And a pinch of home dirt—I could have carried that around in my shoe. I’d be looking for you on Visiting Day. Uncle Homer’s got the surest transportation, but he wouldn’t have begged for me as hard as you. You got to beg pretty wholehearted before old Parchman will listen.”

“I didn’t know Parchman would behave like that,” said Gloria.

“You got to aggravate ’em until they do.” He fanned them.

“I had a baby. That’s exactly what I was doing!”

He looked at her over the baby’s little crop of hair. “And I wouldn’t have had you set your little foot in a place like Parchman for all you’d give me! You know that, Beautiful. I was trying to make you smile. Where I’m proud and glad to have you is right here at home in Banner, exactly the way you are.”

“Then why do you tease me?” she whispered.

“Honey, Judge Moody’s gone to Grinder’s Mill.”

“You went farther than Grinders Mill.”

“I’m back.”

“And look what you’re doing first thing.”

“Is she satisfied now?” he loudly answered her, for the baby just then dodged from her mother to complete a yawn. He jumped up. “I believe she’s sleepy. How sound does our baby sleep?”

Lady May’s little hand dropped like a falling star. More slowly, her eyelids fell.

“She goes to the Gates of Beyond, just like you,” whispered Gloria.

He took the shirt off his back and folded it and took up the limp baby in it and walked to where the shadow of the tree reached into the feathery plum bushes. He laid her down and wrapped her lightly in his sleeves, and saw that she had a little canopy of light boughs, with a plum hanging as if it might fall in her mouth.

He turned, and Gloria darted. Once more they were running as hard as they could go, Gloria in front, rounding the bank its whole way around, swiftly past the piecrust edge, streaking by the peephole, clicking across the limestone, bounding over the hummocks, taking the hollow places skip by skip without a miss, threading serpentine through the plum bushes, softly around the baby, and back to the tree, where he reached with both hands and had her. Catching her weight as though he’d trapped it, he lowered her into the seat that looked out over the drop and got in with her.

The tree trunk, as high up as the hitching limb, was well carved; it was wound up in strings and knots of names and initials as if in a clover chain. In the upper gloom of branches, two doves like two stars flew in, then flew out again, out over the unseen river.

“When will we move to ourselves?” Gloria whispered.

“I believe that’s what you was saying to me the last thing before I left home for the courthouse.”

“Our wedding day. It was those very words.”

“They sound a familiar tune.”

“And I wrote you the same words too, didn’t let you forget ’em all the time you were gone.”

“I so much rather hear your sweet voice saying ’em,” he gasped, and taking her by the hand he laid his mouth over hers.

When she could speak, she said, “Stop. What is the most important thing in all the world?”

“I reckon what we need right now is a scout,” he said without pulling his face off hers. “Now Vaughn would come if I’d give him another holler. Little fellow just sits there listening.”

“No, I want Vaughn to remember you later as a good example.”

“Or Aycock. Aycock’d do anything for me and I’d do anything for him. He’d keep a lookout—”

“Jack, I want you to give him up.”

“Give up
Aycock?
”

“He’s good-for-nothing and spineless. And now he’s back home with a prison record besides.”

“He’s an old Banner boy! He just ain’t had all the good things
I have—has no daddy at home, no mama able to keep on the subject, no sisters and brothers to call on—no wife! Not to mention a sweet, helpful little girl-baby.’ ”

“I wouldn’t let Aycock touch the hem of her garment,” she said. “If it wasn’t for all the other people around us, our life would be different this minute.”

“Who wants it different?” he whispered.

“Your wife.”

He rolled closer.

“And here you are, going right back down in the road to more trouble, the minute you let go of me,” she said, as he clasped her close.

“Just because something may give me a little bit of trouble, you don’t see me go backing away from it, do you?” He rubbed his cheek against hers. “I’m beholden to the reunion to keep it running on a smooth track today, for Granny’s birthday to be worth her living to see. For Mama’s chickens not to go wasted, and for all of ’em that’s travelled through dust not to go home disappointed. It’s up to me to meet that Judge, Possum, sing him my name out loud and clear, and leave him in as good a ditch as the one he had before I saved him. That’s all.”