Losing Battles (43 page)

“Come on, sisters, help feed her! Let’s cram it down her little red lane! Let’s make her say Beecham!
We
did!” came the women’s voices.

“What you so proud about?” Aunt Nanny held high a hunk of melon as generous as a helping at the table. They were crying with laughter now. “Say who’s a Beecham! Then swallow it!”

Gloria tried to call Jack once more.

Somebody shouted, “Wash it down her crook!”

Elvie in her swing said, “If she swallows them seeds, she’ll only grow another Tom Watson melon inside her stomach.”

A melony hand forced warm, seed-filled hunks into Gloria’s sagging mouth. “Why, you’re just in the bosom of your own family,” somebody’s voice cried softly as if in condolence. Melon and fingers together went into her mouth. “Just swallow,” said the voice. “
Everybody’s got something
they could cry about.”

“I think she’s lost her breath now. She’s just letting us sit on her,” said a voice that sighed.

“Sometimes women is too deep for me. But I reckon it’s only for the good reason that I never had any sisters,” pronounced Miss Beulah from the porch, in the voice of lofty argument she used with Lady May.

The aunts were helping each other to their feet. Gloria lay flat, an arm across her face now, its unfreckled side exposed and as pale as the underpelt of a rabbit. The swifts were gone out of the sky, perhaps all down their chimney.

“Remember when she first come to Banner? She wasn’t as determined then as she got to be later. She was scared as a little naked bird. Wonder why!” said Aunt Nanny.

“Far from what she knew,” said Aunt Beck. “That’s in her face again now.”

“Got here and didn’t even know how to pull mustard,” said Aunt Birdie.

“Yes, she knew that. She was brought up an orphan, after all,” Auntie Fay said.

“What do men see in ’em?” whispered Miss Lexie.

Miss Beulah came marching to Gloria and planted her feet beside her. “Gloria Beecham Renfro, what are you doing down on the dusty ground like that? Get up! Get up and join your family, for a change.” Miss Beulah reached down, took Gloria by the arm, and pulled her to her feet.

“I still don’t believe I’m a Beecham,” she came up saying. The watermelon juice by now had chalked her face pink and stiffened her lips as it dried.

“Gloria,” said Miss Beulah, “go back in the house and wash that face and get rid of some of that tangly hair, then shake that dress and come out again. Now that’s the best thing I can tell you.”

“No thank you, ma’am.” She stood right there. “I’m standing my ground,” she told everybody.

“And look at her,” said Miss Lexie. “I guess you-all will make me be the one to fix her so we can stand the sight of her.” She walked up to Gloria and clapped a hand on her shoulder as if she’d been empowered to arrest her. “You need a little trimming done on you. Gonna run?” Miss Lexie invited her. Her fingers made sure of the needle she carried in her collar. She threw out her hand at random, a thimble was tossed from among the aunts, and she cupped it to her breastbone to catch it. Then she threw forward her Buster Brown bob and pulled off over her head the ribbon that carried her scissors with her everywhere.

“Lexie, you always bite off more than you can chew,” said Miss Beulah. “And this house never allowed sewing on Sunday.”

“I’m not going to come out of my dress for anybody,” said Gloria, arms clamped to her sides.

“We know you’re modest,” teased Aunt Nanny.

“You just stand still, and tell it to stay light,” said Miss Lexie to Gloria. “The men ain’t going to pay a sewing session a bit of attention, and Jack ain’t here to worry about.”

On her saying that, the uncles turned their chairs a little bit, and Mr. Renfro got up and hobbled away, as if to see how many more of his watermelons still waited in reserve under the porch. With a long sound like a stream of dry seed being poured into an empty bucket, the song of the locusts began.

“I’ll tell you one thing about that dress—you can’t hurt it now! Not after the travelling it’s done today,” Aunt Nanny said gaily, “and the waltzing around it’s had.” She swung the sash she held.

“I found my patch ready-made,” said Miss Lexie, ripping.

“Will you please spare my pocket?” cried Gloria.

“I’ve already got it,” said Miss Lexie and slipped it wrong side out.

“No wedding dress I ever saw had a pocket,” said Mrs. Moody.

“It was carrying my wedding handkerchief,” said Gloria.

“Looks prettier if you hold it,” said Miss Lexie, handing it up. “And you might want to drop some tears, who knows? Just for a change.”

Miss Lexie began snipping at the hem of Gloria’s dress. “I worshipped her! Worshipped Miss Julia Mortimer!” she suddenly declared from behind Gloria, close to her there near the ground. She brought out her words as loudly or as softly as she ripped, as if to keep up with her thread. “She lived and boarded with us, right across the road from the schoolhouse, and taught me as far as the seventh grade. She encouraged me too, when I was coming up. For all anybody here knows, I might have had my sights set too on stepping into her shoes.” She paused to rock on her heels where she squatted, giving her silent laugh. “But they die,” she said. “The ones who think highly of you. Or they change, or leave you behind, get married, flit, go crazy—”

“Lexie, has anybody asked you for your story?” Miss Beulah asked, still patrolling the yard, down as far as where some boy cousins were tinkering under two of the cars, keeping her eye on the whole scene.

“My memory reaches back to where she first came to Banner,” said Miss Lexie, going after the thread. “But it was before that that Grandfather Renfro said, ‘I’ve lived a long time and come a long way to find out there’s a rushing river still left between my folks and something they ought to have on the other side. And I’m going to pray till I find a way for mine to get ahold of it.’ He meant a good schooling. He’d had Papa and his two little sisters going to Alliance. It meant two of ’em riding the horse to a place up the river, and the little one hanging on behind to ride the horse back home. Then they rowed ’em across and walked the rest of the way.”

“Where was the bridge?” Aunt Cleo was asking.

“Nobody’d dreamed yet we needed one,” Miss Beulah said forbiddingly.

“Man would pole you across for the promise of a fat hen or a sack of potatoes,” said Granny. “A fellow thought twice about it, then, whether he wanted quite as much as he thought he did to be on the other side.”

“Grandfather took all this to the Lord,” said Miss Lexie, “and the Lord told him it would be a lot better if they built a school on this side of the Bywy and let the
teacher
do the crossing. So as to save
time and trouble and to cheat the bad weather, she could board on the Banner side during the week. Well, then!”

“You mean to say we owe Banner School to a Renfro? Never dreamed that!” Aunt Nanny cried, and called, “Why, Mr. Renfro!”

“And Miss Julia Mortimer was the living answer to Old Preacher Renfro’s prayer? I never knew that either!” cried Uncle Noah Webster.

“Well, not right directly,” said Mr. Renfro. “There had to be a generation go by before something more come of it. They had to build the schoolhouse. And after it’s built and standing there, there was a little breathing space while they could hope the teacher they prayed for’d never come.”

“But here she came. Miss Julia Mortimer,” said Miss Lexie, snipping and ripping, squatting her way around Gloria’s skirt. “Solid as a rock and not one bit of nonsense, looking like the Presbyterian she started out to be. First thing, she clamped down on the men and made ’em fence the yard to keep us in and saw out more windows to see our lessons by, and she scrubbed it inside out and scoured it without any help, raised up a ladder and painted it herself inside and out. ‘That’s a good start, now,’ she says when it’s white and got a flagpole. ‘And I’ll keep lessons going till you find somebody better.’ That’s how she got herself in harness.”

“Where did they even
find
her!” exclaimed Aunt Birdie.

“They didn’t have to find her. She’d found them. Banner School was ready for a teacher, and that was all she needed,” said Miss Lexie.

“How old was you then, Lexie?” asked Aunt Nanny. “How old are you
now?
”

“I’m old enough to remember the first morning,” said Miss Lexie, “with a mind still clear. She steps to the front and says, ‘Children of Banner School! It’s the first day for both of us. I’m your teacher, Miss Julia Mortimer. Nothing in this world can measure up to the joy you’ll bring me if you allow me to teach you something.’ ”

“And Banner was glad to get her!” Miss Beulah said. “Oh, yes, Grandpa offered up a prayer of thanks for her and asked the Lord to spare her.”

“At first everybody must have been as happy as she was,” said Miss Lexie. “Fell in love with each other! I’ve come to believe that’s a bad sign. The next thing they knew, Miss Julia Mortimer was saying that poor attention and bad behavior on a Monday would always
be punished on a Tuesday. On Tuesday, here came all the children to school and some leading their fathers. So Miss Julia said ‘Good morning!’ to all alike, and then she called up the pupils that hadn’t behaved on Monday, like Earl Comfort, and one by one she gave ’em a little token of her meaning with her fresh-cut peach-tree switch. Then she says, ‘Now. If any of these fathers who were so brave as to come to school this morning feel prompted to step up too, I’m ready for them now. Otherwise, they can all stay right there on the back bench and learn something.’ And invited up old Levi Champion first—Homer’s daddy.”

“He run,” said Mr. Renfro. He sat down by Judge Moody and smiled at him. “I know that without being there. She meant her words entirely, the lady did. Then and every other time she delivered herself.”

“From that day on, she was a fixture at Banner School,” said Miss Lexie. “She wouldn’t have given it up for anybody. Now,
your
turn,” she told Gloria. She went on. “Promptly, she nailed a shelf there under the front window and called it the library. She took her own money to fill up that shelf with books.”

“She made salary, didn’t she?” asked Aunt Cleo.

“The first month, the way the old folks remembered it, they paid her with seventeen silver dollars. But afterwards, they wasn’t ever able to come up to that brave start,” said Miss Beulah.

“They knew about warrants, even in the early days. Teachers just got a warrant,” said Mr. Renfro. “And there come up Mr. Dearman—”

“Perish the name!” cried Miss Beulah.

“Well, he was going around the country buying up teachers’ warrants at a discount,” said Mr. Renfro. “That’s telling the least of him, Mother.”

“No matter how, Miss Julia got books and came bringing ’em. I bet you Banner School had a library as long as your arm,” cried Aunt Birdie, as though she saw a snake.

“Then what happened to it? It was gone by the time I came along,” said Auntie Fay.

“It got rained on, darlin’,” said Aunt Nanny, letting her grin show. “I believe the teacher was young enough to cry.”

“She only started it again. And kept her map of the world hanging up year in, year out,” said Aunt Birdie. “And did it rattle on a March morning!”

“And we’re not on it,” said Miss Beulah. “Miss Julia said—”

“ ‘
Put
Banner on the map!’ ” came a chorus, the men joining in.

“We know the rest!” said Miss Beulah. “That’ll do for her now, Lexie.”

“I worshipped her as a child, though please don’t ask me to find you the reason for it now, now that I’ve seen her go down,” Miss Lexie said. “I cried when she had to leave our house for this one.”

“Stayed with me first,” said Granny, looking at them sideways out of the slits of her eyes.

“Don’t start getting jealous, Granny!” Uncle Noah Webster said. “You didn’t
want
the teacher, did you? Grandpa and us children filled up the house for you, didn’t we?”

“Everybody had to have her. The Comforts, they had their crack at her too. Come the long winter evenings, they all had to crowd mighty close together in the room with the fire to both see and keep warm by. And she’d stand up and read to ’em! Made ’em mad as wet hens. They had to hush talking, else be called impolite,” said Aunt Nanny. “I used to be there and in the same boat with ’em, because, you know, that’s who Mama gave me to.”

“
Read
to ’em? At
home?
” Aunt Birdie cried.

“It was her idea, not theirs,” said Aunt Nanny. “
Old
Mis’ Comfort says nobody’d ever know what her and the children suffered, with that teacher cooped in with us all winter. Old lady’s dust now, but she one time heard Miss Julia out to the tag end of her piece in the reader, and then that old lady spit in the fire and told the teacher
and
her own daughter—who’d just had a baby without sign of wedding band—’Now be ashamed
both
of ye.’ ”

“That’s enough,” said Miss Beulah.

Miss Lexie said to Gloria, “If anybody’s trying to cut under you, hold still.” She looked up at the rest of them, from under her Buster Brown bangs, and said, “But I didn’t come in that class. She
encouraged
me. She
made
me work.”