The Ponder Heart (11 page)

"Now that'n," he says. "Then you're the very one I ought to ask. Which-a-way did that'n get in, and which-a-way did it get out?"

"You've never been inside our house, Mr. Gladney," I says. "But I'll try to tell you. In down the front chimney. Careened around the parlor a minute, and out through the hall. And if you've never seen a ball of fire go out through bead curtains, it goes as light as a butterfly with wings."

"Do tell!—And what was Mrs. Bonnie Dee Ponder doing," he hollers, "while you was in the parlor
with
her, miratin' at a ball of fire that was supposed to be scarin' her to death? And who else was in there besides? Now the cat's out of the bag!"

Would
you
have known what he was up to? I could have bitten my tongue off! But I didn't show it—I just gave a laugh.

"I beg your pardon, Mr. Gladney," I says. "You aren't a bit straight. The ball of fire you keep going back to was coming out of the parlor when I saw it. That's how I knew where it had been. When Uncle Daniel and I were heading in through the front door of the house, it was heading out the parlor through the curtains—those bead curtains. We practically collided with it in front of the hatrack. I remember I said at the time, 'Whew, Uncle Daniel, did you see that? I bet that scared Bonnie Dee Peacock!' It skirted on down the hall and streaked out the back somewhere to scare the Negroes."

And I sails from the witness stand. I wasn't going to hear another word about balls of fire
that
day.

"Now they've found a witness!" says old Gladney to my back. "A fine witness! A ball of fire! I double-dog dare Mr. Clanahan to produce it after dinner!"

Well, everybody had a good time over that. But when I sat down again by Uncle Daniel, he looked at me like he never saw me before in his life.

"Speaking of dinner," says Judge Waite. "Recess!"—and I could have kissed him, and Ada's sister too, that stood in the door with her finger up.

 

We had all that company to crowd in at the Beulah dinner table, had to serve it twice, but there was plenty and it was good} and everybody was kind enough to tell me how I did (except Judge Waite, who sat up there by me without opening his mouth except to eat) and made me feel better. I hardly had a chance to swallow my fresh peach pie. When somebody spoke to Uncle Daniel, I tried to answer for him too, if I could. I'm the go-between, that's what I am, between my family and the world. I hardly ever get a word in for myself.

Right across the street were the Peacocks perched on the Courthouse stile, in stairsteps, eating—in the only shade there was. I could tell you what they ate without even seeing it—jelly sandwiches and sweet milk and biscuit and molasses in a tin bucket—poked wells in the biscuit to hold the molasses—and sweet potatoes wrapped in newspaper. That basket was drawing ants all through my testimony, I saw them. The Peacocks finished up with three or four of their own watermelons that couldn't have been any too ripe, to judge by what they left lying on the Courthouse grass for the world to see and pick up.

 

I certainly was unprepared for what DeYancey Clanahan did after lunch. He asked permission to call up a surprise witness; and he called up one of those blessed Peacocks.

It was one of Bonnie Dee's little old sisters—Johnnie Ree Peacock. The same size and the same hair, and batting her eyes! And there was most of Bonnie Dee's telephone-putting-in costume—very warm for June. And in the most mosquitery little voice you ever heard in your life, with lots of pauses for breath, she testifies that no, she and Bonnie Dee were not twins, they just came real close together, and their mama used to play-like they were twins. You could tell from listening at Johnnie Ree that she didn't have the sense her sister did, though Bonnie Dee never had enough to get alarmed about. Just enough to get married on trial.

Johnnie Ree said Bonnie Dee never did a thing to be ashamed of in her life. And neither did she.

"Even in Memphis?" says DeYancey, prancing around her.

That's what I mean by a tangent. DeYancey didn't have any business starting to prove that Uncle Daniel
ought
to have got after Bonnie Dee. He just ought to stick to proving that he didn't. He hadn't told me at all, eating that pie, that he was thinking of doing that. If he had, he'd have had another think coming. I didn't want any harm done to Bonnie Dee now! I don't have an ounce of revenge in my body, and neither does Uncle Daniel. The opposite.

"I believe it to be a fact, Miss Peacock, that you once enjoyed a trip to Memphis, Tennessee, with your sister," says DeYancey, and Johnnie Ree's face lights up a smidgen.

She says "Yessir."

I saw it then. Oh, I did well not to make up my mind too hastily about Ovid Springer. I congratulate myself still on that, every night of the world. Mr. Springer would not have hesitated to blacken Uncle Daniel's name before the world by driving sixty-five miles through the hot sun and handing him over a motive on a silver platter. Tired traveling man if you like—but when it came to a murder trial, he'd come running to be in on it. De Yancey had taken time from dinner to catch him on the telephone—he was eating cold cuts in Silver City—and he was headed here, as I found out later, but he had a flat tire in Delhi. I'm afraid that's a good deal like Mr. Springer, from beginning to end. Of course, he never had anybody to look after him.

So Johnnie Ree was just a substitute. But she didn't know it.

DeYancey says, "What kind of time did you have in Memphis?" and she says "Nice," and he says, "Tell us about it."

"Here?" she says.

"Why not?" says DeYancey, smiling that Clanahan smile.

According to Johnnie Ree, in her little mosquito voice, they walked around blocks and blocks and blocks of sidewalks in Memphis without coming to anything but houses, and when they came to stores they rode up and down in stores, and went to movies. Never saw the same show twice. By the second day they started going in the morning and didn't stop all day. Four in one day was their goal. Johnnie Ree wanted to stop and tell us all
Quo Vadis
, as if it had never been to Clay, but DeYancey broke in to ask her where did they stay in Memphis and Johnnie Ree said
she
didn't know: it said "A Home Away from Home." There was a fern a yard broad sitting on the buttress out front that looked like it could eat them up, and that was how she could tell the house from some others that said "A Home Away from Home" too.

And they didn't care to board with the lady, but ate in cafeterias, because you could pick out what you wanted. They had store-bought watermelon in round slices, and store-bought cake that tasted of something queer, like paregoric. Johnnie Ree's voice got a little stronger on the subject of watermelon.

I suppose her tales of Memphis would have gone on the rest of the afternoon (what a blessing that Bonnie Dee didn't
talk
but took after her father!) and everybody was sleepy after dinner anyway, except all of a sudden Uncle Daniel
noticed
her. Noticed Johnnie Ree. (She was on the premises at the funeral, but nothing looked the same then.) I heard his chair scrape. His eyes got real round, and I put my hand on his knee, like I do in church when he begins to sing too fast.

"Why, Bonnie Dee kept something back from me," he says. "Look yonder, Edna Earle. I'm seeing a vision. Why didn't you poke me?"

I says, "Oh, she's got on rags and tags of somebody else's clothes, but she looks like the last of pea-time to me." I still hold that Bonnie Dee was the only pretty one they had.

But it was her clothes that Uncle Daniel was seeing.

"Wait till the trial's over, Uncle Daniel," I whispers, and he subsides. He's forgotten the way he looked at me—he's good as gold again.

So Johnnie Ree, who'd talked on and on, and on and on, says, "So we got back home. The end." Like a movie.

"And you behaved like a lady the whole time?" asks DeYancey.

"Yes sir. As far as I know."

"And Bonnie Dee behaved?" cried DeYancey.

"Oh, Bonnie Dee
sure
behaved. She stayed to home."

"What's that?" says DeYancey, stock still. "Who's this sister you've been telling us about? Who did go on this fool's errand, anyway? We were given to understand by a witness now racing toward us to testify, that it was you and your sister Bonnie Dee that were up in Memphis on the loose."

"Bonnie Dee's not the only sister in the world," says Johnnie Ree. "Stand up, Treva."

And up pops a little bitty one. She held her gum still, and turned all the way around, and stood there, till Johnnie Ree says, "Sit down." She was well drilled. Treva had a pin pulling her front together, and guess what the pin was—a little peacock with a colored tail, all kinds of glass stones. I wouldn't be surprised if that wasn't the substance of what she brought back from Memphis.

DeYancey groans. "Mrs. Bonnie Dee Ponder never went herself at all?"

"She was ready to hear what it's like the way we told it. But me and Treva was the ones went, and Bonnie Dee stayed home with Mama," says Johnnie Ree. "She give us two twenties and a five and a ten, and part of her old-lady clothes. So she could get a whole bed to herself and eat Mama's greens."

"But never went?" DeYancey groaned—
everybody
groaned, but the Peacocks.

"She said she was an old, married lady. And it was too late for her to go."

"Why, Mr. Clanahan," says Judge Waite. "I believe you've been wasting our time."

Johnnie Ree brings up her fingers and gives three little scrapes at DeYancey. When she came down, her whole family was just as proud of her as if she'd been valedictorian of the graduating class. The other side didn't want to ask her a thing. She'll remember that trial for the rest of her days.

But mercy. Uncle Daniel was stirring in his chair.

"DeYancey," he says. "You've got a hold of me. Let-a-go."

"Never mind," says DeYancey. "Never you mind."

"I'm fixing to get up there myself." That's what Uncle Daniel said.

"Take the stand? Uh-uh, Daniel. You know what I told you," says DeYancey. "What I told you and told you!"

"Let-a-go your side, Edna Earle," says Uncle Daniel.

"Dear heart," I says.

"It's way past my turn now," says Uncle Daniel. "Let-a-go."

"Edna Earle, he said he wouldn't—didn't you hear him?" says DeYancey across Uncle Daniel's little bow tie.

"You all didn't tell me I was going to have to do so much listening. It ain't good for my constitution," says Uncle Daniel.

I just drew a deep, big sigh. Sometimes I do that, but not like then, in public.

"What's this new commotion? Is this a demand to testify I'm about to hear? I expected it," says the Judge.

I just looked at him.

"That's what it's mounting up to be, Judge," says DeYancey, and he all but wrings his hands then. "Judge, do you have to let him?"

"If he so demands," says Judge Waite. "I've been sitting on the bench a mighty long time, son, since before you were born. I'm here to listen to any and all. Haven't been surprised so far."

"Daniel," DeYancey turns back and says. "If you stand up there, you got to fire me first."

"I'd hate that," says Uncle Daniel, really sorry. "But I'd rather be up there talking myself than hear you and every one of these other folks put together. Turn-a-loose."

"Daniel, it looks to me like now you got to choose between you and me who knows best," DeYancey says.

"I choose me," says Uncle Daniel.

"Don't you think, Daniel, you need to think that over a minute?" says Judge Waite, leaning down like he's finally ashamed of himself.

"Not a bit in the world," says Uncle Daniel.

"Miss Edna Earle's trying her best to say something to you," says Judge Waite.

"I'm going to beat her if she don't stop. And I'm going to
fire him
," says Uncle Daniel. "DeYancey, you're fired."

"Here and now?" says DeYancey, like his heart would break, and Uncle Daniel says, "Sure as you're born. Look—my foot was about to go to sleep." And up he rises.

"Who's going to ask you the questions up there?" says DeYancey, with one last try.