Delta Wedding (25 page)

It was Mrs. Fairchild's tenth pregnancy. But oh, why had she waited to faint just at this moment? Why couldn't Battle bring his own wife to? For the same reason the bird had got in the house when she came in, Robbie thought; for the reason Aunt Primrose killed her guinea fowl today for George: the way of the Fairchilds, the way of the world.

Ellen opened her eyes, then closed them again.

"I saw her peep," said Roxie. "Now then. Git to work, Vi'let, Little Uncle!"

"Half an hour," Tempe announced to Ellen, as if that would gratify a lady who had fainted.

"Oh, Mama!" cried Dabney. "Shelley, bring a pillow to prop her up."

"We caught the bird, Mama," said Ranny clearly. "It was a brown thrush. It was the female."

"It could have flown around our house all day and night with a thousand windows and never found the way out," said Little Battle. "I didn't think we was going to catch it, but Orrin caught it with Papa's hat and batted it to the wall."

Ellen opened her eyes. Orrin held out the still bird. "
Veni, vidi, vici!
" he said.

Dabney was leaning over her mother accusingly. "Mama! What happened? I know! You were upset about me."

"I'm all right," said Ellen, lifting one arm and pulling Dabney's hair low over her forehead the way she thought it looked nicer.

"Mama! Oh, Mama!"

Shelley, wordless beside Dabney, knelt on as if in a dream.

"I have the same thing, every now and then," said Aunt Tempe. "I nearly died when Mary Denis married—could scarcely be revived."

"Mama! Do you
want
me to get married?"

"Certainly she doesn't," said Tempe with surprise.

"Oh, she doed too," said Primrose.

"I think about your happiness," said Ellen, in the thoughtful, slow voice of people coming out of faints.

"Oh, then!" Dabney jumped up, whirled, and with a scatter of tissue-paper and ribbons she flung wide her newest present, which somebody had put on the table ("A Point Valenciennes banquet cloth!" exclaimed Tempe. "Who from?") and pulled it to her with it spreading behind her like a peacock tail, and pranced around. Then she spread it out before her with her arms wide and smiled tenderly over it at her mother, as if from a balcony. "Don't you see you don't need to worry?" she asked, showing how wide, how fine, how much in her possession she had everything, all for her mother to see.

Shelley, getting up to look, turned on her heel, to go write in her diary. Then she turned back; belatedly, the dining room's one forlorn figure had printed itself on her mind.

"Don't you want to take a bath, Robbie?" she asked meditatively. "Where'd Little Uncle put your suitcase?"

"It got lost when I turned George's car over in a ditch and wrecked it," Robbie said, rocking gently on her high heels from one to the other.

"What?" cried George across the room, with his finger on Ellen's pulse.

"Right out of Memphis, and the day I left," Robbie said with some satisfaction.

"You haven't a stitch but what's on your back?" cried Tempe. "Fathers alive, what a state to come to a wedding in!"

George looked at Robbie intently, without smiling, across the still prancing Dabney, who marched between them.

Battle let out a generous laugh and ambled over to give Robbie a spank. "I'm going to get you a horse to ride for the next time you run away—no, a safe old mule with a bell around the neck. Hear, George?"

"Do you feel stronger?—How'd you get here?" George patted Ellen's hand. His voice for both women had an intolerant sound that made him seem trapped. Tempe made her way toward him and with a smile of mischief popped a pastry into his mouth.

"Do you know that she walked from Fairchilds?" said Ellen, turning her face toward the room. "And nobody's even offered her a bath till Shelley just now, or a place to lie down? Robbie, you lie down
here.
"

George glared across the room. "What? You fought the mosquitoes clear from Fairchilds? I ought to whip you all the way home."

"By yourself? You could easily have met a mad dog," said Aunt Jim Allen, who had been able to hear all this.

"Don't chide her, Georgie," said Aunt Primrose. "She won't do it again, will you, Robbie?"

Robbie was basking a little, and fanned her face with the back of her hand.

"Well!" said Troy. "Now then. I've got to get back to East Field before dark." He picked up Aunt Tempe's cornucopia which went to bits under his thumb. "Oh-oh. Something you made me, Dabney?"

Dabney was still prancing—she seemed to see nobody in the room, and was smiling with her lower lip caught under her pretty teeth. "Dabney can't cook!" Tempe and several more cried together.

"She evermore can't," said Troy.

"I'm awfully sorry
I
can," said Aunt Tempe severely.

"'Fare thee well,'" sang Bluet, patting her mother with soft raps like drum beats, her eyes gazing blissfully at Dabney in the glittering train. "Fare thee well, fare thee well, my fairy fay ...'"

"The right place for a tablecloth is on a table, though," said somebody—Troy. He gazed at Dabney, side-stepped her path, and left the room.

"Want to get out?" asked Roy, just outside the dining-room arch. He and Laura both stood there, chins ducked. "Come on, Laura." He had seen a lady's hand reach out and pull his father in.

"All right." She loved Roy—his scars, bites, scabs and bandages, and intricate vaccination—his light eyes and his sunburn, little berry-colored nipples. The minute he was out of the dining room he was with a visible flash naked to the waist, flat and neat as a hinge in his short pants with the heavy leather belt that was too big around for him, so that he seemed to walk stepping in a tub. Roy was eight. He still shivered to hear the hounds in the night. He was giving her an intent, sizing-up look.

"You'll have to tote my turtle," he said. "The whole time, and keep him right side up and not set him down anywhere, if you come with me."

"Oh, I will," Laura promised, shuddering.

"You'll have to wait till I find him, so you can carry him."

India skipped out, her heavy straight hair swinging behind like a rope; she carried a stack of crackers in her mouth and skipped from side to side, going off to eat by herself.

"Do you want to come, India?" asked Roy, running up with his turtle.

"No," said India, who could talk plainly with anything in her mouth. "Do you want Maureen to come?"

"O—nay, I—day on't-day."

"Let's all the girls go sit in the chinaberry tree and see who is the one can make their crackers last the longest," said Lady Clare, coming out; she seemed tired—company always was.

"You have to chunk at Maureen, or she'll come." India picked up a stone and threw it.

"Don't hit her," said Laura.

"You
can't
hit her," said India scornfully.

"India, let us take Bluet!" said Roy crazily.

"Take me," said Bluet, clasping Roy around the knees and kissing them fervently.

"Not this time, Roy. I need her here." They all skipped off except Maureen, who did not go away but did not come either, this time. She only threatened, taking stamping steps forward with one foot.

***

They ran down to the bayou, the turtle in Laura's hands bouncing against her diaphragm. Roy went between two close Spanish daggers and she went after him. The bayou had a warm breath, like a person.

"Is that your boat?" cried Laura.

"It's as much mine as anybody's. I'll take you for a row if you get in," said Roy, stepping in himself.

The boat was in a willow shadow, floating parallel to the bank—dark, unpainted, the color of the water. She would have to step deep. A fishing bucket was in it, and also one oar where a dark line of water went like a snake along the bottom.

"Here's the other oar," she said; it was resting on a dogwood tree. She stepped down in, and he instructed her to sit at the other end of the boat and be quiet. "I know how," said Laura. On her lap the turtle looked out. Roy pushed off, his old tennis shoes splashed water which ran under her sandals, and he sat down and looked nowhere, frowning in the sun. The boat was cut loose but almost still, for as a current urges a boat on, the lack of current seems to pull it back, not let go. Laura could not see beyond a willow branch that hung in her face. Then with a gruff noise the oars went into the water, with the unwilling-looking, casual movement of Roy's arm. The water was quieter than the land anywhere.

"Let me row," said Laura.

"Be quiet," said Roy. He took his tennis shoes slowly off and put them on the little seat between them. He hooked his toes. At the stroke of his oars a shudder would interrupt the smoothness of their motion.

The bayou was narrow and low and soon the water's edge was full of cypress trees. They went in heavy shade. There were now and then muscadines hanging in the air like little juicy balls strung over the trees beside the water, and they rode staring up, Roy with his mouth open, hoping that grapes might fall. Then leaves cut out like stars and the early red color of pomegranates lay all over the water, and imperceptibly they came out into the river. The water looked like the floor of the woods that could be walked on.

"Are we going down the river?" asked Laura.

"Sure. And the Yazoo River runs into the Mississippi River."

"And it runs into the sea," said Laura, but he would say no more.

As they went down the Yazoo, a long flight of ducks went over, going the way they were going, the V very high in the sky, very long and thin like a ribbon drawn by a finger through the air, but neither child said anything, and after a long time the ducks were a little wrinkle deep down in the sky and then out of sight.

On the other side of the river from where they had come, facing them, Laura saw what they were getting to, a wonderful house in the woods. It was twice as big as Shellmound. It was all quiet, and unlived in, surely; the dark water was going in front of it, not a road.

"Look," she said.

Roy glanced over his shoulder and nodded.

"Let's go in!"

There was a dark waterlogged landing, and Roy got the boat to it neatly and ran the chain around a post. He jumped out of the boat and Laura climbed out after him. "Bring my turtle, remember," he said. She brought it, like a hot covered dish. They were in a wood level with the water, dark cedar trees planted in some pattern, some of them white with clematis. It looked like moonlight.

"Why, here's Aunt Studney, way over here!" cried Roy. "Hi, Aunt Studney!"

Laura remembered Aunt Studney, coal-black, old as the hills, with her foot always in the road; on her back she carried a big sack that nearly weighted her down. There at a little distance, near the house, she was walking along, laboring and saying something.

"Ain't studyin' you."

"That's what she says to everybody—even Papa," said Roy. "Nobody knows what she's got in the sack."

"Nobody in the world?"

"I said nobody."

"Where does she live?" asked Laura a little fearfully.

"Oh, back on our place somewhere. Back of the Deadening. You'll see her walking the railroad track anywhere between Greenwood and Clarksdale, Aunt Studney and her sack."

"Are you scared of Aunt Studney?" asked Laura.

"No. Yes, I am."

"I despise Aunt Studney, don't you?"

"Papa's scared of her too. Me, I think that's where Mama gets all her babies."

"Aunt Studney's sack?"

"Sure."

"Do you think
Ranny
came out of that sack?"

"Sure....I don't know if
I
came out of it, though." Roy gave her a hard glance, and looked as if he might put his fist to her nose.

"I wonder if she'd let
me
look in—Aunt Studney," said Laura demurely.

"Of course not! If she won't let any of
us
look in, even Papa, you know she won't let
you
walk up and look in."

"Do you dare me to ask her?"

"All right, I dare you."

"Double-dog-dare me."

"I just dare you."

"Aunt Studney, let me look in your sack!" screamed Laura, taking one step in front of Roy and waiting with open mouth.

"Ain't studyin' you," said Aunt Studney instantly.

She stamped on, like an old wasp over the rough, waggling her burden.

"Look! She's going in Dabney's house!" cried Roy.

"Is this Dabney's house?" cried Laura.

"Cousin Laura, you don't know anything."

"All right: maybe she's gone in to open her sack."

"If she does, we'll run off with what's in it!"

"Oh, Roy. That would be perfect."

"Be quiet," said Roy. "How do you know?"

"All right: you go in front."

They went up an old drive, made of cinders, shaded by cedar and crape-myrtle trees which the clematis and the honeysuckle had taken. There were iron posts with open mouths in their heads, where a chain fence used to run. Taking the posts was a hedge that went up from the landing, higher than anybody's head, with tiny leaves nobody could count—boxwood; it was bitter-green to smell, the strong fearless fragrance of things nobody has been to see.

When they came to the house, there was a dead mockingbird on the steps. They jumped over it, Laura not looking back—dead birds lay on their sides, like people. Roy reached down and touched the bird to see how dead it was; he said it was hot. The porch was covered with leaves, like the river, and there were loose, joggling boards in it. The door was open.

Roy and Laura, Laura with the turtle against her, held in the crook of her arm now like a book, went in a vast room, the inside of a tower. Their heads fell back. Up there the roof, if there was one, seemed to fade into the light. Before them rose two stairs, wooden spirals that went up barely touching at wavery rims, little galleries on two levels, and winding into the depths of light—for Laura had a moment of dizziness and felt as if she looked into a well.

There was an accusing, panting breathing, and the thud of a big weight planted in the floor. "Look," said Laura. Aunt Studney, whom she had forgotten about, was in the middle of the room, which was quite empty of the furnishings of a house, standing over her sack and muttering.