Delta Wedding (29 page)

Yes, there was a light in the office. And Troy was keeping them all waiting! To show him what she thought of him, and rather shocking herself, she walked in with the briefest of knocks.

The green-shaded light fell over the desk. It shone on that bright-red head. Troy was sitting there—bathed and dressed in a stiff white suit, but having trouble with some of the hands. Shelley walked into the point of a knife.

Root M'Hook, a field Negro, held the knife drawn; it was not actually a knife, it was an ice pick. Juju and another Negro stood behind, with slashed cheeks, and open-mouthed; still another, talking to himself, stood his turn apart.

Shelley ran to Troy, first behind him and then to his side. Wordlessly, he pushed her behind him again. She saw he had the gun out of the drawer.

"You start to throw at me, I'll shoot you," Troy said.

Root vibrated his arm, aiming, Troy shot the finger of his hand, and Root fell back, crying out and waving at him.

"Get the nigger out of here. I don't want to lay eyes on him."

"Pinchy cause
trouble
comin' through," said Juju to the other boy as they lifted Root and pulled him through the doorway.

"All right, who're you now?" Troy said, before he spoke to Shelley.

"I's Big Baby, de one dey all calls."

"All right, stop making that commotion and tell me what's got hold of you. Alligator bite your tail?"

"Mr. Troy,
I
got my seat full of buck-shot," said the Negro, in confessional tones.

Troy groaned with him, but laughed between his drawn lips.

"Find me that ice pick. Pull down your clothes, Big Baby, and get over my knee. Shelley, did you come in to watch me?"

"I can't get past—there's blood on the door," said Shelley, her voice like ice.

"Then you'll have to jump over it, my darlin'," said Troy, sing-song.

Shelley halfway smiled, with the sensation that she had only seen a man drunk. The next moment she felt a sharp, panicky triumph. As though the sky had opened and shown her, she could see the reason why Dabney's wedding should be prevented. Nobody could marry a man with blood on his door.... But even as she saw the reason, Shelley knew it would not avail. She would jump as Troy told her, and never tell anybody, for what was going to happen was going to happen.

"Mr. Rondo's waiting," she said. "We're all ready, when you are. You have to practice coming into the parlor."

"I'll be there in due time, Shelley," said Troy evenly. He held the ice pick in a hand bright with red hairs, and red hairs sprang even from his ears.

Shelley jumped over the doorsill.

Running back along the bayou, faster than she had come, Shelley could only think in her anger of the convincing performance Troy had given as an overseer born and bred. Suppose a real Deltan, a planter, were no more real than that. Suppose a real Deltan only imitated another Deltan. Suppose the behavior of all
men
were actually no more than this—imitation of other men. But it had previously occurred to her that Troy was trying to imitate her father. (Suppose her
father
imitated ... oh, not he!) Then all men could not know any too well what they were doing. Everybody always said George was a second Denis.

She felt again, but differently, that men were no better than little children. She ran across the grass toward the house. Women, she was glad to think, did know a
little
better—though everything they knew they would have to keep to themselves ... oh, forever!

After, at last, the rehearsal, and the supper, and the Winona dance, Shelley, in a cool nightgown, opened her diary.

What could she put down?..."First, the wrong person has eaten Partheny's cake," she wrote, "like in Shakespeare..."

There was a whirr and a clawing at the window screen back of the light. A big beetle, a horned one, was trying to get in. All at once Shelley was sickeningly afraid of life, life itself, afraid
for
life.... She turned out the light, fell on her bed, and the beating and scratching ceased.

Next morning Pinchy was setting the table and Aunt Mac was at the china closet loudly counting the glasses of each kind. Horace was hosing down the Summers's car and in a mystifiyingly high falsetto he was singing "Why?" Howard, with Maureen running about the foot of his ladder, was with almost imperceptible motions hanging paper lanterns in the trees, gradually moving across the yard like the movement of shade under the climbing sun. In the soft early air—Ellen stood at her window, with Battle asleep—in which there was a touch, today perhaps the first touch, of fall, the sounds of the busy fields came traveling up to the yard, the beat and sashay of a horse's feet. Though by another hour the fields would seem to jump in the sight with heat, now there was over them—and would be later when evening would come—the distance and clarity of fall, out of which came a breath of cool. Ellen took it, the breath, and turned to wake Battle.

"When does Primrose Fairchild think she can make that ton of chicken salad, if she doesn't come on?" cried Tempe aloud in the kitchen as the clock was striking the dot of something. Some of the roast turkeys and the ham were lined up in the middle of the kitchen table, and the oven gave off waves of fire and fragrance. Roxie was cooking breakfast over a crowded little unused stove in another part of the kitchen, followed by Ranny begging sticks of bacon, and stamping her foot at some kittens that ran about over there. "I bet Jim Allen is trying to make mints. That can keep you running crazy all day, and with a wedding waiting on you. Roxie, where are the Memphis mints?"

"Great big pasteboard box yonder in de pantry, Miss Tempe," called Roxie. "Have to untie you de ribbon to git you a taste. But you ought to see dem Memphis ice slippers! Green!"

Tempe went from the pantry to the back-porch icebox. "And hard as rocks—I know," she said. "And slippery—! People'll lose them off their plates and they'll slide across the floor from here to yonder, oh me. It's an old story, Roxie, weddings to me." She slammed the icebox door, after taking out a little piece of celery.

"Yes, ma'am, sure is. Old story."

"Who's going to make the beaten biscuit, Roxie? I have to have the kitchen to myself when the cornucopias are made! I'll kill anybody making beaten biscuit around me."

"Miss Tempe, you sure will. Miss Ellen say she make one or two ovens of biscuit while you all be taking your napses."

"Good idea.
Everything
would be done more satisfactorily if you could do it with most people asleep. I don't think that's even remotely near the number of pickled peaches it will take for going around the hams and turkeys!" She started counting on her fingers. Ranny offered her a bite of bacon and she bent and took it.

The Memphis flowers had come down just right, on the Yellow Dog that morning, and Miss Thelma had sent them up on horseback, the boxes tied over Sammie McNair's saddle, with Sammie holding Miss Thelma's umbrella over them.

"Oh, mercy—the bride's bouquet! We ought to look at it," Tempe said darkly, as Sammie got off to have breakfast with them.

"Why?" asked India, appearing in her nightgown.

"Just to be sure."

India in a moment had the bouquet out, and held it up at arm's length over her head. "Are you sure, Aunt Tempe?"

"We'll have to doctor it a little, just as I thought," Aunt Tempe said, "take out those common snapdragons. Vi'let! You can take Miss Dabney's bouquet and all these flower boxes to the spring-house, Vi'let, but keep their paper around them so not even your breath touches them."

"Ain't they pretty?" Vi'let cried. "Oh. Oh!"

"There's a ladybug on Dabney's," said Bluet, gazing up. She had come out in her nightgown too.

"I bid it!" India went off with the ladybug on the back of her hand, Bluet following hopefully, asking the ladybug if the trip from Memphis wasn't simply
smothering.

***

In a little while here came bumping a wagon. 'It's the cake!" said Tempe clairvoyantly. It was the cake, in the tallest box yet from Memphis.

"Now the cake will have to be lifted out by everybody, on the cutting board—there's no two ways about that, if you don't want a ruined toppling thing," said Aunt Mac with spirit.

"One strong, sure-footed man might be the best," said Tempe, "
I
would think."

"Go to grass," said Aunt Mac. Vi'let ran for the old cutting board in the attic, big as the head of a bed, and she, Howard, and Little Uncle began to get the cake on it and so down from the wagon. Old Man Treat, a passer-by who had driven the cake up specially for Miss Thelma at the post office, was not allowed to put in a word or move.

"Mercy! Open it first!" cried Tempe. "So it won't rub off on the box! So we can see it!" They opened the box and stripped it back, like the petals of a flower. Mr. Treat looked over his shoulder. There it was, the tall white thing, shining before God in the light of day. It was a real fantasy! Only God knew if it was digestible.

Ellen already held the door, and some of the girls in their nightgowns and kimonos came out watching.

"It's leaning! It's leaning!" cried India, laughing and joining her hands.

"It looks like the Leaning Tower of Pisa," said Shelley critically.

"Well, it cost your father thirty-five dollars," Ellen told her. "It's no wonder it looks like something or other—do you think, Mr. Treat?" she threw in, for she remembered he was a distant cousin of the Reids.

"Talk about spun sugar!" said Tempe. She gave a little smack. In her arms, forgotten, were the early-cut flowers from the yard. "I think they did real well, considering it was all done by telephone. Now did they forget the ring and thimble and all inside?"

"That's something we won't know till the cake's cut and eaten," said Ellen. "That's too late to tell Memphis about."

"I'm going to cut the ring!" sang India.

"Who're you going to marry, child?" asked Aunt Tempe.

"Dickie Boy Featherstone! No, Red Boyne."

"Red hair!" cried Aunt Tempe exasperated. "What has happened to this clan? Don't you dare do it, India."

"All my children will be ugly like Lady Clare."

"And she upstairs with the chicken pox, shame," said Ellen. "Stand here by me, India."

"There will be no holding Lady Clare when they're all in their dresses, I'm afraid," said Aunt Tempe, flinching now as she watched the cake actually being lifted down. "I'm not saying she won't fight her way to the wedding after all—you watch that cake, Howard! Do you know what'll happen to you if you drop that?"

"Yes, ma'am.
Dis
cake not goin' drop—no'm."

"That's what you
say.
You have to
carry
it straight up, too."

"Little Uncle, you kind of go
under
—like that. Spread your arms out like a bird—now. That's grand, Little Uncle."

"I'm a wreck," said Shelley. "I'm glad Dabney's not here watching. Oh, Croesus, I wish old Troy Flavin would just
quit wanting
to marry Dabney!"

"Don't frown like that, you'll hurt your looks, Shelley. A fine time now, for Troy Flavin to do a thing like that," said Aunt Tempe. "You all set the cake where it's going to
go,
on the middle of the dining-room table. We'll just have to eat like scaries all day and not do any shaking or stamping."

"Can you all tell the middle of the table?" asked Ellen anxiously as the cake went in the door. "You run in, India, and show them with your finger, right in the center of that lace rose that's the middle of Mashula's cloth. This was certainly nice of you, Mr. Treat. Run lightly, India, don't shake the house, from now on."

George, coming downstairs, held still with his eye on the cake—it was crossing the hall. Howard, Vi'let, and Little Uncle with the cake coming in were meeting Bitsy and some of the field Negroes, Juju and Zell, carrying a long side-table out.

"No collisions, I tell you!" cried Tempe, at the heels of the cake party.

"You've got to find a level place in the yard to set that down now, Bitsy," said Ellen, in the voice of one who is not sure there are any level places in the Delta.

"Yes, ma'am! Dis table goin' to go down in a
level
place."

"Where's Robbie, Georgie?"

"She's still asleep," said George, running down and kissing them. "All of you look beside yourselves!"

"I think Robbie's going to sleep the day away! Like Dabney."

"That's
all right
, she was good and tired," said Ellen.

"Well! It looks like she could show some interest. After all, there's a wedding in the house!" Tempe said. George grinned and snapping off a Michaelmas daisy from her armful handed it to her.

"Where's my pipe, girls?" he said.

Bluet went in and woke up Dabney, carrying her coffee, with her sisters watching in the door. "Wake up, Dabney, it's your wedding day," she said carefully.

"Oh!" Dabney sat bolt upright. She seized the cup and drank off the coffee. Then she fell back, pulling Bluet up in the bed with her. She pressed the little girl to her.

"Precious! Precious!"

They all laughed and came in, and saw that she got up. They brought her down to the table and made her eat her breakfast. They all sat down around her wedding cake.

"It didn't break?" smiled Dabney, giving it a bright glance as she ate a plum. She and Shelley looked at each other, their kimono sleeves, pink and blue, fluttering together in the morning wind.

"Oh!" exclaimed Tempe, rising from her breakfast and running to the window. "Lady Clare's out there talking to a mad dog!" She turned to George—and time was when he would have dashed out of the house to hear that, but not now. He smiled absently and ate a bite of his mackerel. Pattering out the door, Tempe sighed. She ran through the sun as she would run through a pounding rain, and took hold of Lady Clare, who was in her nightgown and all spots.

"Don't you know strange dogs may be mad dogs?" she said, running in with her. "Probably
are
mad dogs. I fully expected something to happen to you, Lady Clare. A time like this and a house like this—!"

The strange dog—mad or not, Lady Clare would never know—looked after their retreat and trotted off to the bayou bank.