Delta Wedding (33 page)

A bumblebee with dragging polleny legs went smoth-eringly over the abelia bells, making a snoring sound. The old crape myrtle with its tiny late old bloom right at the top of the tree was already beginning to shed all its bark, its branches glowed silver-brown and amber, brighter than its green. Well, the cypresses in the bayou were touched with flame in their leaves, early to meet fall as they were early to meet spring and with the same wild color. The locust shells clung to the tree trunks, the birds were flying over every day now, and Roy said he heard them calling in the night.

And there was that same wonderful butterfly, yellow with black markings, that she had seen here yesterday. It was spending its whole life on this one abelia.

The elaeagnus had overnight, it seemed, put out shoots as long as a man. "Howard, bring your shears, too! Did this look this way for the wedding? It's a wonder Tempe didn't get after us for that."

The robins fed like chickens in the radius of the hose. A whole tree was suddenly full of warblers—strange small greedy birds from far away, that would be gone tomorrow. The Shellmound blue jays fussed at them furiously. Old Beverley opened his eyes, closed them again. A Dainty Bess that wanted to climb held a cluster of five blooms in the air. "I can't reach," Ellen remarked firmly. She needed to take up some things that would go in the pit for winter, she wanted to flower some bulbs too. When, when? And the spider lilies were taking everything.

Her chrysanthemums looked silver and ragged, their few flowers tarnished and all their lower leaves hanging down black, like scraggly pullets, and Howard would have to tie them up again too. "Howard, remind me to ask Mr. Battle for three or four loads of fertilizer
tomorrow.
" The dead iris foliage curled and floated wraith-like over everything. "Howard, you get the dead leaves away from here and be careful, if I let you put your hands any further in than the violets, do you hear?"—"I ain't goin' pull up anything you don't want me pullin' up,
no'm.
Not
this
time." She looked at the tall grass in her beds, as if it knew she could no longer bend over and reach it. What would happen to everything if she were not here to watch it, she thought, not for the first time when a child was coming. Of all the things she would leave undone, she hated leaving the garden untended—sometimes as much as leaving Bluet, or Battle.

"Now those dahlias can just come up out of there," she said, pausing again. "They have no reason for being in there at all, that I can see..." She wanted to separate the bulbs again too, and spread the Roman hyacinths out a little under the trees—they grew so thick now they could hardly bloom last spring. "Howard, don't you think breath-of-spring leans over too much to look pretty?"

"Yes,
ma'am.
"

"Howard, look at my roses! Oh, what all you'll have to do to them."

"I wish there wasn't no such thing as roses," said Howard. "If I had my way, wouldn't be a rose in de world. Catch your shirt and stick you and prick you and grab you. Got thorns."

"Why, Howard. You hush!" Ellen looked back over her shoulder at him for a minute, indignant. "You don't want any roses in the world?"

"Wish dey was out of de world, Miss Ellen," said Howard persistently.

"Well, just hush, then."

She cut the few flowers, Etoiles and Lady Hillingtons (to her astonishment she was trembling at Howard's absurd, meek statement, as at some impudence), and called the children to run take them in the house. Bluet and Ranny and Howard's little boy had three straws down a doodlebug hole and were all calling the doodlebug, each using a separate and ardent persuasion.

In the house she could hear India and Roxie laughing in a wild duet, Roxie turning the ice cream freezer, and at an upper window Aunt Shannon singing. Poor Lady Clare was calling that she was going to drop her comb and brush out the window if nobody came to make her look pretty and sweet. Shelley had taken Maureen and Laura with her to Greenwood for the groceries—they were out of everything. (Should she keep Laura? Billie McRaven was solid and devoted, but he had
no imagination
—should she take Laura and keep her at Shellmound?) Aunt Mac, driven by Little Uncle, had set off to Fairchilds for the payroll, as she had decided to iron it this morning—too much had happened, said Aunt Mac, and it seemed a little cool. Ellen had no idea where Roy and Little Battle had gone, racing out by themselves, she hoped and prayed they were all right and on the place. But Dabney. If only she could see Dabney, if Dabney would be home soon. Time, that she had wanted to stand still in the garden, waiting for her to catch up, if only it would fly and bring Dabney home. Memphis for three days even
sounded
like Forever.

She might go see what the men wanted for dinner. They were gone, except for poor Pinck, but she would go stand at the empty icebox and see if something would come to her. Battle, after having the bell beat on, had addressed a back yard full of Negroes that morning, all sleepy and holding their heads. "This many of you all are going over to Marmion today, right now—start in on it. Men clear off and clear out, women do sweeping—and so forth. Want you all to climb over the whole thing and see what has to be done—I imagine the roof's not worth a thing. Don't you go falling through, and skittering down the stairs, haven't got the time to fool with any broken necks, Miss Dabney wants Marmion
now.
Take your wagons, shovels, axes, everything—now shoo. Orrin, you go stand over this.—I believe we can do it in three days," he said to Ellen.

"Three days!"

"Sure. I could get it done in one day, if I could spare that many Negroes—all but the fine touches!"

"It
is
hard on you," she had said, watching him sink groaningly into his hammock.

"The weather's liable to change any day now," he agreed, shutting his eyes. "Then the rains."

George had wanted to plunge straight into fishing again, set off for Drowning Lake down the railroad track, and wanted Robbie to go with him—the minute he was out of bed. George—men—expected a resilience in women that exasperated Ellen while she wanted to laugh. Robbie had reached up and rapped him over the head—he stood in his pyjamas in the kitchen casually taking a bacon bone from Roxie's fingers. Robbie made him take her to Greenwood after breakfast, to buy her a little dress and some kind of little hat, saying that then they might fish somewhere, if he had to fish, and it wasn't too late. He would tolerate exactly that treatment, that was what he wanted, and they went off cheerfully together, in Tempe's car.

Pinchy, passing by, looked at Ellen stupidly. When Pinchy was coming through, she had not looked at her at all, but simply turned up her face, dark-purple like a pansy, that no more saw her nor knew her than a pansy. Now, speaking primly, back in her relationship on the place, she was without any mystery to move her. She was all dressed up in her glittering white.

"Pinchy! Where are you going, Pinchy?"

"To
church
, Miss Ellen," said Pinchy, with a soft, lush smile. "
This
is
Sunday
!"

Sunday! What has come over Aunt Mac? Ellen wondered, stricken. She'll never forgive herself, when she gets to the bank. Or us! We have every one lost track of the day of the week.

Laura liked to go along for the groceries, because in the Delta all grocery keepers seemed to be Chinese gentlemen. The car moved rapidly through the white fields toward Greenwood. A buzzard hung up in the deeps of sky, as if on a planted fish pole. Not another living creature was in sight.

"Is it still Shellmound?" she asked, but nobody answered her. Shelley must be thinking. Laura looked with speculation at the pure profile, the flying hair bound at the temples. She had thought Shelley perhaps knew more than anybody in the family, until Dabney's wedding night came, and Shelley was scorned a little, out in the hall—she had heard it.

She and India had gone to bed in an opened-out cot outside their room, because Dickie Boy Featherstone and Red Boyne had been put in their bed. One of the McLeouds had the place downstairs on the settee, and she thought Uncle Pinck might have stayed where last she saw him, in the hammock out under the stars.

Shelley had come down the hall barefooted, with her hair down, in her white nightgown. "Oh, Papa," she had said, standing in the door. "How could you keep getting Mama in this predicament?"

"How's that?" Uncle Battle asked drowsily.

"You'll catch cold, Shelley, come in out of that hall draft," Aunt Ellen said.

"I said how could you keep getting Mama in this predicament—again and again?"

"A predicament?"

"Like you do."

"I told you we were going to have another little girl, or boy. It won't be till Christmas," Aunt Ellen said sleepily in the voice she used to India, and Shelley hearing it said, "I'm not India!"

"Mama, we don't
need
any more." Shelley gave a reason: "We're perfect the way we are. I couldn't love any more of us."

"I've heard that before," said Aunt Ellen. "And what would you do without Bluet now?"

"What do you mean—a predicament?" said Uncle Battle once more.

"I thought that was what people call it," Shelley faltered. "I think in Virginia—"

"Maybe they do. And maybe they're right! But it's damn well none of your concern tonight, girlie," said Uncle Battle. "Waking up the house that's just getting to sleep."

But Shelley hung there as if she had nowhere to go. Robbie and George were sleeping in her room, its door pulled to, and one of Robbie's shoes had been dropped in the hall, as though George had picked her up and carried her in barefooted. This was Dabney's wedding night and the clock was striking. "The gas machine," Shelley tried to say, through the noise. "I'm so
sorry,
Mama—"

"Get in out of the draft, Shelley," said Aunt Ellen. "Even on a still night like tonight there's always a draft in that hall. Come in or go out."

"I'm going," said Shelley.

"Skedaddle," said her father. "Come kiss me."

"Yes, sir."

"You've got a bed."

"I can see you shivering right through your nightgown—standing with your back to the moon," said Aunt Ellen reproachfully, and Shelley folded her arms across herself and ran out on tiptoe.

"I hear people!" called Bluet from the sleeping porch. "I hear fairies and elves and gnomes! I hear pretty little babies fixing to dance!"

"Lie back down, Bluet!" yelled her father from his bed. "Go back to sleep or I'm coming to break your neck!"

"Are they going to dance by the light of the moon?" Bluet softly called a very subdued question.

"Yes, they
are
" Ranny could be heard answering her in an aerial voice.

"I'm going to move to a raft on the river where I can sleep!" shouted Orrin—though it sounded a bit like Little Battle too.

Then there was only the murmur of the night, the gin. There was once the cry of a hound far off, and Laura thought, Roy heard that too, and shivered in his bed. She would tell him that there was no mention of Aunt Studney's sack, and another baby was coming; that would stop him as he flitted by.

When Shelley got the groceries from a nice Chinese man who immediately unlocked the store for her (for it was Sunday) she saw Mr. Rondo forlorn on a corner and invited him to ride back to Fairchilds; something or other had delayed him, they could not follow other people's profuse talk, and he wanted by all means to get to church. He insisted that Maureen was the very one he wanted to sit by, though she did not want him to pat her, it was plain to see. He even drove her to try to steal Laura's doll.

"Give my darling back to me!"

Laura lay back in the whizzing car, her head gently rolling against the soft seat and Shelley's arm, and brought Marmion, her stocking doll, up to her cheek. She held him there, though he was hot—hotter than she was—and smelled his face which became, quite gently, fragrant of a certain day to her; his breath was the wind and rain of her street in Jackson.

It was a day they—her mother, father, and herself—were home from the summer's trip. With the opening of the front door which swung back with an uncustomary shiver, a sudden excitement made Laura run in first, pushing ahead of her father who had turned the key. She ran pounding up the stairs, striking the carpet flowers with the flat of her hands. The house was so close, so airless, that it gave out its own breath as she stirred it to life, the scents of carpet and matting and the oily smell of the clock and the smell of the starch in the curtains. It was morning, just before a rain. Through the window on the landing, the street was in the shadow of a cloud as close as a wing, fanning their tree and rolling sycamore balls over the roof of the porch.

Her mother, delighting in the threat of storm, went about opening the windows and on the landing leaning out on her hand as though she were all alone or nothing distracted her from the world outside. Her father was at the hall clock, standing with his driving cap and his goggles still on, reaching up to wind it. "I always like to know what time it is." She listened for her mother's familiar laugh at these words, and could imagine even without looking around at her how she flickered her eyelids as she smiled, so her father would not appear too bragging of his virtues or herself too unappreciative. The loud ticks and the hours striking to catch up responded to him and rose to the upper floor, accompanying Laura as she ran from room to room, in and out, flinging up shades, passing and looking in the mirrors.

Before the storm broke, before they were barely settled or had more than their faces washed, Laura cried, "Mother, make me a doll—I want a doll!"

What made this different from any other time? Her father for some reason did not ask "Why another?" or remind her of how many dolls she had or of when she last said she was tired of dolls and never wanted to play with one again. And this time was the most inconvenient that she could have chosen. Her mother, though, simply smiled—as if she shared the same excitement. As though Laura had made a perfectly logical request, her mother said, "Would you like a stocking doll?" And she began to turn things out of her basket, a shower of all kinds of colorful things, saved as if for the sheer pleasure of looking through.