Losing Battles

by Eudora Welty

  Miss Beulah forked two crusty wings from her platter down before her. “You-all can start at the beginning and I reckon by trying you may be able to catch up,” she said. “Yonder’s my grandmother at the head of this table, she’s ninety years old today. Try not to have her object to you. She’s getting all the excitement she needs the way it is, and still got a while to wait to blow out her candles.”

  Granny’s eyes hadn’t left her plate, but Uncle Nathan, behind her, slowly raised his arm to hail the newcomers.

  “Who’s that familiar-looking old man doing the talking?” asked Mrs. Moody, and just then Brother Bethune waved his hand at her.

  “And so here we all are, with very few skips and some surprises.” Brother Bethune was keeping right on, in the argumentative voice of one who habitually brings comfort to others. His words ran on over Granny’s bobbing head and down her table, over the rest of the tables and the sitters on the ground, went scaling up into the leaves, lighting on the chimney with a mockingbird, skimming down to the lemonade. Every now and then his eyes went to the cake of ice, as they might have gone to a clock-face. “They have journeyed over long distances and perilous ways to get here. Won’t it be sorrowful if they don’t all get home tonight! Let us hope they do—without losing their way or swallowing too many clouds of dust or having their horses scared out from under ’em or their buggies upsetting and falling in the river.” He spread his arms. “Or meeting with the Devil in Banner Road.”

  “How long will this go on?” Mrs. Moody turned and whispered over her shoulder to Judge Moody behind her.

  The school chair he sat in was crowded up against the althea bush. Mr. Renfro had hitched a keg up close to his other side, and sat just behind Judge Moody’s elbow, eating off his lap. A little black and white dog came trotting up, lay at the Judge’s feet, and began licking his shoe.

  “Just eat like everybody else, Maud Eva. It can’t be helped,” he said, and set his teeth into a big chicken back.

  “You let the children beat you to the finish, Brother Bethune—here’s the birthday cake coming!” Miss Beulah cried. She caught Brother Bethune by his suspenders, turned him around, and pointed for him.

  Coming out of the passage and around the cactus to cross the porch, and down the steps and over the yard, winding in and out among the sitters on the ground, Miss Beulah’s and Mr. Renfro’s three girls were joined in parade. Their dresses had been starched so stiff that they kept time now with their marching legs, like a set of little snare-drums. Elvie at the rear looked almost too small to keep up. Etoyle had splashed her face clean, and along with her shoes she had added her school-band coat, emerald green. Epaulettes the size of sunflowers crowded onto her shoulders and poked her dress out in front. The cake was carried by Ella Fay at the head of them, with twelve candles alight, their flames laid back like ears. In a hush that was almost secrecy, it was set on the table in front of Granny’s eyes. For a moment nothing broke the silence except a bird shuffling about in the althea bush like somebody looking through a bureau drawer where something had been put away.

  Then Granny rose to her feet, her own crackling petticoats giving way to quiet the way kindling does when the fire catches. She stood only by her own head taller than her cake with its candles and its now erect, fierce flames. With one full blow from her blue lips, breath riding out on a seashell of pink and blue flame, Granny blew the candles out.

  “She’ll get her wish!” cried a chorus of voices.

  “Yes sir, Mis’ Vaughn is right remarkable,” said Brother Bethune, looking at her from the drawn-back face of caution.

  Granny accepted the knife Miss Beulah offered, she placed the blade and sank it in. The cake cut like cream.

  “I made it in the biggest pan I had,” said Granny. “If it don’t go round, I’ll have to stir up another one.”

  While the birthday cake and its companion cakes went on their rounds, all sank back in a murmuring soft as a nest. Then suddenly Jack’s dogs tore loose from their holdings and streaked through the reunion, turning over one or two sitters on the ground, their voices pealing. Shouts and cheers rose up on the edge of the crowd, then spread, and the dogs poured up the front steps and clamored on the porch.

  Jack, Gloria, and the baby burst shining out of the passage.

  “They set down without us,” gasped Jack.

  “I see the Moodys, first thing,” Gloria said. “Their faces stick out of the crowd at me like four-leafs in a clover patch. Now see what kind of welcome you get.”

  Jack, washed and curried and with his shirt buttoned together, though it was tucked into the same ragged pants, went leaping into the reunion. Miss Beulah, with her arms open, clapped him against her.

  “Son, what will you bring home to your mother next?” she cried, hugging him tight.

  “Bring yourself forward, Jack! Fight your way in, and take your place at the table! Here comes the bashful boy!” roared Uncle Noah Webster, as they made a path for him to Granny. Behind him walked Gloria, gleaming and carrying Lady May, who was wide-awake with both clean little feet stuck out.

  Jack bent to kiss the old lady, her mouth busy with coconut. She gave him a nod. She put out her hand and found Lady May’s little washed foot and clasped it, as if to learn who else had come. Then she let them by.

  “Uncle Nathan!” Jack cried. “When I see your face, I know Jack Frost is coming not far behind! I want you to know that’s a good strong sign you planted on Banner Top.”

  “What did that one say?” asked Uncle Nathan in a modest voice, but just then Lady May’s little feet, like two pistols, were stuck right in his chest, and he drew back.

  Other arms reached for Jack, more hands pulled him along, and he made his way down Granny’s table kissing and being kissed by the aunts, being pounded on by the uncles, with Gloria coming along behind him with a crowing Lady May.

  “Jack, you got here in time for it,” Aunt Beck told him.

  “Though I don’t exactly approve of Moody being here for everything,” said Aunt Birdie.

  “Never mind, Jack, we know you just can’t help it,” said Aunt Beck. “I’m not blaming you. I’m just glad to see you still alive. And ready for what’s coming.”

  “We are all pleased and proud to welcome the oldest son of the house back into our midst—Jack Renfro!” Brother Bethune was calling out in competition. “He has been away and dwelling among strangers for the best part of two years! Though Jack has been away from our beck and call, we are sure without needing to be told that he’s back here today the same as he ever was, and will be just as good a boy after getting home as he was before he went. Jack is just a good Renfro boy of the Banner community that we have all knowed since birth. Ain’t that right, precious friends?”

  Some shouts of approval could be heard through the noise, and Brother Bethune continued in rising shouts of his own. “Jack was getting to be one of the best-known farmers of this end of the ridge! He raised all his folks’ cotton and corn, sorghum, hay and peas, peanuts, potatoes, and watermelons! And all needing him as bad as I ever saw crop needing man! He’d grind him his cane at the right time and sell his syrup to the public!” As Jack made his way down the table, Brother Bethune’s tongue got faster and faster. “Cuts him and sells him his wood in winter, and all of it goes to Curly Stovall—the Renfros don’t even get the sawdust! Ha! Ha! Ha! Slops him a pig or two! Concerned in raising him a herd of milkers! And his daddy’s still got two left for him to start over with! Best of all, he helps his father and mother by living with ’em! And now! Now that he’s come through all his trials and troubles unscathed and is about to take up where he left off and get everybody back to as good as before—all right, then! Today, the one that gets the baby-kiss for coming the farthest is—Jack Renfro! How do you like that for a change, Brother Nathan? All right, Jack!” shouted Brother Bethune, though he could scarcely have been heard by now over the other shouts, the teasing, and the dog-barking. “You wasn’t a lick too soon!”

  A baby, like
something coming on wings, was shoved into Jack’s face. It was still Lady May, in Aunt Nanny’s hands.

  “Haul yourself off the sugar barrel, Noah Webster—that’s Jack’s,” said Miss Beulah, and he had to bring up a stepladder for himself and wedge it in on the other side of Aunt Cleo, almost in Miss Lexie Renfro’s lap. Miss Beulah pushed Jack onto the barrel there at the foot of the table, where he and Granny could face each other, and cried, “Now, start catching up!” as she turned a dozen pieces of chicken onto a platter in front of him. “All right, Gloria,” she said. “Now you. I saved you the baby-rocker.”

  Gloria lowered herself and slid in. The rocker, there below Jack’s barrel, was slick as a butter paddle and so low to the ground that her chin was barely on a level with the edge of her plate. The baby sat on her lap; only her little cockscomb could have been visible to those up and down the table.

  “Did Brother Bethune forgive Jack? Or not?” Aunt Birdie was asking the other aunts.

  “If forgiving Jack was what he was doing, I’d hate to think that’s his best effort,” said Aunt Beck.

  “Judge Moody and Mrs. Moody! I hope your appetite is proving equal to the occasion,” Jack was saying, while the pickled peaches and the pear relish, the five kinds of bread, the sausages and ham—fried and boiled—and the four or five kinds of salad, and the fresh crocks of milk and butter that had been pulled up out of the well, were all being set within his reach. And then Aunt Beck’s chicken pie was set down spouting and boiling hot right under his nose. “Mama’ll take it pretty hard if you go away leaving a scrap on your plate,” he told the Moodys.

  Brother Bethune had come down to the World War. “All the Beecham boys but the youngest and the oldest went over with me to the trenches and ever’ last one of ’em but the youngest got back like me with their hides on. I don’t know how they did it, exactly, but I do know it’s a good deal more like the Beechams than it is like the Bethunes. A few scratches here and a few medals there to be put away and buried with ’em, but they come back the same old Beecham boys they always was, and just the good old Beecham boys we still know ’em to be. Like they’d never been gone.”

  “If we go German-hunting again, I say don’t let’s us leave even a nit over there this time!” shouted Uncle Noah Webster. Laughter spilled out of his mouth like the cake crumbs.

  “They say the next time, them Germans is coming over here after us,” whispered Uncle Percy.

  “Let ’em come try!” shouted Uncle Dolphus.

  “Will we arm ourselves as did the knights of old? Or will we turn and run, like that jack rabbit I see yonder?” asked Brother Bethune, arm shooting out to point, as every head turned to follow. Then came the laugh.

  “Brother Bethune, I declare, you might get somewhere yet,” Uncle Dolphus declared, and Uncle Curtis said, “You’re not Grandpa Vaughn, but at least you know better now than try to be.”

  Brother Bethune cleared his throat and looked all about him. “The old homestead here looks very natural,” he said, wearing the face of good news. He wheeled back to them so fast that he might have been expecting to find somebody already gone.

  “Crops not what they used to be,” said Uncle Curtis, as though Brother Bethune needed prompting.

  He went on in soothing tones. “I don’t reckon good old Mississippi’s ever been any poorer than she is right now, ’cept when we lost. And in all our glorious state I can’t think of any county likelier to take the cake for being the poorest and generally the hardest-suffering than dear old Boone.” Sighs of leisure and praise rose to encourage him, and Brother Bethune paused to suck up some lemonade. Then his smile broke. “Looks like some not too far from the sound of my voice is going to have to go on relief for the first time. Ha! Ha!”

  “Not Ralph Renfro,” Mr. Renfro promised him shortly. He was at the lemonade tub too. He filled his cup and sat down again beside Judge Moody, so as to take pleasure in him.

  “I believe we might even do a little material complaining around Banner, if we try right hard,” said Brother Bethune, managing to dip up a little more for himself by tilting the tub against his knee. “Floods all spring and drought all summer. We stand some chance of getting about as close to starvation this winter as we come yet. The least crop around here it would be possible for any man to make, I believe Mr. Ralph Renfro is going to make it this year.”

  “Good old Brother Bethune,” somebody was murmuring out in the crowd, “he’s warming up now.”

  “No corn in our cribs, no meal in our barrel, no feed and no shoes and no clothing—tra la la la!” he sang to the littlest one he could see, a baby tied in the wheelbarrow. “No credit except for the kind of rates nobody is inclined to pay. Pigs is eating on the watermelons. All you people without any watermelons come on over to my house. Too cheap to haul from the field this year! And yet! It’d be a mighty hard stunt to starve a bunch like us.” He spread his teasing smile over them all. “I reckon we’ll all, or nearly all, hold out for one more round.” As they cheered him on he called over them, “We got hay made and in the barn, we’ll soon have some fresh meat, the good ladies has stocked the closet shelf with what garden we saved by hauling water. We got milk and butter and eggs, and maybe even after today’s slaughter there’ll be a few chickens left. And if we must needs accept them old commodities again from Uncle Sam, come about Christmas time, here’s hoping he will have the preferences of Boone County better in mind than he did last year and leave out his wormy apples, ha ha! I expect he’s found out by now we can be a little more particular here than the next fella!”

  “Tell us some more!” the men cried, their voices aching with laughter the same as his, while Miss Beulah behind Jack’s shoulder cried, “Ready for your next plateful? Here’s the sausage I saved you from last year’s hog! Here’s some more home-cured ham, make room for more chicken. Elvie! Buttermilk! This time bring him the whole pitcher!”

  “I would like to draw you a picture of Banner today,” said Brother Bethune, gazing upwards, with his lips smacking over the name just as they smacked over “Bethune.” But when he finished—“In Stovall’s cornfield, only this morning, I saw a snake so long it was laying over seven and a half hills of corn. I didn’t get him, either, precious friends! There was the other one coming, and I stood there torn between ’em, let the pair of ’em get away. There’s a lesson in that!”—Aunt Cleo said, “He almost makes me glad I don’t live here.”

  “That’s because you’ve listened to the wrong preacher,” said Aunt Beck.

  “Now I didn’t recognize Banner,” claimed Aunt Birdie, pointing her finger at Brother Bethune. “And I was a Lovat and grew up right there, with the river right under my door. If that was Banner, I certainly wasn’t hearing any compliments for it.”

  “I don’t think that’s high enough praise you’ve given the neighborhood, Brother Bethune,” said Aunt Beck. “I miss something in your words. Can’t you make that church rivalry sound a little stronger?”

  Brother Bethune only looked down at them all from Grandpa’s old place. “Banner is better known today for what ain’t there than what is,” he said. “I can truthfully say it hasn’t growed one inch since I been preaching.”

  “It’s been growing, but like the cow’s tail, down instead of up!” cried Uncle Noah Webster. “Cleo, the old place here was plum stocked with squirrel when we was boys. It was overrun with quail. And if you never saw the deer running in here, I saw ’em. It was filled—it was filled!—with every kind of good thing, this old dwelling, when me and the rest of us Beecham boys grew up here under Granny and Grandpa Vaughn’s strict raising. It’s got everlasting springs, a well with water as sweet as you could find in this world, and a pond and a creek both. But you’re seeing it today in dry summer.”

  “It’s parched,” said Uncle Dolphus. “Just like mine. So dry the snakes is coming up in my yard to drink with the chickens.”

  “And it’s a shame and a crime about them web worms, too,” said Aunt Nanny, looking to the other end of
the yard where the majestic pecan tree rose, full of years. The caterpillar nets that infested it gave it the surface of some big old clouded mirror.

  “It’s loaded, though,” said Mr. Renfro. “If you doubt that, Nanny, all you got to do is make a climb up there and count what’s coming.”

  “I’ve about decided that nothing’s going to kill some bearers,” said Aunt Birdie. “Regardless of treatment.”

  “And won’t you be glad when those little hard nuts start raining down,” said Aunt Beck. “They’re the sweetest, juiciest kind. The hardest to crack always is.”

  “None of you have much, do you?” said Aunt Cleo.

  “Farming is what we do. What we was raised for,” said Uncle Curtis in a formal manner, from there at Granny’s right.

  “Farmers still and evermore will be,” said Uncle Dolphus, farther around on her left.

  “We’re relying on Jack now. He’ll haul us out of our misery, and we thought he was going to haul us with that do-all truck.” Uncle Curtis’s long face cracked open into its first smile. “Since all my boys done up and left my farm.”

  “Mine too. That’s only the way of it,” whispered Uncle Percy.

  “But all nine of mine,” said Uncle Curtis, turning in his chair to gaze around at the crowd. “The only chance I get to see ’em, over and beyond the Sundays when their wives can drive ’em to church, is the reunion.”

  “What did they leave home for? Wasn’t there enough to go round?” teased Aunt Cleo.

  “It’s the same old story,” said Uncle Dolphus. “It’s the fault of the land going back on us, treating us the wrong way. There’s been too much of the substance washed away to grow enough to eat any more.”

  “Now well’s run dry and river’s about to run dry. Around here there ain’t nothing running no more but snakes on the ground and candidates for office. And snakes and them both could do that in their sleep,” said Uncle Dolphus.