by Eudora Welty
“In whose place? Who are you trying to fool?” Granny asked Judge Moody.
Miss Beulah ran to protect her, but she had already found the little wilted bunch of dahlias and swatted feebly at Judge Moody. He backed away, and Jack caught him, then guided him out of Granny’s hearing.
“I’m sorry, Judge Moody—Granny’s jealous of who tries to get in our family,” Jack said. “But her shooing you off don’t make me forgive you any the faster! Judge Moody, here you are because you and Mrs. Judge would be roofless in Banner and in danger of starving without us. And you’re welcome to the table. And I owe you a raft of gratitude for veering and not killing my wife and baby. And I’m going to get your car back the way it was going in Banner Road. But I ain’t going to forgive you for sending me to the pen! Because listen, Judge Moody, you caused all these you see here smiling to do without me for a year, six months and a day while I was ploughing Parchman. And I take it right hard, and it gives me right much of a shock on the day of my welcome home, to hear ’em all forgiving you for it—all but Granny.” He gave Granny a look, and then cried, staring all around, “Is the whole rest of the reunion going to forgive him? Mama, Papa, sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles, cousins? Every last one except my wife?”
“I told you so,” said Gloria.
“It’s all part of the reunion. We got to live it out, son,” said Mr. Renfro.
“No sir, I don’t forgive you, Judge Moody,” Jack told him. “Oh, I’m boiling for ’em still, for the way you deprived ’em. And now hear ’em!”
“Jack, make up your mind your family is always going to stay one jump ahead of you,” said Gloria.
“I don’t forgive you at all, sir,” said Jack in a clear, loud voice.
“All right! Fine! I prefer it that way,” Judge Moody said with some vigor. “Thank you.”
“You’re more than welcome,” said Jack. He thrust out an arm, and he and Judge Moody shook hands.
“None of this would have happened if Grandpa Vaughn had had this reunion in charge,” said Miss Beulah. “And least of all this headlong forgiving of the first craven soul that comes and offers. Oh, Grandpa Vaughn, I miss your presence!”
“We’re just at the wrong end of Boone County!” Mrs. Moody burst out.
“Can I just tell you something?” interrupted Miss Beulah. “That coconut cake’s so tender I advise you to eat it with a spoon.”
“And now who wins for giving the biggest surprise?” Brother Bethune called, sweeping Lady May up out of her mother’s lap and running with her back to his place, then setting her onto his gun shoulder. “It’s a pretty little girl—the one you see raised at last above your heads. She answers to the name of Lady May.”
“And if that ain’t the longest upper lip in Boone County!” said Aunt Nanny.
Lady May, who had drawn a deep breath, took a look down at everybody, and then it came.
“And I want to take this opportunity to say,” said Brother Bethune right over the baby’s crying, almost crying himself, “that never have I seen any more of a family gathered together since the Bethunes started to go. There’s been a Bethune and a Renfro to go every year, till this year somebody fooled us out of the Renfros. Wonder whose turn it’ll be next time, Mr. Ralph?” Brother Bethune cranked his head around the baby’s kicking legs and put it to him. He ripped out a bandanna, paused to mop his face, then the baby’s, and drove on. “At no reunion the summer long have I enjoyed any better attention or seen any better behavior. The interruptions has been few and far between. And the boat—the boat this little baby, the youngest Renfro walking today, is travelling up on the river of life, I hope the oar of faith and the oar of works will row that little boat clear to the gates of Heaven.”
He shut his mouth in a black line, put Lady May down on the ground, and from all around the yard the other babies all cried with her.
“And now, precious friends—if you think this is a big reunion! If you think this is a pretty full count and a brave showing! Wait! On the Day of Judgment and at the Sounding of the Trumpet—!”
“I can wait!” sang out Uncle Noah Webster.
“Why, Banner Cemetery is going to be throwed open like a hill of potatoes!” Brother Bethune cried. “All those loving kin who have gone before, there they’ll all be—waiting for you and me! How will you start behaving then, precious friends? I’ll tell you! You’ll all be left without words. Without words! Can you believe it? Think about that!”
He threw out his arms and stood there, open-mouthed.
“Ain’t we given him a splendid time?” Aunt Birdie exclaimed.
“Sometimes I think it was an old bachelor like Brother Bethune that thought up reunions in the first place,” said Aunt Nanny.
“Three cheers for Brother Bethune!” shouted Uncle Noah Webster.
“Brother Bethune has not accepted many earthly titles,” croaked Brother Bethune. “He is content to be one of God’s chosen vessels.”
“Three more cheers for Brother Bethune!”
“Never asked the church for a cent of money and never needed such. Without script or purse,” he whispered, as the cheers died down.
“That’s right, Brother Bethune. Sit down, Brother Bethune,” several voices invited him.
“I may not have very many earthly descendants,” Brother Bethune in an unmollified voice went on. “If you want to come right down to it, I ain’t got a one. Now I have killed me a fairly large number of snakes. I have kept a count of my snakes I have killed in the last five years, and up to and including this Sunday morning, the grand sum total is four hundred and twenty-six.”
They cheered.
“Brother Bethune holds the title of champion snake killer of this entire end of the county,” contributed Uncle Curtis. “And I suppose he limits himself to the Bywy on this bank and five or six little branches of it. Is that so, Brother Bethune?”
“It is so so far,” said Brother Bethune, still not sitting down.
“You use the old-time twelve-gauge shotgun, I believe,” said Mr. Renfro. “That is your main weapon.”
“It is my only weapon,” said Brother Bethune. He threw out an arm for it, where it stood against the tree—as long as he was, its barrels silver-bright—and shook it at Uncle Nathan, who slowly saluted him back with his paint-stained hand.
Brother Bethune sat down with a groan. His eyes went first to the cake plate, where the last slice of birthday cake stood caving into its crumbs. With the flat of her knife, Granny rapped his reaching fingers.
But here ran Miss Beulah, who set a plate in front of Brother Bethune and rained down on it a collection of chicken gizzards, clattering like china doorknobs. She forked onto the plate the last pickled peach, so heavy it would hardly roll. Brother Bethune gave a hoarse sound of appreciation.
“Did Brother Bethune forgive Jack?” Aunt Birdie asked.
“No, he didn’t. He was on the track, but he swerved,” said Uncle Curtis.
Mr. Renfro split open seven or eight more watermelons and passed them around. Each time, he gave a different girl the bursting red heart to drown her face in. Each time, giggling, the girl accepted it.
“Listen, I want to know something,” said Aunt Birdie. “If it wasn’t to make trouble for our boy today, why did you come along Banner Road at all? Judge Moody, will you tell me?”
“My presence in this end of the county has nothing to do with him or the rest of this crowd,” said Judge Moody. “I’m here on an errand of my own. I was doing my best to find a way across that river, that’s all.”
“But we didn’t want to get up on that bridge,” said Mrs. Moody.
“Shied at the bridge? Well, I don’t entirely blame you,” said Mr. Renfro.
“Why, of course they don’t want to cross that,” said Aunt Beck. “Neither do I. And I don’t.”
Miss Beulah said, “I reckon they must know the story.”
“No,” said Judge Moody warningly. “I just took a good look at it.”
“That bridge is a bo
ne of contention between two sets of supervisors, now that’s one safe thing to say about it,” said Mr. Renfro. “It’s crossing the river between rival counties, you know. Boone on this side, Poindexter on the other.”
“There’s a sign hanging from the top saying ‘Cross at Own Risk,’ ” said Judge Moody.
“With a skull and crossbones on it,” said Mrs. Moody. “Do you argue with that?”
“And the same sign hangs for them on the other side,” said the unexpected deep voice of Uncle Nathan.
“Boone and Poindexter, each one of ’em owns that bridge as far out as the middle,” said Mr. Renfro. “Let something get the matter with it and the blame goes flying backwards and forwards, thick and fast. And that’s about the end of it.”
“I’d hate to hear the story,” said Mrs. Moody accusingly.
“Clyde Comfort had been out gigging frogs that night, and was just pulling in,” said Mr. Renfro, setting down his glass of lemonade. “And passing under the bridge in his boat, he chanced to look up. And he seen the three-quarter moon shining at him just like the bridge wasn’t there. There’s been a great big bite taken out of the floor of that bridge on the Boone County side, right where it leaves the bank at Banner, and the moon’s peeping through at Clyde just like through a gap in the clouds. The first few rows of planks had give way and fell in, or somebody had carried ’em off out of meanness, nobody ever knew. If they’d been pitch pine, I wouldn’t have put it past Clyde Comfort himself to run off with ’em, to feed the fire in his boat,” he assured Judge Moody. “Well, while he sat there marvelling, he says, he heard a horse and buggy come tearing down the hill into Banner, lickety-split for the bridge. And it’s still dark. The pine-knots burning down in Clyde’s boat and the three-quarter moon in the sky, that’s all the light there was anywhere. And about that same time, Clyde out of the other eye saw him a big fat frog, the kind he was looking for all night, just setting there waiting on him. What was Clyde going to do, hop out and skin up that bank to holler to ’em when he didn’t know who—or not lose that frog? Well, he took the path of least resistance. Clyde liked to tell it longer than that, but that’s the substance.”
“Mr. Renfro, are you trying so hard to entertain Judge Moody that you’d give ’im that story from the other side?” cried Miss Beulah. “What that story is about is Mama and Papa Beecham being carried off young and at the same time, how that bridge flung ’em off and drowned ’em in that river one black morning when the Bywy was high, and afterwards being found wide apart.”
“Oh, at least I’ve heard that one,” protested Aunt Cleo.
“Our papa was a Methodist circuit rider, from over in Poindexter County,” Miss Beulah began. “And he circuited around here for the declared purpose of finding himself a wife. Clapped his eyes one time on Ellen Vaughn stepping out of her father’s church one pretty Sunday, and it was all over for Euclid Beecham.”
“I wish I’d had a penny for every time I’ve listened to this one,” Mr. Renfro told Judge Moody, but Miss Beulah drove on, and everybody listened except Gloria.
“She did more than marry Euclid Beecham, she made him give up being a Methodist too. And Granny and Grandpa took him in hand and made a pretty good farmer out of him, to boot. Oh, Ellen and Euclid’s wedding! That’s the one I wish I had a picture of!” she cried. “Rival preachers to marry ’em—Grandpa Vaughn and the Methodist. And the time of year when everything was all bowery. Wasn’t it, Granny?”
“Time of locust bloom,” Granny admitted.
“And it was two rings to that wedding,” Miss Beulah went on. “She gave hers to him, he gave his to her.”
“I reckon they did have a plenty more of everything in those days,” said Uncle Percy in a whisper. “Long Hungry Ridge must have been a fair prospect then.”
“And all this countryside hitched in the grove at Damascus Church and there was singing you could hear for a mile, and Mama and Papa was young and known to all around, and everybody said it was the prettiest couple ever to marry in Banner. Said they could hardly wait to see their children.”
“Thick and fast we got here! Nathan the oldest, then Curtis, then Dolphus, then Percy, then me, then Beulah, and then Sam Dale the baby,” said Uncle Noah Webster.
“Euclid got what he bargained for,” said Mr. Renfro.
“And every last one of those children good as gold, bright and sweet-natured and well-mannered,” continued Miss Beulah, still speaking as if from hearsay, or from beyond the grave.
“Well, we know what happened,” said Aunt Cleo.
“Papa couldn’t help it if he’s good-looking beyond the ordinary,” said Miss Beulah. “He couldn’t help it if he’s baptized in the cradle. Couldn’t even help it if they named him Euclid, poor little old soul.” Suddenly she folded her arms and cried, “I just wish he’d learned how to stop a runaway horse a little better! That’s what I wish!”
“Maybe he’d done better if his wife hadn’t been holding the reins,” said Mr. Renfro.
“I’m going right ahead and tell it!” cried Miss Beulah. “You can’t stop me. Now of all the children, Noah Webster was the one awake and was here on the spot to witness ’em go.”
“This Noah Webster?” Aunt Cleo asked.
Miss Beulah raced on. “He run out when he heard the barn door open, run out in his little gown with a ‘Stop, Papa and Mama! Wait a minute!’ Almost catches onto the horse but just not high enough. So he just hollers ‘Granny!’ instead. Well, they was going right on, straight out to the gate, and Granny comes running to stop ’em and nearly got caught and mashed to pieces between the buggy shaft and the tree—” She jabbed her finger at the section of cedar down in the yard. “She run-run-run down the hill after ’em, calling ’em back here.”
“Granny running?” Vaughn yelled out in horror.
“She jumped on her horse and whipped him up and followed behind ’em trot-a-trot, trot-a-trot, galloping, galloping, but her smart horse stopped dead at the bridge when he got her there. Because he smelled the danger and seen the hole, and there’s the buggy-horse kicking down under, and the top of the buggy out in the water, standing up like a sail.”
Uncle Curtis, Aunt Nanny, Uncle Percy, all but Uncle Nathan, with single accord flung up their arms in the air, and Uncle Noah Webster held his transfixed wide over his head.
“The beginning of the bridge was just a big hole, and nobody saw fit to tell ’em, and it throwed both of ’em out and drowned ’em in the Bywy River and left us orphans all in the twinkling of an eye,” said Miss Beulah. “The Bywy was running high, was full that spring, and I don’t know how far downstream they put up the struggle, or what may have tore ’em out of each other’s arms. They wasn’t found too almighty close together.”
“Did they ever find the horse?” yelled Vaughn.
“He didn’t manage to hit the water. Had to shoot him.”
“Poor Noah Webster always tries to put in that he blames himself for that trouble. And it does look like there ought to been a wide-awake boy could have got his father and mother to hear him when he opened his mouth,” said Miss Beulah, striking her own breast.
“Somebody was running away from us children, that’s what I believed at the time and still believe,” said Uncle Noah Webster. “If I hadn’t believed it, I wouldn’t have stationed myself in the road and waited for ’em. I’d have been in the bed, tumbled in with the rest of you. Because unless I dreamed it, I didn’t know yet about the Bywy bridge getting a hole in it, didn’t know any more than they did. I just knew I was in pretty bad danger of losing ’em.”
“If they hadn’t been who they was, his own mother and father, they might have done different. They only thought he was trying to go with ’em, I reckon. Didn’t even turn their heads. If it’d been anybody but a Comfort out gigging on the river! And of course Granny couldn’t do anything to stop ’em!” said Miss Beulah in anguish. “Papa was fished out by evening, right where he went in. But where was Mama?” she cried at the company.
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p; “I stood on Banner Top and watched ’em dynamite for her. Two days,” said Mr. Renfro. “Old river was running by me faster than I could run, trailing its bubbles.”
“But at Deepening Bend, she came up by herself, Mama did. Beulah’s too little to remember it, she says,” Uncle Dolphus said, sadly teasing.
“It’s a wonder to me that river didn’t swallow a whole lot of other people that morning who was behaving just as mule-headed,” said Aunt Birdie, giving a deep sigh. “That’s what still scares me.”
“Old bridge has seen some progress. We keep the floor patched at our end, and keep driving spikes in the runners to hold ’em from flapping. But give it high water, or a little mischief, and it’s still sure death,” Uncle Curtis said to Judge Moody. “From my own bed, I’ve heard it sing all night and with nobody on it, when a north wind blows.”
“Take me back to the bridge a minute. What errand was they both so bent on when they hitched and cut loose from the house so early and drove out of sight of Grandpa and Granny, children and all, that morning?” It was Aunt Beck with the gentle voice who prodded.
“Now that’s a deep question,” said Aunt Nanny.
“Beck, that part of the story’s been lost to time,” said Uncle Curtis, looking over at his wife. “I think most people just give up wondering, in the light of what happened to ’em on the way.”
“Something between man and wife is the only answer, and it’s what no other soul would have no way of knowing, Cousin Beck,” said Mr. Renfro, and he climbed to his feet and made his way back to the lemonade tub.
“At any rate, by patience and waiting they was able to hold a double funeral,” said Aunt Beck to Mrs. Moody. “That’s always a comfort.”
“At the double funeral,” said Miss Beulah, her eyes burning at her grandmother, “it was the same church, with the same two rival preachers, but Grandpa Vaughn overpowering, and with all the little children lined up—that was us—bawling like calves in a row, I’ll be bound, though I don’t have a speck of recollection.”
“So before it’s too late,” said Aunt Nanny, “those that’s bringing comfort make up their minds to take one of them two rings off. Not let ’em go in the ground taking just all there was of them. They taken Ellen’s for the reason she was the most pitiful.”