by Eudora Welty
“I’m glad Uncle Nathan didn’t ever have to go to the pen. They would never have let him put up his tent and bring his own syrup. Or be an artist,” said Jack presently. “As long as I went and took my turn, maybe it’s evened up, and now the poor old man can rest.”
“He’d have to be talked into it,” said Gloria.
“At the next reunion I might get a chance to speak to him.”
“He only washes in the Bywy River. I hope he won’t come.”
“He loves his grandma,” said Jack. “And I rather hear his cornet blow for a poor soul than a hundred funeral orations, long or short.” He took her hand to lead her out the way they had come. “I’m sorry you had to lose your teacher,” he said. “But I’m glad I could get you here on time and you got your respects paid.”
Gloria didn’t speak until they got to the fence. Then she said, “Miss Julia Mortimer didn’t want anybody left in the dark, not about anything. She wanted everything brought out in the wide open, to see and be known. She wanted people to spread out their minds and their hearts to other people, so they could be read like books.”
“She sounds like Solomon,” said Jack. “Like she ought to have been Solomon.”
“No, people don’t want to be read like books.”
“I expect she might be the only one could have understood a word out of that man burying her. If he was a man,” said Jack. “She was away up over our heads, you and me.”
“Once. But she changed. I’ll never change!” she cried out to him, and he clasped her.
While he helped her back over the stile, the sun came following fast behind them. The cemetery everywhere began to steam. The gravestones looked small and white and alike, all like one gathering of eggs let carelessly roll from an apron.
They came out through the dinner grounds and on around the church. Damascus was a firm-cornered, narrow church resting on four snowy limestone rocks. It stood even with the bank to face Better Friendship Methodist Church across Banner Road. This morning the rained-on wooden face of Damascus had a darkness soft as a pansy’s. The narrow stoop was sheltered by two new-looking boards at a right-angle; under this, like an eye beneath an eyebrow, a single electric light bulb was screwed into the wall. Its filaments showed a little color, like weak veins—somebody had turned on the current and it was working. Two wires bored into the wall, and a meter box hung by the closed door, bright as a watch. Up above, the steeple was wrapped around and around up to its point in tin, like an iris bud in its gray spring sheath.
“Jack, the last time we stood together on the steps of Damascus, we were just starting out! Getting up the courage to walk inside and down the aisle where Grandpa Vaughn was waiting at the foot, ready to marry us,” said Gloria.
“Too late!” said Brother Bethune, coming out. “I waited and nobody came. ‘Where’s my bride and groom?’ I kept asking. ‘Where’s my crowd?’ It’s a shame the way you all treat me. I wasn’t even sure your floor was going to hold me. And I drawed my finger ’cross the lid of your Bible, and if I could’ve thought of my name right quick, I had enough dust right there to write it in. And look at me teeter! Porch like this could pitch a hungry preacher right out on his head. Pitch him clean to the road! You’re letting ’em undermine your church, clawing up here with that road, and what’s fixing to cave in the hind end—your river? Front and back, you’re being eat out of here.” Brother Bethune inched down the steps, leaving the door wide open behind him. He pointed back up with his gun. “Why don’t you paint it?” he asked. “It’s going to rot! There’s only one thing I feel like is going to save this church at all—I just know it’s Baptist. The same as I know I am. And why don’t you try getting married on a Sunday? That’s what Sunday’s for.”
“If Grandpa was back on earth to hear him, he’d bore a hole right through him now with his eyes,” whispered Jack, as Brother Bethune tramped over the irises down to the road. “Grandpa Vaughn built Damascus.”
“One ordinary look should have told even Brother Bethune we were married,” said Gloria.
His mule walked out of the hitching grounds and trotted down to the road after him, while Bet stood waiting her turn in the shade.
“He’s climbing on,” said Jack. “As long as his mule knows him, he’s safe. He’ll get carried to the right place.”
The sun came out as if for good. All at once they were standing again in a red world. Their skin took the sharp sting of heat. At the foot of the road, on which Brother Bethune was trotting down to Banner, the shadow of the bridge on the river floor looked more solid than the bridge, every plank of its uneven floor laid down black, like an old men’s game of dominoes left lying on a sunny table in a courthouse yard at dinner time. Along the bank of the river, the sycamore trees in the school yard were tinged on top with yellow, as though acid had been spilled on them from some travelling spoon. The gas pump in front of Curly’s store stood fading there like a little old lady in a blue sunbonnet who had nowhere to go.
“Between ’em all, they’ve taken away everything you’ve got, Jack,” said Gloria.
“There’s been just about a clean sweep,” he agreed.
“Everybody’s done their worst now—everybody and then some,” she said. “They can’t do any more now.”
He set his lips on hers. “They can’t take away what no human can take away. My family,” he said. “My wife and girl baby and all of ’em at home. And I’ve got my strength. I may not have all the time I used to have—but I can provide. Don’t you ever fear.”
“I’ll just keep right on thinking about the future, Jack.”
He interrupted her with a shout. Down on the dim, steamy pasture between Curly Stovall’s back shed and the river, something white was moving, erratic as a kite in a windy sky.
“Dan!” he shouted. “I’m looking straight at Dan!”
The horse ran lightly as a blown thistledown out of the open pasture gate, around Curly’s house and store, over the road, across the school yard and once around the school, down the railroad track to the water tank and around it and back, running on his shadow. He ran all over Banner in those few bright minutes. He ended up in the school yard, and paced deliberately up to the basketball goal post, his old hitching post, which leaned over him with its battered ring of sunlit rust. He stood as if listening for his name.
“Dan!”
The horse lifted on his hind legs and turned around on his shadow. He came down in a red splash that shot up man-high and fell behind him. He came a graceful step or two up Banner Road, and there was nobody out to see him, tossing his mane and tail, while Jack laughed until tears popped out on both cheeks.
“Dan, you’re alive. You lived through it!” He stood in the road and threw open his arms.
The horse came a little way farther, close enough to show he was still white, though his coat was rough. His mane and tail had been combed only by the rain. Jack gave his sweet, warbling whistle. But the horse with a wayward toss of his head turned around in the road and trotted back down again, his tail streaming bright as frost behind.
“He’s fickle,” Gloria told Jack. “Dan is fickle. And now he’s Curly’s horse and he’s let you know it. Oh, Jack, I know you’d rather he was rendered!”
“No, I rather he’s alive and fickle than all mine and sold for his hide and tallow,” said Jack. He still stood in the road with his arms out. “Why hasn’t Curly already pranced out on his back in front of me then? What’s he saving the last for?—There’s just one answer. He’s waiting till he can catch him.” Gloria slowly nodded. He went on, “And I expect this morning Captain Billy Bangs let him out of the pasture. We all went off and left Captain Billy with nothing else to do—he can’t vote till tomorrow.” He cupped his hands to his mouth and yelled, “All right, Curly! I saw him! I’ll be down to get him when the time’s good and ripe!”
“That’s what Prentiss Stovall wants you to do,” said Gloria. “He’ll be justice of the peace by day after tomorrow. Oh, Jack, does this mean it’ll a
ll happen over again?”
“It’s a start,” said Jack. Then he swung around. “But for right now, Gloria, there’s a lot of doing I got to catch up with at home. We got to eat! That’s the surest thing I know. But I still got my strength.”
Bet came down into the road.
“The surest thing I know is I’ll never let you out of my sight again. Never,” Gloria swore. “I never will let you escape from me, Jack Renfro. Remember it.”
“It’s the first I knew I was trying,” he said, with his big smile.
He lifted her and set her up on Bet’s waiting back, and took Bet by the bridle and led her. They started for home.
“And some day,” Gloria said, “some day yet, we’ll move to ourselves. And there’ll be just you and me and Lady May.”
“And a string of other little chaps to come along behind her,” said Jack. “You just can’t have too many, is the way I look at it.”
Sid twinkled out of the church. He had gone straight through Damascus Church, in at the back and out at the front, as though it were a tree across a ditch. He came in springs down the bank and ran up the red road, tail jumping like a ringing bell as he sped for home, and growing smaller and smaller up ahead.
Jack and Gloria went along behind him, and the sun gave Banner Road no more shade now—it was noon. One of his eyes still imperfectly opened, and the new lump blossoming on his forehead for his mother’s kiss, Jack raised his voice and sang. All Banner could hear him and know who he was.
“Bringing in the sheaves,
Bringing in the sheaves!
We shall come rejoicing,
Bringing in the sheaves!”
About the Author
One of America’s most admired authors, Eudora Welty was born in Jackson, Mississippi, which is still her home. She was educated locally and at Mississippi State College for Women, the University of Wisconsin, and the Columbia University Graduate School of Business. She is the author of, among many other books, The Robber Bridegroom, Delta Wedding, The Ponder Heart, The Eye of the Story, and The Optimist’s Daughter.