Delta Wedding

by Eudora Welty

  And no matter what any of them could possibly want, it would be sure to be in the store somewhere; the only requirement was that it must be looked for. There was almost absolute surety of finding it. One day on the ledge with the hunting caps, India found a perfect china doll head to fit the doll she had dropped the minute before.

  At the moment nobody seemed to be keeping the store at all, except little Ranny, whom Tippy must have set down in here to wait; smelling of violets, he was bouncing a ball in a cleared space, his soft voice going, "—Twenty-three, twenty-four—last night, or the night before, twenty-four robbers at my back door—" There were some old fellows ninety years old sitting there around the cold stove, still as sleeping flies, resting over a few stalks of sugar cane.

  Laura, who loved all kinds of boxes and bottles, all objects that could keep and hold things, went gazing her fill through the store, and touching where she would. At first she thought she could find anything she wanted for a wedding present for her uncle George.

  Along the tops of the counters were square glass jars with gold-topped stoppers—they held the kernels and flakes of seed—and just as likely, crusted-over wine-balls, licorice sticks, or pink-covered gingerbread stage-planks. All around, at many levels, fishing boxes all packed, china pots with dusty little lids, cake stands with the weightiest of glass covers, buckets marked like a mackerel sky, dippers, churns, bins, hampers, baby baskets, popcorn poppers, cooky jars, butter molds, money safes, hair receivers, mouse traps, all these things held the purest enchantment for her; once, last year, she threw her arms around the pickle barrel, and seemed to feel then a heavy, briny response in its nature, unbudging though it was. The pickle barrel was the heart of the store in summer, as in winter it was the stove that stood on a square stage in the back, with a gold spittoon on each corner. The name of the stove was "Kankakee," written in raised iron writing across its breast which was decorated with summer-cold iron flowers.

  The air was a kind of radiant haze, which disappeared into a dim blue among hanging boots above—a fragrant store dust that looked like gold dust in the light from the screen door. Cracker dust and flour dust and brown-sugar particles seemed to spangle the air the minute you stepped inside. (And she thought, in the Delta, all the air everywhere is filled with things—it's the shining dust that makes it look so bright.) All was warm and fragrant here. The cats smelled like ginger when you rubbed their blond foreheads and clasped their fat yellow sides. Every counter smelled different, from the ladylike smell of the dry-goods counter with its fussy revolving ball of string, to the manlike smell of coffee where it was ground in the back. There were areas of banana smell, medicine smell, rope and rubber and nail smell, bread smell, peppermint-oil smell, smells of feed, shot, cheese, tobacco, and chicory, and the smells of the old cane chairs creaking where the old fellows slept.

  Objects stood in the aisle as high as the waist, so that you waded when you walked or twisted like a cat. Other things hung from the rafters, to be touched and to swing at the hand when you gave a jump. Once Laura's hand went out decisively and she almost chose something—a gold net of blue agates—for Uncle George. But she said, sighing, to Ranny running by, "I don't see a present for Uncle George. Nothing you have is good enough!"

  "Nine, ten, a big fat hen!" Ranny cried at her, with a radiant, spitting smile.

  But Shelley had stiffened the moment she entered the store. Sure enough, she could hear somebody crying, deep in the back. She went to look, her heart pounding. Robbie was sitting on the cashier's stool, filling the store with angry and shameless tears, under a festoon of rubber boots.

  Shelley stood beside her, not speaking, but waiting—it was almost as if she had made Robbie cry and was standing there to see that she kept on crying. Her heart pounded on. Robbie's tears shocked her for being un-hesitant—for being plain, assertive weeping for a man—weeping out loud in the heart of Fairchilds, in the wide-open store that was more public than the middle of the road. Nothing covered up the sound, except the skipping of Laura up and down, the little kissing sound of Ranny's bouncing ball, and the snore of an old man. Shelley stood listening to that conceited fervor, and then Robbie raised her head and looked at her with the tears running down, and then made an even worse face, deliberately—an awful face. Shelley fell back and flew out with the children. An old mother bird dog lay right in the aisle, her worn teats flapping up and down as she panted—that was how public it was.

  III

  Robbie bared her little white teeth after Shelley Fairchild and whatever other Fairchilds she had with her. The flat in Memphis had heavy face-brick pillars and poured-cement ornamental fern boxes across a red tile porch. It was right in town! The furniture was all bought in Memphis, shiny mahogany and rich velvet upholstery, blue with gold stripes, up and down which she would run her fingers, as she would in the bright water in a boat with George. There were soft pillows with golden tassels, and she would bite the tassels! Two of the chairs were rockers to match the davenport and there were two tables—matching. The lamps matched, being of turned mahogany, and there were two tall ones and two short ones, all with shades of mauve gorgette over rose China silk. On the mantel, which was large and handsome made of red brick, was a mahogany clock, very expensive and ticking very slowly. The candles in heavy wrought-iron holders on each side had gilt trimming and were too pretty to be lighted. There were several Chinese ash trays about. (Oh, George's pipe!) The rugs were both very fine, and he and she went barefooted. The black wrought-iron fire-screen, andirons, and poker set were the finest in Memphis. Every door was a French door, the floors were hardwood, highly waxed, and yellow.

  His books had never a speck of dust on them, such as the Shellmound books were covered with if you touched them. His law books weighed a lot and she carried them in her arms one by one when she moved them from table to chair to see all was perfect, all dusted. She was a perfect housekeeper with only one Negro, and one more to wash. How fresh her curtains were! Even in the dirtiest place in the world: Memphis.

  Only the bedroom was still not the way she wanted it. She really wanted a Moorish couch such as Agnes Ayres had lain on in the picture show, but a mahogany bed would come in a set with matching things and she knew that would please George, new and shiny and expensive. Just yet they had an old iron bed with a lot of thin rods head and foot, and she had painted it. There were unnoticeable places where the paint had run down those hard rods, that had never quite got dry, and when George went away on a case or was late coming home she would lie there indenting these little rivers of paint with her thumbnail very gently, to kill time, the way she would once hold rose petals on her tongue and gently bite them, waiting here in the store, the days when he courted.

  They lived on the second floor of a nice, two-story flat, and nobody bothered them. The living room faced the river with two windows. In front of those she had the couch so they could lie there listening to the busy river life and watching the lighted boats on summer nights. As long as they stayed without going to bed they could hear colored bands playing from here and there, never far away. The little hairs on her arm would rise, to think where she was. Then they would dance barefooted and drink champagne, and sometimes in the middle of the day they would meet by appointment in the New Peabody by the indoor fountain with live, pure Mallard ducks in it!

  "Are you waiting on people?" asked a slow-talking man in front of her. It was Troy Flavin, the Fairchild overseer, his red hair on end.

  "I'm not waiting on people, I'm just waiting. Looking for somebody," she said, opening her own eyes wide, expecting him to see who she was.

  "Oh, I beg your pardon." Suddenly he swept his straw hat upwards from his side and fanned her face with it, vigorously. When she bent away he held her straight on the stool and fanned her as firmly as if he were giving her medicine. "Is it the heat? Who're you looking for?" He did not recognize her at all—maybe the heat had him.

  "None of your business! Well, all right, stop fanning and I'll tell you. For George
Fairchild."

  He looked down and put his head on one side as if he talked to some knee-high child. "Why didn't you ask me somebody hard, from the way you're about to cry about it?"

  "I'm not! Where is he?"

  "Could put my finger on George Fairchild this minute, I'm marrying into that family, come eight o'clock tomorrow night."

  "Not Shelley! Oh—Dabney!"

  She began to laugh, and he said, "You look familiar."

  "Don't you know me? I'm Robbie Fairchild. I'm George's wife."

  Miss Thracia Leeds came into the store and fingered over the ribbon counter, like a pianist over trills. "Why, hello, Robbie, are you back at the store?"

  "Well, George's right there at Shellmound in the porch hammock, if you want him," said Troy. "His wife? You look like you've been to Jericho and back, so dusty."

  "I've been leaving him—that's what I've been doing. If anybody wondered!"

  "In the porch hammock, he was," said Troy, with some reserve in his voice. Then he added politely, "Dabney's who I'm carrying—you know, Mr. Battle's girl, not the oldest—the prettiest. High-strung sometimes, though!"

  "High-strung!" said Miss Thracia with much sarcasm.

  "But they're all high-strung. All ready to jump out of their skins if you don't mind out how you step. 'Course, it would be worse for a girl, marrying into them."

  "I didn't marry into them! I married George!" And she beat his hat away, for he started that again—as though he had brought some insufferably old argument into her face.

  "Well, it's a close family," Troy said laconically, catching his hat. "Too close, could be."

  "A family can't be too close, young man," said a new voice. Miss Mayo Tucker had come in.

  Robbie rocked gently on her stool, and like a courtesy Troy put his hand over her flushed forehead as if trying to feel there how dangerously close the Fairchilds were. Miss Maggie Kinkaid stood behind Miss Mayo and asked Robbie, if she had come back to work, if she would make good a nest egg, since the other one broke.

  "I might have known! I might have known he wouldn't hunt for me—I could kill him! Right back at Shellmound in a hammock," Robbie cried. "I thought he might drag the river, even."

  "Drag which river? Why, Dabney wanted George here, is why he's here," Troy said, looking down at her in concern. "Dabney sent for him. He's my what-you-call-it—best man. They didn't care for Buster Daggett, for that friend of mine over at the ice and coal."

  "Buster Daggett, I don't wonder," remarked Miss Mayo. "Robbie, did I hear you'd run away, and George Fairchild used to beat you unmercifully in Memphis? Cut me off a yard of black sateen, child, you're right at it."

  Robbie laughed and brushed at her eyes. "Dabney's marrying—marrying you? You're the overseer out there."

  "Sure I am. How'd you know?"

  "We've met" said Robbie with energy. "Don't you remember me on the trestle—that day? I remember you. All you did was keep looking up at the sky and saying, 'Why don't she storm?'"

  "And she didn't?" Troy smiled in delight after a moment. "That day! I don't remember but one thing. I got engaged up yonder!"

  "You got engaged, and George Fairchild missed by a hair letting the Yellow Dog run over him for the sake of a little old crazy! Never thinking of me!"

  To her surprise, Troy Flavin became more dignified than before. "Yes, your husband'll make you worry-like," he said. "It'll come up."

  Robbie with furious neatness cut off a yard of sateen, tied it up, and rang up thirty cents on the cash register.

  "You're Robbie, George's wife. People've been no-rating about you, sure!" said Troy, watching her speed. "Well, you're just in time."

  "I bet it's a big wedding and all. Did Miss Tempe make herself come? How's Mary Denis?" asked Miss Thracia.

  "They've come from far and near, Fairchilds," said Troy. "You could have been too late." He momently reversed the fanning hat and fanned himself. "But now you'll see the wedding."

  "Me! Who's going to invite me?"

  "I invite you," said Troy. "Now I've invited me somebody." He stared at her appreciatively. Then he put his hat, carefully, over her head to make her laugh, and spread a big hand sprinkled with red hair over each of her shoulders.

  "Which way is this? Set me straight, did you run off and leave George, or did he run off and leave you? I believe those Fairchild men are great consorters," said Miss Mayo. "Does he make any money in the law business? It's bad luck for a girl to put a man's hat on."

  "It would be fun to walk in during it, and make George and everybody jump," Robbie said, looking up at Troy and smiling for the first time, under the yellow brim.

  "What! Not during the wedding!"

  "Oh, look at me forget about you being there."

  "It would cause a stir," he said, and balanced a pencil on his finger. "Furthermore, I'd be scared of Aunt Mac. Why don't you go walk in now? What's keeping you, if you're going in the end? like I say to myself."

  "Do you mean to say, Robbie Reid, you had gone off and left George Fairchild and now you're just coming back?" said Miss Thracia. "I know what he ought to do to you."

  "Must I go now, and push him out of the hammock?" said Robbie softly. Her eyelids fell, as if she were being lulled to sleep. She thought Troy was very kind, and clever. Tears ran down her face.

  "That sounds better than the other," said Troy. She jumped off the stool. "And considering we're next thing to kin,—go wash your face."

  She gave him back his hat and he stood holding it politely.

  "And to tell you the truth," he said when she came in from the little back porch with a clean face, "I feel without doubt you ought to be getting somewhere near your husband, not sitting here baking by yourself in this hot store."

  Robbie went out, past Miss Thracia, Miss Maggie, and Miss Mayo, fluffing her hair. "See if you think she's going to have a baby," said Miss Maggie. "I wonder if it will be a boy or girl and how they'll divide up the land in that case."

  "She's not," said Miss Mayo definitely.

  With a start Troy went to the door and looked up and down the street. "I forgot to wonder how she'd get there," he said.

  India was walking up the sidewalk eating ice, with her eyes shut. She opened her eyes and saw Troy.

  "Troy Flavin! I've got something for you," she said, her face alight. She put something in his hands. "A cake! Dabney baked it with her own hands, just for you."

  "Well, it surprises me," Troy told her, accepting it. "I didn't know she could even make light bread."

  India turned a handspring and looked back over her shoulder at him—it was a look so much like Dabney's that he started again, and he called after her, "Much obliged!" But she too had got out of sight.

  IV

  Robbie saw it would be a long hot walk in the boiling sun. But Troy Flavin had been right, though highhanded, for somebody that came from "away"—anything was better than that oven of a store. She couldn't stand it any longer. And, oh, George must have known he could come and get her, Shelley must have tattletaled, and when she had come as far as Fairchilds, as far even as the store—! She passed the shade of the cemetery and took the road. Off there was the bayou, but if she was going back to George in the hot sun, then she was going in the hot sun. She glanced through the distant trees; the whirlpool was about there. She and George had once or twice gone swimming in that, once at night, playing at drowning, first he and then she sinking down with a hand up. There were people she would like to see go down in that, and a snake look good at them.

  She was in the road through the Fairchild Deadening. What a wide field! All this was where the old Fairchilds had started, deadened off the trees to take the land a hundred years ago. She could hardly see across. The white field in the heat darted light like a prism edge. She put a hand over her eyes, but the light came red through her fingers. She knew she was a small figure here, and went along with a little switch of elderberry under the straight-up sun.

  Caught in marriage you were then supposed to fling
about, to cry out and ask for something—to expect something—what was the look in all unmarried girls' eyes but the challenging look of knowing what? But Robbie—who was greatly in love and so would freely admit everything—did not know what. It was not this!

  In the depths of her soul she had at first looked for one of two blows, or magic touches, to fall—unnerving change or beautiful transformation; she had been practical enough to expect alternate eventualities. But even now—unless the old bugaboo of pregnancy counted—there was no eventuality. Here she was—Robbie, making her way, stamping her feet in the pink Fairchild dust, at a very foolish time of day to be out unprotected. There was not one soul to know she was desperate and angry.

  The Fairchild women asked a great deal of their men—competitively. Miss Tempe in particular was a bully, or would have been, without the passive, sweet Miss Primrose and Miss Jim Allen to compete with another way. Naturally, the Fairchild women knew what to ask, because in their kind of people, the Fairchild kind, the women always ruled the roost; Robbie believed in her soul that men should rule the roost. (George, showing how simple and difficult he was in a Fairchild man's way, did not betray it that there were two kinds of people.) It was notoriously the women of the Fairchilds who since the Civil War, or—who knew?—since the Indian times, ran the household and had everything at their fingertips—not the men. The women it was who inherited the place—or their brothers, guiltily, handed it over.

  In the Delta the land belonged to the women—they only let the men have it, and sometimes they tried to take it back and give it to someone else. The Grove had been left to Miss Tempe and she married Mr. Pinckney Summers (a terrible drinker) and moved to Inverness, presenting it to George—and George had told his unmarried sisters, Primrose and Jim Allen, that they could live there. Marmion belonged by rights to that little Maureen, for whom Miss Annie Laurie Fairchild had felt that wild concern some ladies feel for little idiot children, even the wicked ones—though if she knew, she would be sorry now, with her own child cheated. She had given Marmion to Denis when she married and went out of the Delta, and now of the two children would it in all strictness be Maureen's? A joke on the Fairchilds. And Shellmound—Miss Rowena, the quiet one, the quiet old maid, had let Mr. Battle have it before she ever lived in it herself; no one could ever be grateful enough to Rowena! Not then, not now, when she was dead and triumphantly beyond gratitude, but Robbie would tell anybody that Miss Rowena was forgotten, if a Fairchild could be. She let all her brothers take from her so, she let them! Robbie shivered for Miss Rowena. All the men lived here on a kind of sufferance!