The Ponder Heart

by Eudora Welty

  I missed my city lights. I guess electricity was about the bane of Grandpa's life, next to weakness of character. Some power fellow was eternally coming out there and wanting to string it up to the house, and Grandpa'd say, "Young man, do you want to draw the lightning out here to me when I've done everything I know how to prevent it?" and throw him out. We all grew up learning to fend for ourselves. Though you may not be able to read in the dark, I can. But all the other children and grandchildren went away to the ends of the earth or died and left only me and Uncle Daniel—the two favorites. So we couldn't leave each other.

  As a matter of fact, when I went back in that house to look after Uncle Daniel when he was sick, Pd have been lonesome myself if I hadn't liked to read and had good eyes. Pm a great reader that never has time to read.

  Little old Bonnie Dee had six years of True Love Story and six years of Movie Mirror stacked up on the sewing machine in my room (she never hesitated to shift the furniture) and the hatrack in the hall, and down behind the pillows on the sofa. She must have read her heart out. Or at least she'd cut all the coupons out with her scissors. I saw by the holes she'd left where she'd sent off for all kinds of things—you know, wherever they showed the postman smiling in the ad. I figured she must have got back, sometime or other, twenty-four samples of world-famous perfumes; and a free booklet on how to speak and write masterly English from a Mr. Cody who looks a great deal like Professor Magee from Clay, who's been dead for years; and a free piano lesson to prove you can amaze your friends; and a set of Balzac to examine ten days free of charge, but she must have decided against it—I looked everywhere. So there were holes in the stories all the way through, but they wouldn't have lasted me long anyway. I read The House of a Thousand Candles for the thousandth time; and the rest of the time I cleaned house. The hotter it is, the faster I go.

  Uncle Daniel was happy no matter what I was doing. He wasn't really sick: I diagnosed him. Oh, he might have had a little malaria—he took his quinine when I gave it to him. Mainly, he just didn't want to be by himself. He wanted somebody closer than three miles away when he had something to say right then. There's something I think's better to have than love, and if you want me to, I'll tell you what it is—that's company. That's one reason Uncle Daniel enjoyed life even in Jackson—he was surrounded there.

  "Why don't you come on into town, Uncle Daniel," I said, "and stay at the Beulah with me? I need to get the windows washed there too."

  "No indeed," he says. "If she comes back, she'll come back here where she left off. Pretty thing, if she'd come in the door this minute, I'd eat her up."

  But, "Oh, Edna Earle, where did she go?" That's what he began and ended his day with, that was the tail to all his stories. "Where has Bonnie Dee gone?" So after I'd heard that refrain enough times, I took myself into town and climbed the stairs to Judge Tip Clanahan's office. I caught him with his feet up on the wall, trying on fishing boots. I'm afraid DeYancey was already fishing.

  Well, as I opened the subject by saying when I sat down, I can't help being smarter than Uncle Daniel. I don't even try, myself, to make people happy the way they should be: they're so stubborn. I just try to give them what they think they want. Ask me to do you the most outlandish favor tomorrow, and I'll do it. Just don't come running to me afterwards and ask me how come.

  So we compromised on a three-day ad in the Memphis Commercial Appeal. (Judge Tip wanted to let well enough alone.) Because it developed that Mr. Springer—my friend—had come through yesterday, and sailed right on to Silver City for the night; but had idled his engine long enough at the drugstore corner to call to DeYancey Clanahan, who was getting a haircut from Mr. Wesley Bodkin next door, to tell him he saw Bonnie Dee Peacock the day before in Memphis, when he was passing through. Saw her in Woolworth's. She was trying to buy something. And had her sister with her. Mr. Springer told DeYancey and Mr. Bodkin that he raised his hat and tendered a remark to her, and she put out her tongue at him. That was enough for Mr. Springer.

  Looks like he would have come straight to me with that, but he said he didn't know where I was. Everybody else knew where I was. Everybody knows where everybody is, if they really want to find them. But I suppose if the door to the Beulah is ever pulled to, and Ada's not out cutting the grass, Mr. Springer will always assume that I'm dead.

  Well, I mailed in the ad without saying a word to the post office, and sat back with folded hands. Judge Tip and I didn't breathe a word of what we'd done. Uncle Daniel hopes too much as it is. And he'd rather get a surprise than fly. Besides, it would have hurt his feelings more than anything else I know of to discover the entire world could pick up the morning paper and read at a glance what had happened to him, without him being the one to tell it.

  Lo and behold, they printed it. I put it in the form of a poem while I was about it. It's called "Come Back to Clay."

  Bonnie Dee Ponder, come back to Clay.

  Many are tired of you being away.

  O listen to me, Bonnie Dee Ponder,

  Come back to Clay, or husband will wonder.

  Please to no more wander.

  As of even date, all is forgiven.

  Also, retroactive allowance will be given.

  House from top to bottom now spick and span,

  Come back to Clay the minute you can.

  Signed, Edna Earle Ponder.

  P.S. Do not try to write a letter,

  Just come, the sooner the better.

  Judge Tip horned in on two lines, and I don't think he helped it any. But it was better then than it may sound now. I cut it out and put it in a drawer to show my grandchildren.

  I don't believe for a minute that she saw it. Somebody with bright eyes, who did, went and told her. And here she came. Nine forty-five the next morning, in she walked at the front door. She looked just exactly the same—seventeen.

  The first I knew about it, Uncle Daniel hollered from the dining room out to me in the kitchen, "Edna Earle! Edna Earle! Make haste! She's fixing to cut my throat!"

  I'd been up for hours. I was having Narciss put up his peaches. But I came when he called, spoon and all. He'd jumped up on top of the dining room table where he'd been having a little buttermilk and crackers after breakfast.

  I said, "Why, climb down, Uncle Daniel, it's only Bonnie Dee. I thought that was what you wanted! You'll spill your milk."

  "Hallelujah!" hollers Narciss behind me. "Prayers is answered."

  Here she came, Miss Bonnie Dee, sashaying around the table with her little bone razor wide open in her hand. So Uncle Daniel climbed down, good as gold, and sat back in his chair and she got the doodads and commenced to lather his face, like it was any other day. I suppose she always shaved him first thing, and in the dining room!

  "Good evening," I says.

  "Miss Edna Earle," Bonnie Dee turns and remarks to me, "Court's opened." There she stood with that razor cocked in her little hand, sending me about my business. "Keep hands down," she pipes to Uncle Daniel, bending down toward him just as bossy, with her little old hip stuck out behind, if you could say she had hips. And when he reached for her, she went around to his other side. I believe she'd missed him.

  So I just politely turned on my heel, leaving them both there with fourteen perfect quarts of peach preserves cooling on the back porch behind me. But before I could get down the front steps—

  "Miss Edna Earle! Miss Edna Earle!" Narciss came streaking out after me. "Call Dr. Lubanks!"

  "I imagine I can handle it," I says. "What is it?"

  "It's him," says Bonnie Dee in the door behind her, on one foot.

  "Say please, then," I says, and when she did, I went back in. I thought there'd be a little tiny cut on one cheek. But there he stretched. What had happened was, poor Uncle Daniel had gotten out of the habit of knowing what to expect, and when Bonnie Dee came real close to his eye with that razor, biting her tongue as she came, he'd pitched right out of his chair—white as a ghost with lather all over his cheeks and buttermilk dotting his tie
.

  "Narciss!" I says. "Holler for the closest!"

  Grandpa considered he had a perfectly good way of getting in touch with the doctor or anybody else: a Negro on the back of a mule. There's a white man sitting at the crossroads store with a telephone and nothing to do all day but feed those birds.

  Dr. Ewbanks had this to say, after he'd come and we'd all finished a good dinner: "Daniel, you know what? You've got to use more judgment around here. You've got a racing heart."

  "Sure enough?" says Uncle Daniel. He'd been almost guarded with Dr. Ewbanks ever since Grandpa's funeral. But he smiled clear around the table at that word "heart." "You hear that, Edna Earle.? Hear that, sugar? It's my heart. Promise you won't ever go scootin' off again, then scare me that way coming back."

  And Bonnie Dee crosses her heart, but looking around at us all while she does it, like she don't know which one to cross it to, me or Uncle Daniel or Dr. Ewbanks or Narciss or the kitchen cat. Dr. Ewbanks winks at her, and when Uncle Daniel runs around the table, so pale and proud, to get a kiss from her, she says, "Aren't you 'shamed! You always do the wrong thing."

  I'll never forgive her.

  I had her retroactive allowance right there in my pocketbook—I'd been about to forget it. I replaced my napkin, marched out to the parlor, straight to Grandma's vase on the table. It's two babies pulling a swan and holding something I always thought was a diploma. It had never held anything but calling cards before. I wish you could have seen it the way I left it, stuffed and overflowing with money. You would have wondered what had happened to the parlor table.

  And here at the Beulah, coming in singing, Uncle Daniel commenced on, "Oh, my bride has come back to me. Pretty as a picture, and I'm happy beyond compare. Edna Earle got her back for me, you all, and Judge Tip Clanahan sewed it up. It's a court order, everybody. Oh, I remember how I fretted when she tried to run away."

  "So do I," I says. "You cried on my shoulder."

  "Did I?" he says. "Well, I don't have to cry any more. She's perched out there on the sofa till I get home tonight. I'll hug her and kiss her and I'll give her twenty-five dollars in her little hand. Oh, it would do you good to see her take it."

  I put my finger on his lips.

  I can't think just what they call that in Court—separate maintenance, I think it is. Only, Uncle Daniel and Bonnie Dee weren't separate as long as he maintained her, is what the difference amounted to. Old Judge Clanahan is pretty well up on things for a man of seventy-five. Uncle Daniel was so happy it was nearly more than he could stand. I sometimes feared for his heart, but he'd forgotten all about that} or she'd made him ashamed of it, one.

  He even quit coming to town so much; he'd just send for me to come calling out there if he wanted company. And when I walked in, he'd beam on me and make me look through the bead curtains into the parlor. There she'd be, Bonnie Dee Peacock, curled up on Grandma's rosewood sofa, busy in the light of the lamp—spitting on her finger, turning through the magazines, cutting the coupons out by the stack and weighting them down under the starfish, and eating the kind of fudge anybody can make.

  And after all I did, lo and behold! Poor Uncle Daniel—here he came around the Courthouse Square all by himself one day, in the middle of hot afternoon, carrying both the suitcases and wearing two hats. I was out in my flowers in front, getting a few weeds out of the ground with my little old hatchet.

  "Edna Earle!" he starts calling as soon as he sees me. "Have you got a few cold biscuits I could have before supper, or a little chicken bone I could gnaw on? Look! I've come."

  I jumped up and shook my hatchet at him. "Has she gone again?" I said. "Now she said she wouldn't—I heard her."

  "Edna Earle, she didn't go a step," says Uncle Daniel, setting down his suitcases real gentle before me and taking off both hats. He'd walked all the way in, but made it all in one trip. "She didn't break her promise," he says. "She run me off."

  And he walked in and made himself at home right away and didn't take it as hard as you'd imagine. He was so good.

  And to tell you the truth, he was happy. This time, he knew where she was. Bonnie Dee was out yonder in the big old lonesome dark house, right in the spot where he most wanted her and where he left her, and where he could think of her being—and here was himself safe with Edna Earle in the Beulah Hotel, where life goes on on all sides. I moved out a lazy drummer and gave Uncle Daniel that big front room upstairs with the Courthouse out the window—the one where he is now. Christmas came, then spring, then Court, and everything in the world was going on, and so many more people were here around than out in the country—than just Bonnie Dee, the Peppers, and the Negroes, the Negroes, the Peppers, and Bonnie Dee. He had a world more to see and talk about here, and he ate like it.

  You know, whatever's turned up, we've always enjoyed Uncle Daniel so—and he's relied on us to. In fact, he's never hesitated to enjoy himself. But Uncle Daniel never was a bit of good with nothing to talk about. For that, you need a Sistrunk. Something had better happen, for Uncle Daniel to appreciate life. And if he wasn't in the thick of things, and couldn't tell you about them when they did happen, I think he'd just pine and languish. He got that straight from Grandma. Poor Bonnie Dee: I never believed she had one whit of human curiosity. I never, in all the time she was married to Uncle Daniel, heard her say "What next?"

  About the time she ran him off is when she began ordering off after everything. The Memphis paper did that. With her name in it that one time, she tried a whole year of it, and here it came, packed with those big, black ads. (Well, her name was in again. Mercy on us.)

  We heard about the ordering from Narciss, when we saw Narciss in Bonnie Dee's pink voile dress she got married in, parading through Sistrunk's Grocery with a store-bought watermelon wrapped in her arms. Narciss said sure she was dressed up—she spent all her time now saying "Thank you!" As for Miss Bonnie Dee, her new clothes were gorgeous, and she hoped for some of those too some day, when they got holes. Narciss said there were evening dresses and street dresses and hostess dresses and brunch dresses—dresses in boxes and hanging up. Think of something to wear. Bonnie Dee had it.

  And things began to pour into that house—you'd think there wouldn't be room. Narciss came chugging into town more times a week than ever, to claim something mighty well wrapped and tied, at the post office or the freight depot, and ride it home on the back seat.

  Bonnie Dee even got a washing machine.

  "She'll find she's going to need current out there," I says one day. "She may not be prepared for that."

  "Yes'm she is," says Narciss. "She prepared. White man back agin yesterday."

  "Does she remember it's Grandpa's house she's in?" I says, and Narciss drove off in a fit of the giggles, going zigzag.

  But Bonnie Dee kept the washing machine on the front porch, just like any Peacock would be bound to do. Narciss didn't have any idea how to work any machinery but a Studebaker car. I wonder how many of those things they ever did bring under control. I told Narciss I was sure they came with directions hanging on, if there were eyes to read them.

  I imagine Bonnie Dee was making hay while the sun shone. Because sure as you're born, if she hadn't run Uncle Daniel off, he'd be there giving things away as quick as she could get them in the door, or up to the porch. She was showing how she felt about things. Poor Bonnie Dee, I sometimes do think! Of course down payments were as far as her mind went.

  And to crown it all, she got a telephone.

  I passed by the place myself, going for a quick ride before dark with Mr. Springer when he was tired (so tired I drove) and Uncle Daniel sitting up behind. Bonnie Dee was out in the yard fully to be seen, in a hunter's green velveteen two-piece dress with a stand-up collar, and Narciss was right behind her in blue, all to watch the man put it in. They waved their hands like crazy at the car going by, and then again going back, blowing dust on all that regalia. Do you think it's ever rung once?

  Of course I never asked Uncle Daniel why she ran him off, and don't
know to this day. I don't want to know.

  So Uncle Daniel was happy in the Beulah and Bonnie Dee was out yonder dressing up and playing lady with Narciss. And it got on toward summer again, but I just couldn't throw myself into it. My conscience pricked me. And pricked me and pricked me. Could I go on letting Uncle Daniel think that was the right way to be happy? Could you let your uncle?

  I don't know if you can measure love at all. But Lord knows there's a lot of it, and seems to me from all the studying I've done over Uncle Daniel—and he loves more people than you and I put together ever will—that if the main one you've set your heart on isn't speaking for your love, or is out of your reach some way, married or dead, or plain nitwitted, you've still got that love banked up somewhere. What Uncle Daniel did was just bestow his all around quick—men, women, and children. Love! There's always somebody wants it. Uncle Daniel knew that. He's smart in a way you aren't, child.

  And that time, he did it talking. In Clay he was right on hand. He took every soul I let in at the Beulah straight to his heart. "Hello, son—what's news?"—then he'd start in. Oh, the stories! He made free with everybody's—he'd tell yours and his and the Man in the Moon's. Not mine: he wouldn't dream I had one, he loves me so—but everybody else's. And things couldn't happen fast enough to suit him. I used to thank my stars this was a Courthouse town.

  Well, if holding forth is the best way you can keep alive, then do it—if you're not outrageously smart to start with and don't have things to do. But I was getting deaf!

  So one Friday morning at nine-thirty when we were sitting down to our cokes in the dining room, I made up my mind to say something. Mr. Springer happened to be here. And Eva Sistrunk had wandered in and sat down—invited herself.