Losing Battles Read Online Free PDF Page A

barn behind, did the barking all byhimself now. His appeals, appeals, appeals rang out without stopping.
    “I guess,” said the new Aunt Cleo, “I guess I’m waiting for somebody to tell me what the welcome for Jack Renfro is all about! What’s he done that’s so much more than all these big grown uncles and boy cousins or even his cripple daddy ever done? When did he leave home, and if he ain’t let you have a card from him, what makes you so sure he’s coming back today? And what’s his wife got her wedding dress on for?”
    Aunt Cleo had been left the school chair to sit on. She leaned her elbow on the writing-arm and crossed her feet.
    Then the uncles stretched and came strolling back to the house. Uncle Noah Webster skidded across the porch floor, riding his splint chair turned backwards, so as to sit at her elbow.
    “If you don’t know nothing to start with, I don’t reckon we could tell you all that in a hundred years, Sister Cleo,” said Aunt Birdie. “I’m scared Jack’d get here before we was through.”
    “Take a chance,” she said.
    There was not a breath of air. But all the heart-shaped leaves on the big bois d’arc tree by the house were as continually on the spin as if they were hung on threads. And whirly-winds of dust marched, like scatterbrained people, up and down the farm track, or pegged across the fields, popped off into nowhere.
    “Can’t she wait till Brother Bethune gets here for dinner and tells it to us all at the table? Surely he’ll weave it into the family history,” pleaded Aunt Beck.
    “This’ll be his first go at us,” Uncle Percy reminded her.
    “If he shows up as poor in comparison to Grandpa Vaughn at the reunion as he shows up in the pulpit on Second Sundays, I’ll feel like he won’t even earn his dinner,” said Uncle Curtis.
    “Brother Bethune is going to do the best he can, and we all enjoy the sound of his voice,” said Aunt Birdie. “Still, his own part in this story’s been fairly stingy. I wouldn’t put it past a preacher like him to just leave out what he wasn’t in on.”
    “What I mainly want to hear is what they sent Jack to the pen for,” said Aunt Cleo.
    Miss Beulah marched right away from them and in a moment her set of bangs and clatters came out of the kitchen.
    Then a mockingbird pinwheeled, singing, to the peak of the barn roof. After moping and moulting all summer, he’d mounted tohis old perch. He began letting loose for all he was worth, singing the two sides of a fight.
    Their voices went on with his—some like pans clanking on the stove, some like chains dropping into buckets, some like the pigeons in the barn, some like roosters in the morning, some like the evening song of katydids, making a chorus. The mourning dove’s voice was Aunt Beck, the five-year-old child’s was Aunt Birdie. But finally Aunt Nanny’s fat-lady’s voice prevailed: “Let Percy tell! His voice is so frail, getting frailer. Let him show how long can he last.”
    Only at the last minute did Aunt Cleo cry out, “Is it long?”

    “Well, crops was laid by one more year. Time for the children to all be swallowed up in school,” Uncle Percy’s thready voice had already begun. “We can be sure that Grandpa Vaughn had started ’em off good, praying over ’em good and long here at the table, and they all left good and merry, fresh, clean and bright. Jack’s on his best behavior. Drove ’em off in the school bus, got ’em all there a-shrieking, ran and shot two or three dozen basketball goals without a miss, hung on the oak bough while Vaughn counted to a hundred out loud, and when it’s time to pledge allegiance he run up the flag and led the salute, and then come in and killed all the summer flies while the teacher was still getting started. That’s from Etoyle.”
    “But it don’t take Ella Fay long!” prompted Aunt Nanny.
    “Crammed in at her desk, she took a strong notion for candy,” Uncle Percy quavered. “So when the new teacher