The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty - Eudora Welty [223]
"All right, I said to Old Man Moody while ago, look. Jinny was unfaithful to Ran—that's the up-and-down of it. There you have what it's all about. That's the brunt of it. Face it, I told Dave Moody. Like Lizzie Stark does, she's brave. Though she's seven miles south of here, Snowdie MacLain's another brave one. Poor Billy Texas Spights is beyond knowing. You're just a seed and feed man and the marshal here, you don't form opinions enough to suit me.
"Jinny was never scared of the Devil himself as a growing girl, so she certainly shouldn't be now, she's twenty-five. She's Lizzie's own. And Woodrow Spights won't ever quit at the bank, will he? It's so much cleaner than the store, and he'll get the store too. So it's up to you, Ran, looks like.
"And I'd go back to my lawful spouse!" Miss Perdita puts both hands on the bars of my cage and raises her voice. "You or I or the Man in the Moon got no business sleeping in that little hot upstairs room with a western exposure at Miss Francine Murphy's for all the pride on earth, not in August! And even if it is the house you grew up in, it's a different room. And listen here to me. Don't you ruin a country girl in the bargain. Make what you will of that."
She backs away leaving her hands out, pulling-like at the air, like I'm floating on my ear suspended, hypnotized, and she can leave. But she just goes as far as the next window—Woody Spights'.
I went back to the room I had at Miss Francine Murphy's. Father, it used to be the trunk room. It had Mother's pieced quilts and her wedding dress and all the terrible accumulation of a long time you wouldn't have known about.
After work I would cut the grass or something in Miss Francine's backyard so it would be cooler for Bella. It kept the fleas away from her to some extent. It didn't do much good. The heat held on.
I tried going to Jinny's a little later in the afternoon. The men were playing, still playing croquet with a little girl, and the women had taken off to themselves, on the porch. I tried without Maideen.
It was the long Mississippi evening, the waiting till it was cool enough to eat. The voice of Miss Lizzie carried. Like the hum of the gin, it was there, but the evening was still quiet, still very hot and quiet.
Somebody called to me, "You're dead on Woody." It was just a little Williams girl in pigtails.
I may have answered with a joke. I felt light-headed, not serious at all, really doing it for a child when I lifted my mallet—the one with the red band that had always been mine. But I brought Woody Spights down with it. He toppled and shook the ground. I felt the air rush up. Then I beat on him. I went over his whole length, and cracked his head apart with that soft girl's hair and all the ideas, beat on him without stopping till every bone, all the way down to the numerous little bones in the foot, was cracked in two. I didn't have done with Woody Spights till then. And I proved the male human body—it has a too positive, too special shape, you know, not to be hurt—it could be finished up pretty fast. It just takes one good loud blow after another—Jinny should be taught that.
I looked at Woodrow down there. And his blue eyes were just as unharmed. Just as unharmed as bubbles a child blows, the most impervious things—you've seen grass blades go through bubbles and they still reflect the world, give it back unbroken. Woodrow Spights I declare was dead. "Now you watch," he said.
He spoke with no sign of pain. Just that edge of competition was in his voice. He was ever the most ambitious fool. To me ambition's always been a mystery, but now it was his try to deceive us—me and him both. I didn't know how it could open again, the broken jawbone of Woody Spights, but it could. I heard him say, "Now you watch."
He was dead on the ruined grass. But he had risen up. Just to call