The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty - Eudora Welty [224]
And I should have called out then—All is disgrace! Human beings' cries could swell if locusts' could, in the last of evening like this, and cross the grass in a backyard, if only they enough of them cried. At our feet the shadows faded out light into no shadows left and the locusts sang in long waves, O-E, O-E, and the gin ran on. Our grass in August is like the floor of the sea, and we walk on it slowly playing, and the sky turns green before dark, Father, as you know. The sweat ran over my back and down my arms and legs, branching, like an upside-down tree.
Then, "You all come in!" They were calling from the porch—the well-known lamps suddenly all went on. They called us in their calling women's voices, of disguise, all but Jinny. "Fools, you're playing in the dark!" she said. "Supper's ready, if anybody cares."
The bright porch across the dark was like a boat on the river to me; an excursion boat I wasn't going on. I was going to Miss Francine Murphy's, as everybody knew.
Each evening to avoid Miss Francine and the three school teachers, I ran through the porch and hall both like a man through a burning building. In the backyard, with fig trees black, otherwise moonlit, Bella opened her eyes and looked at me. Her eyes both showed the moon. If she drank water, she vomited it up—yet she went with effort to her pan and drank again, for me. I held her. Poor Bella. I thought she suffered from a tumor, and stayed with her most of the night.
Mother said, Son, I was glad to see you but I noticed that old pistol of your father's in your nice coat pocket, what do you want with that? Your father never cared for it, went off and left it. Not any robbers coming to the Morgana bank that I know of. Son, if you'd just saved your money you could take a little trip to the coast. I'd go with you. They always have a breeze at Gulf port, nearly always.
Where the driveway ends at Jinny's, there are Spanish daggers and the bare front yard with the forked tree with the seat around it—like some old playground of a consolidated school, with the school back out of sight. Just the sharp, overgrown Spanish daggers, and the spider-webs draped over them like clothes-rags. You can go under trees to the house by going all around the yard and opening the old gate by the summerhouse. Somewhere back in the shade there's a statue from Morgan days, of a dancing girl with her finger to her chin, all pockmarked, with some initials on her legs.
Maideen liked the statue but she said, "Are you taking me back in? I thought maybe now you weren't going to."
I saw my hand on the gate and said, "Now you wait. I've lost a button." I held out my sleeve to Maideen. All at once I felt so unlike myself I was ready to shed tears.
"A button? Why, I'll sew you one on, if you come on and take me home," Maideen said. That's what I wanted her to say, but she touched my sleeve. A chameleon ran up a leaf, and held there panting. "Then Mama can meet you. She'd be glad to have you stay to supper."
I unlatched the little old gate. I caught a whiff of the sour pears on the ground, the smell of August. I'd never told Maideen I was coming to supper, at any time, or would see her mama, of course; but also I kept forgetting about the old ways, the eternal politeness of the people you hope not to know.
"Oh, Jinny can sew it on now," I said.
"Oh, I can?" Jinny said. She'd of course been listening all the time from the summerhouse. She came out, alone, with the old broken wicker basket full of speckled pears. She didn't say go back and shut the gate.
I carried the rolling basket for her and we went ahead of Maideen but I knew she was coming behind; she wouldn't know very well how not to. There in the flower beds walked the same robins. The sprinkler dripped now. Once again we went into the house by the back door. Our hands touched. We had stepped on Tellies patch of mint. The yellow cat was waiting to go in with us, the door handle