The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty - Eudora Welty [262]
Miss Snowdie had come to stand folding napkins too.
"I'd come and I'd go again, only I ended up at the wrong end, wouldn't you say?" He suddenly smiled, rather fiercely, but at neither woman. He wore the stiffest-starched white suit Virgie ever saw on any old gentleman; it looked fierce too—the lapels alert as ears. "Saw your mother in a pink sunbonnet. Rosy-cheeked. 'Hello!'—'I declare, King MacLain, you look to me as you ever did, strolling here in the road. You rascal.'—'Just for that, what would you rather have than anything?
I'm asking because I'm going to get it for you.'—'A swivel chair. So I can sit out front and sell crochet and peaches, if my good-for-nothing husband'll let me.' Ah, we all knew sweet old Fate, he was a sweet man among us. 'Shucks, that's too easy. Say something else. I'd have got you anything your living heart desired.'—'Well, I told you. And you mischief, I believe you.'
"Three niggers up to the house in a wagon, bang-up noon next day. Up to the door, pounding.
"'Oh, King MacLain! You've brought it so quick-like!'
"But I! I was no telling where by that time. Looked to her, I know, like I couldn't wait long enough to hear her pleasure. So bent, so bent I was on all I had to do, on what was ahead of me.
"She told me how she flew around the yard. 'Watch out, now, don't set that down a minute till I tell you where it'll go!' Had niggers carrying here, carrying there. Then she put it spang by the road, close as she could get.
"And her chair always too big for her, little heels wouldn't touch ground. It was big enough for a man, big enough for Drewsie Carmichael, 'cause it was his. I prevailed on the widow. Oh, Katie Rainey was a sight, I saw her swing her chair round many's the time, to hear me coming down the road or starting out, waving her hand to me. And sold more eggs than you'd dream. Oh, then, she could see where Fate Rainey had fallen down, and a lovely man, too; never got her the thing she wanted. I set her on a throne!"
"Mr. King, I never knew the chair came from you," Virgie said, smiling.
He looked all at once inconsolable, but Miss Snowdie shook her head.
"Have a little refreshments, sir. There's ham and potato salad—"
"Oh, is there ham?"
Virgie led him down the hall. The Negroes stood by the table with fly swatters. She laid a little piccalilli with the ham on his plate, which he held for her as long as she'd help it.
When Virgie returned to the parlor, Jinny MacLain came forward to greet her: as if their positions were reversed.
Jinny, who in childhood had seemed more knowing than her years, was in her thirties strangely childlike; was it old perversity or further tactics? She too arrived at close range, looked at the burns and scars on Virgie's hands, as Missie Spights had done, making them stigmata of something at odds in her womanhood.
"Listen. You should marry now, Virgie. Don't put it off any longer," she said, making a face, any face, at her own words. She was grimacing out of the iron mask of the married lady. It appeared urgent with her to drive everybody, even Virgie for whom she cared nothing, into the state of marriage along with her. Only then could she resume as Jinny Love Stark, her true self. She was casting her eye around the room, as if to pick Virgie some husband then and there; and her eyes rested over Virgie's head on—Virgie knew it—Ran MacLain. Virgie smiled faintly; now she felt, without warning, that two passionate people stood in this roomful, with their indifferent backs to each other.
A great many had gathered now. People sat inside and outside, listening and not listening. Young people held hands, all of them taking seats early to reserve the back row. Then some of the Mayhews carried the coffin into the parlor and placed it over the hearth on the four chairs from around the table. The wreaths were stood on edge to hide the chair legs.
"What are my children up to?" Jinny whispered hurriedly, and swept a curtain aside to expose the front yard. "My daughter has chosen today to catch lizards. She's wearing lizard