The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty - Eudora Welty [286]
After all the July miles, there Jackson stood, burned twice, or who knew if it was a hundred times, facing them in the road. Delilah could see through Jackson like a haunt, it was all chimneys, all scooped out. There were soldiers with guns among the ashes, but these ashes were cold. Soon even these two ladies, who had been everywhere and once knew their way, told each other they were lost. While some soldiers looked them over, they pointed at what they couldn't see, traced gone-away spires, while a horse without his rider passed brushing his side against them and ran down a black alley softly, and did not return.
They walked here and there, sometimes over the same track, holding hands all three, like the timeless time it snowed, and white and black went to play together in hushed woods. They turned loose only to point and name.
"The State House."—"The school."
"The Blind School."—"The penitentiary!"
"The big stable."—"The Deaf-and-Dumb."
"Oh! Remember when we passed three of them, sitting on a hill?" They went on matching each other, naming and claiming ruin for ruin.
"The lunatic asylum!"—"The State House."
"No, I said that. Now where are we? That's surely Captain Jack Calloway's hitching post."
"But why would the hitching post be standing and the rest not?"
"And ours not."
"I think I should have told you, Myra—"
"Tell me now."
"Word was sent to us to get out when it was sent to the rest on Vicksburg Road. Two days' warning. I believe it was a message from General Pemberton."
"Don't worry about it now. Oh no, of course we couldn't leave," said Miss Myra. A soldier watched her in the distance, and she recited:
"There was a man in our town
And he was wondrous wise.
He jumped into a bramble bush
And scratched out both his eyes."
She stopped, looking at the soldier.
"He sent word," Miss Theo went on, "General Pemberton sent word, for us all to get out ahead of what was coming. You were in the summerhouse when it came. It was two days' warning—but I couldn't bring myself to call and tell you, Myra. I suppose I couldn't convince myself—couldn't quite believe that they meant to come and visit that destruction on us."
"Poor Theo. I could have."
"No you couldn't. I couldn't understand that message, any more than Delilah here could have. I can reproach myself now, of course, with everything." And they began to walk boldly through and boldly out of the burnt town, single file.
"Not everything, Theo. Who had Phinny? Remember?" cried Miss Myra ardently.
"Hush."
"If I hadn't had Phinny, that would've made it all right. Then Phinny wouldn't have—"
"Hush, dearest, that wasn't your baby, you know. It was Brother Benton's baby. I won't have your nonsense now." Miss Theo led the way through the ashes, marching in front. Delilah was in danger of getting left behind.
"—perished. Dear Benton. So good. Nobody else would have felt so bound," Miss Myra said.
"Not after I told him what he owed a little life! Each little life is a man's fault. I said that. Oh, who'll ever forget that awful day?"
"Benton's forgotten, if he's dead. He was so good after that too, never married."
"Stayed home, took care of his sisters. Only wanted to be forgiven."
"There has to be somebody to take care of everybody."
"I told him, he must never dream he was inflicting his sisters. That's what we're for."
"And it never would have inflicted us. We could have lived and died. Until they came."
"In at the front door on the back of a horse," said Miss Theo. "If Benton had been there!"
"I'll never know what possessed them, riding in like that," said Miss Myra almost mischievously; and Miss Theo turned.
"And you said—"
"I said something wrong," said Miss Myra quickly. "I apologize, Theo."
"No, I blame only myself. That I let you remain one hour in that house after it was doomed. I thought I was equal to it, and I proved I was, but not you."
"Oh, to my shame you saw me, dear! Why do you say it wasn't my baby?"