Losing Battles by Eudora Welty Page A

Beulah,” said Uncle Noah Webster. “And was that little rooster martin loud!”
    “Hen never budged, either,” Uncle Percy whispered. “Not for something as unparticular as a wagon-ride to Ludlow and a courthouse trial and the same ride home again. She set right through it all.”
    “Don’t you know she got hungry?” cried Aunt Nanny.
    “She hatched ’em, too, later on,” said Aunt Birdie. “It was Ora’s cat that finally made a meal of ’em.”
    “Well, they couldn’t blame Jack for that!” Aunt Beck said. “He was too far from us all to save baby birds by that time!”
    “It’s money they worry about in town,” said Uncle Curtis.
    “Curly had ’em sized up! He give a song and dance about how poor he stayed, never getting paid like he ought by the poor farmers, then to lose his safe, only to get it back full of chinaberries. I’m surprised he didn’t show ’em the chinaberries,” Uncle Percy said. “But finally he’s through and it’s Jack’s turn.” Uncle Percy lifted his hand for quiet and went into falsetto. “ ‘I’m going to question this boy myself,’ Judge Moody says, and bangs till the family’s all in their seats and the dogs from Banner gives up on their barking. Then says to Jack, ‘All right, you heard the charge. Now did you do all that to Marshal Stovall?’
    “ ‘Yes sir, and a little bit more.’
    “ ‘Well, what did you do it for?’
    “Jack says, ‘Well, it’s because he’s aggravating.’
    “Judge Moody cracks down with the gavel. ‘No clapping and stamping in the courtroom while I’m on the bench!’ he calls to the congregation. Try and remember you all are in Ludlow, and in this room on sufferance,’ he says, and asks Jack, ‘What’s “aggravating” mean in your book? Give me one example,’ he says.
    “ ‘He’d just have to show you himself,’ says Jack.”
    “Well, Jack’s a bashful boy,” said Aunt Birdie loyally.
    “Sure-enough?”
    “You’d been bashful too, Sister Cleo,” said Aunt Beck, “if you’d been a boy no more than eighteen years old and just got married the night before by Grandpa Vaughn to your schoolteacher, and woke up in jail in Ludlow to be tried by a hard-to-please stranger sitting over you and in front of all your aching family and a pretty good helping of the public. And if you was the only one of ’em standing up.”
    “What’s the trouble, couldn’t Jack put up a good story?” Aunt Cleo asked. “That’s what he’s up there for.”
    “He’s twenty-one country-miles from home!” Uncle Noah Webster cried.
    Miss Beulah came out drying her hands on her apron. “And we knew full well he wasn’t going to stand up in front of the public and tell ’em any of our business. Wasn’t going to call his sister’s name, even! Though she did keep standing up and setting down and standing up again, waving at him, like she’s trying to tell him go ahead.”
    “Felt cheated, didn’t she?” grinned Aunt Nanny.
    “Just hungering to get up there herself and cry for a crowd of strangers!” Miss Beulah marched off again.
    “Vaughn felt mighty put-upon too. Jack had told us the best place for Vaughn Renfro was setting on the steps outside and holding the dogs. Vaughn was there, boo-hooing,” Aunt Nanny said with a grin.
    “Judge Moody says, ‘Hush that crying! Why aren’t these children in school?’ Then he asks Jack how many times along the way did he drop that safe, and Jack says he hadn’t kept count. ‘I just dropped it to mop my neck, like you’re mopping yours now, sir,’ he says. ‘I reckon it’s even hotter in Ludlow than it is in Banner.’ ”
    “Of course it was! I could see it rolling off of both of ’em,” said Aunt Birdie.
    “And I was sweating right along with ’em! Pouring! Oh, I wouldn’t live in a paved town for all you’d give me!” cried Aunt Nanny.
    “And the flies!” Aunt Birdie said.
    “Judge Moody says to Jack, ‘The storekeeper aggravated you, so you carried off