The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty Page B

when you did , Wanda Fay,” she went on, wagging her finger. “There’s a time and a place for everything. You try begging for sympathy later on, when folks has gone back about their business, and they don’t appreciate your tears then. It just tries their nerves.”
    “Wanda Fay, I’m sorry I can’t fool around here no longer,” said Bubba Chisom, handing her his empty plate. “A wrecking concern hasn’t got all that time to spare, not with all we got to do in Madrid.”
    “Come on, then,” said Sis, who had pushed herself to her feet again. “Let’s get going before the children commence to fighting and Wendell starts giving trouble again. Wendell Chisom,” she said to the littleboy, “you can take this home to your mother: this is the first and last time you’re ever going to be carried to a funeral in any charge of me.” She took Laurel’s hand and shook it. “We thought a heap of your old dad, even if he couldn’t stay on earth long enough for us to get to know him. Whatever he was, we always knew he was just plain folks.”
    Through the open front door could be seen the old grandfather already outside with his hat on, walking around looking at the trees. The pecan tree there was filled with budding leaves like green bees spaced out in a hive of light. There was something bright as well in the old man’s hatband—the other half of his round-trip ticket from Bigbee.
    “Wanda Fay,” said Mrs. Chisom, “let me ask you this: who’re you ever going to get to put in this house besides you?”
    “What are you hinting at?” said Fay with a dark look.
    “Tell you one thing, there’s room for the whole nation of us here,” Mrs. Chisom said, and stepping back into the hall she looked up the white-railed stairway. “In case we ever took a notion to move back to Mississippi.” She went outside and they heard her stepping along the front porch. “It’d make a good boarding house, if you could get your mother to come cook for ’em.”
    “Great Day in the Morning!” exclaimed Miss Tennyson Bullock.
    “Mama,” said Fay, “you know what? I’ve got a good mind this minute to jump in with you. And ride home with my folks to Texas.” Her chin was trembling as she named it. “Hear?”
    “For how long do you mean to stay?” asked Mrs. Chisom, coming to face her.
    “Just long enough.”
    “You going to rush into a trip right now?” Major Bullock asked, going to her other side.
    “Major Bullock,” she said, “I think when a person can see a free ride one way, the decision is made for them. And it just so happens I haven’t unpacked my suitcase.”
    “I haven’t heard your excuse for going yet,” said Sis. “Have you got one?”
    “I’d just like to see somebody that can talk my language, that’s my excuse. Where’s DeWitt?” Fay demanded. “You didn’t bring him.”
    “DeWitt? He’s still in Madrid. He’s been in a sull ever since you married Judge McKelva and didn’t send him a special engraved invitation to the wedding,” said Bubba.
    Fay gave them a tight smile.
    Mrs. Chisom said, “I said, ‘DeWitt, now! You’re a brother just the same as Bubba is—and Roscoe was—and it’s your place to get up out of that sull and come on with us to the funeral. You can take the wheel in Lake Charles.’ But DeWitt is DeWitt, he expects his feelings to be considered.”
    “He speaks my language,” said Fay. “I’ve got a heap to tell DeWitt.”
    “You may have to stand out in front of his house and holler it, if you do,” said Bubba. “He’s got folks’ appliances stacked over ever’ blooming inch of space. You can’t hardly get in across those vacuum cleaners and power motors and bathroom heaters and old window fans, and not a one of ’em running. Hasn’t fixed a one. He can’t hardly get out of the house and you can’t get in.”
    “I’ll scare him out of that sull,” said Fay.
    “I think that’s just what he’s waiting for, myself,” said Sis. “I wouldn’t