The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty

by Eudora Welty

  "What is it, what is it?" he shouted.

  "You got you a little goggle-eye there, son."

  Dewey, dancing with it—it was six inches long and jumping on the hook—hugged his father's neck and said, "Well—ready to go?"

  "No ... Best not to stay either too long or too little-bit. I favor tarrying awhile," said his father.

  Dewey sat back down, and gazed up at his father's solemn side-face—then followed the look his father shot across the river like a fishing line of great length, one that took hold.

  Across the river the lady looked out for the third time. She was almost out of the willows now, on the sand. She put the little shells of her hands up to her throat. What did that mean? It was the way she'd pull her collar together if she'd been given a coat around her. It was about to rain. She knew as well as they did that people were looking at her hard; but she must not feel it, Dewey felt, or surely people would have to draw their looks away, and not fasten her there. She didn't have even one word to say, this time.

  The bay tree that began moving and sighing over her head was the tall slender one Dewey had picked as his marker. With its head in a stroke of sun, it nodded like a silver flower. There was a little gentle thunder, and Dewey knew that her eyes shut, as well as he would know even in his sleep when his mother put down the windows in their house if a rain was coming. That way, she stood there and waited. And Dewey's father—whose sweat Dewey took a deep breath of as he stood up beside him—believed that the one that lady waited for was never coming over the bridge to her side, any more than she would come to his.

  Then, with a little sound like a mouse somewhere in the world, a scratch, then a patter like many mice racing—and then at last the splash on Dewey's cheek—it simply began raining. Dewey looked all around—the river was dancing.

  "Run now, son! Run for cover! It's fixing to pour down! I'll be right behind you!" shouted his father, running right past him and then jumping over the side of the bridge. Arms and legs spread wide as surprise itself, he did a grand leap to the sand. But instead of sheltering under the bridge, he kept going, and was running up the bank now, toward Royals. Dewey resigned himself to go the same way. As for the lady, if she was still where they left her, about to disappear perhaps, she was getting wet.

  They ran under the sounding trees and vines. It came down in earnest, feeling warm and cool together, a real spring shower.

  "Trot under here!" called a pre-emptory voice.

  "Miss Hattie! Forgot she was anywhere near," said Dewey's father, falling back. "Now we got to be nice to her."

  "Good evening, Lavelle."

  At that name, Dewey fell back, but his father went on. Maybe he was getting used to being called, today, and it didn't make any difference what name he got, by now.

  Something as big as a sail came out through the brambles.

  "Did you hear me?" said Miss Hattie—there she stood. "Get you both under this umbrella. I'm going straight back to town, and I'll take you with me. Can't take your fishing poles, unless you drag'em."

  "Yes'm," they said, and got under.

  Starting forward, Miss Hattie held her own umbrella, a man with her or not, branches of trees coming or not, and the harder the rain fell the more energetically she held to the handle. There were little cowlicks of damp standing up all around the black fur of her collar. Her spectacles were on her nose, and both windows had drops all over them like pearls. Miss Hattie's coat tapered up like one tent, and the umbrella spread down like another one. They marched abreast or single file, as the lay of the land allowed, but always politely close together under the umbrella, either despising paths or taking a path so fragrant and newly slick it didn't seem familiar. But there was an almost forgotten landmark of early morning, boarded twin towers of a colored church, set back closet-like in the hanging moss. Dewey thought he knew where he was. Suddenly frogs from everywhere let loose on the world, as if they'd been wound up.

  In no time, Miss Hattie brought them to the edge of the woods. Next they were at the gravel road and walking down the middle of it. The turn was coming where Royals could be seen spread out from Baptist church to schoolhouse.

  Dewey, keeping watch around Miss Hattie's skirt, saw the lady appear in the distance behind them, running like a ghost across the road in the shining rain—shining, for the sun had looked through.

  "The Devil is beating his wife," said Miss Hattie in a professional voice.

  There ran the figure that the rain sheathed in a spinning cocoon of light—as if it ran in peril. It was cutting across Mr. Jep Royal's yard, where the Royals were all sitting inside the house and some cows as black as blackbirds came close and watched her go.

  "Look at that, to the side," said Miss Hattie suddenly. "Who's that, young eyes?"

  Dewey looked shyly under her forward sleeve and asked his father, "Reckon it's the lady?"

  "Well, call her," said Miss Hattie. "Whoever she is, she can trot under this umbrella just as easy as we can. It's good size."

  "La-dy!"

  That was Dewey, hollering.

  They stood and waited for the lady to come across the pasture, though his father looked very black, trapped under the umbrella. Had Miss Hattie looked at him, that showed what his name was and how he got it, looking like thunder.

  But the lady, now opposite, in a whole field of falling light, was all but standing still. Starting here, starting there, wavering, retreating, she made no headway at all. Then abruptly she disappeared into the Royals' pear orchard—this time for good.

  "Maybe somebody new has escaped from the lunatic asylum," said Miss Hattie. "March."

  On they went in the rain.

  Opal Purcell slipped sideways through the elderberry bushes at the creek bank, with both hands laid, like a hat, on top of her head, and waited for them.

  "Why, it's only my own niece," said Miss Hattie. "Trot under here, Opal. How do you like this rain?"

  "Hey, Aunt Hat. Hey," said Opal to Dewey.

  She was grown. Sometimes she waited on people in the Seed & Feed. She was plump as ever. She didn't look far enough around her aunt to speak to his father.

  Miss Hattie touched Opal on the head. "Has it rained that much?" she said in a gratified way.

  "I thought I saw you in the post office, Aunt Hat," objected Opal.

  "I expect you did. I had the mail to tie up. I'm a fast worker when the case demands."

  They were all compelled, of course, to keep up with Miss Hattie and stay with her and be company all the way back to town. Her black cotton umbrella lacked very little of being big enough for four, but it lacked some. Dewey gave Opal his place.

  He marched ahead of them, still in step with his father, but out in the open rain, with his fish now let up high on its pole behind him. He felt the welcome plastering down of his hair on his forehead, and the relentless way the raindrops hit and bounced on him.

  Opal Purcell had a look, to Dewey, as if she didn't know whether she was getting wet or not. It was his father's fishing look. And Miss Hattie's rainmaking look. He was the only one—out here in the rain itself—that didn't have it.

  Like a pretty lady's hand, to tilt his face up a little and make him smile, deep satisfaction, almost love came down and touched him.

  "Miss Hattie," he turned walking and said over his shoulder, "I caught me a goggle-eye perch back yonder, see him? I wish I could give him to you—for your supper!"

  "You good and wet, honey?" she said back, marching there in the middle.

  The brightest thing in Royals—rain was the loudest, on all the tin roofs—was the empty school bus drawn up under the shed of the filling station. The movie house, high up on its posts, was magnesia-bottle blue. Three red hens waited on the porch. Dewey's and Opal's eyes together looked out of their corners at the "Coming Saturday" poster of the charging white horse. But Miss Hattie didn't dismiss them at the movie house.

  They passed the Baptist church getting red as a rose, and the Methodist church getting streaky. In the mi
ddle of the first crossing, the water tank stood and they walked under; water from its bottom, black and cold as ice, fell a drop for each head as always. And they passed along the gin, which alone would sleep the spring out. All around were the well-known ditches and little gullies; there were the chinaberry trees, and some Negroes and some dogs underneath them; but it all looked like some different place to Dewey—not Royals. There was a line of faces under the roof of the long store porch, but they looked, white and black, like the faces of new people. Nevertheless, all spoke to Miss Hattie, Blackie, Opal, and Dewey by name; and from their umbrella—out in the middle of the road, where it was coming down hardest—Miss Hattie did the speaking back.

  "It's the beginning!" she called. "I'd a heap rather see it come this way than in torrents!"

  "We're real proud of you, Miss Hattie!"

  "You're still a credit to Royals, Miss Hattie!"

  "Don't you drown yourself out there!"

  "Oh, I won't," said Miss Hattie.

  At the bank corner, small spotty pigs belonging to nobody, with snouts as long as corncobs, raced out in a company like clowns with the Circus, and ran with Dewey and Miss Hattie and all, for the rest of the way. There was one more block, and that was where the post office was. Also the Seed & Feed, and the schoolhouse beyond, and the Stave Mill Road; and also home was that way.

  "Well, good-by, everybody," said Miss Hattie, arrived at the post office tree.

  Dewey's father—the blackest-browed Coker of the family, much blacker-browed than Uncle Lavelle, who had run off a long time ago, by Dewey's reckoning—bowed himself out backward from under the umbrella and straightened up in the rain.

  "Much obliged for the favor, Miss Hattie," he said. With a reminding hand he turned over his fishing pole to Dewey, and was gone.

  "Thank you, ma'am, I enjoyed myself," said Dewey.

  "You're wet as a drowned rat," said Miss Hattie admiringly.

  Up beyond, the schoolhouse grew dim behind its silver yard. The bell mounted at the gate was making the sound of a bucket filling.

  "I'll leave you with the umbrella, Opal. Opal, run home," said Miss Hattie, pointing her finger at Opal's chest, "and put down the south windows, and bring in the quilts and dry them out again before the fire. I can't tell you why I forgot clean about my own windows. You might stand on a chair and find a real pretty quart of snapbeans and put them on with that little piece of meat out of the safe. Run now. Where've you been?"

  "Nowheres.—Hunting poke salad," said Opal, making a little face twice. She had wet cheeks, and there was a blue violet in her dress, hanging down from a buttonhole, and no coat on her back of any kind.

  "Then dry yourself," said Miss Hattie. "What's that?"

  "It's the train whistle," said Dewey.

  Far down, the mail train crossed the three long trestles over Little Muscadine swamp like knocking three knocks at the door, and blew its whistle again through the rain.

  Miss Hattie never let her powers interfere with mail time, or mail time interfere with her powers. She had everything worked out. She pulled open the door of her automobile, right there. There on the back seat was her mail sack, ready to go.

  Miss Hattie lived next door—where Opal had now gone inside—and only used her car between here and the station; it stayed under the post office tree. Some day old Opal was going to take that car, and ride away. Miss Hattie climbed up inside.

  The car roared and took a leap out into the rain. At the corner it turned, looking two stories high, swinging wide as Miss Hattie banked her curve, with a lean of her whole self deep to the right. She made it. Then she sped on the diagonal to the bottom of the hill and pulled up at the station just in time for Mr. Frierson to run out in his suspenders and hang the mail as the train rushed through. It hooked the old sack and flung off the new to Royals.

  The rain slacked just a little on Miss Hattie while she hauled the mail uphill. Dewey stamped up the post office runway by her side to help her carry it in—the post office used to be a stable. He held the door open, they went inside, and the rain slammed down behind them.

  "Dewey Coker?"

  "Ma'am?"

  "Why aren't you in school?"

  In a sudden moment she dropped the sack and rubbed his head—just any old way—with something out of her purse; it might have been a dinner napkin. He rubbed cornbread crumbs as sharp as rocks out of his eye. Across the road, while this drying was happening, a wonderful white mule that had gotten into the cemetery and rolled himself around till he was green and white like a marble monument, got up to his feet and shivered and shook the raindrops everywhere.

  "I may can still go," he said dreamily. "Excalibur—"

  "Nonsense! Don't you see that rain?" cried Miss Hattie. "You'll stay here in this post office till I tell you."

  The post office inside was a long bare room that looked and smelled like a covered bridge, with only a little light at the other end where Miss Hattie's window was. Dewey had never stayed inside here more than a minute at a time, in his life.

  "You make yourself at home," said Miss Hattie, and disappeared into the back.

  Dewey stood the poles by the front door and kept his fish in his hand on the bit of line, while Miss Hattie put up the mail. After she had put it all up as she saw fit, then she gave it out: pretty soon here came everybody. There was a lot of conversation through the window.

  "Sure is a treat, Miss Hattie! Only wish it didn't have to stop."

  "It looks like a gully washer to me, Miss Hat!"

  "It's a beginning," was all Miss Hattie would say. "I'll go back out there tomorrow, if I have the time, and if I live and don't nothing happen, and do some more on it. But depends on the size of the mail."

  And someone leaned down and said to Dewey, "Hi, Dewey! I saw you! And what was you up to this evening?"

  After everybody had shed their old letters and papers on the floor and tracked out, there would have been silence everywhere but for the bombardment on the roof. Miss Hattie still didn't come out of her little room back there, of which Dewey could see nothing but the reared-back honeycomb of her desk with nine letters in the holes.

  Out here, motes danced lazily as summer flies in the running green light of the cracks in the walls. The hole of a missing stovepipe high up was blocked with a bouquet of old newspapers, yellow as roses. It was a little chilly. It smelled of rain, of fish, of pocket money and pockets. Whether the lonely dangling light was turned on or off it was hard to see. Its bulb hung down fierce in a little mask like a biting dog.

  On the high table against the wall there was an ink well and a pen, as in a school desk, and an old yellow blotter limp as biscuit dough. Reaching tall, he rounded up the pen and with a great deal of the ink drew a picture on the blotter. He drew his fish. He gave it an eye and then mailed it through the slot to Miss Hattie.

  Presently he hung his chin on the little ledge to her window, to see if she got it.

  Miss Hattie was asleep in her rocking chair. She was sitting up with her head inclined, beside her little gas stove. She had laid away her hat, and there was a good weight to her hair, which was shaped and colored like the school bell. She looked noble, as if waiting to have the headsman chop off her head. All was quietness itself. For the rain had stopped. The only sound was the peeping of baby chicks from the parcel post at her feet.

  "Can I go now?" he hollered.

  "Mercy!" she exclaimed at once. "Did it bite? Nothing for you today! Who's that? I wasn't asleep! Whose face is that smiling at me? For pity's sakes!" She jumped up and shook her dress—some leaves fell out. Then she came to the window and said through it, "You want to go leave me? Run then! Because if you dream it's stopped, child, I won't be surprised a bit if it don't turn around and come back."

  At that moment the post office shook with thunder, as if horses ran right through it.

  Miss Hattie came to the door behind him. He slid down the runway with all he had. She remained there looking out, nodding a bit and speaking a few word
s to herself. All she had to say to him was "Trot!"

  It was already coming down again, with the sound of making up for the lapse that had just happened. As Dewey began to run, he caught a glimpse of a patchwork quilt going like a camel through the yard next door toward Miss Hattie's house. He supposed Opal was under it. Fifteen years later it occurred to him it had very likely been Opal in the woods.

  Just in time, he caught and climbed inside the rolling school bus with the children in it, and rode home after all with the others, a sort of hero.

  After the bus put him down, he ran cutting across under the charred pines. The big sky-blue violets his mother loved were blooming, wet as cheeks. Pear trees were all but in bloom under the purple sky. Branches were being jogged with the rush and commotion of birds. The Cokers' patch of mustard that had gone to seed shone like gold from here. Dewey ran under the last drops, through the hooraying mud of the pasture, and saw the corrugations of their roof shining across it like a fresh pan of cornbread sticks. His father was off at a distance, on his knees—back at mending the fences. Minnie Lee, Sue, and Annie Bess were ready for Dewey and came flocking from the door, with the baby behind on all fours. None of them could hope to waylay him.

  His mother stood in the back lot. Behind her, blue and white, her morning wash hung to the ground, as wet as clouds. She stood with a switch extended most strictly over the head of the silky calf that drank from the old brown cow—as though this evening she knighted it.

  "Whose calf will that be? Mine?" he cried out to her. It was to make her turn, but this time, he thought, her answer would be yes.

  "You have to ask your pa, son."

  "Why do you always tell me the same thing? Mama!"

  Arm straight before him, he extended toward her dear face his fish—still shining a little, held up by its tail, its eye and its mouth as agape as any big fish's. She turned.

  "Get away from me!" she shrieked. "You and your pa! Both of you get the sight of you clear away!" She struck with her little green switch, fanning drops of milk and light. "Get in the house. Oh! If I haven't had enough out of you!"