Free Losing Battles by Eudora Welty Page A

for, if and when and how soon. If she don’t starve in the meantime.”
    “If you used up your warrant for your ring, what’d you have left over for that wedding dress?” asked Aunt Cleo. “I only ask because I’m curious.”
    “It’s homemade.”
    “You just can’t see how much sewing there is to it, because of all that baby in her lap,” Aunt Nanny said.
    “Just a minute! If it tore!” Gloria cautioned two little girls who had come up from either side to stare and were now holding her sleeves and the hem of her skirt between their fingers. “I ratheryou stood back a distance.” Her short puff sleeves were ironed flat into peaks stuck flat together and canvas-stiff, almost as if they were intended to be little wings.
    “Full, full skirt and deep, deep hem,” said Ella Fay, bumping through them on her way into the house now. “Organdy and insertion, flower-petal sleeves, and a ribbon-rose over the stomach above the sash. That’s the kind of wedding dress I want.”
    “You could almost wear hers. I can see now there’s a lots of material going to waste in that,” said Aunt Cleo. “Despite that baby taking up the most of her lap.” She laughed. “So you was here, ready, and waiting all this time?” she asked Gloria. “Well, where’d you hold the wedding? Your church right on the road? Or do you all worship off in the woods somewhere?”
    “I’m surprised you didn’t see Banner flying by on your way here, Sister Cleo,” said Uncle Curtis. “Didn’t Noah Webster show you which church was ours?”
    “I keep my eyes on the driver,” she said.
    “Listen, Grandpa Vaughn downed enough trees himself to raise Damascus Church. Hewed them pews out of solid cedar, and the pulpit is all one tree. And in case you’re about to tell us you still don’t remember it, you might remember the cemetery on beyond—it’s bigger than Foxtown’s got to this day.”
    “How many came to the wedding? Church fill up to the back?”
    “Stand up now and count!” Miss Beulah cried, clattering some pans together. “And you can add on the ones still to come today—Nathan, bless his heart, Fay and Homer Champion, Brother Bethune—”
    “And Jack!” they cried.
    “I’d call it a fair crowd,” said Uncle Curtis. “I seen Aycock Comfort propped in a window—that’s what room we had left for a Methodist.”
    “Blessed Grandpa joined those two blushing children for life in Damascus Church on a Sunday evening in spring,” said Aunt Birdie. “If I forget everything else alive, I’ll remember that wedding, for the way I cried.”
    “Oh, Grandpa Vaughn out-delivered himself! Already the strictest marrier that ever lived—and the prayer he made alone was the fullest you ever heard. The advice he handed down by itself was a mile long!” cried Uncle Noah Webster. “It would have wilted down any bride and groom but the most sturdy.”
    “And Curly Stovall come down the aisle and clapped his hand on Jack’s shoulder in the middle of it, I’ve already guessed,” said Aunt Cleo.
    “Sister Cleo! Curly Stovall would not dare, would not dare to walk in Damascus Church with Grandpa Vaughn standing up in his long beard and looking at him over the Bible!” Aunt Birdie cried. “And Curly ain’t even a Baptist.”
    “Not even for the scene it’d make?” she asked them.
    Miss Beulah marched in on her. “I just came to be told the name of the church you go to,” she said.
    “Defeated Creek Church of the Assembly of God. One mile south of Piney.”
    “Never heard of a single piece of it.” She about-faced and marched out again.
    “It’s after we’re back at the house here, Sister Cleo, cooling off with Beulah’s lemonade, and seeing the sun go down, that old Curly sneaks up the road on Jack for the second time. Says Curly, ‘Eight o’clock in the morning by the strike of the courthouse clock, they’ll be calling your name in Ludlow!’ And just to be sure Jack will answer, he gets him thrown in the Ludlow