Free The Ponder Heart by Eudora Welty Page B

ain't comin' out twell it's over."
    "The same as ever," says DeYancey, and he smiles. "Now tell me this. What was Miss Bonnie Dee herself generally doing when there was such a thunderstorm?"
    "Me and Miss Bonnie Dee, we generally gits down together. Us hides together under Miss Edna Earle's bed when it storms. Another thing we does together, Mr. De Yancey, I occasionally plays jacks with her," says Narciss, "soon as I gits my kitchen swep out."
    And at first Bonnie Dee just couldn't stand Negroes! And I like her nerve, where she hid.
    "But that Monday," says De Yancey, "that Monday, she didn't get down under anything?"
    "She pleadin' company. So us just gits de sofa moved away from de lightnin' best we can. Ugh! I be's all by myself under de bed—listenin' to
dat
" Narciss all at once dies laughing.
    "So you can't know what happened right afterward?"
    "Sir? I just be's tellin' you what happened," says Narciss. "Boom! Boom! Rackety rack!" Narciss laughs again and the little dog barks with her.
    "Narciss! Open your eyes. Both of 'em." And DeYancey gave a whistle. Here came two little Bodkin boys, red as beets, wearing their Scout uniforms and dragging something together down the aisle.
    "DeYancey, what is that thing?" asks Judge Waite from the bench.
    "Just part of a tree," says DeYancey. He's a modest boy. I don't think it had been cut more than fifteen minutes. "You know what tree that is?" he says to Narciss.
    "Know that fig tree other side of Jericho," says Narciss. "It's ours."
    "Something specially big and loud
did
happen, Narciss, the minute after you ran under the bed, didn't it?"
    DeYancey shakes the tree real soft and says,"Your Honor, I would like to enter as evidence the top four-foot section of the little-blue fig tree the Ponders have always had in their yard, known to all, standing about ten feet away from the chimney of the house, that was struck by a bolt of lightning on Monday afternoon, June the sixteenth, before the defendant and his niece had ever got in the house good. Had they gone in the side door, they would very likely not be with us now. In a moment I'll lay this before Your Honor and the jury. Please to pass it. Look at the lightning marks and the withered leaves, and pass it quietly to your neighbor. I submit that it was the racket this little-blue fig tree made being struck, and the blinding flash of it, just ten short feet from the walls of the Ponder house, that caused the heart of Mrs. Bonnie Dee Peacock Ponder to fail in her bosom.
This
is the racket you heard, Narciss. I told you to open your eyes."
    Narciss opened her eyes and shut them again. It was the worst looking old piece of tree you ever saw. It looked like something had skinned down it with claws out. De Yancey switched it back and forth, sh! sh! under Narciss's nose and all at once she opened her mouth but not her eyes and said:
    "Storm come closer and closer. Closer and closer, twell a big ball of fire come sidlin' down de air and hit right
yonder
—" she pointed without looking right under De Yancey's feet. "Ugh. You couldn't call it pretty. I feels it clackin' my teeths and twangin' my bones. Nippin' my heels. Den I couldn't no mo' hear and couldn't no mo' see, just smell dem smokes. Ugh. Den far away comes first little sound. It comes louder and louder twell it turn into little black dog whinin'—and pull me out from under de bed." She pointed at the dog without looking and he wagged his tail at her. Then Narciss opens her eyes and laughs, and shouts, "
Yassa! Bat
what git her!
You
hit it!" And all of a sudden she sets her glasses back on and quits her laughing and you can't see a thing more of her but stove black.
    All I can say is, that was news to me.
    "And
then
you heard the company at the door," says DeYancey, and they just nod at each other.
    Old Gladney's right there and says, "Woman, are you prepared to swear on the Holy Scripture here that you know which one came in that house first—those white folks or