Delta Wedding by Eudora Welty Read Free Book Online Page A

eyes shut against what was too bright. Uncle George would be coming some time today—she would be glad. He would be sweet to her, sweet to Troy. In a way, their same old way, the family were leaving any sweetness, any celebration and good wishing, to Uncle George. They had said nothing very tender or final to her yet; hardly anything at all excited, even, about the marriage—beyond her father's carrying on, that went without saying. They had put it off, she guessed, sighing. This was too much in cotton-picking time, that was all—or else they still had hope that she would not do this to them. Dabney smiled again—she smiled as often as tears, once started, would fall—her flickering eyes on India shaking her switch like a wand at a scampering rabbit. Uncle George would come and say something just right—or rather he would come and not say any special thing at all, just show them the champagne he brought for the wedding night, while Shelley, perhaps, was coaxed to cry—and they would not fret or worry or hold back any longer. Dabney herself would then be entirely happy.
    "Has James's Bayou really got a whirlpool in the middle of it?" cried India intensely.
    "No, India, always no, but
you
stay out of it." They rode into the tarnished light of a swampy place.
    "But has it really got a ghost? Everybody knows it has."
    "Then don't ask me every time. Just so she won't cry for my wedding, that's all I ask!" Dabney sighed.
    "I'd love her to cry for me," India said luringly. "Cry and cry."
    Just then, directly in front of them, Man-Son, one of the Negroes, raised his hat. How strange—he should be picking cotton, thought Dabney. But everything seemed to be happening strangely, some special way, now. Nodding sternly to Man-Son, she remembered perfectly a certain morning away back; of course, it was then she had discovered in Uncle George one first point where he differed from the other Fairchilds, and learned that one human being can differ, very excitingly, from another. As if everything had waited for her to be about to marry, for her to fall in love, it seemed to her that all, even memories and dreams, grew clear....
    ***
    It was a day in childhood, they were living at the Grove. She had wandered off—no older than India now—and had seen George come on a small scuffle, a scuffle with a knife, out in the woods—right here. George, thin, lanky, exultant, "wild," they said smilingly, had been down at the Grove from school that summer. Two of their little Negroes had flown at each other with extraordinary intensity here on the bank of the bayou. It was in the bright sun, in front of the cypress shadows. At the jerk-back of a little wrist, suddenly a knife let loose and seemed to fling itself in the air. Uncle George and Uncle Denis (who was killed the next year in the war) had just come out of the bayou, naked, so wet they shone in the sun, wet light hair hanging over their foreheads just alike, and they were stamping their feet, flinging out their arms, starting to wrestle and play, and Uncle George reached up and caught the knife. "I'll be damned," he said (at that she thought he was wounded) and turning, rushed in among the thrashing legs and arms. Uncle Denis walked off, slipping into his long-tailed shirt, just melted away into the light, laughing. Uncle George grabbed the little Negro that wanted to run, and pinned down the little Negro that was hollering. Somehow he held one, said "Hand me that," and tied up the other, tearing up his own shirt. He used his teeth and the Negroes' knife, and the young fighters were both as still as mice, though he said something to himself now and then.
    It was a big knife—she was sure it was as big as the one Troy could pull out now. There was blood on the sunny ground. Uncle George cussed the little Negro for being cut like that. The other little Negro sat up all quiet and leaned over and looked at all Uncle George was doing, and in the middle of