The Ponder Heart (12 page)

"
Questions
/" says Uncle Daniel. "Who you think I am?"

"Wait, Daniel Ponder," says the Judge. "You've been here enough times and sat through enough sessions of Court to know how it's done as well as I do. You got to let somebody ask you the questions before you can do the talking. I say so."

"Then I choose this gentleman here," says Uncle Daniel—pointing straight at old Gladney, nearly in his open mouth. "I've had my eye on him—he's up and coming. Been at it harder than anybody and I give him a little pat on the back for it. DeYancey's spent most of his time today trying to hold us all down. Run home, DeYancey. Give your grandfather my love."

The judge just made a few signs with his hands, and threw himself back in his chair.

There it came: "Mr. Daniel Ponder!"

Uncle Daniel listened to his name, and just beamed. I wish you could have seen him then, when he walked up there and faced us. He could always show his pleasure so! Round and pink and grand, and beaming out everywhere in his sparkling-white suit. Nobody'd still have a coat on in weather like this—you'd have to be Uncle Daniel, or a candidate.

They let Uncle Daniel hold up his hand and swear, and old Gladney loped over to him, and eyed him, looking up. Uncle Daniel didn't care to sit down. He'd always rather talk standing up.

"Mr. Ponder?"

And Uncle Daniel looked over his shoulder for Grandpa. Nobody had ever called him Mr. Ponder in his life. He was thrilled from the start.

"Mr. Ponder, what is your calling or occupation?" says old Gladney. "Your line of work?"

"Work?" says Uncle Daniel, looking all around, thrilled. "What would I want to work for? I'm rich as Croesus. My father Mr. Sam Ponder left me more than I'd ever know what to do with."

Old Gladney keeps on. "Did you love your wife, Mr. Ponder? I refer to your second wife, Mrs. Bonnie Dee."

"Yes indeed. Oh, I should say I did. You would have loved her too, Mr. Gladney, if you could have had the chance to know her," says poor Uncle Daniel.

"You loved Bonnie Dee," says old Gladney, still keeping on. "You expect the Court to believe that?"

"They've heard it before," Uncle Daniel said, "every one of 'em. She wasn't any bigger than a minute—and pretty as a doll. And a natural-born barber. I'll never find another one like her." But for a second his poor eye wandered.

"And did your wife Bonnie Dee return your love?" asks Gladney.

"Well now, that depended, sir," says poor Uncle Daniel, with the best will in the world. "Edna Earle could have told you all about that. She kept tabs on it." The whole thing might have come out then and there, the whole financial story of the Ponder family. Of course everybody in the room was familiar with it, but nobody wanted to
hear
it.

"On Monday, the sixteenth of June, Mr. Ponder, would you say she loved you?" says old Gladney. "Or loved you not?" He laughed.

They had to recall to Uncle Daniel the day that was—he's the worst person in town on dates and figures—but he said, "Oh, yes indeed, sir. She loved me then."

"Well, Mr. Ponder! If you loved your wife as you declare, and thought there was nobody like her, and your wife—as it depended or not—loved you, and on June the sixteenth she showed she did love you by sending you three proved invitations to return to her side—what did you want to go out there and kill her for?"

Old Gladney shot his old bony finger right in Uncle Daniel's face, surprising him to death. I don't reckon he'd ever really taken it in what the charge was.

Nothing happened in the courtroom except some babies cried.

"Was it because you told her you would? ... Tell us about it," says old Gladney, real smiley.

They ought never to have let Uncle Daniel up there if they didn't want to hear the story. He smiled back. I tried to hold him with my eye, but it didn't work—not with him up on a stage.

He says, "Do you know, all in all, I've seen mighty little of that girl? First she came, then she went. Then she came, then she run me off. Edna Earle knows, she keeps tabs. Then three kind friends brought word in one day I was welcome. It already looked dark and commenced rumbling towards the west, and we lit out there lickety-split. Now when we got there, I went to hug my wife and kiss her, it had been such a time, Mr. Gladney; but you might hug your wife too hard. Did you ever do that?" asks Uncle Daniel.

Old Gladney says, "No-o-o." People started to laugh at him, then changed their minds and didn't.

"It's a way too easy to do," says Uncle Daniel.

"Sure enough?" says old Gladney, and steps close. "Show me."

Uncle Daniel stood there and hung his head, ashamed of that old fool.

"I'm impervious, I guarantee you," says that old lawyer. "Go ahead, show me what a hug too hard is."

"But that time I didn't," Uncle Daniel tells him. "I went to hug her, but I didn't get to."

"Is that so? How come you didn't get to?" says old Gladney, still close.

That little frown, that I just can't stand to see, came in Uncle Daniel's forehead, and everybody caught their breath but me. I was on my feet.

"Never mind, Uncle Daniel," I calls up. "I've told that."

Judge Waite and old man Gladney and DeYancey Clanahan all three poked their fingers at me, but didn't really notice what I said; nobody noticed. Even Uncle Daniel.

Old Gladney keeps right on. "Listen close to my next question, Mr. Ponder. I know you can answer it—it ain't hard. When you ran into the parlor to hug her—only you didn't get to—did Bonnie Dee speak to you?"

DeYancey was leaping up and snapping his fingers, objecting his heart out, but what good does objecting to Uncle Daniel do? You just get fired. Uncle Daniel would have fired the angel Gabriel, right that minute, for the same thing. You never could stop Uncle Daniel from going on, once you let him know he had your ears. And now everybody was galvanized.

"Hollered! She hollered at me. 'I don't appreciate lightning and thunder a bit!'" said Uncle Daniel—proudly. And in her voice. He did have it down to a T, like he could always do bird calls. He looked over our heads for Narciss, and smiled at her.

Everybody let out one of those big courtroom sighs.

"She spoke. She hollered. She was alive and strong," says Gladney. "And what did
you
say, sir?"

Uncle Daniel changed. He got carnation-color. He looked down at the Stetson between his fingers and all that time went by while he turned it round and then sighted through the ventilation holes he'd cut in the crown. Then he said quick, "I said 'Catch her, Edna Earle!'"

Gladney
says, "Bonnie Dee was running?"

"No, falling," says Uncle Daniel. "Falling to the floor."

"And did Miss Edna Earle catch her?"

"No, sir," says Uncle Daniel. "She can't catch."

I could have died right there.

"And what had you done to her first?" whispers old Gladney.

Uncle Daniel whispers back, "Nothing."

"You laid hands on her first!" yells Gladney.

"On Bonnie Dee? No, you can hug your wife too hard," says Uncle Daniel, "when you haven't seen her in a long time. But I didn't get to. Dr. Ewbanks had to raise me up and tend to me. I'm more poorly than I look."

"I congratulate you just the same," says Gladney, straightening up. "You got a reliable memory. You set us going on the right track. You got the most reliable memory in Court. We'll see who can remember the rest of it now. Much obliged—Mr. Ponder."

"Daniel!" says DeYancey, pushing in front of Gladney and pulling Uncle Daniel by the sleeve. "I know you fired me, but we've got to disregard it—everything! Listen to me: were you ever in the asylum?"

"Look, Tadpole," Uncle Daniel says—he still calls DeYancey that from the time they played so nicely together, "if there's anybody knows the answer to that already, it's you and your granddaddy. Your granddaddy got me in, him and somebody else." Till that good day, Uncle Daniel had never mentioned Grandpa's name from the time he died.

"Thanks, boy," says DeYancey, and to Gladney he says, "That's the witness. I ask that his evidence be stricken—"

Old Gladney was already wheeling back in his coattails. "Mr. Ponder! Were you
discharged
from the asylum?"

"Why, sure," says Uncle Daniel. "Look where I am. Man alive, if Judge Clanahan could get me in he could get me out. Couldn't he, Tadpole? Where is he, by the way—I've missed his face. Give him my love."

"Thank you, Mr. Ponder—I thank you. That'll be all. I'd now be very happy to cross-examine Miss Edna Earle Ponder once more, if she don't mind," old Gladney says.

But Uncle Daniel says, "Wait. You want the story, don't you? There's a world more to it than that. I can beat Edna Earle the world and all telling it. I'll start over for you."

And I knew he did want to tell it—I was the one knew that better than anybody. But I leaped up one more time where I was.

"Never mind, Uncle Daniel! Listen to Edna Earle," I says. "If you tell that, nobody'll ever be able to believe you again—not another word you say. You hear me?"

He needn't think I was going to let him tell it now. After guarding him heart and soul a whole week—a whole lifetime! How he came into the parlor all beaming pleasure and went shining up to her to kiss her and she just jumped away when the storm went boom. Like he brought it. And after she'd gone to the trouble to send for him, and we'd gone to the trouble to come, she just looked at him with her little coon eyes, and would have sent him back if I hadn't been there. She never said good evening to me. When I spoke she held her ears. So I sat myself down on the piano stool, crossed my knees, and waited for the visit to start.

Uncle Daniel sat down beside her and she wouldn't even look. She pulled herself in a little knot at the other end of the sofa. Here came a flash of lightning bigger than the rest, and thunder on top of it, and she buried her face in the pillow and started to cry. So the tassel of Grandma's antimacassar came off in Uncle Daniel's hand and he reached out and tickled her with it, on the ankle.

The storm got closer and he tickled a little more. He made the little tassel travel up to her knee. He wouldn't call it touching her—it was tickling her; though she didn't want one any more right now than the other.

Of course, Uncle Daniel and I had both been brought up to be mortally afraid of electricity ourselves. I'd overcome it, by sheer force of character—but I didn't know Uncle Daniel had. I believe he overcame it then. I believe for Bonnie Dee's sake he shut his own ears and eyes to it and just gave himself up to trying to make her stop crying.

And all the while it was more like a furnace in there, and noisy and bright as Kingdom Come. Grandpa Ponder's house shook! And Bonnie Dee rammed harder into the pillow and shrieked and put out her hands behind her, but that didn't do any good. When the storm got right over the house, he went right to the top with "creep-mousie," up between those bony little shoulder blades to the nape of her neck and her ear—with the sweetest, most forbearing smile on his face, a forgetful smile. Like he forgot everything then that she ever did to him, how changeable she'd been.

But you can't make a real tickler stop unless you play dead. The youngest of all knows that.

And that's what I thought she did. Her hands fluttered and stopped, then her whole little length slipped out from under his fingers, and rolled down to the floor, just as easy as nod, and stayed there—with her dress up to her knees and her hair down over her face. I thought she'd done it on purpose.

"Well!" I says to Uncle Daniel. "I don't think it's such a treat to get sent after. The first thing Bonnie Dee does when we get here is far from ladylike." I thought that would make her sit up.

"Catch her, Edna Earle," he says. "Catch her." That's when he said it.

I marched over and pulled up her hand, and it hung a weight in mine like her ball and jacks were in it. So did her other hand when I pulled it. I said "Bonnie Dee Peacock."

That's when the ball of fire came down the chimney and charged around the room. (The ball of fire Narciss took for her story.) That didn't scare me. I didn't like it, but it didn't scare me: it was about as big as your head. It went up the curtains and out through them into the hall like a butterfly. I was waiting for Bonnie Dee to answer to her name.

When she wouldn't do it, I spread back that baby hair to see what was the matter. She was dead as a doornail. And she'd died laughing.

I could have shaken her for it. She'd never laughed for Uncle Daniel before in her life. And even if she had, that's not the same thing as smiling} you may think it is, but I don't.

I was in a quandary what to do. I had hold of her, and nobody ought to stay on the floor. It was still carrying on everywhere you looked. I hauled her back up on the sofa the best I could. She was trouble—little as she was, she was a whole heap heavier than she looked. And her dress was all over the place—those peach-colored pleats blinking on and off in the lightning, and like everything else you touched, as warm as dinner plates.

Poor Uncle Daniel had never stirred an inch since she went out of his reach, except to draw up his feet. Now, after where I put her back, and let her be, he hitched both arms around his knees and stayed that way.

Of course I couldn't go off and leave him there, to get help. I only ran after the ammonia, and that only takes a second, because I know where to find it. In the bathroom I glanced in the mirror, to see how I was taking it, and got the fright of my life. Edna Earle, I said, you look old as the hills! It was a different mirror, was the secret—it magnified my face by a thousand times—something Bonnie Dee had sent off for and it had come. I ran back, but the laugh didn't go away—for all I went out of the room a minute, and for all Uncle Daniel sat still as a mouse, and for all the spirits of ammonia I offered her or the drenching I gave her face. That ice in her glass was all water now.

I never thought of the telephone! I got the boy on the hay wagon by the simple expedient of opening the window and hollering as loud as I could, till it brought him. In came Dr. Ewbanks, finally, in his boots, and pushed that yellow fluff back just the way I did.