Losing Battles by Eudora Welty

The Boone County Vindicator . ‘What happened to you?’ ‘School threw open this morning!’ he says. ‘Get me out of this harness!’ ‘Jack Renfro must have made up his mind mighty sudden to go on with his education,’ she says, seeing what kind of knots it was. “If you-all just wouldn’t bring it in the store!’ ‘If you could just get me loose!’ says Curly. So Aycock borries the knife out of the store cheese and saws through the clothesline with it. And Curly hollers, ‘Now who’s going to buy that, Aycock, after you been slicing on it?’ Pore Aycock, it looks like anywhere he goes he has a hard time finding him any gratitude,”
    “One more way he’s a different breed from Jack,” said Aunt Beck.
    “So Miss Ora says, ‘Take your pickle and go, Aycock, and stand out of busy folks’ way. Me and Brother don’t want to see this high varnish get scratched.’ Plants her feet. Takes a good hold of that brother of hers and she pulls. And she pulls. Till out he comeslike a old jaw tooth, hollering. She had to give the pull of her life to do it, and declares to the passing public she ain’t over it yet,” Uncle Percy said.
    “And as soon as she’s out of the way, Curly whirls and cuts off Aycock’s shirt-tail. And if Aycock don’t pick up a little two-ounce popcorn-popper and come running at him while he’s nailing it up!”
    Uncle Noah Webster said, “Percy, you don’t give Aycock no credit at all. I feel like it was at least a churn dasher!”
    “Well, he’s running full-tilt with it. And right in time for the crack, in comes Homer Champion!”
    “That’s my sister Fay’s husband,” Miss Lexie told Aunt Cleo. “I’m going to get you one person told before you ask.”
    “And look out for him today,” said Uncle Noah Webster. “He’s a certified part of this reunion.”
    “Well, Homer comes rattling up and bringing in his bucket of eggs—he’s on his egg route. ‘Homer Champion,’ says Curly, ‘you’re justice of the peace—why won’t you come to the phone? I been smothered, tied and robbed, pulled on by a hundred and seventy-five pound woman, and hit a good lick with a churn dasher! Made a monkey out of by who ought to be in school, talked back to by a eight-ounce schoolteacher! Everything but have my phone used free! Well, here’s Aycock by the ear—I caught you one of ’em. And you can catch you the other one. You grab hold of Jack, put ’em under arrest, and haul ’em off to jail, both of ’em.’ ”
    “ ‘Did I understand you to say Jack ?’ says Homer Champion.
    “ ‘Now he’s a safe robber!’ says Curly. ‘You can catch him easy when he gets back to drive the school bus.’
    “But Homer Champion says, ‘Curly Stovall, did you suppose you could trick me that easy into riding my own wife’s brother’s oldest boy through the country clear across Boone County all the way to Ludlow to put him in jail—the whole Banner School basketball team in one?’ ‘That’s what I want,’ says Curly. ‘I got a good mind to throw something at you,’ Homer says. Or so he tells it.
    “ ‘Now will all three of you get out from under my feet so I can clean up the store?’ says Miss Ora, coming in to take the eggs away from ’em. ‘Before that tide of children floods in here when the last bell rings? I wish you didn’t have to act so countrified.’ She sends Curly to the pump to wash some of it out of him.”
    “If I’d been Curly, I’d been mad at all of ’em, her included,” said Aunt Cleo.
    “He wasn’t overly pleased,” said Uncle Curtis. “Now, it’s the last bell, and without a minute wasted in pours the whole horde of children for their penny stick of fresh gum to chew in the bus going home. Then they all pour out into the bus, and Jack ain’t quite back yet.”
    “Didn’t the new teacher know enough to wait on him?” teased Aunt Birdie.
    “She says, ‘Long skinny red-headed boy without any books, come here to me.’ That’s Aycock,