The Ponder Heart by Eudora Welty Page B

what gold and riches brought you to, and at such an early age—and the other big rawboned country preacher on the other side, to get started praying and not be able to stop. That one asked heavenly mercy for everybody he could think of from the Peacocks on up to the President of the United States. When he got to Uncle Daniel's name I was ready for him and gave Uncle Daniel a good pinch at the right minute. (He generally beams to hear his name called.) My rocking chair was dusty, but at least I got to sit down.
    During the service, half the Peacocks—the girls—were still as mice, but the boys, some of them grown men, were all collected out on the porch. Do you know what they did out there, on the other side of the wall from us? Bawled. Howled. Not that they ever did a thing for their sister in life, very likely, or even came to see her, but now they decided to let forth. And do you know all through everything the broom was still standing behind the door in that room?
    Once outside, up on the hill, I noticed from the corner of my eye a good many Peacocks buried in the graveyard, well to the top of the hill, where you could look out and see the Clay Courthouse dome like a star in the distance. Right
old
graves, with "Peacock" on them out bold. It may be that the Peacocks at one time used to amount to something (there
are
worthwhile Peacocks, Miss Lutie Powell has vouched for it to Eva Sistrunk), but you'll have a hard time making me believe they're around us. I believe these have always been just about what they are now. Of course, Polk did use to be on the road. But the road left and it didn't get up and follow, and neither did the Peacocks. Up until Bonnie Dee.
    It was there at the graveside that Uncle Daniel had his turn. There might have been high foolishness or even trouble—both big red-headed Baptist preachers took hold of him. It was putting her in the ground
he
didn't like.
    But I said, very still, "Look, Uncle Daniel. It looks right cool, down yonder in the ground. Here
we
are standing up on top in the burning heat. Let her go."
    So he stepped back, for me.
    While they were laying on the ferns, away down below us a freight train went by through the empty distance, and the two littlest Peacocks, another generation coming up, stepped forward and waved it out of sight. And I counted the cars—not because I didn't know any better, like them, but because I couldn't help it right then. I counted seventy-nine.
    Going back down the hill, Uncle Daniel offered Mrs. Peacock a new pick-up truck for her to haul their watermelons to market; he'd noticed through a slit in the shade, during all that praying, that they were about ripe over the fence, and he complimented the Peacocks on them and said he hoped they'd bring him one. The girls said all right, they would. If he hadn't been so shy with the Peacock boys, he might have given them something} but they didn't get a thing, for the way they acted.
    And then, when we got home, they
charged,
us.
    I know of a case where a man really murdered his wife, with a sure-enough weapon, and her family put on her tombstone, "Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, I will repay." And his family—the nicer people—had to go take it off with a cold chisel when her family wasn't looking. Ancient history. But thank goodness the Peacocks hadn't heard about that. They just charged us in Court.
    Because of course the minute the funeral was over good, and the county paper came out with Eva Sistrunk's write-up and poem, that county attorney we wished on ourselves, Dorris R. Gladney—no friend of the Ponders—out he sailed in a black Ford older than mine, and searched out the Peacocks in Polk and found them, too, and told them what they could do.
    They charged Uncle Daniel with murder.

So last week it came up on the docket—it hadn't been anything much of a docket before that, and they shoved a few things out of the way for it.
    Old Judge Waite was sitting on the case.