The Ponder Heart Read Free

stick away from him like he was anybody else. Judge Tip Clanahan had to learn about it from Uncle Daniel and then send down to get Grandpa out, and when Grandpa did get loose, they nearly gave him back the wrong stick. They would have heard from him about
that.
    When Uncle Daniel got here with that tale, everybody in town had a conniption fit trying to believe it, except Judge Tip. Uncle Daniel thought it was a joke on the
lady.
It took Grandpa all day long from the time he left here to make it on back, with the help of Judge Clanahan's long-legged grandson and no telling what papers.
He
might as well not have left home, he wouldn't stop to tell us a word.
    There's more than one moral to be drawn there, as I told Mr. Springer at the time, about straying too far from where you're known and all—having too wide a territory. Especially if you light out wearing a seersucker suit you wouldn't let the rummage sale have, though it's old as the hills. By the time you have to prove who you are when you get there, it may be too late when you get back.
Think
about Grandpa Ponder having to call for witnesses the minute he gets fifty miles off in one direction. I think that helped put him in his grave. It went a long way toward making him touchy about what Uncle Daniel had gone and done in the meanwhile. You see, by the time Grandpa made it back, something had happened at home. Something will every time, if you're not there to see it.
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    Uncle Daniel had got clear up to his forties before we ever dreamed that such a thing as love flittered through his mind. He's so
sweet.
Sometimes I think if we hadn't showed him that widow! But he was bound to see her: he has eyes: Miss Teacake Magee, lived here all her life. She sings in the choir of the Baptist Church every blessed Sunday: couldn't get
her
out. And sings louder than all the rest put together, so loud it would make you lose your place.
    I'll go back a little for a minute. Of course we're all good Presbyterians. Grandpa was an elder. The Beulah Bible Class and the Beulah Hotel are both named after Grandma. And my other grandma was the second-to-longest-living Sunday School teacher they've ever had, very highly regarded. My poor little mama got a pageant written before she died, and I still conduct the rummage sales for the Negroes every Saturday afternoon in the corner of the yard and bring in a sum for the missionaries in Africa that I think would surprise you.
    Miss Teacake Magee is of course a Sistrunk (the Sistrunks are
all
Baptists—big Baptists) and Professor Magee's widow. He wasn't professor
of
anything, just real smart—smarter than the Sistrunks, anyway. He'd never worked either—he was like Uncle Daniel in that respect. With Miss Teacake, everything dates from "Since I lost Professor Magee." A passenger train hit him. That shows you how long ago
his
time was.
    Uncle Daniel
thought
what he was wild about at that time was the Fair. And I kept saying to myself, maybe that
was
it. He carried my plant over Monday, in the tub, and entered it for me as usual, under "Best Other Than Named"—it took the blue ribbon—and went on through the flowers and quilts and the art, passing out compliments on both sides of him, and out the other door of the Fine Arts Tent and was loose on the midway. From then on, the whole week long, he'd go back to the Fair every whipstitch—morning, noon, or night, hand in hand with any soul, man, woman, or child, that chose to let him—and spend his change on them and stay till the cows come home. He'd even go by himself. I went with him till I dropped. And we'd no more leave than he'd clamp my arm. "Edna Earle, look back yonder down the hill at all those lights still a-burning!" Like he'd never seen lights before. He'd say, "Sh! Listen at Intrepid Elsie Fleming!"
    Intrepid Elsie Fleming rode a motorcycle around the Wall of Death—which let her do, if she wants to ride a motorcycle that bad. It was the time she wasn't