Read Online The Ponder Heart by Eudora Welty - Free Book Online Page B

ingratitude.
    It was Big John—worked for us out there since time was: I don't know what he
did.
Always wore the same hat and shoes and overalls, and couldn't sign his name if life depended. Old man lives off by himself, a way, way back on the place—wonder how far anybody would have to go to find him. I never saw where he lived. First, Uncle Daniel had had to send a little Negro from the barbership to get the old one to come in and
learn
the message. Whole thing took all day.
    All the money Big John's ever made is right on him now, in his overall pocket, if somebody hasn't taken it again—that's all he wants it for, to carry it around. I expect he's been robbed a hundred times, among the Negroes, but he'll always ask you for money any time he sees you. Of course he and Uncle Daniel get along
fine.
He used to work in the flowers, if you could keep him out of the beds. Dug holes for Grandma 5
that's
what she did with Big John.
    So here he was. Around his hat is a bunch of full-blown roses, five or six Etoiles in a row, with little short stems stuck down in the hatband—they're still growing in Grandma's garden, in spite of everything.
    "Did Mr. Daniel Ponder send word by you to his wife, Miss Bonnie Dee Ponder, on the fourteenth day of June of this year?" is what old Gladney asks him.
    Big John agrees with you every time. He nods his head, and the roses bow up and down.
    "Now I can tell you're a reliable Negro," says old Gladney. "And I just want you to tell me what the message was. What did Mr. Daniel tell you to say to the lady?"
    Big John has a little voice like a whistle the air won't come through just right.
    "Go tell Miss Bonnie Dee—go tell Miss Bonnie Dee—" He's getting started.
    "Keep on. Tell Miss Bonnie Dee what?"
    Big John fixed his mouth, and recited it off. "'I'm going to kill you dead, Miss Bonnie Dee, if y' don't take m' back.'"
    I
would have thought Big John would get the message wrong, to begin with—that's one reason I'd never have picked him. But there was no mistaking that—he got
Uncle Daniel's
right!
    Old man Gladney says after him, real soft, "'I'm going to kill you dead, Miss Bonnie Dee—' Did he laugh, I wonder, when he said that?"
    DeYancey took objection to that, but Big John didn't even know what laugh was. He just scratched his head up under his hat.
    "What made you remember it so good, Uncle?"
    Big John still only scratched his head. Finally he says, "'Cause Mr. Daniel give me a dime."
    That was all he could think of. But I knew it was because of that high esteem Big John held Uncle Daniel in, that made him remember so fine. I must say Uncle Daniel held esteem for Big John, too. He always did like him—because of the money he could deposit on him, and then he didn't mind old dirty people the way you and I do. He let Big John come around him and listened to what he said, both. They listened to each other. When you saw them walking white and black together over the back lot, you'd have thought there went two Moguls, looking over the world.
    "And what word did Miss Bonnie Dee send back?" says old Gladney. But Big John could remember that about as well as the frizzly hen that comes up to the back door.
    "Her didn't have nothing to give me," was the best he could do.
    "But Mr. Daniel Ponder did send this message to Miss Bonnie Dee Peacock Ponder, paying you for its safe delivery, Uncle, only two short days before her death: 'I'm going to kill you dead if you don't take me back.' Didn't he?"
    "Ain't said to
me,
to
her
," Big John whistled out. "Ain't said to me
that
time. I ain't doin' nothin'. Only but what he tell me."
    "That's right. 'I'm going to kill you dead, Miss Bonnie Dee'—and now he's done it," says old Gladney sharp, and no matter how DeYancey's objecting, Big John's agreeing like everything, bobbing his head with those flowers on it under everybody's nose.
    De Yancey doesn't want to ask him anything—makes a sign like he's brushing flies