The Ponder Heart Read Online Free Page A

yard married them. Uncle Daniel let Narciss pick out where to go, and Narciss picked out Silver City because she'd never been. None of them had ever been! It was the only spot in Creation they could have gone to without finding somebody that knew enough to call Clay 123 and I'd answer. Silver City's too progressive. Here they rolled back all three as pleased and proud as Punch at what they'd accomplished. It wasn't lost on me, for all the length Narciss had her mouth drawn down to.
    I hadn't even had my bath! I just stood there, in my raggediest shade hat and that big black rummage sale purse weighting me down, all traffic stopped, and Eva Sistrunk with her face in mine just looking.
    "So Miss Teacake's an old story," I said. "All right, Uncle Daniel—this makes you two."
    "Makes me three," he says. "Hop out a minute, sugar, down in the road where Edna Earle and them can see you," he says to the child. But she sits there without a hat to her name, batting her eyes. "I married Mrs. Magee and I married this young lady, and way before that was the Tom Thumb Wedding—that was in
church
."
    And it was. He has the memory of an elephant. When he was little he was in the Tom Thumb Wedding—Mama's pageant—and everybody said it was the sweetest miniature wedding that had ever been held here. He was the bridegroom and I believe to my soul Birdie Bodkin, the postmistress, was the bride—the Bodkins have gone down since. They left the platform together on an Irish Mail decorated with Southern Smilax, pumping hard. I've been told I was the flower girl, but I don't remember it—I don't remember it at all. And here Uncle Daniel sat, with that first little bride right on tap and
counting
her.
    "Step out in the bright a minute, and see what I give you," he says to Bonnie Dee.
    So she stood down in the road on one foot, dusty as could be, in a home-made pink voile dress that wouldn't have stood even a
short
trip. It was wrinkled as tissue paper.
    And he says, "Look, Edna Earle. Look, you all. Couldn't you eat her up?"
    I wish you could have seen Bonnie Dee! I wish you could. I guess I'd known she was living, but I'd never given her a real good look. She was just now getting her breath. Baby yellow hair, downy—like one of those dandelion puff-balls you can blow and tell the time by. And not a grain beneath. Now, Uncle Daniel may not have a whole
lot
of brains, but what's there is Ponder, and no mistake about it. But poor little old Bonnie Dee! There's a world of difference. He talked and she just stood there and took her fill of my rummage sale, held up there under the tree, without offering a word. She was little and she was dainty, under the dust of that trip. But I could tell by her little coon eyes, she was shallow as they come.
    "Turn around," I says as nicely as I can, "and let's see some more
of
you."
    Nobody had to tell Bonnie Dee how to do that; she went puff-puff right on around, and gave a dip at the end.
    Uncle Daniel hollers out to her, "That's my hotel, sugar." (He'd forgotten.) "Hop back in, and I'll show you my house."
    I could have spanked her. She hopped in and he gave her a big kiss.
    So Narciss pulls out the throttle, and don't back up but just cuts the corner through the crowd, and as they thunder off around the Courthouse she lets out real high and sad, "Miss Edna Earle, Mr.
Sam
ain't back yit, is he?" She was so proud of that ride she could die. She and Uncle Daniel rode off with what they had 'em—proud together.
    Before I can turn around, Judge Tip Clanahan bawls down out of the window, "Edna Earle!" His office has been in the same place forever, next door up over the movie; but that never keeps me from jumping. "Now what? What am I going to do with Daniel, skin him? Or are you all going to kill him first? I tell you right here and now, I'm going to turn him over to DeYancey, if you don't mind out for him better than that."
    Judge Tip gets us out of fixes.
    "And hurt Uncle Daniel's