The Ponder Heart Read Online Free

knew how to do was make change.
    So—that very day, after Uncle Daniel finished turning the tables and was just through telling us about it, and we were all having a conniption fit in here, Uncle Daniel moseyed down the street and in five minutes was inside the ten cent store. That was where he did all his shopping. He was intending to tell his story in there, I think, but instead of that, he was saying to the world in general and Bonnie Dee at the jewelry counter in particular, "I've got a great big house standing empty, and my father's Studebaker. Come on—marry me."
    You see how things happen? Miss Lutie Powell, Uncle Daniel's old schoolteacher, was in there at the time buying a spool of thread, and she heard it—but just didn't believe it.
    I was busy, busy, busy with two things that afternoon—worrying about what I'd say to Grandpa when he got back, and conducting my rummage sale in the yard. I might as well have been in Jericho. If Uncle Daniel had told me what he was going in the ten cent store to say—but I doubt strongly if he knew, himself, he's so sudden-quick—I could have pretty well predicted the answer. I could have predicted it partway. Because—Uncle Daniel can't help it!—he always makes everything sound grand. Home on the hilltop! Great big car! Negroes galore! Homegrown bacon and eggs and ham and fried grits and potato cakes and honey and molasses for breakfast every morning to start off with—you know, you don't have to have all the brilliance in the world to sound grand, or
be
grand either. It's a gift.
    The first thing I knew of what transpired was two hours and a half later, when I was two dollars and ninety-five cents to the good of the heathen, selling away to the Negroes as hard as I could and dead on my feet in the yard. Then bang up against the hitching post at the curb pulls in that Studebaker. It honks, and the motor huffs and puffs, and the whole car's shaking all over like it does if you stop it too quick after running it too long.
It's
been going all day, too. I shade my eyes and who do I see but old Narciss at the steering wheel. She's the cook out at the place. She's looking at me, very mournful and meaning and important. She always does look like that, but I never in my life knew she knew how to drive.
    "Oh-oh," I says to the rummage sale. "Don't anybody touch a thing till I get back," and march out to meet it. There in the back seat sat Uncle Daniel big as life and right beside him Bonnie Dee Peacock, batting her eyes.
    "Uncle Daniel, dear heart, why don't you get out and come in?" I says, speaking just to him, first.
    And Eva Sistrunk, the one that's a little older than me, just passing by with nothing to do, stopped in her tracks and politely listened in.
    "Eva, how's your family?" says Uncle Daniel.
    He was beaming away for all he was worth and shooting up his arm every minute to wave—of course Saturday traffic was traveling around the Square. Those people had just spent the morning waving him good-by, seeing him off to the asylum with Grandpa. By next time around they'd know everything. I look straight at Narciss.
    Narciss is biding her time till she's got a big crowd and an outside ring of Negroes; then she sings out real high and sad, "Mr. Daniel done took a new wife, Miss Edna Earle."
    You can't trust a one of them: a Negro we'd had her whole life long, older by far than I was, Grandma raised her from a child and brought her in out of the field to the kitchen and taught her everything she knew. Just because Uncle Daniel asked the favor, because the Studebaker wouldn't run for him the minute he got it back to where it belonged, Narciss hitched herself right in that front seat and up to the wheel and here they flew; got Bonnie Dee from in front of Woolworth's (and nobody saw it, which I think is worth mentioning—I believe they picked her up without stopping) and went kiting off to Silver City, and a justice of the peace with a sign in the