The four hundred plus pages of Eudora Welty's Losing Battles (quotes from the Random House edition of 1970) is dedicated to a little over a day, the Sunday of the Renfro-Beecham family reunion in Banner, Mississippi, at family matriarch Granny Vaughan's old farm homestead. The day also marks Granny's ninetieth birthday. Meticulously detailed by Eudora Welty, much of the day is given over to the family's telling stories of themselves. Gathered together physically by a comically woebegone set of vehicles, the Renfro-Beecham clan is brought together spiritually through the telling of their stories.
The Beecham-Renfros number enough for a good church choir. Granny's daughter and son-in-law died young in a flood, but not before bringing forth a brood of Beechams: Nathan, Noah,Percy, Dolphus, Curtis, and Beulah. Beulah, Mr. Renfro her husband, and four of their five children live with Granny Vaughan at the Banner homestead. Beulah's brothers, their voluble spouses and, in some cases, considerable families, have journeyed from near and far (Southern Mississippi) for what is an annual reunion. The Beechams are joined by Mr. Renfro's two sisters, old-maid Lexie and Auntie Fay who's married to Homer Champion. Homer's the county sheriff and thus a figure of some suspicion to this often times unruly family. The Beecham children seem to harbor a residue of suspicion about every single one of their in-laws, but Homer comes in for special scrutiny owing to his position as a law enforcer. With considerable pride, the Beecham-Renfros refer to the number gathered for their reunion as hundreds. This might be true if one were to include the dogs. Every guest seems to bring at least one, if not several. There's also a veritable tribe of dogs at this reunion.
Everyone attending anxiously awaits the appearance of Jack Renfro, Beulah's eldest boy. Jack is the pride of the family despite the fact he's returning from a stint in Parchman Penitentiary. Beulah tells Granny that Jack's returning on her birthday will be the ultimate gift of her day, "the joy of your life's coming home!"(5). Even though the family is in debt and the farm is suffering, Mr. Renfro has furnished the family home with a brand-new tin roof to welcome this prodigal son home. Likewise, Jack's wife Gloria has donned her wedding dress and sits facing the road with their child Lady May, who was born while he was away. Only Jack's little brother Vaughan, continually eclipsed by Jack, seems less than eager to see him.
Yet, all Gloria's efforts to extract Jack from his family and its continual troubles prove fruitless. Trouble finds Jack. While he and Gloria are getting reacquainted on a local outcrop, Banner Top, they hear the Judge's car coming along the road. Jack prepares to descend Banner Top to the road below and to shoo the Judge's car into a ditch nearby. Hoping to stop him, Gloria makes worse the situation by sticking Lady May in Jack's hands just as he's getting ready to descend, warning him, "If you can't be a better example to Lady May-hold her"(119). Jack does so but also begins his ragged descent down the outcrop, Lady May in hand. Gloria follows, and is unable to stop her descent until she ends up across the road. Lady May gets free when Jack gets to the bottom and tries to get to her mother on the other side of the road. Crossing it, she goes right into the path of the Judge's oncoming car. Gloria frantically runs to her and falls on top the baby in the middle of the road. Coming upon them, the Judge's swerves his car off the road to avoid them and runs the vehicle up the outcrop and almost off the edge on the other side. It comes to rest hanging half off of the "jumping-off place" on the side of Banner Top that fronts the Bywee River running below. It hangs precariously, anchored ultimately by Jack's best friend Aycock Comfort who somehow managed to get in the back seat of the car while it swerved off the road to avoid the baby. It's a crazy scene that apparently defies both explanation and the laws of physics.
Jack comes away convinced that the Judge has saved his baby and his wife. Grateful, he feel compelled to help the Moody's get their car down from the precipice, despite the Moody's reservations about his doing so. While Jack eagerly contemplates how he might do so, the judge tells his wife, "I reckon I better go on up there and put the quietus on that boy"(126). They ultimately resort to Gloria to put a stop to Jack's efforts to rescue the car on his own by driving it down the outcrop. Judge Moody asks him, "'have you been made to understand to keep hands off of that car?'" and Jack concedes "Yes sir...My wife's done passed a law'"(127).
While determined to resist Jack's offers of help, Mrs. Moody is clearly interested in getting the Moody car down soon. Yet, events conspire against this. When Curly Stovall happens by soon after, he is inclined to help till the mysterious appearance of events leads him to believe that Jack has set up the entire event to wreak vengeance upon him. He tells Mrs. Moody that he can't help her on a Sunday but promises to come back the following morning. Irritated, she commands her husband to "'shanghai the next thing on wheels that dares to come along here and make'em carry you back to civilization where you can beat somebody over the head till they come and haul us'"(155). Clearly, the civilization and regulation represented by the Moody's can be a thin veneer which washes away under distress.
The next potential Moody savior is a busload of teachers headed to Alliance, across the river from Banner. They're headed their to attend the funeral of Miss Julia Mortimer, a legendary school teacher in the region and a woman who acted as mentor/guardian/scold to Gloria when she was abandoned as a baby. The news of Ms. Julia's death hits Gloria as he she'd been "struck in the forehead by a stone out of a slingshot"(157), a curious Bible allusion which, in a bit of reverse casting, presents Gloria as the philistine. The teachers have headed this way to pick up Gloria on the way to Miss Julia's wake and funeral. As in other of Welty's depictions of small town life, the teachers have come to watch/experience/enjoy her mourning, her grief.
The teachers invite Gloria aboard their bus, reminding her "You're still one of us, Gloria Short. Even though you didn't wear too well or last as long as we did"(158). Finally, in a manipulative fashion, they remind her that "she owes [Miss Julia] the most of all...She loved you the best and prized you the most"(158). But, Gloria resist joining the schoolteachers, arguing that she must look after Lady May, who then comically happens to appear perched high above them on the top of Banner Top overlooking the road. Jack recovers the child. While she might be doing a poor job of looking after Lady May, Gloria protests she can't come along because she's got her hands full. With self-damning words in accord with the anti-education bent of the book, the school teachers add in agreement "'of the living'"(162). They head off without her. Gloria is a woman without a country, neither country nor city, neither civilized or of the land, neither schoolteacher nor Renfro.
With their car stuck on Banner Top with no help in sight, Jack invites the Moody's to come on home with him and Gloria. They accept. Atop a series of tables set up in the front yard of the Vaughn homestead, dinner is getting underway under a large tree. Granny Vaughn has been brought to the table like an icon, "lifted high and carried through the crowd. Little clouds of fragrance seemed to go with her"(175). Taking the place of her deceased minister husband, Brother Bethune, a Baptist minister with "his stand were wedged in to the tree roots by her side"(176). Brother Bethune doesn't simply offer a simple grace or blessing before the meal. Instead, he launches into a a sermon that is one part blessing, one part grace, and one solid part family history. Like the meal itself, it is without seeming boundaries and of prodigious length. He recalls Granny's marriage to Preacher Vaughn who "came here to this beautiful old house to live on their wedding day, and I believe he'd just surrendered to the ministry too, both at the age of eighteen"(182). His choice of the word "surrendered" suggests religion's potential to control. His sermon shows it's potential to ennoble, comfort and entertain.
During the course of the conversation that punctuates Bethune's sermon, Jack reveals that he has actually escaped from Parchman a day before his sentence was up. He does so within earshot of the Judge, attempting to explain his action by telling him, "Our reunion is one that don't wait, sir"(195).
Judge Moody is truly in an odd position at this reunion. Viewed as the villain who unjustly sentenced Jack, Judge Moody has been invited rather suddenly to dinner by the man he harmed. Brother Bethune tries to defuse the situation by introducing the Judge and his wife and by then informing them that the clan gathered is "going to forgive you"(208). The Moodys seem genuinely puzzled as to why the're being forgiven. Mrs. Moody assumes they're being forgiven for having walked in on the dinner and objects that they were invited to dinner by Jack. Uncle Noah replies such an invitation is "plain hospitality...That ain't no guarantee you ain't going to be forgiven when you get here"(208). Feeling he's done nothing wrong, Judge Moody refuses to be forgiven. Pointing to the reciprocal benefits of forgiveness, Brother Bethune implores, "Judge Moody, you do like the majority begs and be forgiven...Don't you want to come back and hear yourself be forgiven?" In the moral economy of common folk of the book, forgiveness addresses equally the needs of both the forgiven and the forgiver. One can satisfactorily forgive even if the action is not recognized by the recipient.
The family is angered by Judge Moody's refusal to accept their forgiveness. They are upset that he can't see he needs their forgiveness. They see Jack and his actions through the eyes of familial love while the Judge viewed him in the considerably cooler eyes of the law and its insistence on facts.
The Beecham-Renfros number enough for a good church choir. Granny's daughter and son-in-law died young in a flood, but not before bringing forth a brood of Beechams: Nathan, Noah,Percy, Dolphus, Curtis, and Beulah. Beulah, Mr. Renfro her husband, and four of their five children live with Granny Vaughan at the Banner homestead. Beulah's brothers, their voluble spouses and, in some cases, considerable families, have journeyed from near and far (Southern Mississippi) for what is an annual reunion. The Beechams are joined by Mr. Renfro's two sisters, old-maid Lexie and Auntie Fay who's married to Homer Champion. Homer's the county sheriff and thus a figure of some suspicion to this often times unruly family. The Beecham children seem to harbor a residue of suspicion about every single one of their in-laws, but Homer comes in for special scrutiny owing to his position as a law enforcer. With considerable pride, the Beecham-Renfros refer to the number gathered for their reunion as hundreds. This might be true if one were to include the dogs. Every guest seems to bring at least one, if not several. There's also a veritable tribe of dogs at this reunion.
Everyone attending anxiously awaits the appearance of Jack Renfro, Beulah's eldest boy. Jack is the pride of the family despite the fact he's returning from a stint in Parchman Penitentiary. Beulah tells Granny that Jack's returning on her birthday will be the ultimate gift of her day, "the joy of your life's coming home!"(5). Even though the family is in debt and the farm is suffering, Mr. Renfro has furnished the family home with a brand-new tin roof to welcome this prodigal son home. Likewise, Jack's wife Gloria has donned her wedding dress and sits facing the road with their child Lady May, who was born while he was away. Only Jack's little brother Vaughan, continually eclipsed by Jack, seems less than eager to see him.
At the outset, Jack's absence is left unexplained. There's no indication as to when, or more importantly, why he's expected back and from where. We gradually glean that he's been in the penitentiary in Parchman, Mississippi. Many stories later, we learn why he's been sent there. The family seems to have but a foggy notion of his doings in Parchman. With the exception of Lexie, no one seems to have any idea as to the length of his sentence. Yet, they have faith he's coming. They are certain that the family gathering itself at the homestead, like some kind of force of nature, will magically draw him back.
The waiting for Jack starts early. Shortly after sun-rise, before the reader is even aware of Jack as a character, the elderly Granny tells Beulah, "He can come right now,"(5) and the reader could be forgiven for believing the reference is to God. Later, when family arrives, Uncle Dolphus greets Granny, his mother, with a kiss and the reassurance, "we'll help you wait on him"(10).
The waiting for Jack starts early. Shortly after sun-rise, before the reader is even aware of Jack as a character, the elderly Granny tells Beulah, "He can come right now,"(5) and the reader could be forgiven for believing the reference is to God. Later, when family arrives, Uncle Dolphus greets Granny, his mother, with a kiss and the reassurance, "we'll help you wait on him"(10).
While waiting for him, prompted by a newcomer sister-in-law Cleo, the family begins to tell stories. The first relates how Jack managed to find himself in the pen. Uncle Percy with his thready voice relates the main-line of the story but all interrupt and add to it. The Beecham-Renfros tell stories in a communal fashion. It doesn't take long to realize that the Beecham-Renfros have a limited interest in the facts. Their stories are a mix of history, entertainment, poetry and legend. In telling stories, they are fashioning a family portrait with love and pride. Their stories provide a window on the truths that matter to the tellers. The stories stake out the family, mirror it, love and honor it.
The Beecham-Renfros are salt-of-the-earth, country folk. They are insular, clannish and at war against a range of threats: poor harvest, droughts, and debt. However, their chief enemy seems to be education. One time school teacher Gloria sketches out the dimensions of the threat in a brief elegy she offers Julia Mortimer, a legendary school teacher in Banner who adopted and mentored her in the profession she dropped upon marriage into the Renfro-Beechams. According to Gloria, Miss Julia "didn't want anybody left in the dark, not about anything. She wanted everything brought out in the wide open, to see and be known. She wanted people to spread out their minds and their hearts to other people, so they could be read like books." A doorstep child ignorant of her past, Gloria concludes "people don't want to be read like books"(432). Although opposed to them in many ways, Gloria proves to be of like heart with her adopted family in this sentiment. The Beecham-Renfros are about the pleasures and strengths of the irregular and unexpected. Deep down, Welty's novel seems convinced such treasures don't survive the scrutiny and observation brought by education.
The family is in a pitched battle with all forms of regulation and government. This comes through to comic effect in the family's retelling of Jack's "crime" and trial. Jack suspects his longtime nemesis,shopkeeper/local sheriff Curly Stovall, has taken a family wedding ring from Jack's sister in lieu of overdue bills. Suspecting Stovall's hidden it in his locked safe, Jack roughs Curly and steals his safe, hoisting it up on his shoulders like Atlas shouldering the world. It is later we learn that Jack's sister has a sweet spot for Curly and may have given the ring to him. But, that's a later story.
Jack's arrest for stealing the safe puzzles the family. I never could quite determine what the safe actually did contain. Regardless or its contents, according to Uncle Curtis, "Jack had acted the only way a brother and son could act, and done what any other good Mississippi boy would have done in his place" and, recalling the trail, he claims, "I fully expected'em to throw the case right out the window"(43). In court, Judge Moody asks Jack if he's planning to plead innocent and Jack replies, "Yes sir, I'm needed"(52).
The Renfro-Beecham logic proves alien to the court's. Jack is sent to the penitentiary. Ultimately, by the family's sights, what the court lacks is a proper knowledge. His mother argues, "that judge never got it through his head what it was all about! Born and bred in Ludlow, most likely in the very shadow of the courthouse! A man never spend a day of his life in Banner, never heard of a one of us!"(62). The law is suspect because of it inability to account for circumstance and context, to account for the individual.
The judge Beulah refers to is Judge Moody. Recalling the trial, Uncle Percy says, "Judge Moody's whole battle cry was respect"(56). Judge Moody reads Jack's attack on and theft of Curly as an attack on authority, both the authority of money and law. He concludes, "'You folks around Banner trade at Stovall's store, vote him into office, and raise the roof when you feel like it'"(56). He warns, "You can't go knocking the law down if it gets in your way, you can't keep on packing up the law in the nearest crate big enough to hold it [to steal the safe, Jack ties up Curly in an empty coffin]...and go skipping out the store with a safe, so called....and all without offering this court any better reason than "He's [Curly is] aggravating." Aggravating!'"(56). Still, Jack responds with more of the same family logic: "'Judge, I reckon to do justice to Curly, you got to see him in Banner'"(57). Truth and law must be based on knowledge, and all three are dependent on context. To rule justly, you got to be and know where you're ruling.
Jack gets two years. To make his grandmother's birthday and the reunion, he leaves jail a few days shy of two years. However, outside of maiden Aunt Lexie, few question him when he arrives home like an idol to a wandering people. The family worships Jack. They surround him, pamper him, pepper him with questions, feed him. They break the bad news of his grandfather's passing. They prepare to tell him he has a daughter, although later we learn Gloria has told him this without informing the family she has done so. And, much to his chagrin, Jack learns from a late arriving Homer Champion that a man Jack helped out of a ditch earlier in the day, near Banner, was the same Judge Moody who'd sentenced him to the pen. Jack has acted as a good Samaritan to a man he considers an enemy and this perturbs Jack and his family. Various retributive options are bandied about till Gloria, anxious to keep her husband out of the pen for a spell, takes control and leads him away from his family.
In effect, Gloria, Jack and the baby Lady May go off for a walk. Gloria is anxious to be with Jack alone, both now and in the future and both figuratively and literally. She wishes to peel him from his family. Most immediately, she hopes to deter Jack from his desire to "meet that Judge....sing him my name out loud and clear, and leave him in as good a ditch as the one he had before I saved him. That's all." To which, Gloria replies, "Then it's up to your wife to pit her common sense against you"(112).
Gloria occupies a peculiar place in the family's battle against law, authority and education. While married in to the family via Jack, Gloria wishes for some distance from the Beecham clan. Abandoned at birth, Gloria was taken in by life-long school teacher Miss Julia who groomed her as a school-teacher. Gloria's career as a school teacher in Banner was brought to a sudden end when she fell in love and married Jack while boarding at his parent's.
The Beecham-Renfros are salt-of-the-earth, country folk. They are insular, clannish and at war against a range of threats: poor harvest, droughts, and debt. However, their chief enemy seems to be education. One time school teacher Gloria sketches out the dimensions of the threat in a brief elegy she offers Julia Mortimer, a legendary school teacher in Banner who adopted and mentored her in the profession she dropped upon marriage into the Renfro-Beechams. According to Gloria, Miss Julia "didn't want anybody left in the dark, not about anything. She wanted everything brought out in the wide open, to see and be known. She wanted people to spread out their minds and their hearts to other people, so they could be read like books." A doorstep child ignorant of her past, Gloria concludes "people don't want to be read like books"(432). Although opposed to them in many ways, Gloria proves to be of like heart with her adopted family in this sentiment. The Beecham-Renfros are about the pleasures and strengths of the irregular and unexpected. Deep down, Welty's novel seems convinced such treasures don't survive the scrutiny and observation brought by education.
The family is in a pitched battle with all forms of regulation and government. This comes through to comic effect in the family's retelling of Jack's "crime" and trial. Jack suspects his longtime nemesis,shopkeeper/local sheriff Curly Stovall, has taken a family wedding ring from Jack's sister in lieu of overdue bills. Suspecting Stovall's hidden it in his locked safe, Jack roughs Curly and steals his safe, hoisting it up on his shoulders like Atlas shouldering the world. It is later we learn that Jack's sister has a sweet spot for Curly and may have given the ring to him. But, that's a later story.
Jack's arrest for stealing the safe puzzles the family. I never could quite determine what the safe actually did contain. Regardless or its contents, according to Uncle Curtis, "Jack had acted the only way a brother and son could act, and done what any other good Mississippi boy would have done in his place" and, recalling the trail, he claims, "I fully expected'em to throw the case right out the window"(43). In court, Judge Moody asks Jack if he's planning to plead innocent and Jack replies, "Yes sir, I'm needed"(52).
The Renfro-Beecham logic proves alien to the court's. Jack is sent to the penitentiary. Ultimately, by the family's sights, what the court lacks is a proper knowledge. His mother argues, "that judge never got it through his head what it was all about! Born and bred in Ludlow, most likely in the very shadow of the courthouse! A man never spend a day of his life in Banner, never heard of a one of us!"(62). The law is suspect because of it inability to account for circumstance and context, to account for the individual.
The judge Beulah refers to is Judge Moody. Recalling the trial, Uncle Percy says, "Judge Moody's whole battle cry was respect"(56). Judge Moody reads Jack's attack on and theft of Curly as an attack on authority, both the authority of money and law. He concludes, "'You folks around Banner trade at Stovall's store, vote him into office, and raise the roof when you feel like it'"(56). He warns, "You can't go knocking the law down if it gets in your way, you can't keep on packing up the law in the nearest crate big enough to hold it [to steal the safe, Jack ties up Curly in an empty coffin]...and go skipping out the store with a safe, so called....and all without offering this court any better reason than "He's [Curly is] aggravating." Aggravating!'"(56). Still, Jack responds with more of the same family logic: "'Judge, I reckon to do justice to Curly, you got to see him in Banner'"(57). Truth and law must be based on knowledge, and all three are dependent on context. To rule justly, you got to be and know where you're ruling.
Jack gets two years. To make his grandmother's birthday and the reunion, he leaves jail a few days shy of two years. However, outside of maiden Aunt Lexie, few question him when he arrives home like an idol to a wandering people. The family worships Jack. They surround him, pamper him, pepper him with questions, feed him. They break the bad news of his grandfather's passing. They prepare to tell him he has a daughter, although later we learn Gloria has told him this without informing the family she has done so. And, much to his chagrin, Jack learns from a late arriving Homer Champion that a man Jack helped out of a ditch earlier in the day, near Banner, was the same Judge Moody who'd sentenced him to the pen. Jack has acted as a good Samaritan to a man he considers an enemy and this perturbs Jack and his family. Various retributive options are bandied about till Gloria, anxious to keep her husband out of the pen for a spell, takes control and leads him away from his family.
In effect, Gloria, Jack and the baby Lady May go off for a walk. Gloria is anxious to be with Jack alone, both now and in the future and both figuratively and literally. She wishes to peel him from his family. Most immediately, she hopes to deter Jack from his desire to "meet that Judge....sing him my name out loud and clear, and leave him in as good a ditch as the one he had before I saved him. That's all." To which, Gloria replies, "Then it's up to your wife to pit her common sense against you"(112).
Gloria occupies a peculiar place in the family's battle against law, authority and education. While married in to the family via Jack, Gloria wishes for some distance from the Beecham clan. Abandoned at birth, Gloria was taken in by life-long school teacher Miss Julia who groomed her as a school-teacher. Gloria's career as a school teacher in Banner was brought to a sudden end when she fell in love and married Jack while boarding at his parent's.
Yet, all Gloria's efforts to extract Jack from his family and its continual troubles prove fruitless. Trouble finds Jack. While he and Gloria are getting reacquainted on a local outcrop, Banner Top, they hear the Judge's car coming along the road. Jack prepares to descend Banner Top to the road below and to shoo the Judge's car into a ditch nearby. Hoping to stop him, Gloria makes worse the situation by sticking Lady May in Jack's hands just as he's getting ready to descend, warning him, "If you can't be a better example to Lady May-hold her"(119). Jack does so but also begins his ragged descent down the outcrop, Lady May in hand. Gloria follows, and is unable to stop her descent until she ends up across the road. Lady May gets free when Jack gets to the bottom and tries to get to her mother on the other side of the road. Crossing it, she goes right into the path of the Judge's oncoming car. Gloria frantically runs to her and falls on top the baby in the middle of the road. Coming upon them, the Judge's swerves his car off the road to avoid them and runs the vehicle up the outcrop and almost off the edge on the other side. It comes to rest hanging half off of the "jumping-off place" on the side of Banner Top that fronts the Bywee River running below. It hangs precariously, anchored ultimately by Jack's best friend Aycock Comfort who somehow managed to get in the back seat of the car while it swerved off the road to avoid the baby. It's a crazy scene that apparently defies both explanation and the laws of physics.
Jack comes away convinced that the Judge has saved his baby and his wife. Grateful, he feel compelled to help the Moody's get their car down from the precipice, despite the Moody's reservations about his doing so. While Jack eagerly contemplates how he might do so, the judge tells his wife, "I reckon I better go on up there and put the quietus on that boy"(126). They ultimately resort to Gloria to put a stop to Jack's efforts to rescue the car on his own by driving it down the outcrop. Judge Moody asks him, "'have you been made to understand to keep hands off of that car?'" and Jack concedes "Yes sir...My wife's done passed a law'"(127).
While determined to resist Jack's offers of help, Mrs. Moody is clearly interested in getting the Moody car down soon. Yet, events conspire against this. When Curly Stovall happens by soon after, he is inclined to help till the mysterious appearance of events leads him to believe that Jack has set up the entire event to wreak vengeance upon him. He tells Mrs. Moody that he can't help her on a Sunday but promises to come back the following morning. Irritated, she commands her husband to "'shanghai the next thing on wheels that dares to come along here and make'em carry you back to civilization where you can beat somebody over the head till they come and haul us'"(155). Clearly, the civilization and regulation represented by the Moody's can be a thin veneer which washes away under distress.
The next potential Moody savior is a busload of teachers headed to Alliance, across the river from Banner. They're headed their to attend the funeral of Miss Julia Mortimer, a legendary school teacher in the region and a woman who acted as mentor/guardian/scold to Gloria when she was abandoned as a baby. The news of Ms. Julia's death hits Gloria as he she'd been "struck in the forehead by a stone out of a slingshot"(157), a curious Bible allusion which, in a bit of reverse casting, presents Gloria as the philistine. The teachers have headed this way to pick up Gloria on the way to Miss Julia's wake and funeral. As in other of Welty's depictions of small town life, the teachers have come to watch/experience/enjoy her mourning, her grief.
The teachers invite Gloria aboard their bus, reminding her "You're still one of us, Gloria Short. Even though you didn't wear too well or last as long as we did"(158). Finally, in a manipulative fashion, they remind her that "she owes [Miss Julia] the most of all...She loved you the best and prized you the most"(158). But, Gloria resist joining the schoolteachers, arguing that she must look after Lady May, who then comically happens to appear perched high above them on the top of Banner Top overlooking the road. Jack recovers the child. While she might be doing a poor job of looking after Lady May, Gloria protests she can't come along because she's got her hands full. With self-damning words in accord with the anti-education bent of the book, the school teachers add in agreement "'of the living'"(162). They head off without her. Gloria is a woman without a country, neither country nor city, neither civilized or of the land, neither schoolteacher nor Renfro.
With their car stuck on Banner Top with no help in sight, Jack invites the Moody's to come on home with him and Gloria. They accept. Atop a series of tables set up in the front yard of the Vaughn homestead, dinner is getting underway under a large tree. Granny Vaughn has been brought to the table like an icon, "lifted high and carried through the crowd. Little clouds of fragrance seemed to go with her"(175). Taking the place of her deceased minister husband, Brother Bethune, a Baptist minister with "his stand were wedged in to the tree roots by her side"(176). Brother Bethune doesn't simply offer a simple grace or blessing before the meal. Instead, he launches into a a sermon that is one part blessing, one part grace, and one solid part family history. Like the meal itself, it is without seeming boundaries and of prodigious length. He recalls Granny's marriage to Preacher Vaughn who "came here to this beautiful old house to live on their wedding day, and I believe he'd just surrendered to the ministry too, both at the age of eighteen"(182). His choice of the word "surrendered" suggests religion's potential to control. His sermon shows it's potential to ennoble, comfort and entertain.
During the course of the conversation that punctuates Bethune's sermon, Jack reveals that he has actually escaped from Parchman a day before his sentence was up. He does so within earshot of the Judge, attempting to explain his action by telling him, "Our reunion is one that don't wait, sir"(195).
Judge Moody is truly in an odd position at this reunion. Viewed as the villain who unjustly sentenced Jack, Judge Moody has been invited rather suddenly to dinner by the man he harmed. Brother Bethune tries to defuse the situation by introducing the Judge and his wife and by then informing them that the clan gathered is "going to forgive you"(208). The Moodys seem genuinely puzzled as to why the're being forgiven. Mrs. Moody assumes they're being forgiven for having walked in on the dinner and objects that they were invited to dinner by Jack. Uncle Noah replies such an invitation is "plain hospitality...That ain't no guarantee you ain't going to be forgiven when you get here"(208). Feeling he's done nothing wrong, Judge Moody refuses to be forgiven. Pointing to the reciprocal benefits of forgiveness, Brother Bethune implores, "Judge Moody, you do like the majority begs and be forgiven...Don't you want to come back and hear yourself be forgiven?" In the moral economy of common folk of the book, forgiveness addresses equally the needs of both the forgiven and the forgiver. One can satisfactorily forgive even if the action is not recognized by the recipient.
The family is angered by Judge Moody's refusal to accept their forgiveness. They are upset that he can't see he needs their forgiveness. They see Jack and his actions through the eyes of familial love while the Judge viewed him in the considerably cooler eyes of the law and its insistence on facts.
