The Yearling

Chapter XI

The fawns were being born. Jody saw through the scrub the delicate tracery of their small pointed hooves. Wherever he went, to the sink-hole, for wood into the black-jacks south of the lot, to the traps Penny was obliged to keep about for varmints, he walked with eyes on the ground, watching for signs of their comings and their goings. The larger hoof-marks of the does usually preceded them. But the does were wary. Often the doe-sign was in one place, where the mother had fed alone, and the wavering fawn-sign was some distance away, where the infant had been left in the greater safety of heavy cover. Often there were twin fawns. When Jody found the double set of tracks he could scarcely contain himself.

He thought always then, “I could leave one for the mammy and take one for myself.”

He broached the matter to his mother one evening.

“Ma, we got milk a-plenty. Cain’t I git me a leetle ol’ fawn for a pet for me? A spotted fawn, Ma. Cain’t I?”

“I should jest say not. What you mean, milk a-plenty? They ain’t a extry drop left from sun to sun.”

“It could have my milk.”

“Yes, and fatten the blasted fawn and you grow up puny. Much as we all got to do, what on earth do you want with one o’ them things, blayting around here day and night?”

“I want one. I want a ‘coon, but I know a ‘coon gits mischievous. I’d love a bear cub, but I know they’re liable to be mean. I jest want something—” he puckered his face so that his freckles ran together—”I jest want something all my own. Something to foller me and be mine.” He struggled for words. “I want something with dependence to it.”

His mother snorted.

“Well, you’ll not find that no-where. Not in the animal world nor in the world o’ man. Now Jody, I’ll not have you pesterin’ me. You say another word, ‘fawn’ or ”coon’ or ‘bear cub,’ and I’ll take a bresh to you.”

Penny listened quietly from his corner.

In the morning he said, “We’ll go hunt us a buck today, Jody. Likely we’ll find a fawn beddin’. Hit’s near about as much pleasure seein’ ‘em wild, as havin’ ‘em tame.”

“Will we take both dogs?”

“Nobody but old Julia. She ain’t had a work-out since she was hurt. A slow hunt’ll do her good.”

Ma Baxter said, “That last venison didn’t last no time. But we did jerk right smart of it, come to think of it. Git a few hams in the smoke-house and hit’ll look natural agin.”

Her good nature rose and fell with the food supply.

Penny said, “Jody, looks like you’ve fell heir to the old muzzle-loader. But don’t git too put out now, do it fail you like it failed me.”

He could not imagine being impatient about it. It was enough to have the use of it for himself. His mother had sewed the cream-colored ‘coonskin into a knapsack for him. He filled it with shot and caps and wadding and filled the powder horn.

Penny said, “Ma, I been studyin’. I jest about got to go to Volusia to git me shell cases. Lem only th’owed in a few shells with the gun. And I’d love some rale coffee. I’ve had a bait o’ them wild coffee beans.”

“Me, too,” she agreed. “And I need me some thread and a paper o’ needles.”

“Now the bucks,” he said, “seems to be feedin’ toward the river. I been seein’ a perfect shower o’ tracks headin’ that-a-way. I believe me and Jody kin hunt on in that direction, and do we git us a buck or two, we kin trade the saddles and haunches to Volusia for what we need. Then we kin say ‘Howdy’ to Grandma Hutto.”

She frowned.

“You’ll git to visitin’ with that sassy old woman and like as not you’ll be gone a couple o’ days. I think you’d ought to leave Jody with me.”

Jody squirmed and looked at his father.

Penny said, “We’ll be back tomorrer. How’s Jody to learn to hunt and be a man if his daddy don’t carry him along and learn him?”

“Hit’s a good excuse,” she said. “Hit’s jest men-folks likin’ to prowl off together.”

“Then you come make the hunt with me, sweetheart, and leave Jody here.”

Jody laughed out. The picture of his mother’s great frame pushing through the bay-heads made him shout in spite of himself.

“Oh, go on,” she said, and laughed. “Git it over and done with.”

“You know you enjoy gittin’ shut of us now and agin,” Penny told her.

“Hit’s my only rest,” she admitted. “Leave me Grandpa’s gun loaded.”

The ancient Long Tom, Jody thought, was more of a menace to her than to any intruders. She was an inaccurate and incompetent shot, and the gun was as fallible as Penny’s muzzle-loader, but he could understand the comfort to her of its presence. He brought it from the shed for his father to load, grateful that she had not demanded his own newly acquired piece.

Penny whistled to old Julia and the man and boy and hound set out eastward in mid-morning. The May day was warm and close. The sun beat down through the scrub. The small hard leaves of the scrub oaks were flat pans to hold the heat. The sand burned Jody’s feet through his cowhide shoes. In spite of the heat, Penny walked at a fast gait. It was all Jody could do to follow him. Julia loped ahead. There was as yet no scent. Penny stopped once and stared about the horizon.

Jody asked, “What you see, Pa?”

“Nothin’, son, and very leetle o’ that.”

A mile east of the clearing, he changed his direction. There were suddenly deer tracks in a great plenty. Penny studied them, for size and sex and freshness.

“Here’s two big ol’ bucks travelin’ together,” he said at last. “They come this way before day.”

“How kin you tell about tracks so?”

“Jest by bein’ used to ‘em.”

Jody could see little difference between them and some of the other hoof-marks. Penny stooped and traced them with his finger.

“Now you know to tell a doe from a buck. A doe’s track is pointed and fine. And ary one kin tell how fresh a track be, for a old track has sand blowed into it. And now if you’ll notice, a deer’s toes is spraddled when he’s runnin’. They’re close together when he walks.” He indicated the fresh tracks to the hound. “Here, Julia, git him!”

Julia bent her long nose to the trail. It led out of the scrub, toward the south-east, into an open area of gallberry flats. Here was bear sign as well.

Jody asked, “Must I shoot a bear, do I git the chancet?”

“Bear or buck, hit’s all right. Jest be sure you got a good chancet. Don’t go wastin’ your shot.”

The flats were not hard going, but the sun was blazing. The gallberry bushes ended and there was a welcome stretch of pines. The shadows were cooling. Penny pointed out a bear gnaw. It was a clawed area on a tall pine tree, shoulder high to a man. The resin dripped from it.

“I’ve watched a bear at it,” Penny said, “many a time. He’ll stretch up and he’ll claw. He’ll turn his head sideways and he’ll nag and gnaw. Then he’ll back up and rub his shoulders agin the resin. Some folks says it’s to keep the bees from stingin’ when he robs a bee-tree, but I’ve allus figgered ‘twas jest a way o’ boastin’. A buck’ll boast jest about the same way. He’ll rub his head and horns agin a saplin’ jest to prove hisself.”

Julia lifted her nose and Penny and Jody stopped short. There was a commotion ahead. Penny motioned Julia to heel and they crept close. An opening showed and they halted. Twin bear cubs were high in a slim pine sapling, using it for a swing. The sapling was tall and limber and the yearling cubs were rocking it back and forth. Jody had swung in the same fashion. For an instant the cubs were not bears, but boys like himself. He would have liked to climb the sapling and rock with them. It bent half-way to the ground as they swung their weight, swayed upright again, then low on the other side. The cubs made now and then an amiable talking.

Julia could not resist barking. The cubs stopped their play, astonished, and stared down at the humans. They were not alarmed. It was their first sight of mankind and they seemed to feel, as Jody felt, only curiosity. They cocked their black furry heads from one side to the other. One scrambled to a higher limb, not for safety, but for a better view. He curled one arm around the sapling and gaped down below him. His black beady eyes were bright.

“Oh Pa,” Jody begged, “let’s ketch us one.”

Penny himself was tempted.

“They’re a mite big for tamin’.” He brought himself to his senses. “Now what ails us? Jest how long would it take your Ma to run him off, and me and you with him?”

“Pa, look at him cut his eyes.”

“That’s likely the mean un. Of twin bear cubs, one’ll be gentle and t’other’ll be mean.”

“Let’s ketch the gentle un. Please, Pa.”

The cubs craned their necks. Penny shook his head.

“Come long, boy. Le’s git on with our hunt and leave ‘em to their play.”

He lingered behind while his father took up the bucks’ trail again. He thought once that the cubs were about to come down the sapling to him, but they only scrambled about from one limb to another and turned their heads to watch him. He ached to touch them. He imagined them sitting on their haunches and begging, as Oliver Hutto described trained bears as doing; nesting in his lap, warm and furry and intimate; sleeping on the foot of his bed; even under the covers with him, if the nights were cold. His father was almost out of sight under the pines. He ran after him. He looked back over his shoulder and waved his hand to the bear cubs. They lifted their black noses, as though the air might tell them, what their eyes had not, the nature of their observers. In their first sign of alarm, he saw them clamber down the sapling and slip away to the west beyond the gall-berries. He caught up to his father.

“Do you ever ask your Ma into leavin’ you have sich as that,” Penny told him, “you belong to git one young enough to train easy.”

The thought was encouraging. The yearling cubs would indeed be large to handle.

“Now I never had nothin’ much to pet nor play with, neither,” Penny said. “There was sich a mess of us. Neither farmin’ nor the Bible pays a man too good, and Pa was like your Ma, he jest wouldn’t feed no creeturs. He done well to fill our bellies. Then he put in and died, and since I was the oldest rat in the barn, I had to look after the rest of ‘em ‘til they was old enough to shuffle around for theirselves.”

“Well, a bear cub could near about make his own livin’, couldn’t he?”

“Yes — offen your Ma’s chickens.”

Jody sighed and applied himself with his father to the buck tracks. The pair of deer was keeping close together. It was odd, he thought, that the bucks could be so friendly through the spring and summer. Then when their horns were grown, and they began to run with the does in the autumn, they would drive the fawns away from the does, and battle fiercely. One buck was larger than the other.

“That un there’s a buck big enough to ride,” Penny said.

A patch of hammock joined the pines. Dogbane grew thickly here, lifting its yellow bells. Penny studied the multitude of tracks.

“Now boy,” he said, “you been wantin’ to see fawns. Me and Julia’ll go on and make a circle. You climb up this here live oak and scrooch down in the branches and I believe you’ll see somethin’. Hide your gun here in the bushes. You’ll not want it.”

Jody settled himself halfway up the live oak. Penny and Julia disappeared. The shade of the oak was cool. A light breeze moved through its leaves. Jody’s shaggy hair was wet. He pushed it out of his eyes and wiped his face on his blue sleeve, then settled himself to quiet. Silence took over the scrub. Far away a hawk cried shrilly and was gone. No bird stirred in any branches. No creature moved or fed. No bees droned, or any insect. It was high noon. Everything living was resting in the heat of the sun’s meridian. Everything except Penny and old Julia, who moved now somewhere among the scrub oaks and the myrtle. Bushes crackled below him. He thought his father was returning. He almost betrayed himself with a quick movement. A bleat sounded. A fawn was moving from under the protection of a low clump of palmettos. It must have been there all the time. Penny had known. Jody held his breath.

A doe bounded over the palmettos. The fawn ran to her, wobbling on unsteady legs. She bent her head to it and made a low sound in greeting. She licked its small anxious face. It was all eyes and ears. It was spotted. Jody had never seen one so young. The doe threw up her head and tasted the air with her wide nostrils. A taint lay on it of the human enemy. She kicked up her heels and made a sortie about the live oak. She discovered the trail of hound and man. She followed it backward and forward, throwing up her head at every few steps. She stopped and listened, her ears pricked tall above her great luminous eyes.

The fawn bleated. The doe quieted. She seemed satisfied that the danger had come and gone. The fawn nuzzled her full udders and began to nurse. It butted her bag with its knobby head and switched its short tail in a gluttonous ecstasy. The doe was not content. She broke away from it and moved directly underneath the live oak. The boughs below Jody obscured his view, but he could see that she had traced his scent to the tree and was lifting her head to locate him. Her nose followed the odor of his hands, the leather of his shoes, the sweat of his clothing, as surely as a man’s eyes followed a blazed trail. The fawn followed, greedy for the warm milk. Suddenly the doe wheeled and kicked the fawn sprawling into the bushes. She cleared them in a great bound and galloped away.

Jody scrambled down from his perch and ran to the place where he had seen the fawn tumble. It was not there. He hunted the ground carefully. The tiny hoof-marks crossed and criss-crossed and he could not tell one track from another. He sat down disconsolately to wait for his father. Penny returned, red of face and wet with sweat.

“Well, son,” he called, “what did you see?”

“A doe and a fawn. The fawn were right here all the while. He nursed his mammy and she smelled me and run off. And I cain’t find the fawn no-where. You reckon Julia kin track him?”

Penny dropped down on the ground.

“Julia kin track ary thing that makes a trail. But don’t let’s torment the leetle thing. Hit’s right clost this minute, and likely scairt to death.”

“His mammy shouldn’t of left him.”

“That’s where she was smart. Most ary thing would take out after her. And she’s learned the fawn to lay up so still hit’ll not git noticed.”

“Hit was mighty cute spotted, Pa.”

“Was the spots all in a line, or helter-skelter?”

“They was in a line.”

“Then hit’s a leetle ol’ buck-fawn. Wasn’t you proud to see it so clost?”

“I was proud, but I’d shore love to ketch him and keep him.”

Penny laughed and opened his knapsack and took out the lunch. Jody protested. He was for once more anxious to hunt than to eat.

Penny said, “We got to noon somewhere, and a deer is mighty like to run over us right here. When you noon, you jest as good to noon where the game walks.”

Jody brought his gun from its hiding place and sat down to eat. He was abstracted and only the flavor of fresh brierberry jam brought him back to a consciousness of his food. The jam was thin and not sweet enough, sugar being scarce. Old Julia was still a little weak. She lay stretched out on her side. Her battle scars showed white against her dark hide. Penny lay on his back.

He said lazily, “Them two bucks is like to circle back through here to bed up right soon, if the wind don’t change. If you was of a notion to go climb one o’ them high pine trees about a quarter to the east, hit’d make a mighty good stand.”

Jody picked up his gun and started away. He would give anything to bring down a buck alone.

Penny called after him, “Don’t try for too long a shot. Take your time. And don’t let the gun kick you outen the tree.”

Tall scattered pines lifted ahead from a desolate flat of gallberry bushes. Jody chose one that commanded a view of a wide area. Nothing could cross in any direction without his seeing it. It was hard work to climb the straight trunk with the gun in one hand. His knees and shins were raw when he reached the lowest branches. He rested a moment then climbed as high as he dared in the tree-top. The pine swayed in an imperceptible breeze. It seemed alive, stirring with a breath of its own.

He recalled the bear cubs, rocking the sapling. He began to swing his tree-top, but it was over-balanced with his weight and that of his gun. It cracked ominously and he held quiet. He looked about him. He knew now how a hawk felt, surveying the world from high places. An eagle stared down as he was staring, high and wise and predatory and keen. He swung his head in a slow circle. For the first time he could believe that the world was round. By turning his head quickly, he could almost see the whole horizon at once.

He thought that his vision covered the entire area. He was startled to see movement. He had seen nothing approaching. But a large buck was feeding toward him. Early huckleberries were offering food. The buck was still out of range. He debated climbing down from the pine tree and stalking it, but knew that the animal, more alert than he, would be gone before he could lift his gun. He could only wait, and pray that it would feed within a reasonable distance. It moved with a maddening slowness.

For a time he thought it meant to feed away from him, to the south. Then it began to move directly toward him. He brought his gun up behind the shelter of the branches. His heart pounded. He could not tell for the life of him whether the deer was near or far. It loomed large, yet he was conscious that such details as eyes and ears were still not plain to him. He waited for what seemed an interminable period. The buck lifted his head. Jody drew a bead on the stout neck.

He pulled the trigger. At the instant that he did so, he realized that he had not made sufficient allowance for his height above the game. He had over-shot. Yet it seemed to him that he must have touched the animal, for it leaped into the air with something more than alarm. It cleared the gallberry bushes with a high bounding, making long cradled arcs. It passed directly under the pine-tree. If he had had his father’s new double-barreled gun, he would have had another shot. In a few seconds he heard Penny’s gun. He was quivering. He climbed down from the pine and pushed his way back to the patch of hammock. The buck lay in the shade of the live oak. Penny had already begun the dressing.

Jody called, “Did I hit him?”

“You hit him. You done a mighty good job. Like as not, he’d of fell a piece on, but I takened a shot at him as he come by, jest to make sure. You was a mite high.”

“I know it. The minute I shot, I knowed I was high.”

“Well, that’s the way you learn. Next time, you’ll know. Now here’s your shot, here, and there’s mine.”

Jody knelt down to examine the fine frame. Again, a sickness came over him at the sight of the glazed eyes and the bleeding throat.

He said, “I wisht we could git our meat without killin’ it.”

“Hit’s a pity, a’right. But we got to eat.”

Penny was working deftly. His hunting knife, a flat saw-file ground down to an edge, with only a corn-cob for handle, was not overly sharp, but he had already drawn the venison and cut off the heavy head. He skinned it below the knees, crossed the legs and tied them, slipped his arms through the junctures, and stood up with the carcass neatly balanced on his back for carrying.

“Now Boyles may want the hide when we skin it out at Volusia,” he said, “but if you’d like to carry the hide to Grandma Hutto for a present, we’ll jest refuse him.”

“I reckon she’d be proud to have it for a rug, a’right. I wisht I’d shot it by myself, to give her.”

“That’s jest all right. The hide’s yours. I’ll carry her a fore-quarter, for my portion. She’s got nobody but us to hunt for her, with Oliver gone to sea. That mindless Yankee hangs around her is no good for sich as that.” Penny said innocently, “Now mebbe you’d ruther carry the hide to your sweetheart.”

Jody scowled blackly.

“Pa, you know I got no sweetheart.”

“You ain’t goin’ back on Eulalie after I seed you holdin’ hands at the doin’s?”

“I was not holdin’ hands. It was a game they was playin’. If you say that agin, Pa, I’ll jest die.”

Penny seldom teased his son, but now and then an occasion was irresistible.

“Grandma’s my sweetheart,” Jody said.

“All right. I jest wanted to git it straight.”

The sand road was long and hot. Penny was wet with sweat, but he walked easily under his burden.

Jody said, “Kin I tote it a ways?” but Penny shook his head.

“These fellers only fits a man’s back,” he said.

They crossed Juniper Creek, then, after two miles of narrow road, picked up the main road to the river and to Volusia. Penny stopped to rest. In late afternoon they passed Captain McDonald’s house and Jody knew they were nearing Fort Butler. Around a bend in the road, the dry growth of pines and scrub oak disappeared. There was a new lushness. Sweet gums and bay were here, and, like sign-posts indicating the river, cypress. Wild azaleas were blooming late in the low places, and the passion flower opened its lavender corollas along the road.

They reached the St. John’s River. It was dark and aloof. It seemed to slide toward the ocean indifferent to its own banks and to the men who crossed or used it. Jody stared at it. It was a pathway to the world. Penny shouted across it to summon the ferry from the Volusia side. A man crossed over for them with a rough raft of hewn logs. They crossed back, watching the slow sweep of the river current. Penny paid his ferriage and they walked up the curving shell road and into the Volusia store.

Penny hailed the proprietor, “Howdy, Mr. Boyles. How do this feller look to you?”

“Too good for the steam-boat. But Cap’ll want it.”

“What’s venison worth?”

“The same. A dollar and a half a saddle. I’ll swear, those city folks travelling up and down the river — Hollering for venison, and ‘tain’t half as good as pork, and you and me, we know it.”

Penny hauled the deer to the big meat block and began the skinning.

“Yes,” he agreed, “but if a feller’s pot-bellied and cain’t git out and shoot it for hisself, I reckon venison has a mighty fancy taste to him.”

They laughed together. Penny was a welcome trader at the store, as much for his wit and his stories, as his business. Boyles himself was judge and arbiter and encyclopedia for the small community. He stood now in the close odorous dusk of his store like a captain in the hold of his ship. His wares included the necessities and scanty luxuries of the whole country-side, from plows, wagons, buggies and implements, through food staples to whiskey and hardware, dry goods and notions and medicines.

“Now one fore-quarter I’ll call back by for tomorrer to carry home to my wife. T’other one goes to Grandma Hutto,” Penny said.

“Bless her old soul,” Boyles said. “Why I say ‘old soul’ I don’t know. If a man’s wife was as young-hearted as Grandma Hutto, why, living’d be a feast.”

Jody walked along the length of the glass case under the counter. There were sweet crackers and an assortment of candies. There were Barlow knives and the new Rogers. There were shoe-strings, buttons, thread and needles. The coarser wares were on shelves that lined the walls. Buckets and pitchers, lard-oil lamps and basins, the new kerosene lamps, coffee pots and cast-iron skillets and Dutch ovens, nestled together like strange birds, fledglings in one nest. Beyond the utensils were the dress goods; calico and Osnaburg, denim and shoddy, domestic and homespun. A few bolts of alpaca and linsey and broadcloth were thick with dust. There was little sale for such luxuries, especially in the summer. At the back of the store were the groceries, hams and cheeses and bacons. There were barrels of sugar and flour and meal and grits and green coffee beans; sacks of potatoes; kegs of syrup; barrels of whiskey. Nothing here was tempting and Jody wandered back to the glass case. A rusty mouth organ lay on top of a pile of licorice strings. He was tempted for a moment to trade in his deer hide and buy the mouth organ, so that he could play to Grandma Hutto or accompany the Forresters. But Grandma would probably prefer the deer hide. Boyles called to him.

“Young man, your daddy doesn’t come to trade too often. I’ll treat you to a dime’s worth of anything you take a notion to.”

He looked over the assortment hungrily. “I reckon the mouth organ’s wuth more’n a dime.”

“Well, yes, but it’s been there a good while now. Take it and welcome.”

Jody cast a last look at the candies. But Grandma Hutto would have sweets for him.

He said, “Thank you, sir.”

Boyles said, “Your boy’s mannerly, Mr. Baxter.”

“He’s right smart of a comfort,” Penny said. “We lost so many young uns, I think sometimes I set too much store by him.”

Jody glowed with a sense of virtue. He longed to be good and noble. He turned back of the counter to garner the reward of his character. He glanced up at a motion by the door. Boyles’ niece, Eulalie, stood gaping at him. He was flooded instantly with hate. He hated her because his father had teased him. He hated her hair, hanging in tight pig-tails. He hated her freckles, more lavish than his own. He hated her squirrel-teeth, her hands, her feet, and every bone in her lank body. He leaned over swiftly and picked a small potato from a sack and lifted it. She eyed him venomously. Slowly, she flickered her tongue at him like a garter snake. She clasped two fingers over her nose in a gesture of malodorous disgust. He hurled the potato. It struck her on the shoulder and she retreated with shrieks of anguish.

Penny said, “Why, Jody.”

Boyles advanced, frowning.

Penny said sternly, “Git right outen here. Mr. Boyles, he cain’t have the mouth organ.”

He went outside into the hot sunlight. He was humiliated. Yet if he had it to do over again, he would throw another potato at her, a larger one. When his business was done, Penny joined him.

He said, “I’m sorry you seed fit to shame me. Mebbe your Ma’s right. Mebbe you hadn’t ought to have no truck with the Forresters.”

Jody scuffled his feet in the sand.

“I don’t keer. I hate her.”

“I don’t know what to say. How on earth come you to do it?”

“I jest hate her. She made a face at me. She’s ugly.”

“Well, son, you cain’t go thru life chunkin’ things at all the ugly women you meet.”

Jody spat unrepentant in the sand.

“Well,” Penny said, “I don’t know what Grandma Hutto’ll say.”

“Oh Pa, don’t tell her. Please don’t tell her.”

Penny was ominously silent.

“I’ll be mannerly, Pa.”

“I don’t know whether she’ll take this hide from you now or not.”

“Leave me have it, Pa. I’ll not chunk nothin’ at nobody agin, if you’ll not tell Grandma.”

“All right. This time. But don’t let me ketch you at sich as that agin. Take your deer-hide.”

His spirits lifted. The menacing cloud moved away. They turned north up a path that paralleled the river. Magnolias were in bloom along it. Beyond, there was a lane of oleanders. These too were blossoming. Red-birds flew ahead down the lane. The oleanders led to a gate in a white picket fence. Grandma Hutto’s flower garden was a bright patchwork quilt thrown down inside the pickets. Her small white cottage was bound to the substantial earth with vines of honeysuckle and jessamine. Everything here was dear and familiar. Jody ran down the path through the garden; through the patch of indigo, in feathery, rose-lavender bloom.

He called, “Hey! Grandma!”

Light steps sounded inside the cottage and she was on the door-step.

“Jody! You scamp.”

He ran to her.

Penny called, “Don’t knock her down, boy.”

She braced her small frame. He squeezed her until she squeaked.

“You tormented bear cub,” she said.

She began to laugh, and he tipped back his head to laugh with her and watch her face. It was pink and wrinkled. Her eyes were as black as gallberries. They opened and shut when she laughed, and the wrinkles rippled out from the sides. She shook up and down, and her small plump breast quivered like a quail dusting. Jody sniffed at her like a puppy.

He said, “Ummm, Grandma, you smell good.”

Penny said, “That’s more’n you kin say for us, Grandma. We’re a dirty pair o’ somebodies.”

“‘Tain’t nothin’ but huntin’ smell,” Jody said. “Deer-hide and leaves and sich. And sweatin’.”

“It’s a dandy smell,” she said. “I’m jest lonesome for boy-smell and man-smell.”

Penny said, “Anyway, here’s our excuse-us. Fresh venison.”

“And the hide,” Jody said. “For a rug for you. Hit’s mine. I wounded it.”

She lifted her hands in the air. Their gifts became at once of great value. It seemed to Jody that he could bring in a panther single-handed, in return for her approval. She touched meat and hide.

Penny said, “Now don’t dirty them leetle hands.”

She drew gallantry from men as the sun drew water. Her pertness enchanted them. Young men went away from her with a feeling of bravado. Old men were enslaved by her silver curls. Something about her was forever female and made all men virile. Her gift infuriated all women. Ma Baxter had returned to the clearing from her four years in her house with an acute dislike. The older woman returned it with good measure.

Penny said, “Leave me tote the meat to the kitchen. And I’d best tack the hide to your shed wall, to cure for you.”

Jody called, “Here, Fluff!”

The white dog came racing. He bounded at Jody like a ball and leaped at his face to lick it.

Grandma said, “He’s as proud to see you as if ‘twas some of his kin-folks.”

Fluff caught sight of old Julia, sitting sedately on her haunches. He stiffened and advanced to her. Julia sat without stirring, her long ears drooping.

Grandma said, “I like that dog. She looks jest like my Aunt Lucy.”

Penny went to the rear of the cottage with the venison and the hide. They were all welcome here, father and son and battle-scarred hound. Jody felt more at home than when he returned to his own mother.

He said, “I reckon you wouldn’t be so proud to see me, did you have to put up with me all the time.”

Grandma chuckled.

“You’ve heard your Ma say that. Did she quarrel about you comin?”

“Not so turrible as sometimes.”

“Your father,” she said tartly, “married a woman all Hell couldn’t amuse.”

She lifted a finger in the air.

“I’ll bet you want to go swimmin’.”

“In the river?”

“Smack in the river. When you come out, I’ll give you clean clothes. Some of Oliver’s.”

She did not caution him against alligators or moccasins or against the river current. It was good to have it taken for granted that he had a little sense of his own. He ran down the path to the landing. The river flowed deep and dark. It made a rippling sound against the banks, but the great liquid heart of it moved silently. Only the swift progress of fallen leaves showed the current. Jody hesitated a moment on the wooden landing, then dove in. He came up gasping with the coldness and struck upstream. He kept close to the bank, where the current ran less swiftly.

He made almost no progress. The dark vegetation towered on either side of the river. He was pinned between banks of live oaks and cypresses. He pretended that an alligator was behind him and swam desperately. He passed one spot and then, laboriously, another, dog-paddling. He wondered if he could swim as far as the upper landing, where the ferry crossed and the river steamers halted. He fought his way toward it. A cypress knee offered anchorage and he clung to it and caught his wind. He set out again. The landing looked far away. His shirt and breeches interfered with his freedom. He wished he had gone in naked. Grandma would not have minded. He wondered what his mother would have said if he had told her the Forresters had played and sung naked.

He looked over his shoulder. Hutto’s landing had disappeared around the bend. He was suddenly not happy in the fluid darkness. He turned around. The current caught him and he shot downstream. He struggled to approach the bank. Watery tentacles held him. He thought in a panic that he might be swept on to Volusia Bar, to great Lake George itself, even, perhaps, the sea. He fought blindly, reaching for whatever might be solid under him. He found himself grounding a little above the landing. In relief, he drifted cautiously down to it and climbed up on the wooden platform. He drew a deep breath. The panic left him and he was exhilarated by the cold water and the danger. Penny was on the landing.

His father said, “That were right smart of a tussle. Reckon I’ll jest ease around the edge to git me my wash.”

He dropped cautiously from the landing.

He said, “Now I don’t aim to take my feet offen the ground. My day for capers is over.”

He came out of the water shortly. They returned to the rear of the cottage. Grandma Hutto had clean clothes waiting for them. For Penny, there were garments of the long-dead Mr. Hutto, musty with age. For Jody, there were shirt and breeches that Oliver had worn and outgrown many years ago.

Grandma said, “They say you git to use things again, if you save them, ever’ seven years. How many is two times seven, Jody?”

“Fourteen.”

Penny said, “Don’t ask him no further. That school teacher me and the Forresters boarded last winter didn’t scarcely know, hisself.”

“Well, lots of things is more important than book-learnin’.”

“I know that, but a feller needs to know to read and write and figger. But Jody’s gittin’ along right good with what I kin make out to learn him.”

They dressed in the shed. They smoothed back their hair with their hands and felt clean and strange in the borrowed clothing. Jody’s freckled face shone. His tawny hair lay wet and smooth. They put on their own shoes and wiped away the dust with their discarded shirts. Grandma Hutto called to them and they went into the cottage.

Jody smelled its familiar odor. He had never been able to disentangle its elements. The sweet lavender she used on her clothing was plain. There were dried grasses in a jar before the fire-place. There was the unmistakable smell of honey, which she kept in a cupboard. There was pastry; tarts and cookies and fruit cakes. There was the smell of the soap she used on Fluff’s fur. There was the pervasive scent of flowers from the garden outside the windows. And above it all, it came to him at last, lay the smell of the river. The river itself was fluid through the cottage and around it, leaving a whirlpool of odorous dampness and decaying fern. He looked through the open door. A path led through marigolds to the water. The river shone in the late sunlight, Guinea-gold, like the bright flowers. Its flow drew Jody’s mind with it to the ocean, where Oliver rode the storms in ships, and knew the world.

Grandma brought Scuppernong wine and spice cakes. Jody was allowed a glass of wine. It was as clear as Juniper Springs. Penny smacked his lips over it, but Jody wished it was something sweeter, blackberry shrub, perhaps. He ate spice cakes absently, and stopped in shame to see that he had emptied the plate. This, at home, would be catastrophe. Grandma went to the cupboard and filled the plate again.

She said, “Don’t you spoil your dinner.”

“I never know, ‘til it’s too late.”

She went to the kitchen and he followed her. She began to slice venison to broil. He frowned anxiously. The meat was no great treat to the Baxters. She opened the oven door and he became aware that other things were being cooked. She had an iron cook stove. Food from it was more mysterious than from the open hearth at home. The closed door concealed all manner of things behind its black bosom. The cake had dulled his appetite a little, but the good odors brought it back again.

He wandered back and forth from Grandma to his father. Penny sat sunk in quiet in a padded chair in the front room. Shadows lay over him and absorbed him. There was not here the excitement of a visit to the Forresters. There was instead a snugness that covered him like a warm quilt in winter. It was meat and drink to Penny, harassed at home by all his duties. Jody offered to help in the kitchen, but Grandma sent him away. He rambled into the yard and played with Fluff. Old Julia watched them wonderingly. Romping was as alien to her as to her master. Her black and tan face wore the solemnity of the work-dog.

Dinner was ready. Grandma Hutto was the only person Jody knew who had a separate room to eat in. Every one else ate in the kitchen, from a scrubbed and bare pine table. Even as she brought in the food, he could not take his eyes from the white cloth and the blue plates.

Penny said, “Now we’re a mighty sorry pair o’ tramps to set down to all these purties.”

But he joked and gossiped with Grandma with an ease he did not have at his own table.

He said to her, “I’m surprised your sweetheart ain’t showed up yit.”

Her black eyes snapped.

“Anybody but you said that, Penny Baxter, he’d get pitched in the river.”

“The way you done pore Easy hisself, eh?”

“Pity he didn’t drown. A man that don’t know when he’s insulted.”

“You’ll be obliged to take him yit, to give you the legal right to throw him out.”

Jody laughed boisterously. He could not listen to them and eat at the same time. He found himself getting behind and settled down to steady eating. There was a bass, fresh from Easy’s fish-trap in the river, baked whole with a savory stuffing. The Irish potatoes were a treat, after the Baxter sweet potatoes three times a day. There was early mutton corn. The Baxters seldom ate new corn, for all that was raised seemed more desperately needed for the stock. Jody sighed with his inability to hold everything. He concentrated on light bread and mayhaw jelly.

Penny said, “He’ll be so spoiled, his Ma’ll have to break him in like a new bird-dog.”

After dinner they walked together through the garden to the river bank. Boats passed. The travellers waved to Grandma and she waved back. Toward sunset Easy Ozell turned into the path to the cottage to do the evening chores. Grandma eyed her approaching admirer.

“Now don’t he look like the back end o’ bad luck?”

Jody thought that Easy looked like a sick gray crane, with feathers draggled by the rain. His hair hung in gray wisps in his neck. He had a long thin gray mustache that drooped to his jaws. His arms hung like limp wings at his sides.

“Look at him,” she said. “Tormented Yankee. His feet drag like a ‘gator’s tail.”

“He shore ain’t purty,” Penny admitted, “but he’s humble as a dog.”

“I hate a pitiful man,” she said. “And I hate anything is bow-legged. He’s so bow-legged his breeches near about make a mark on the ground.”

Easy shuffled back of the house. Jody heard him with the cow, and later at the wood-pile. When the evening’s work was done, he came timidly to the front steps. Penny shook hands with him and Grandma nodded to him. He cleared his throat. Then as though his Adam’s apple, working up and down, blocked his words, he gave up trying to speak and sat down on the bottom step. The talk flowed about him, and his gray face was bright with content. At twilight, Grandma disappeared inside the house. Easy rose stiffly to go.

He said to Penny, “My, if I could talk like you. Maybe she’d take to me better. You s’pose it’s that, or won’t she never forgive me, bein’ a Yankee? If ‘twas that, I’ll declare, Penny, I’d spit on the flag.”

“Well, you know a woman’ll hold a idee like a ‘gator’ll hold a shoat. She cain’t fergit the time the Yankees takened her needles and thread and she walked clean to St. Augustine with three hen’s eggs to trade for a paper o’ needles. Now if the Yankees had got beat, she’d mebbe forgive you.”

“But I was beat, Penny. I myself was beat something awful. It was at Bull Run. You rebels whipped us something terrible. My, I hated it.” His memories overcame him. He wiped his eyes. “You whipped us, and we was two to your one!”

He shuffled away.

“Now think o’ that beat-down human aspirin’ to Grandma,” Penny said. “He’s shore got a low eye for a high fence.”

Inside the cottage, Penny tormented Grandma about Easy, as he had tormented Jody about Eulalie. But she gave back as good as she took, and the bout was good-natured. The subject reminded Jody of the matter that had been on his conscience.

He said, “Grandma, Lem Forrester said Twink Weatherby was his gal. I said she was Oliver’s, and Lem didn’t like it no leetle bit.”

“Oliver’ll likely take care o’ Lem when he comes home,” she said. “If a Forrester knows to fight fair.”

She put them to bed in a room as white as the snow that Oliver told of. Jody stretched out beside his father between immaculate sheets.

He said, “Don’t Grandma live nice?”

Penny said, “Hit’s a way some women has.” He added loyally, “But don’t think hard o’ your Ma for not doin’ like Grandma. Your Ma ain’t never had nothin’ much to do with, and I’m to blame for that, not her. She cain’t he’p it, livin’ rough.”

Jody said, “I wisht Grandma was really my Grandma. I wisht Oliver was shore enough kin.”

“Well, folks that seems like kin-folks, is kin-folks. You ruther live here with Grandma?”

Jody pictured the cabin in the clearing. Hoot-owls would be crying, and perhaps the wolves would howl, or a panther scream. The deer would be drinking at the sink-hole, the bucks alone, the does with their fawns. The bear cubs would be curled up in their beds together. There was something at Baxter’s Island that was better than white tablecloths and counterpanes.

“No, I’d not. I’d jest like to take Grandma home to live with us. But we’d have to make Ma mind her.”

Penny chuckled.

“Pore boy,” he said, “has got to grow up and learn women—”