The Yearling

Chapter XIII

Jody thought, “I dreamed the fighting.”

He stared at the ceiling in Grandma Hutto’s spare bedroom. A freight steamer was thrashing up-stream. He heard the side-wheel paddles drinking the swift current of the river. They gulped great wet mouthfuls and let it spill out again. The steamer blew for the Volusia landing. He must certainly have only now awakened in the morning. The steamer’s chugging filled the river bed and beat against the western wall that was the scrub. He had had a nightmare about Oliver Hutto, coming home to fight the Forresters. He turned his head to look out of the window and watch the passing vessel. A sharp pain shot through his neck and shoulder. He could only turn his head part-way. Memory went through him, thrusting like the pain.

He thought, “The fighting was true.”

It was afternoon. The sun shone in the west across the river. A bright band lay across the counterpane. The pain stopped, but he felt faint and dizzy. There was movement in the room. A rocker creaked.

Grandma Hutto said, “His eyes are open.”

He tried to turn his head toward her voice but could not, without pain. She leaned over him.

He said, “Hey, Grandma.”

She spoke, not to him, but to his father.

“He’s tough as you. He’s all right.”

Penny appeared on the other side of the bed. One wrist was bandaged and one eye was black. He grinned at Jody.

He said, “We was a big help, you and me.”

A cold wet cloth slipped from Jody’s forehead. Grandma took it away and laid her hand in its place. She reached her fingers back of his head and felt carefully for the source of pain. It was in his left jaw, where Lem had struck him, and in the back of his head, where he had hit the sand. It eased under her slow manipulation.

She said, “Say somethin’, so I’ll know your brains ain’t jellied.”

“I cain’t think o’ nothin’ to say.” He added, “Ain’t it past dinner-time?”

Penny said, “The only serious hurt could come to him, is likely his belly.”

He said, “I ain’t hongry. I jest seed the sun and I was wonderin’.”

She said, “That’s all right, Punkin.”

He asked, “Where’s Oliver?”

“In the bed.”

“Is he bad hurted?”

“Not bad enough to learn him sense.”

“I don’t know now,” Penny said. “One more clip, and he’d not of had much left to learn with.”

“Anyway, he’s spoiled his pretty looks so no yellow-headed thing’ll look at him for a while.”

“You women is right smart hard on one another,” Penny said. “Seems to me ‘twas Oliver and Lem done most o’ the lookin’.”

Grandma rolled up the cold cloth and left the bedroom.

Penny said, “‘Twa’n’t noways fair, gittin’ a young un knocked dead. But I’m proud you was man enough to mix in it, when you seed a friend in trouble.”

Jody stared at the sunlight.

He thought, “The Forresters are my friends, too.”

As though he read his thoughts, Penny said, “This’ll likely end neighborin’ with the Forresters.”

A twinge of pain shot from Jody’s head into the pit of his stomach. He could not give up Fodder-wing. He decided that he would slip away some time and call to Fodder-wing from the bushes. He pictured the secret meeting. Perhaps they would be discovered and Lem would whip them both to death. Then Oliver would be sorry he had fought because of Twink Weatherby. Jody was more resentful at Oliver than at the Forresters. Something of Oliver that had belonged to him, and to Grandma, had been taken away and given to the yellow-headed girl who wrung her hands over the fighting.

Yet if he had it to do over again, he would still have to help Oliver. He recalled a wild-cat that the dogs had torn to pieces. Wild-cats deserved what they got. Yet at one moment, when the snarling mouth had gaped wide in agony, and the evil eyes had filmed in dying, he had been stabbed with pity. He had cried out, longing to help the creature in its torture. Too much pain was unjust. Too many against one were unjust. That was why it had been necessary to fight for Oliver, even if it lost him Fodder-wing. He closed his eyes, satisfied. Everything was all right when he understood it.

Grandma came into the bedroom with a tray.

“Now, Punkin, see can you sit up.”

Penny slipped his hands under the pillow and Jody eased up slowly. He was stiff and sore, but he felt no worse than the time he had fallen out of the chinaberry tree.

Penny said, “I wisht pore Oliver had got off this light.”

Grandma said, “He’s lucky he didn’t get his fine nose broke.”

He ate his way painfully toward a plate of gingerbread. Because of the soreness, he was forced to leave a square. He looked at it.

Grandma said, “I’ll save that for you.”

Penny said, “Ain’t it a treat, to have a woman reads your mind and then agrees with it.”

“I mean.”

Jody lay against his pillow. Violence broke into peace, and tore the world to tatters, and then, suddenly, all was peaceful again.

Penny said, “I got to be pushin’ on. Ory’ll be rarin’.”

He stood in the doorway. He was a little stooped. He looked lonely.

Jody said, “I want to go with you.”

Penny’s face grew bright.

He said, “Now, boy.” He was eager. “You shore you’re fitten? Tell you what I’ll do. Borry Boyles’ ol’ mare, the one goes home alone. We’ll ride her back and turn her a-loose.”

Grandma said, “Ora’ll feel better about him, if he goes with you. I know what happens to Oliver where I can see him, ain’t near as bad as what happens out of my sight.”

Jody eased his body from the bed. He was dizzy. His head felt large and full. He was tempted to sink back on the smooth sheets.

Penny said, “Jody’s a man, if I do say it.”

He straightened and went to the door.

“Must I say good-by to Oliver?”

“Why, shore, but don’t let on how bad he looks. He’s proud.”

He went to Oliver’s room. Oliver’s eyes were swollen shut, as though he had fallen in a nest of wasps. One cheek was purple. A white bandage was tied around his head. His lips were puffed. The fine sailor was laid low, and all because of Twink Weatherby.

Jody said, “Good-by, Oliver.”

Oliver did not answer. Jody softened.

“I’m sorry Pa and me didn’t git there quicker.”

Oliver said, “Come here.”

Jody went close to the bed.

“You do somethin’ for me? Go tell Twink I’ll meet her at the old grove Tuesday about dusk-dark.”

Jody was frozen.

He burst out, “I won’t do it. I hate her. Ol’ yellow-headed somethin’.”

“All right. I’ll send Easy.”

Jody scuffled the rug with one foot.

Oliver said, “I thought you were my friend.”

Being friends, he thought, was a nuisance. Then he remembered the hunting knife and was filled with gratitude and shame.

“Well, all right. I don’t want to, but I’ll tell her.”

Oliver laughed from the bed. He would laugh, Jody thought, if he lay dying.

“Good-by, Oliver.”

“Good-by, Jody.”

He left the room. Grandma was waiting.

He said, “It come out kind o’ disappointin’, didn’t it, Grandma? Oliver fightin’, and all.”

Penny said, “Boy, be civil.”

Grandma said, “The truth’s civil enough. When bears with sore heads go courtin’, there’s always trouble. As long as this is the end and not the beginning—”

Penny said, “You know where to send for me.”

They went down the path through the garden. Jody looked back over his shoulder. Grandma stood waving after them.

Penny stopped at Boyles’ store for his supplies and for his forequarter of venison. Boyles was willing to lend the mare, if Penny would strap a length of good buckskin for boot laces on the saddle when he sent her home, in payment. The supplies, flour and coffee and powder and lead and shell cases for the new gun, were dropped in a sack. Boyles went to his lot and brought out the mare, saddled with a blanket.

“Don’t turn her loose ‘til morning,” he said. “She can outrun a wolf, but I wouldn’t want a panther dropping on her.”

Penny turned away to lift his sacks. Jody sidled close to the storekeeper. He was reluctant to have his father know Oliver’s secret.

He whispered, “I got to see Twink Weatherby. Where do she live?”

“What you want of her?”

“I got somethin’ to say to her.”

Boyles said, “A heap of us have something to say to her. Well, you’ll have to bide your time. The young lady’s put a kerchief on her yellow curls and slipped off on the freight boat to Sanford.”

Jody felt a satisfaction as great as though he had driven her away himself. He borrowed a piece of paper and a thick pencil and printed a note to Oliver. It was laborious work, for his father’s teachings had been supplemented only by one brief winter of instruction from the itinerant school teacher. He wrote:

He read it over. He decided in favor of a greater kindness. He crossed out “im gladd” and wrote in its place “im sorry.” He felt virtuous. Something of the old glow for Oliver came back to him. Perhaps he could still hear his tales.

Crossing to the scrub side on the ferry, he stared down into the swift river. His thoughts were as turbulent as the current. Oliver had never failed him before. The Forresters were after all as rough as his mother insisted. He felt deserted. But he was sure Fodder-wing would not change. The gentle mind in the twisted body would be as aloof from the quarrel as his own. His father, of course, stood as unchangeable as the earth.