The Yearling

Chapter XIV

The quail were nesting. The fluted covey call had been silent for some time. The coveys were dividing into pairs. The cocks were sounding the mating call, clear and sweet and insistent.

One day in mid-June Jody saw a cock and a hen run from the grape arbor with the scuttling hurry of paternity. He was wise enough not to follow them, but prowled about under the arbor until he found the nest. It held twenty cream-colored eggs. He was careful not to touch them, for fear the quail might desert them, as guineas did. A week later he went to the arbor to look at the progress of the Scuppernongs. They were like the smallest pellets of shot, but they were green and sturdy. He lifted a length of vine, imagining the dusty golden grapes in the late summer.

There was a stirring at his feet, as though the grass had exploded. The setting was hatched. The young quail, each no bigger than the end of his thumb, scattered like small wind-blown leaves. The mother quail cried out, and made alternate sorties after the brood, in defense, and at Jody, in attack. He stood quiet, as his father had taught him to do. The hen gathered her young together and took them away through the tall broom-sage grasses. Jody ran to find his father. Penny was working the field peas.

“Pa, the quail has hatched under the Scuppernong. And the grapes is makin’.”

Penny rested on the plow handles. He was wet with sweat. He looked across the field. A hawk flew low, quartering.

He said, “If the hawks don’t git the quail, and the ‘coons don’t git the Scuppernongs, we’ll have a mighty good meal, about first frost.”

Jody said, “I hate the hawks eatin’ the quail, but I don’t someway mind the ‘coons eatin’ the grapes.”

“That’s because you love quail-meat more’n you love grapes.”

“No, ‘tain’t. Hit’s because I hate hawks and I love ‘coons.”

“Fodder-wing learned you that,” Penny said, “with all them pet ‘coons.”

“I reckon so.”

“The hogs come up yit, boy?”

“Not yit.”

Penny frowned.

“I purely hate to think the Forresters has trapped ‘em. But they ain’t never stayed off so long. If ‘twas bears, they wouldn’t all be gone to oncet.”

“I been as far as the old clearin’, Pa, and the tracks goes on west from there.”

“Time I git done workin’ these peas, we’re jest obliged to take Rip and Julia and go track ‘em.”

“What’ll we do, do the Forresters have ‘em trapped?”

“Whatever we got to do, when the time comes.”

“Ain’t you skeert to face the Forresters agin?”

“No, for I’m right.”

“Would you be skeert if you was wrong?”

“If I was wrong, I wouldn’t face ‘em.”

“What’ll we do, do we git beat up agin?”

“Take it for our share and go on.”

“I’d ruther let the Forresters keep the hogs.”

“And go without meat? A black eye’ll quiet down a heap quicker’n a empty belly. You want to beg off goin’?”

He hesitated.

“I reckon not.”

Penny turned back to his cultivating.

“Then go tell your Ma please Ma’am to fix us early supper.”

Jody went to the house. His mother was rocking and sewing on the shady porch. A small blue-bellied lizard scuttled from under her chair. Jody grinned, thinking how quickly she would heave her frame from the rocker if she had known.

“Please, Ma’am, Pa says to fix us supper right now. We got to go huntin’ the hogs.”

“About time.”

She finished her seam leisurely. He dropped on the step below her.

“We likely got to face the Forresters, Ma, if they got ‘em trapped.”

“Well, face ‘em. Black-hearted thieves.”

He stared at her. She had been furious at both him and his father because they had fought the Forresters at Volusia.

He said, “We’re like to git beat up and bloodied agin, Ma.”

She folded her sewing impatiently.

“Well, pity on us, we got to have our meat. Who’ll git it if you don’t?”

She went into the house. He heard her thumping the lid on the Dutch oven. He was confused. His mother talked much of “duty.” He had always hated the very word. Why was it his duty to let the Forresters maul him again, to recover the hogs, if it had not been his duty to let them maul him in order to help his friend Oliver? It seemed more honorable to him to bleed for a friend than for a side of bacon. He sat idly, listening to the fluttered whirring of mockingbirds in the chinaberry. The jays were chasing the red-birds out of the mulberry trees. There was a squabble for food even in the safety of the clearing. But it seemed to him there was always enough here for every one. There was food and shelter for father and mother and son; for old Cæsar; for Trixie and her spotted calf; for Rip and Julia; for the chickens, clucking and crowing and scratching; for the hogs, grunting in at evening for a cob of corn; for the song-birds in the trees, and the quail nesting under the arbor; for all of these, there was enough at the clearing.

Out in the scrub, the war waged ceaselessly. The bears and wolves and panthers and wild-cats all preyed on the deer. Bears even ate the cubs of other bears, all meat being to their maws the same. Squirrels and wood-rats, ‘possums and ‘coons, must all scurry for their lives. Birds and small furred creatures cowered in the shadow of hawk and owl. But the clearing was safe. Penny kept it so, with his good fences, with Rip and old Julia, with a wariness that seemed to Jody to be unsleeping. Sometimes he heard a rustling in the night, and the door opened and closed, and it was Penny, slipping back to his bed from a silent hunt for some marauder.

There was intrusion back and forth, as well. The Baxters went into the scrub for flesh of deer and hide of wild-cat. And the predatory animals and the hungry varmints came into the clearing when they could. The clearing was ringed around with hunger. It was a fortress in the scrub. Baxter’s Island was an island of plenty in a hungry sea.

He heard the trace chains clanking. Penny was returning to the lot along the fence row. Jody ran ahead to open the lot gates for him. He helped with the unharnessing. He climbed the ladder into the loft and pitched down a forkful of cowpea hay into Cæsar’s manger. There was no more corn and would not be until the summer’s crop was made. He found a pile of hay with the dried peas still clinging to it and threw it down for Trixie. There would be more milk in the morning for both the Baxters and the spotted calf. The calf was inclined to leanness, for Penny was weaning it from the cow. The loft was heavy with heat, trapped under the thick hand-hewn slabs of the shingled roof. The hay crackled with a dry sweetness. It tickled his nostrils. He lay down in it a moment, abandoning himself to the resiliency. He was no more than comfortable when he heard his mother call. He scrambled down from the loft. Penny had finished milking. They went to the house together. Supper was on the table. There were only clabber and cornbread, but there was enough.

Ma Baxter said, “You fellers try to git a shot at some meat while you’re off.”

Penny nodded.

“I’m totin’ my gun o’ purpose.”

They set off to the west. The sun was still above the tree-tops. There had been no rain for several days, but now cumulus clouds were piled low in the north and west. From the east and south, a steel grayness crept toward the glaring brilliance of the west.

Penny said, “A good rain today’d near about leave us lay by the corn.”

There was no breeze. The air lay over the road like a thick down comforter. It seemed to Jody that it was something that could be pushed away, if he could struggle up through it. The sand burned his bare calloused soles. Rip and Julia walked listlessly, heads down, tails sagging, their tongues dripping from open jaws. It was not easy to follow the tracks of the hogs where the loose soil had been so long dry. Penny’s eye was keener here than Julia’s nose. The hogs had fed through the black-jack, crossed the abandoned clearing, and then headed for the prairie, where lily roots could be dug, and pools of cool water could be muddied and wallowed in. They did not range so far when food could be had close at home. Now was a barren and parlous season. There was no mast yet, of pine or oak or hickory, except what could be rooted deep under the leaves from last year’s falling. Palmetto berries were still too green, even for the undiscerning taste of a hog. Three miles from Baxter’s Island Penny crouched to examine the trail. He picked up a grain of corn and turned it over in his hand. He pointed to the hoof-marks of a horse.

“They baited them hogs,” he said.

He straightened his back. His face was grave. Jody watched him anxiously.

“Well, son, we’re obliged to follow.”

“Clare to the Forresters?”

“Clare to wheresomever the hogs be. Mought be, we’ll find ‘em in a pen some’eres.”

The trail zigzagged where the hogs had weaved back and forth for the scattered corn.

Penny said, “I kin understand the Forresters fightin’ Oliver and I kin understand them rompin’ on you and me. But I be dogged if I kin understand cold-out meanness.”

A quarter of a mile beyond stood a rough hog-trap. It had been sprung but the pen was now empty. It was made of untrimmed saplings and a limber sapling had been baited to spring the gate behind the crowding hogs.

“Them rascals was nearby, waitin’,” Penny said. “That pen wouldn’t hold a hog no time.”

A cart had turned around in the sand to the right of the pen. The wheel tracks led down a dim scrub road toward Forresters’ Island.

Penny said, “All right, boy. Here’s our way.”

The sun was near the horizon. The cumulus clouds were white puff-balls, stained with the red and yellow wash of the sunset. The south was filled with darkness, like the smoke of gunpowder. A chill air moved across the scrub and was gone, as though a vast being had blown a cold breath and then passed by. Jody shivered and was grateful for the hot air that fell in behind it. A wild grape-vine trailed across the thin-rutted road. Penny leaned to pull it aside.

He said, “When there’s trouble waitin’ for you, you jest as good go to meet it.”

The rattler struck him from under the grape-vine without warning. Jody saw the flash, blurred as a shadow, swifter than a martin, surer than the slashing claws of a bear. He saw his father stagger backward under the force of the blow. He heard him give a cry. He wanted to step back, too. He wanted to cry out with all his voice. He stood rooted to the sand and could not make a sound. It was lightning that had struck, and not a rattler. It was a branch that broke, it was a bird that flew, it was a rabbit running—

Penny shouted, “Git back! Hold the dogs!”

The voice released him. He dropped back and clutched the dogs by the scruff of their necks. He saw the mottled shadow lift its flat head, knee-high. The head swung from side to side, following his father’s slow motions. He heard the rattles hum. The dogs heard. They winded. The fur stood stiff on their bodies. Old Julia whined and twisted out of his hand. She turned and slunk down the trail. Her long tail clung to her hindquarters. Rip reared on his hind feet, barking.

As slowly as a man in a dream, Penny backed away. The rattles sung. They were not rattles — Surely it was a locust humming. Surely it was a tree-frog singing — Penny lifted his gun to his shoulder and fired. Jody quivered. The rattler coiled and writhed in its spasms. The head was buried in the sand. The contortions moved down the length of the thick body, the rattles whirred feebly and were still. The coiling flattened into slow convolutions, like a low tide ebbing. Penny turned and stared at his son.

He said, “He got me.”

He lifted his right arm and gaped at it. His lips lifted dry over his teeth. His throat worked. He looked dully at two punctures in the flesh. A drop of blood oozed from each.

He said, “He was a big un.”

Jody let go his hold on Rip. The dog ran to the dead snake and barked fiercely. He made sorties and at last poked the coils with one paw. He quieted and snuffed about in the sand. Penny lifted his head from his staring. His face was like hickory ashes.

He said, “Ol’ Death goin’ to git me yit.”

He licked his lips. He turned abruptly and began to push through the scrub in the direction of the clearing. The road would be shorter going, for it was open, but he headed blindly for home in a direct line. He plowed through the low scrub oaks, the gallberries, the scrub palmettos. Jody panted behind him. His heart pounded so hard that he could not see where he was going. He followed the sound of his father’s crashing across the undergrowth. Suddenly the denseness ended. A patch of higher oaks made a shaded clearing. It was strange to walk in silence.

Penny stopped short. There was a stirring ahead. A doe-deer leaped to her feet. Penny drew a deep breath, as though breathing were for some reason easier. He lifted his shotgun and leveled it at the head. It flashed over Jody’s mind that his father had gone mad. This was no moment to stop for game. Penny fired. The doe turned a somersault and dropped to the sand and kicked a little and lay still. Penny ran to the body and drew his knife from its scabbard. Now Jody knew his father was insane. Penny did not cut the throat, but slashed into the belly. He laid the carcass wide open. The pulse still throbbed in the heart. Penny slashed out the liver. Kneeling, he changed his knife to his left hand. He turned his right arm and stared again at the twin punctures. They were now closed. The forearm was thick-swollen and blackening. The sweat stood out on his forehead. He cut quickly across the wound. A dark blood gushed and he pressed the warm liver against the incision.

He said in a hushed voice, “I kin feel it draw—”

He pressed harder. He took the meat away and looked at it. It was a venomous green. He turned it and applied the fresh side.

He said, “Cut me out a piece o’ the heart.”

Jody jumped from his paralysis. He fumbled with the knife. He hacked away a portion.

Penny said, “Another.”

He changed the application again and again.

He said, “Hand me the knife.”

He cut a higher gash in his arm where the dark swelling rose the thickest. Jody cried out.

“Pa! You’ll bleed to death!”

“I’d ruther bleed to death than swell. I seed a man die—”

The sweat poured down his cheeks.

“Do it hurt bad, Pa?”

“Like a hot knife was buried to the shoulder.”

The meat no longer showed green when he withdrew it. The warm vitality of the doe’s flesh was solidifying in death. He stood up.

He said quietly, “I cain’t do it no more good. I’m goin’ on home. You go to the Forresters and git ‘em to ride to the Branch for Doc Wilson.”

“Reckon they’ll go?”

“We got to chance it. Call out to ‘em quick, sayin’, afore they chunk somethin’ at you or mebbe shoot.”

He turned back to pick up the beaten trail. Jody followed. Over his shoulder he heard a light rustling. He looked back. A spotted fawn stood peering from the edge of the clearing, wavering on uncertain legs. Its dark eyes were wide and wondering.

He called out, “Pa! The doe’s got a fawn.”

“Sorry, boy. I cain’t he’p it. Come on.”

An agony for the fawn came over him. He hesitated. It tossed its small head, bewildered. It wobbled to the carcass of the doe and leaned to smell it. It bleated.

Penny called, “Git a move on, young un.”

Jody ran to catch up with him. Penny stopped an instant at the dim road.

“Tell somebody to take this road in to our place and pick me up in case I cain’t make it in. Hurry.”

The horror of his father’s body, swollen in the road, washed over him. He began to run. His father was plodding with a slow desperation in the direction of Baxter’s Island.

Jody ran down the wagon trail to the myrtle thicket where it branched off into the main road to Forresters’ Island. The road, much used, had no growth of weeds or grass to make a footing. The dry shifting sand caught at the soles of his feet and seemed to wrap clinging tentacles around the muscles of his legs. He dropped into a short dog-trot that seemed to pull more steadily against the sand. His legs moved, but his mind and body seemed suspended above them, like an empty box on a pair of cart-wheels. The road under him was a treadmill. His legs pumped up and down, but he seemed to be passing the same trees and bushes again and again. His pace seemed so slow, so futile, that he came to a bend with a dull surprise. The curve was familiar. He was not far from the road that led directly into the Forrester clearing.

He came to the tall trees of the island. They startled him, because they meant that he was now so close. He came alive and he was afraid. He was afraid of the Forresters. And if they refused him help, and he got safely away again, where should he go? He halted a moment under the shadowy live oaks, planning. It was twilight. He was sure it was not time for darkness. The rain clouds were not clouds, but an infusion of the sky, and had now filled it entirely. The only light was a strand of green across the west, the color of the doe’s flesh with the venom on it. It came to him that he would call to his friend Fodder-wing. His friend would hear him and come, and he might be allowed to approach close enough to tell his errand. It eased his heart to think of it, to think of his friend’s eyes gentle with sorrow for him. He drew a long breath and ran wildly down the path under the oak trees.

He shouted, “Fodder-wing! Fodder-wing! Hit’s Jody!”

In an instant now his friend would come to him from the house, crawling down the rickety steps on all fours, as he must do when in a hurry. Or he would appear from the bushes with his raccoon at his heels.

“Fodder-wing! Hit’s me!”

There was no answer. He broke into the swept sandy yard.

“Fodder-wing!”

There was an early light lit in the house. A twist of smoke curled from the chimney. The doors and shutters were closed against the mosquitoes and against the night-time. The door swung open. In the light beyond, he saw the Forrester men rise to their feet, one after the other, as though the great trees in the forest lifted themselves by their roots and stirred toward him. He stopped short. Lem Forrester advanced to the stoop. He lowered his head and turned it a little sideways until he recognized the intruder.

“You leetle bastard. What you after here?”

Jody faltered, “Fodder-wing—”

“He’s ailin’. You cain’t see him no-ways.”

It was too much. He burst out crying.

He sobbed, “Pa — He’s snake-bit.”

The Forresters came down the steps and surrounded him. He sobbed loudly, with pity for himself and for his father, and because he was here at last and something was finished that he had set out to do. There was a stirring among the men, as though the leavening quickened in a bowl of bread-dough.

“Where’s he at? What kind o’ snake?”

“A rattlesnake. A big un. He’s makin’ it for home but he don’t know kin he make it.”

“Is he swellin’? Where’d it git him?”

“In the arm. Hit’s bad swelled a’ready. Please ride for Doc Wilson. Please ride for him quick, and I won’t he’p Oliver agin you no more. Please.”

Lem Forrester laughed.

“A skeeter promises he won’t bite,” he said.

Buck said, “Hit’s like not to do no good. A man dies right now, bit in the arm. He’ll likely be dead afore Doc kin git to him.”

“He shot a doe-deer and used the liver to draw out the pizen. Please ride for Doc.”

Mill-wheel said, “I’ll ride for him.”

Relief flooded him like the sun.

“I shore thank you.”

“I’d he’p a dog, was snake-bit. Spare your thanks.”

Buck said, “I’ll ride on and pick up Penny. Walkin’s bad for a man is snake-bit. My God, fellers, we ain’t got a drop o’ whiskey for him.”

Gabby said, “Ol’ Doc’ll have some. If he’s purty tol’able sober, he’ll have some left. If he’s drunk all he’s got, he kin blow his breath, and that’ll make a powerful portion.”

Buck and Mill-wheel turned away with torturing deliberation to the lot to saddle their horses. Their leisureliness frightened Jody as speed would not have done. If there was hope for his father, they would be hurrying. They were as slow and unconcerned as though they were burying Penny, not riding for assistance. He stood, desolate. He would like to see Fodder-wing just a moment before he went away. The remaining Forresters turned back up the steps, ignoring him.

Lem called from the door, “Git goin’, Skeeter.”

Arch said, “Leave the young un be. Don’t torment him, and his daddy likely dyin’.”

Lem said, “Die and good riddance. Biggety bantam.”

They went into the house and closed the door. A panic came over Jody, that they did not mean, any of them, to help at all; that Buck and Mill-wheel had gone away to the corral for a joke, and were laughing at him there. He was forsaken, and his father was forsaken. Then the two men rode out and Buck lifted his hand to him, not unkindly.

“No use to fret, boy. We’ll do what we kin. We don’t hold nothin’ agin folks in trouble.”

They touched their heels to the horses’ flanks and shot away. Lightness filled him where he had been heavy as lead. It was only Lem, then, who was an enemy. He settled his hate on him with satisfaction. He listened until the hoof-beats faded from his hearing, then set out down the road for home.

Now he was free to accept the facts. A rattlesnake had struck his father, who might die of it. But help was on the way, and he had done what he was supposed to do. His fear had a name, and was no longer quite so terrible. He decided not to try to run, but to walk steadily. He should have liked to ask the loan of a horse for himself, but dared not.

A pattering of rain passed over him. A hush followed. The storm might go around the scrub entirely, as often happened. There was a faint luminosity in the air around him. He had scarcely been conscious that he was carrying his father’s gun. He swung it over one shoulder and walked rapidly where the road was firm. He wondered how long it would take Mill-wheel to reach the Branch. He wondered, not whether old Doc would be drunk, for that was known, but just how drunk he would be. If Doc could sit up in bed, he was considered fit to go.

He had been at Doc’s place once when he was very young. He remembered still the sprawling house with wide verandas, decaying, as old Doc was decaying, in the heart of a dense vegetation. He remembered the cockroaches and the lizards, as much at home inside the house as in the thick vines outside it. He remembered old Doc, deep in his cups, lying under a mosquito canopy, staring at the ceiling. When he was called, he sprawled to his feet and went about his business on uncertain legs, but with gentle heart and hands. He was known far and wide as a good doctor, drunk or no. If he could be reached in time, Jody thought, his father’s life was certain.

He turned from the Forresters’ lane into the road that ran east to his father’s clearing. He had four miles ahead of him. On hard ground, he could make it in little over an hour. The sand was soft, and the very darkness seemed to hold him back and make his steps uneven. He would do well to reach home in an hour and a half, and it might take two. He broke now and then into a trot. The brightness in the air dropped into the darkness of the scrub like a water turkey dropping into the river. The growth on either side of the road pressed closer, so that the way was narrow.

He heard thunder in the east, and a flash of lightning filled the sky. He thought he heard foot-steps in the scrub oaks, but it was drops of rain, striking like shot on the leaves. He had never minded night or darkness, but Penny had always been in front of him. Now he was alone. He wondered, sickened, whether his father lay now in the road ahead of him, swollen with poison, or perhaps across Buck’s saddle, if Buck had reached and found him. The lightning flashed again. He had sat with his father through many storms, under the live oaks. The rain had then been friendly, shutting them in together.

A snarl sounded in the bushes. Something incredibly swift flashed across the road in front of him and was gone, soundlessly. A musky taint lay on the air. He was not afraid of lynx or wild-cat, but a panther had been known to attack a horse. His heart thumped. He fingered the stock of his father’s gun. It was useless, for Penny had shot both barrels, one at the rattler, one at the doe. He had his father’s knife in his belt, and wished he had brought the long knife Oliver had given him. He had no scabbard for it, and it was dangerously sharp, Penny had said, to carry. When he was safe at home, lying under the grape arbor, or at the bottom of the sink-hole, he had pictured himself thrusting it with one sure plunge into the heart of bear or wolf or panther. There was no flush of pride now in the picture. A panther’s claws were quicker than he.

Whatever the animal, it had gone its way. He walked more rapidly, stumbling in his haste. He thought he heard a wolf howl, but it was so far away that it might only have been the wind. The wind was rising. He heard it far off in the distance. It was as though it were blowing in another world, across a dark abyss. Suddenly it swelled. He heard it coming closer, like a moving wall. The trees ahead thrashed their limbs. The bushes rattled and flattened to the ground. There was a great roaring and the storm hit him like a blow.

He lowered his head and fought against it. He was drenched to the skin in an instant. The rain poured down the back of his neck and washed through his breeches. His clothes hung heavily and held him back. He stopped and turned his back to the wind and propped the gun at the side of the road. He took off his shirt and breeches and rolled them into a bundle. He took up the gun and went on naked through the storm. The rain on his bare skin made him feel clean and free. The lightning flashed and he was startled by his own whiteness. He felt suddenly defenseless. He was alone and naked in an unfriendly world; lost and forgotten in the storm and darkness. Something ran behind him and ahead of him. It stalked the scrub like a panther. It was vast and formless and it was his enemy. Ol’ Death was loose in the scrub.

It came to him that his father was already dead, or dying. The burden of the thought was intolerable. He ran faster, to shake it off. Penny could not die. Dogs could die, and bears and deer and other people. That was acceptable, because it was remote. His father could not die. The earth might cave in under him in one vast sink-hole and he could accept it. But without Penny, there was no earth. Without him there was nothing. He was frightened as he had never been before. He began to sob. His tears ran salt into his mouth.

He begged of the night, as he had begged of the Forresters, “Please—”

His throat ached and his groins were shot with hot lead. The lightning showed an opening ahead of him. He had reached the abandoned clearing. He darted into it and crouched against the old rail fence for a moment’s shelter. The wind washed over him more coldly than the rain. He shivered and rose and went on again. The stop had chilled him. He wanted to run, to warm himself, but he had strength only to plod slowly. The rain had packed the sand so that the walking was firm and easier. The wind lessened. The down-pour settled into a steady falling. He walked on in a dull misery. It seemed to him that he must walk forever, but suddenly he was passing the sink-hole and was at the clearing.

The Baxter cabin was bright with candles. Horses whinnied and pawed the sand. There were three tethered to the slat fence. He passed through the gate and into the cabin. Whatever was, was done. There was no bustle to greet him. Buck and Mill-wheel sat by the empty hearth, tilted back in their chairs. They were talking casually. They glanced at him, said “Hey, boy,” and went on with their talk.

“You wasn’t here, Buck, when ol’ man Twistle died o’ snake-bite. Penny must o’ been right about whiskey not doin’ no good. Twistle were drunk as a coot when he stepped on the rattler.”

“Well, do I ever git snake-bit, fill me full jest for luck. I’d ruther die drunk than sober, ary day.”

Mill-wheel spat into the fireplace.

“Don’t fret,” he said. “You will.”

Jody was faint. He dared not ask them the question. He walked past them and into his father’s bedroom. His mother sat on one side of the bed and Doc Wilson sat on the other. Old Doc did not turn his head. His mother looked at him and rose without speaking. She went to a dresser and took out a fresh shirt and breeches and held them out to him. He dropped his wet bundle and stood the gun against the wall. He walked slowly to the bed.

He thought, “If he’s not dead now, he’ll not die.”

In the bed, Penny stirred. Jody’s heart leaped like a rabbit jumping. Penny groaned and retched. Doc leaned quickly and held a basin for him and propped his head. Penny’s face was dark and swollen. He vomited with the agony of one who has nothing to emit, but must vomit still. He fell back panting. Doc reached inside the covers and drew out a brick wrapped in flannel. He handed it to Ma Baxter. She laid Jody’s garments at the foot of the bed and went to the kitchen to heat the brick again.

Jody whispered, “Is he bad?”

“He’s bad, a’right. Looks as if he’d make it. Then again, looks as if he won’t.”

Penny opened his puffed eyes. The pupils were dilated until his eyes seemed black. He moved his arm. It was swollen as thick as a bullock’s thigh.

He murmured thickly, “You’ll ketch cold.”

Jody fumbled for his clothes and pulled them on. Doc nodded.

“That’s a good sign, knowin’ you. That’s the first he’s spoken.”

A tenderness filled Jody that was half pain, half sweetness. In his agony, his father was concerned for him. Penny could not die. Not Penny.

He said, “He’s obliged to make it, Doc, sir.” He added, as he had heard his father say, “Us Baxters is all runty and tough.”

Doc nodded.

He called to the kitchen, “Let’s try some warm milk now.”

With hope, Ma Baxter began to sniffle. Jody joined her at the hearth.

She whimpered, “I don’t see as we’d deserve it, do it happen.”

He said, “Hit’ll not happen, Ma.” But his marrow was cold again.

He went outside for wood to hurry the fire. The storm was moving on to the west. The clouds were rolling like battalions of marching Spaniards. In the east, bright spaces showed, filled with stars. The wind blew fresh and cool. He came in with an armful of fat-wood.

He said, “Hit’ll be a purty day tomorrow, Ma.”

“Hit’ll be a purty day iffen he’s yit alive when day comes.” She burst into tears. They dropped on the hearth and hissed. She lifted her apron and wiped her eyes. “You take the milk in,” she said. “I’ll make Doc and me a cup o’ tea. I hadn’t et nothin’, waitin’ for you-all, when Buck carried him in.”

He remembered that he had eaten lightly. He could think of nothing that would taste good. The thought of food on his tongue was a dry thought, without nourishment or relish. He carried the cup of hot milk carefully, balancing it in his hands. Doc took it from him and sat close to Penny on the bed.

“Now boy, you hold his head up while I spoon-feed him.”

Penny’s head was heavy on the pillow. Jody’s arms ached with the strain of lifting it. His father’s breathing was heavy, like the Forresters when they were drunk. His face had changed color. It was green and pallid, like a frog’s belly. At first his teeth resisted the intruding spoon.

Doc said, “Open your mouth before I call the Forresters to open it.”

The swollen lips parted. Penny swallowed. A portion of the cupful went down. He turned his head away.

Doc said, “All right. But if you lose it, I’m comin’ back with more.”

Penny broke into a sweat.

Doc said, “That’s fine. Sweatin’s fine, for poison. Lord of the jay-birds, if we weren’t all out of whiskey, I’d make you sweat.”

Ma Baxter came to the bedroom with two plates with cups of tea and biscuits on them. Doc took his plate and balanced it on his knee. He drank with a mixture of gusto and distaste.

He said, “It’s all right, but ‘tain’t whiskey.”

He was the soberest Jody had ever heard of his being.

“A good man snake-bit,” he said mournfully, “and the whole county out of whiskey.”

Ma Baxter said dully, “Jody, you want somethin’?”

“I ain’t hongry.”

His stomach was as queasy as his father’s. It seemed to him that he could feel the poison working in his own veins, attacking his heart, churning in his gizzard.

Doc said, “Blest if he ain’t goin’ to keep that milk down.”

Penny was in a deep sleep.

Ma Baxter rocked and sipped and nibbled.

She said, “The Lord watches the sparrer’s fall. Mought be He’ll take a hand for the Baxters.”

Jody went into the front room. Buck and Mill-wheel had lain down on the deer-skin rugs on the floor.

Jody said, “Ma and Doc’s eatin’. You-all hongry?”

Buck said, “We’d jest done et when you come. Don’t pay us no mind. We’ll sleep here and wait-see how it comes out.”

Jody crouched on his heels. He would have liked to talk with them. It would be good to talk of dogs and guns and hunting, of all the things that living men could do. Buck snored. Jody tiptoed back to the bedroom. Doc was nodding in his chair. His mother moved the candle from the bed-side and returned to her rocker. The runners swished a while and then were still. She too nodded.

It seemed to Jody that he was alone with his father. The vigil was in his hands. If he kept awake, and labored for breath with the tortured sleeper, breathing with him and for him, he could keep him alive. He drew a breath as deep as the ones his father was drawing. It made him dizzy. He was light-headed and his stomach was empty. He knew he would feel better if he should eat, but he could not swallow. He sat down on the floor and leaned his head against the side of the bed. He began to think back over the day, as though he walked a road backward. He could not help but feel a greater security here beside his father, than in the stormy night. Many things, he realized, would be terrible alone that were not terrible when he was with Penny. Only the rattlesnake had kept all its horror.

He recalled the triangular head, the lightning flash of its striking, the subsidence into alert coils. His flesh crawled. It seemed to him he should never be easy in the woods again. He recalled the coolness of his father’s shot, and the fear of the dogs. He recalled the doe and the horror of her warm meat against his father’s wound. He remembered the fawn. He sat upright. The fawn was alone in the night, as he had been alone. The catastrophe that might take his father had made it motherless. It had lain hungry and bewildered through the thunder and rain and lightning, close to the devastated body of its dam, waiting for the stiff form to arise and give it warmth and food and comfort. He pressed his face into the hanging covers of the bed and cried bitterly. He was torn with hate for all death and pity for all aloneness.