The Yearling

Chapter XVI

The fawn took up much of Jody’s time. It tagged him wherever he went. At the woodpile, it interfered with the swing of his axe. The milking had been assigned to him. He was forced to bar the fawn from the lot and it stood by the gate, peering between the bars, and bleated until he had finished. He stripped Trixie’s teats until she kicked in protest. Each cupful of milk meant more nourishment for the fawn. It seemed to him that he could see it growing. It stood firm on its small legs and leaped and tossed its head and tail. He romped with it until they dropped together in a heap to rest and cool themselves.

The days were hot and humid. Penny sweat in his bed. Buck came dripping from the fields. He discarded his shirt and worked naked to the waist. His chest was thick with black hair. The perspiration glistened on it like rain drops on black dried moss. When she was sure he would not call for it, Ma Baxter washed and boiled the shirt and hung it in the scalding sunshine.

She said with satisfaction, “There’s that much of him, now, won’t stink.”

Buck filled the Baxter cabin until it bulged.

Ma Baxter said to Penny, “First sight I catch o’ that beard and chest in the mornin’s, I take a start, for I think a bear’s got in the house.”

She was appalled at the amount of food he bolted three times a day. She could scarcely complain, since he more than made it up with the work he was doing and the game with which he supplied her. In the week he had been at the clearing, he had worked out the corn, the cow-peas and the sweet potatoes. He had cleared two acres of new ground to the west, between the pea-field and the sink-hole. He had cut down a dozen oaks and pines and sweet gums and innumerable saplings, burned the stumps and trimmed the fallen trees, so that Jody and Penny on the cross-cut saw might cut the limbs and trunks for fire-wood.

He said, “You plant Sea Island cotton on that new ground, come spring, and you’ll make you a crop.”

Ma Baxter said suspiciously, “You-all has got no cotton.”

He said easily, “Us Forresters ain’t farmers. We’ll do the clarin’, we’ll plow a field now and agin, but it’s our nature to make a livin’ what I reckon you’d call rough and easy.”

She said primly, “Rough ways lands folks in trouble.”

He said, “You ever know my granddaddy? They called him Trouble Forrester.”

She could not dislike him. He was as good-natured as a dog. She could only say to Penny in the privacy of night, “He works like a ox, but he’s so tormented black. Ezra, he’s black as a buzzard.”

“Hit’s his beard,” Penny said. “Did I have a black beard like that un, I mought not look like no buzzard, but I’d shore look like a crow.”

Penny’s strength was slow in returning. The swelling from the poisoning had gone down. The skin was sloughing away where the rattler had struck him and he had cut the wounds to make the envenomed blood flow more freely. But at the least exertion, he was nauseated, and his heart pumped like the paddle-wheels on the river steamers, and he gasped for breath and must lie flat to recover himself. He was all wiry nerves, strung like harp-strings on a frail wooden body.

To Jody, the presence of Buck was a stimulation so great that he was feverish with it. The fawn alone would have had him delirious. The two together kept him in a daze, wandering from Penny’s room to wherever Buck was working, to wherever the fawn might be, and around again.

His mother said, “You’d ought to be noticin’ all what Buck is doin’, so you kin do it when he’s gone.”

There was a tacit understanding among the three of them that Penny was to be spared.

The morning of the eighth day that Buck had been at the clearing, he called Jody to the cornfield. Vandals had visited it during the night. Half a row of corn had been stripped of its ears. Mid-way of the row lay a pile of corn-husks.

Buck said, “You know what done that?”

“‘Coons?”

“Hell, no. Foxes. Foxes love corn gooder’n I do. Two-three o’ them bushy-tailed scapers come in last night and had them a pure picnic.”

Jody laughed out.

“A fox picnic! I’d love to of seed it.”

Buck said sternly, “You’d ought to be out at night with your gun, keepin’ ‘em out. Now we’ll git ‘em tonight. You got to learn to be serious. And this evenin’ we’ll rob that bee-tree by the sink-hole, and that’ll learn you how to do that.”

Jody went through the day impatiently. A hunt with Buck had a different quality from a hunt with his father. There was an excitement in anything the Forresters did that made him nervous and high-keyed. There was noise and confusion. A hunt with Penny held a satisfaction that was of more than the chase. There was always time to see a bird fly over, or to listen to a ‘gator, bellowing in the swamp. He wished that Penny were able to be about, to rob the bee-tree with them; to go on the trail of the robber foxes. In mid-afternoon, Buck came from the new ground. Penny was sleeping.

Buck said to Ma Baxter, “I’ll want a lard-pail and a axe and a heap o’ rags to burn for smudges.”

There were not many rags in the Baxter household. Clothes were worn and patched and mended until they dropped in ribbons. Flour sacks went into aprons and dish-towels and chair-backs that she embroidered on winter evenings; into backs for her patch-work quilts. Buck looked disgustedly at the small handful she gave him.

He said, “Well, reckon we kin use moss.”

She said, “Don’t you-all git stung, now. My grand-pappy got hisself stung oncet to where he was in the bed a fortnight.”

“If we git stung, hit shore won’t be o’ purpose.”

He started across the yard with Jody beside him. The fawn was close behind.

“You want your blasted baby to git stung to death? Then shut him up.”

Jody led the fawn reluctantly to the shed and closed the door. He hated to be separated from it, even for honey-hunting. It seemed unjust that Penny should not be along. He had had his eye on the bee-tree all spring. He had waited for the proper time, when the bees should have gathered their nectar from the yellow jessamine, from the mulberry and the holly, the palmetto bloom and the chinaberry, the wild grapes and the peaches, and from the hawthorn and the wild plum. There would still be bloom from which they might make their own winter store. The red bay and the loblolly were in full blossom. There would soon be sumac and goldenrod and asters.

Buck said, “You know who’d purely love to be gittin’ honey with us? Fodder-wing. He’ll work amongst the bees so quiet, you’d figger they was makin’ him a present o’ the honey-comb.”

They reached the sink-hole.

Buck said, “I don’t see how you-all have made out, totin’ your water so fur. If I wasn’t about to be leavin’, I’d shore he’p you dig a well nigh to the house.”

“You fixin’ to leave?”

“Well, yes. I’m fretted about Fodder-wing. And I ain’t never lived this long without whiskey.”

The bee-tree was a dead pine. Mid-way up its height, the wild honey-bees flew in and out of a deep cavity. It stood at the north edge of the sink-hole. Buck stopped by the live oaks to pull down armfuls of green Spanish moss. At the base of the pine he pointed to a pile of dried grass and feathers.

“The wood-ducks tried to nest there,” he said. “They’ll see a hole in a tree, and don’t matter do it belong to a Lord God woodpecker, or one o’ them big woodpeckers with a ivory bill, or a swarm o’ bees, they’ll take a notion to it and they’ll try to nest in the hole. The bees has done drove these uns out.”

He began to chop at the base of the dead pine. High in the air a humming sounded like a den of rattlers, far distant and turbulent. The blows of the axe echoed back and forth across the sink-hole. Squirrels, quiescent in the oaks and palm trees, began to chatter at the disturbance. Scrub jays cried shrilly. The pine shook. The humming grew into a roar. The bees sung across their heads like small shot.

Buck called, “Light me a smudge, boy. Be peert.”

Jody made a loose ball of moss and rags and opened Buck’s tinder horn. He struggled with flint and steel. Penny was so expert at starting a fire that it occurred to Jody in a panic that he had never done it himself. The sparks flashed to the scorched rags that constituted the tinder, but he blew them so violently that they flickered out almost as soon as they touched the cloth. Buck dropped the axe and ran to him and took the materials from him. He rubbed flint and steel together as vigorously as Jody had done, but he blew on the spark-touched rags with a judiciousness amazing in a Forrester. The rags blazed and he touched the fire to the moss. It began to smoke without blazing.

Buck ran back to the pine and put his muscles behind the axe. Its bright blade ate into the decayed center of the tree. Its long fibers split and ripped and shivered. The pine roared in the air as though a voice had come to it to cry out with in its falling. It crashed to earth and the bees were a cloud across its dead gaping heart. Buck snatched up the smudge and darted in as quick, for all his size, as a weasel. He stuffed the smoking ball into the cavity with one thrust and ran madly. He looked more than ever like a lumbering bear. He let out a howl and slapped at his chest and shoulders. Jody had to laugh at him. Then a needle-point of fire stabbed his own neck.

Buck shouted, “Git down the sink-hole! Git to the water!”

They scrambled down the steep bank. The seepage pool at the bottom was shallow for lack of rains. The water did not quite cover them when they lay in it. Buck scooped up handfuls of mud and plastered Jody’s hair and neck with it. His own thatch was a thick enough protection. A few bees followed and swung back and forth persistently. After a time Buck raised himself cautiously.

He said, “They’re due to be quiet now. But ain’t we a pair o’ hogs.”

Their breeches, their faces, their shirts, were caked with mud. It was not yet wash-day and Jody led the way up the south wall of the sink-hole to the wash-troughs. They sousled their clothes in one and washed themselves from the other.

Buck said, “What you grinnin’ about?”

Jody shook his head. He could imagine his mother saying, “If it takes bees to git a Forrester clean, I’ll hive ‘em a swarm.”

Buck had half a dozen stings but Jody had escaped with two. They approached the bee tree cautiously. The smudge had been properly placed. The bees were drugged with the heavy smoke. They swarmed slowly around the cavity, searching for their queen.

Buck split a wider opening and used his sheath knife to hack away the edges. He cleaned away trash and splinters and reached in with the knife. He turned, amazed.

“Great day! They’s a wash-tub o’ honey here. The tree’s full.”

He brought out a slab, golden and dripping. The comb was rough and dark, but the honey was paler than fine syrup. They filled the lard-pail and carried it between them to the house. Ma Baxter gave them a cypress tub to take back with them.

Buck said, “Now a wash tub o’ biscuits is all more is needed.”

The return load was heavy. It was the largest yield, Buck said, he had ever seen from a bee-tree since he was a boy.

He said, “When I go home tomorrer and tell my folks, they’ll not believe me.”

She said slowly, “I reckon you’ll want to carry some back with you.”

“No more’n I kin carry in my belly. I got my eye on two-three trees in the swamp. Do they fail me, I’m like to come beggin’.”

Ma Baxter said, “You’ve been mighty neighborly. Mebbe some day we’ll have a plenty and kin do for you.”

Jody said, “I wish you’d not go, Buck.”

The big man shoved him playfully.

“With me gone, you’ll not have no time to nuss that fawn.”

Buck was plainly restless. He shuffled his feet at supper and paced up and down afterward. He looked at the sky.

He said, “A good clare night for ridin’.”

Jody said, “How come you anxious all to oncet?”

Buck paused in his pacing.

“I git that-a-way. I like to come and I like to go. Wherever I be, I’m content a while, and then I jest someway ain’t content no more. When me and Lem and Mill-wheel goes off hoss-tradin’ to Kentucky, I’ll swear, I figger I’ll bust ‘till I git home agin.” He paused and stared into the sunset. He added in a low voice, “And I’m right smart fretted about Fodder-wing. I got a feelin’ here—” he thumped his hairy chest—”he ain’t doin’ good.”

“Wouldn’t somebody of come?”

“That’s it. If they didn’t know your Pa was bad off, they’d of ridden over jest to say Howdy. They figgered your Pa needed he’p and they’d not like to toll me away, was the news bad or worrisome.”

He waited nervously for dark. He wanted to be done with his job, and gone. Penny was as good a night-hunter as any Forrester. Jody was tempted to brag of the varmints his father had disposed of, but that might cut him out of a night-prowl with Buck. He held his tongue. He helped Buck prepare the fat-wood splinters for the fire-pan.

Buck said, “My Uncle Cotton had red hair. They was a heap of it, stood up like a haystack, and red as a fightin’ cock’s comb. He was fire-huntin’ one night, and the handle was a mite short, and a spark from the pan set his hair a-fire. And you know when he hollered to Pa for he’p, Pa didn’t pay him no mind. He jest thought the moon had done rose and was shinin’ through Uncle Cotton’s hair.”

Jody gaped.

“Is that true, Buck?”

Buck whittled busily.

“Now if you was to tell me a tale,” he said, “I’d not ask you no sich of a question.”

Penny called from his bedroom.

“I cain’t stand it; I’m o’ good notion not to leave you go without me.”

They came to his room.

“If ‘twas a panther hunt you was goin’ on,” he said, “I’ll swear I’d feel good enough to go with you.”

Buck said, “Now I’d jest carry you on a panther hunt, did I have my dogs.”

“Why, my pair’ll out-hunt your whole pack.” He asked innocently, “How did you-all come out with that sorry dog I traded you?”

Buck drawled, “Why, that dog’s proved out the fastest and the finest and the hardest-huntin’ and the fearlessest of ary dog we’ve ever had on the place. All he needed was men to train him.”

Penny chuckled.

He said, “I’m proud you was smart enough to make somethin’ outen him. Where’s he now?”

“Well, he was so blasted good, he put t’other dogs so to shame, Lem couldn’t abide it, and he hauled off and shot him and buried him in the Baxter cemetery one night.”

Penny said gravely, “I noticed the new grave and I figgered you-all had give outen buryin’-ground. I’ll whittle a head-stone, time I git my strength. I’ll carve on it, ‘Here lies a Forrester, mourned by all his kin.’”

He grinned broadly and slapped the covers of his bed.

“Give in, Buck,” he said, “give in.”

Buck wiped his beard.

“All right,” he said, “I’ll take it for funnin’. But don’t look to Lem to take it for ary thing but a cold-out insult.”

Penny said, “No hard feelin’s. I got none, and I hope you-all’ll hold none, Lem nor nobody.”

“Lem’s different. He takes things personal.”

“That grieves me. I pitched into the fight betwixt him and Oliver because they was too many of you on one side.”

Buck said, “Well, blood’s thicker’n water. We fight amongst ourselves now and agin, but when it’s us and t’other feller, we allus fight on the same side o’ the creek. But me and you has got no call to fall out.”

Words began fights and words ended them.

Jody asked, “If fellers didn’t say quarrelin’ things, would they put in to fight?”

Penny said, “I’m feered so. I oncet seed a pair o’ deef dummies havin’ it. But they do say they got a sign language, and likely one passed the insult in a sign.”

Buck said, “Hit’s male nature, boy. Wait ‘til you git to courtin’ and you’ll git your breeches dusted many a time.”

“But nobody but Lem and Oliver was courtin’, and here all us Baxters and all you Forresters was in to it.”

Penny said, “They’s no end to what a man’ll fight for. I even knowed a preacher takened off his coat and fit ary man wouldn’t agree to infant damnation. All a feller kin do, is fight for what he figgers is right, and the devil take the hindmost.”

Buck said, “Listen. I think I heered a fox bark then in the hammock.”

At first the night seemed silent. Then sounds drifted like clouds into their hearing. An owl hooted. A tree-frog scraped his fiddle and predicted rain.

Buck said, “There he be.”

A thin bark sounded in the distance, shrill and mournful.

Buck said, “Now wouldn’t that be music to my pore dogs? Wouldn’t they sing to that sopranner?”

Penny said, “If you and Jody don’t clean out the litter tonight, bring your dogs on the next moon and we’ll have us a chase.”

Buck said, “Let’s us git goin’, Jody. That yipper’ll about make the cornfield time we do.” He picked up Penny’s shotgun from the corner. “I’ll borry this tonight. Seems to me I’ve seed it before.”

“Jest don’t bury it beside the dog,” Penny said. “Hit’s ralely a good gun.”

Jody packed his muzzle-loader over his shoulder. He went out with Buck. The fawn heard him and bleated from the shed. They walked under the mulberries and crossed the split-rail fence into the cornfield. Buck walked north down the first row. At the far end of the field he began walking across the ends of the rows. He stopped at each row and focussed the light from the fire-pan down the length of the field. Mid-way he stopped. He turned and nudged Jody. Where the light came to rest, two fiery green agates caught the light.

He murmured, “Slip half-way up the row. I’ll keep the light on him. Don’t git in the path o’ the light. When his eyes looks as big as a shillin’, give it to him, right between ‘em.”

Jody crept forward, hugging the corn at his left. The green lights were extinguished a moment, then stared again. He lifted his gun and allowed the light from the blazing splinters in the fire-pan to slip down the barrel. He pulled the trigger. The gun, as always, knocked him off balance. He started to run forward to ascertain his hit, but Buck hissed at him.

“Psst. You got him. Leave him lay. Come back.”

He crept along the row. Buck handed him the shotgun.

“They’s likely another here clost.”

They crept from row to row. This time he saw the glowing eyes before Buck saw them. He advanced down the row as before. The shotgun was a delight to handle. It was lighter than the old muzzle-loader, not so long, and easier to sight. He shot with a feeling of confidence. Again Buck called him back and he retreated. But though they combed the rows carefully, and worked around the west end of the field and flashed the light down the corn rows from the south, there were no more bright green eyes.

Buck said aloud, “That’s the crop for tonight. Let’s see what we got.”

Both shots had killed. One was a dog-fox and one a vixen, fat with Baxter corn.

Buck said, “Now they got a litter off in a den some’eres, but they’ll be part-growed and kin make out by theirselves. Come fall, we’ll have us a fox-chase.”

The foxes were gray and in good condition, with full brushes. Jody carried them in complacently.

Approaching the cabin, they heard a commotion. Ma Baxter shrieked.

Buck said, “Your Ma wouldn’t romp on your Pa while he was ailin’, would she?”

“She don’t never romp on him with nothin’ but talkin’.”

“I’d a heap ruther a woman tore me down with a lighter’d knot, than speakin’ sharp.”

Close to the cabin, they heard Penny shout.

Buck said, “Why, boy, the woman’s killin’ him.”

Jody said, “Somethin’s after the fawn!”

The yard itself was not often disturbed by anything more dangerous than the small varmints. Buck hurdled the fence and Jody vaulted it after him. A light shone from the doorway. Penny stood there dressed only in his breeches. Ma Baxter was beside him, flapping her apron. Jody thought he saw a dark form move off into the night, toward the grape arbor, followed by the dogs, baying.

Penny called, “Hit’s a bear! Git him! Git him ‘fore he makes the fence!”

Sparks showered from the fire-pan as Buck ran. The light reached out to a lumbering body galloping to the east under the peach trees.

Jody shouted, “Give me the fire-pan, Buck, and you do the shootin’.”

He felt frightened and incompetent. They exchanged on the run. At the fence the bear turned at bay. He slashed at the dogs. His eyes and teeth shone in the spasmodic light. Then he turned to clamber over the fence. Buck shot. The bear tumbled. The dogs broke into a tumult. Penny came running. The light showed a kill. The dogs made a pretense of having done the job, and bayed and attacked proudly. Buck was smug.

He said, “This feller’d not of come around if he’d knowed they was a Forrester on the place.”

Penny said, “He smelt things set him so wild, he’d not of noticed the hull tribe of you.”

“What was that?”

“Jody’s fawn and the new honey.”

“Did he git to the fawn, Pa? Oh Pa, the fawn ain’t hurt?”

“He never got to him. The door by luck was closed. Then he must of winded the honey and come traipsin’ around by the stoop. I figgered it was you-all comin’ back and I didn’t pay no mind until he knocked the cover offen the honey. I could of shot him down right at the door, but here I was and no gun. All me and Ory could do was holler, but I reckon it was the fiercest hollerin’ he’d ever run into, and he lit out.”

Jody was weak at thought of what might have happened to the fawn. He ran to the shed to comfort it, and found it drowsy and unconcerned. He stroked it gratefully, then returned to the men and the bear. It was a two-year-old male, in good condition. Penny insisted on helping with the dressing. They dragged the carcass to the back yard and skinned it out by the light of the fire-pan; quartered it and hung the meat in the smoke-house.

Buck said, “Now I will beg a pail o’ the fat for Ma, to make her some bear grease and cracklin’s. There’s things she jest won’t fry without bear grease, and the old soul says bear cracklin’s and sweet pertaters rests so easy on her gums. Why, them four teeth o’ hers could chomp on ‘em all day.”

Ma Baxter developed generosity with the plenitude.

She said, “And a big piece o’ the liver goes to pore leetle Fodder-wing. Hit’ll give him strength.”

Penny said, “I’m only sad this ain’t old Slewfoot. My, wouldn’t I love to draw the knife down his thievin’ backbone.”

The foxes could wait to be skinned until morning, for the meat would be used only to cook for the chickens, with pepper, for a tonic.

Buck said, “Did old man Easy Ozell ever ask you to come eat one o’ his fox pilaus?”

Penny said, “He done so. And I said, ‘No, thank you, Easy, I’ll jest wait until you cook one o’ your dogs.’”

Penny was thriving on the excitement. He sat on his heels beside Buck and exchanged tales of foxes and of dogs, of strange foods and the stranger people who ate them. The yarns for once failed to hold Jody’s interest. He was anxious for every one to go to bed. At last Penny’s new-found energy failed him, and he washed his hands and cleaned his skinning knife and joined his wife in the bed. Buck was wound up to talk half the night. Jody knew the signs and pretended to go to sleep on his pallet on the floor of his small room. Buck had been occupying his bed, his long hairy legs hanging unsupported a quarter of its length. Buck sat on the edge of the bed and talked until the lack of audience discouraged him. Jody heard him yawn and pull off his trousers and lie down on the corn shucks mattress on the creaking slats.

He waited until a deep rumbling snore sounded. Then he slipped from the house and groped his way to the shed. The fawn stood up at the sound. He felt his way to it and threw his arms around its neck. It nuzzled his cheek. He picked it up and carried it to the door. It had grown so fast in the brief time he had had it, that it was all he could do to carry it. He tiptoed into the yard with it and set it down. It followed him willingly. He crept into the house, keeping one hand on its smooth hard head to guide it. Its sharp heels clicked on the wooden floor. He lifted it again and stepped cautiously past his mother’s bedroom and into his own.

He lay down on his pallet and drew the fawn down beside him. He often lay so with it in the shed, or under the live oaks in the heat of the day. He lay with his head against its side. Its ribs lifted and fell with its breathing. It rested its chin on his hand. It had a few short hairs there that prickled him. He had been cudgeling his wits for an excuse to bring the fawn inside at night to sleep with him, and now he had one that could not be disputed. He would smuggle it in and out as long as possible, in the name of peace. On the inevitable day when he should be discovered, what better reason was there than the menace — the constant danger, he would point out — of bears?