The Yearling

Chapter XXIX

In February, Penny became badly crippled for a time with his rheumatism. It had bothered him for several years in cold or wet weather. He was careless always about exposure, doing whatever he wished to do, or what seemed necessary, regardless of the weather and unsparing of himself. It was as good a time as any, Ma Baxter said, for him to be laid up, but he was uneasy for fear he would not be ready for his spring planting.

“Then let Jody do it,” she said impatiently.

“He’s never done nothin’ but foller me at it. There’s so many things a boy kin do wrong at sich work as that.”

“Yes, and whose fault is it he don’t know more about it? You’ve spared him too long. When you was nearly thirteen, wasn’t you plowin’ like a man?”

“Yes, and that’s jest why I don’t crave for him to do it ‘til he’s got his growth and his strength.”

“Old butter-hearted,” she muttered. “Plowin’ never hurt nobody.”

She pounded poke-root and boiled it and made poultices for him, and made him a tonic of prickly ash and poke-root and potassium. He accepted her ministrations gratefully, but was no better. He went back to his panther oil, and rubbed his knees patiently with it, an hour at a time, and said it helped him more than the other remedies.

While his father was idle, Jody did the light chores and kept up with the wood. He had an incentive to hurry at his work, for when it was done, he was free to wander away with Flag. Penny even permitted him to take the shotgun with him. He missed his father’s company, yet he liked to hunt alone. He and Flag were free together. They liked best going to the sink-hole. They had stumbled on a game there one day when Flag had gone with him when he went to fetch drinking water. The game was a mad one of tag, up and down the steep slopes of the great green bowl. Flag was unbeatable at it, for he was up and down one side half a dozen times while Jody was making one climb to the top. Finding that he could not be caught, he alternated between a teasing business of wearing Jody out, and a more satisfying and ingratiating trick of deliberately allowing himself to be captured.

On a warm sunny day in mid-February, Jody looked up from the bottom of the sink-hole. Flag stood in silhouette at the top. For a startled moment, it seemed to him that it was another deer. Flag was so big — He had not seen how fast he was growing. Many a young yearling shot for food was no bigger than he. He went home to Penny in excitement. Penny sat by the kitchen hearth, wrapped in quilts, though the day was mild.

Jody burst out, “Pa, you reckon Flag’s near about a yearlin?”

Penny looked at him quizzically.

“I been thinkin’ that myself lately. Give him a month more, I’d say he was a yearlin’.”

“How’ll he be different?”

“Well, he’ll stay off in the woods longer. He’ll grow a good bit bigger. He’ll be betwixt and between. He’ll be like a person standin’ on the state line. He’ll be leavin’ one and turnin’ into t’other. Behind him’s the fawn. Before him’s the buck.”

Jody stared into vacancy.

“Will he have horns?”

“He’ll likely not show no horns before July. The bucks is sheddin’ their horns right now. They’ll be butt-headed all through the spring. Then along in the summer the spikes’ll show and by ruttin’ season they’ll have full sets agin.”

Jody examined Flag’s head carefully. He felt the hard edge of his forehead. Ma Baxter passed by with a pan in her hand.

“Hey, Ma, Flag’ll soon be a yearlin’. Won’t he be purty, Ma, with leetle ol’ horns? Won’t his horns be purty?”

“He’d not look purty to me did he have a crown on. And angel’s wings.”

He followed her to cajole her. She sat down to look over the dried cow-peas in the pan. He rubbed his nose over the down of her cheek. He liked the furry feel of it.

“Ma, you smell like a roastin’ ear. A roastin’ ear in the sun.”

“Oh git along. I been mixin’ cornbread.”

“‘Tain’t that. Listen, Ma, you don’t keer do Flag have horns or no. Do you?”

“Hit’ll be that much more to butt and bother.”

He did not press the point. Flag was in increasing disgrace, at best. He had learned to slip free from the halter about his neck. When it was tightened so that he could not get out of it, he used the same tactics that a calf used against restraint. He strained against it until his eyes bulged and his breathing choked, and to save his perverse life, it was necessary to release him. Then when he was free, he raised havoc. There was no holding him in the shed. He would have razed it to the ground. He was wild and impudent. He was allowed in the house only when Jody was on hand to keep up with him. But the closed door seemed to make him possessed to enter. If it was not barred, he butted it open. He watched his chance and slipped in to cause some minor damage whenever Ma Baxter’s back was turned.

She set the dish of shelled dried peas on the table and went to the hearth. Jody went to his room to look for a piece of rawhide. There was a clatter and commotion and then Ma Baxter’s storm of fury. Flag had leaped onto the table, seized a mouthful of the peas and sent the pan sprawling, the peas scattered from one end of the kitchen to the other. Jody came running. His mother threw the door open and drove Flag out with the broom. He seemed to enjoy the fracas. He kicked up his heels, flicked his white flag of a tail, shook his head as though threatening to attack with imaginary antlers, sailed over the fence and galloped away to the woods.

Jody said, “That were my fault, Ma. I shouldn’t of left him. He were hongry, Ma. The pore feller didn’t git enough for breakfast. You should of beat me, Ma, not him.”

“I’ll tear down all two of you. Now git down and pick up ever’ one o’ them peas and wash ‘em off.”

He was only too glad to do so. He crawled under the table and reached behind the kitchen safe and under the inside water-shelf and in every corner, to retrieve them. He washed them carefully and went to the sink-hole for extra water, to replace what he had used, and more. He felt entirely righteous.

“Now see, Ma,” he said, “they’s no harm done. Ary leetle harm Flag do, you kin depend on me to take keer of it.”

Flag did not return until sunset. Jody fed him outside and waited to smuggle him into his bedroom after Penny and Ma were in bed. Flag had lost his fawn’s willingness to sleep long hours and had been increasingly restless at night. Ma Baxter had complained that she had heard him tripping about in Jody’s room or the front room several times. Jody had invented a plausible tale of rats on the roof, but his mother was sceptical. Perhaps Flag had had a sleep that afternoon in the woods, for this night he left his moss pallet and pushed open the rickety door of Jody’s bedroom and wandered about the house. Jody was aroused by a piercing shriek from his mother. Flag had awakened her from a sound sleep by pushing his wet muzzle against her face. Jody slipped the fawn out by the front door before she should do a more thorough job of it.

“Now that ends it,” she raged. “The creetur gives me no peace day or night. Now he cain’t come in this house, no time, never no more.”

Penny had kept apart from the controversy. Now he spoke from his bed.

“Your Ma’s right, boy. He’s got too big and restless to be in the house.”

Jody went back to bed and lay wakeful, wondering if Flag were cold. He thought it was unreasonable of his mother to object to the clean soft nose against her own. He could never get enough of fondling the delicate muzzle, himself. She was a mean, hard woman and did not care if he was lonely. His resentment eased him and he went to sleep, clutching his pillow and pretending that it was Flag. The fawn snorted and stamped around the house most of the night.

In the morning Penny felt well enough to dress and hobble around the clearing, leaning on a stick. He made the rounds. He returned to the rear of the house. His face was grave. He called Jody to him. Flag had trampled back and forth across the tobacco seed-bed. The young plants were almost ready to set out. He had destroyed nearly half of them. There would be enough for the usual patch for Penny’s own use. There would be no money crop, as he had planned, for storekeeper Boyles at Volusia.

“I don’t figger Flag done it malicious,” he said. “He were jest racin’ back and forth and it were somethin’ to jump on, was all. Now you go set up stakes all through the bed amongst the plants and all around the bed, to keep him offen the rest of ‘em. I should of done it before, I reckon, but I never studied on him rompin’ in that pertickler place.”

Penny’s reasonableness and kindness depressed Jody as his mother’s rage had not done. He turned away disconsolately to do the job.

Penny said, “Now it jest bein’ accidental-like, we’ll not say nothin’ to your Ma. Hit’d be a pore time for her to know it.”

As Jody worked, he tried to think of a way to keep Flag out of mischief. Most of his tricks he considered only clever, but the destruction of the seed-bed was serious. He was sure that such a thing would never happen again.