The Yearling

Chapter XXX

March came in with a cool and sunny splendor. The yellow jessamine bloomed late and covered the fences and filled the clearing with its sweetness. The peach trees blossomed, and the wild plums. The red birds sang all day, and when they had done with their song in the evening, the mocking-birds continued. The ground doves nested and cooed one to another and walked about the sand of the clearing like shadows bobbing.

Penny said, “If I was dead, I’d set up and take notice, a day like this un.”

There had been a light shower during the night and the hazy substance of the sunrise indicated there would be another before night. But the morning itself was luminous.

“Jest right for corn,” Penny said. “Jest right for cotton. Jest right for ‘baccy.”

“I take it you’re pleased with the day,” Ma Baxter said.

He grinned and finished his breakfast.

“Now jest ‘cause you feel better,” she warned him, “don’t git in the field and kill yourself.”

“I feel so good,” he said, “I’ll kill ary thing keeps me from plantin’. All day. I’m fixin’ to plant all day. Today. Tomorrer. The next day. Plantin’. Corn. Cotton. ‘Baccy.”

“I heered you,” she said.

He stood up and thumped her on the back.

“Cow-peas! ‘Taters! Greens!”

She had to laugh at him, and Jody laughed too.

“Hear you tell it,” she said, “you’re fixin’ to plant the world.”

“I’d purely love it.” He threw out his arms. “A day like this un, I’d love to plant rows from here to Boston and back agin to Texas. Then when I come to Texas, I’d turn around and go back to Boston to see had the seeds come up yit.”

“I see where Jody gits his fairy-tales,” she said.

He pounded Jody on the back.

“You got a sweet job, boy. You kin set out the ‘baccy plants. If my back didn’t near about kill me when I stoop, I’d take it from you, for I love settin’ plants. Leetle ol’ young green things — Given’ ‘em a chancet to grow.”

He went whistling to his work. Jody gulped his breakfast and followed him. Penny was at the tobacco seed-bed, lifting out the tender plants.

“You belong to handle ‘em like they was new-borned babies,” he said.

He set out a dozen plants by way of lesson, then watched and corrected Jody while he went on with the row. He brought old Cæsar and the scooter plow and turned in to the field, laid off and bedded up ready for the corn, to open the furrows for the planting. Jody hunched along on his heels, or dropped to his knees when his legs grew tired. He worked leisurely, for Penny said there was no hurry, and that the job must be done well. The March sun grew strong in mid-morning, but a fresh breeze blew. The tobacco plants wilted behind him, but the night’s dark coolness would bring them upright again. He watered them as he went and had to go twice to the sink-hole for water. Flag had disappeared after breakfast and was not in sight. Jody missed him, but he was relieved that the fawn had chosen the particular morning to stay away. If he joined him, and gamboled about as usual, he would destroy the plants faster than Jody could set them out. He finished the task by dinner time. The tobacco patch filled only a portion of the ground that Penny had prepared for it according to the original size of the seed-bed. When Penny went with him after dinner to look it over, his father’s exuberance ebbed.

“You ain’t left no plants in the bed, boy? You got ‘em all?”

“Ever’ one. I even set them leetle ol’ spindly ones.”

“Well — I’ll put in somethin’ else to fill out.”

Jody offered eagerly, “I kin he’p you with t’other plantin’ now. Or tote water for you.”

“No need to water. Hit looks more prosperous for a shower ever’ minute. You kin he’p plant.”

Penny had the furrows open for the corn. Now he went ahead, drilling his holes with a pointed stick down the long rows. Jody followed, dropping two kernels to the hole. He was anxious to please, to have his father forget the shrunken tobacco patch.

He called, “Goes fast, two workin’, don’t it, Pa?”

Penny did not answer. Yet as the early spring day clouded and the light wind shifted into the southeast and it was plain that a shower would come on the planting, insuring the quick sprouting of the corn, his spirits lifted again. The rain caught them in the late afternoon, but they continued to work and finished the field. It rolled gently well-tilled and tawny, its soft bosom receptive to the rain. Leaving it, Penny rested on the split-rail fence and looked back over it with satisfaction. There was a wistful look in his eyes as well, as though he were obliged now to leave his handiwork to forces he could only trust blindly not to betray him.

Flag came bounding out of the rain from the south. He came to Jody to be scratched behind the ears. He leaped back and forth in a zig-zag across the fence, then stopped under a mulberry tree and reached up to catch the tip of a bough. Jody sat on the fence beside his father. He turned to call Penny’s attention to the slim neck of the fawn stretched up to the new green leaves of the mulberry. His father was studying the young deer with an unfathomable expression. His eyes were narrowed and speculative. He seemed, as when he had set out after old Slewfoot, a stranger. A chill passed over the boy that was not of the dampness of the rain.

He said, “Pa—”

Penny turned to him, startled from his thoughts. He looked down, as though to hide a thing in his eyes.

He said carelessly, “That fawn o’ yourn shore growed up in a hurry. He ain’t the baby you toted home in your arms all the way that black night — He’s a yearlin’ now, for shore.”

The words gave Jody little pleasure. Somehow, he sensed they were not quite what his father had been thinking. Penny laid his hand an instant on his son’s knee.

“You’re a pair o’ yearlin’s,” he said. “Hit grieves me.”

They slid from the fence and went to the lot to do the chores, then to the house to dry out by the fire. The rain beat lightly on the shingled roof. Flag bleated outside to be allowed to come in. Jody looked appealingly at his mother but she was deaf and blind. Penny felt stiff and sat with his back close to the heat, rubbing his knees. Jody begged some stale cornbread and went outside. He made a fresh bed in the shed and enticed Flag inside with the bread. He sat down and the deer finally doubled his long legs under him and lay down beside him. Jody took hold of the two pointed ears and rubbed his nose against the wet muzzle.

“You a yearlin’ now,” he said. “You hear me? You growed up. Now you listen to me. You got to be good, now you’re growed. You cain’t go gallivantin’ acrost no t’baccy. Don’t you git Pa down on you. You listenin’?”

Flag chewed ruminatively.

“All right, then. Now soon as we git done with the plantin’, I kin go off with you agin. You wait for me. You was gone too long today. Don’t you go wild, jest ‘cause I told you you was a yearlin’.”

He left Flag and had the satisfaction of seeing him remain contentedly in the shed. Ma Baxter and Penny had begun supper when he went into the kitchen. They made no comment on his lateness. They ate in silence. Penny went to bed at once. Jody was suddenly tired out and dropped into bed without washing his dusty feet. When his mother came to his door to remind him of it, he was asleep with one arm thrown back over the pillow. She stood looking at him, then turned away without arousing him.

In the morning, Penny was blithe again.

“Today’s cotton day,” he said.

The soft rain had stopped in the night. The morning was dewy. The fields were rosy, dipping into lavender at the far misty edges. The mocking-birds made a musical din along the fence-rows.

“They tryin’ to hurry the mulberries,” Penny said.

The cotton was sowed free in drills. Later it would be chopped out to a stand, a foot apart, with the hoe. Jody followed his father as before, dropping the small shining seeds. He was curious about the new Baxter crop and asked endless questions. Flag had disappeared shortly after breakfast, but came trotting to the planters in mid-morning. Again Penny watched him. His sharp hooves cut deeply into the soft moist earth, but the seeds were planted deeply enough so that no harm was possible.

“He do take out after you when he misses you,” Penny said.

“He’s like a dog that-a-way, ain’t he, Pa? He wants to tag me jest like Julia tags you.”

“You think a heap of him, don’t you, boy?”

“Why, shore.”

He stared at his father.

Penny said, “Well, we’ll wait and see.”

The remark made no particular sense and Jody ignored it.

The planting continued all week. Cow-peas followed the corn and cotton. Sweet potatoes followed the cow-peas. The vegetable garden back of the house was planted to onions and turnips, for the moon was dark, and root crops must be planted then. Penny had been forced by his rheumatism to let pass the fourteenth of February, the date on which collards should be planted, so as not to go to seed. He was tempted to put them in now, but since the leafy crops did best when planted on an increasing moon, he decided to wait a week or so.

He was up early each day and finished late. He drove himself mercilessly. The planting itself was done, but he was not content. He was in a fever over the spring work, for weather conditions were favorable and the year’s living depended on the immediate results. He carried the two heavy buckets full of water from the sink-hole again and again to water the tobacco plants and the garden.

A stump that Buck Forrester had left to rot out in the new ground where the cotton was planted, annoyed him. He dug and chopped around it, then hooked trace chains to it and put old Cæsar at pulling on it. The old horse tugged and strained, his sides heaving. Penny lashed a rope about the stump, said “Gee-up!” to Cæsar and pulled with him. Jody saw his father’s face turn white. Penny clutched at his groin and sank to his knees. Jody ran to him.

“Hit’s all right. I’ll be all right in a minute — Reckon I strained myself—”

He dropped to the ground and stirred in agony.

He murmured, “I’ll be all right — Go put Cæsar up — Wait — Take a-holt o’ my hand — I’ll ride him in.”

He was bent double and could not straighten, for pain. Jody helped him to the stump. From there he managed to clamber on Cæsar’s back. He leaned forward, resting his head on Cæsar’s neck, gripping the mane. Jody unhitched the trace chains and led the horse out of the field and through the gate into the yard. Penny made no move to get down. Jody brought a chair for him to stand on, to break the descent. Penny slid to it and to the ground and crept into the house. Ma Baxter turned from her work at the kitchen table. She dropped a pan with a clatter.

“I knowed it! You’ve hurted yourself. You don’t never know to quit.”

He shuffled to his bed and threw himself face down on it. She followed and turned him over and put a pillow under his head. She pulled off his shoes and laid a light quilt over him. He stretched out his legs with relief. He closed his eyes.

“That’s good — Oh Ory, that’s good — I’ll be all right in a minute. Must o’ strained myself—”