The Yearling

Chapter XXXI

Penny did not recover. He lay suffering without complaint. Ma Baxter wanted Jody to ride for Doc Wilson, but Penny would not allow it.

“I owe him a’ready,” he said. “I’ll git easement directkly.”

“You’re likely ruptured.”

“Even so — Hit’ll clare up.”

Ma Baxter lamented, “If you had a mite o’ sense — But you’ll try to do like as if you was big as a Forrester.”

“My uncle Miles were a big man and he were ruptured. He got around all right. Please to hush, Ory.”

“I’ll not hush. I want you should learn your lesson and learn it good.”

“I’ve done learned it. Please hush.”

Jody was disturbed. Yet Penny was always having minor accidents, trying, with his small stout physique, to do the work of ten. Jody could remember dimly when a tree that Penny was felling had caught him, crushing one shoulder. His father had carried his arm in a sling for long months, but he had recovered and been as strong as ever. Nothing could harm Penny for long. Not even a rattlesnake, he thought comfortingly, could kill him. Penny was inviolable, as the earth was inviolable. Only Ma Baxter fretted and fumed, but she would have done so if it were only a little finger that had been strained.

Shortly after Penny was laid up, Jody came in to report that the corn was up. The stand was perfect.

“Now ain’t that fine!”

The pale face on the pillow was bright.

“Now if it so happen I ain’t outen the bed, you’re jest the feller to plow it out.” He frowned. “Boy, you know as good as I do, you got to keep that yearlin’ outen the fields.”

“I’ll keep him out. He ain’t bothered nary thing.”

“That’s fine. That’s jest fine. But you keep him out, religious.”

Jody spent most of the next day on a hunt with Flag. They went nearly to Juniper Spring and returned with four squirrels.

Penny said, “Now that’s what I call a son. Come in with rations for his old man.”

Ma Baxter made a pilau of the squirrels for supper.

“They do eat good,” she said.

“Why, the meat’s so tender,” Penny said, “you could kiss it off the bones.”

Jody, and Flag with him, was in high favor.

A light rain fell in the night. In the morning he went to the cornfield at Penny’s request to see whether the rain had pushed the corn and whether there was any sign of cutworms. He leaped the split-rail fence and set out across the field. He had gone some yards when it occurred to him that he should be seeing the pale green shoots of the corn. There were none. He was bewildered. He went farther. There was no corn visible. It was not until he reached the far end of the field that the delicate sprouts appeared. He walked back along the rows. Flag’s sharp tracks were plain. He had pulled up the corn in the early morning as neatly as though it had been pulled by hand.

Jody was frightened. He dawdled about the field, hoping to have a miracle happen and the corn appear again when his back was turned. Perhaps he was having a nightmare in which Flag had eaten the corn crop, and when he awakened he would go out and find it growing, green and tender. He pushed a stick into one arm to make sure. The dull misery he felt was that of a bad dream, but the pain in his arm was as real as the destruction of the corn. He dragged back to the house with slow and heavy feet. He sat down in the kitchen and did not go to his father. Penny called him. He went to the bedroom.

“Well, boy? How’s the crops?”

“The cotton’s up. Hit looks like okry, don’t it?” His enthusiasm was spurious. “The cow-peas is breakin’ the ground.”

He spread the toes of his bare feet and wriggled them. He was absorbed in them, as though they had developed an interesting new function.

“And the corn, Jody?”

His heart beat as fast as a humming-bird’s wings. He swallowed and took the plunge.

“Somethin’s et off most of it.”

Penny lay silent. His silence was a nightmare, too. At last he spoke.

“Couldn’t you tell what ‘twas, done it?”

He looked at his father. His eyes were desperate and beseeching.

Penny said, “Ne’ mind. I’ll git your Ma to go look. She kin tell.”

“Don’t send Ma!”

“She’s obliged to know.”

“Don’t send her!”

“Hit were Flag done it, wa’n’t it?”

Jody’s lips trembled.

“I reckon — Yes, sir.”

Penny looked at him pityingly.

“I’m sorry, boy. I more’n half looked for him to do it. You go play a while. Tell your Ma to come here.”

“Don’t tell her, Pa. Please don’t tell her.”

“She’s got to know, Jody. Now go on. I aim to do the best I kin for you.”

He stumbled to the kitchen.

“Pa wants you, Ma.”

He went out of the house. He called Flag, quaveringly. The deer came to him from the black-jack. Jody walked down the road with his arm across his back. He loved him more than ever, in his sin. Flag kicked up his heels and invited him to romp. He had no heart for play. He walked slowly as far as the sink-hole. It was lovely as a spring flower garden. The dog-wood had not finished blooming. The last blossoms were white against the pale green of the sweet gums and the hickories. He was not even tempted to walk around it. He turned back to the house and went inside. His mother and father were still talking. Penny called to him to come in beside the bed. Ma Baxter’s face was flushed. She was hot with defeat. Her mouth was a tight line.

Penny said quietly, “We’ve come to a agreement, Jody. What’s happened is powerful bad, but we’ll have a try at a remedy. I take it you’re willin’ to work extry hard to fix things.”

“I’ll jest do ary thing, Pa. I’ll keep Flag shut up ‘til the crops is made—”

“We got no earthly place to shut up a wild thing like that. Now listen to me. You go now and git corn from the crib. Pick the best ears. Your Mall he’p you shell it. You go then and plant it jest like we done before, right where the first lot was put. Drill your holes like I done, and go back over and drop the seed and kiver it.”

“I know jest how.”

“Then time you git that done, likely along tomorrer mornin’, you hitch Cæsar to the wagon and go yonder to the old clearin’ on the way to the Forresters, where the road turns off. You tear down that old rail fence there and load the rails on the wagon. Not too heavy a load, for Cæsar cain’t pull too much on that piece of up-grade. You make as many trips as you need to. Pile the rails here and yon along our fence. Dump your first loads along the south side o’ the cornfield and along the east side, borderin’ the house yard. Then you build up that fence — workin’ first on them two sides — jest as high as you got the rail to do it. I been noticin’ your yearlin’ allus takes the fence on this end. If you kin keep him out up here, he’ll mebbe stay out ‘til you kin build up the rest.”

It seemed to Jody that he had been shut up in a small black box and now the lid was off, and the sun and light and air came in across him, and he was free.

Penny said, “Now when you git your fence higher’n you kin reach, if I ain’t on my feet by then, your Ma’ll he’p you with the riders.”

Jody turned joyously to embrace his mother. She was patting one foot ominously on the floor. She stared straight ahead and did not speak. He decided that it was probably best not to touch her. Nothing could alter his relief. He ran outside. Flag was feeding along the road near the gate. Jody threw his arms around him.

“Pa’s fixed it,” he told him. “Ma’s pattin’ her foot, but Pa’s fixed it.”

Flag’s mind was on the tender sprigs of grass and he shook free. Jody went whistling to the crib and sorted over the corn for the ears with the largest kernels. It would take a good many ears of the remaining corn for seed for the second planting. He carried it in a sack to the back door and sat down on the stoop and began the shelling. His mother came and sat beside him. Her face was a frigid mask. She picked up an ear and went to work.

“Huh!” she snorted.

Penny had forbidden her outright to scold Jody. He had not forbidden her to talk to herself.

“‘Spare his feelin’s!’ Huh! And who’s to spare our bellies this winter? Huh!”

Jody swung around so that his back was partly turned on her. He hummed under his breath, ignoring her.

“Hush that racket.”

He left off his humming. It was no moment to be impudent or to argue. His fingers flew. The corn popped from the cobs. He wanted to be away from her and at his planting as quickly as possible. He gathered up the sack of seed and slung it over his shoulder and went to the field. It was nearly dinner time, but he could get in an hour’s work. In the open field he was free to sing and whistle. A mocking-bird in the hammock sang, whether in competition or harmony, he could not tell. The March day was blue and gold. The feel of the corn in his fingers, the feel of the earth that reached out to enclose the corn, was good. Flag discovered him and joined him.

He said, “You do your rompin’ right now, ol’ feller. You goin’ to git barred out.”

He bolted his dinner at noon and hurried back to the planting. He worked so fast that a couple of hours would finish it the next morning. He sat at Penny’s bedside after supper, chattering like a squirrel. Penny listened gravely, as always, but his responses were sometimes detached and vacant, and his thoughts were elsewhere. Ma Baxter kept stonily to herself. Dinner and supper had both been meager and indifferently cooked, as though she took her revenge from behind her own citadel, the cook-pot. Jody paused for breath. In the hammock, a whip-poor-will called. Penny’s face brightened.

“‘When the first whip-poor-will calls, the corn had ought to be in the ground.’ We still not too late, boy.”

“Ever’ last bit’ll be in tomorrer mornin’.”

“That’s good.”

He closed his eyes. Relief from acute agony had come, as long as he lay quiet. When he moved, the pain was excruciating. He was wracked constantly with his rheumatism.

He said, “You go on to bed now and git your rest.”

Jody left him and washed his feet without being told. He went to bed, peaceful of mind and tired of body, and was asleep in an instant. He awakened before dawn with a feeling of responsibility. He got out of bed and dressed immediately.

Ma Baxter said, “Pity hit take a thing like this to make you put out.”

In standing between her and Flag during the past months, he had learned the value of his father’s trick of an unarguing silence. It annoyed his mother more for the moment, but she stopped scolding sooner. He ate heartily but hurriedly, slipped a handful of biscuits inside his shirt for Flag, and went at once to his work. He could scarcely see, at first, to plant. He watched the sun rise beyond the grape arbor. In the thin golden light the young leaves and tendrils of the Scuppernong were like Twink Weatherby’s hair. He decided that sunrise and sunset both gave him a pleasantly sad feeling. The sunrise brought a wild, free sadness; the sunset, a lonely yet a comforting one. He indulged his agreeable melancholy until the earth under him turned from gray to lavender and then to the color of dried corn husks. He went at his work vigorously. Flag came to him from the woods where he had evidently spent the night. He fed him the biscuits and let him nose inside his shirt bosom for the crumbs. He tingled with the sensation of the soft wet nose against his bare flesh.

When the planting of the corn was finished in the early morning, he bounded back to the lot. Old Cæsar was pasturing south of it. He lifted his grizzled head from the grass with a mild astonishment. Jody had seldom had the harnessing of him. He behaved meekly for the hitching and stepped backward politely between the shafts of the wagon. It gave Jody an agreeable sense of authority. He made his voice as deep as possible and gave unnecessary orders. Cæsar obeyed humbly. Jody took his seat alone, slapped the reins and set off to the abandoned clearing to the west. Flag was pleased with the business and trotted ahead. Now and then he stopped dead in the middle of the road, for mischievousness, and Jody had to stop the horse and cajole the deer into moving.

“You mighty biggety now you’re a yearlin’,” he called to him.

He flicked the reins and made Cæsar jog-trot, then remembered that he would have many trips to make, and allowed the old animal to slow down to his usual walk. At the clearing, it was no job at all to pull the old split-rail fence apart. The stakes and riders collapsed conveniently. The loading seemed easy for a time, then his back and arms began to ache and he had to stop and rest. There was no danger of over-loading, because it was too difficult to pile the rails past a certain height. He tried to coax Flag to jump up on the seat beside him. The yearling eyed the narrow space and turned away and could not be induced. Jody tried to lift him in, but he was astonishingly heavy and he could no more than get his front legs over the wagon wheel. He gave it up and turned around and drove home. Flag went into a sprint and was waiting ahead of him when he reached there. He decided to begin dumping his piles at the fence corner near the house and working in both directions, alternately. In that way, when the rails gave out, he would have built up the fence highest across Flag’s favorite crossing places.

The hauling and unloading took longer than he dreamed of. Midway, it seemed an endless and a hopeless task. The corn would be up before he had begun the fencing. The weather was dry and the corn was slow in germinating. Each morning he looked fearfully for the pale shoots. Each morning he found with relief that they were not yet showing. He was up each day in the dark before dawn and either ate a cold breakfast without disturbing his mother, or hauled a load before he came to the table. He worked at night until the sun had set, and the red and orange faded through the pines, and the split rails merged with the color of the earth. He had dark circles under his eyes for lack of enough sleep. Penny had not had time to cut his hair, and it hung shaggily in his eyes. He made no complaint when, his eyelids drooping after supper, his mother asked him to fetch in wood that she could easily have brought in herself during the day. Penny watched him with a pain keener than the rupture in his groin. He called him to the bed one night.

“I’m proud to see you workin’ so hard, boy, but even the yearlin’, much as you think of him, ain’t wuth killin’ yourself over.”

Jody said doggedly, “I ain’t killin’ myself. Feel my muscle. I’m gittin’ powerful strong.”

Penny felt of the thin hard arm. It was true. The regular and heavy lifting and heaving of the rails were developing his arms and back and shoulders.

Penny said, “I’d give a year o’ my life to be to where I could he’p you with this.”

“I’ll git it done.”

On the fourth morning he decided to begin building up the fence at the end Flag had been using. Then if the corn was up before he had finished, Flag would not take him unaware. He would even tie him by the legs to a tree, day and night, and let him kick and flounder, if necessary, until the fence was done. He found to his relief that the work went rapidly. In two days, he had raised the south and east fence lines to a height of five feet. Ma Baxter, seeing the impossible materialize, softened. On the morning of the sixth day, she said, “I got nothin’ to do today. I’ll he’p you git another foot on that fence.”

“Oh, Ma. You good ol’ Ma—”

“Now ne’ mind squeezin’ the life outen me. I never figgered you had it in you to work this-a-way.”

She gave out of breath easily, but the work itself, while arduous, was not heavy with a pair of hands at each end of the light rails. The swing of it was rhythmic, like the swing of the cross-cut saw. She grew red in the face and panted and sweat, but she laughed and stayed with him most of the day and part of the next. There were enough rails piled at the corner to go even higher, and they built it well over the six feet that Penny had said would be high enough to keep out the yearling.

“If ‘twas a full-growed buck now,” he said, “he could clear eight feet easy.”

That night Jody discovered the corn breaking the ground. In the morning he tried to put a hobble on Flag. He tied a rope from one hind shin to the other, with a foot of play between. Flag bucked and kicked and threw himself on the ground in a frenzy. He stumbled to his knees and fought so wildly that it was plain he would break a leg if he were not released. Jody cut the rope and let him go. He galloped away to the woods and was gone all day. Jody worked furiously at the west fence line, for that would be the yearling’s most logical line of attack on the field when the south and east ends turned him. Ma Baxter gave him two or three hours of help in the afternoon. He used up all the rails he had dumped to the west and north.

Two showers of rain pushed the corn. It was more than an inch high. On the morning that Jody was ready to return to the old clearing for more rails, he went to the new high fence and climbed to the top to look over the field. His eye caught sight of Flag, feeding on the corn near the north hammock. He jumped down and called his mother.

“Ma, will you go he’p me haul rails? I got to hurry. Flag’s done come in the north end.”

She hurried outside with him and climbed part-way up the fence until she could peer over.

“North end nothin’,” she said. “He takened the fence right here at the highest corner.”

He looked down where she pointed. The sharp tracks led to the fence and appeared again on the other side, inside the cornfield.

“And he’s got this crop, too,” she said.

Jody stared. Again, the shoots had been pulled up by the roots. The rows were bare. The yearling’s tracks led regularly up and down between them.

“He ain’t gone fur, Ma. Look, the corn’s still there, yonder. He ain’t et but a leetle ways.”

“Yes, and what’s to keep him from fmishin’ it?” She dropped back to the ground and walked stolidly back into the house.

“This settles it,” she said. “I was a fool to give in before.”

Jody clung to the fence. He was numb. He could neither feel nor think. Flag scented him, lifted his head and came bounding to him. Jody climbed down into the yard. He did not want to see him. As he stood, Flag cleared, as lightly as a mocking-bird in flight, the high fence on which he had labored. Jody turned his back on him and went into the house. He went to his room and threw himself on his bed and buried his face in his pillow.

He was prepared for his father to call him. The talk between Penny and Ma Baxter this time had not taken long. He was prepared for trouble. He was prepared for something ominous that had dogged him for days. He was not prepared for the impossible. He was not prepared for his father’s words.

Penny said, “Jody, all’s been done was possible. I’m sorry. I cain’t never tell you, how sorry. But we cain’t have our year’s crops destroyed. We cain’t all go hongry. Take the yearlin’ out in the woods and tie him and shoot him.”