The Yearling

Chapter IX

Soft rain fell in the night. The April morning that followed was clear and luminous. The young corn lifted pointed leaves and was inches higher. The cow-peas in the field beyond were breaking the ground. The sugar-cane was needle-points of greenness against the tawny earth. It was strange, Jody thought, whenever he had been away from the clearing, and came home again, he noticed things that he had never noticed before, but that had been there all the time. Young mulberries were clustered along the boughs, and before he went to the Forresters’ he had not even seen them. The Scuppernong grapevine, a gift from his mother’s kin in Carolina, was in bloom for the first time, fine and lace-like. The wild golden bees had found its fragrance, and were standing on their heads to guzzle its thin honey.

For two days he had filled his stomach so richly that this morning he felt a little languid and was not truly hungry. His father was up and out ahead of him, as usual. Breakfast was ready in the kitchen and his mother was tending the sausages in the smoke-house. The woodbox was low and Jody idled outside to fill it. He was in a mood for work, but it must be something gentle and unhurried. He made two leisurely trips to fill the woodbox. Old Julia was dragging herself around in search of Penny. Jody stooped to stroke her head. She seemed to share the sense of well-being that filled the clearing; or perhaps she understood that she had been spared a time longer to run through swamp and scrub and hammock. She wagged her long tail and stood quiet under his petting. The deepest wound was still raw and angry, but the others were healing. Jody saw his father, moving across the road toward the house from the barns and lot. He dangled a strange object. He called to Jody.

“I got a mighty cur’ous somethin’.”

Jody ran to him. The limp object was an animal, at once strange and familiar. It was a raccoon, but instead of being the usual iron-gray, it was all a creamy white. He could not believe his eyes.

“How come it white, Pa? Is it a ol’ grand-daddy ‘coon?”

“That’s what’s so cur’ous. A ‘coon don’t never git to where he’s white-headed. No sir, hit’s one o’ them rare things the books calls a albino. Borned white. And look, them rings on its tail, them that’s due to be dark, they ain’t no more’n cream-colored.”

They crouched in the sand and examined the ‘coon.

“Were it in the trap, Pa?”

“In the trap. Bad hurted but not dead. I’ll declare, I hated a-killin’ of it.”

Jody felt a sense of loss, that he had not known the albino ‘coon alive.

“Leave me tote him, Pa.”

He cradled the dead animal in his arms. The pale fur seemed softer than the ordinary. The belly fur was as soft as the fluff of new-hatched biddies. He stroked it.

“I’d of loved to of ketched him leetle, Pa, and raised him.”

“He’d of been a purty pet, a’right, but likely jest as mean as ary other ‘coon.”

They turned in at the gate and around the side of the house to the kitchen.

“Fodder-wing said none of his ‘coons wasn’t never pertickler mean.”

“Yes, but a Forrester wouldn’t scarcely notice if he was to git bit.”

“Likely he’d bite right back, eh, Pa?”

They laughed together, picturing their neighbors. Ma Baxter met them at the door. Her face brightened, seeing the animal.

“You got him. Good. That’s what’s been goin’ with my hens.”

“But Ma,” Jody protested. “Look at him. He’s white. He’s a cur’ossity.”

“He’s a thievin’ varmint right on,” she said indifferently. “Is the hide wuth more’n usual?”

Jody looked at his father. Penny was deep in the washbasin. He opened one bright eye among the soap-suds and winked at his son.

“Likely ain’t wuth a nickel,” he said carelessly. “Jody’s been a-wantin’ of a leetle knapsack. Jest as good to leave him use up the hide.”

Next to having the albino ‘coon alive, nothing could be finer than a knapsack of the soft curious fur. Jody’s mind was full of it. He could not eat his breakfast. He wanted to show his gratitude.

“I kin clean the water troughs, Pa,” he said.

Penny nodded.

“I keep hopin’ each year, come spring, to hire us a deep well dug. Then them water troughs could fill with trash and welcome. But bricks is mighty high.”

“I’d not know what ‘twas, not to be sparin’ o’ my water,” Ma Baxter said. “For twenty years, I been sparin’.”

“Now be patient, Ma,” Penny said.

His face furrowed. Jody knew that the lack of abundant water was a trial to his father, and a greater hardship than for mother or son. Jody was held accountable for wood, but it was Penny himself who slung the ox yoke across his narrow shoulders, hung the great hewn cypress buckets at either end, and trudged up and down the sandy road from the clearing to the sink-hole, where seepage alone built pools of water, amber-colored from leaf-mould, and filtered by the sand. It was as though the labor were Penny’s apology to his family for having established them on land so arid, when creeks and rivers and good wells flowed not many miles away. For the first time, Jody wondered why his father had chosen to inhabit this place. Thinking of the pools on the steep side of the sink-hole that must be cleared, he was almost tempted to wish that they lived on the river, with Grandma Hutto. Yet the clearing, the island of tall pines, made up the world. Life in other places was only a tale that was told, as Oliver Hutto told of Africa and China and Connecticut.

His mother said, “You better put a biscuit-two and some meat in your pocket. You ain’t et.”

He filled his pockets.

“You know what I wisht I had, Ma? A pouch like a ‘possum, to tote things.”

“The Lord put your stomach inside you o’ purpose. He meant you to put your rations inside you when your Ma sets ‘em on the table.”

He rose and ambled to the door.

Penny said, “You git on to the sink-hole, son, and I’ll foller time I’ve skinned out your ‘coon hide.”

The day was bright and windy. Jody took a grubbing hoe from the shed behind the house and strolled toward the road. The mulberry trees by the fence were a sharp green. His mother’s favorite hen clucked to her biddies from the slat coop. He scooped up a small ball of yellow down and held it against his cheek, its cheepings shrill in his ear. He released it and it scurried for shelter under the fat hen’s wings. The yard would soon need hoeing.

The walk from the front steps to the gate needed hoeing, too. The walk was bordered with cypress slats, but the weeds crept under and over, and grew impudently among the Amaryllis that lined the pathway. The lavender petals of the chinaberry blooms were falling. Jody scuffed his bare toes through them and went through the gate. He hesitated. The barns were tempting. There might be a new hatching of biddies. The calf might have a different look from yesterday. And if he could think of a good reason to give himself for prowling about, the increasingly unwelcome job of cleaning the water troughs might be that much longer postponed. Then it occurred to him that if he finished the cleaning in short order, he might be through for the day. He swung the grubbing hoe over his shoulder and set off at a trot toward the sink-hole.

The end of the world, he thought, might be like the sinkhole. Fodder-wing had said that it was empty and dark, with only clouds to ride on. But no one knew. Certainly reaching it must feel as it felt to reach the edge of the sink-hole. Jody wished that he had been the first to discover it. He turned the corner of the fence now. He left the road and took the trail. It was narrow, hemmed in by briers. He pretended that he did not know there was a sink-hole. He passed a dogwood tree. It was a landmark. He closed his eyes and whistled carelessly. He put his feet ahead of him slowly. In spite of his determination, in spite of squeezing his eyelids tight, he could not make himself go farther with his eyes shut. He opened them and walked with a sense of relief the last few steps to the edge of the great limestone sink.

A small world lay at his feet. It was deep and concave, like a great bowl. Fodder-wing said that a bear as big as God had scooped out a pawful of earth to get a lily-root. Jody knew the truth from his father. It was only that underground rivers ran through the earth and swirled and eddied beneath the surface, and changed their courses. This was especially so where there were streaks of limestone, as here. The limestone was soft and crumbling before the air touched and hardened it. Sometimes, without reason, without warning, after long rains, perhaps, a section of earth sank in, gently and almost without sound, and a deep cavity marked the place where once had run, darkly and unseen, a river. Sometimes the sink-hole was a few feet only in depth and width. Baxter’s sink-hole was sixty feet deep. It was so wide that Penny’s old muzzle-loader could not hit a squirrel from one side to the other. The sink-hole was as round as though it had been dug so on purpose. Staring into it, it seemed to Jody that the truth of its fashioning was more fantastic than the tales of Fodder-wing.

The hole was older than Penny Baxter. Penny said he could remember when the trees that lined its steep banks were no larger much than saplings. Now they were of great size. A magnolia that grew half-way up the east bank had a trunk as broad as the mill-stone with which the Baxters ground their meal. A hickory was as thick as a man’s thigh. A live oak spread its branches across half the sink-hole. Smaller trees, sweet gum and dogwood, ironwood and holly, grew lushly up and down the banks. Palmettos thrust tall spears among them. Giant ferns grew from top to bottom. Jody looked down into a great cupped garden, feathered with green leaves, cool and moist and, always, mysterious. The sink-hole was set in the arid scrub, at the core of the pine island, like a lush green heart.

The trail to the bottom of the sink-hole led down the west bank. It was worn deep into the sand and limestone by the years of Penny Baxter’s feet, leading his stock to water. In the dryest weather, there was a continual seepage which dripped down the banks and came to gather at the bottom in a shallow pool. This water was stagnant, and clouded by the comings and goings of the animals who watered there. Only Penny’s hogs used it for drinking and wallowing. For the other stock, and for his own family’s use, Penny had an ingenious arrangement. Up the east, or opposite, bank from the trail, he had cut out of the limestone strata a series of troughs to catch and hold the filtered seepage. The lowest trough was shoulder-high from the bottom of the sink-hole. Here he led the cow and calf to water, and his horse. Here in his young manhood he had led the yoke of cream-colored oxen with which he had cleared his land. A few yards higher up, he had cut a pair of deeper troughs. Here his wife brought her block and paddle and came to do her washing. A portion of the bank bore a milky whitewash from the years of her soap-suds. For her annual quilt-washing, she caught rain water.

At the last, high above the stock trough and the wash troughs, lay a deep, narrow trough that gathered water used only for cooking and drinking. The bank above was so steep that none of the larger animals disturbed the water. The deer that came, the bears, the panthers, all used the west trail and watered either at the pool itself, or at the stock trough. Squirrels drank from the upper trough, and occasionally a wild-cat, but for the most it was untouched by anything but Penny’s gourd, dipping into it to fill his cypress buckets.

Jody jolted down the trail, bracing himself against the steepness with the grubbing hoe. It made a clumsy stock, catching in the wild grape vines. The descent always excited him. Step by step the banks lifted above him. Step by step he passed the tops of trees. A breath of wind eddied into the green bowl, stirring waves of coolness. The leaves fluttered their thin hands. The ferns bent a moment to the ground. A red-bird swung in an arc across the sink-hole. It turned and dropped down to the pool, like a bright leaf falling. Seeing the boy, it whirred up and away. Jody knelt by the pool.

The water was clear, for the hogs were feeding to the north in the marshy prairies, and had no need of the sink-hole. A small green frog eyed the boy from a partly submerged twig. The nearest water was a couple of miles away. It seemed amazing that frogs should travel so far, to settle in a small and distant pool. He wondered if the first frog migrants had known that there was water here, when they hopped to the rim of the sink-hole and hesitated on their green haunches. Penny said that once in rainy weather he had seen a line of frogs in single file, like marching soldiers, crossing the dry flat-woods. Did they move blindly or with knowledge? Penny did not know. Jody flipped a frond of fern into the pool and the frog dove and hid himself in the soft muck.

A sense of aloneness that was not lonely came to the boy. He decided that when he was grown he would build himself a little house beside the pool. The animals would become used to it, and he would look out of the windows on moonlit nights and see them drinking.

He crossed the flat floor of the sink-hole and climbed a few feet to reach the stock trough. It was awkward, bringing the grubbing hoe over his shoulder and into the trough. He discarded it and went at his work with his two hands. An accumulation of leaves and sand had left a thick layer. He dug and scraped vigorously. He worked against the creeping moisture, trying to hold the trough dry and empty for an instant. The seepage had returned by the time he took his hands away. The limestone trough was white and clean. He left it with satisfaction and moved higher up the bank to the more laborious work of scouring out the larger wash troughs. Constant use kept these comparatively free from leaves, but the soap-suds in time made them slippery. He climbed a sweet gum and gathered an armful of Spanish moss. It made good scouring material. He scooped sand from a bare spot on the bank and used it with the moss.

He was tired when he reached the drinking trough at the top. The incline was so steep that by resting his belly flat against the bank, he needed only to lower his head, like a fawn, to drink. He ran his tongue up and down the length of the trough. He darted it in and out and leaned back to watch the ripples. He wondered whether a bear lapped water like a dog or sucked it in like a deer. He imagined himself a bear and drank both ways, deciding. Lapping was slower, but he choked when he sucked the water in. He could not decide. Penny would know how a bear drank. He had probably actually seen them.

Jody buried his face completely in the water. He turned it from side to side, so that first one cheek and then the other was laved and cooled. He stood on his head in the trough, resting his weight on the palms of his hands. He tried to see how long he could hold his breath. He made bubbles. He heard his father’s voice at the bottom of the sink-hole.

“Son, how come that water to feel so good to you? Put the same thing in the wash-basin, you act like ‘twas something nasty.”

He turned, dripping.

“Pa, I never heered you comin’.”

“You had your dirty leetle ol’ face too deep in what your pore Pa was fixin’ to take a drink of.”

“I wa’n’t dirty, Pa. The water ain’t riled.”

“I ain’t that thirsty.”

Penny climbed the bank and examined the lower troughs. He nodded. He leaned over the rim of the wash trough and chewed a twig.

“I declare,” he said, “your Ma purely shocked me when she said ‘twenty years’. I jest hadn’t never set down and reckoned the time. The years has slipped by me, one by one, me not noticin’ nor countin’. Ever’ spring, I’d figger to git your Ma a well dug. Then I’d need a ox, or the cow’d bog down and perish, or one o’ the young uns’d put in and die and I’d have no heart for well-diggin’, and medicine to pay for. Bricks so turrible high — When I begun diggin’ oncet, and got no water at thirty feet, I knowed I was in for it. But twenty years is too long to ask ary woman to do her washin’ on a seepage hillside.”

Jody listened gravely.

He said, “We’ll git her a well one day.”

“Twenty years—” Penny repeated. “But always somethin’ interferin’. And the war — And then the land to be cleared all over agin.”

He stood leaning against the trough, looking backward along the years.

“When I first come here,” he said, “when I picked this place and come to it, I hoped—”

The morning’s question came to Jody’s mind again.

“How come you to pick it, Pa?”

“Well, I picked it because—” His face puckered, his mind seeking words. “I jest craved peace, was all.” He smiled. “Out here I got it, excusin’ the bears and panthers and wolves and wild-cats — and now and agin, your Ma.”

They sat in silence. The squirrels began to stir in the tree-tops. Suddenly Penny poked Jody in the ribs with his elbow.

“Look at that scaper, peekin’ at us.”

He pointed to a sweet gum. A half-grown raccoon was peering around the side of the trunk, a dozen feet from the ground. It saw itself observed and pulled back out of sight. In an instant the masked face looked again.

Penny said, “I reckon we be as cur’ous to the creeturs as they be to us.”

“How come some is skeert and some is bold?”

“That I don’t know. It depend, likely, on how young a creetur is scairt. They don’t seem to be no rule for it. I mind me, oncet, I’d been huntin’ all mornin’—this were over on Wild-cat Prairie — and I set down under a live oak and made me a leetle fire to warm me and cook me a bit o’ bacon. Well, whilst I was settin’ there, a fox walked right up t’other side o’ the fire and laid down. I looked at him and he looked at me. I figgered mebbe he were hongry. I takened a piece o’ meat and I jobbed it on a long stick and I helt it out to him. I helt it right over his nose. Now a fox is mighty wild and I ain’t never knowed one to git that hongry to where he wouldn’t run. And you know that fox laid there right on, lookin’ at me, and never et nor run.”

“I’d love to of seed him. What you figger made him lay there, Pa, lookin’ at you?”

“Hit’s been a puzzlement to me all these years since it happened. All I kin figger is, the dogs had run him until he got heated and his brains was cooked. I figger, for some reason, that fox were cold-out crazy.”

The ‘coon had moved into full view.

Jody said, “Pa, I wisht I had me somethin’ to pet and play with, like Fodder-wing. I wisht I had me a ‘coon, or a bear cub, or sich as that.”

Penny said, “You know how your Ma rares. I’d not mind it, for I love the creeturs. But times has been hard and rations scarce, and your Ma’s the one to say.”

“I’d love a baby fox, or a baby panther. Kin you tame ‘em, do you git ‘em young?”

“You kin tame a ‘coon. You kin tame a bear. You kin tame a wild-cat and you kin tame a panther.” He pondered. His mind went back to his father’s sermons. “You kin tame arything, son, excusin’ the human tongue.”