The Yearling Read online

  “Here’s two big ol’ bucks travelin’ together,” he said at last. “They come this way before day.”

  “How kin you tell about tracks so?”

  “Jest by bein’ used to ’em.”

  Jody could see little difference between them and some of the other hoof-marks. Penny stooped and traced them with his finger.

  “Now you know to tell a doe from a buck. A doe’s track is pointed and fine. And ary one kin tell how fresh a track be, for a old track has sand blowed into it. And now if you’ll notice, a deer’s toes is spraddled when he’s runnin’. They’re close together when he walks.” He indicated the fresh tracks to the hound. “Here, Julia, git him!”

  Julia bent her long nose to the trail. It led out of the scrub, toward the south-east, into an open area of gallberry flats. Here was bear sign as well.

  Jody asked, “Must I shoot a bear, do I git the chancet?”

  “Bear or buck, hit’s all right. Jest be sure you got a good chancet. Don’t go wastin’ your shot.”

  The flats were not hard going, but the sun was blazing. The gallberry bushes ended and there was a welcome stretch of pines. The shadows were cooling. Penny pointed out a bear gnaw. It was a clawed area on a tall pine tree, shoulder high to a man. The resin dripped from it.

  “I’ve watched a bear at it,” Penny said, “many a time. He’ll stretch up and he’ll claw. He’ll turn his head sideways and he’ll nag and gnaw. Then he’ll back up and rub his shoulders agin the resin. Some folks says it’s to keep the bees from stingin’ when he robs a bee-tree, but I’ve allus figgered ’twas jest a way o’ boastin’. A buck’ll boast jest about the same way. He’ll rub his head and horns agin a saplin’ jest to prove hisself.”

  Julia lifted her nose and Penny and Jody stopped short. There was a commotion ahead. Penny motioned Julia to heel and they crept close. An opening showed and they halted. Twin bear cubs were high in a slim pine sapling, using it for a swing. The sapling was tall and limber and the yearling cubs were rocking it back and forth. Jody had swung in the same fashion. For an instant the cubs were not bears, but boys like himself. He would have liked to climb the sapling and rock with them. It bent half-way to the ground as they swung their weight, swayed upright again, then low on the other side. The cubs made now and then an amiable talking.

  Julia could not resist barking. The cubs stopped their play, astonished, and stared down at the humans. They were not alarmed. It was their first sight of mankind and they seemed to feel, as Jody felt, only curiosity. They cocked their black furry heads from one side to the other. One scrambled to a higher limb, not for safety, but for a better view. He curled one arm around the sapling and gaped down below him. His black beady eyes were bright.

  “Oh Pa,” Jody begged, “let’s ketch us one.”

  Penny himself was tempted.

  “They’re a mite big for tamin’.” He brought himself to his senses. “Now what ails us? Jest how long would it take your Ma to run him off, and me and you with him?”

  “Pa, look at him cut his eyes.”

  “That’s likely the mean un. Of twin bear cubs, one’ll be gentle and t’other’ll be mean.”

  “Let’s ketch the gentle un. Please, Pa.”

  The cubs craned their necks. Penny shook his head.

  “Come long, boy. Le’s git on with our hunt and leave’em to their play.”

  He lingered behind while his father took up the bucks’ trail again. He thought once that the cubs were about to come down the sapling to him, but they only scrambled about from one limb to another and turned their heads to watch him. He ached to touch them. He imagined them sitting on their haunches and begging, as Oliver Hutto described trained bears as doing; nesting in his lap, warm and furry and intimate; sleeping on the foot of his bed; even under the covers with him, if the nights were cold. His father was almost out of sight under the pines. He ran after him. He looked back over his shoulder and waved his hand to the bear cubs. They lifted their black noses, as though the air might tell them, what their eyes had not, the nature of their observers. In their first sign of alarm, he saw them clamber down the sapling and slip away to the west beyond the gallberries. He caught up to his father.

  “Do you ever ask your Ma into leavin’ you have sich as that,” Penny told him, “you belong to git one young enough to train easy.”

  The thought was encouraging. The yearling cubs would indeed be large to handle.

  “Now I never had nothin’ much to pet nor play with, neither,” Penny said. “There was sich a mess of us. Neither farmin’ nor the Bible pays a man too good, and Pa was like your Ma, he jest wouldn’t feed no creeturs. He done well to fill our bellies. Then he put in and died, and since I was the oldest rat in the barn, I had to look after the rest of ’em ’til they was old enough to shuffle around for theirselves.”

  “Well, a bear cub could near about make his own livin’, couldn’t he?”

  “Yes—offen your Ma’s chickens.”

  Jody sighed and applied himself with his father to the buck tracks. The pair of deer was keeping close together. It was odd, he thought, that the bucks could be so friendly through the spring and summer. Then when their horns were grown, and they began to run with the does in the autumn, they would drive the fawns away from the does, and battle fiercely. One buck was larger than the other.

  “That un there’s a buck big enough to ride,” Penny said.

  A patch of hammock joined the pines. Dogbane grew thickly here, lifting its yellow bells. Penny studied the multitude of tracks.

  “Now boy,” he said, “you been wantin’ to see fawns. Me and Julia’ll go on and make a circle. You climb up this here live oak and scrooch down in the branches and I believe you’ll see somethin’. Hide your gun here in the bushes. You’ll not want it.”

  Jody settled himself halfway up the live oak. Penny and Julia disappeared. The shade of the oak was cool. A light breeze moved through its leaves. Jody’s shaggy hair was wet. He pushed it out of his eyes and wiped his face on his blue sleeve, then settled himself to quiet. Silence took over the scrub. Far away a hawk cried shrilly and was gone. No bird stirred in any branches. No creature moved or fed. No bees droned, or any insect. It was high noon. Everything living was resting in the heat of the sun’s meridian. Everything except Penny and old Julia, who moved now somewhere among the scrub oaks and the myrtle. Bushes crackled below him. He thought his father was returning. He almost betrayed himself with a quick movement. A bleat sounded. A fawn was moving from under the protection of a low clump of palmettos. It must have been there all the time. Penny had known. Jody held his breath.

  A doe bounded over the palmettos. The fawn ran to her, wobbling on unsteady legs. She bent her head to it and made a low sound in greeting. She licked its small anxious face. It was all eyes and ears. It was spotted. Jody had never seen one so young. The doe threw up her head and tasted the air with her wide nostrils. A taint lay on it of the human enemy. She kicked up her heels and made a sortie about the live oak. She discovered the trail of hound and man. She followed it backward and forward, throwing up her head at every few steps. She stopped and listened, her ears pricked tall above her great luminous eyes.

  The fawn bleated. The doe quieted. She seemed satisfied that the danger had come and gone. The fawn nuzzled her full udders and began to nurse. It butted her bag with its knobby head and switched its short tail in a gluttonous ecstasy. The doe was not content. She broke away from it and moved directly underneath the live oak. The boughs below Jody obscured his view, but he could see that she had traced his scent to the tree and was lifting her head to locate him. Her nose followed the odor of his hands, the leather of his shoes, the sweat of his clothing, as surely as a man’s eyes followed a blazed trail. The fawn followed, greedy for the warm milk. Suddenly the doe wheeled and kicked the fawn sprawling into the bushes. She cleared them in a great bound and galloped away.

  Jody scrambled down from his perch and ran to the place where he had seen the fawn tumble. It
was not there. He hunted the ground carefully. The tiny hoof-marks crossed and criss-crossed and he could not tell one track from another. He sat down disconsolately to wait for his father. Penny returned, red of face and wet with sweat.

  “Well, son,” he called, “what did you see?”

  “A doe and a fawn. The fawn were right here all the while. He nursed his mammy and she smelled me and run off. And I cain’t find the fawn no-where. You reckon Julia kin track him?”

  Penny dropped down on the ground.

  “Julia kin track ary thing that makes a trail. But don’t let’s torment the leetle thing. Hit’s right clost this minute, and likely scairt to death.”

  “His mammy shouldn’t of left him.”

  “That’s where she was smart. Most ary thing would take out after her. And she’s learned the fawn to lay up so still hit’ll not git noticed.”

  “Hit was mighty cute spotted, Pa.”

  “Was the spots all in a line, or helter-skelter?”

  “They was in a line.”

  “Then hit’s a leetle ol’ buck-fawn. Wasn’t you proud to see it so clost?”

  “I was proud, but I’d shore love to ketch him and keep him.”

  Penny laughed and opened his knapsack and took out the lunch. Jody protested. He was for once more anxious to hunt than to eat.

  Penny said, “We got to noon somewhere, and a deer is mighty like to run over us right here. When you noon, you jest as good to noon where the game walks.”

  Jody brought his gun from its hiding place and sat down to eat. He was abstracted and only the flavor of fresh brierberry jam brought him back to a consciousness of his food. The jam was thin and not sweet enough, sugar being scarce. Old Julia was still a little weak. She lay stretched out on her side. Her battle scars showed white against her dark hide. Penny lay on his back.

  He said lazily, “Them two bucks is like to circle back through here to bed up right soon, if the wind don’t change. If you was of a notion to go climb one o’ them high pine trees about a quarter to the east, hit’d make a mighty good stand.”

  Jody picked up his gun and started away. He would give anything to bring down a buck alone.

  Penny called after him, “Don’t try for too long a shot. Take your time. And don’t let the gun kick you outen the tree.”

  Tall scattered pines lifted ahead from a desolate flat of gallberry bushes. Jody chose one that commanded a view of a wide area. Nothing could cross in any direction without his seeing it. It was hard work to climb the straight trunk with the gun in one hand. His knees and shins were raw when he reached the lowest branches. He rested a moment then climbed as high as he dared in the tree-top. The pine swayed in an imperceptible breeze. It seemed alive, stirring with a breath of its own.

  He recalled the bear cubs, rocking the sapling. He began to swing his tree-top, but it was over-balanced with his weight and that of his gun. It cracked ominously and he held quiet. He looked about him. He knew now how a hawk felt, surveying the world from high places. An eagle stared down as he was staring, high and wise and predatory and keen. He swung his head in a slow circle. For the first time he could believe that the world was round. By turning his head quickly, he could almost see the whole horizon at once.

  He thought that his vision covered the entire area. He was startled to see movement. He had seen nothing approaching. But a large buck was feeding toward him. Early huckleberries were offering food. The buck was still out of range. He debated climbing down from the pine tree and stalking it, but knew that the animal, more alert than he, would be gone before he could lift his gun. He could only wait, and pray that it would feed within a reasonable distance. It moved with a maddening slowness.

  For a time he thought it meant to feed away from him, to the south. Then it began to move directly toward him. He brought his gun up behind the shelter of·the branches. His heart pounded. He could not tell for the life of him whether the deer was near or far. It loomed large, yet he was conscious that such details as eyes and ears were still not plain to him. He waited for what seemed an interminable period. The buck lifted his head. Jody drew a bead on the stout neck.

  He pulled the trigger. At the instant that he did so, he realized that he had not made sufficient allowance for his height above the game. He had over-shot. Yet it seemed to him that he must have touched the animal, for it leaped into the air with something more than alarm. It cleared the gallberry bushes with a high bounding, making long cradled arcs. It passed directly under the pine-tree. If he had had his father’s new double-barreled gun, he would have had another shot. In a few seconds he heard Penny’s gun. He was quivering. He climbed down from the pine and pushed his way back to the patch of hammock. The buck lay in the shade of the live oak. Penny had already begun the dressing.

  Jody called, “Did I hit him?”

  “You hit him. You done a mighty good job. Like as not, he’d of fell a piece on, but I takened a shot at him as he come by, jest to make sure. You was a mite high.”

  “I know it. The minute I shot, I knowed I was high.”

  “Well, that’s the way you learn. Next time, you’ll know. Now here’s your shot, here, and there’s mine.”

  Jody knelt down to examine the fine frame. Again, a sickness came over him at the sight of the glazed eyes and the bleeding throat.

  He said, “I wisht we could git our meat without killin’ it.”

  “Hit’s a pity, a’right. But we got to eat.”

  Penny was working deftly. His hunting knife, a flat sawfile ground down to an edge, with only a corn-cob for handle, was not overly sharp, but he had already drawn the venison and cut off the heavy head. He skinned it below the knees, crossed the legs and tied them, slipped his arms through the junctures, and stood up with the carcass neatly balanced on his back for carrying.

  “Now Boyles may want the hide when we skin it out at Volusia,” he said, “but if you’d like to carry the hide to Grandma Hutto for a present, we’ll jest refuse him.”

  “I reckon she’d be proud to have it for a rug, a’right. I wisht I’d shot it by myself, to give her.”

  “That’s jest all right. The hide’s yours. I’ll carry her a fore-quarter, for my portion. She’s got nobody but us to hunt for her, with Oliver gone to sea. That mindless Yankee hangs around her is no good for sich as that.” Penny said innocently, “Now mebbe you’d ruther carry the hide to your sweetheart.”

  Jody scowled blackly.

  “Pa, you know I got no sweetheart.”

  “You ain’t goin’ back on Eulalie after I seed you holdin’ hands at the doin’s?”

  “I was not holdin’ hands. It was a game they was playin’. If you say that agin, Pa, I’ll jest die.”

  Penny seldom teased his son, but now and then an occasion was irresistible.

  “Grandma’s my sweetheart,” Jody said.

  “All right. I jest wanted to git it straight.”

  The sand road was long and hot. Penny was wet with sweat, but he walked easily under his burden.

  Jody said, “Kin I tote it a ways?” but Penny shook his head.

  “These fellers only fits a man’s back,” he said.

  They crossed Juniper Creek, then, after two miles of narrow road, picked up the main road to the river and to Volusia. Penny stopped to rest. In late afternoon they passed Captain McDonald’s house and Jody knew they were nearing Fort Butler. Around a bend in the road, the dry growth of pines and scrub oak disappeared. There was a new lushness. Sweet gums and bay were here, and, like sign-posts indicating the river, cypress. Wild azaleas were blooming late in the low places, and the passion flower opened its lavender corollas along the road.

  They reached the St. John’s River. It was dark and aloof. It seemed to slide toward the ocean indifferent to its own banks and to the men who crossed or used it. Jody stared at it. It was a pathway to the world. Penny shouted across it to summon the ferry from the Volusia side. A man crossed over for them with a rough raft of hewn logs. They crossed back, watching t
he slow sweep of the river current. Penny paid his ferriage and they walked up the curving shell road and into the Volusia store.

  Penny hailed the proprietor, “Howdy, Mr. Boyles. How do this feller look to you?”

  “Too good for the steam-boat. But Cap’ll want it.”

  “What’s venison worth?”

  “The same. A dollar and a half a saddle. I’ll swear, those city folks travelling up and down the river— Hollering for venison, and ’tain’t half as good as pork, and you and me, we know it.”

  Penny hauled the deer to the big meat block and began the skinning.

  “Yes,” he agreed, “but if a feller’s pot-bellied and cain’t git out and shoot it for hisself, I reckon venison has a mighty fancy taste to him.”

  They laughed together. Penny was a welcome trader at the store, as much for his wit and his stories, as his business. Boyles himself was judge and arbiter and encyclopedia for the small community. He stood now in the close odorous dusk of his store like a captain in the hold of his ship. His wares included the necessities and scanty luxuries of the whole country-side, from plows, wagons, buggies and implements, through food staples to whiskey and hardware, dry goods and notions and medicines.

  “Now one fore-quarter I’ll call back by for tomorrer to carry home to my wife. T’other one goes to Grandma Hutto,” Penny said.

  “Bless her old soul,” Boyles said. “Why I say ’old soul’ I don’t know. If a man’s wife was as young-hearted as Grandma Hutto, why, living’d be a feast.”

  Jody walked along the length of the glass case under the counter. There were sweet crackers and an assortment of candies. There were Barlow knives and the new Rogers. There were shoe-strings, buttons, thread and needles. The coarser wares were on shelves that lined the walls. Buckets and pitchers, lard-oil lamps and basins, the new kerosene lamps, coffee pots and cast-iron skillets and Dutch ovens, nestled together like strange birds, fledglings in one nest. Beyond the utensils were the dress goods; calico and Osnaburg, denim and shoddy, domestic and homespun. A few bolts of alpaca and linsey and broadcloth were thick with dust. There was little sale for such luxuries, especially in the summer. At the back of the store were the groceries, hams and cheeses and bacons. There were barrels of sugar and flour and meal and grits and green coffee beans; sacks of potatoes; kegs of syrup; barrels of whiskey. Nothing here was tempting and Jody wandered back to the glass case. A rusty mouth organ lay on top of a pile of licorice strings. He was tempted for a moment to trade in his deer hide and buy the mouth organ, so that he could play to Grandma Hutto or accompany the Forresters. But Grandma would probably prefer the deer hide. Boyles called to him.