The Yearling Read online

  “Young man, your daddy doesn’t come to trade too often. I’ll treat you to a dime’s worth of anything you take a notion to.”

  He looked over the assortment hungrily.

  “I reckon the mouth organ’s wuth more’n a dime.”

  “Well, yes, but it’s been there a good while now. Take it and welcome.”

  Jody cast a last look at the candies. But Grandma Hutto would have sweets for him.

  He said, “Thank you, sir.”

  Boyles said, “Your boy’s mannerly, Mr. Baxter.”

  “He’s right smart of a comfort,” Penny said. “We lost so many young uns, I think sometimes I set too much store by him.”

  Jody glowed with a sense of virtue. He longed to be good and noble. He turned back of the counter to garner the reward of his character. He glanced up at a motion by the door. Boyles’ niece, Eulalie, stood gaping at him. He was flooded instantly with hate. He hated her because his father had teased him. He hated her hair, hanging in tight pig-tails. He hated her freckles, more lavish than his own. He hated her squirrel-teeth, her hands, her feet, and every bone in her lank body. He leaned over swiftly and picked a small potato from a sack and lifted it. She eyed him venomously. Slowly, she flickered her tongue at him like a garter snake. She clasped two fingers over her nose in a gesture of malodorous disgust. He hurled the potato. It struck her on the shoulder and she retreated with shrieks of anguish.

  Penny said, “Why, Jody.”

  Boyles advanced, frowning.

  Penny said sternly, “Git right outen here. Mr. Boyles, he cain’t have the mouth organ.”

  He went outside into the hot sunlight. He was humiliated. Yet if he had it to do over again, he would throw another potato at her, a larger one. When his business was done, Penny joined him.

  He said, “I’m sorry you seed fit to shame me. Mebbe your Ma’s right. Mebbe you hadn’t ought to have no truck with the Forresters.”

  Jody scuffled his feet in the sand.

  “I don’t keer. I hate her.”

  “I don’t know what to say. How on earth come you to do it?”

  “I jest hate her. She made a face at me. She’s ugly.”

  “Well, son, you cain’t go thru life chunkin’ things at all the ugly women you meet.”

  Jody spat unrepentant in the sand.

  “Well,” Penny said, “I don’t know what Grandma Hutto’ll say.”

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

  Penny was ominously silent.

  “I’ll be mannerly, Pa.”

  “I don’t know whether she’ll take this hide from you now or not.”

  “Leave me have it, Pa. I’ll not chunk nothin’ at nobody agin, if you’ll not tell Grandma.”

  “All right. This time. But don’t let me ketch you at sich as that agin. Take your deer-hide.”

  His spirits lifted. The menacing cloud moved away. They turned north up a path that paralleled the river. Magnolias were in bloom along it. Beyond, there was a lane of oleanders. These too were blossoming. Red-birds flew ahead down the lane. The oleanders led to a gate in a white picket fence. Grandma Hutto’s flower garden was a bright patchwork quilt thrown down inside the pickets. Her small white cottage was bound to the substantial earth with vines of honeysuckle and jessamine. Everything here was dear and familiar. Jody ran down the path through the garden; through the patch of indigo, in feathery, rose-lavender bloom.

  He called, “Hey! Grandma!”

  Light steps sounded inside the cottage and she was on the door-step.

  “Jody! You scamp.”

  He ran to her.

  Penny called, “Don’t knock her down, boy.”

  She braced her small frame. He squeezed her until she squeaked.

  “You tormented bear cub,” she said.

  She began to laugh, and he tipped back his head to laugh with her and watch her face. It was pink and wrinkled. Her eyes were as black as gallberries. They opened and shut when she laughed, and the wrinkles rippled out from the sides. She shook up and down, and her small plump breast quivered like a quail dusting. Jody sniffed at her like a puppy.

  He said, “Ummm, Grandma, you smell good.”

  Penny said, “That’s more’n you kin say for us, Grandma. We’re a dirty pair o’ somebodies.”

  “’Tain’t nothin’ but huntin’ smell,” Jody said. “Deerhide and leaves and sich. And sweatin’.”

  “It’s a dandy smell,” she said. “I’m jest lonesome for boy-smell and man-smell.”

  Penny said, “Anyway, here’s our excuse-us. Fresh venison.”

  “And the hide,” Jody said. “For a rug for you. Hit’s mine. I wounded it.”

  She lifted her hands in the air. Their gifts became at once of great value. It seemed to Jody that he could bring in a panther single-handed, in return for her approval. She touched meat and hide.

  Penny said, “Now don’t dirty them leetle hands.”

  She drew gallantry from men as the sun drew water. Her pertness enchanted them. Young men went away from her with a feeling of bravado. Old men were enslaved by her silver curls. Something about her was forever female and made all men virile. Her gift infuriated all women. Ma Baxter had returned to the clearing from her four years in her house with an acute dislike. The older woman returned it with good measure.

  Penny said, “Leave me tote the meat to the kitchen. And I’d best tack the hide to your shed wall, to cure for you.”

  Jody called, “Here, Fluff!”

  The white dog came racing. He bounded at Jody like a ball and leaped at his face to lick it.

  Grandma said, “He’s as proud to see you as if ’twas some of his kin-folks.”

  Fluff caught sight of old Julia, sitting sedately on her haunches. He stiffened and advanced to her. Julia sat without stirring, her long ears drooping.

  Grandma said, “I like that dog. She looks jest like my Aunt Lucy.”

  Penny went to the rear of the cottage with the venison and the hide. They were all welcome here, father and son and battle-scarred hound. Jody felt more at home than when he returned to his own mother.

  He said, “I reckon you wouldn’t be so proud to see me, did you have to put up with me all the time.”

  Grandma chuckled.

  “You’ve heard your Ma say that. Did she quarrel about you comin?”

  “Not so turrible as sometimes.”

  “Your father,” she said tartly, “married a woman all Hell couldn’t amuse.”

  She lifted a finger in the air.

  “I’ll bet you want to go swimmin’.”

  “In the river?”

  “Smack in the river. When you come out, I’ll give you clean clothes. Some of Oliver’s.”

  She did not caution him against alligators or moccasins or against the river current. It was good to have it taken for granted that he had a little sense of his own. He ran down the path to the landing. The river flowed deep and dark. It made a rippling sound against the banks, but the great liquid heart of it moved silently. Only the swift progress of fallen leaves showed the current. Jody hesitated a moment on the wooden landing, then dove in. He came up gasping with the coldness and struck upstream. He kept close to the bank, where the current ran less swiftly.

  He made almost no progress. The dark vegetation towered on either side of the river. He was pinned between banks of live oaks and cypresses. He pretended that an alligator was behind him and swam desperately. He passed one spot and then, laboriously, another, dog-paddling. He wondered if he could swim as far as the upper landing, where the ferry crossed and the river steamers halted. He fought his way toward it. A cypress knee offered anchorage and he clung to it and caught his wind. He set out again. The landing looked far away. His shirt and breeches interfered with his freedom. He wished he had gone in naked. Grandma would not have minded. He wondered what his mother would have said if he had told her the Forresters had played and sung naked.

  He looked over his shoulder. Hutto’s landing had
disappeared around the bend. He was suddenly not happy in the fluid darkness. He turned around. The current caught him and he shot downstream. He struggled to approach the bank. Watery tentacles held him. He thought in a panic that he might be swept on to Volusia Bar, to great Lake George itself, even, perhaps, the sea. He fought blindly, reaching for whatever might be solid under him. He found himself grounding a little above the landing. In relief, he drifted cautiously down to it and climbed up on the wooden platform. He drew a deep breath. The panic left him and he was exhilarated by the cold water and the danger. Penny was on the landing.

  His father said, “That were right smart of a tussle. Reckon I’ll jest ease around the edge to git me my wash.”

  He dropped cautiously from the landing.

  He said, “Now I don’t aim to take my feet offen the ground. My day for capers is over.”

  He came out of the water shortly. They returned to the rear of the cottage. Grandma Hutto had clean clothes waiting for them. For Penny, there were garments of the longdead Mr. Hutto, musty with age. For Jody, there were shirt and breeches that Oliver had worn and outgrown many years ago.

  Grandma said, “They say you git to use things again, if you save them, ever’ seven years. How many is two times seven, Jody?”

  “Fourteen.”

  Penny said, “Don’t ask him no further. That school teacher me and the Forresters boarded last winter didn’t scarcely know, hisself.”

  “Well, lots of things is more important than book-learnin’.”

  “I know that, but a feller needs to know to read and write and figger. But Jody’s gittin’ along right good with what I kin make out to learn him.”

  They dressed in the shed. They smoothed back their hair with their hands and felt clean and strange in the borrowed clothing. Jody’s freckled face shone. His tawny hair lay wet and smooth. They put on their own shoes and wiped away the dust with their discarded shirts. Grandma Hutto called to them and they went into the cottage.

  Jody smelled its familiar odor. He had never been able to disentangle its elements. The sweet lavender she used on her clothing was plain. There were dried grasses in a jar before the fire-place. There was the unmistakable smell of honey, which she kept in a cupboard. There was pastry; tarts and cookies and fruit cakes. There was the smell of the soap she used on Fluff’s fur. There was the pervasive scent of flowers from the garden outside the windows. And above it all, it came to him at last, lay the smell of the river. The river itself was fluid through the cottage and around it, leaving a whirlpool of odorous dampness and decaying fern. He looked through the open door. A path led through marigolds to the water. The river shone in the late sunlight, Guinea-gold, like the bright flowers. Its flow drew Jody’s mind with it to the ocean, where Oliver rode the storms in ships, and knew the world.

  Grandma brought Scuppernong wine and spice cakes. Jody was allowed a glass of wine. It was as clear as Juniper Springs. Penny smacked his lips over it, but Jody wished it was something sweeter, blackberry shrub, perhaps. He ate spice cakes absently, and stopped in shame to see that he had emptied the plate. This, at home, would be catastrophe. Grandma went to the cupboard and filled the plate again.

  She said, “Don’t you spoil your dinner.”

  “I never know, ’til it’s too late.”

  She went to the kitchen and he followed her. She began to slice venison to broil. He frowned anxiously. The meat was no great treat to the Baxters. She opened the oven door and he became aware that other things were being cooked. She had an iron cook stove. Food from it was more mysterious than from the open hearth at home. The closed door concealed all manner of things behind its black bosom. The cake had dulled his appetite a little, but the good odors brought it back again.

  He wandered back and forth from Grandma to his father. Penny sat sunk in quiet in a padded chair in the front room. Shadows lay over him and absorbed him. There was not here the excitement of a visit to the Forresters. There was instead a snugness that covered him like a warm quilt in winter. It was meat and drink to Penny, harassed at home by all his duties. Jody offered to help in the kitchen, but Grandma sent him away. He rambled into the yard and played with Fluff. Old Julia watched them wonderingly. Romping was as alien to her as to her master. Her black and tan face wore the solemnity of the work-dog.

  Dinner was ready. Grandma Hutto was the only person Jody knew who had a separate room to eat in. Every one else ate in the kitchen, from a scrubbed and bare pine table. Even as she brought in the food, he could not take his eyes from the white cloth and the blue plates.

  Penny said, “Now we’re a mighty sorry pair o’ tramps to set down to all these purties.”

  But he joked and gossiped with Grandma with an ease he did not have at his own table.

  He said to her, “I’m surprised your sweetheart ain’t showed up yit.”

  Her black eyes snapped.

  “Anybody but you said that, Penny Baxter, he’d get pitched in the river.”

  “The way you done pore Easy hisself, eh?”

  “Pity he didn’t drown. A man that don’t know when he’s insulted.”

  “You’ll be obliged to take him yit, to give you the legal right to throw him out.”

  Jody laughed boisterously. He could not listen to them and eat at the same time. He found himself getting behind and settled down to steady eating. There was a bass, fresh from Easy’s fish-trap in the river, baked whole with a savory stuffing. The Irish potatoes were a treat, after the Baxter sweet potatoes three times a day. There was early mutton corn. The Baxters seldom ate new corn, for all that was raised seemed more desperately needed for the stock. Jody sighed with his inability to hold everything. He concentrated on light bread and mayhaw jelly.

  Penny said, “He’ll be so spoiled, his Ma’ll have to break him in like a new bird-dog.”

  After dinner they walked together through the garden to the river bank. Boats passed. The travellers waved to Grandma and she waved back. Toward sunset Easy Ozell turned into the path to the cottage to do the evening chores. Grandma eyed her approaching admirer.

  “Now don’t he look like the back end o’ bad luck?”

  Jody thought that Easy looked like a sick gray crane, with feathers draggled by the rain. His hair hung in gray wisps in his neck. He had a long thin gray mustache that drooped to his jaws. His arms hung like limp wings at his sides.

  “Look at him,” she said. “Tormented Yankee. His feet drag like a ’gator’s tail.”

  “He shore ain’t purty,” Penny admitted, “but he’s humble as a dog.”

  “I hate a pitiful man,” she said. “And I hate anything is bow-legged. He’s so bow-legged his breeches near about make a mark on the ground.”

  Easy shuffled back of the house. Jody heard him with the cow, and later at the wood-pile. When the evening’s work was done, he came timidly to the front steps. Penny shook hands with him and Grandma nodded to him. He cleared his throat. Then as though his Adam’s apple, working up and down, blocked his words, he gave up trying to speak and sat down on the bottom step. The talk flowed about him, and his gray face was bright with content. At twilight, Grandma disappeared inside the house. Easy rose stiffly to go.

  He said to Penny, “My, if I could talk like you. Maybe she’d take to me better. You s’pose it’s that, or won’t she never forgive me, bein’ a Yankee? If ’twas that, I’ll declare, Penny, I’d spit on the flag.”

  “Well, you know a woman’ll hold a idee like a ’gator’ll hold a shoat. She cain’t fergit the time the Yankees takened her needles and thread and she walked clean to St. Augustine with three hen’s eggs to trade for a paper o’ needles. Now if the Yankees had got beat, she’d mebbe forgive you.”

  “But I was beat, Penny. I myself was beat something awful. It was at Bull Run. You rebels whipped us something terrible. My, I hated it.” His memories overcame him. He wiped his eyes. “You whipped us, and we was two to your one!”

  He shuffled away.

  “Now think o’ that
beat-down human aspirin’ to Grandma,” Penny said. “He’s shore got a low eye for a high fence.”

  Inside the cottage, Penny tormented Grandma about Easy, as he had tormented Jody about Eulalie. But she gave back as good as she took, and the bout was good-natured. The subject reminded Jody of the matter that had been on his conscience.

  He said, “Grandma, Lem Forrester said Twink Weatherby was his gal. I said she was Oliver’s, and Lem didn’t like it no leetle bit.”

  “Oliver’ll likely take care o’ Lem when he comes home,” she said. “If a Forrester knows to fight fair.”

  She put them to bed in a room as white as the snow that Oliver told of. Jody stretched out beside his father between immaculate sheets.

  He said, “Don’t Grandma live nice?”

  Penny said, “Hit’s a way some women has.” He added loyally, “But don’t think hard o’ your Ma for not doin’ like Grandma. Your Ma ain’t never had nothin’ much to do with, and I’m to blame for that, not her. She cain’t he’p it, livin’ rough.”

  Jody said, “I wisht Grandma was really my Grandma. I wisht Oliver was shore enough kin.”

  “Well, folks that seems like kin-folks, is kin-folks. You ruther live here with Grandma?”

  Jody pictured the cabin in the clearing. Hoot-owls would be crying, and perhaps the wolves would howl, or a panther scream. The deer would be drinking at the sink-hole, the bucks alone, the does with their fawns. The bear cubs would be curled up in their beds together. There was something at Baxter’s Island that was better than white tablecloths and counterpanes.