The Yearling Read online

  Penny said, “All right, boy. Here’s our way.”

  The sun was near the horizon. The cumulus clouds were white puff-balls, stained with the red and yellow wash of the sunset. The south was filled with darkness, like the smoke of gunpowder. A chill air moved across the scrub and was gone, as though a vast being had blown a cold breath and then passed by. Jody shivered and was grateful for the hot air that fell in behind it. A wild grape-vine trailed across the thin-rutted road. Penny leaned to pull it aside.

  He said, “When there’s trouble waitin’ for you, you jest as good go to meet it.”

  The rattler struck him from under the grape-vine without warning. Jody saw the flash, blurred as a shadow, swifter than a martin, surer than the slashing claws of a bear. He saw his father stagger backward under the force of the blow. He heard him give a cry. He wanted to step back, too. He wanted to cry out with all his voice. He stood rooted to the sand and could not make a sound. It was lightning that had struck, and not a rattler. It was a branch that broke, it was a bird that flew, it was a rabbit running——

  Penny shouted, “Git back! Hold the dogs!”

  The voice released him. He dropped back and clutched the dogs by the scruff of their necks. He saw the mottled shadow lift its flat head, knee-high. The head swung from side to side, following his father’s slow motions. He heard the rattles hum. The dogs heard. They winded. The fur stood stiff on their bodies. Old Julia whined and twisted out of his hand. She turned and slunk down the trail. Her long tail clung to her hindquarters. Rip reared on his hind feet, barking.

  As slowly as a man in a dream, Penny backed away. The rattles sung. They were not rattles— Surely it was a locust humming. Surely it was a tree-frog singing— Penny lifted his gun to his shoulder and fired. Jody quivered. The rattler coiled and writhed in its spasms. The head was buried in the sand. The contortions moved down the length of the thick body, the rattles whirred feebly and were still. The coiling flattened into slow convolutions, like a low tide ebbing. Penny turned and stared at his son.

  He said, “He got me.”

  He lifted his right arm and gaped at it. His lips lifted dry over his teeth. His throat worked. He looked dully at two punctures in the flesh. A drop of blood oozed from each.

  He said, “He was a big un.”

  Jody let go his hold on Rip. The dog ran to the dead snake and barked fiercely. He made sorties and at last poked the coils with one paw. He quieted and snuffed about in the sand. Penny lifted his head from his staring. His face was like hickory ashes.

  He said, “Ol’ Death goin’ to git me yit.”

  He licked his lips. He turned abruptly and began to push through the scrub in the direction of the clearing. The road would be shorter going, for it was open, but he headed blindly for home in a direct line. He plowed through the low scrub oaks, the gallberries, the scrub palmettos. Jody panted behind him. His heart pounded so hard that he could not see where he was going. He followed the sound of his father’s crashing across the undergrowth. Suddenly the denseness ended. A patch of higher oaks made a shaded clearing. It was strange to walk in silence.

  Penny stopped short. There was a stirring ahead. A doedeer leaped to her feet. Penny drew a deep breath, as though breathing were for some reason easier. He lifted his shotgun and leveled it at the head. It flashed over Jody’s mind that his father had gone mad. This was no moment to stop for game. Penny fired. The doe turned a somersault and dropped to the sand and kicked a little and lay still. Penny ran to the body and drew his knife from its scabbard. Now Jody knew his father was insane. Penny did not cut the throat, but slashed into the belly. He laid the carcass wide open. The pulse still throbbed in the heart. Penny slashed out the liver. Kneeling, he changed his knife to his left hand. He turned his right arm and stared again at the twin punctures. They were now closed. The forearm was thick-swollen and blackening. The sweat stood out on his forehead. He cut quickly across the wound. A dark blood gushed and he pressed the warm liver against the incision.

  He said in a hushed voice, “I kin feel it draw——”

  He pressed harder. He took the meat away and looked at it. It was a venomous green. He turned it and applied the fresh side.

  He said, “Cut me out a piece o’ the heart.”

  Jody jumped from his paralysis. He fumbled with the knife. He hacked away a portion.

  Penny said, “Another.”

  He changed the application again and again.

  He said, “Hand me the knife.”

  He cut a higher gash in his arm where the dark swelling rose the thickest. Jody cried out.

  “Pa! You’ll bleed to death!”

  “I’d ruther bleed to death than swell. I seed a man die——”

  The sweat poured down his cheeks.

  “Do it hurt bad, Pa?”

  “Like a hot knife was buried to the shoulder.”

  The meat no longer showed green when he withdrew it. The warm vitality of the doe’s flesh was solidifying in death. He stood up.

  He said quietly, “I cain’t do it no more good. I’m goin’ on home. You go to the Forresters and git ’em to ride to the Branch for Doc Wilson.”

  “Reckon they’ll go?”

  “We got to chance it. Call out to ’em quick, sayin’, afore they chunk somethin’ at you or mebbe shoot.”

  He turned back to pick up the beaten trail. Jody followed. Over his shoulder he heard a light rustling. He looked back. A spotted fawn stood peering from the edge of the clearing, wavering on uncertain legs. Its dark eyes were wide and wondering.

  He called out, “Pa! The doe’s got a fawn.”

  “Sorry, boy. I cain’t he’p it. Come on.”

  An agony for the fawn came over him. He hesitated. It tossed its small head, bewildered. It wobbled to the carcass of the doe and leaned to smell it. It bleated.

  Penny called, “Git a move on, young un.”

  Jody ran to catch up with him. Penny stopped an instant at the dim road.

  “Tell somebody to take this road in to our place and pick me up in case I cain’t make it in. Hurry.”

  The horror of his father’s body, swollen in the road, washed over him. He began to run. His father was plodding with a slow desperation in the direction of Baxter’s Island.

  Jody ran down the wagon trail to the myrtle thicket where it branched off into the main road to Forresters’ Island. The road, much used, had no growth of weeds or grass to make a footing. The dry shifting sand caught at the soles of his feet and seemed to wrap clinging tentacles around the muscles of his legs. He dropped into a short dog-trot that seemed to pull more steadily against the sand. His legs moved, but his mind and body seemed suspended above them, like an empty box on a pair of cart-wheels. The road under him was a treadmill. His legs pumped up and down, but he seemed to be passing the same trees and bushes again and again. His pace seemed so slow, so futile, that he came to a bend with a dull surprise. The curve was familiar. He was not far from the road that led directly into the Forrester clearing.

  He came to the tall trees of the island. They startled him, because they meant that he was now so close. He came alive and he was afraid. He was afraid of the Forresters. And if they refused him help, and he got safely away again, where should he go? He halted a moment under the shadowy live oaks, planning. It was twilight. He was sure it was not time for darkness. The rain clouds were not clouds, but an infusion of the sky, and had now filled it entirely. The only light was a strand of green across the west, the color of the doe’s flesh with the venom on it. It came to him that he would call to his friend Fodder-wing. His friend would hear him and come, and he might be allowed to approach close enough to tell his errand. It eased his heart to think of it, to think of his friend’s eyes gentle with sorrow for him. He drew a long breath and ran wildly down the path under the oak trees.

  He shouted, “Fodder-wing! Fodder-wing! Hit’s Jody!”

  In an instant now his friend would come to him from the house, crawling down the rickety steps on a
ll fours, as he must do when in a hurry. Or he would appear from the bushes with his raccoon at his heels.

  “Fodder-wing! Hit’s me!”

  There was no answer. He broke into the swept sandy yard.

  “Fodder-wing!”

  There was an early light lit in the house. A twist of smoke curled from the chimney. The doors and shutters were closed against the mosquitoes and against the night-time. The door swung open. In the light beyond, he saw the Forrester men rise to their feet, one after the other, as though the great trees in the forest lifted themselves by their roots and stirred toward him. He stopped short. Lem Forrester advanced to the stoop. He lowered his head and turned it a little sideways until he recognized the intruder.

  “You leetle bastard. What you after here?”

  Jody faltered, “Fodder-wing——”

  “He’s ailin’. You cain’t see him no-ways.”

  It was too much. He burst out crying.

  He sobbed, “Pa— He’s snake-bit.”

  The Forresters came down the steps and surrounded him. He sobbed loudly, with pity for himself and for his father, and because he was here at last and something was finished that he had set out to do. There was a stirring among the men, as though the leavening quickened in a bowl of breaddough.

  “Where’s he at? What kind o’ snake?”

  “A rattlesnake. A big un. He’s makin’ it for home but he don’t know kin he make it.”

  “Is he swellin’? Where’d it git him?”

  “In the arm. Hit’s bad swelled a’ready. Please ride for Doc Wilson. Please ride for him quick, and I won’t he’p Oliver agin you no more. Please.”

  Lem Forrester laughed.

  “A skeeter promises he won’t bite,” he said.

  Buck said, “Hit’s like not to do no good. A man dies right now, bit in the arm. He’ll likely be dead afore Doc kin git to him.”

  “He shot a doe-deer and used the liver to draw out the pizen. Please ride for Doc.”

  Mill-wheel said, “I’ll ride for him.”

  Relief flooded him like the sun.

  “I shore thank you.”

  “I’d he’p a dog, was snake-bit. Spare your thanks.”

  Buck said, “I’ll ride on and pick up Penny. Walkin’s bad for a man is snake-bit. My God, fellers, we ain’t got a drop o’ whiskey for him.”

  Gabby said, “Ol’ Doc’ll have some. If he’s purty tol’able sober, he’ll have some left. If he’s drunk all he’s got, he kin blow his breath, and that’ll make a powerful portion.”

  Buck and Mill-wheel turned away with torturing deliberation to the lot to saddle their horses. Their leisureliness frightened Jody as speed would not have done. If there was hope for his father, they would be hurrying. They were as slow and unconcerned as though they were burying Penny, not riding for assistance. He stood, desolate. He would like to see Fodder-wing just a moment before he went away. The remaining Forresters turned back up the steps, ignoring him.

  Lem called from the door, “Git goin’, Skeeter.”

  Arch said, “Leave the young un be. Don’t torment him, and his daddy likely dyin’.”

  Lem said, “Die and good riddance. Biggety bantam.”

  They went into the house and closed the door. A panic came over Jody, that they did not mean, any of them, to help at all; that Buck and Mill-wheel had gone away to the corral for a joke, and were laughing at him there. He was forsaken, and his father was forsaken. Then the two men rode out and Buck lifted his hand to him, not unkindly.

  “No use to fret, boy. We’ll do what we kin. We don’t hold nothin’ agin folks in trouble.”

  They touched their heels to the horses’ flanks and shot away. Lightness filled him where he had been heavy as lead. It was only Lem, then, who was an enemy. He settled his hate on him with satisfaction. He listened until the hoofbeats faded from his hearing, then set out down the road for home.

  Now he was free to accept the facts. A rattlesnake had struck his father, who might die of it. But help was on the way, and he had done what he was supposed to do. His fear had a name, and was no longer quite so terrible. He decided not to try to run, but to walk steadily. He should have liked to ask the loan of a horse for himself, but dared not.

  A pattering of rain passed over him. A hush followed. The storm might go around the scrub entirely, as often happened. There was a faint luminosity in the air around him. He had scarcely been conscious that he was carrying his father’s gun. He swung it over one shoulder and walked rapidly where the road was firm. He wondered how long it would take Mill-wheel to reach the Branch. He wondered, not whether old Doc would be drunk, for that was known, but just how drunk he would be. If Doc could sit up in bed, he was considered fit to go.

  He had been at Doc’s place once when he was very young. He remembered still the sprawling house with wide verandas, decaying, as old Doc was decaying, in the heart of a dense vegetation. He remembered the cockroaches and the lizards, as much at home inside the house as in the thick vines outside it. He remembered old Doc, deep in his cups, lying under a mosquito canopy, staring at the ceiling. When he was called, he sprawled to his feet and went about his business on uncertain legs, but with gentle heart and hands. He was known far and wide as a good doctor, drunk or no. If he could be reached in time, Jody thought, his father’s life was certain.

  He turned from the Forresters’ lane into the road that ran east to his father’s clearing. He had four miles ahead of him. On hard ground, he could make it in little over an hour. The sand was soft, and the very darkness seemed to hold him back and make his steps uneven. He would do well to reach home in an hour and a half, and it might take two. He broke now and then into a trot. The brightness in the air dropped into the darkness of the scrub like a water turkey dropping into the river. The growth on either side of the road pressed closer, so that the way was narrow.

  He heard thunder in the east, and a flash of lightning filled the sky. He thought he heard foot-steps in the scrub oaks, but it was drops of rain, striking like shot on the leaves. He had never minded night or darkness, but Penny had always been in front of him. Now he was alone. He wondered, sickened, whether his father lay now in the road ahead of him, swollen with poison, or perhaps across Buck’s saddle, if Buck had reached and found him. The lightning flashed again. He had sat with his father through many storms, under the live oaks. The rain had then been friendly, shutting them in together.

  A snarl sounded in the bushes. Something incredibly swift flashed across the road in front of him and was gone, soundlessly. A musky taint lay on the air. He was not afraid of lynx or wild-cat, but a panther had been known to attack a horse. His heart thumped. He fingered the stock of his father’s gun. It was useless, for Penny had shot both barrels, one at the rattler, one at the doe. He had his father’s knife in his belt, and wished he had brought the long knife Oliver had given him. He had no scabbard for it, and it was dangerously sharp, Penny had said, to carry. When he was safe at home, lying under the grape arbor, or at the bottom of the sink-hole, he had pictured himself thrusting it with one sure plunge into the heart of bear or wolf or panther. There was no flush of pride now in the picture. A panther’s claws were quicker than he.

  Whatever the animal, it had gone its way. He walked more rapidly, stumbling in his haste. He thought he heard a wolf howl, but it was so far away that it might only have been the wind. The wind was rising. He heard it far off in the distance. It was as though it were blowing in another world, across a dark abyss. Suddenly it swelled. He heard it coming closer, like a moving wall. The trees ahead thrashed their limbs. The bushes rattled and flattened to the ground. There was a great roaring and the storm hit him like a blow.

  He lowered his head and fought against it. He was drenched to the skin in an instant. The rain poured down the back of his neck and washed through his breeches. His clothes hung heavily and held him back. He stopped and turned his back to the wind and propped the gun at the side of the road. He took off his shirt and breeches and
rolled them into a bundle. He took up the gun and went on naked through the storm. The rain on his bare skin made him feel clean and free. The lightning flashed and he was startled by his own whiteness. He felt suddenly defenseless. He was alone and naked in an unfriendly world; lost and forgotten in the storm and darkness. Something ran behind him and ahead of him. It stalked the scrub like a panther. It was vast and formless and it was his enemy. Ol’ Death was loose in the scrub.

  It came to him that his father was already dead, or dying. The burden of the thought was intolerable. He ran faster, to shake it off. Penny could not die. Dogs could die, and bears and deer and other people. That was acceptable, because it was remote. His father could not die. The earth might cave in under him in one vast sink-hole and he could accept it. But without Penny, there was no earth. Without him there was nothing. He was frightened as he had never been before. He began to sob. His tears ran salt into his mouth.

  He begged of the night, as he had begged of the Forresters, “Please——”

  His throat ached and his groins were shot with hot lead. The lightning showed an opening ahead of him. He had reached the abandoned clearing. He darted into it and crouched against the old rail fence for a moment’s shelter. The wind washed over him more coldly than the rain. He shivered and rose and went on again. The stop had chilled him. He wanted to run, to warm himself, but he had strength only to plod slowly. The rain had packed the sand so that the walking was firm and easier. The wind lessened. The down-pour settled into a steady falling. He walked on in a dull misery. It seemed to him that he must walk forever, but suddenly he was passing the sink-hole and was at the clearing.

  The Baxter cabin was bright with candles. Horses whinnied and pawed the sand. There were three tethered to the slat fence. He passed through the gate and into the cabin. Whatever was, was done. There was no bustle to greet him. Buck and Mill-wheel sat by the empty hearth, tilted back in their chairs. They were talking casually. They glanced at him, said “Hey, boy,” and went on with their talk.