The Yearling Read online

  “You wasn’t here, Buck, when ol’ man Twistle died o’ snake-bite. Penny must o’ been right about whiskey not doin’ no good. Twistle were drunk as a coot when he stepped on the rattler.”

  “Well, do I ever git snake-bit, fill me full jest for luck. I’d ruther die drunk than sober, ary day.”

  Mill-wheel spat into the fireplace.

  “Don’t fret,” he said. “You will.”

  Jody was faint. He dared not ask them the question. He walked past them and into his father’s bedroom. His mother sat on one side of the bed and Doc Wilson sat on the other. Old Doc did not turn his head. His mother looked at him and rose without speaking. She went to a dresser and took out a fresh shirt and breeches and held them out to him. He dropped his wet bundle and stood the gun against the wall. He walked slowly to the bed.

  He thought, “If he’s not dead now, he’ll not die.”

  In the bed, Penny stirred. Jody’s heart leaped like a rabbit jumping. Penny groaned and retched. Doc leaned quickly and held a basin for him and propped his head. Penny’s face was dark and swollen. He vomited with the agony of one who has nothing to emit, but must vomit still. He fell back panting. Doc reached inside the covers and drew out a brick wrapped in flannel. He handed it to Ma Baxter. She laid Jody’s garments at the foot of the bed and went to the kitchen to heat the brick again.

  Jody whispered, “Is he bad?”

  “He’s bad, a’right. Looks as if he’d make it. Then again, looks as if he won’t.”

  Penny opened his puffed eyes. The pupils were dilated until his eyes seemed black. He moved his arm. It was swollen as thick as a bullock’s thigh.

  He murmured thickly, “You’ll ketch cold.”

  Jody fumbled for his clothes and pulled them on. Doc nodded.

  “That’s a good sign, knowin’ you. That’s the first he’s spoken.”

  A tenderness filled Jody that was half pain, half sweetness. In his agony, his father was concerned for him. Penny could not die. Not Penny.

  He said, “He’s obliged to make it, Doc, sir.” He added, as he had heard his father say, “Us Baxters is all runty and tough.”

  Doc nodded.

  He called to the kitchen, “Let’s try some warm milk now.”

  With hope, Ma Baxter began to sniffle. Jody joined her at the hearth.

  She whimpered, “I don’t see as we’d deserve it, do it happen.”

  He said, “Hit’ll not happen, Ma.” But his marrow was cold again.

  He went outside for wood to hurry the fire. The storm was moving on to the west. The clouds were rolling like battalions of marching Spaniards. In the east, bright spaces showed, filled with stars. The wind blew fresh and cool. He came in with an armful of fatwood.

  He said, “Hit’ll be a purty day tomorrow, Ma.”

  “Hit’ll be a purty day iffen he’s yit alive when day comes.” She burst into tears. They dropped on the hearth and hissed. She lifted her apron and wiped her eyes. “You take the milk in,” she said. “I’ll make Doc and me a cup o’ tea. I hadn’t et nothin’, waitin’ for you-all, when Buck carried him in.”

  He remembered that he had eaten lightly. He could think of nothing that would taste good. The thought of food on his tongue was a dry thought, without nourishment or relish. He carried the cup of hot milk carefully, balancing it in his hands. Doc took it from him and sat close to Penny on the bed.

  “Now boy, you hold his head up while I spoon-feed him.”

  Penny’s head was heavy on the pillow. Jody’s arms ached with the strain of lifting it. His father’s breathing was heavy, like the Forresters when they were drunk. His face had changed color. It was green and pallid, like a frog’s belly. At first his teeth resisted the intruding spoon.

  Doc said, “Open your mouth before I call the Forresters to open it.”

  The swollen lips parted. Penny swallowed. A portion of the cupful went down. He turned his head away.

  Doc said, “All right. But if you lose it, I’m comin’ back with more.”

  Penny broke into a sweat.

  Doc said, “That’s fine. Sweatin’s fine, for poison. Lord of the jay-birds, if we weren’t all out of whiskey, I’d make you sweat.”

  Ma Baxter came to the bedroom with two plates with cups of tea and biscuits on them. Doc took his plate and balanced it on his knee. He drank with a mixture of gusto and distaste.

  He said, “It’s all right, but ’tain’t whiskey.”

  He was the soberest Jody had ever heard of his being.

  “A good man snake-bit,” he said mournfully, “and the whole county out of whiskey.”

  Ma Baxter said dully, “Jody, you want somethin’?”

  “I ain’t hongry.”

  His stomach was as queasy as his father’s. It seemed to him that he could feel the poison working in his own veins, attacking his heart, churning in his gizzard.

  Doc said, “Blest if he ain’t goin’ to keep that milk down.”

  Penny was in a deep sleep.

  Ma Baxter rocked and sipped and nibbled.

  She said, “The Lord watches the sparrer’s fall. Mought be He’ll take a hand for the Baxters.”

  Jody went into the front room. Buck and Mill-wheel had lain down on the deer-skin rugs on the floor.

  Jody said, “Ma and Doc’s eatin’. You-all hongry?”

  Buck said, “We’d jest done et when you come. Don’t pay us no mind. We’ll sleep here and wait-see how it comes out.”

  Jody crouched on his heels. He would have liked to talk with them. It would be good to talk of dogs and guns and hunting, of all the things that living men could do. Buck snored. Jody tiptoed back to the bedroom. Doc was nodding in his chair. His mother moved the candle from the bed-side and returned to her rocker. The runners swished a while and then were still. She too nodded.

  It seemed to Jody that he was alone with his father. The vigil was in his hands. If he kept awake, and labored for breath with the tortured sleeper, breathing with him and for him, he could keep him alive. He drew a breath as deep as the ones his father was drawing. It made him dizzy. He was light-headed and his stomach was empty. He knew he would feel better if he should eat, but he could not swallow. He sat down on the floor and leaned his head against the side of the bed. He began to think back over the day, as though he walked a road backward. He could not help but feel a greater security here beside his father, than in the stormy night. Many things, he realized, would be terrible alone that were not terrible when he was with Penny. Only the rattlesnake had kept all its horror.

  He recalled the triangular head, the lightning flash of its striking, the subsidence into alert coils. His flesh crawled. It seemed to him he should never be easy in the woods again. He recalled the coolness of his father’s shot, and the fear of the dogs. He recalled the doe and the horror of her warm meat against his father’s wound. He remembered the fawn. He sat upright. The fawn was alone in the night, as he had been alone. The catastrophe that might take his father had made it motherless. It had lain hungry and bewildered through the thunder and rain and lightning, close to the devastated body of its dam, waiting for the stiff form to arise and give it warmth and food and comfort. He pressed his face into the hanging covers of the bed and cried bitterly. He was torn with hate for all death and pity for all aloneness.

  The Vigil (p. 146)

  Chapter XV

  JODY moved through a tortuous dream. With his father beside him, he fought a nest of rattlesnakes. They crawled across his feet, trailing their rattles, clacking lightly. The nest resolved itself into one snake, gigantic, moving toward him on a level with his face. It struck and he tried to scream but could not. He looked for his father. He lay under the rattler, with his eyes open to a dark sky. His body was swollen to the size of a bear. He was dead. Jody began to move backward away from the rattler, one agonized step at a time. His feet were glued to the ground. The snake suddenly vanished and he stood alone in a vast windy place, holding the fawn in his arms. Penny was gone. A sense of sorrow
filled him so that he thought his heart would break. He awakened, sobbing.

  He sat up on the hard floor. Day was breaking over the clearing. A pale light lay in streaks beyond the pine trees. The room was filled with grayness. For an instant he was still conscious of the fawn against him. Then he remembered. He scrambled to his feet and looked at his father.

  Penny was breathing with a greater ease. He was still swollen and fevered, but he looked no worse than when the wild honey bees had stung him. Ma Baxter was asleep in her rocker with her head thrown far back. Old Doc lay across the foot of the bed.

  Jody whispered, “Doc!”

  Doc grunted and lifted his head.

  “What is it—what is it—what is it?”

  “Doc! Look at Pa!”

  Doc shifted his body and eased himself on one elbow. He blinked and rubbed his eyes. He sat up. He leaned over Penny.

  “Lord o’ the jay-birds, he’s made it.”

  Ma Baxter said, “Eh?”

  She sat upright.

  “He dead?”

  “Not by a long sight.”

  She burst out crying.

  Doc said, “You sound like you’re sorry.”

  She said, “You jest don’t know what ’twould mean, him leavin’ us here.”

  Jody had never heard her speak so gently.

  Doc said, “Why, you got you another man here. Look at Jody, now. Big enough to plow and reap and do the huntin’.”

  She said, “Jody’s a’right, but he ain’t a thing but boy. Got his mind on nothin’ but prowlin’ and playin’.”

  He hung his head. It was true.

  She said, “His Pa encourages him.”

  Doc said, “Well, boy, be glad you got encouragement. Most of us live our lives without it. Now, Ma’am, let’s get some more milk down this feller, time he wakes.”

  Jody said eagerly, “I’ll go milk, Ma.”

  She said with satisfaction, “About time.”

  He passed through the front room. Buck was sitting up on the floor, rubbing his head sleepily. Mill-wheel was still asleep.

  Jody said, “Doc says Pa’s done made it.”

  “I be dogged. I woked up, fixin’ to go he’p bury him.”

  Jody went around the side of the house and took down the milk-gourd from the wall. He felt as light as the gourd. It seemed to him in his liberation that he might spread his arms and float over the gate like a feather. The dawn was still nebulous. A mocking-bird made a thin metallic sound in the chinaberry. The Dominick rooster crowed uncertainly. This was the hour at which Penny arose, allowing Jody to sleep a little later. The morning was still, with a faint fluttering of breeze through the tops of the tall pine trees. The sunrise reached long fingers into the clearing. As he clicked the lotgate, doves flew from the pines with a whistling of wings.

  He called exultantly after them. “Hey, doves!”

  Trixie lowed, hearing him. He climbed into the loft for fodder for her. She was very patient, he thought, giving her milk in return for so poor a feeding. She munched hungrily. She lifted a hind leg once in threat when he was clumsy with the milking. He stripped two teats carefully, then turned the calf in with her to nurse on the other two. There was not as much milk as his father would have gotten from her. He decided that he would drink none himself so that his father might have all of it until he was well again.

  The calf butted the sagging udders and sucked noisily. It was too big still to be nursing. The thought of the fawn returned to him. A leaden feeling came over him again. It would be desperate with hunger this morning. He wondered if it would try to nurse the cold teats of the doe. The open flesh of the dead deer would attract the wolves. Perhaps they had found the fawn and had torn its soft body to ribbons. His joy in the morning, in his father’s living, was darkened and tainted. His mind followed the fawn and would not be comforted.

  His mother took the milk-gourd without comment on the quantity. She strained the milk and poured a cupful and took it to the sick room. He followed her. Penny was awake. He smiled weakly.

  He whispered thickly, “Ol’ Death got to wait a while on me.”

  Doc said, “You belong to be kin to the rattlesnakes, man. How you done it without whiskey, I don’t know.”

  Penny whispered, “Why, Doc, I’m a king snake. You know a rattler cain’t kill a king snake.”

  Buck and Mill-wheel came into the room. They grinned.

  Buck said, “You ain’t purty, Penny, but by God, you’re alive.”

  Doc held the milk to Penny’s lips. He swallowed thirstily.

  Doc said, “I can’t take much credit for savin’ you. Your time just hadn’t come to make a die of it.”

  Penny closed his eyes.

  He said, “I could sleep a week.”

  Doc said, “That’s what I want you to do. I can’t do no more for you.”

  He stood up and stretched his legs.

  Ma Baxter said, “Who’ll do the farmin’ and him asleep?”

  Buck said, “What’s he got, belongs to be done?”

  “Mostly the corn, needs another workin’ to be laid by. The ’taters needs hoein’, but Jody’s right good at hoein’ do he choose to stick to it.”

  “I’ll stick, Ma.”

  Buck said, “I’ll stay and work the corn and sich.”

  She was flustered.

  She said stiffly, “I hates to be beholden to you.”

  “Hell, Ma’am, they ain’t too many of us shiftin’ for a livin’ out here. I’d be a pore man, didn’t I not stay.”

  She said meekly, “I’m shore obliged. If the corn don’t make, we jest as good all three to die o’ snake-bite.”

  Doc said, “This is the soberest I’ve waked up since my wife died. I’d be proud to eat breakfast before I go.”

  She bustled to the kitchen. Jody went to build up the fire.

  She said, “I never figgered I’d be beholden to a Forrester.”

  “Buck ain’t exactly a Forrester, Ma. Buck’s a friend.”

  “Hit do look that-a-way.”

  She filled the coffee-pot with water and added fresh coffee to the grounds.

  She said, “Go to the smoke-house and git that last side o’ bacon. I’ll not be out-done.”

  He brought it proudly. She allowed him to slice the meat.

  He said, “Ma, Pa shot a doe and used the liver to draw out the pizen. He bled hisself and then laid on the liver.”

  “You should of carried back a haunch o’ the meat.”

  “There wasn’t no time to figger on sich as that.”

  “That’s right, too.”

  “Ma, the doe had a fawn.’

  “Well, most does has fawns.”

  “This un was right young. Nigh about new-borned.”

  “Well, what about it? Go set the table. Lay out the brier-berry jelly. The butter’s right strong but it’s yit butter. Lay it out, too.”

  She was stirring up a cornpone. The fat was sizzling in the skillet. She poured in the batter. The bacon crackled in the pan. She turned and flattened the slices, so that they would brown evenly. He wondered if they would ever be able to fill up Buck and Mill-wheel, accustomed to the copiousness of Forrester victuals.

  He said, “Make a heap o’ gravy, Ma.”

  “Iffen you’ll do without your milk, I’ll make milk-gravy.”

  The sacrifice was nothing.

  He said, “We could of kilt a chicken.”

  “I studied on it, but they’re all too young or too old.”

  She turned the cornpone. The coffee began to boil.

  He said, “I could of shot some doves or some squirrels this mornin’.”

  “A fine time to think of it. Go tell the men-folks to wash theirselves and come to table.”

  He called them. The three men went outside to the watershelf and slapped water over their faces, dabbled their hands. He brought them a clean towel.

  Doc said, “Blest if I don’t get hungry when I’m sober.”

  Mill-wheel said, “Whiskey’s a
food. I could live on whiskey.”

  Doc said, “I’ve near about done it. Twenty years. Since my wife died.”

  Jody was proud of the table. There were not as many different dishes as the Forresters served, but there was enough of everything. The men ate greedily. At last they pushed away their plates and lit their pipes.

  Mill-wheel said, “Seems like Sunday, don’t it?”

  Ma Baxter said, “Sickness allus do seem like Sunday, someway. Folks settin’ around, and the men not goin’ to the field.”

  Jody had never seen her so amiable. She had waited to eat until the men were done, for fear of their not having plenty. She sat now eating with relish. The men chatted idly. Jody allowed his thoughts to drift back to the fawn. He could not keep it out of his mind. It stood in the back of it as close as he had held it, in his dreaming, in his arms. He slipped from the table and went to his father’s bedside. Penny lay at rest. His eyes were open and clear, but the pupils were still dark and dilated.

  Jody said, “How you comin’, Pa?”

  “Jest fine, son. Ol’ Death gone thievin’ elsewhere. But wa’n’t it a close squeak!”

  “I mean.”

  Penny said, “I’m proud of you, boy, the way you kept your head and done what was needed.”

  “Pa——”

  “Yes, son.”

  “Pa, you recollect the doe and the fawn?”

  “I cain’t never forget ’em. The pore doe saved me, and that’s certain.”

  “Pa, the fawn may be out there yit. Hit’s hongry, and likely mighty skeert.”

  “I reckon so.”

  “Pa, I’m about growed and don’t need no milk. How about me goin’ out and seein’ kin I find the fawn?”

  “And tote it here?”

  “And raise it.”

  Penny lay quiet, staring at the ceiling.

  “Boy, you got me hemmed in.”

  “Hit won’t take much to raise it, Pa. Hit’ll soon git to where it kin make out on leaves and acorns.”

  “Dogged if you don’t figger the farrest of ary young un I’ve ever knowed.”

  “We takened its mammy, and it wa’n’t no-ways to blame.”

  “Shore don’t seem grateful to leave it starve, do it? Son, I ain’t got it in my heart to say ’No’ to you. I never figgered I’d see daylight, come dawn today.”