The Yearling Read online

  They were at dinner when he reached the house. He lifted the buckets to the water shelf and shut up the fawn. He filled the water pitcher from the fresh buckets and took it in to the table. He had worked so hard and was so hot and tired that he was not particularly hungry. He was glad of this and was able to set aside a large portion of his own dinner for the fawn. The meat was a pot-roast from the bear’s haunch, pickled in brine for keeping. It was a trifle coarse, with long fibers, but the flavor, he thought, was better than beef and almost as good as venison. He made his meal on the meat, with a helping of collard greens, and saved all his cornpone and his milk for the fawn.

  Penny said, “We was mighty lucky ’twas a young bear like this un come scaperin’ under our noses. Had it of been a big ol’ male, we couldn’t of et the meat this time o’ year. The bears mates in July, Jody, and allus remember the meat o’ the males ain’t fitten when they’re matin’. Don’t never shoot one then unless it’s botherin’ you.”

  “Why ain’t the meat fitten?”

  “Now I don’t know. But when they’re courtin’, they’re mean and hateful——”

  “Like Lem and Oliver?”

  “—like Lem and Oliver. Their gorge rises, or their spleen, and seems like the hatefulness gits right into their flesh.”

  Ma Baxter said, “A boar hog’s the same. Only he’s that-a-way the year around.”

  “Well Pa, do the male bears fight?”

  “They’ll fight turrible. The female’ll stand off and watch the fightin——”

  “Like Twink Weatherby.”

  “—like Twink Weatherby, and then she’ll go off with the one wins the fight. They’ll stay in pairs all through July, mebbe into August. Then the males goes off and the cubs is borned in February. And don’t you think a male, like ol’ Slewfoot, won’t eat them cubs do he come on ’em. That’s another reason I hate bears. They ain’t natural in their affections.”

  Ma Baxter said to Jody, “You look out, now, walkin’ to Forresters’ today. A matin’ bear’s a thing to shun.”

  Penny said, “Jest keep your eyes open. You’re all right as long as you see a creetur first and don’t take him by surprise. Even that rattlesnake that got me, why, I takened him by surprise and he wasn’t no more’n lookin’ out for hisself.”

  Ma Baxter said, “You’d stick up for the devil hisself.”

  “I reckon I would. The devil gits blamed for a heap o’ things is nothin’ but human cussedness.”

  She asked suspiciously, “Jody finish his hoein’ like he belonged to?”

  Penny said blandly, “He finished his contract.”

  He winked at Jody and Jody winked back. There was no use in trying to explain the difference to her. She was outside the good male understanding.

  He said, “Ma, kin I go now?”

  “Let’s see. I’ll need a mite o’ wood toted in——”

  “Please don’t think up nothin’ long to do, Ma. You wouldn’t want I should be so late gittin’ home tonight the bears’d git me.”

  “You be later’n dark gittin’ home and you’ll wish ’twas a bear had you, ’stid o’ me.”

  He filled the wood-box and was ready to go. His mother made him change his shirt and comb his hair. He fretted at the delay.

  She said, “I jest want them dirty Forresters to know there’s folks does live decent.”

  He said, “They ain’t dirty. They jest live nice and natural and enjoy theirselves.”

  She sniffed. He let out the fawn from the shed, fed it from his hand, held the pan of milk mixed with water for it to drink, and the two set off. The fawn ran sometimes behind him, sometimes ahead, making short forays into the brush, bounding back to him in an alarm that Jody was sure was only pretended. Sometimes it walked beside him, and this was best. He laid his hand, then, lightly on its neck, and fitted the rhythm of his two legs to its four. He imagined that he was another fawn. He bent his legs at the knees, imitating its walk. He threw his head up, alertly. A rabbit-pea vine was in blossom beside the road. He pulled a length of it and twined it around the fawn’s neck for a halter. The rosy blooms made the fawn so pretty that it seemed to him even his mother would admire it. If it faded before he returned, he would make a fresh halter on the way home.

  At the cross-roads near the abandoned clearing, the fawn halted and lifted its nostrils into the wind. It pricked up its ears. It turned its head this way and that, savoring the air. He turned his own nose in the direction on which it seemed to settle. A strong odor came to him, pungent and rank. He felt the hair prickle on the back of his neck. He thought he heard a low rumbling sound and then a snapping that might be of teeth. He was tempted to turn tail and head for home. Yet he would always wonder what the sounds had been. He moved one step at a time around the turn in the road. The fawn stayed motionless behind him. He stopped short.

  Two male bears were moving slowly ahead down the road, a hundred yards distant. They were on their hind legs, walking like men, shoulder to shoulder. Their walk seemed almost a dance, as when couples in the square dance moved side by side to do a figure. Suddenly they jostled each other, like wrestlers, and lifted their forepaws, and turned, snarling, each trying for the other’s throat. One raked his claws across the other’s head and the snarls grew to a roar. The fighting was violent for a few moments, then the pair walked on, boxing, jostling, parrying. The wind was in Jody’s favor. They could never smell him. He crept down the road after them, keeping his distance. He could not bear to lose sight of them. He hoped they would fight to a finish, yet he should be terrorized if one should end the fight and turn his way. He decided that they had been fighting for a long time and were exhausted. There was blood in the sand. Each attack seemed less violent than the others. Each shoulder-to-shoulder walking was slower paced. As he stared, a female walked out of the bushes ahead with three males following her. They turned silently into the road and walked on in single file. The fighting pair swung their heads a moment, then fell in behind. Jody stood until the procession passed from sight, solemn and ludicrous and exciting.

  He turned and ran back to the cross-roads. The fawn was nowhere to be seen. He called and it emerged from the scrub growth at the side of the road. He took the Forresters’ road and ran down it. Now that it was over, he shook at his own boldness. But it was done now, and he would follow again, for all men were not privileged to see the creatures in their private moments.

  He thought, “I’ve seen a thing.”

  It was good to become old and see the sights and hear the sounds that men saw and heard, like Buck and his father. That was why he liked to lie flat on his belly on the floor, or on the earth before the camp-fire, while men talked. They had seen marvels, and the older they were, the more marvels they had seen. He felt himself moving into a mystic company. He had a tale now of his own to tell on winter evenings.

  His father would say, “Jody, tell about the time you seed the two male bears fightin’ down the road.”

  Above all, he could tell Fodder-wing. He ran again, for pleasure in his hurry to tell his friend his story. He would surprise him. He would walk up to Fodder-wing in the woods, or back of the house among his pets, or to his bed, if he were still ailing. The fawn would walk beside him. Fodder-wing’s face would shine with its strange brightness. He would hunch his twisted body close and put out his gentle and crooked hand and touch the fawn. He would smile, to know that he, Jody, was content. After a long time Fodder-wing would speak, and what he said would be perhaps peculiar, but it would be beautiful.

  Jody reached the Forrester land and hurried under the live oaks into the open yard. The house was somnolent. There was no curl of smoke from the chimney. There were no dogs in sight, but a hound was howling from the dog-pen at the rear. The Forresters were probably all sleeping through the heat of the early afternoon. But when they slept in the day-time, they overflowed the house, out to the veranda, under the trees. He stopped and called.

  “Fodder-wing! Hit’s Jody!”

  The hound wh
ined. A chair scraped on the board floor inside the house. Buck came to the door. He looked down at Jody and passed his hand over his mouth. His eyes were unseeing. It seemed to Jody that he must be drunk.

  Jody faltered, “I come to see Fodder-wing. I come to show him my fawn.”

  Buck shook his head as though he would shake away a bee that annoyed him, or his thoughts. He wiped his mouth again.

  Jody said, “I come special.”

  Buck said, “He’s dead.”

  The words had no meaning. They were only two brown leaves that blew past him into the air. But a coldness followed their passing, and a numbness took him. He was confused.

  He repeated, “I come to see him.”

  “You come too late. I’d of fotched you, if there’d been time. There wasn’t time to fotch ol’ Doc. One minute he was breathin’. The next minute he jest wa’n’t. Like as if you blowed out a candle.”

  Jody stared at Buck and Buck stared back at him. The numbness grew into a paralysis. He felt no sorrow, only a coldness and a faintness. Fodder-wing was neither dead nor alive. He was, simply, nowhere at all.

  Buck said hoarsely, “You kin come look at him.”

  First Buck said that Fodder-wing was gone, like candlelight, and then he said that he was here. None of it made sense. Buck turned into the house. He looked back, compelling Jody with his dull eyes. Jody lifted one leg after the other and mounted the steps. He followed Buck into the house. The Forrester men sat all together. There was a oneness about them, sitting so, motionless and heavy. They were pieces of one great dark rock, broken into separate men. Pa Forrester turned his head and looked at Jody as though he were a stranger. Then he turned it away again. Lem and Mill-wheel looked at him. The others did not stir. It seemed to Jody that they saw him from over a wall they had built against him. They were unwilling to hold the sight of him. Buck groped for his hand. He led him toward the large bedroom. He started to speak. His voice broke. He stopped and gripped Jody’s shoulder.

  He said, “Bear up.”

  Fodder-wing lay with closed eyes, small and lost in the center of the great bed. He was smaller than when he had lain sleeping on his pallet. He was covered with a sheet, turned back beneath his chin. His arms were outside the sheet, folded across his chest, the palms of the hands falling outward, twisted and clumsy, as in life. Jody was frightened. Ma Forrester sat by the side of the bed. She held her apron over her head and rocked herself back and forth. She flung down the apron.

  She said, “I’ve lost my boy. My pore crookedy boy.”

  She covered herself again and swayed from side to side.

  She moaned, “The Lord’s hard. Oh, the Lord’s hard.”

  Jody wanted to run away. The bony face on the pillow terrified him. It was Fodder-wing and it was not Fodderwing. Buck drew him to the edge of the bed.

  “He’ll not hear, but speak to him.”

  Jody’s throat worked. No words came. Fodder-wing seemed made of tallow, like a candle. Suddenly he was familiar.

  Jody whispered, “Hey.”

  The paralysis broke, having spoken. His throat tightened as though a rope choked it. Fodder-wing’s silence was intolerable. Now he understood. This was death. Death was a silence that gave back no answer. Fodder-wing would never speak to him again. He turned and buried his face against Buck’s chest. The big arms gripped him. He stood a long time.

  Buck said, “I knowed you’d hate it fearful.”

  They left the room. Pa Forrester beckoned to him. He went to his side. The old man stroked his arm. He waved at the circle of brooding men.

  He said, “Ain’t it quare now? We could of spared nigh ary one o’ them fellers. The one we cain’t spare was the one was takened.” He added brightly, “And him a swiveled, no-account thing, too.”

  He sank back in his rocking chair, pondering the paradox.

  Jody bruised them all with his presence. He wandered outside into the yard. He roamed to the back of the house. Fodder-wing’s pets were here, caged and forgotten. A fivemonths’ bear cub, brought no doubt to amuse him in his illness, was chained to a stake. It had walked its dusty circle, around and around, until its chain was tangled and it was held tight against the stake. Its water-pan was overturned and empty. At sight of Jody, it rolled on its back and cried with a sound like a human baby. Squeak the squirrel ran his endless treadle. His cage had neither food nor water. The ’possum was asleep in its box. Preacher the red-bird hopped on his one good leg and pecked at the bare floor of his cage. The raccoon was not in sight.

  Jody knew where Fodder-wing kept sacks of peanuts and corn for his creatures. His brothers had made him a little feed-box and kept it filled for him. Jody fed the small things first and watered them. He approached the bear cub cautiously. It was small and roly-poly, but he was not too certain what use it might make of its sharp claws. It whimpered and he reached out one arm to it. It wrapped all four legs around it and clung desperately. It rubbed its black nose against his shoulder. He untangled it and pulled away from it and straightened its chain and brought it a pan of water. It drank again and again, then took the pan from him with its paws like the hands, he thought, of a nigger baby, and turned the last few cool drops on its stomach. He could have laughed aloud if he were not so heavy with sadness. But it relieved him to care for the animals, to give them, for the time, the comfort that their master could never offer them again. He wondered sorrowfully what would become of them.

  He played abstractedly with them. The sharp joy that he had once felt when Fodder-wing shared them was muted. When Racket, the raccoon, came in from the forest with its queer, uneven gait, and recognized him, and climbed up his leg to his shoulder, and made its plaintive, chirring cry, and parted his hair with its thin, restless fingers, he longed so painfully for Fodder-wing that he had to lie on his belly and beat his feet in the sand.

  The ache turned into a longing for the fawn. He got up and brought a handful of peanuts for the ’coon, to keep it occupied. He went in search of the fawn. He found it behind a myrtle bush, where it had been able to watch unobserved. He thought it might be thirsty, too, and he offered it water in the bear cub’s pan. The fawn sniffed and would not drink. He was tempted to feed it a handful of corn from the Forresters’ abundance, but decided it would not be honest to do so. Probably its teeth were still too tender to chew the hard kernels in any case. He sat down under the live oak and held the fawn close to him. There was a comfort in it not to be found in the hairy arms of Buck Forrester. He wondered if his pleasure in Fodder-wing’s creatures had been dissipated because Fodder-wing was gone, or because the fawn now held all he needed of delight.

  He said to it, “I’d not trade you for all of ’em, and the cub to boot.”

  A gratifying feeling of faithfulness came over him, that the enchantment of the creatures he had so long coveted could not deflect his affections from the fawn.

  The afternoon was endless. It came to him that something was unfinished. The Forresters ignored him, yet, somehow, he knew they expected him to stay. Buck would have said good-by to him if he were supposed to go. The sun dropped behind the live oaks. His mother would be angry. Yet he was waiting for something, if only dismissal by a sign. He was bound to Fodder-wing, tallow-white in the bed, and a thing waited that would set him free. At dusk the Forresters filed out of the house and went in silence about their chores. Smoke drifted from the chimney. The smell of fat pine blended with frying meat. He trailed after Buck, driving the cows to water.

  He offered, “I done fed and watered the bear cub and the squirrel and them.”

  Buck touched a switch to a heifer.

  He said, “I remembered them oncet today, and then my mind went black agin.”

  Jody said, “Kin I he’p?”

  “They’s a plenty of us here, to do. You could wait on Ma like Fodder-wing done. Keep up her fire and sich as that.”

  He went reluctantly into the house. He avoided the sight of the bedroom door. It was drawn almost closed. Ma Forrester was at t
he hearth. Her eyes were red. She stopped every few moments to touch them with the corner of her apron. Her straggly hair had been wet and brushed back smooth and neat, as though in honor of a guest.

  He said, “I come to he’p.”

  She turned with a spoon in her hand.

  She said, “I been standin’ here thinkin’ about your Ma. She’s burrit as many as I got.”

  He fed the fire unhappily. He was increasingly uneasy. Yet he could not go. The meal was as meager as the Baxters’ own. Ma Forrester set the table indifferently.

  She said, “Now I forgot to make coffee. They’d drink coffee when they’d not eat.”

  She filled the pot and set it on the coals. The Forrester men came one by one to the back porch and washed their hands and faces and combed their hair and beards. There was no talk, no joking and jostling, no noisy stamping. They trooped in to the table like men in a dream. Pa Forrester came in from the bedroom. He looked about him wonderingly.

  He said, “Ain’t it quare——”

  Jody sat down next to Ma Forrester. She served the plates with meat, then began to cry.

  She said, “I counted him in, same as always. Oh my Lord, I counted him in.”

  Buck said, “Well now, Ma, Jody’ll eat his portion and mebbe grow up big as me. Eh, boy?”

  The family rallied. For a few minutes they ate hungrily. Then a nauseating fullness came over them and they pushed away their plates.

  Ma Forrester said, “I got no heart to clean up tonight, nor you neither. Jest stack the plates ’til after tomorrer mornin’.”

  Release, then, would come in the morning. She looked at Jody’s plate.

  She said, “You ain’t et your biscuits nor drinked your milk, boy. What ailded ’em?”

  “That’s for my fawn. I allus save him some o’ my dinner.”

  She said, “You pore lamb.” She began to cry again. “Wouldn’t my boy of loved to seed your fawn. He talked about it and he talked about it. He said, ’Jody’s got him a brother.’”