The Yearling Read online

  Jody felt the hateful thickening of his throat. He swallowed.

  He said, “That’s how come me to be here. I came for Fodder-wing to name my fawn.”

  “Why,” she said, “he named it. Last time he talked about it, he gave it a name. He said, ’A fawn carries its flag so merry. A fawn’s tail’s a leetle white merry flag. If I had me a fawn, I’d name him “Flag.” “Flag the fawn,” is what I’d call him.’”

  Jody repeated, “Flag.”

  He thought he would burst. Fodder-wing had talked of him and had named the fawn. There was happiness tangled with his grief that was both comforting and unbearable.

  He said, “I reckon I best go feed him. I best go feed Flag.”

  He slid from his chair and went outside with the cup of milk and the biscuits. Fodder-wing seemed close and living. He called, “Here, Flag!”

  The fawn came to him and it seemed to him that it knew the name, and had perhaps always known it. He soaked the biscuits in the milk and fed them to it. Its muzzle was soft and wet in his hand. He went back into the house and the fawn followed.

  He said, “Kin Flag come in?”

  “Bring him right in and welcome.”

  He sat down stiffly on Fodder-wing’s three-legged stool in the corner.

  Pa Forrester said, “Hit’d pleasure him, you comin’ to set up with him tonight.”

  That, then, was the thing expected of him.

  “And ’twouldn’t scarcely be decent, buryin’ him in the mornin’ without you was here. He didn’t have no friend but you.”

  Jody cast off his anxiety over his mother and father like a too-ragged shirt. It was of no importance, in the face of matters so grave. Ma Forrester went into the bedroom to take the early vigil. The fawn nosed about the room, smelling of one man after the other, then came and lay down beside Jody. Darkness came tangibly into the house, adding its heaviness to theirs. They sat smothered under the thick air of sorrow that only the winds of time could blow away.

  At nine o’clock Buck stirred and lit a candle. At ten o’clock a horse and rider clattered into the yard. It was Penny on old Cæsar. He dropped the reins over its head and came into the house. Pa Forrester, as head of the house, rose and greeted him. Penny looked about at the dark faces. The old man pointed to the half-open bedroom door.

  Penny said, “The boy?”

  Pa Forrester nodded.

  “Gone—or goin’?”

  “Gone.”

  “I feered it. Hit come over me, that was what was keepin’ Jody away.”

  He laid one hand on the old man’s shoulder.

  “I feel for you.”

  He spoke to one man after the other. He looked directly at Lem.

  “Howdy, Lem.”

  Lem hesitated.

  “Howdy, Penny.”

  Mill-wheel gave him his chair.

  Penny asked, “When did it happen?”

  “Jest at dawn today.”

  “Ma goed in to see would he eat a bit o’ breakfast.”

  “He’d been layin’ punishin’ a day-two, and we’d had ol’ Doc, but he seemed to be mendin’.”

  The talk broke over Penny in a torrent. The relief of words washed and cleansed a hurt that had been in-growing. He listened gravely, nodding his head from time to time. He was a small staunch rock against which their grief might beat. When they finished and fell quiet, he talked of his own losses. It was a reminder that no man was spared. What all had borne, each could bear. He shared their sorrow, and they became a part of his, and the sharing spread their grief a little, by thinning it.

  Buck said, “Likely Jody’d like to set up with him alone a whiles.”

  Jody was in a panic when they took him into the room and turned away to close the door. Something sat in a far dark corner of the room and it was the same thing that had prowled the scrub the night his father had been bitten.

  He said, “Would it be all right, did Flag come, too?”

  They agreed that it was seemly and the fawn was brought to join him. He sat on the edge of the chair. It was warm from Ma Forrester’s body. He crossed his hands in his lap. He looked furtively at the face on the pillow. A candle burned on a table at the head of the bed. When the flame flickered, it seemed that Fodder-wing’s eyelids fluttered. A light breeze stirred through the room. The sheet seemed to lift, as though Fodder-wing were breathing. After a time the horror went away and he could sit back in the chair. When he leaned far back, Fodder-wing looked a little familiar. Yet it was not Fodder-wing who lay, pinched of cheek, under the candle-light. Fodder-wing was stumbling about outside in the bushes, with the raccoon at his heels. In a moment he would come into the house with his rocking gait, and Jody would hear his voice. He stole a look at the crossed, crooked hands. Their stillness was implacable. He cried to himself, soundlessly.

  The wavering candle was hypnotic. His eyes blurred. He roused himself, but a moment came when his eyes would not open. Death and the silence and his sleep were one.

  He awakened at daylight to a heaviness of spirit. He heard a sound of hammering. Some one had laid him across the foot of the bed. He was wide awake instantly. Fodder-wing was gone. He slid from the bed and into the big room. It was empty. He went outside. Penny was nailing a cover on a fresh pine box. The Forresters stood about. Ma Forrester was crying. No one spoke to him. Penny drove the last nail.

  He asked, “Ready?”

  They nodded. Buck and Mill-wheel and Lem moved forward.

  Buck said, “I kin tote it alone.”

  He swung the box to his shoulder. Pa Forrester and Gabby were missing. Buck set out toward the south hammock. Ma Forrester followed him. Mill-wheel took hold of her arm. The others dropped in behind them. The procession filed slowly to the hammock. Jody remembered that Fodder-wing had a grape-vine swing here, under a live oak. He saw Pa Forrester standing beside it. They had spades in their hands. A raw hole gaped in the earth. The mounded soil beside it was dark with wood-mould. The hammock was light with the dawning, for the sunrise reached out luminous fingers parallel with the earth and covered it with brightness. Buck set down the coffin and eased it into the opening. He stepped back. The Forresters hesitated.

  Penny said, “The father first.”

  Pa Forrester lifted his spade and shovelled earth on the box. He handed the spade to Buck. Buck threw a few clods. The spade passed from one to the other of the brothers. There was a tea-cupful of earth remaining. Jody found the spade in his hands. Numb, he scooped the earth and dropped it on the mound. The Forresters looked at one another.

  Pa Forrester said, “Penny, you’ve had Christian raising. We’d be proud, did you say somethin’.”

  Penny advanced to the grave and closed his eyes and lifted his face to the sunlight. The Forresters bowed their heads.

  “Oh Lord. Almighty God. Hit ain’t for us ignorant mortals to say what’s right and what’s wrong. Was ary one of us to be a-doin’ of it, we’d not of brung this pore boy into the world a cripple, and his mind teched. We’d of brung him in straight and tall like his brothers, fitten to live and work and do. But in a way o’ speakin’, Lord, you done made it up to him. You give him a way with the wild creeturs. You give him a sort o’ wisdom, made him knowin’ and gentle. The birds come to him, and the varmints moved free about him, and like as not he could o’ takened a she wild-cat right in his pore twisted hands.

  “Now you’ve done seed fit to take him where bein’ crookedy in mind or limb don’t matter. But Lord, hit pleasures us to think now you’ve done straightened out them legs and that pore bent back and them hands. Hit pleasures us to think on him, movin’ around as easy as ary one. And Lord, give him a few red-birds and mebbe a squirrel and a ’coon and a ’possum to keep him comp’ny, like he had here. All of us is somehow lonesome, and we know he’ll not be lonesome, do he have them leetle wild things around him, if it ain’t askin’ too much to put a few varmints in Heaven. Thy will be done. Amen.”

  The Forresters murmured “Amen.” Sweat stood on their faces.
They came to Penny one by one and wrung his hand. The raccoon came running and ran across the fresh-turned earth. It cried and Buck lifted it to his shoulder. The Forresters turned and trooped back to the house. They saddled Cæsar and Penny mounted. He swung Jody up behind him. Jody called the fawn and it came from the bushes. Buck came from the rear of the house. He had a small wire cage in his hand. He handed it up to Jody on the horse’s rump. It held Preacher, the lame red-bird.

  He said, “I know your Ma wouldn’t leave you keep ary o’ the creeturs, but this feller’ll make out on pure crumbs. Hit’s for you to remember him by.”

  “I thank you. Good-by.”

  “Good-by.”

  Cæsar jogged down the road toward home. They did not speak. Cæsar dropped into a walk and Penny did not disturb him. The sun rose high. Jody’s arm ached from holding the little cage in the air. The Baxter clearing came into sight. Ma Baxter had heard the horse’s hooves and was at the gate.

  She called out, “Hit’s enough to be fretted about one, then you both go off and stay gone.”

  Penny dismounted and Jody slid down.

  Penny said, “Easy, Ma. We had a duty. Pore leetle ol’ Fodder-wing died and we he’ped bury him.”

  She said, “Well— Pity ’twa’n’t that great quarrelin’ Lem.”

  Penny turned Cæsar out to graze and came to the house. Breakfast had been cooked but was now cold.

  He said, “Ne’ mind. Jest warm the coffee.”

  He ate abstractedly.

  He said, “I never seed a family take a thing so hard.”

  She said, “Don’t tell me them big rough somebodies took on.”

  He said, “Ory, the day may come when you’ll know the human heart is allus the same. Sorrer strikes the same all over. Hit makes a different kind o’ mark in different places. Seems to me, times, hit ain’t done nothin’ to you but sharpen your tongue.”

  She sat down abruptly.

  She said, “Seems like bein’ hard is the only way I kin stand it.”

  He left his breakfast and went to her and stroked her hair.

  “I know. Jest be a leetle mite easy on t’other feller.”

  Chapter XVIII

  AUGUST was merciless in its heat, but it was, mercifully, leisurely. There was little work to be done and no great hurry about the doing of that little. There had been rains and the corn had come to maturity. It was drying on the stalks and could soon be broken for curing. Penny estimated that he would have a good yield, perhaps as much as ten bushels to the acre. The sweet potato vines grew lushly. The Kaffir corn for the chickens was ripening, its long heads like sorghum. The sunflowers along the fence, also for the chickens, had heads as big as plates. The cow-peas were abundant. They made the staple food, with the meat of some game, almost every day. There would be a fine stand of cow-pea hay for use through the winter months. The field of pindars was not doing so well, but because of the killing by old Slewfoot of Betsy the brood sow, there were not many shoats to fatten. The Baxter hogs had come mysteriously home, and with them a young brood sow. Its mark had been changed from the Forrester mark to the Baxter. Penny accepted it as the peace offering for which it was intended.

  The red ribbon cane had made a fair stand. The Baxters looked forward to autumn and the frosts, when sweet potatoes would be dug, hogs butchered, corn ground into meal, and the cane would be ground and the juice boiled into syrup, and plenty would replace the meagerness. There was enough to eat, even now in the leanest season, but there was no variety, no richness, no comfortable feeling of ample reserve stores. They lived from day to day, with meal and flour and fat meat short, dependent on Penny’s chance shots at deer and turkey and squirrel. He trapped a fat ’possum in the yard one night, and dug a mess of the new sweet potatoes to roast with it, for a special treat. It was an extravagance, for the potatoes were small and immature.

  The sun laid a heavy hand on the scrub and on the clearing. Ma Baxter’s bulk suffered with the heat. Penny and Jody, lean and clean-limbed, felt the temperature only in an increasing reluctance to move rapidly, or often. They did the chores together in the morning, milked the cow, fed the horse, chopped wood for cooking, brought water from the sink-hole, and then were through until the evening. Ma Baxter cooked hot dinner at noon, then banked the fire on the hearth with ashes; and supper was cold, consisting of the noon surplus.

  Jody was conscious always of Fodder-wing’s absence. Living, Fodder-wing had been with him, in the back of his mind, a friendly presence to which he might turn in his thoughts, if not in reality. But Flag grew miraculously, day by day, and that was comfort enough. Jody thought that its spots were beginning to fade, a sign of maturity, but Penny could see little change. It was unquestionably growing in intelligence. Penny said that the bears had the largest brains of any of the scrub animals, and the brain of the deer came next.

  Ma Baxter said, “This un’s too dad-ratted smart,” and Penny said, “Why, Ma, shame on you for cussin’,” and winked at Jody.

  Flag learned to lift the shoe-string latch on the door and come in the house at any hour of the day or night, when he was not shut up. He butted a feather pillow from Jody’s bed and tossed it all over the house until it burst, so that feathers drifted for days in every nook and cranny, and appeared from nowhere in a dish of biscuit pudding. He began to romp with the dogs. Old Julia was too dignified to do much more than wag her tail slowly when he pawed at her, but Rip growled and circled and pretended to pounce, and Flag kicked up his heels and flicked his merry tail and shook his head and finally, with impudence, leaped the slat fence and raced alone down the roadway. He liked best to play with Jody. They tussled and held furious butting matches and raced side by side, until Ma Baxter protested that Jody was growing as lean as a black snake.

  In a late afternoon toward the end of August, Jody went with the fawn to the sink-hole for fresh water for supper. The road was bright with flowers. The sumac was in bloom, and the colic root sent up tall stalks of white or orange orchid-like flowers. The French mulberries were beginning to ripen on slim stems. They were lavender in color, close-clustered, like snails’ eggs along lily stalks. Butterflies sat on the first purple buds of the fragrant deer-tongue, opening and closing their wings slowly, as though waiting for the buds to open and the nectar to be revealed. The covey call of quail sounded again from the pea-field, clear and sweet and communal. Sunset was coming a little earlier, and at the corner of the fence-row, where the old Spanish trail turned north and passed the sink-hole, the saffron light reached under the low-hanging live oaks and made of the gray pendulous Spanish moss a luminous curtain.

  Jody stopped short with his hand on the fawn’s head. A horseman with a helmet was riding through the moss. Jody took a step forward, and horse and rider vanished, as though their substance were no thicker than the moss. He stepped back and they appeared again. He drew a long breath. Here, certainly, was Fodder-wing’s Spaniard. He was not sure whether he was frightened or no. He was tempted to run back home, telling himself that he had truly seen a spirit. But his father’s stuff was in him, and he forced himself to walk forward slowly to the spot in which the apparition had appeared. In a moment the truth was plain. A conjunction of moss and limbs had created the illusion. He could identify the horse, the rider and the helmet. His heart thumped with relief, yet he was disappointed. It would be better not to have known; to have gone away, believing.

  He continued on to the sink-hole. The sweet bay was still in bloom, filling the sink-hole with its fragrance. He longed for Fodder-wing. Now he should never know whether the mossy horseman in the sunset was the Spaniard, or whether Fodder-wing had seen yet another, at once more mystic and more true. He set down his buckets and went down the narrow trail that Penny had cut between banks to the floor of the sink-hole, long before he was born.

  He forgot his errand and lay down under the lacy shadow of a dogwood tree at the foot of the slope. The fawn nosed about, then lay down beside him. He could see from this spot the whole deep-sunk bowl at o
nce. The rim above caught the glow of the sunset, as though a ring of fires burned invisibly around it. Squirrels, quieted a moment by his coming, began to bark and chatter and swing across the tree-tops, frenzied with the last hour of day, as they were always frenzied with the first. The palm fronds made a loud rattling where they dashed through, but the live oaks gave almost no record of their passing. In the thick sweet gums and hickories they were almost inaudible, always unseen, until they raced up and down the tree trunks or slipped to the edge of a limb to swing into another tree. Birds made sweet sharp sounds in the branches. Far away, a red-bird sang richly, coming closer and closer, until Jody saw him drift to the Baxter drinking trough. A flock of turtle doves whirred in, to drink briefly, then flew away to their roosting places in the adjoining pine forest. Their wings whistled, as though their pointed gray and rosy feathers were thin knives to slash the air.

  Jody’s eye caught a motion at the edge of the slope. A mother raccoon came down to the limestone troughs, followed by two young ones. She fished the series of troughs carefully, beginning with the drinking trough at the upper level. He had the finest reason now for delaying. He would have to wait until the water had cleared and settled. The mother ’coon found nothing of interest in the troughs. One of the young clambered to the edge of the stock-trough and peered in curiously. She slapped it away, out of danger. She worked her way down the slope. Now she was lost among the tall ferns. Now her black-masked face appeared again between stalks of the Cherokee bean. The two young ones peered out after her, their small faces replicas of her own, their bushy tails ringed almost as decisively.

  She reached the seepage pool at the bottom and began to fish in earnest. Her long black fingers groped under fallen twigs and branches. She lay on her side to reach into a crevice for, no doubt, a crayfish. A frog jumped and she made a quick circular pounce and waded back to the edge with it. She sat up on her hind legs and held it a moment, kicking, against her breast, then sunk her teeth in it and shook it, as a dog shakes a rat. She dropped it between her offspring. They pounced on it and snarled and growled and cracked its bones and finally shared it. She watched dispassionately a moment, then turned back into the pool. Her bushy tail was lifted just above the water level. The young ones waded out after her. Their peaked noses lifted above the water. She turned and saw them and dragged them back to land. She lifted each one in turn and spanked its small furry bottom in so human a way that Jody had to clap his hand over his mouth to keep from shouting. He watched her for a long time, fishing and feeding them. Then she ambled leisurely across the floor of the sink-hole and up the far slope and away over the rim, the young ones following, chirring and grumbling amiably together.