The Yearling Read online

  “Or Lem put a mouth on me,” he thought.

  The babies were frail, and almost as fast as they came, they sickened and died. Penny had buried them one by one in a cleared place among the black-jack oaks, where the poor loose soil made the digging easier. The plot grew in size until he was compelled to fence it in against the vandalism of hogs and pole-cats. He had carved little wooden tombstones for all. He could picture them now, standing white and straight in the moonlight. Some of them had names: Ezra Jr.; Little Ora; William T. The others bore only such legends at Baby Baxter, aged 3 mos. 6 days. On one, Penny had scratched laboriously with his pocket-knife, “She never saw the light of day.” His mind moved back down the years, touching them, as a man touches fence-posts in his passing.

  There had been a hiatus in the births. Then, when the loneliness of the place had begun to frighten him a little, and his wife was almost past the age of bearing, Jody Baxter was born and thrived. When the baby was a toddling two-year-old, Penny had gone to the war. He had taken his wife and child to the river, to live with his crony, Grandma Hutto, for the few months he expected to be away. He had come back at the end of four years with the mark of age on him. He had gathered up his wife and boy and taken them back to the scrub with gratitude for its peace and isolation.

  Jody’s mother had accepted her youngest with something of detachment, as though she had given all she had of love and care and interest to those others. But Penny’s bowels yearned over his son. He gave him something more than his paternity. He found that the child stood wide-eyed and breathless before the miracle of bird and creature, of flower and tree, of wind and rain and sun and moon, as he had always stood. And if, on a soft day in April, the boy had prowled away on his boy’s business, he could understand the thing that had drawn him. He understood, too, its briefness.

  His wife’s bulk stirred and she made a sound in her sleep. He would act on any such occasion, he knew, as a bulwark for the boy against the mother’s sharpness. The whip-poor-will flew farther into the forest and took up his lament again, sweet with distance. The moonlight moved beyond the focus of the bedroom window.

  “Leave him kick up his heels,” he thought, “and run away. Leave him build his flutter-mills. The day’ll come, he’ll not even care to.”

  Chapter III

  JODY opened his eyes unwillingly. Sometime, he thought, he would slip away into the woods and sleep from Friday until Monday. Daylight was showing through the east window of his small bedroom. He could not be certain whether it was the pale light that had awakened him, or the stirring of the chickens in the peach trees. He heard them fluttering one by one from their roost in the branches. The daylight lay in orange streaks. The pines beyond the clearing were still black against it. Now in April the sun was rising earlier. It could not be very late. It was good to awaken by himself before his mother called him. He turned over luxuriously. The dry corn shucks of his mattress rustled under him. The Dominick rooster crowed boisterously under the window.

  “You crow now,” the boy said. “See kin you rout me out.”

  The bright streaks in the east thickened and blended. A golden flush spread as high as the pines, and as he watched, the sun itself lifted, like a vast copper skillet being drawn to hang among the branches. A light wind stirred, as though the growing light had pushed it out of the restless east. The sacking curtains eddied out into the room. The breeze reached the bed and brushed him with the cool softness of clean fur. He lay for a moment in torment between the luxury of his bed and the coming day. Then he was out of his nest and standing on the deerskin rug, and his breeches were hanging handily, and his shirt right side out by good fortune, and he was in them, and dressed, and there was not any need of sleep, or anything but the day, and the smell of hot cakes in the kitchen.

  “Hey, ol’ Ma,” he said at the door. “I like you, Ma.”

  “You and them hounds and all the rest o’ the stock,” she said. “Mighty lovin’ on a empty belly and me with a dish in my hand.”

  “That’s the way you’re purtiest,” he said, and grinned.

  He went whistling to the water-shelf and dipped into the wooden bucket to fill the wash-basin. He sousled his hands and face in the water, deciding against the strong lye soap. He wet his hair and parted and smoothed it with his fingers. He took down the small mirror from the wall and studied himself a moment.

  “I’m turrible ugly, Ma,” he called.

  “Well, there ain’t been a purty Baxter since the name begun.”

  He wrinkled his nose at the mirror. The gesture made the freckles across the bridge blend together.

  “I wisht I was dark like the Forresters.”

  “You be proud you ain’t. Them fellers is black as their hearts. You a Baxter and all the Baxters is fair.”

  “You talk like I wasn’t no kin to you.”

  “My folks runs to fairness, too. They ain’t none of ’em puny, though. Iffen you’ll learn yourself to work, you’ll be your Pa all over.”

  The mirror showed a small face with high cheek bones. The face was freckled and pale, but healthy, like a fine sand. The hair grieved him on the occasions when he went to church or any doings at Volusia. It was straw-colored and shaggy, and no matter how carefully his father cut it, once a month on the Sunday morning nearest the full moon, it grew in tufts at the back. “Drakes’ tails,” his mother called them. His eyes were wide and blue. When he frowned, in close study over his reader, or watching something curious, they narrowed. It was then that his mother claimed him kin.

  “He do favor the Alverses a mite,” she said.

  Jody turned the mirror to inspect his ears; not for cleanliness, but remembering the pain of the day when Lem Forrester had held his chin with one vast hand and pulled his ears with the other.

  “Boy, your ears is set up on your head like a ’possum’s,” Lem said.

  Jody made a leering grimace at himself and returned the mirror to the wall.

  “Do we got to wait for Pa to eat breakfast?” he asked.

  “We do. Set it all in front of you and there’d likely not be enough left for him.”

  He hesitated at the back door.

  “And don’t you slip off, neither. He ain’t but to the corncrib.”

  From the south, beyond the black-jacks, he heard the bell-like voice of old Julia, giving tongue in great excitement. He thought he heard, too, his father, giving her a command. He bolted away before his mother’s sharp voice could stop him. She, too, had heard the dog. She followed to the door and called after him.

  “Don’t you and your Pa be gone too long now, follerin’ that fool hound. I’m o’ no mind to set around waitin’ breakfast and you two piddlin’ around in the woods.”

  He could no longer hear either old Julia or his father. He was in a frenzy for fear the excitement was over; the intruder gone and perhaps dog and father with it. He crashed through the black-jacks in the direction from which the sounds had come. His father’s voice spoke, close at hand.

  “Easy, son. What’s done ’ll wait for you.”

  He stopped short. Old Julia stood trembling, not in fear but in eagerness. His father stood looking down at the crushed and mangled carcass of black Betsy, the brood sow.

  “He must of heered me darin’ him,” Penny said. “Look careful, boy. See do you see what I see.”

  The sight of the mutilated sow sickened him. His father was looking beyond the dead animal. Old Julia had her sharp nose turned in the same direction. Jody walked a few paces and examined the sand. The unmistakable tracks made his blood jump. They were the tracks of a giant bear. And from the print of the right front paw, as big as the crown of a hat, one toe was missing.

  “Old Slewfoot!”

  Penny nodded.

  ’I’m proud you remembered his track.”

  They bent together and studied the signs and the direction in which they had both come and gone.

  “That’s what I call,” Penny said, “carryin’ the war into the enemy’s camp.”
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  “None o’ the dogs bayed him, Pa. Lessen I didn’t hear, for sleepin’.”

  “None of ’em bayed him. He had the wind in his favor. Don’t you think he didn’t know what he was doin’. He slipped in like a shadow and done his meanness and slipped out afore day.”

  A chill ran along Jody’s backbone. He could picture the shadow, big and black as a shed in motion, moving among the black-jacks and gathering in the tame and sleeping sow with one sweep of the great clawed paw. Then the white tusks followed into the backbone, crushing it, and into the warm and palpitating flesh. Betsy had had no chance even to squeal for help.

  “He’d a’ready fed,” Penny pointed out. “He ate no more’n a mouthful. A bear’s stomach is shrunk when he first comes outen his winter bed. That’s why I hate a bear. A creetur that kills and eats what he needs, why, he’s jest like the rest of us, makin’ out the best he kin. But an animal, or a person either, that’ll do harm jest to be a-doin’—— You look in a bear’s face and you’ll see he’s got no remorse.”

  “You aim to carry in old Betsy?”

  “The meat’s bad tore up, but I reckon there’s sausage left. And lard.”

  Jody knew that he should feel badly about old Betsy, but all that he could feel was excitement. The unwarranted kill, inside the sanctuary of the Baxter acres, had made a personal enemy of the big bear that had evaded all the stock owners for five years. He was wild to begin the hunt. He acknowledged to himself, as well, a trace of fear. Old Slew-foot had struck close to home.

  He took one hind leg of the sow and Penny the other. They dragged it to the house with Julia reluctant at their heels. The old bear-dog could not understand why they did not set out at once on the chase.

  “I’ll swear,” Penny said, “I’m daresome to break the news to your Ma.”

  “She’ll rare for certain,” Jody agreed.

  “Betsy was sich a fine brood sow. My, she was fine.”

  Ma Baxter was waiting for them by the gate.

  “I been a-callin’ and I been a-callin’,” she hailed them. “What you got there, piddlin’ around so long? Oh dear goodness, oh dear goodness—my sow, my sow.”

  She threw her arms toward the sky. Penny and Jody passed through the gate and back of the house. She followed, wailing.

  “We’ll hang the meat to the cross-piece, son,” Penny said. “The dogs’ll not reach it there.”

  “You might tell me,” Ma Baxter said. “The least you kin do is tell me, how come her dead and tore to ribbons right under my nose.”

  “Old Slewfoot done it, Ma,” Jody said. “His tracks was certain.”

  “And them dogs asleep right here in the clearin’?”

  The three had already appeared, nosing about the fresh smell of the blood. She threw a stick in their direction.

  “You no-account creeturs! Hornin’ in on our rations and leavin’ sich as this to happen.”

  “Ain’t a dog borned as smart as that bear,” Penny said.

  “They could of barked.”

  She threw another stick and the dogs slunk away.

  The family went to the house. In the confusion, Jody went first into the kitchen, where the smell of breakfast tortured him. His mother could not be too disturbed to notice what he was doing.

  “You git right back here,” she called, “and wash your dirty hands.”

  He joined his father at the water-shelf. Breakfast was on the table. Ma Baxter sat, swaying her body in distress, and did not eat. Jody heaped his plate. There were grits and gravy, hot cakes, and buttermilk.

  “Anyway,” he said, “we got meat to eat for a whiles now.”

  She turned on him.

  “Meat now, and none this winter.”

  “I’ll ask the Forresters out of a sow,” Penny said.

  “Yes, and be beholden to them rascals.” She began to wail again. “That blasted bear— I’d like to git my hands on him.”

  “I’ll tell him when I see him,” Penny said mildly between mouthfuls.

  Jody burst out laughing.

  “That’s right,” she said. “Make a fun-box outen me.”

  Jody patted her big arm.

  “Hit jest come to me, Ma, how you’d look—you and ol’ Slewfoot mixin’ it.”

  “I’d bet on your Ma,” Penny said.

  “Nobody but me don’t take life serious,” she lamented.

  Chapter IV

  PENNY pushed back his plate and stood up from the table.

  “Well, son, we got our day’s work laid out for us.”

  Jody’s heart fell. Hoeing——

  “We stand a right good chancet o’comin’ up with that bear today.”

  The sun was bright again.

  “Fetch me my shot-bag and my powder horn. And the tinder horn.”

  Jody jumped to bring them.

  “Look at him move,” his mother said. “To see him hoe, you’d think he was a snail. Say ’huntin’ ’ and he’s quick as a otter.”

  She went to the kitchen safe and took out one of the few remaining glasses of jelly. She spread the jelly on the leftover stack of hot cakes and tied them in a piece of cloth and dropped them in Penny’s knapsack. She took the remains of the sweet potato pone and set aside a piece for herself, then added the pone, wrapped in a fragment of paper, to the knapsack. She looked again at the pone she had saved, and with a quick motion dropped it in the sack with the other.

  “This ain’t much dinner,” she said. “Mebbe you’ll be soon back.”

  “Don’t look for us ’til you see us,” Penny said. “Anyways, no man never starved to death in a day.”

  “To hear Jody tell it,” she said, “he kin starve to death about a hour after breakfast.”

  Penny swung the knapsack and tinder horn over his shoulder.

  “Jody, take the big knife and go cut a good strip offen that ’gator tail.”

  The meat, dry-cured for the feeding of the dogs, hung in the smoke-house. Jody ran to it and swung open the heavy timbered door. The smoke-house was dark and cool, odorous with the smell of hams and bacons, dusty with the ash of hickory. The rafters, studded with square-headed nails for the hanging of meats, were now almost bare. Three shoulders of ham hung, lean and withered, and two bacon sides. A haunch of jerked venison swung beside the smoked alligator meat. Old Slewfoot had indeed done damage. Betsy the brood-sow would have filled the room with her plump progeny by the coming fall. Jody hacked away a piece of alligator. The meat was dry but tender. He touched his tongue to it. Its saltiness was not unpleasing. He joined his father in the yard.

  At sight of the old muzzle-loading shotgun, Julia lifted her voice in a wail of delight. Rip shot from under the house to join her. Perk, the new feice, wagged his tail stupidly and without understanding. Penny patted the dogs in turn.

  “You’ll likely not be so merry, time the day be done,” he told them. “Jody-boy, you best put on your shoes. Hit’ll be rough goin’, places.”

  It seemed to Jody that he would burst if there was further delay. He dashed in to his room and routed out his heavy cowhide brogans from under the bed. He slipped his feet into them and raced after his father as though the hunt would be done and over before he reached him. Old Julia was loping ahead, her long nose against the trail of the bear.

  “The trail’ll not be too cold, Pa? Reckon he won’t be gone too fur yonder to ketch up with him?”

  “He’ll be fur yonder, but we got a heap better chancet o’ ketchin’ up with him, do we let him take it easy and give him time to lay up. A bear that knows he’s follered moves a sight faster’n one that figgers the world’s his own, to prowl and feed in.”

  The trail led south through the black-jacks. After the rain of the afternoon before, the great nubbed tracks made a plain pattern across the sand.

  “He’s got a foot like a Georgia nigger,” Penny said.

  The black-jacks ended as though they had been sown by hand and there had been no more seed in the sack. The land was lower and the growth was of large pines. />
  “Pa, how big you reckon he be?”

  “He’s big. He ain’t full weight right now, account of his stomach bein’ shrunk up from layin’ up, and empty. But look at that track. Hit’s sizable enough to prove him. And look at the way it’s deeper at the back. A deer track’ll prove the same. A deer or bear that’s fat and heavy’ll sink in that-a-way. A leetle ol’ light doe or yearlin’ ’ll walk tippy-toed, and you’ll not see more than the front of their hooves. Oh, he’s big.”

  “You’ll not be scairt when we come up with him, Pa?”

  “Not lessen things goes mighty wrong. I’m fearful, always, for the pore dogs. They’re the scapers gits the worst of it.”

  Penny’s eyes twinkled.

  “I don’t reckon you’ll be scairt, son?”

  “Not me.” He thought a moment. “But if I was to be scairt, must I climb a tree?”

  Penny chuckled.

  “Yes, son. Even if you ain’t scairt, hit’s a good place to watch the ruckus.”

  They walked in silence. Old Julia moved certainly. Rip the bulldog was content to follow at her heels, snuffing where she snuffed, stopping when she hesitated. She blew through her soft nose when the grasses tickled it. The feice made dashes to one side or another and once tore wildly after a rabbit that bolted from under his nose. Jody whistled after him.

  “Leave him go, son,” Penny told him. “He’ll join up agin when it comes to him he’s lonesome.”

  Old Julia gave a thin high wail and looked over her shoulder.

  “The wise old scaper’s changin’ his direction,” Penny said. “Likely he’s headin’ for the saw-grass ponds. Iffen that’s his notion, we kin mebbe slip around and surprise him.”

  Some understanding came to Jody of the secret of his father’s hunting. The Forresters, he thought, would have plunged after old Slewfoot the moment they had found his kill. They would have shouted and bellowed, their pack of dogs would have bayed until the scrub echoed with it, for they encouraged them in it, and the wary old bear would have had full warning of their coming. His father got game, ten to their one. The little man was famous for it.