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  “They’ll git him outside,” Ma Forrester said, suddenly placid. “Pesky varmint.”

  “Ma’s got the best ear for varmints,” Fodder-wing said proudly.

  “I guess anybody’d hear him did he come scratchin’ around their bed-post,” she said.

  Pa Forrester hobbled into the room on his cane.

  “The night’s near about done,” he said. “I’d ruther have a snort o’ whiskey than sleep agin.”

  Buck said, “Pa, you got the most sense for sich a ol’ buzzard.”

  He went to a cupboard and brought out the demi-john. The old man uncorked it and tipped it back and drank.

  Lem said, “Don’t take no sense to crave liquor. Give it here.”

  He took a deep draught and passed the jug on. He wiped his mouth and rubbed his bare stomach. He went to the wall and felt along it for his fiddle. He twanged the strings carelessly, then sat down and began to scrape a tune.

  Arch said, “You ain’t got that right,” and brought his guitar and sat on the bench beside him.

  Ma Forrester set the candle on the table.

  She asked, “You naked jay-birds fixin’ to set up ’till day?”

  Arch and Lem were deep in their chords and no one answered her. Buck took his mouth-organ from a shelf and began a tune of his own. Arch and Lem stopped to listen, then fell in with his melody.

  Pa Forrester said, “Dog take it, that’s purty.”

  The demi-john went around again. Pack brought out his Jew’s-harp and Mill-wheel his drum, Buck changed his plaintive song for a lively dance tune, and the idle music swung into full volume. Jody and Fodder-wing dropped on the floor between Lem and Arch.

  Ma Forrester said, “Now you needn’t think I aim to go to bed and miss nothin’.”

  She unbanked the fire on the hearth and threw on fatwood and moved the coffee-pot close.

  “You hootin’ owls ’ll eat breakfast soon this mornin’ or I’ll know why,” she said. She winked at Jody. “Kill two birds with one stone. Have a frolic and git breakfast done with.”

  He winked back at her. He felt bold and gay and tremulous. He could not understand how his mother could disapprove of such frolicksome people.

  The music was out of tune and thunderous. It sounded like all the wild-cats in the scrub rounded up together, but it had a rhythm and a gusto that satisfied the ear and soul. The wild chords went through Jody as though he too were a fiddle and Lem Forrester drew long fingers across him.

  Lem said to him in a low voice, “Iffen I only had my sweetheart here, to sing and dance.”

  Jody asked brashly, “Who-all’s your sweetheart?”

  “My leetle ol’ Twink Weatherby.”

  “Why, she’s Oliver Hutto’s gal.”

  Lem lifted his fiddle-bow. Jody thought for an instant he meant to strike him. Then he went on with his fiddling, but his eyes smoldered.

  “You say that agin in your life, boy, and you’ll not have a tongue left to say it with. Understand?”

  “Yes, Lem. Could be I was wrong,” he added eagerly.

  “I’m jest tellin’ you.”

  He felt depressed a while, and disloyal to Oliver. Then the music caught him up again as though a great gust of wind lifted him across the tree-tops. The Forresters went from dance-tunes to songs, and Pa and Ma Forrester joined the singing with shrill, wavering voices. Daylight came, and the mocking-birds in the live oaks sang so clear and loud the Forresters heard them, and laid down their pieces, and saw the dawn in the cabin.

  Breakfast covered the table with some scantiness, for a Forrester breakfast, for Ma had been too much occupied to do much cooking. The men pulled on only their breeches, for the food was ready and smoking. After breakfast, they washed above their beards, and put on their boots and shirts, and went leisurely about their day’s business. Buck saddled his big roan stallion and swung Jody up behind him on the rump, for there was not room for a feather with him in the saddle.

  Fodder-wing followed limping to the edge of the clearing, with the raccoon on his shoulder, and waved his stick in farewell until they were out of sight. Jody rode home with Buck to Baxter’s Island and waved after him as he went on. He was still in a daze. It was only as he swung open the gate under the chinaberry that he remembered he had forgotten to look behind the magnolia tree for a Spaniard riding.

  Chapter VIII

  JODY clicked the gate behind him. The unmistakable smell of roasting meat filled the air. He ran around the side of the cabin. Resentment was mixed with his eagerness. Resisting the open kitchen door, he hurried to his father. Penny stepped out of the smoke-house and hailed him.

  The truth, a tangled pain and pleasure, was before him. A large deer hide was stretched on the smoke-house wall.

  Jody wailed, “You been huntin’ and didn’t wait on me.” He stamped his foot. “I ain’t never goin’ to leave you go off without me agin.”

  “Easy, son, ’till you hear. Be proud things come so bountiful.”

  His wrath cooled. Curiosity bubbled like a spring.

  “Tell me quick, Pa, how come.”

  Penny sat down on his heels in the sand. Jody dropped flat beside him.

  “A buck, Jody. I near about run him down.”

  Again he was furious.

  “Why’n’t it wait ’till I got home?”

  “Didn’t you pleasure yourself at the Forresters? You cain’t git all your ’coons up one tree.”

  “Hit could of waited. They ain’t never enough time. Hit go too fast.”

  Penny laughed.

  “Well, son, you nor me nor no man, ain’t never yit learnt to halt it.”

  “Were the buck runnin’?”

  “Jody, I’ll declare. I ain’t never had meat stand and wait for me, the way that buck stood in the road. He didn’t pay the horse no mind. Jest stood there. My first thought was, ‘ ’Tarnation, and me with no shells to my new gun.’ Then I unbreeched the gun and looked in, and bless Heaven, I mought o’ knowed a Forrester would have ary gun fullloaded. There was two shells in the gun, and there stood the buck, jest waitin’. I cracked down and he dropped. Right in the road, handy as a sack o’ meal. I h’isted him over old Cæsar’s rump and away we goed. Tell you what come to me. ’Me bringin’ in venison,’ I figgered, ’Ma won’t crawl me for leavin’ Jody with Fodder-wing.’”

  “What did she say when she seed the new gun and the meat?”

  “She said, ’If ’twas anybody but a honest fool like you, I’d swear you’d been out thievin’.’”

  They chuckled together. The odors from the kitchen were savory. The hours with the Forresters were forgotten. There was no reality but the day’s dinner. Jody went into the kitchen.

  “Hey, Ma. I’m home.”

  “Well, must I laugh or cry?”

  Her ample figure was bent over the hearth. The day was warm and sweat ran down her heavy neck.

  “We got us a shootin’ Pa, ain’t we, Ma?”

  “Yes, and a good thing, too, with you off all the time.”

  “Ma——”

  “What is it?”

  “We eatin’ venison today?”

  She turned from the fire.

  “Merciful Heaven, don’t you ever think o’ nothin’ but your empty belly?”

  “You cook venison so good, Ma.”

  She was mollified.

  “We eatin’ it today. I was feared it’d not keep, and the weather warm.”

  “The liver’ll not keep, neither.”

  “Well, for pity’s sake, we cain’t eat ever’thing to oncet. If you’ll fill my wood-box this evenin’, could be we’d eat liver tonight.”

  He prowled among the dishes.

  “Git outen my kitchen, lessen you want to torment me to death. Then what’d you do for dinner?”

  “I’d cook it.”

  “Yes, you and the dogs.”

  He ran out of the house to his father. “How’s old Julia?”

  It seemed to him he had been away a week.

  “Doin�
� fine. Give her a month, and she’ll have ol’ Slew-foot hollerin’.”

  “Is the Forresters aimin’ to he’p us hunt him?”

  “We never come to no agreement. I’d ruther they hunted their way and leave me hunt mine. I don’t much care who gits him, long as we keep him offen our stock.”

  “Pa, I never told you. I was scairt when the dogs was fightin’ him. I was too scairt even to run.”

  “Hit didn’t pleasure me none, neither, when I found I didn’t have me a gun.”

  “But you told it to the Forresters like as if we was mighty bold-hearted.”

  “Well, son, that’s what makes a tale.”

  Jody examined the deer hide. It was large and handsome, red with spring. The game seemed for him to be two different animals. On the chase, it was the quarry. He wanted only to see it fall. When it lay dead and bleeding, he was sickened and sorry. His heart ached over the mangled death. Then when it was cut into portions, and dried and salted and smoked; or boiled or baked or fried in the savory kitchen or roasted over the camp-fire, it was only meat, like bacon, and his mouth watered at its goodness. He wondered by what alchemy it was changed, so that what sickened him one hour, maddened him with hunger, the next. It seemed as though there were either two different animals or two different boys.

  The hides did not change. They kept their aliveness. Whenever he stepped with bare feet on the soft deer-skin beside his bed, he half expected to feel it start under him. Penny, small body though he was, had a scattering of black hair across his thin chest. As a boy, he had slept naked in winter in a bear-skin, with the fur next to him. Ma Baxter said he had grown hair on his chest from so sleeping. It was her joke, but Jody half believed it.

  The clearing was filled as abundantly as the Forresters’. His mother had ground the slaughtered sow into sausage. Stuffed casings hung in the smoke-house. A slow hickory fire smoked under them. Penny left his work to drop a few chips of wood on the smoldering embers.

  Jody said, “Must I chop wood or finish hoein’ the corn?”

  “Now, Jody, you know good and well I couldn’t let the weeds take the corn. I finished the hoein’. Wood’s the thing.”

  He was glad to go to the wood-pile, for if he did not do something to occupy his mind, hunger would force him to gnaw the dogs’ alligator meat or pick up the chickens’ scraps of cornbread. The time went slowly at first, and he was tormented with the desire to follow his father’s activities. Then Penny disappeared in the mule lot and Jody swung the axe without distraction. He carried an armful of wood to his mother as an excuse to see how dinner was progressing. He was relieved to see it on the table. She was pouring the coffee.

  “Call your Pa,” she said. “And wash them turrible hands. I’ll guarantee you ain’t touched water since you left home.”

  Penny came at last. The ham of venison filled the center of the table. He drew his carving knife with maddening deliberation across the meat.

  Jody said, “I’m so hongry, my belly thinks my throat is cut.”

  Penny laid down the knife and looked at him. Ma Baxter said, “Now if that ain’t a purty somethin’ to say. Where’d you learn to say that?”

  “Well, that’s what the Forresters say.”

  “I knowed it. That’s the kind o’ thing you learn o’ them low-down rascals.”

  “They ain’t low-down, Ma.”

  “Ever’ one of ’em’s lower’n a doodle-bug. And blackhearted to boot.”

  “They ain’t black-hearted. They’re purely friendly. Ma, they fiddle and play and sing better’n the fiddlers’ convention. We was up long before day, singin’, and frolickin’. It was fine.”

  “That’s all right if they got nothin’ better to do.” Meat was before them, piled high on the plates. The Baxters fell to.

  Chapter IX

  A SOFT rain fell in the night. The April morning that followed was clear and luminous. The young corn lifted pointed leaves and was inches higher. The cow-peas in the field beyond were breaking the ground. The sugar-cane was needle-points of greenness against the tawny earth. It was strange, Jody thought, whenever he had been away from the clearing, and came home again, he noticed things that he had never noticed before, but that had been there all the time. Young mulberries were clustered along the boughs, and before he went to the Forresters’ he had not even seen them. The Scuppernong grapevine, a gift from his mother’s kin in Carolina, was in bloom for the first time, fine and lace-like. The wild golden bees had found its fragrance, and were standing on their heads to guzzle its thin honey.

  For two days he had filled his stomach so richly that this morning he felt a little languid and was not truly hungry. His father was up and out ahead of him, as usual. Breakfast was ready in the kitchen and his mother was tending the sausages in the smoke-house. The woodbox was low and Jody idled outside to fill it. He was in a mood for work, but it must be something gentle and unhurried. He made two leisurely trips to fill the woodbox. Old Julia was dragging herself around in search of Penny. Jody stooped to stroke her head. She seemed to share the sense of well-being that filled the clearing; or perhaps she understood that she had been spared a time longer to run through swamp and scrub and hammock. She wagged her long tail and stood quiet under his petting. The deepest wound was still raw and angry, but the others were healing. Jody saw his father, moving across the road toward the house from the barns and lot. He dangled a strange object. He called to Jody.

  “I got a mighty cur’ous somethin’.”

  Jody ran to him. The limp object was an animal, at once strange and familiar. It was a raccoon, but instead of being the usual iron-gray, it was all a creamy white. He could not believe his eyes.

  “How come it white, Pa? Is it a ol’ grand-daddy ’coon?”

  “That’s what’s so cur’ous. A ’coon don’t never git to where he’s white-headed. No sir, hit’s one o’ them rare things the books calls a albino. Borned white. And look, them rings on its tail, them that’s due to be dark, they ain’t no more’n cream-colored.”

  They crouched in the sand and examined the ’coon.

  “Were it in the trap, Pa?”

  “In the trap. Bad hurted but not dead. I’ll declare, I hated a-killin’ of it.”

  Jody felt a sense of loss, that he had not known the albino ’coon alive.

  “Leave me tote him, Pa.”

  He cradled the dead animal in his arms. The pale fur seemed softer than the ordinary. The belly fur was as soft as the fluff of new-hatched biddies. He stroked it.

  “I’d of loved to of ketched him leetle, Pa, and raised him.”

  “He’d of been a purty pet, a’right, but likely jest as mean as ary other ’coon.”

  They turned in at the gate and around the side of the house to the kitchen.

  “Fodder-wing said none of his ’coons wasn’t never pertickler mean.”

  “Yes, but a Forrester wouldn’t scarcely notice if he was to git bit.”

  “Likely he’d bite right back, eh, Pa?”

  They laughed together, picturing their neighbors. Ma Baxter met them at the door. Her face brightened, seeing the animal.

  “You got him. Good. That’s what’s been goin’ with my hens.”

  “But Ma,” Jody protested. “Look at him. He’s white. He’s a cur’ossity.”

  “He’s a thievin’ varmint right on,” she said indifferently. “Is the hide wuth more’n usual?”

  Jody looked at his father. Penny was deep in the washbasin. He opened one bright eye among the soap-suds and winked at his son.

  “Likely ain’t wuth a nickel,” he said carelessly. “Jody’s been a-wantin’ of a leetle knapsack. Jest as good to leave him use up the hide.”

  Next to having the albino ’coon alive, nothing could be finer than a knapsack of the soft curious fur. Jody’s mind was full of it. He could not eat his breakfast. He wanted to show his gratitude.

  “I kin clean the water troughs, Pa,” he said.

  Penny nodded.

  “I keep hopin�
� each year, come spring, to hire us a deep well dug. Then them water troughs could fill with trash and welcome. But bricks is mighty high.”

  “I’d not know what ’twas, not to be sparin’ o’ my water,” Ma Baxter said. “For twenty years, I been sparin’.”

  “Now be patient, Ma,” Penny said.

  His face furrowed. Jody knew that the lack of abundant water was a trial to his father, and a greater hardship than for mother or son. Jody was held accountable for wood, but it was Penny himself who slung the ox yoke across his narrow shoulders, hung the great hewn cypress buckets at either end, and trudged up and down the sandy road from the clearing to the sink-hole, where seepage alone built pools of water, amber-colored from leaf-mould, and filtered by the sand. It was as though the labor were Penny’s apology to his family for having established them on land so arid, when creeks and rivers and good wells flowed not many miles away. For the first time, Jody wondered why his father had chosen to inhabit this place. Thinking of the pools on the steep side of the sink-hole that must be cleared, he was almost tempted to wish that they lived on the river, with Grandma Hutto. Yet the clearing, the island of tall pines, made up the world. Life in other places was only a tale that was told, as Oliver Hutto told of Africa and China and Connecticut.

  His mother said, “You better put a biscuit-two and some meat in your pocket. You ain’t et.”

  He filled his pockets.

  “You know what I wisht I had, Ma? A pouch like a ’possum, to tote things.”

  “The Lord put your stomach inside you o’ purpose. He meant you to put your rations inside you when your Ma sets ’em on the table.”

  He rose and ambled to the door.

  Penny said, “You git on to the sink-hole, son, and I’ll foller time I’ve skinned out your ’coon hide.”

  The day was bright and windy. Jody took a grubbing hoe from the shed behind the house and strolled toward the road. The mulberry trees by the fence were a sharp green. His mother’s favorite hen clucked to her biddies from the slat coop. He scooped up a small ball of yellow down and held it against his cheek, its cheepings shrill in his ear. He released it and it scurried for shelter under the fat hen’s wings. The yard would soon need hoeing.