“Dar he,” Isom said.
“Hit’s Ruby,” Caspey agreed, picking up the lantern. “She got ’im.” The young dog yapped again, with fierce hysteria; then the single low cry chimed. Narcissa slid her arm through Bayard’s. “’Tain’t no rush,” Caspey told her. “Dey ain’t treed yit. Whooy. H’mawn, dawg.” The young dog had ceased its yapping, but still at intervals the other one bayed her single timbrous note, and they followed it. “H’mawn, dawg!”
They stumbled a little over fading plow scars, after Caspey’s bobbing lantern, and the darkness went suddenly crescendo with short, steady cries in four keys. “Dey got ’im,” Isom said.
“Dat’s right,” Caspey agreed. “Le’s go. Hold ’im, dawg!” They trotted now, Narcissa clinging to Bayard’s arm, and plunged through rank grass and over another fence and so among trees. Eyes gleamed fleetingly from the darkness ahead; another gust of barking interspersed with tense, eager whimperings, and among stumbling half-lit shadows dogs surged about them. “He up dar,” Caspey said. “Ole Blue sees ’im.”
“Dar Unc’ Henry’s dawg, too,” Isom said.
Caspey grunted. “I knowed he’d be here. He can’t keep up wid a ’possum no mo’, but jes let a dawg tree whar he kin hear ’im . . .” He set the lantern on his head and peered up into the vine-matted sapling, and Bayard drew a flash light from his pocket and turned its beam into the tree. The three older hounds and Uncle Henry’s ancient, moth-eaten beast sat in a tense circle about the tree, whimpering or barking in short spaced gusts, but the young one yapped steadily in mad, hysterical rushes. “Kick dat puppy still,” Caspey commanded.
“You, Ginger, hush yo’ mouf,” Isom shouted. He laid his ax and sack down and caught the puppy and held it between his knees. Caspey and Bayard moved slowly about the tree, among the eager dogs. Narcissa followed them.
“Dem vines is so thick up dar . . .” Caspey said.
“Here he is,” Bayard said suddenly. “I’ve got ’im.” He steadied his light and Caspey moved behind him and looked over his shoulder.
“Where?” Narcissa asked. “Can you see it?”
“Dat’s right,” Caspey agreed. “Dar he is. Ruby don’t lie. When she say he dar, he dar.”
“Where is he, Bayard?” Narcissa repeated. He drew her before him and trained the light over her head, into the tree, and presently from the massed vines two reddish points of fire not a match-breadth apart gleamed at her, winked out, then shone again.
“He movin’,” Caspey said, “Young ’possum. Git up dar and shake ’im out, Isom.” Bayard held his light on the creature’s eyes and Caspey set his lantern down and herded the dogs together at his knees. Isom scrambled up into the tree and vanished in the mass of vine, but they could follow his progress by the shaking branches and his panting ejaculations as he threatened the animal with a mixture of cajolery and adjuration.
“Hah,” he grunted, “ain’t gwine hurt you. Ain’t gwine do nothin’ ter you but th’ow you inde cook-pot. Look out, mister, I’se comin’ up dar.” More commotion; it ceased, they could hear him moving the branches cautiously. “Here he,” he called suddenly. “Hole dem dawgs, now.”
“Little ’un, ain’t he?” Caspey asked.
“Can’t tell. Can’t see nothin’ but his face. Watch dem dawgs.” The upper part of the sapling burst into violent and sustained fury; Isom whooped louder and louder as he shook the branches. “Whooy, here he comes,” he shouted, and something dropped sluggishly and reluctantly from branch to invisible branch, stopped; and the dogs set up a straining clamor. The thing fell again, and Bayard’s light followed a lumpy object that plumped with a resounding thud to the ground and vanished immediately beneath a swirl of hounds.
Caspey and Bayard leaped among them with shouts and at last succeeded in dragging them clear, and Narcissa saw the creature in the pool of the flash light, lying on its side in a grinning curve, its eyes closed and its pink, babylike hands doubled against its breast. She looked at the motionless thing with pity and distinct loathing-such a paradox, its vulpine, skull-like grin and those tiny, human-looking hands, and the long ratlike tail of it. Isom dropped from the tree and Caspey turned the three straining clamorous dogs he held over to his nephew and picked up the ax, and while Narcissa watched in shrinking curiosity, he laid the ax across the thing’s neck and put his foot on either end of the helve, and grasped the animal’s tail. . . . She turned and fled, her hand to her mouth.
But the wall of darkness stopped her and she stood trembling and a little sick, watching them as they moved about the lantern. Then Caspey drove the dogs away, giving Uncle Henry’s octogenarian a hearty and resounding kick that sent him homeward with blood-curdling and astonished walls, and Isom swung the lumpy sack to his shoulder and Bayard turned and looked for her. “Narcissa?”
“Here,” she answered. He came to her.
“That’s one. We ought to get a dozen, tonight.”
“Oh, no,” she shuddered. “No.” He peered at her; then he snapped his flash light full on her face. She lifted her hand and put it aside.
“What’s the matter? Not tired already, are you?”
“No.” She went on, “I just . . . Come on: they’re leaving us.”
Caspey led them on into the woods. They walked now in a dry sibilance of leaves and crackling undergrowth. Trees loomed into the lantern light; above them, among the thinning branches, stars swam in the hushed, vague sky. The dogs were on ahead, and they went on among the looming tree trunks, sliding down into ditches where sand gleamed in the lantern’s pool and where the scissoring shadow of Caspey’s legs was enormous, struggled through snatching briers and up the other bank.
“We better head away fum de creek bottom,” Caspey suggested. “Dey mought strike a ’coon, and den dey won’t git home ’fo’ day.” He bore away toward the open again; they emerged from the woods and crossed a field of sedge, odorous of sun and dust, in which the lantern was lightly nimbused. “H’mawn, dawg.”
They entered the woods again. Narcissa was beginning to tire, but Bayard strode on with a fine obliviousness of that possibility, and she followed without complaint. At last, from some distance away, came that single ringing cry, Caspey stopped. “Le’s see which way he gwine.” They stood in the darkness, in the sad, faintly chill decline of the year, among the dying trees, listening. “Whooy,” Caspey shouted mellowly. “Go git ’im.”
The dog replied, and they moved again, slowly, pausing at intervals to listen again. The hound bayed; there were two voices now, and they seemed to be moving in a circle across their path. “Whooy,” Caspey called, his voice ebbing in falling echoes among the trees. They went on. Again the dogs gave tongue, half the circle away from where the first cry had come. “He ca’yin’ ’um right back whar he come fum,” Caspey said. “We better wait twell dey gits ’im straightened out.” He set the lantern down and squatted beside it, and Isom sloughed his burden and squatted also, and Bayard sat against a tree trunk and drew Narcissa down beside him again, nearer. Caspey stared off into the darkness toward the sound.
“I believe hit’s a ’coon dey got,” Isom said.
“Mought be. Hill ’coon.”
“Headin’ fer dat holler tree, ain’t he?”
“Soun’ like it,” They listened, motionless. “We have a job, den,” Caspey added. “Whooy.” There was a faint chill in the air now, as the day’s sunlight cooled from the ground, and Narcissa moved closer to Bayard. He took a packet of cigarettes from his jacket and gave Caspey one and lit one for himself. Isom squatted on his heels, his eyes rolling whitely in the lantern light.
“Gimme one, please, suh,” he said.
“You ‘ain’t got no business smokin’, boy,” Caspey told him. But Bayard gave him one, and he squatted leanly on his haunches, holding the white tube in his black diffident hand. There was a scurrying noise in the leaves behind them and a tense whimpering, and the young dog c
ame into the light and slid with squeaking whimpers, and the diffident, fleeting phosphorus of its eyes against Caspey’s leg. “Whut you want?” Caspey said, dropping his hand on its head. “Some thin’ skeer you out dar?” The puppy genuflected its gawky young body and nuzzled whimpering at Caspey’s hand. “He mus’ ’a’ faun’ a bear down yonder,” Caspey said. “Wouldn’t dern other dawgs he’p you ketch ’im?”
“Poor little fellow,” Narcissa said. “Did he really get scared, Caspey? Come here, puppy.”
“De other dawgs jes’ went off and lef’ ’im,” Caspey answered. The puppy moiled diffidently about Caspey’s knees; then it scrambled up and licked his face.
“Git down fum here!” Caspey exclaimed, and he flung the puppy away. It flopped awkwardly in the dry leaves and scrambled to its feet, and at that moment the hounds bayed again, mellow and chiming and timbrous in the darkness, and the puppy whirled and sped yapping shrilly toward the sound. The dogs bayed again; Isom and Caspey listened. “Yes, suh,” Caspey repeated, “he headin’ fer dat down tree.”
“You know this country like you do the back yard, don’t you, Caspey?” Narcissa said.
“Yessum, I ought to. I been over it a hund’ed times since I wuz bawn. Mist’ Bayard knows hit, too. He been huntin’ it long ez I is, pretty near. Him and Mist’ Johnny bofe. Miss Jenny send me wid ’um when dey had dey fust gun; me and dat ’ere single bar’l gun I use ter have ter tie together wid a string. You ‘member dat ole single bar’l, Mist’ Bayard? But hit would shoot. Many’s de fox squir’l we shot in dese woods. Rabbits, too,” Bayard was leaning back against the tree. He was gazing off into the tree tops and the soft sky beyond, his cigarette burning slowly in his hand. She looked at his bleak profile against the lantern glow and moved closer against him. But he did not respond, and she slid her hand in his. But it too was cold, and again he had left her for the lonely heights of his despair. Caspey was speaking again, in his slow, consonantless voice with its overtones of mellow sadness. “Mist’ Johnny, now, he sho’ could shoot. You ’member dat time me and you and him wuz—”
Bayard rose. He dropped his cigarette and crushed it carefully with his heel. “Let’s go,” he said. “They ain’t going to tree.” He drew Narcissa to her feet and turned and went on, Caspey got up and unslung his horn and put it to his lips. The sound swelled about them, grave and clear and prolonged; then it died into echoes and so into silence again, leaving no ripple in the still darkness.
It was near midnight when they left Caspey and Isom at their cabin and followed the lane toward the house. The barn loomed presently beside them, and the house among its thinning trees, against the hazy sky. He opened the gate and she passed through and he followed and closed it, and turning he found her beside him, and stopped. “Bayard?” she whispered, leaning against him, and he put his arms around her and stood so, gazing above her head into the sky. She took his face between her palms and drew it down, but his lips were cold and upon them she tasted fatality and doom, and she clung to him for a time, her head bowed against his chest.
After that she would not go with him again. So he went alone, returning anywhere between midnight and dawn, ripping his clothing off quietly in the darkness and sliding cautiously into bed. But when he was still she would touch him and speak his name in the dark beside him, and turn to him warm and soft with sleep. And they would lie so, holding to one another in the darkness and the temporary abeyance of his despair and the isolation of that doom he could not escape.
2
“Well,” Miss Jenny said briskly, above the soup, “your girl’s gone and left you, and now you can find time to come out and see your kinfolks, can’t you?”
Horace grinned a little. “To tell the truth, I came out to get something to eat. I don’t think that one woman in ten has any aptitude for housekeeping, but my place is certainly not in the home.”
“You mean,” Miss Jenny corrected, “that not one man in ten has sense enough to marry a decent cook.”
“Maybe they have more sense and consideration for others than to spoil decent cooks,” he suggested.
“Yes,” young Bayard said, “even a cook’ll quit work when she gets married.”
“Dat’s de troof,” Simon, propped in a slightly florid attitude against the sideboard, in a collarless boiled shirt and his Sunday pants (it is Thanksgiving Day) and reeking a little of whisky in addition to his normal odors, agreed. “I had to fin’ Euphrony fo’ new cookin’ places de fust two mont’ we wuz ma’ied.”
Dr. Peabody said, “Simon must have married somebody else’s cook.”
“I’d rather marry somebody else’s cook than somebody else’s wife,” Miss Jenny snapped.
“Miss Jenny!” Narcissa reproved. “You hush.”
“I’m sorry,” Miss Jenny said immediately. “I wasn’t saying that at you, Horace; it just popped into my head. I was talking to you, Loosh Peabody. You think, just because you’ve eaten off of us Thanksgiving and Christmas tor sixty years, that you can come into my own house and laugh at me, don’t you?”
“Hush. Miss Jenny!” Narcissa repeated. Horace put down his spoon, and Narcissa’s hand found his beneath the table.
“What’s that?” Old Bayard, his napkin tucked into his waistcoat, lowered his spoon and cupped his hand to his ear.
“Nothing,” young Bayard told him. “Aunt Jenny and Doc fighting again. Come alive, Simon.” Simon stirred and removed the soup plates, but laggardly, still giving his interested attention to the altercation.
“Yes,” Miss Jenny rushed on. “just because that old fool of a Will Falls put axle grease on a little bump on his face without killing him, you have’ to go around swelled up like a poisoned dog. What did you have to do with it? You certainly didn’t take it off. Maybe you conjured it on his face to begin with?”
“Haven’t you got a piece of bread or something Miss Jenny can put in her mouth, Simon?” Dr. Peabody asked mildly. Miss Jenny glared at him a moment; then she flopped back in her chair.
“You, Simon! Are you dead?” Simon removed the plates and bore them out, and the guests sat avoiding one another’s eyes a little while Miss Jenny, behind her barricade of cups and urns and jugs and things, continued to breathe fire and brimstone.
“Will Falls,” old Bayard repeated. “Jenny, tell Simon, when he fixes that basket, to come to my office; I’ve got something to go in it.” This was the pint flask of whisky which he included in old man Falls’ Thanksgiving and Christmas basket and which the old fellow divided out by spoonfuls as far as it would go among his ancient and homeless cronies on those days; and invariably old Bayard reminded her to tell Simon of something which neither of them had overlooked.
“All right,” she returned. Simon reappeared, with a huge silver coffee-urn, set it beside Miss Jenny, and retreated to the kitchen.
“How many of you want coffee now?” she asked generally. “Bayard will no more sit down to a meal without his coffee than he’d fly. Will you, Horace?” He declined, and without looking at Dr. Peabody she said, “I reckon you’ll have to have some, won’t you?”
“If it’s no trouble,” he answered mildly. He winked at Narcissa and assumed an expression of lugubrious diffidence. Miss Jenny drew two cups, and Simon appeared with a huge platter borne gallantly and precariously aloft and set it before old Bayard with a magnificent flourish.
“My God, Simon,” young Bayard said, “where did you get a whale this time of year?”
“Dat’s a fish in dis worl’, mon,” Simon agreed. And it was a fish. It was a yard long and broad as a saddle blanket; it was a jolly red color and it lay gaping on the platter with an air of dashing and rollicking joviality.
“Dammit, Jenny,” old Bayard said pettishly, “what did you want to have this thing for? Who wants to clutter his stomach up with fish in November, with a kitchen full of ’possum and turkey and squirrel?”
“There are other people to eat
here besides you,” she retorted. “If you don’t want any, don’t eat it. We always had a fish course at home,” she added. “But you can’t wean these Mississippi country folks away from bread and meat to save your life. Here, Simon.” Simon set a stack of plates before old Bayard and he now came with his tray and Miss Jenny put two coffee cups on it and he served them to old Bayard and Dr. Peabody. Miss Jenny drew a cup for herself, and Simon passed sugar and cream. Old Bayard, still grumbling heavily, carved the fish.
“I ain’t ever found anything wrong with fish at any time of year,” Dr. Peabody said,
“You wouldn’t,” Miss Jenny snapped. Again he winked heavily at Narcissa.
“Only,” he continued, “I like to catch my own, out of my own pond. Mine have mo’ food value.”
“Still got your pond, Doc?” young Bayard asked.
“Yes. But the fishin’ ain’t been so good, this year. Abe had the flu last winter, and ever since he’s been goin’ to sleep on me, and I have to sit there and wait until he wakes up to take the fish off and bait the hook again. But finally I thought about tyin’ a cord to his leg and the other end of it to the bench, and now when I get a bite, I just reach around and give the string a yank and wake ’im up. You’ll have to bring yo’ wife out some day, Bayard. She ain’t never seen my pond.”
“You haven’t?” Bayard asked Narcissa. She had not. “He’s got benches all around it, with footrests, and a railing just high enough to prop your pole on, and a nigger to every fisherman to bait his hook and take the fish off. I don’t see why you feed all those niggers, Doc.”
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