Some of Your Blood

by Theodore Sturgeon

  Mrs Dency talked it around a whole lot and the upshot was George just asked to stay right where he was. This was a big surprise to Mrs Dency but she thought it over and then said okay, because George was only fifteen then and his two years was up but in another year he would be sixteen and the school could turn him loose without he had to go to no relative.

  George was wrong on a couple of counts here but he never found that out until later, how could he if he would not talk it over but just sat there.

  So he stayed at the school for one more year and you would not know there was any difference, he worked in school and in the auto shop and in the fields and rooted for the ball team and his building won a corn shuck and George won the only thing he ever won in any kind of a race, it was eating blueberry pie with your hands tied behind your back.

  But there was a difference all the same. The two years, that is what the court said and the court and the school had a hold on George. If he went over the wall they would of dragged him back and it would be the cage for him and no movies or ice cream till hell froze over. But in this other year, he done his stretch already and he was there because there was not no place he would rather go to although he never said that, they would have macerated him. He never did think serious of going over the wall but if he did it would not be like capturing a escaped criminal it would depend on this and that and the other thing like was he in any more trouble and did he have a clean place to live and all that; and if he was not in no trouble they would of left him alone without even bringing him back. And somehow this all made a big difference to George and it was not a good difference, it was worse.

  He was smart enough not to let it show but a thing like that is all in the way you feel. The only thing he did different from before was he slipped out into the woods all the time. He never took nobody with him and he did not do much except once a whole litter of foxes and that was practically an accident. Otherwise it was not too much good because you do not club rabbits without you can get to a meadow edge in the dark to wait for sunup and you do not like to set a real big deadfall or a figure-four without you are sure you can leave it where no one can come and also get to it whenever you want to. It was nice getting away every once in a while but on the other hand it was never enough and it was never right. Like if you want something real real bad it is better if you do not get none at all than if they keep feeding you a little tiny bit all the time.

  But the big mystery to George is how come he could go two whole years without even thinking about the woods and all of a sudden for a year he missed it so much there was a hot place in his belly for it all the time. And the two years went by like nothing but the number three was like forever with its feet dragging.

  About the end of it, George got a message to go see Mrs Dency and he did, and she took him in her office and closed the door and there stood Aunt Mary herself. She was a little woman and George always knowed that but not as little as this, probably because he got so big in the meantime. She looked like the mother but not much. She had a very long nose that was always red at the tip and he thought wet under that, and when she talked she had one of those soft voices like pigeons or something so she could tell you what time it was and make it sound good. George knew the minute he seen her he was not mad at her if he had ever been. She should of come the year before, it would of been the same. But how can you know something like that?

  Mrs Dency like had it all thought out what she would say and what Aunt Mary should say and you can bet she had Aunt Mary in that office a whole hour before, to tell her just how to handle George. So once George was in and he and Aunt Mary said hello and all, and the women sat down and George said, thank you ma’am no thanks and just stood there, Mrs Dency took a deep breath and started in at the far edge and come around and around what she was trying to say, while Aunt Mary sat straight up on the front rail of the wicker-seat chair looking bright-eyed like a dog when you got meat in your hand and he thinks it is for him but is afraid to say so yet. So in a way it was funny when finally Mrs Dency got around to saying Aunt Mary still wanted George to come live at the farm, you could see she was like going to touch it and then bounce way off and come in again slow, but George said, and it was the first peep out of him since the hello, he said, “Why sure I will.”

  Mrs Dency could not no more stop than if she had fell off a cliff and was halfway down, she went on for almost a minute explaining all about blood is thicker than water and the advantages of a home and family and the only thing stopped her was Aunt Mary got up and came over to George and took hold of both his hands. So that settled that.

  It was a long ride on the bus and Aunt Mary did not talk too much and George like always talked hardly at all but by the time they got to the farm George understood a lot of things, one was that nobody held it against him he got sent up because when you get right down to it he did not get sent up for no breaking and entering and attempted burglary, at least not no two years worth, it was mainly because the court and the priest and the welfare woman figured he would be better off at the school than in a shack with the town drunk after the mother died. Also that maybe after all she wanted him to come just because she wanted him to come and not to spite nobody like the mother always used to say. So the only thing to worry about was her husband, a tarheel name of Grallus, Jim Grallus, Uncle Jim. At first sight he was not nothing to worry about being only five four and skinny but like a lot of little guys, he had a mad at all big guys especially when he could tell them what to do, you run across that all the damn time in the army. But even when he was sixteen years old George knew about that and like everything else it is not so bad if you expect it. And anyway it did not show very much on Uncle Jim not for a very long time anyway.

  Living on the farm at first was hard on George it was so different from the school, for one thing they gave him a room all to himself and that was much better but for the longest time he could not get used to more than three walls around his bed, it was like your mouth was taped up and half your nose, you could breathe all right but never enough. But in time George got to like the room to himself real good. Also there was always this about George, put him in a new place with new people and he clammed up even more than usual and for a long time he could see Aunt Mary and Uncle Jim thought he was simple, just Yes and No and All right and when they said to tell them something like how was it at the school or back home, just sort of smile and spread out your hands and don’t say nothing.

  So for the first part of the time, eight, nine months, while George was like settling in, he had to go into the woods a whole lot and long as he done his work which he did, they let him. There was real good woods around there better even than Kentucky, he even seen bears a couple of times although he never did get one. But you never seen such possum, big and fat, and coons and rabbits and even beaver but not much. So at first George went hunting because somehow he had to and then he went just to keep making sure he could and then he met Anna and cut it out altogether, why it was like the first two years at the school, he did not even think of it no more.

  He was past sixteen when he met Anna and she was older maybe eight years. Her old man had close to two hundred acres where Aunt Mary had but 46 and that mostly clay pasture, rocks and wood hillside. Anna’s pa’s place was worse even, and seven kids. George always thought how nice that must be, all those folks like belong to each other, here he was with nobody to talk to. But talking to Anna he found out how she used to think all the time, how nice it must be for him, a small place, so quiet, only thirteen head to milk night and morning, and a room of your own. It was really funny how they envied each other.

  George met Anna at the creamery one time when her pa was laid up with a wrenched shoulder falling off a hay tedder. She drove a team to the creamery and he helped her get the forty-quart cans off the buckboard on to the stage. They did not talk very much at first, she was not what you would call good looking which is why she was stuck so long on that farm, nobody was about to marry her. She had a wide pink f
ace and brown eyes and hair, and carried her head sort of forward the way women do who have that lump up between their shoulders they call the widow’s hump. She was big around the upper arms and thighs both but very small in the waist and forearms and ankles and feet. Somehow a woman built like that did not get George all excited but it made him feel comfortable.

  He said to her about the third time he saw her that it was close to twelve miles by road from Aunt Mary’s around to her pa’s place, but did she know it was not more than a mile and a half through the woods. She thought about it and gave him a smile and said yes that’s so, and it was because the two farms was around the mountain shoulder from each other, and the roads followed the valleys. Well he said maybe some time he was out hunting he would see her in the fields. She said maybe and that was all just then because the next time he went to the creamery it was her pa. He never did talk to her pa.

  So not long after, it was in the summer time and light for a couple hours after milking, sure enough he went out into the woods and struck off up the mountain and down again and before you know it there he was.

  And she was sitting outside the barb wire at the edge of the woods by her pa’s north pasture.

  And he said, What are you doing sitting out here?

  And she laughed and said, I reckon I was waiting for you.

  And that was the beginning of it, how they used to have long talks about how lucky she was with all that big family, how lucky he was without no family, and all that. He never was with a girl before but she knew a lot, but always careful, fellows working through with the threshing machine and like that, that did not live around those parts. You might think that would make George mad to find out about that but he did not mind. Those fellows was all part of the past and that was gone, she did not have no steady fellow then but she did now and it was him. She showed him what to do pretty much. You would not believe it but George never pushed her to do it. They done all what she wanted to do and he was glad to do it, but it was for her. It was always for her, the way she wanted it. He was always afraid he would hurt her hands or something. It was not until maybe the third week he kind of took over. A warm night and more than anything she smelled good to him. She smelled good the way a cow’s breath smells good, the way cut hay smells good, or the milkshed on a warm morning before any spills get to souring. He got that burning in his stomach like when he needed to hunt, but that was always part angry and this was not angry at all. She told him no at first, this wasn’t right, but he kept on, and soon she just let him. Well, she knew he would never hurt her and also that he would never talk about it.

  That was the best time of George’s whole life, better than the army or the school or anything else. Sometimes Uncle Jim was real rough on him depending on how he felt, and sometimes George would do something wrong, just not knowing any better, like the time he built a haystack so it fell over and the time he let the chickens run in the old shed where they got the coccydiosis or however you spell it, the first day they droop, the second day they can’t walk, the third day they’re dead, it’s a wonder they didn’t lose the whole flock. George did not like to make mistakes, it made him feel bad and mad at himself. If only Uncle Jim could understand that but he could not. He had to yammer and yell. And sometimes it was bitter cold and sometimes hot and sometimes he had to work two days and nights without stopping like when the calf got born crosswise the same time the windstorm took out more than half the fencing. And his axe jumped off a knot one time and sliced right down through the side of his shoe and into his foot. But with all the trouble and arguments and hard work and all, it was still the best time of his whole life. Nothing ever happened to set him out roaming the woods again with a club or a trap, he just did not need it. He went out a whole lot and they thought it was to hunt, but it was to see Anna. Even not seeing her sometimes was wonderful, like letting yourself go hungry on purpose to make the next meal taste better, which you can do if you are awful sure of the next meal. Anna liked it too, nobody paid her much mind around her place long as she carried her chores. Which she did.

  And the funny thing was nobody ever found out, and George and Anna never much tried to keep it a secret. It got like a habit, that’s all, for them to meet all alone in the woods and a kind of cave they knew about. Sometimes they saw each other at the grange or in town and talked, but everybody knew everybody and no one thought anything of it. And the way people like to talk, to do matchmaking and all, they still never thought anything about George and Anna. He was only fifteen when he come there first, and she twenty-four or so, and he was big and good looking enough that some of the girls in town used to kid him and yell at him and all, and Anna was one of those people who are in crowds, you know they are there but you can’t see their face. So even when folks saw them together in town nobody thought anything of it and nobody ever saw them anywhere else. George he was too young to think about marrying and besides he had no money, and Anna she probably never even thought about it, there are some people who say to theirselves, well, I guess that is not for me, not ever, and they never think about it again, well, Anna had passed that long ago. Two and a half years that way, and you know it is, you think whatever it is you are doing is just naturally going to go on forever. Well it ain’t.

  There was a time when George and Uncle Jim Grallus had a real bad blowoff, it was in November and it got dark early, and after milking and supper George slipped off in the woods and went over the hill and him and Anna spent a long time fixing up the kind of cave they had up there near her pa’s north pasture. It was not much but it was out of the wind. Well what with the work and then fooling around with Anna it was pretty late when he got back.

  He did not find out until much later what it was happened while he was gone, but there was something stealing chickens every night or so and it must be Uncle Jim heard them worrying in the middle of the night or something, anyway out he come in his pajamas and a lantern. There was this big skunk outside the chicken run, when it seen him it went into the harness room under the barn. Uncle Jim was mad at that skunk and he took off after it and with his lantern he could see it scrunched up in the corner looking at him. There was a hay fork there and he was so mad he snatched up the hay fork and lunged at the skunk, well one of the tines went through the skin on the skunk’s side and stuck into the wall, and there it was caught and there was Uncle Jim caught too because everyone knows about a skunk how it smells, but nobody ever seems to mention it has pretty fair claws and a face full of teeth as sharp as a cat and as quick and strong as a wolf. And this was a big one. So Uncle Jim could not turn loose the fork and the skunk could not get loose either, it must have went crazy. Well Uncle Jim hollered a lot but what with being round the other side of the barn from the house, and the wind—it was one of those cold fall nights with a half a moon and a half a gale—Aunt Mary did not hear. And George was not even there but Uncle Jim did not know that.

  Well he yelled his self hoarse and he was cold to boot, and how he stunk too. Maybe he thought to let the skunk bleed to death but it was not bleeding much so he just leaned on the fork and kind of dozed. And woke up and shivered and dozed.

  So about this time George come back. In the moonlight he seen the back barn door open, but no light because the lantern had long gone out. So George he just walked that way instead of straight past. He bumped the door shut and dropped the bar and went on into the house. The sound of the bar just naturally snapped Uncle Jim out of it and he hollered and jumped for the door but by then George turned the corner and with the wind in his ears and thinking, I guess about Anna, he did not hear nothing. So there was Uncle Jim in the pitch black with the skunk and when he jumped for the door he dropped his fork. They went round and round in there a whole lot. In about ten minutes the noise fretted the big Holstein bull, well, mostly Holstein, that was in stanchions on the main floor of the barn, the bull got to tossing against the stanchions, the cows got restless, it woke the hogs, maybe the sow lay over on a shoat, but anyway the shoat started to sque
al. By this time there was noise enough for George Smith to hear and George Washington to boot. George run out there and was all over the yard and barn before he finally heard the cussing and banging from the harness room. He run down there and opened up and the first thing comes out is smell, like a wall falling on you, like something solid. Then the skunk so mad it could not touch the ground, it just flew and they never did get that skunk, George he just blinked and let it go by. Then come Uncle Jim.

  And all he wanted to know was who shut the door and dropped the bar on him. And George said he did but.

  But nothing. Then and there Uncle Jim started in and he cussed George out up and back and down again. If George had anything to say Uncle Jim did not want to hear it, he got through all he could think of about George is stupid and clumsy and lazy and if he thinks he is wise well he has another think coming. And the more he yelled the madder he got, it was like he had a pot full of hate for George and everything about George with the lid screwed down tight and the lid blew off and everything exploded out. Maybe if George was as handy with his mouth as some guys it would not have been so bad, but all he could do was stand there like a dummy and every once in a while, smile. This was not really a smile, he sure did not feel like smiling, but it come out like that. It seemed to put Uncle Jim crazy. He started in on a whole new line of stuff, like he brung up another layer. He said about George’s mother and father they were never married, George was a bastard. He said about George he was a queer, what he meant was I guess George did not have a girl that he knew about, just liked to go off by himself in the woods. He said George’s father was a no good drunk and his mother would of been a whore if she was not too goddamn ugly and George was a robber and a burglar and a jailbird and he was sick and tired of his face around.