The Nearly Complete Works, Volume 2

by Donald Harington

  Sure enough, Bitch led them to this middling-size white oak tree with a bulge and a crack halfway up, and the bees swarming in and out of that crack. “Shud far!” Sog exclaimed.

  The main problem with not being able to talk was that he now had to explain a crucial thing about bees to Robin but couldn’t do it. Bees will only sting you if you’re afraid of ’em. If you don’t fight ’em or swat at ’em or nothing, but just act calm and still, they won’t sting you. It was going to be hard to get this across to Robin but he tried his best with pantomime and going through all the motions of trying to get her to keep real still. He was able to say “Saw,” which is what you say to a cow to keep her calm.

  Bitch was sniffing around the trunk of the bee tree, and when she commenced barking again he figured it was just because she knew this was the right tree, but he took a look and there were some bear tracks around the base of the trunk! Bear! He knew how bears sure did crave honey, and he found claw marks on the trunk which seemed to indicate the bear had tried to climb the tree to get at the honey. Sog asked himself whether he ought to tell Robin that a bear had been here. No sense in scaring her, right now, but he had warned her that time she’d tried to run away that the bears or wolves would get her if she were out in the woods by herself. He knew there weren’t any wolves in Newton County, maybe a few coyotes, but not any big bad wolves. But he’d seen black bears himself. Yes, I’ll tell her, he said, and pointed at the bear tracks and said, “Mawr.” He tried again, “Parr.” But he couldn’t say the name right. He motioned for her to stand a good distance back while he cut down the bee tree.

  He hadn’t hit the trunk more than a few licks with his axe when he felt the first sting. It sure don’t do you a lot of good to know that you keep still to keep from being stung if you have to swing an axe. “Gahrdommid,” he swore, and backed off and waited a while.

  By the time he got the tree cut down, he’d been stung maybe a dozen times, but he knew from past experience that after a while the sting doesn’t sting as much; the more you get stung the less you feel it. He’d heard stories about bee stings being good for arthritis, rheumatism and all kinds of other problems in the joints, and he figured maybe his foot might even stop dragging like the mummy’s or Frankenstein’s.

  They got four buckets full to the brim with honey, but poor Robin herself got stung a few times in the process, and she didn’t like it one bit. He gathered up the leaves of three separate plants—he didn’t know which plants they were but according to the ages-old remedy it didn’t matter which three so long as there was exactly three—and crushed the leaves together and applied them to her bee stings and to his, and the relief was almost instantaneous, but still she was pissed off. He wished he could speak and be philosophical. If he could be philosophical he could tell her that everything in this life worth getting requires being stung a few times. Thinking about this on the way home, he realized the main drawback of losing the power of speech wasn’t that he wouldn’t be able to tell her all those Stay More stories but that he wouldn’t be able to tell her his philosophical thoughts about how the world was just no damn good, life was a joke, the world was full of meanness and wrongdoing and corruption and selfishness and evil and backstabbing and shoddy merchandise and wickedness and bum raps and disorderly conduct and weakness and malpractice and greed and moral turpitude and what not. It had been his plan to learn her to appreciate the isolation of this wilderness that protected her from all that badness and transgression. But how could he do it if he couldn’t talk? Thinking of his bee stings and hers and the tried and true folk remedy he’d applied to the stings, he also thought of all the things he had to learn her about the old ways, the uses of plants, the phases of the moon, the reading of signs. What kind of teacher can’t even talk?

  On the way home he spotted the tracks of a wild turkey! “Darg eek,” he exclaimed, and pantomimed the swagger of a turkey tom and flapped his arms to represent its wings, but he couldn’t get across to her that somewhere out here in these woods their Thanksgiving dinner was a-running around loose.

  When he got home after toting all that honey plus his axe and crosscut and rifle, even with her help, he was plumb dead on his feet and could only crawl into bed with Dr. Jack D’s remedy. There he remained for several more days, thinking philosophical thoughts not only about all the stuff that was wrong with the world but how life itself was just one big joke that wasn’t even funny, and the biggest joke was that if you ever got to finding anything good about life you’d soon enough discover that the only thing that mattered about life is that it comes to an end, by and by. There was this good old funeral hymn everbody used to sing, that Miss Jerram had got them to sing at that mule’s funeral, which said that farther along we’ll know all about it, farther along we’ll understand why, but Sog wasn’t too sure he’d ever be able to know all about it or understand nothing.

  He didn’t even have any notion what time of year it was. What was left of the garden was still producing some fine maters, as well as all the melons they could eat, and although some of the nights had got right crimpy the days was still warm enough to indicate that summer wasn’t quite done by a long shot. But he figured that it must be at least well into September, and the next morning he woke up feeling tolerable he decided it was time for Robin’s birthday.

  He put on his overalls for the first time since he’d been a-beeing, and went out to the kitchen and stirred hisself around and set into making a birthday cake for Robin. He hadn’t forgot how, and they had quite a few boxes of cake mix that all you have to do is follow the directions.

  “What are you doing?” Robin asked him.

  “Awr, og us ursings ur sprose,” he tried to get around telling her what he was up to, and she left him alone.

  While the cake was in the oven, he went into the storeroom and fished in some of the bags and brought out the pretty packages of birthday gift wrap that he’d stocked up on, and some ribbons and Scotch tape. Then he picked out from the hoard assorted little toys and games, as well as this one real nice dress that he’d bought her at the Wal-Mart, and a couple of pretty sweaters. That was more than he’d intended to give her at any one of her birthdays, but he might not even be around for the next one. He wrapped everything up nice and pretty. He sent Robin out to dig up taters, both Irish and sweet taters. And while the oven was still hot he put in a cut of ham off that razorback they’d slaughtered. The meat hadn’t been smoked yet, but that wasn’t necessary for just a cut of ham.

  He served her a fine dinner and then afterward he brought out the cake, with candles lit on top and all. “Hubby bart deg tyoo,” he tried to sing but gave it up and just set the cake on the table.

  “Oh!” Robin said. “Oh!” she said again. “Is it my birthday?”

  “Yur aid,” he said. “Hubby bart deg.”

  And then he brought out all the wrapped presents and she had such a lot of fun opening them one by one. Too bad that dress was too small, and he realized that when he’d got all her clothes he hadn’t even thought that she’d ever outgrow them. He reckoned that he had probably hoped she’d stay seven years old for the rest of her life. But now that she was eight, did he no longer desire her? That was a dumb question, since he didn’t have no desire to speak of nohow.

  “Oh!” she said, taking the wraps off a game. “A Ouija Board! I always wanted a Ouija Board!”

  It was just a plain old game board with all this stuff written on it: all the letters of the alphabet and all the numbers, plus “Yes.” “No.” “Good Bye.” There was a three-legged gizmo that was the only game piece, and Robin explained how you use it. Trouble was, you’re supposed to rest your fingertips gently on that three-legged doodad, but his hands was so shaky he couldn’t do it without jiggling the darn thing. And what it was supposed to do was answer any questions you might have, and he couldn’t ask any questions without the power of speech. So they just had to make do with Robin’s questions. They started off with easy questions, like “Is this September 12?” and t
he pointer thing crept its way over to the “Yes.” So it really was her birthday, after all! If you could believe that pointer. What is the dog’s real name? they asked the Ouija board, and it moved bit by bit to the letter H, the letter R, the letter E, the letter A, the letter P, the letter H again, and the letter A again. “Roffa,” said Robin, which was what Bitch always said.

  By and by, Robin asked the Ouija Board, “Will I ever see my mommy again?”

  The board said, “Yes.”

  When she asked the Board, “Is Sugrue going to get well?” he wanted to stop her, but his curiosity got the better of him.

  “No,” said the damned board.

  Chapter twenty

  Her ambitious project for some time had been to procure a kitten as a birthday present for Robin. She herself had had only one birthday so far, the previous winter. Since it is the lot of most animals not even to know, let alone to observe, their birthdays, she had not expected that hers would be special. She had observed it simply by digging up her favorite bone, declaring I am one, and wishing herself a happy birthday. Of course she had realized the ambiguity of her words: not simply that she was one year old but that she was one fine dog, she was number one, one of the best, one of those, one to reckon with. She had been happily surprised later when Yowrfrowr had shown up in her yard, saying A pity I have no gifts for you but I do want to give you a birthday lick. And he had given her a birthday lick and then had tried to become more romantic than that, but the man had come out of the house and run him off.

  Now with the approach of September she had wanted desperately to see Yowrfrowr again, and had given much consideration to exploring the environs south of the farmstead in search of any remaining trace of the old trail that Adam Madewell had used to reach Stay More when he went to school there. The in-habit had told her he could describe the route and which landmarks to watch for, but he couldn’t take her or go with her, because it would lead beyond his haunt, that is, beyond the area of places that he was allowed to frequent. He also advised that she shouldn’t attempt to hike the trail, which was a long and possibly treacherous journey that had broken some of his bones the last time he’d tried to use it, when he was ten. His warning didn’t scare her sufficiently, because she had powerful motives: simply to enjoy canine companionship again, to tell Yowrfrowr of this particular situation she was in and Robin was in and the man was in, get his opinions thereof, and even, if nature so dictated, permit Yowrfrowr to assuage this peculiar nervousness she had been experiencing lately and the itching in her afterplace. But her principal motive, overriding the others, was this: she wanted to see if she couldn’t take possession of one of those kittens that overpopulated the yard of Yowrfrowr’s house. Hreapha had never bothered to count, but there were always dozens of felines on the premises, often openly and flagrantly engaged in procreation, and consequently no one would even notice if Hreapha removed one of the kittens, seizing the nape of its neck gently in her mouth as she had observed mother cats doing, and, carrying it thus, transporting it all the way back up to Madewell Mountain, and giving it to Robin, who wanted a kitten so badly. Could she do it? It was a challenge, and one that consumed many of Hreapha’s waking thoughts.

  But as Robin’s birthday neared, Hreapha became frantic with the realization that such a journey would take at least one overnight and possibly two or three, and there was simply no way she could explain to the man, let alone to Robin the potential beneficiary, her disappearance.

  As luck would have it, on one of Hreapha’s frequent visits to the beaver pond to visit with her friends there and make sure they were all right, she encountered once again that audacious bobcat who had previously killed one of the beaver kits and had apparently not been sufficiently deterred by the whipping Hreapha had given it. Hreapha wasn’t in the mood for further fighting; her body still ached and hurt from the time the man had kicked her into the beaver pond; but she resented the bobcat for not having learned its lesson in the first fight. So she attacked it again, and not only drove it away from the beaver pond but chased it for some distance through the woods. It was apparently trying to reach the safety of its den or lair when it stepped upon, or was attacked by, a copperhead snake. Copperheads are just as venomous as rattlesnakes, if not more so, and Hreapha had long learned to give them both a wide berth. The bitten bobcat staggered on toward its den, which was actually a nest of leaves in a hollow log, but just managed to reach the opening to the log when the venom took full effect and the bobcat crumpled and, calling out a sound that was like a dying calf’s, expired. Hreapha nudged it with her nose to make sure it was absolutely lifeless.

  The dying-calf sound came again, and Hreapha thought possibly the bobcat was still alive, but when she looked into the hollow log, there was a bobkitten, a lone bobkitten, saying woo again and again. Hreapha’s first thought was to wonder if Robin would object to a kitten who said woo instead of meow. The bobkitten, oblivious or indifferent to Hreapha’s presence, came out of the hollow log and attempted to nurse from its dead mother. Hreapha was touched. Poor kitty, she said. Where’s your brothers and sisters? It occurred to her that a feline as large as a bobcat might not have a litter of more than one or two.

  Hreapha waited until the poor kitty had discovered that it wasn’t going to be able to get any milk from the dead mother, and then she gently chomped the nape of the kitten’s neck, lifted it, and began the trek back home. The kitten remained motionless, as if paralyzed by the clasp of its neck in Hreapha’s jaws. But when eventually Hreapha reached home and set the kitten down in order to announce her return and her gift, the kitten attempted to run away, and Hreapha had to chase and catch it and seize its neck again. She mounted the porch and scratched at the door. Because of the bobkitty in her mouth, she couldn’t call out “Hreapha!” meaning Happy Birthday, but she could scratch the door and whimper, and finally Robin opened the door.

  And you never saw such an astonished expression on anybody’s face! “What have you caught, Hreapha?” she said. “Is it alive?”

  To demonstrate its possession of life, Hreapha gently set it down, and it immediately hollered WOO! WOO! WOO! and ran under the davenport.

  “GURFLAGE!” yelled the man. “Laud faint bub cut! Wul sought my hide!”

  Robin was full of questions which, alas, Hreapha could not answer, the chief one being “What is it?” but also “Where did you get it?” “How old is it?” “Is it a boy or a girl?” She got down on her knees and peered under the davenport and studied it closely. And began to answer her own questions: “It’s some kind of kitty. Hreapha must have found it somewhere. It’s just a baby. And I think it’s a boy. Come on out, kitty. Here kitty kitty.”

  “BUB CUT!” yelled the man. “Glodge plairn fugadaze!”

  “Can I keep him?” Robin asked.

  “Wul hail far hit’sa wile beast,” the man said.

  Robin had succeeded in fishing the critter out from under the davenport and was cradling it in her arms, where it began to purr.

  “Hreapha,” said Hreapha, that is, Happy Birthday.

  “Thank you so much,” Robin said. “It’s the best birthday present I ever had.”

  Having determined, despite the man’s atrocious mispronunciation, that it was a bobcat kitten, Robin decided to name him “Robert.” She fetched one of her dollbaby’s bottles, which had a real nipple on it. She filled it with Pet Milk, and her new pet had its first meal in Robin’s arms.

  “Floszh,” commented the man. Then he slowly and painfully rose to his feet and, taking one of his bottles, went off to bed, or, since the feather mattress was being aired in the yard from an accumulation of his markings upon it, his pallet on the floor.

  “Thank you for the Ouija Board and everything,” she called to him, but he did not respond. He proceeded to guzzle the bottle.

  Robert the kitten continued guzzling his bottle, and at length fell asleep. Robin set him down on a corner of the davenport. “I’ll show you my other presents,” Robin said to Hreapha. And she show
ed her the dress and the sweaters and the toys, including the Ouija Board, which she set up on the floor, suggesting, “Let’s see if you can play. Can you put one of your paws on this?” And she took one of Hreapha’s forefeet and set it upon a kind of miniature table with three legs. “Now I will ask a question, and put my fingertips here beside your paw, and this planchette will start moving until it finds the answer. Okay? I’ve already asked it how to spell your name and it spelled it out, H-R-E-A-P-H-A. So I know that’s your real name, and you’ll never be ‘Bitch’ again. Let’s ask it: How many years will Hreapha live?”

  Hreapha felt the planchette, as it was called, moving beneath her paw and she was prompted to bark. But she watched with fascination as the planchette moved to the numeral 1 and then to the numeral 9.

  “Wow!” Robin said. “Nineteen years is a long life for a dog. Okay? How many years will I live?”

  The planchette moved to the 8 and just stayed there.

  “Oh-oh!” Robin commented. “This is scaring me. Does this mean that I’m going to die before my ninth birthday?” But the planchette was not absolutely motionless. It was moving but never departing from the 8, just circling it. Hreapha wished she could explain to Robin that that might mean it was doing the same numeral twice, that is, not 8 but 88. Robin would live to be eighty-eight years old.

  “Let’s ask it something else,” Robin suggested, but she was clearly disturbed at the thought she might not live beyond this, her eighth year. “Would you like to find out who you will marry? Of course dogs don’t have weddings, but would you like to know who your mate will be?”