The Nearly Complete Works, Volume 2

by Donald Harington

  Like what? He wanted to know.

  Chasing coons, she said. She explained that while he and his sisters and brothers weren’t really coon hounds—or any other kind of raccoon dog, for that matter, they probably had instincts for chasing coons and foxes and squirrels, not for man’s benefit but for their own.

  What’s a instinct? Hrolf wanted to know. Hrothgar’s end stinks but mine don’t.

  Hreapha chuckled. You can’t smell an instinct. It’s something you’re born with, something you don’t have to learn, something that tells you what to do, makes you do what you do without even thinking about it.

  Hrolf thought about that for a while, and then he asked, Is Adam an instinct?

  No, he’s an in-habit. You can’t smell him either. And you sure can’t see him, but you can hear him, can’t you?

  I sure can, Hrolf said. He talks to me a lot.

  Does he? asked Hreapha. What does he talk about?

  He tells me what a good dog I am. And that time when the thunderstorm came and scared the piss out of all the rest of you he told me not to be afraid because it was just noise and it wouldn’t do me no harm.

  You’re his favorite dog, she said. You’re mine too but don’t tell any of them I said that. Thunder doesn’t scare you, and even snakes don’t scare you, but you’d better listen to me, boy, snakes can kill you if you mess with the wrong kind. Thunder can’t hurt you but snakes can bite you to death.

  I just don’t like them thinking they own the place.

  They don’t own it, but you don’t either.

  Hreapha’s biggest problem in the education of her offspring was trying to teach them that all of this vast wilderness in which they lived was not theirs to defend. There were even limits to how far they should mark up the immediate neighborhood—Adam’s haunt—to establish their territory, and they had to know those limits, and if other creatures encroached upon their territory they had to be willing to share. Hreapha herself didn’t like the encroachment, and she still remembered that incident of the hawk who had tried to attack the chickens (a story she had told more than once to her pups, at their request), but she did her best to instill in her brood a knowledge of the difference between harmful and benevolent creatures, while assuring them that even the most harmful creature doesn’t consider itself harmful, that a rattlesnake is just doing its job with its instinctive behavior and theoretically has just as much right to be here as we do. Still, it is good to know the difference between a rattlesnake and a king snake, the latter not only unafraid of the former and immune to its poison but also not poisonous itself. In fact, Hreapha was seriously considering giving Robin a baby king snake for her next birthday, which was coming up soon. It would make an excellent pet.

  The present she’d given Robin for her previous birthday was getting rather stale. Robert spent less and less of his time around the house these days. Possibly, Hreapha realized, he was out searching the forest for a female. Or he was certainly searching the forest for food, since Robin was not able to feed him anything any more. They had made clear to him that he was not ever even to think about eating one of the chickens, and he had certainly become so friendly with the beaver family on his many visits to the beaver pond with Robin and the others that he would never consider recognizing his mother’s instinctive appetite for beaver. Robert was sometimes gone for weeks. He’d always come back, with no stories to tell or any sign of having been in a fight or an adventure of any kind. The young dogs were always glad to see him, despite their instinctive aversion for felines. And Robin always picked him up and held him and listened to him purr, and Robert still loved her, but he wasn’t truly a pet any more and it was time Robin had a new one.

  The young dogs were quickly growing almost as large as Robert was, and he was practically full grown. Hreapha realized that soon she would have to honor her promise to take them hunting for something larger than the squirrels and rabbits they were constantly catching for supper in the nearby forest. Hrothgar especially needed some excitement. Early in life he had developed a compulsion to chase his tail and even to inflict bites upon it, and she needed to provide some exercise for the lad.

  All of them had a regular chore which gave them a certain amount of useful activity; Hreapha called it the garbage detail. Trash and empty tin cans regularly accumulated in the house, and Robin, who wasn’t a very neat housekeeper, usually just tossed them out the door. Hreapha taught her brood how to dig holes at a distance from the house and bury the garbage and then cover it up.

  I don’t get it, Hrolf had complained, the first time his mother introduced him to this accomplishment. What good does it do me, since I don’t even get to eat anything from the cans any more?

  Hrolfie, we must always do anything and everything we can to make life easier for Mistress.

  Why can’t she bury her own garbage? I’ve seen her using a shovel.

  Listen, boy, and don’t ever forget: she is Mistress and we must honor her and worship her and sacrifice for her and please her.

  Whether he passed that message along to his siblings or not, there weren’t any more complaints about their chores.

  Hreapha did have a bit of a problem teaching them something that basically ran against their instincts: that they must never harm deer, especially not fawns. She taught them that fawns have no scent, and because the coloring of their coats looks like the leaves and stuff in which they sit, they often cannot be seen. Their mothers deliberately leave them all alone out in the open, because the mothers don’t want their own scent to draw any predators. So if Hreapha’s young dogs should happen upon a fawn, they should treat it like a copperhead or rattlesnake and stay away from it.

  That’s not fair! Hrolf protested. They really look good to eat! My instincts tell me to eat them!

  Listen, the reason you are not merely a dumb dog but an intelligent canine is that you can use your head and convince yourself that fawns are too innocent and beautiful to be eaten, regardless of what your instincts are telling you.

  Hreapha considered capturing an orphaned fawn and presenting it to Robin as a ninth birthday pet, but she decided to wait until Robin’s tenth, or even, if a king snake were presented for the tenth, the eleventh. By the age of eleven Robin would fully appreciate the young deer and would know how to provide a home for it without completely domesticating it…just as Robert’s long residence in the company of a human had not, apparently, taken away his wildness.

  So it was decided, eventually, practically on the eve of the birthday (again determined with help from the Ouija Board), that Robin’s ninth birthday present would be a baby raccoon. The woods of Madewell Mountain were not exactly teeming with raccoons—a coon needs at least two hundred acres to itself—but they were out there, and Hreapha had entertained her pups endlessly by speaking of the out there and all it contained. She would never tell them of the many trips she had taken with the man to the large towns far away, because she didn’t want them to feel deprived of something they might never experience in their lives. And she hadn’t yet told them about the tiny village of Stay More. Only Hrolf had been curious about the identity of his father, and Hreapha was surprised that he had even learned the concept of “father” without yet knowing anything about reproduction. She had answered his questions by describing what a beautiful beast Yowrfrowr was, and not simply beautiful, but intelligent beyond all comprehension.

  Where does he live? Hrolf wanted to know. Why can’t I go visit him?

  Someday you can, she told him. But it’s a long ways off, and nearly impossible to get to.

  Often, at night, if they listened carefully, they could hear the distant calling of the coyotes, a sound which always excited Yipyip, who would prance around speaking his name whenever he heard it. Hreapha had explained to them that a coyote is an attractive but uncouth dog and that a pack of them prowled the forests out there. Hreapha hoped that the coyotes would never come around here, and she hoped it would be a long time before her young dogs would have to fight them. Just as
her own mother had done for her, Hreapha had taught her pups all the skills of fighting, and they sparred with each other constantly and sometimes with her. Hrolf wasn’t the best fighter. In a tussle between Hrolf and Yipyip, the latter was usually top dog. So Hreapha knew that if the time ever came when her dogs had to fight the coyotes, the coyotes would probably win.

  Raccoons are vicious fighters, and the first time Hreapha took the dogs coon hunting they not only failed to kill any of the quarry they encountered, but they themselves, Hreapha included, came away scratched and bloody. And the coons had an unfair advantage in that they could climb trees. Hrolf once remarked, If God had allowed dogs to climb trees, we would be the lords of the earth.

  Where did you hear about God? Hreapha wondered.

  Mistress talks about Him, Hrolf said. He’s the one who made me and you and everything.

  But the second time they went coon hunting, knowing what to expect and even practicing in advance, they tracked a coon until it came to a clearing, without a tree in easy reach, and all six of them pounced upon it at once, killed it quickly, and ate as much of it as they could separate from its fur. They decided that coon is much more palatable than possum or squirrel. The latter, after all, is just a rodent, while the raccoon is cousin to the bear. Speaking of bears, they had occasionally come across some bear scat, and learned the scent, and they knew that there was a family of black bear somewhere out there, but Hreapha knew they would have to wait a long time before they were big enough, strong enough, and smart enough, not to say brave enough, to go bear-hunting.

  The raccoon was enough for now, and kept their bellies full for days. On their way home from the feast, Hrolf picked up another raccoon scent, or thought he did, and while none of them had any appetite remaining, out of curiosity he traced the scent to a hollow tree, explored it, and came running back to report, Ma, there’s some baby coons in that tree!

  There were three of them. They were very young, their eyes not yet open, and Hreapha, understanding that their mother had just been killed and eaten by ravenous dogs, knew that the babes still had to be suckled for weeks before they could manage on their own. They were orphans. Their father was probably still in the vicinity, perhaps watching at this very moment, and while raccoon fathers help in the rearing of their young they would only eat any young who lost their mothers. Hreapha had not intended to give Robin three birthday presents, but she couldn’t very well choose which one to take and leave the other two. So she instructed Hroberta and Hruschka to gently lift two of them by the nape of the neck, and she took the third herself, and thus they carried the three baby raccoons quite a distance back to the homestead.

  “Hreapha!” Hreapha said to Robin, that is, “Happy Birthday!” And each of the other dogs wished her a Happy birthday too. “Hrolf!” “Hroberta!” “Hrothgar!” “Hruschka!” “Yipyip!” It was quite a chorus.

  “Good heavens, what are they?” Robin wanted to know, which reminded Hreapha of Robin’s first response to the sight of Robert. Baby raccoons appear more like the mature coon—just a smaller version—than baby pups resemble dogs. Their distinctive facial markings are already clearly in place. Hreapha realized that perhaps Robin had never seen a raccoon before and had no idea what they were. It didn’t matter. Creatures don’t have to have names to be appreciated.

  Robin attempted to nurse the raccoon kits with the same doll baby bottle she’d used on baby Robert. “I’ve only got a couple of cans of Pet Milk left,” she said.

  Adam’s voice became present: It aint a good idee to hold ’em like that, he told her. Upside down they might choke on the milk. Hold ’em right side up, on their bellies.

  “What are they, Adam?” she asked him.

  Baby coons, he said. I used to have one. Raised it till it was full growed, but it was so full of mischief my dad took it away off into the woods and let it go. Or maybe he kilt it.

  Whether because the Pet Milk was used up, or because it wasn’t right for the kits in the first place (raccoons can’t drink cow’s milk, Adam told her), two of the kits perished before a week was out. Hreapha instructed her pups to bury them. The third one struggled on, opening its eyes and managing to crawl around and even to grasp one of Robin’s fingers. But it was sickly for a long time, until Robin could get it to take some mashed up apples (Robin had done a good job of getting the orchard to produce this year, with just a little help from her book and from Adam). Maybe the sugar in the apples was all the kit needed, and it began to perk up. Robin gradually added to its diet some Osage oranges, or “horse apples” as Adam called them: the huge fruit of the bois d’arc. And before long, it (or she, for it was clearly a female) was well, and eating anything they could find for it.

  Robin named the baby raccoon Ralgrub, explaining to Hreapha (who in turn explained it to her brood) that it was “burglar” spelled backward. The facial markings, she said, resembled a mask worn by burglars, who are people that sneak into buildings to steal things. As she grew up, Ralgrub would often do that; sneak into the house and steal things.

  Ma, when it’s my birthday will you give me a baby animal? Hrolf wanted to know. Something I can eat?

  Don’t you ever think of anything except your stomach? she chided him, but instantly realized that wasn’t kind. Of all her young, Hrolf was the most interested in things beside his stomach. Tell you what, she added, if you’re a good boy and behave yourself, on your birthday I’ll take you to visit your father.

  Really? he said. Really truly promise cross your heart?

  She had let it slip out, and couldn’t take it back. The slipping out was probably an indication of how much she herself wanted to see Yowrfrowr again. She had hoped that he might want to see her—and his offspring—and might somehow be able to leave home long enough to search for her. Whatever markings she had left along the trail were long evaporated; she had told him the general location of the Madewell place, and if he wanted to, he could find it. But he was devoted to his mistress and wouldn’t leave her.

  Hrolf, we’ll just have to see. Your father lives in a place called Stay More. It isn’t too awfully far from here, but it’s almost impossible to reach. You once said, If God had allowed dogs to climb trees, we would be the lords of the earth. No, we wouldn’t. God would have had to allow you to take wing and fly. The only real way you could get to Stay More easily would be to fly there. If we could fly, I’d take you there tomorrow. But we have to go on foot, and Mistress herself couldn’t possibly do it. Ask Adam to tell you about that trail. Or to tell you what it was like when he could use it to get to school. If he tried to use it today, he’d be out of luck.

  Part Four

  Within

  Chapter thirty-one

  I was out of luck the last time I tried to use that trail when I was a kid. I had used it so often through the third grade of school that I could have used it blindfolded, which is what my morning use of it had amounted to, anyhow, since I’d always had to set out from home well before sunup in order to make the journey before time o’books, which was eight o’clock. I made that journey so many times in the dark that I might as well have closed my eyes. I’ll never forget the very first time I made it, the only time I wasn’t alone. Grampaw took me. I was six years old, and it was August during the war years, and I had heard Grampaw and Paw arguing the day before over whether I was to be allowed to go or not. Paw had quit going to the school before he’d finished the third grade and had not been promoted to the fourth, not because he wasn’t smart and not because he was a troublemaker, but simply because he could not—or would not—learn how to read. He had no use for it, he always said. There was no earthly reason why a feller had to know how to look at a bunch of squiggly marks and tell what words they stood for. Words, if used at all, was meant to be spoken, not figured out of some squiggly marks. He was not going to let me start school either, despite my mother’s tears, she who’d never been known to shed any. But Grampaw, who lived in a shed (long gone now) behind his cooperage, and was still very much in char
ge of the homeplace he’d built as well as the cooperage, told my father, “For you to keep that boy out of school because you failed at it yourself would be like me keeping you away from coopering because I was fourteen before I could hammer and drive a barrel myself.”

  And it was Grampaw who came into the house before the others were awake and shook me and told me to get dressed. He had a coal-oil lantern, and I followed single-file along after him, barefoot because I had no shoes, as he led me on the narrow trail which I hadn’t even known existed. He told me he’d blazed that trail himself when he’d anticipated going for the doctor to assist Grandma in her labor for the birth of my father. The job had taken him three weeks with axe and shovel and he was prouder of it than he had been years earlier making the road up the north side of his mountain that had allowed him to get his team and wagon in and out, up the steep winding road and back again. He’d had to practically carve the cliffside into a ledge wide enough for the wagon wheels (a ledge eventually fallen away and constricted into the narrow path that Sog Alan had been required to use). Every week he—and during my growing-up years, my father in his stead—drove a wagonload of finished barrels, lashed together to keep them from falling off the wagon, across that precarious ledge and down that crooked road and onward for many miles to Harrison, where he sold them, making just enough money to buy whatever was needed to live on until the next shipment of barrels could be made and loaded and hauled. He told me that making that original road—he’d called it the North Way—had been much easier than making the trail we were now using, the South Way, which, although it was not wide enough for a wagon and team and scarcely even wide enough for a person as big as Grampaw, had taken not just an awful lot of physical effort but considerable trial-and-error surveying of the best possible—in some places the only possible—route. He told me he’d jokingly said to Grandma, “Laurie, I reckon it’ll be a real tribulation for you to birth that baby but most of the labor was mine.” There was one spot on the trail so steep that he related how he’d had to tie a rope around the doctor’s waist to haul him up—although now you could hold on to the branches of shrubs and trees on either side to raise and lower yourself. In such places, I had to keep my hands free by gripping in my teeth the bail of the dinner pail my mother had filled for me: hard-boiled eggs, a big tomato, a roasting ear, some cornbread and a bit of meat, probably possum.