by Pamela Morsi
"You sure you remember how to load that thing, Oather?" Eben pointed to the fancy new Marlin repeater that he carried.
"I got one shot for the deer and one for you," Oather threatened. "So you'd better stay out of my line of fire."
Jesse gazed in disbelief at the two fractious men. They were arguing as if they were alone, so Jesse tried to pretend that he couldn't hear them. The fact that he could hear them perfectly and that he didn't like a thing that he heard was beside the point completely.
The Sweetwood Meadow was on the far side of the mountain near the peak. The area, whether by long-gone settlers or Indian farmers, had been partially denuded and cleared. The abandoned spot had been taken over by the first growths of forest, herbs and grasses, milkweed and thistles, and the short stubby sweet wood cedars from where it got its name. The spot was especially good hunting for foxes and quail. But it was very possible that a whitetail deer might venture that way.
It was a good long walk, which under normal circumstances would have been pleasant for Jesse. The two angry men beside him, however, precluded any enjoyment of the cloudy cold morning.
"I don't want you hanging around the store," Oather said to Eben. "I've told you before, but I'm warning you now, I don't want you around there."
"I don't see no signs posted there," Eben argued. "It seems to me a feller can loll about wherever he has a mind to."
"I think we both know why I don't want you there," Oather said, his eyes narrowing hatefully. "You've done enough already. I want you to leave her alone."
Jesse wondered curiously who she was that Eben was to leave alone. Could he mean Miss Althea? She didn't spend much time at the store at all. It was very puzzling.
Eben was silent for several moments. When he spoke again his tone was quieter, serious, and more thoughtful.
"I don't think I can do that, Oather," he said. "And I think it's time that we let go of this feud and dealt with each other honestly and honorably."
"Honorably?" Oather huffed in disbelief. "You don't know the meaning of the word. You've trod on our honor about as much as I'm going to stand. I don't know what I'll do about it. But mark my words, I ain't allowing anything more."
"I've been thinking a lot about things," Eben continued calmly. "I've been thinking about how things are, and what I've done. And I've been thinking that I'm going to let you have Althea."
"You're what?"
Jesse stared at Eben, just as surprised as Oather.
"I'm going to let you have Althea," he continued. "I know that you want to marry up with her real bad. I guess it would please your daddy a lot, so I'm stating here that I'm stepping aside."
"What are you up to?" Oather's voice was low and menacing.
"I ain't up to nothing, really," Eben said. He glanced around at the woods as if searching for something to hold his interest. "I talked with your sister," he admitted quietly. "And she convinced me that I should just step aside."
"You talked to her!" Oather's tone was furious. "I told you not to talk to her."
"I know that you did and I confess that you're right about that, I have no right after . . . after what happened way back then. Truly I should have kept my distance but, well, we was kind of thrown together at the hog killing and she actually spoke first."
Oather's eyes narrowed and his expression was suspicious.
Eben continued. "Mavis wants you to marry Althea," he said. "She knows it will please your father and that you really want to please him. And she thinks that maybe it will make you happy and she wants to make you happy."
Oather sneered, his reply was rife with sarcasm. "Mavis wants to make me happy, so you want to make me happy, is that the tale you're telling?"
"I ain't telling a tale at all, Oather," Eben assured him. "I'm just saying I'm stepping back and you can have Althea Winsloe and the farm and the all of it. I don't care nothing about it anymore."
"Well, thank you very much." Oather's tone had slipped from merely sarcastic to downright acerbic.
"Anyway, the point of this is," Eben finished, "you don't have to get this deer today. We all know you hate hunting. Jesse and I can bag it and we'll just tell Althea that you brought it to her. In another week you'll be wed and it won't make a lick of difference."
That seemed reasonable to Jesse.
"And what do you get from this?" Oather asked angrily. "My sister's honor? Her pride? Her life?"
Eben didn't answer.
"It's no trade, you mangy lowlife. Mavis is worth a lot more to me than marrying Althea Winsloe. Besides, I don't think you've won yet. I'm going to get this deer on my own and she's going to choose me over you. Then you can just go to the devil in the quickest conveyance."
"For lordy sakes, Oather, I'm trying to help you," Eben complained. "Mavis wanted me to."
"Well, I don't want you to. And I don't want you doing any favors for Mavis. If it weren't for you she might be happy now."
"Yep, she might be, if she weren't so damned worried about you."
Oather was startled by the accusation. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"You and your father, fighting all the time. The old man doesn't think much of you. You think you've got to prove yourself to him. Lord Almighty, Mavis loves you both and she's scared to death that the two of you are going to have a falling out that can't be repaired."
"You don't know nothing about me or my father or Mavis," Oather told him.
"I hurt Mavis," Eben acknowledged honestly. "I did plenty to her. I admit that. I'll even admit to hating myself for having done it. But it ain't me that's hurting her now, Oather. It's you. It's you and your father, not able to come to terms with who you are."
Eben's shots were right on target. Oather's anger floundered to uncertainty. "I suppose you're an authority on that. How long did it take you to come to terms with having a father who was a shiftless, worthless bum?"
Eben winced as if he'd been slapped. "A good long time, Oather," he answered. "A good long time. But I will tell you this. It's something that I just learned. My father was who he was. There's bad in him that I share and there's good in him that runs in me, too. There ain't nothing I can change about either of that. But my life is my own. I can't live up to him or live over him or even live like him. This life is mine and I've got to do with it what seems best for me."
Eben stopped Oather in his tracks and looked him in the eye. "You're a smart feller, Oather. Everybody on the mountain knows that. But sooner or later you're going to have to learn that you just can't be whatever it is your daddy wants of you. You're going to have to learn to be what manner of man that you are."
"Don't you be lecturing to me."
"I'm not lecturing, I'm trying to talk truth to you. I . . ." Eben's attention was momentarily diverted. "Did you see that?"
Oather's gaze followed Eben's. "What?"
"I saw a deer in that thicket, I think," Eben said, pulling his gun to the ready.
Oather did the same. “This is my deer, Eben Baxley," he snarled. "Don't you dare take a shot at it."
Eben ignored him and cocked his rifle. "Oather, you ain't got a shot off since you were a boy, there ain't a chance in this world for you to hit nothing."
"I said it was my deer," Oather snarled, readying his weapon. "It's my deer and I'm going to get it."
Both men held their guns aimed at the thicket, hammers drawn, eager and watchful.
Jesse was confused. His gun was still at his side and his brow was furrowed. With flaring nostrils he checked the air for scent. Eben couldn't have seen a deer. They were downwind from the thicket. Jesse knew he should be able to smell a deer that close and downwind.
He glanced down at the dogs. They hadn't even hesitated at the spot. Sawtooth was in the lead, his nose to the ground, Old Poker was right beside him. Neither showed interest in anything behind him. Runt was tagging along after. And Queenie was also heading straight ahead, unconcerned with either side of the path.
"There!" Eben cried aloud.
>
Jesse saw it, the white flash of a deer's tail. He pulled in the scent again. He glanced at the dogs. He looked back at Eben and Oather, both taking aim.
He knew then. Suddenly, clearly, he knew.
"NO!" he screamed, jumping toward the two men. "Don't shoot!"
Throwing himself in the firing line, Jesse pushed the rifles aside. Eben managed to hold his fire. Oather was not so quick and the gun flashed and fired; the bullet sped past Jesse's ear, hitting a nearby shagbark.
"What the devil?" Eben asked.
"Jesse, are you crazy? I could easily have shot you!" Oather's shock immediately turned to fear.
"There ain't no deer," he told them. His face was pale as death and his eyes were big as saucers.
"We saw it," Eben answered. "We both saw its tail a-flashing."
Jesse turned to the silence of the woods and hollered out in fury.
"Come here this minute!"
There was a crash of breaking underbrush and then a moment later a small boy emerged from beyond the forest path. His eyes wide, his step hurried as he answered the authoritative voice that called him.
"Oh, my God!" Oather cried out.
Eben stared in disbelief.
"We could have killed him," Oather whispered in horror. "I could have killed him."
Jesse walked straight over to Baby-Paisley, his eyes narrowed in fury. He jerked the deer tail-decorated hat from the child's head, grabbed the little fellow by the arm, and pulled him to the path.
"What are you doing here?" Jesse asked angrily as he squatted down to look at the boy eye to eye.
"I wanna go huntin'," was Baby-Paisley's answer.
Jesse handed the cap to Eben. "Get rid of this," he ordered.
Eben did as he was bid, ripping off the deer tail and throwing it as far as he could into the brush.
"How'd you get away from your mama?" Jesse asked.
"I ripped my shirt and snucked out when she went to get water," he admitted.
Oather Phillips had dropped to his knees upon the path and was vomiting. "I almost killed him. I almost killed a little child," he kept saying to himself.
"Do you know that your mama is probably scared to death right now?" Jesse asked him. "She's probably running and crying and looking for you."
The little boy hung his head guiltily.
"Your mama loves you more than anything else in this world and you hurt her," Jesse accused. "Do you understand that? You hurt her."
"I didn't mean to," the little boy said lamely.
"Men don't do that," he said sternly. "Men don't act that way. They don't run off or hurt the women that loves them. That's not the way men do. If you want to be a man, you can't do that neither."
"I'm sorry, Jesse," he said. "I'm real sorry."
"That sorry belongs to your mama, Paisley Winsloe," he told him. "I'm taking you back to her. I'm taking you back this very minute."
The little boy nodded, understanding.
Jesse pointed his finger gravely at the boy. "And don't you never, ever run off from your mama again. Do you understand me?"
"Yes, Jesse," he answered.
Jesse sighed heavily. "You scared me, too," he said. "I love you and you scared me, too."
The little boy began to cry. He threw himself into Jesse's arms.
"I'm sorry, Jesse. I'm real sorry," he whimpered.
Jesse hugged the boy to him tightly. His own eyes welled with tears. He couldn't ever let anything happen to this little boy. Not ever.
When Jesse rose to his feet, he set Baby-Paisley on the path before him. "You've got to go face your mama now and take what you deserve."
The little boy nodded bravely. "Yes, sir," he said.
Jesse turned to the two men with him. Eben was standing silently by. Oather was still doubled up, retching.
"I've got to take him back down the mountain," he said. "Miss Althea will be worrying herself crazy."
Eben nodded. "Go on, Jesse. I'll get Oather home," he said.
* * *
"This is the most foolhardy notion you've come up with yet!" Buell Phillips was raging as he paced across the room of the living quarters above the store. "You can't just up and leave."
"I can, Papa, and I am," Oather replied adamantly, his voice raised as loud as his father's. "It's what I should have done years ago."
The women in the house were quiet. Mavis was crying, almost silently. Lessy looked on and listened, apparently resigned. She'd packed her son a sack of vittles for the path. It was what a mother did when her son left home.
Oather was collecting his things, determinedly, efficiently. He was gathering together what he would not leave behind.
"If you think that you can just up and walk out of here whenever the spirit moves you, well, let me tell you this," Buell shouted, "you won't be welcomed back here like the prodigal son in thirty days."
Oather raised his chin in cold defiance. Today he was not to be cowered.
"Don't worry, there will be no need to kill the fatted calf, Papa," he said. "I won't be back in thirty days. I may never be back."
His mother stifled a gasp. Mavis moaned.
Frustration made Buell curse vividly. "There just ain't no talking to you. And there ain't no sense in this, no sense at all."
"There is every sense, Papa," Oather told him. "I almost killed someone today. Do you understand what that means to me? I almost killed an innocent little boy. Why? Because I was trying to be something that I am not."
"You were trying to get meat on the table," Buell said with rough rationality. "Accidents out hunting happen all the time. And this time nobody was even hurt."
"I was hurt," Oather answered. "I was hurt. I hate hunting. We both know that. I haven't carried a gun to the woods in years and we both know why. After the last time you forced me to go out, even you knew there was no sense in it. I don't like killing animals. I didn't go out there to put meat on anyone's table.”
“Buell couldn't argue that.
"I went out there today because it was what you wanted me to do. I went out there for you, Papa."
His son's declaration was disconcerting. "All right, all right, you don't have to hunt," Buell told him hastily. "I won't ever ask you to do it again."
"Maybe you won't ask that of me, Papa," Oather said. "But I know you'll always ask more than I can give. I went out there to prove that I'm the kind of son that you really want. But we already know the truth about that. You've been ashamed of me since the day I was born. I can't live up to what you want from me. I never have been able to, I never will be able to."
"I've never said that!" Buell snapped, incensed.
"You didn't have to say it," Oather answered. "I'm not like any man on this mountain. I think I've known that since I was a little boy. I'm not like any of them. And, Papa, I'm not like you. I've tried and I've tried, but I'm just not like you."
"So what does that matter?"
"It matters, Papa. It matters, because it matters to you."
The truth of his words momentarily halted his father's tirade. "Oather, don't leave like this." His still gruff voice had turned pleading.
"I have to, Papa," Oather said, more softly.
"No, no you don't," he insisted.
"I do," he said firmly. "I'm not like any man on this mountain, but I believe, no I think I know, that there are men like me. There are men like me somewhere and I'm going out there to find them."
Buell Phillips stood and stared at his son. His father's expression was so bleak, so heart-wrenching, that his son was momentarily torn.
Oather steeled himself not to give in to the need to please, to comfort.
"I don't ask you to love me, Papa," he said. "Or even to understand me. But I do ask you to let me go without a fight."
Gesturing toward his mother and sister, he pleaded, "Can't you see they're hurting, Papa? I'm hurting, too."
"You think I don't hurt?" Buell asked.
"I guess you do, Papa," Oather answered. "I guess it hurts
not to have the son that you want."
"You are the son that I want!"
"No, Papa."
"Listen to me! Listen!"
"I've been listening all my life," Oather answered.
"But you'd best listen now, 'cause I've never said this even to myself."
Silence filled the room. Everyone was listening. All of them. Listening. Waiting. Buell swallowed nervously. His face twisted in anguish as he sought the words.
Visibly, Buell's anger turned to determination. He appeared ready to speak, then he hesitated and directed his attention to the women.
"Mavis, Mrs. Phillips, could you please leave the room? I've important things to talk over with my son."
Mavis, her handkerchief clutched in her hand, looked ready to do as she was bid. Lessy Phillips surprisingly pulled out a chair from the table and seated herself.
Her husband's eyes widened in disbelief.
"He's my boy, too, Buell Phillips," she declared. "I'm not going to cower in the next room while you browbeat and berate him."
"I'm not going to browbeat or berate him," Buell answered gruffly.
She raised a brow in speculation and kept her seat.
“This is a personal discussion between a man and his son," he insisted sternly. "You've no call to get between it, Lessy."
"Maybe I have exactly," she shot back. "Maybe if I'd got between the two of you twenty years ago there'd be a bridge across the distance today."
"Woman, I—"
"Yell 'til you're hoarse if you like," she interrupted. "I'm not going nowhere."
Buell sputtered ineffectually for a moment and then leaned closer to his wife.
"Lessy, I'm not going to holler at the boy," he said quietly. "I don't want to drive him away."
"You can't drive him away, Buell," she answered. "He's leaving on his own. That's what's bothering you. You want him to make his own decisions, but when he does, you can't let him live with them."