The Yearling

by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

  He hesitated over the strangeness, then touched his finger to the hot savory meat and put his finger in his mouth.

  He said, “’Tis good.”

  The men laughed, but he ate two slices.

  Penny said, “Now some folks’d say hit’d make you fearless, eatin’ wild-cat liver. We’ll jest see.”

  Buck said, “Dogged if it don’t smell fine. Give a mite here.”

  He sampled it and agreed that it was as good as any other liver. Mill-wheel ate a portion then but Penny refused.

  “If I was to git any braver,” he said, “I’d be rompin’ on you Forresters and gittin’ Hell beat out o’ me agin.”

  They passed the bottle once more. The fire blazed, the meat dripped its juices into the flames, the fragrance eddied up with the smoke. The sun set behind the scrub oaks and Mill-wheel’s swamp cabbage was done. Penny emptied it on a clean palm frond and put it over a smoldering log to keep warm. He wiped out the frying pan with a handful of moss and set it back over the coals to heat. He sliced bacon into it. When the bacon was brown and the fat sizzling hot, he fried the thin slices of backstrap crisp and tender. Buck cut scoops from the palm stems and every one dipped, share and share alike, into the swamp cabbage. Penny made hush-puppies of meal and salt and water and fried them in the fat the venison had cooked in.

  Buck said, “Now if I knowed they’d feed you this good in Heaven, I’d not holler when I die.”

  Mill-wheel said, “Rations tastes a heap better in the woods. I’d ruther eat cold bread in the woods than hot puddin’ in the house.”

  “Now you know,” Penny said, “the same dog bit me.”

  The cat-meat was done. They cooled it a little and threw it to the dogs. The dogs bolted it greedily, then went to the pond to drink. They prowled about for a time, excited by the varying scents, then returned to lie by the blazing camp-fire in the increasing chill of the evening. Buck and Mill-wheel and Jody had stuffed. They dropped flat on their backs and stared up into the sky.

  Penny said, “Flood or no flood, this is fine. I want you fellers to promise me one thing. When I’m an old man, set me on a stump and leave me listen to the hunt. Don’t go off and leave me in the bay.”

  Stars twinkled, the first in nine days. Penny stirred at last to clean up the debris. He tossed the dogs the left-over cornmeal patties. He put the corncob stopper back in the bottle of fat. He held it up to the firelight. He shook it.

  He said, “I’ll be blasted. We’ve et my rubbin’ medicine.”

  He pawed in the crocus sack and brought out the other bottle and opened it. It held unmistakably the lard-oil.

  “Mill-wheel, you jay-bird. You opened the panther oil for the swamp cabbage.”

  There was silence. Jody felt his stomach turn over.

  Mill-wheel said, “How’d I know ’twas panther oil?”

  Buck swore under his breath. Then he burst into a thunderous laughter.

  “I ain’t goin’ to let my imagination quarrel with what goes in my belly,” he said. “I never et better swamp cabbage.”

  “Nor me,” Penny said. “But when my bones gits to achin’, I’ll wish ’twas back where it come from.”

  Buck said, “Anyways, we know what to use for grease when we git ketched in the woods.”

  Jody’s stomach quieted. After two slices of wild-cat liver, it would be poor business to be squeamish. But the panther oil did seem different, after having seen Penny rub it on his knees on winter evenings.

  Mill-wheel said, “Well, I’ll cut ever’body boughs for beds, long as I’m the one’s in disgrace.”

  Penny said, “I’ll come with you. If I was to go to sleep and raise up and see you in the bushes, I’d figger ’twas a bear, shore. I’ll swear, I don’t see how some o’ you fellers growed so big.”

  Mill-wheel said, “Why, hell, we was raised on panther oil.”

  Every one went in high humor to cut his own bed. Jody broke small pine boughs with the needles on them and gathered moss for a mattress. They laid the pallets close to the fire. The Forresters lay down on their boughs with a crashing sound.

  Penny said, “Now I’ll bet ol’ Slewfoot don’t make that much fuss when he lays down.”

  Buck said, “And I’ll bet you kin hear a June bird goin’ to bed a heap further’n one o’ you Baxters.”

  Mill-wheel said, “I wisht I had me a sack o’ corn shucks now for a mattress.”

  Penny said, “The best bed I ever had was one made o’ the fluff from cat-tail rushes. Hit were like lyin’ on a cloud. But it takened a time to gather enough cat-tails.”

  Buck said, “The best bed in all the world is a feather bed.”

  Penny said, “Ary one ever tell you fellers about the time your daddy raised pure hell with a feather bed?”

  “Tell it.”

  “Hit were before you were borned. Mebbe two-three of you was back in the house some’eres in cradles. I were jest a leetle ol’ young un myself. I come over to your island with my own daddy. Reckon mebbe he come to try to give your Pa salvation. When he was young, your Pa was wilder’n you-all. He could tip a jug o’ corn liquor back and drink it down like water. And he done so, in them days, right frequent. Well, we rode up to your door and here was broke dishes and rations all strowed down the walk, and chairs pitched over the gate. And all over the yard, and all along the fence row, was feathers. Looked as if chicken Heaven had done blowed up. Layin’ on the stoop was the tickin’ o’ the feather bed where it had been split open with a knife.

  “Your daddy come to the gate. Now I won’t say he was drunk, but he shore had done been drunk. He’d tore up ever’thing had takened his eye. And the last thing he noticed was the feather bed. Now he wa’n’t mad nor quarrelin’. He was jest havin’ him a big time crackin’ things open. He’d got all over it, and was peaceful and happy as could be. Now what your Ma was doin’ and sayin’ whilst he was at it, you’d know better’n me. But right now she was still, and cold as ice. She was settin’ rockin’ with her hands folded and her mouth like a steel trap. My daddy had sense, if he was a preacher, and I reckon he figgered another time’d be best for whatever ’twas he’d come to say. So he jest passed the time o’ day and set out to ride on agin.

  “Well, your Ma come to and remembered her manners and called out to him. ’Stay eat with us, Mr. Baxter,’ she said. ‘I got nothin’ left to offer you but corn-pone and honey. If I kin find a whole plate for you to eat on.’

  “Your Pa turned and looked at her, surprised.

  “’Honey,’ he said, ’honey, is there any honey in the honey-jug?’”

  The Forresters shouted and slapped each other.

  Buck said, “Wait ’til I walk in and ask Ma, ’Honey, is there any honey in the honey-jug?’ Oh, wait!”

  Jody laughed to himself long after the Forresters were quiet. His father made a story so real, he could see the feathers still, blown against the split-rail fence. The dogs, roused by the laugher, stirred and changed their positions. They had edged close for the warmth of the humans and of the fire. Old Julia lay at his father’s feet. He wished Flag were with him, to snuggle close with his smooth warm coat. Buck rose and pulled another log on the fire. The men began to talk of the probable movements of the scrub and swamp animals. The wolves were evidently moving in another direction from the rest of the animals. They disliked wet sections even more than the big cats and were no doubt in the heart of the high scrub. Bear had not been as plentiful as expected.

  Buck said, “You know where the bears be? South in the scrub around Sellers Bear Hole and Squaw Pond Bear Hole.”

  Mill-wheel said, “Tollie’s Hammock, I’ll bet you, toward the river.”

  Penny said, “They’ll not be south. The wind and rain the last days all come from the southeast. They’d put it behind ’em, not go into it.”

  Jody put his arms under his head and looked up into the sky. It was as thick with stars as a pool of silver minnows. Between the two tall pines over him, the sky was milky, as though Trixie had kick
ed a great bucket of milk foaming across the heavens. The pines swayed back and forth in a light cool breeze. Their needles were washed with the silver of the starlight. Smoke from the camp-fire eddied up and joined the stars. He watched it drift through the pine tops. His eyelids fluttered. He did not want to go to sleep. He wanted to listen. The hunting talk of men was the finest talk in the world. Chills went along his spine to hear it. The smoke against the stars was a veil drawn back and forth across his eyes. He closed them. For a moment the talk of the men was a deep droning against the snapping of the wet wood. Then it faded into the sound of the breeze in the pines, and was no longer sound, but the voiceless murmur of a dream.

  He was awakened in the night by his father, sitting bolt upright. Buck and Mill-wheel were snoring heavily. The fire had died low. The wet wood was sizzling slowly. He sat up beside Penny.

  Penny whispered, “Listen.”

  Far in the night an owl hooted and a panther screamed. There was a closer sound. It sounded like the air dying from a bellows.

  “Whoo—oo—. Whoo—oo—oo. Whoo—oo—oo.”

  It seemed almost at their feet. Jody’s flesh crept. It might be Fodder-wing’s Spaniard. Were ha’nts susceptible, like mortals, he wondered, to flood and rain? Did they yearn to warm their thin transparent hands at a hunter’s campfire? Penny eased himself to his feet and fumbled for a pine knot for a torch. He lit it at the fire and started forward cautiously. The sighing sound had ceased. Jody followed close behind him. There was a rustling. Penny swung the torch. A pair of eyes, red as a bull-bat’s, caught the light. He shifted the light. He laughed. The visitor was an alligator from the pond.

  He said, “He smelt the fresh meat. Now wouldn’t I love to drop him on top o’ them Forresters.”

  Jody said, “Was it him, makin’ that sighin’?”

  “It were him, breathin’ and blowin’ and raisin’ hisself up and down.”

  “Let’s torment Buck and Mill-wheel with him.”

  Penny hesitated.

  “He’s a mite big for funnin’. He’ll go six feet. If he was to take a chunk outen one of ’em, hit’d be a sorry joke.”

  “Will we kill him?”

  “No use. We’ll be gittin’ meat for the dogs and to spare. ’Gators is harmless things.”

  “You goin’ to leave him blow around all night?”

  “No, for he’d quit blowin’ and go to huntin’ that meat he smells.”

  Penny made a rush at the alligator. It lifted its body on its short legs and turned back toward the pond. Penny ran after it, stopping to pick up sand or whatever came under his hand to throw after it. It ran with amazing speed. Penny followed, and Jody behind him, until a splash sounded at some distance.

  “There. He’s back with his kin folks. Now do he be polite enough to stay there, we’ll not bother him.”

  They turned back to the camp-fire. It glowed comfortingly in the darkness. The midnight was still. The stars were so bright that when they looked away from the fire, they could see the water shining in the ponds. The air was cool. Jody wished that he could camp always like this, with his father. All that he lacked was Flag beside him. Penny moved the torch across the Forresters. Buck threw his arm across his face, but slept on. Mill-wheel was flat on his back. His black beard lifted and fell with his heavy breathing.

  “He blows near about as deep as a ’gator,” Penny said.

  They piled more wood on the fire and returned to their pallets. They did not seem as comfortable as when they had first lain down on them. They shook up the moss and tried to flatten the pine boughs. Jody made a nest for himself in the middle and curled up kitten-wise. He lay a few luxurious moments watching the fresh blaze, then fell into a sleep as deep as the first.

  The dogs were the first to awaken at daybreak. A fox had crossed under their noses, leaving its rank taint fresh on the air. Penny jumped up and caught them and tied them.

  “We got bigger business today than fox,” he told them.

  From where he lay, Jody could look straight across into the sunrise. It was strange to see it on a level with his face. At home the thick scrub growth beyond the cleared fields obscured it. Now there was only a morning fog between. The sun did not seem to rise, but to sweep forward through a gray curtain. The curtain began to part its folds for the passing. The light was the thin pale gold of his mother’s wedding ring. It grew brighter and brighter until he found himself blinking into the very face of the sun. The light September fog clung tenaciously a little while to the tops of the trees, as though resisting the tearing and destructive fingers of the sun. Then it too was gone and the whole east was the color of ripe guavas.

  Penny called, “I need somebody to he’p find the panther oil so I kin cook breakfast.”

  Buck and Mill-wheel sat up. They were stiff from their heavy sleep.

  Penny said, “The ’gators and the foxes has been runnin’ right acrost you fellers.”

  He told of the night’s encounter.

  Buck said, “You shore ’twasn’t one o’ them swamp skeetters you seed, after Doc Wilson’s liquor?”

  “A foot less, and I’d say mebbe. But not scarcely six feet.”

  “Oh, yes. Why, I went to sleep on a camp like this oncet, and I dreamed I heered a skeeter buzzin’, and when I waked up, here was me and my bed both, hangin’ up on a snag in a cypress swamp.”

  Penny called Jody to wash his face and hands at the pond’s edge. When they reached the water, the stench turned them back.

  Penny said comfortably, “Well, our dirt is nothin’ but wood-smoke. Even your Ma wouldn’t make you wash in that kind o’ water.”

  Breakfast was the same as supper, except that there was no more swamp cabbage with panther oil. Again the Forresters substituted a draught of whiskey for the missing coffee. Penny refused it. The pond water was not fit to drink and Jody was thirsty. In a world so full of water, it had occurred to no one to carry it.

  Penny said, “You watch for a holler log is well off the ground, and has rain water in it. Rain water’s allus fitten.”

  The fried and roasted venison and the hush-puppies did not taste as good as the night before. Penny cleaned up after breakfast. Grazing for the horses had been poor because the grasses were beaten flat. Jody gathered armfuls of moss for them and they ate it with relish. Breaking camp, mounting, turning the heads of the horses south, was the beginning of a fresh journey. Jody looked over his shoulder. The camp site was desolate. The charred logs, the gray ashes, were forlorn. The magic had died out with the flames of the camp-fire. The morning had been cool but the climbing sun began to heat the day. The earth steamed. The stench of the polluted waters was often overpowering.

  Penny, in the lead, called back, “I wonder, kin the creeturs’ bellies stand this rotten water?”

  Buck and Mill-wheel shook their heads. The flood was unprecedented in the scrub. No man could tell what would come of it. The cavalcade continued steadily south.

  Penny called to Jody, “Remember where we seed the whoopin’ cranes dancin’ so purty?”

  Jody would not have recognized the prairie. It was a flat body of water, where even a crane might hesitate to wade and wander. Farther south was scrub again, then gallberry flats and bay-heads. But where marsh should be, was a lake. They reined in the horses. It was as though they had camped overnight on some strange borderland and had now come into another country. Fish were leaping in the air from water that a week ago had been land. And here, after all the miles, were the bears— They were fishing with an abandon that made them unaware of, or indifferent to, the approach of horses and riders. Two or three dozen black forms moved through the waters, belly-deep. Fish jumped ahead of them.

  Penny called, “Hit’s mullet!”

  But mullet, Jody thought, lived in the ocean. They lived in Lake George, with its touch of salt, its faint surge of tide. They lived in the tidal rivers, and in a few fresh-water rivers where flowing springs and swift currents pleased them as well as the ocean, and from which they might
leap, as they were doing now, in tensile silver arcs.

  Penny said, “Hit’s plain as day. Lake George backed up Juniper Creek, and the creek backed up, and the spring overflowed onto the parairie. And here’s mullet.”

  Buck said, “We got a new parairie then. Mullet Parairie. And look at them bears—”

  Mill-wheel said, “Hit’s bear Heaven. Well, men, how many do we want?”

  He sighted his rifle experimentally. Jody blinked his eyes. He had never seen so many bears at once in his life, except in dreams.

  Penny said, “Don’t let’s be hogs about it, even if ’tis bears.”

  Buck said, “Four’ll do us for a while.”

  “One’ll do the Baxters. Jody, you want to kill a bear?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well— Now men, if it’s agreeable, we’ll pick our shots here and spread out a leetle. Somebody’ll be obliged to git a second shot. Mebbe three, do Jody miss.”

  He assigned Jody the closest shot. It was a large fellow, probably a male.

  Penny said, “Now Jody, you ride to the left a mite, ’til you git a bead on his cheek. When I give the word, ever’body’ll fire. If he’s moved by that time, take the best head shot you kin git. And if his head’s down, and hid from you, aim for his middle and one of us’ll finish him after.”

  Buck and Mill-wheel indicated their choices and the group spread cautiously in both directions. Penny lifted his hand. They halted. Jody was trembling so violently that when he lifted his gun he could see nothing in front of him but a blur of water. He forced himself to steady his aim. His bear was quartering from him, but he was able to draw a bead on the left cheek from the rear. Penny dropped his hand. Guns barked. There was a second bombardment from Buck and Mill-wheel. The horses reared a little. Jody could not remember having pulled the trigger. But fifty yards in front of him a black body, that had been upright, lay half-sunk in the water.

  Penny shouted, “Nice shootin’, boy!” and rode forward.

  The remaining bears were scrambling across the swamp like paddle boats, churning the water behind them. It would take a long shot now to bring one down. Again Jody was amazed at the speed of the bulky bodies. The first shot of each man had been accurate and deadly. Buck and Mill-wheel had only wounded on their second shots. The dogs, kept at heel, broke into bedlam. They barked in a frenzy and dashed into the water. It was too deep for wading and too thick with growth for swimming. They were forced to retreat, shrill with frustration. The men rode in close on the two wounded animals. They fired again and the game lay still. The unharmed bears were vanishing before their eyes. No game was quicker or cleverer.