“What else eats the berries, Pa?”
“The deer loves ’em. And leave me tell you, do you fill a demi-john with ’em and pour Cuby rum over ’em and leave ’em stand five months, you’ve got a drink would make even your Ma shout Hallelujah, could you oncet git it down her.”
Where the palmettos began to grow on higher land and merge into black-jack, Penny pointed out narrow trails leading into the gopher holes. The rattlesnakes had denned up for the winter but on warm bright days they came out for a few hours and sunned themselves near the holes. It seemed to Jody that all the invisible creatures of the scrub walked in plain sight before Penny’s eyes.
At the house, Jody helped him skin the deer and dress out the hides and the hindquarters, which would be the only salable portions. Ma Baxter fried the meat from the forequarters and put it down for keeping in its own fat. The bones and scraps were boiled in the wash-pot for the dogs. The family feasted that night on the hearts and livers. There was not much wasted on Baxter’s Island.
In the morning, Penny said, “We got to agree now, will we stay with Grandma Hutto tonight or come home. Do we spend the night, Jody’s got to stay here to milk and feed the dogs and chickens.”
Jody said, “Trixie’s near about dry, Pa. And we kin leave feed. Leave me go, but please let’s stay with Grandma Hutto.”
Penny said to his wife, “You want to stay there tonight?”
“No, I don’t. Her and me don’t never swop much honey.”
“Then we’ll not stay. Jody, you kin go, but no teasin’ to stay after we git there.”
“What must I do with Flag? Cain’t he foller along so Grandma kin see him?”
Ma Baxter burst out, “That blasted fawn! They ain’t never been such a nuisance on the place, even countin’ you.”
He said with hurt pride, “I reckon I’ll jest stay here with him.”
Penny said, “Now boy, tie up the creetur and fergit him. He ain’t a dog, he ain’t a young un, though you’ve near about made one outen him. You cain’t carry him places like a gal would a play-dolly.”
He tied Flag reluctantly in the shed and changed into clean clothes to go to Volusia. Penny was dressed in his broadcloth suit with the shrunken sleeves, with his black felt hat on top of his head. The roaches had eaten a hole in the brim, but it was after all a hat. He had no other except his wool hunting cap and his palmetto field hat. Jody was in his best, brogan shoes, homespun breeches, big wire-grass hat and a new black alpaca coat bound with red tape. Ma Baxter was clean and crisp in a new dress made of the blue and white checked gingham from Jacksonville. It was a darker blue than she wanted, but the check was pretty. She wore her blue sun-bonnet but carried her black frilled bonnet to put on when she should approach the village.
It was pleasant, jogging down the sand road in the wagon. Jody sat on the floor of the wagon body with his back against the seat. It was interesting to see the scrub drop away behind him as he watched it. The sense of progressing was more acute than when he faced forward. The wagon jolted and his thin rump felt bruised by the time they reached the river. He had nothing much to think about and he gave himself over to thoughts of Grandma Hutto. She would be surprised to know that he was angry with Oliver. He pictured her face with satisfaction. Then he felt uncomfortable. He felt toward her exactly as he had always felt, except that through the summer he had actually forgotten her. Perhaps he would not tell her that he was through with Oliver. He saw himself being kind to her and maintaining a noble silence. The imagined scene pleased him. He made up his mind definitely to inquire politely after Oliver’s health.
Penny had the deer meat in two pokes. The hides were in crocus sacks. Ma Baxter had a basket of eggs and a small pat of butter to trade at the store, and another basket containing gifts for Grandma Hutto: a quart of new syrup, a peck of sweet potatoes, and a shoulder of the Baxters’ sugar-cured ham. She would not have gone empty-handed even to the house of an enemy.
Penny hallooed on the west side of the river to call the ferry from the east. The sound echoed down the river. A boy appeared on the opposite bank. He came leisurely. For an instant it seemed to Jody that the boy had an enviable life, pulling the ferry back and forth across the river. Then it occurred to him that such a life was quite without freedom. There would be for such a boy no hunts, no jaunts into the scrub, no Flag. He was glad he was not the ferry-man’s son. He said “Hey” to him with condescension. The boy was ugly and bashful. He helped lead the Baxters’ horse on the ferry with lowered head. Jody was filled with curiosity about his life.
He asked, “You got a gun?”
The boy jerked his head sideways in a negative and fastened his eyes on the east shore of the river. Jody recalled Fodder-wing longingly. From the minute he used to come in sight, Fodder-wing had talked to him. He gave up the new boy as a bad job. Ma Baxter was anxious to do her trading before she went visiting. They drove the wagon the short distance to the store and laid their articles of exchange on the counter. Storekeeper Boyles was in no hurry to trade. He wanted news of the scrub. The Forresters had given an incredible account of conditions after the flood. A few hunters from the Volusia territory had been there and had reported game almost impossible to find. The bears were troubling stock along the river, which they had not done in years. He wanted Penny’s verification of the tales.
“Hit’s ever’ word true,” Penny said.
He leaned over the counter and settled himself for talk.
Ma Baxter said, “You know I cain’t stand on my feet too long. If you men’ll agree on your trade, I’ll do my buyin’ and go on to Mis’ Hutto’s. Then you kin talk here all day.”
Boyles weighed out the meat promptly. With venison scarce, he could find a ready sale for it at a good price. The river steamer would take a haunch or two by way of novelty to the English and Yankee travelers. He examined the hides carefully, and at last expressed his satisfaction with their condition. He had an order and could pay five dollars each. The rate was higher than the Baxters had hoped for. Ma turned to the dry goods counter with a complacent air. She was high-handed and would have only the best. He was out of brown alpaca. He could send for it by the next boat, he said. She shook her head. It was too far to send back for it from the Island.
He said, “Now why don’t you take a dress length of this black alpaca and start new?”
She fingered it.
“Shore is purty. How much did you say? Oh——”
She turned away. She retreated into her pride.
“I said ’brown’ and I meant ’brown,’ “she said coldly.
She bought spices and raisins for a Christmas cake.
She said, “Jody, go look and see has old Cæsar broke loose.”
The request was so absurd that he gaped at her. Penny winked at him. He wheeled quickly so that she could not see him smile. She meant to buy something to surprise him for Christmas. Penny would have thought of a better excuse to get him out of the way. He went outside and stared at the boy who tended the ferry. The boy sat and studied his own knees. Jody picked up bits of limestone and aimed them at the trunk of a live oak up the road. The boy watched him furtively, then came behind him without speaking and picked up bits, too, and hurled them at the tree. The contest continued wordlessly. After a time Jody thought his mother would have finished and he ran back into the store.
His mother said, “You comin’ with me or stayin’ with your Pa?”
He stood hesitant. Grandma Hutto would bring out cake or cookies the moment he was in her house. On the other hand, he could never get enough of hearing his father talk with other men. The matter was settled for him by the storekeeper’s handing him a licorice stick for himself. It would keep body and soul together for the time being.
He said loftily, “Me and Pa’ll foller.”
She went out. Penny watched after her. He frowned. Boyles was stroking the fur of the deer hides with approval.
Penny said, “I’d figgered on takin’ cash for them hides. But if you’d as
soon trade me a dress length o’ that black alpacy, why, I don’t much keer.”
Boyles said reluctantly, “I’d not do it for anybody else. But you’ve traded here a long time. All right.”
“Best cut it up and wrap it before I change my mind.”
Boyles said wryly, “You mean before I change mine.”
The scissors snipped crisply across the alpaca.
“Now gimme silk thread to match and a card o’ them glass buttons.”
“That’s not in the bargain.”
“I got money for it. And put the alpacy in a box, do it rain this evenin’.”
Boyles said good-naturedly, “Now you’ve cheated me, tell me where a man can go to shoot him a wild turkey for Christmas dinner.”
“I cain’t no more’n tell you where I’m fixin’ to hunt one myself. They’re mighty scarce. The plague got ’em bad. But you cross the river about where Seven-Mile Branch flows into it. You know that cypress swamp with two-three good big cedars in it, jest southwest o’ the run? You work through there——”
The good male talk was beginning. Jody sat down on a cracker box to listen. There were no other customers and Boyles came out from behind the counter and pulled up a straight chair and an old cowhide rocker beside the thumper stove for himself and Penny. They got out their pipes and Penny shaved Boyles a pipeful of his own tobacco.
“Nothing like home-raised tobaccy for satisfaction,” Boyles said. “You plant a patch for me this spring. I’ll pay as high as anybody. Now go on— Southwest o’ the run——?”
Jody chewed on his licorice stick. The rich black juice filled his mouth and the talk filled another hunger, back of his palate, that was seldom satisfied. Penny told of the flood in the scrub. It had been bad along the river, too, Boyles interrupted to say, but the river had carried most of the water away as fast as it fell. The banks had been flooded, and Easy Ozell’s shack had swayed back and forth in the wind and finally capsized.
“He’s living in Grandma’s shed,” Boyles said, “and happy as a pine borer in a fresh log.”
Penny recounted the wolf hunt and the bear hunt; told of the rattler’s strike, which the Forresters had not thought to mention. Jody lived the summer over again, and it was better than when it happened, the way Penny told it. Boyles was as fascinated, and sat leaning forward, forgetting to smoke. A customer came in and he left the stove grudgingly.
Penny said, “Your Ma’s been gone a hour-two, boy. You best run on to Grandma’s. Tell ’em I’ll be along directly.”
The licorice had long been swallowed. It was getting on toward noon and he was famished.
“Will we eat dinner at Grandma’s?”
“Why, yes. If we wasn’t invited, your Ma’d of been back by now. You go on now. And carry that forequarter to her yourself.”
He went, a little drugged with Penny’s tale-telling.
Grandma’s tidy yard was recovering from the effect of the high water. The river had been over its bank here and her fall flower garden had been washed away. There was unaccustomed debris here and there. The second planting was thriving, but there was no bloom, except of shrubs close beside the house. The blooms of the indigo had fruited into small black seed-pods, curved like scythe blades. Grandma was inside the house with his mother. He heard their voices and as he stepped up on the porch and looked through the window, he saw the flickering of flames on the hearth. She saw him and came to the door.
Her embrace was friendly, but it lacked something of enthusiasm. The two Baxter men were more welcome without Ma. There was no plate of cookies anywhere in sight. The smell of cooking, however, came from the kitchen. Otherwise he could scarcely have endured his disappointment. Grandma Hutto sat down again to talk with his mother with a tight-lipped patience. His mother was behaving no better. She looked critically at Grandma’s frilled white apron.
She said, “No matter where I be, I like to dress plain in the mornin’.”
Grandma Hutto said tartly, “I wouldn’t be caught dead without a frill on me. Men-folks like a woman dressed pretty.”
“I was raised to call it indecent, to dress to please the men. Well, some of us plain folks has had to go pore on this earth, ’ll git our frills in Heaven.”
Grandma Hutto rocked rapidly.
“Now I don’t want to go to Heaven,” she announced.
Ma Baxter said, “Reckon there’s no danger.”
Grandma’s black eyes snapped.
“Why wouldn’t you want to go, Grandma?” Jody asked.
“One thing, the company I’d have to keep.”
Ma Baxter ignored this.
“Another thing’s the music. There’s nothin’ played there, they claim, but harps. Now the only music I like is a flute and a bass viol and an octave harp. Unless one o’ your preachers’ll guarantee that, I’ll jest refuse the trip with thanks.”
Ma Baxter’s face was stormy.
“Another thing’s the food. Even the Lord likes the incense of roasted meat before him. But accordin’ to the preachers, folks in Heaven live on milk and honey. I despise milk and honey makes me sick to my stummick.” She smoothed her apron complacently. “I figger Heaven’s only folks’ longin’ for what they ain’t had on earth. Well, I’ve had near about ever’thing a woman could want. Mebbe that’s why I’ve got no interest.”
Ma Baxter said, “Includin’ Oliver runnin’ off with a yaller-headed chipperdale, I reckon.”
Grandma’s rocker beat a tune on the floor.
“Oliver’s up-standin’ and fine-lookin’ and women has allus follered him and allus will. Take Twink, now. She’s not to blame. She’d never had a fine thing in her life and then Oliver takened a notion to her. Why wouldn’t she foller him? The pore child’s an orphan.” She shook out her frills. “Left an orphan at the mercy of the Christians.”
Jody fidgeted in his chair. The coziness of Grandma’s house was chilled, as though the doors were open. It was more woman-business, he decided. Women were all right when they cooked good things to eat. The rest of the time they did nothing but make trouble. Penny’s step sounded on the porch. Jody was relieved. Perhaps his father could straighten them out. Penny came into the room. He rubbed his hands together by the open fire.
He said, “Now ain’t this fine? The two women I love the most in all the world, waitin’ for me by the hearth-fire.”
Grandma said, “If the two women loved each other as good, Ezra, all’d be well.”
“I know you two don’t git on,” he said. “You want to know the reason? You’re jealous, Grandma, ’cause I’m livin’ with Ory. And Ory, you’re jealous ’cause you ain’t as handsome as Grandma. Now hit takes a bit of age to make a woman handsome—I don’t say purty—and time Ory’s got a bit of age on her, mebbe she’ll be handsome, too.”
It was impossible to quarrel around his good-nature. The two women laughed and bridled.
Penny said, “What I want to know, is the Baxters invited to eat o’ the fat o’ the land, or be they obliged to turn around and go home to cold cornpone?”
“Now you know you’re welcome, day or night. And I do thank you for the deer meat. I only wish Oliver was here to eat it with us.”
“What’s the news from him? We was right hurt he didn’t come to visit us before he put to sea.”
“It was a long time before he got over his beatin’. Then he had word there was a boat in Boston wanted him for mate.”
“I reckon there was a gal in Floridy wanted him for the same thing, eh?”
They laughed together and Jody laughed with them for relief. Grandma’s house was warm again.
She said, “Dinner’s ready, and if you scrub creeturs don’t eat hearty, my feelin’s’ll be mighty hurt.”
Dinner was not as lavish as when Penny and Jody came alone. Yet there were furbelows to impress Ma Baxter that were very tasty. The meal was friendly.
Ma Baxter said, “Well, we made up our minds to come to the Christmas doin’s. We couldn’t come last year for we’d not come em
pty-handed. You figger a fruit cake and a bait o’ syrup candy’ll be welcome for my share?”
“Nothin’ better. How about you-all spendin’ the night and havin’ Christmas with me?”
Penny said, “That’ll be fine. And you kin depend on me for meat. I’ll git a turkey if I have to hatch one.”
Ma Baxter said, “What about the cow and dogs and chickens? We cain’t all come off and leave ’em, Christmas or no Christmas.”
“We kin leave enough for the dogs and chickens. They’ll not starve in a day. And I got a idee Trixie’ll be fresh and we kin leave the calf to nuss her.”
“And lose the calf to a blasted bear or panther.”
“I kin fix a corral inside the barn where nothin’ won’t bother ’em. Now if you want to stay home and keep off the creeturs, you stay, but I mean to have Christmas.”
“And me,” Jody said.
Ma Baxter said to Grandma, “I got no more chancet agin ’em than a rabbit agin a pair o’ wild-cats.”
Penny said, “Now allus seemed to me ’twas Jody and me was two rabbits agin one wild-cat.”
“You make a mighty good race of it,” she said, but she had to laugh.
It was settled that they would come for Grandma to go to the doings, returning to her house to spend the night and the next day. Jody was elated. Then the thought of Flag came over him like a dark cloud in a sunny sky.
He burst out, “Now I jest cain’t come. I got to stay home.”
Penny said, “Why, what ails you, boy?”
Ma Baxter turned to Grandma Hutto.
“Hit’s that tormented fawn o’ hissen. He cain’t bear it out of his sight. I never knowed a young un so crazy for a live thing to mess with. He’ll go hongry to feed it, he sleeps with it, he talks to it like it was a person—oh, I’ve heered you, out in that shed—he don’t think of nary thing else but that troublesome fawn.”
Penny said gently, “Don’t make the boy feel like he has the small-pox, Ory.”
Grandma said, “Why can’t he bring it along?”
He threw his arms around her.
The Yearling Page 30