The Yearling

by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

  “Now that ends it,” she raged. “The creetur gives me no peace day or night. Now he cain’t come in this house, no time, never no more.”

  Penny had kept apart from the controversy. Now he spoke from his bed.

  “Your Ma’s right, boy. He’s got too big and restless to be in the house.”

  Jody went back to bed and lay wakeful, wondering if Flag were cold. He thought it was unreasonable of his mother to object to the clean soft nose against her own. He could never get enough of fondling the delicate muzzle, himself. She was a mean, hard woman and did not care if he was lonely. His resentment eased him and he went to sleep, clutching his pillow and pretending that it was Flag. The fawn snorted and stamped around the house most of the night.

  In the morning Penny felt well enough to dress and hobble around the clearing, leaning on a stick. He made the rounds. He returned to the rear of the house. His face was grave. He called Jody to him. Flag had trampled back and forth across the tobacco seed-bed. The young plants were almost ready to set out. He had destroyed nearly half of them. There would be enough for the usual patch for Penny’s own use. There would be no money crop, as he had planned, for storekeeper Boyles at Volusia.

  “I don’t figger Flag done it malicious,” he said. “He were jest racin’ back and forth and it were somethin’ to jump on, was all. Now you go set up stakes all through the bed amongst the plants and all around the bed, to keep him offen the rest of ’em. I should of done it before, I reckon, but I never studied on him rompin’ in that pertickler place.”

  Penny’s reasonableness and kindness depressed Jody as his mother’s rage had not done. He turned away disconsolately to do the job.

  Penny said, “Now it jest bein’ accidental-like, we’ll not say nothin’ to your Ma. Hit’d be a pore time for her to know it.”

  As Jody worked, he tried to think of a way to keep Flag out of mischief. Most of his tricks he considered only clever, but the destruction of the seed-bed was serious. He was sure that such a thing would never happen again.

  Chapter XXX

  MARCH came in with a cool and sunny splendor. The yellow jessamine bloomed late and covered the fences and filled the clearing with its sweetness. The peach trees blossomed, and the wild plums. The red birds sang all day, and when they had done with their song in the evening, the mocking-birds continued. The ground doves nested and cooed one to another and walked about the sand of the clearing like shadows bobbing.

  Penny said, “If I was dead, I’d set up and take notice, a day like this un.”

  There had been a light shower during the night and the hazy substance of the sunrise indicated there would be another before night. But the morning itself was luminous.

  “Jest right for corn,” Penny said. “Jest right for cotton. Jest right for ’baccy.”

  “I take it you’re pleased with the day,” Ma Baxter said. He grinned and finished his breakfast.

  “Now jest ’cause you feel better,” she warned him, “don’t git in the field and kill yourself.”

  “I feel so good,” he said, “I’ll kill ary thing keeps me from plantin’. All day. I’m fixin’ to plant all day. Today. Tomorrer. The next day. Plantin’. Corn. Cotton. ’Baccy.”

  “I heered you,” she said.

  He stood up and thumped her on the back.

  “Cow-peas! ’Taters! Greens!”

  She had to laugh at him, and Jody laughed too.

  “Hear you tell it,” she said, “you’re fixin’ to plant the world.”

  “I’d purely love it.” He threw out his arms. “A day like this un, I’d love to plant rows from here to Boston and back agin to Texas. Then when I come to Texas, I’d turn around and go back to Boston to see had the seeds come up yit.”

  “I see where Jody gits his fairy-tales,” she said.

  He pounded Jody on the back.

  “You got a sweet job, boy. You kin set out the ’baccy plants. If my back didn’t near about kill me when I stoop, I’d take it from you, for I love settin’ plants. Leetle ol’ young green things— Given’ ’em a chancet to grow.”

  He went whistling to his work. Jody gulped his breakfast and followed him. Penny was at the tobacco seed-bed, lifting out the tender plants.

  “You belong to handle ’em like they was new-borned babies,” he said.

  He set out a dozen plants by way of lesson, then watched and corrected Jody while he went on with the row. He brought old Cæsar and the scooter plow and turned in to the field, laid off and bedded up ready for the corn, to open the furrows for the planting. Jody hunched along on his heels, or dropped to his knees when his legs grew tired. He worked leisurely, for Penny said there was no hurry, and that the job must be done well. The March sun grew strong in mid-morning, but a fresh breeze blew. The tobacco plants wilted behind him, but the night’s dark coolness would bring them upright again. He watered them as he went and had to go twice to the sink-hole for water. Flag had disappeared after breakfast and was not in sight. Jody missed him, but he was relieved that the fawn had chosen the particular morning to stay away. If he joined him, and gamboled about as usual, he would destroy the plants faster than Jody could set them out. He finished the task by dinner time. The tobacco patch filled only a portion of the ground that Penny had prepared for it according to the original size of the seed-bed. When Penny went with him after dinner to look it over, his father’s exuberance ebbed.

  “You ain’t left no plants in the bed, boy? You got ’em all?”

  “Ever’ one. I even set them leetle ol’ spindly ones.”

  “Well— I’ll put in somethin’ else to fill out.”

  Jody offered eagerly, “I kin he’p you with t’other plantin’ now. Or tote water for you.”

  “No need to water. Hit looks more prosperous for a shower ever’ minute. You kin he’p plant.”

  Penny had the furrows open for the corn. Now he went ahead, drilling his holes with a pointed stick down the long rows. Jody followed, dropping two kernels to the hole. He was anxious to please, to have his father forget the shrunken tobacco patch.

  He called, “Goes fast, two workin’, don’t it, Pa?”

  Penny did not answer. Yet as the early spring day clouded and the light wind shifted into the southeast and it was plain that a shower would come on the planting, insuring the quick sprouting of the corn, his spirits lifted again. The rain caught them in the late afternoon, but they continued to work and finished the field. It rolled gently well-tilled and tawny, its soft bosom receptive to the rain. Leaving it, Penny rested on the split-rail fence and looked back over it with satisfaction. There was a wistful look in his eyes as well, as though he were obliged now to leave his handiwork to forces he could only trust blindly not to betray him.

  Flag came bounding out of the rain from the south. He came to Jody to be scratched behind the ears. He leaped back and forth in a zig-zag across the fence, then stopped under a mulberry tree and reached up to catch the tip of a bough. Jody sat on the fence beside his father. He turned to call Penny’s attention to the slim neck of the fawn stretched up to the new green leaves of the mulberry. His father was studying the young deer with an unfathomable expression. His eyes were narrowed and speculative. He seemed, as when he had set out after old Slewfoot, a stranger. A chill passed over the boy that was not of the dampness of the rain.

  He said, “Pa——”

  Penny turned to him, startled from his thoughts. He looked down, as though to hide a thing in his eyes.

  He said carelessly, “That fawn o’ yourn shore growed up in a hurry. He ain’t the baby you toted home in your arms all the way that black night— He’s a yearlin’ now, for shore.”

  The words gave Jody little pleasure. Somehow, he sensed they were not quite what his father had been thinking. Penny laid his hand an instant on his son’s knee.

  “You’re a pair o’ yearlin’s,” he said. “Hit grieves me.”

  They slid from the fence and went to the lot to do the chores, then to the house to dry out
by the fire. The rain beat lightly on the shingled roof. Flag bleated outside to be allowed to come in. Jody looked appealingly at his mother but she was deaf and blind. Penny felt stiff and sat with his back close to the heat, rubbing his knees. Jody begged some stale cornbread and went outside. He made a fresh bed in the shed and enticed Flag inside with the bread. He sat down and the deer finally doubled his long legs under him and lay down beside him. Jody took hold of the two pointed ears and rubbed his nose against the wet muzzle.

  “You a yearlin’ now,” he said. “You hear me? You growed up. Now you listen to me. You got to be good, now you’re growed. You cain’t go gallivantin’ acrost no t’baccy. Don’t you git Pa down on you. You listenin’?”

  Flag chewed ruminatively.

  “All right, then. Now soon as we git done with the plantin’, I kin go off with you agin. You wait for me. You was gone too long today. Don’t you go wild, jest ’cause I told you you was a yearlin’.”

  He left Flag and had the satisfaction of seeing him remain contentedly in the shed. Ma Baxter and Penny had begun supper when he went into the kitchen. They made no comment on his lateness. They ate in silence. Penny went to bed at once. Jody was suddenly tired out and dropped into bed without washing his dusty feet. When his mother came to his door to remind him of it, he was asleep with one arm thrown back over the pillow. She stood looking at him, then turned away without arousing him.

  In the morning, Penny was blithe again.

  “Today’s cotton day,” he said.

  The soft rain had stopped in the night. The morning was dewy. The fields were rosy, dipping into lavender at the far misty edges. The mocking-birds made a musical din along the fence-rows.

  “They tryin’ to hurry the mulberries,” Penny said.

  The cotton was sowed free in drills. Later it would be chopped out to a stand, a foot apart, with the hoe. Jody followed his father as before, dropping the small shining seeds. He was curious about the new Baxter crop and asked endless questions. Flag had disappeared shortly after breakfast, but came trotting to the planters in mid-morning. Again Penny watched him. His sharp hooves cut deeply into the soft moist earth, but the seeds were planted deeply enough so that no harm was possible.

  “He do take out after you when he misses you,” Penny said.

  “He’s like a dog that-a-way, ain’t he, Pa? He wants to tag me jest like Julia tags you.”

  “You think a heap of him, don’t you, boy?”

  “Why, shore.”

  He stared at his father.

  Penny said, “Well, we’ll wait and see.”

  The remark made no particular sense and Jody ignored it.

  The planting continued all week. Cow-peas followed the corn and cotton. Sweet potatoes followed the cow-peas. The vegetable garden back of the house was planted to onions and turnips, for the moon was dark, and root crops must be planted then. Penny had been forced by his rheumatism to let pass the fourteenth of February, the date on which collards should be planted, so as not to go to seed. He was tempted to put them in now, but since the leafy crops did best when planted on an increasing moon, he decided to wait a week or so.

  He was up early each day and finished late. He drove himself mercilessly. The planting itself was done, but he was not content. He was in a fever over the spring work, for weather conditions were favorable and the year’s living depended on the immediate results. He carried the two heavy buckets full of water from the sink-hole again and again to water the tobacco plants and the garden.

  A stump that Buck Forrester had left to rot out in the new ground where the cotton was planted, annoyed him. He dug and chopped around it, then hooked trace chains to it and put old Cæsar at pulling on it. The old horse tugged and strained, his sides heaving. Penny lashed a rope about the stump, said “Gee-up!” to Cæsar and pulled with him. Jody saw his father’s face turn white. Penny clutched at his groin and sank to his knees. Jody ran to him.

  “Hit’s all right. I’ll be all right in a minute— Reckon I strained myself-”

  He dropped to the ground and stirred in agony.

  He murmured, “I’ll be all right— Go put Cæsar up— Wait— Take a-holt o’ my hand— I’ll ride him in.”

  He was bent double and could not straighten, for pain. Jody helped him to the stump. From there he managed to clamber on Cæsar’s back. He leaned forward, resting his head on Cæsar’s neck, gripping the mane. Jody unhitched the trace chains and led the horse out of the field and through the gate into the yard. Penny made no move to get down. Jody brought a chair for him to stand on, to break the descent. Penny slid to it and to the ground and crept into the house. Ma Baxter turned from her work at the kitchen table. She dropped a pan with a clatter.

  “I knowed it! You’ve hurted yourself. You don’t never know to quit.”

  He shuffled to his bed and threw himself face down on it. She followed and turned him over and put a pillow under his head. She pulled off his shoes and laid a light quilt over him. He stretched out his legs with relief. He closed his eyes.

  “That’s good— Oh Ory, that’s good— I’ll be all right in a minute. Must o’ strained myself—”

  Chapter XXXI

  PENNY did not recover. He lay suffering without complaint. Ma Baxter wanted Jody to ride for Doc Wilson, but Penny would not allow it.

  “I owe him a’ready,” he said. “I’ll git easement directkly.”

  “You’re likely ruptured.”

  “Even so— Hit’ll clare up.”

  Ma Baxter lamented, “If you had a mite o’ sense— But you’ll try to do like as if you was big as a Forrester.”

  “My uncle Miles were a big man and he were ruptured. He got around all right. Please to hush, Ory.”

  “I’ll not hush. I want you should learn your lesson and learn it good.”

  “I’ve done learned it. Please hush.”

  Jody was disturbed. Yet Penny was always having minor accidents, trying, with his small stout physique, to do the work of ten. Jody could remember dimly when a tree that Penny was felling had caught him, crushing one shoulder. His father had carried his arm in a sling for long months, but he had recovered and been as strong as ever. Nothing could harm Penny for long. Not even a rattlesnake, he thought comfortingly, could kill him. Penny was inviolable, as the earth was inviolable. Only Ma Baxter fretted and fumed, but she would have done so if it were only a little finger that had been strained.

  Shortly after Penny was laid up, Jody came in to report that the corn was up. The stand was perfect.

  “Now ain’t that fine!”

  The pale face on the pillow was bright.

  “Now if it so happen I ain’t outen the bed, you’re jest the feller to plow it out.” He frowned. “Boy, you know as good as I do, you got to keep that yearlin’ outen the fields.”

  “I’ll keep him out. He ain’t bothered nary thing.”

  “That’s fine. That’s jest fine. But you keep him out, religious.”

  Jody spent most of the next day on a hunt with Flag. They went nearly to Juniper Spring and returned with four squirrels.

  Penny said, “Now that’s what I call a son. Come in with rations for his old man.”

  Ma Baxter made a pilau of the squirrels for supper.

  “They do eat good,” she said.

  “Why, the meat’s so tender,” Penny said, “you could kiss it off the bones.”

  Jody, and Flag with him, was in high favor.

  A light rain fell in the night. In the morning he went to the cornfield at Penny’s request to see whether the rain had pushed the corn and whether there was any sign of cutworms. He leaped the split-rail fence and set out across the field. He had gone some yards when it occurred to him that he should be seeing the pale green shoots of the corn. There were none. He was bewildered. He went farther. There was no corn visible. It was not until he reached the far end of the field that the delicate sprouts appeared. He walked back along the rows. Flag’s sharp tracks were plain. He had pulled up the corn in
the early morning as neatly as though it had been pulled by hand.

  Jody was frightened. He dawdled about the field, hoping to have a miracle happen and the corn appear again when his back was turned. Perhaps he was having a nightmare in which Flag had eaten the corn crop, and when he awakened he would go out and find it growing, green and tender. He pushed a stick into one arm to make sure. The dull misery he felt was that of a bad dream, but the pain in his arm was as real as the destruction of the corn. He dragged back to the house with slow and heavy feet. He sat down in the kitchen and did not go to his father. Penny called him. He went to the bedroom.

  “Well, boy? How’s the crops?”

  “The cotton’s up. Hit looks like okry, don’t it?” His enthusiasm was spurious. “The cow-peas is breakin’ the ground.”

  He spread the toes of his bare feet and wriggled them. He was absorbed in them, as though they had developed an interesting new function.

  “And the corn, Jody?”

  His heart beat as fast as a humming-bird’s wings. He swallowed and took the plunge.

  “Somethin’s et off most of it.”

  Penny lay silent. His silence was a nightmare, too. At last he spoke.

  “Couldn’t you tell what ’twas, done it?”

  He looked at his father. His eyes were desperate and beseeching.

  Penny said, “Ne’ mind. I’ll git your Ma to go look. She kin tell.”

  “Don’t send Ma!”

  “She’s obliged to know.”

  “Don’t send her!”

  “Hit were Flag done it, wa’n’t it?”

  Jody’s lips trembled.

  “I reckon— Yes, sir.”

  Penny looked at him pityingly.

  “I’m sorry, boy. I more’n half looked for him to do it. You go play a while. Tell your Ma to come here.”

  “Don’t tell her, Pa. Please don’t tell her.”

  “She’s got to know, Jody. Now go on. I aim to do the best I kin for you.”