“In plantin’ time?”
“Plantin’ time be tradin’ time. They’d ruther trade than plow. They figgered they’d make enough, tradin, to buy our rations.” The old man spat. “And likely, they will.”
“They’re all gone?”
“Ever’ one of ’em. Pack and Gabby’ll be back in April.”
Ma Forrester said, “Heap o’ good it do a woman to birth a mess o’ young uns and raise ’em and then have ’em all go off to oncet. I will say, they left rations and stacked wood. We won’t need nothin’ ’til some of ’em’s back in April.”
“April——”
He turned dully from the door.
“Come set with us, boy. I’d be proud to cook dinner for you. Raisin puddin’, eh? You and Fodderwing allus loved my raisin puddin’.”
“I got to go,” he said. “I thank you.”
He turned back.
He burst out desperately, “What would you do, did you have a yearlin’ et up the corn and you couldn’t keep it out no-way and your Pa told you to go shoot it?”
They blinked at him. Ma Forrester cackled.
Pa Forrester said, “Why, I’d go shoot it.”
He realized that he had not made the matter clear.
He said, “Supposin’ it was a yearlin’ you loved like you-all loved Fodder-wing?”
Pa Forrester said, “Why, love’s got nothin’ to do with corn. You cain’t have a thing eatin’ the crops. Lessen you got boys like mine, has got other ways o’ makin’ a livin’.”
Ma Forrester asked, “Hit that fawn you carried here last summer for Fodder-wing to put a name to?”
“That’s him. Flag,” he said. “Cain’t you-all take him? Fodder-wing would of takened him.”
“Why, we got no better way’n you o’ keepin’ him. He’d not stay here, no-how. What’s four mile to a yearlin’ deer?”
They too were a stone wall.
He said, “Well, good-by,” and went away.
The Forrester clearing was desolate without the big men and their horses. They had taken most of the dogs with them. Only a mangy pair remained, chained at the side of the house, scratching themselves mournfully. He was glad to get away again.
He would walk to Jacksonville with Flag himself. He looked about for something to make a halter by which to lead him, so that he would not turn and run home, as he had done on the Christmas hunt. He hacked laboriously at a grapevine with his pocket knife. He looped a length of it around Flag’s neck and set off to the northeast. The trail came out somewhere near Hopkins Prairie, he knew, on the Fort Gates road on which he and Penny had intercepted the Forresters. Flag was docile for a time under the leash, then grew impatient of the restraint and tugged against it.
Jody said, “How come you to grow up so unlawful?”
It wore him out, trying to coax the yearling into going willingly. At last he gave it up and took off the grapevine halter. Flag was then perversely content to keep in sight. In the afternoon, Jody found himself tired with a fatigue born of hunger. He had left the house without breakfast. He had wanted only to get away. He looked along the road for berries to eat, but it was too early and there were none. The blackberries had not yet finished blooming. He chewed some leaves, as Flag was doing, but they made him feel emptier than before. His feet dragged. He lay down by the road in the sun for a rest and induced Flag to lie beside him. He was drugged with hunger and misery and the strong March sun on his head. He fell asleep. When he awakened, Flag had gone. He followed his tracks. They led in and out of the scrub, then turned back to the road and continued evenly toward home.
There was nothing to do but follow. He was too weary to think further. He reached Baxter’s Island after dark. A candle burned in the kitchen. The dogs came to him. He patted them to quiet them. He crept close silently and peered in. Supper was over. His mother sat in the candle-light, sewing her endless patchwork pieces. He was trying to make up his mind whether to go in or not, when Flag galloped across the yard. He saw his mother lift her head and listen.
He slipped hurriedly beyond the smoke-house and called Flag in a low voice. The yearling came to him. He crouched at the corner. His mother came to the kitchen door and threw it open. A bar of light lay across the sand. The door closed. He waited a long time until the light went out in the kitchen. He allowed time for her to go to bed and to sleep. He prowled inside the smoke-house and found the remainder of the smoked bear-meat. He hacked off a strip. It was hard and dry, but he chewed on it. He supposed Flag had fed on buds in the woods, but he could not bear to think of him hungry. He went to the corn-crib and took two ears of corn and shelled them and fed the kernels to him. He chewed some kernels himself. He thought longingly of the cold cooked food that must be in the kitchen safe but he dared not go in after it. He felt like a stranger and a thief. This was the way the wolves felt, he thought, and the wild-cats and the panthers and all the varmints, looking in at the clearing with big eyes and empty bellies. He made a bed in a stall at the lot with an armful of the scant remaining marsh-grass hay. He slept there with Flag beside him, not quite warm enough through the chill March night.
He awakened after sunrise, stiff and miserable. Flag was gone. He went reluctantly but compelled to the house. At the gate he heard his mother’s voice raised in a storm of anger. She had discovered the shotgun where he had leaned it against the smoke-house wall. She had discovered Flag. She had discovered, too, that the yearling had made the most of the early hours and had fed, not only across the sprouting corn, but across a wide section of the cow-peas. He went helplessly to her to meet her wrath. He stood with his head down while she flailed him with her tongue.
She said finally, “Git to your Pa. For oncet, he’s with me.”
He went into the bedroom. His father’s face was drawn.
Penny said gently, “How come you not to do what I told you?”
“Pa, I jest couldn’t. I cain’t do it.”
Penny leaned his head back against the pillow.
“Come here clost to me, boy. Jody, you know I’ve done all I could to keep your leetle deer for you.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You know we depend on our crops to live.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You know they ain’t a way in the world to keep that wild yearlin’ from destroyin’ ’em.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then why don’t you do what’s got to be done?”
“I cain’t.”
Penny lay silent.
“Tell you Ma to come here. Go to your room and shut the door.”
“Yes, sir.”
There was a relief in following simple orders.
“Pa says to go to him.”
He went to his room and closed the door. He sat on the side of the bed, twisting his hands. He heard low voices. He heard steps. He heard a shot. He ran from the room to the open kitchen door. His mother stood on the stoop with the shotgun smoking in her hands. Flag lay floundering beside the fence.
She said, “I didn’t want to hurt the creetur. I cain’t shoot straight. You know I cain’t.”
Jody ran to Flag. The yearling heaved to his three good legs and stumbled away, as though the boy himself were his enemy. He was bleeding from a torn left forequarter. Penny dragged himself from his bed. He sank on one knee in the doorway, clutching it for support.
He called, “I’d do it if I could. I jest cain’t stand up— Go finish him, Jody. You got to put him outen his torment.” .
Jody ran back and snatched the gun from his mother.
He screamed, “You done it o’ purpose. You allus hated him.”
He turned on his father.
“You went back on me. You told her to do it.”
He screeched so that his throat felt torn.
“I hate you. I hope you die. I hope I never see you agin.”
He ran after Flag, whimpering as he ran.
Penny called. “He’p me, Ory. I cain’t git up——”
Flag ran on three legs
in pain and terror. Twice he fell and Jody caught up to him.
He shrieked, “Hit’s me! Hit’s me! Flag!”
Flag thrashed to his feet and was off again. Blood flowed in a steady stream. The yearling made the edge of the sinkhole. He wavered an instant and toppled. He rolled down the side. Jody ran after him. Flag lay beside the pool. He opened great liquid eyes and turned them on the boy with a glazed look of wonder. Jody pressed the muzzle of the gun barrel at the back of the smooth neck and pulled the trigger. Flag quivered a moment and then lay still.
Jody threw the gun aside and dropped flat on his stomach. He retched and vomited and retched again. He clawed into the earth with his finger-nails. He beat it with his fists. The sink-hole rocked around him. A far roaring became a thin humming. He sank into blackness as into a dark pool.
Chapter XXXIII
JODY walked north up the Fort Gates road. His gait was wooden, as though nothing of I him were alive except his legs. He had left the dead yearling without daring to look at him. Nothing mattered but getting away. There was no place to go. That did not matter, either. Above Fort Gates he would cross the river on the ferry. His plans became clear. He was headed for Jacksonville. He was going to Boston. He would find Oliver Hutto in Boston and go to sea with him, leaving his betrayal behind him, as Oliver had done.
The best way to get to Jacksonville and Boston was by boat. He had better get on the river itself at once. He needed a boat. He remembered Nellie Ginright’s discarded dug-out, in which he and Penny had crossed Salt Springs Run on the hunt for old Slewfoot. At thought of his father, a sharp knife struck his cold numbness, then the wound froze over again. He would tear his shirt in strips and stuff the cracks of the dug-out and pole down the creek to Lake George, then north down the big river. Somewhere along it he would hail a passing steamer and go to Boston. Oliver would pay his fare when he got there. If he could not find him, they would put him in jail. That did not matter either.
He turned in at Salt Springs. He was thirsty and waded out in the shallow water and bent and drank from the bubbling spring. Mullet jumped nearby and blue crabs scuttled sideways. Below the spring a fisherman was setting out. Jody walked along the bank and called to him.
“Kin I go down with you a piece to my boat?”
“I reckon.”
The fisherman swung in to shore and he stepped in.
The man asked, “You live around here?”
He shook his head.
“Where’s your boat at?”
“Down past Mis’ Nellie Ginright’s.”
“You kin to her?”
He shook his head. Questions from a stranger were probes in his wounds. The man looked at him curiously, then gave himself to his rowing. The rough boat moved smoothly down the swift current. The run was broad at its upper reaches. The water was blue and the March sky over it was blue. A light wind stirred the white clouds. It was the kind of day he had always liked particularly. The banks were of a rosy red, for the swamp maple and the red-bud were in full spring color. Swamp laurel was in bloom and its sweetness filled the creek. An ache choked him, so that he wanted to put his hand to his throat and tear it out. The beauty of the late March day held only pain to hurt him. He did not want to look at the new-needled cypresses. He watched the water and the garfish and the turtles and did not lift his eyes again.
The fisherman said, “Here’s Mis’ Nellie’s place. You want to stop?”
He shook his head.
“My boat’s on yonder.”
As they passed the bluff, he saw Mis’ Nellie standing in front of her house. The fisherman lifted his hand to her and she waved. Jody did not stir. He remembered the night in her house and the morning when she had cooked breakfast and had joked with Penny, and sent them on their way feeling warm and strong and friendly. He pushed the memory aside. The run narrowed. The banks came close and there were swamp and cat-tails.
He said, “Yonder’s my boat.”
“Why, boy, hit’s half-sunk.”
“I aim to fix it.”
“You got ary one comin’ to he’p you? You got oars?”
He shook his head.
“Here’s a piece of a paddle. Shore don’t look like much of a boat to me. Well, so long.”
The man pushed out into the current and waved to the boy. He took a biscuit and a piece of meat from a box under the board seat and began cramming them in his mouth as he moved away. The odor of the food came to Jody. It reminded him that he had had nothing to eat in two days except the few mouthfuls of smoked bear meat and the few kernels of dried corn. That did not matter. He was not hungry.
He pulled the dug-out on land and bailed it. Long immersion had swelled it, and the bottom was tight. There were cracks in the bow that let in water. He tore the sleeves from his shirt and ripped them in strips and caulked the cracks. He went to a pine and scraped resin with his pocket knife and worked it in on the outside.
He pushed the dug-out into the stream and picked up the broken paddle and began to paddle downstream. He was clumsy at it and the current took him from one bank to the other. He landed in sawgrass and cut his hands trying to push through it. The dug-out swung sideways and stuck in the soft muck along the south bank. He pushed free. The trick of it began to come to him, but he felt weak and faint. He wished that he had asked the fisherman to wait for him. There was nothing living in sight except a buzzard, wheeling in the blue sky. The buzzards would find Flag by the pool in the sink-hole. He began to be sick again and let the boat drift among the cat-tails. He rested his head on his knees until the nausea passed.
He stiffened and began paddling. He was on his way to Boston. His mouth was tight. His eyes were narrowed. The sun was well down in the sky when he came to the end of the run. The creek emptied at once into a broad bay of big Lake George. A spit of dry land extended a little distance to the south. On the opposite side there was only swamp. He turned the dug-out and swung up to the land, stepped out and pulled the boat high. He sat down under a live oak and leaned against the trunk and stared out to the open waters. He had hoped that he might encounter a river boat at the end of the run. He saw one passing south, but it was far out in the lake. He realized that the end of the creek must join only an arm or bay.
It was no more than an hour or two until sunset. He was afraid to let dark find him on the open lake waters in the unsteady canoe. He decided to wait on the point of land for a passing boat. If none came, he would sleep under the live oak and paddle farther in the morning. Numbness had held off his thoughts all day. Now they poured in on him, as the wolves had poured in to the calf-pen. They tore him, so that it seemed to him that he must, invisibly, be bleeding, as Flag had bled. Flag was dead. He would never run to him again. He tortured himself with saying the words.
“Flag’s dead.”
They were as bitter as alum-root tea.
He had not yet probed the deepest pain.
He said aloud, “Pa went back on me.”
It was a sharper horror than if Penny had died of the snake-bite. He rubbed his knuckles over his forehead. Death could be borne. Fodder-wing had died and he was able to bear it. Betrayal was intolerable. If Flag had died, if bear or wolf or panther had slipped in on him, he would have grieved with a great grief, but he could have endured it. He would have turned to his father, and his father would have comforted him. Without Penny, there was no comfort anywhere. The solid earth had dissolved under him. His bitterness absorbed his sorrow, and they were one.
The sun dropped below the tree-tops. He gave up hope of hailing any vessel before night. He gathered moss and made a bed for himself at the base of the oak tree. A bittern cried rustily in the swamp across the run, and as the sun set, the frogs began to croak and sing. He had always liked the sound of their music, coming from the sink-hole at home. The cry they were making now was mournful. He hated it. They seemed to be grieving. Thousands of them were crying out in an endless and unappeasable sorrow. A wood-duck called, and its cry, too, was sad.
Th
e lake was rosy, but shadows had taken over the land. It would be supper-time at home. In spite of his nausea, he thought now of food. His stomach began to ache as though there was too much in it, instead of nothing. He remembered the smell of the fisherman’s meat and biscuit. His mouth watered. He ate some stalks of grass. He ripped the joints with his teeth, as animals ripped flesh. Instantly he saw creatures creeping in to Flag’s carcass. He vomited the grass.
Darkness filled both land and water. A hoot owl cried in the thicket near him. He shivered. The night wind stirred and was chill. He heard a rustling that might be leaves moving ahead of the wind, or small creatures passing. He was not afraid. It seemed to him that if a bear came, or a panther, he might touch it and stroke it and it would understand his grief. Yet the night sounds about him made his flesh creep. It would be good to have a camp-fire. Penny could start a fire even without his tinder-horn, in the way the Indians did, but he had never been able to do it. If Penny were here, there would be a blazing fire, and warmth and food and comfort. He was not afraid. He was only desolate. He pulled the moss over him and cried himself to sleep.
The sun awakened him, and the red-winged blackbirds chattering in the reeds. He stood up and pulled the long strands of moss from his hair and clothing. He was weak and dizzy. Now that he was rested, he knew that he was hungry. The thought of food was torture. Cramps struck like small hot knives across his stomach. He thought of paddling back up the run to Mis’ Nellie Ginright and asking her to feed him. But she would ask him questions. She would ask him why he was here alone, and there was no answer, except that his father had betrayed him, and in the betrayal, Flag was dead. It would be better to go on, as he had planned.
A fresh wave of loneliness swept over him. He had lost Flag and he had lost his father, too. The gaunt little man he had last seen crouched in pain in the kitchen doorway, calling for help to stand, was a stranger. He pushed out his dug-out and took up his paddle and headed for the open waters. He was out in the world, and it seemed to him that he was alien here, and alone, and that he was being carried away into a void. He paddled for the location where he had seen the steamer pass. Living was no longer the grief behind him, but the anxiety ahead. Leaving the mouth of the creek behind him, he found the wind freshening. Out from the shelter of the land a brisk breeze was blowing. He ignored the gnawing in his belly and paddled desperately. The wind caught the dug-out and slewed it around. He could not keep it headed. The waves were mounting. Their soft lapping changed to a hissing. They began to break over the bow of the canoe. When it swung sideways, they washed in and it tipped and rolled. There was an inch of water across the bottom. There was no vessel of any sort in sight.
The Yearling Page 38