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A column of smoke rose thin and straight from the cabin chimney. The smoke was blue where it left the red of the clay. It trailed into the blue of the April sky and was no longer blue but gray. The boy Jody watched it, speculating. The fire on the kitchen hearth was dying down. His mother was hanging up pots and pans after the noon dinner. The day was Friday. She would sweep the floor with a broom of ti-ti and after that, if he were lucky, she would scrub it with the corn shucks scrub. If she scrubbed the floor she would not miss him until he had reached the Glen. He stood a minute, balancing the hoe on his shoulder. |
The clearing itself was pleasant if the unweeded rows of young shafts of corn were not before him. The wild bees had found the chinaberry tree by the front gate. They burrowed into the fragile clusters of lavender bloom as greedily as though there were no other flowers in the scrub; as though they had forgotten the yellow jessamine of March; the sweet bay and the magnolias ahead of them in May. It occurred to him that he might follow the swift line of flight of the black and gold bodies, and so find a bee-tree, full of amber honey. The winter's cane syrup was gone and most of the jellies. Finding a bee-tree was nobler work than hoeing, and the corn could wait another day. The afternoon was alive with a soft stirring. It bored into him as the bees bored into the chinaberry blossoms, so that he must be gone across the clearing, through the pines and down the road to the running branch. The bee-tree might be near the water. |
He stood his hoe against the split-rail fence. He walked down the cornfield until he was out of sight of the cabin. He swung himself over the fence on his two hands. Old Julia the hound had followed his father in the wagon to Grahamsville, but Rip the bull-dog and Perk the new feice saw the form clear the fence and ran toward him. Rip barked deeply but the voice of the small mongrel was high and shrill. They wagged deprecatory short tails when they recognized him. He sent them back to the yard. They watched after him indifferently. They were a sorry pair, he thought, good for nothing but the chase, the catch and the kill. They had no interest in him except when he brought them their plates of table scraps night and morning. Old Julia was a gentle thing with humans, but her worn-toothed devotion was only for his father, Penny Baxter. Jody had tried to make up to Julia, but she would have none of him. |
He made a circle around the sheds and corn-crib and cut south through the black-jack. He wished he had a dog like Grandma Hutto's. It was white and curly-haired and did tricks. When Grandma Hutto laughed and shook and could not stop, the dog jumped into her lap and licked her face, wagging its plumed tail as though it laughed with her. He would like anything that was his own, that licked his face and followed him as old Julia followed his father. He cut into the sand road and began to run east. It was two miles to the Glen, but it seemed to Jody that he could run forever. There was no ache in his legs, as when he hoed the corn. He slowed down to make the road last longer. He had passed the big pines and left them behind. Where he walked now, the scrub had closed in, walling in the road with dense sand pines, each one so thin it seemed to the boy it might make kindling by itself. The road went up an incline. At the top he stopped. The April sky was framed by the tawny sand and the pines. It was as blue as his homespun shirt, dyed with Grandma Hutto's indigo. Small clouds were stationary, like bolls of cotton. As he watched, the sunlight left the sky a moment and the clouds were gray. |
The down grade tempted him to a lope. He reached the thick-bedded sand of the Silver Glen road. The tar-flower was in bloom, and fetter-bush and sparkleberry. He slowed to a walk, so that he might pass the changing vegetation tree by tree, bush by bush, each one unique and familiar. He reached the magnolia tree where he had carved the wildcat's face. The growth was a sign that there was water nearby. It seemed a strange thing to him, when earth was earth and rain was rain, that scrawny pines should grow in the scrub, while by every branch and lake and river there grew magnolias. Dogs were the same everywhere, and oxen and mules and horses. But trees were different in different places. |
A spring as clear as well water bubbled up from nowhere in the sand. It was as though the banks cupped green leafy hands to hold it. There was a whirlpool where the water rose from the earth. Grains of sand boiled in it. Beyond the bank, the parent spring bubbled up at a higher level, cut itself a channel through white limestone and began to run rapidly down-hill to make a creek. The creek joined Lake George, Lake George was a part of the St. John's River, the great river flowed northward and into the sea. It excited Jody to watch the beginning of the ocean. There were other beginnings, true, but this one was his own. He liked to think that no one came here but himself and the wild animals and the thirsty birds. |
He was warm from his jaunt. The dusky glen laid cool hands on him. He rolled up the hems of his blue denim breeches and stepped with bare dirty feet into the shallow spring. His toes sank into the sand. It oozed softly between them and over his bony ankles. The water was so cold that for a moment it burned his skin. Then it made a rippling sound, flowing past his pipe-stem legs, and was entirely delicious. He walked up and down, digging his big toe experimentally under smooth rocks he encountered. A school of minnows flashed ahead of him down the growing branch. He chased them through the shallows. They were suddenly out of sight as though they had never existed. He crouched under a bared and overhanging live-oak root where a pool was deep, thinking they might reappear, but only a spring frog wriggled from under the mud, stared at him, and dove under the tree root in a spasmodic terror. He laughed. |
He had never built one alone. Grandma Hutto's son Oliver had always made one for him whenever he was home from sea. He went to work intently, frowning as he tried to recall the exact angle necessary to make the mill-wheel turn smoothly. He cut two forked twigs and trimmed them into two Y's of the same size. Oliver had been very particular to have the cross-bar round and smooth, he remembered. A wild cherry grew half-way up the bank. He climbed it and cut a twig as even as a polished pencil. He selected a palm frond and cut two strips of the tough fiber, an inch wide and four inches long. He cut a slit lengthwise in the center of each of them, wide enough to insert the cherry twig. The strips of palm frond must be at angles, like the arms of a windmill. He adjusted them carefully. He separated the Y-shaped twigs by nearly the length of the cherry cross-bar and pushed them deep into the sand of the branch bed a few yards below the spring. |
The water was only a few inches deep but it ran strongly, with a firm current. The palm-frond mill-wheel must just brush the water's surface. He experimented with depth until he was satisfied, then laid the cherry bar between the twigs. It hung motionless. He twisted it a moment, anxiously, helping it to fit itself into its forked grooves. The bar began to rotate. The current caught the flexible tip of one bit of palm frond. By the time it lifted clear, the rotation of the bar brought the angled tip of the second into contact with the stream. The small leafy paddles swung over and over, up and down. The little wheel was turning. The flutter-mill was at work. It turned with the easy rhythm of the great water-mill at Lynne that ground corn into meal. |
Jody drew a deep breath. He threw himself on the weedy sand close to the water and abandoned himself to the magic of motion. Up, over, down, up, over, down--the flutter-mill was enchanting. The bubbling spring would rise forever from the earth, the thin current was endless. The spring was the beginning of waters sliding to the sea. Unless leaves fell, or squirrels cut sweet bay twigs to drop and block the fragile wheel, the flutter-mill might turn forever. When he was an old man, as old as his father, there seemed no reason why this rippling movement might not continue as he had begun it. |
He moved a stone that was matching its corners against his sharp ribs and burrowed a little, hollowing himself a nest for his hips and shoulders. He stretched out one arm and laid his head on it. A shaft of sunlight, warm and thin like a light patchwork quilt, lay across his body. He watched the flutter-mill indolently, sunk in the sand and the sunlight. The movement was hypnotic. His eyelids fluttered with the palm-leaf paddles. Drops of silver slipping from the wheel blurred together like the tail of a shooting star. The water made a sound like kittens lapping. A rain frog sang a moment and then was still. There was an instant when the boy hung at the edge of a high bank made of the soft fluff of broom-sage, and the rain frog and the starry dripping of the flutter-mill hung with him. Instead of falling over the edge, he sank into the softness. The blue, white-tufted sky closed over him. He slept. |
When he awakened, he thought he was in a place other than the branch bed. He was in another world, so that for an instant he thought he might still be dreaming. The sun was gone, and all the light and shadow. There were no black boles of live oaks, no glossy green of magnolia leaves, no pattern of gold lace where the sun had sifted through the branches of the wild cherry. The world was all a gentle gray, and he lay in a mist as fine as spray from a waterfall. The mist tickled his skin. It was scarcely wet. It was at once warm and cool. He rolled over on his back and it was as though he looked up into the soft gray breast of a mourning dove. |
He lay, absorbing the fine-dropped rain like a young plant. When his face was damp at last and his shirt was moist to the touch, he left his nest. He stopped short. A deer had come to the spring while he was sleeping. The fresh tracks came down the east bank and stopped at the water's edge. They were sharp and pointed, the tracks of a doe. They sank deeply into the sand, so that he knew the doe was an old one and a large. Perhaps she was heavy with fawn. She had come down and drunk deeply from the spring, not seeing him where he slept. Then she had scented him. There was a scuffled confusion in the sand where she had wheeled in fright. The tracks up the opposite bank had long harried streaks behind them. Perhaps she had not drunk, after all, before she scented him, and turned and ran with that swift, sand-throwing flight. He hoped she was not now thirsty, wide-eyed in the scrub. |
He looked about for other tracks. The squirrels had raced up and down the banks, but they were bold, always. A raccoon had been that way, with his feet like sharp-nailed hands, but he could not be sure how recently. Only his father could tell for certain the hour when any wild things had passed by. Only the doe had surely come and had been frightened. He turned back again to the flutter- mill. It was turning as steadily as though it had always been there. The palm-leaf paddles were frail but they made a brave show of strength, rippling against the shallow water. They were glistening from the slow rain. |
Jody looked at the sky. He could not tell the time of day in the grayness, nor how long he may have slept. He bounded up the west bank, where open gallberry flats spread without obstructions. As he stood, hesitant whether to go or stay, the rain ended as gently as it had begun. A light breeze stirred from the southwest. The sun came out. The clouds rolled together into great white billowing feather bolsters, and across the east a rainbow arched, so lovely and so various that Jody thought he would burst with looking at it. The earth was pale green, the air itself was all but visible, golden with the rain-washed sunlight, and all the trees and grass and bushes glittered, varnished with the rain- drops. |
A spring of delight boiled up within him as irresistibly as the spring of the branch. He lifted his arms and held them straight from his shoulders like a water-turkey's wings. He began to whirl around in his tracks. He whirled faster and faster until his ecstasy was a whirlpool, and when he thought he would explode with it, he became dizzy and closed his eyes and dropped to the ground and lay flat in the broom-sage. The earth whirled under him and with him. He opened his eyes and the blue April sky and the cotton clouds whirled over him. Boy and earth and trees and sky spun together. The whirling stopped, his head cleared and he got to his feet. He was light-headed and giddy, but something in him was relieved, and the April day could be borne again, like any ordinary day. |
He turned and galloped toward home. He drew deep breaths of the pines, aromatic with wetness. The loose sand that had pulled at his feet was firmed by the rain. The return was comfortable going. The sun was not far from its setting when the long-leaf pines around the Baxter clearing came into sight. They stood tall and dark against the red-gold west. He heard the chickens clucking and quarreling and knew they had just been fed. He turned into the clearing. The weathered gray of the split-rail fence was luminous in the rich spring light. Smoke curled thickly from the stick-and- clay chimney. Supper would be ready on the hearth and hot bread baking in the Dutch oven. He hoped his father had not returned from Grahamsville. It came to him for the first time that perhaps he should not have left the place while his father was away. If his mother had needed wood, she would be angry. Even his father would shake his head and say, "Son--" He heard old Caesar snort and knew his father was ahead of him. |
The clearing was in a pleasant clatter. The horse whinnied at the gate, the calf bleated in its stall and the milch cow answered, the chickens scratched and cackled and the dogs barked with the coming of food and evening. It was good to be hungry and to be fed and the stock was eager with an expectant certainty. The end of winter had been meager: corn short, and hay, and dried cow-peas. But now in April the pastures were green and succulent and even the chickens savored the sprouts of young grass. The dogs had found a nest of young rabbits that evening, and after such tid-bits the scraps from the Baxter supper table were a matter of some indifference. Jody saw old Julia lying under the wagon, worn out from her miles of trotting. He swung open the front paling gate and went to find his father. |
Penny Baxter was at the wood-pile. He still wore the coat of the broadcloth suit that he had been married in, that he now wore as badge of his gentility when he went to church, or off trading. The sleeves were too short, not because Penny had grown, but because the years of hanging through the summer dampness, and being pressed with the smoothing iron and pressed again, had somehow shrunk the fabric. Jody saw his father's hands, big for the rest of him, close around a bundle of wood. He was doing Jody's work, and in his good coat. Jody ran to him. |
Jody heard nothing; saw nothing but his plate. He had never been so hungry in his life, and after a lean winter and slow spring, with food not much more plentiful for the Baxters than for their stock, his mother had cooked a supper good enough for the preacher. There were poke-greens with bits of white bacon buried in them; sand-buggers made of potato and onion and the cooter he had found crawling yesterday; sour orange biscuits and at his mother's elbow the sweet potato pone. He was torn between his desire for more biscuits and another sand-bugger and the knowledge, born of painful experience, that if he ate them, he would suddenly have no room for pone. The choice was plain. |
It was true. He was addled with April. He was dizzy with Spring. He was as drunk as Lem Forrester on a Saturday night. His head was swimming with the strong brew made up of the sun and the air and the thin gray rain. The flutter-mill had made him drunk, and the doe's coming, and his father's hiding his absence, and his mother's making him a pone and laughing at him. He was stabbed with the candlelight inside the safe comfort of the cabin, with the moonlight around it. He pictured old Slewfoot, the great black outlaw bear with one toe missing, rearing up in his winter bed and tasting the soft air and smelling the moonlight, as he, Jody, smelled and tasted them. He went to bed in a fever and could not sleep. A mark was on him from the day's delight, so that all his life, when April was a thin green and the flavor of rain was on his tongue, an old wound would throb and a nostalgia would fill him for something he could not quite remember. A whip-poor-will called across the bright night, and suddenly he was asleep. |
As he looked back over the years, he himself had had no boyhood. His own father had been a preacher, stern as the Old Testament God. The living had come, however, not from the Word, but from the small farm near Volusia on which he had raised a large family. He had taught them to read and write and to know the Scriptures, but all of them, from the time they could toddle behind him down the corn rows, carrying the sack of seed, had toiled until their small bones ached and their growing fingers cramped. Rations had been short and hookworm abundant. Penny had grown to maturity no bigger than a boy. His feet were small, his shoulders narrow, his ribs and hips jointed together in a continuous fragile framework. He had stood among the Forresters one day, like an ash sapling among giant oaks. |
The name had been his only one ever since. When he voted, he signed himself "Ezra Ezekial Baxter," but when he paid his taxes, he was put down as "Penny Baxter" and made no protest. But he was a sound amalgam; sound as copper itself; and with something, too, of the copper's softness. He leaned backward in his honesty, so that he was often a temptation to store-keepers and mill-owners and horse-traders. Store-keeper Boyles at Volusia, as honest as he, had once given him a dollar too much in change. His horse being lame, Penny had walked the long miles back again to return it. "The next time you came to trade would have done," Boyles said. |
The remark might have explained, to those who puzzled at him, his migration to the adjacent scrub. Folk who lived along the deep and placid river, alive with craft, with dugouts and scows, lumber rafts and freight and passenger vessels, side-wheel steamers that almost filled the stream, in places, from bank to bank, had said that Penny Baxter was either a brave man or a crazy one to leave the common way of life and take his bride into the very heart of the wild Florida scrub, populous with bears and wolves and panthers. It had been understandable for the Forresters to go there, for the growing family of great burly quarrelsome males needed all the room in the county, and freedom from any hindrance. But who would hinder Penny Baxter? |
He had perhaps been bruised too often. The peace of the vast aloof scrub had drawn him with the beneficence of its silence. Something in him was raw and tender. The touch of men was hurtful upon it, but the touch of the pines was healing. Making a living came harder there, distances were troublesome in the buying of supplies and the marketing of crops. But the clearing was peculiarly his own. The wild animals seemed less predatory to him than people he had known. The forays of bear and wolf and wild-cat and panther on stock were understandable, which was more than he could say of human cruelties. |
In his thirties he had married a buxom girl, already twice his size, loaded her in an ox-cart along with the rudiments of housekeeping, and jogged with her to the clearing, where with his own hands he had reared a cabin. He had chosen his land as well as a man might choose in the brooding expanse of scrawny sand pines. He had bought of the Forresters, who lived a safe four miles away, high good land in the center of a pine island. The island was called by such a name, in an arid forest, because it was literally an island of long-leaf pines, lifted high, a landmark, in the rolling sea that was the scrub. There were other such islands scattered to the north and west, where some accident of soil or moisture produced patches of luxuriant growth; even of hammock, the richest growth of all. Live oaks were here and there; the red bay and the magnolia; wild cherry and sweet gum; hickory and holly. |
A scarcity of water was the only draw-back to the location. The water level lay so deep that wells were priceless. Water for inhabitants of Baxter's Island must come, until bricks and mortar were cheaper, from the great sink-hole on the western boundary of the hundred-acre tract. The sinkhole was a phenomenon common to the Florida limestone regions. Underground rivers ran through such sections. The bubbling springs that turned at once into creeks and runs were outbreaks of these. Sometimes a thin shell of surface soil caved in and a great cavern was revealed, with or without a flow of water. The sink-hole included with Penny Baxter's land contained, unfortunately, no flowing spring. But a pure filtered water seeped day and night through the high banks and formed a pool at the bottom. The Forresters had tried to sell Penny poor land in the scrub itself, but with cash to back him, he had insisted on the island. |
The babies were frail, and almost as fast as they came, they sickened and died. Penny had buried them one by one in a cleared place among the black-jack oaks, where the poor loose soil made the digging easier. The plot grew in size until he was compelled to fence it in against the vandalism of hogs and pole-cats. He had carved little wooden tombstones for all. He could picture them now, standing white and straight in the moonlight. Some of them had names: Ezra Jr.; Little Ora; William T. The others bore only such legends at Baby Baxter, aged 3 mos. 6 days. On one, Penny had scratched laboriously with his pocket-knife, "She never saw the light of day." His mind moved back down the years, touching them, as a man touches fence-posts in his passing. |
There had been a hiatus in the births. Then, when the loneliness of the place had begun to frighten him a little, and his wife was almost past the age of bearing, Jody Baxter was born and thrived. When the baby was a toddling two-year-old, Penny had gone to the war. He had taken his wife and child to the river, to live with his crony, Grandma Hutto, for the few months he expected to be away. He had come back at the end of four years with the mark of age on him. He had gathered up his wife and boy and taken them back to the scrub with gratitude for its peace and isolation. |
Jody's mother had accepted her youngest with something of detachment, as though she had given all she had of love and care and interest to those others. But Penny's bowels yearned over his son. He gave him something more than his paternity. He found that the child stood wide-eyed and breathless before the miracle of bird and creature, of flower and tree, of wind and rain and sun and moon, as he had always stood. And if, on a soft day in April, the boy had prowled away on his boy's business, he could understand the thing that had drawn him. He understood, too, its briefness. |
Jody opened his eyes unwillingly. Sometime, he thought, he would slip away into the woods and sleep from Friday until Monday. Daylight was showing through the east window of his small bedroom. He could not be certain whether it was the pale light that had awakened him, or the stirring of the chickens in the peach trees. He heard them fluttering one by one from their roost in the branches. The daylight lay in orange streaks. The pines beyond the clearing were still black against it. Now in April the sun was rising earlier. It could not be very late. It was good to awaken by himself before his mother called him. He turned over luxuriously. The dry corn shucks of his mattress rustled under him. The Dominick rooster crowed boisterously under the window. |
The bright streaks in the east thickened and blended. A golden flush spread as high as the pines, and as he watched, the sun itself lifted, like a vast copper skillet being drawn to hang among the branches. A light wind stirred, as though the growing light had pushed it out of the restless east. The sacking curtains eddied out into the room. The breeze reached the bed and brushed him with the cool softness of clean fur. He lay for a moment in torment between the luxury of his bed and the coming day. Then he was out of his nest and standing on the deerskin rug, and his breeches were hanging handily, and his shirt right side out by good fortune, and he was in them, and dressed, and there was not any need of sleep, or anything but the day, and the smell of hot cakes in the kitchen. |
The mirror showed a small face with high cheek bones. The face was freckled and pale, but healthy, like a fine sand. The hair grieved him on the occasions when he went to church or any doings at Volusia. It was straw-colored and shaggy, and no matter how carefully his father cut it, once a month on the Sunday morning nearest the full moon, it grew in tufts at the back. "Drakes' tails," his mother called them. His eyes were wide and blue. When he frowned, in close study over his reader, or watching something curious, they narrowed. It was then that his mother claimed him kin. |
The meat, dry-cured for the feeding of the dogs, hung in the smoke- house. Jody ran to it and swung open the heavy timbered door. The smoke-house was dark and cool, odorous with the smell of hams and bacons, dusty with the ash of hickory. The rafters, studded with square-headed nails for the hanging of meats, were now almost bare. Three shoulders of ham hung, lean and withered, and two bacon sides. A haunch of jerked venison swung beside the smoked alligator meat. Old Slewfoot had indeed done damage. Betsy the brood-sow would have filled the room with her plump progeny by the coming fall. Jody hacked away a piece of alligator. The meat was dry but tender. He touched his tongue to it. Its saltiness was not unpleasing. He joined his father in the yard. |
The pines were becoming scattering. There was suddenly a strip of hammock land, and a place of live oaks and scrub palmettos. The undergrowth was thick, laced with cat-briers. Then hammock, too, ended, and to the south and west lay a broad open expanse that looked at first sight to be a meadow. This was the saw-grass. It grew knee-deep in water, its harsh saw-edged blades rising so thickly that it seemed a compact vegetation. Old Julia splashed into it. The rippling of the water showed the pond. A gust of air passed across the open area, the saw-grass waved and parted, and the shallow water of a dozen ponds showed clearly. Penny watched the hound intently. The treeless expanse seemed to Jody more stirring than the shadowy forest. At any moment the great black form might rear itself high. |
The hound splashed in a zigzag trail where solid ground edged the saw-grass. Here and there the scent was lost in the water. Once she dipped her head to lap, not in thirst, but for the very taste of the trail. She moved confidently down the middle of the pond. Rip and Perk found their short legs too deep in muck for comfort. They retreated to higher ground and shook themselves, watching Julia anxiously. Perk barked shortly, and Penny slapped him, for quiet. Jody stepped cautiously behind his father. A blue heron flew low over him without warning, and he started. The pond water was cold an instant against his legs, his breeches were clammy, the muck sucked at his shoes. Then the water was comfortable, and it was good to walk in the wet coolness, leaving sandy whirlpools behind. |
The red bay thicket seemed impenetrable. This land of sudden changes gave good cover for the game. Old Slewfoot in his careless feeding had never been far from shelter. The bay saplings stood as close together as the palings of a stockade. Jody wondered how the bear had managed to work his bulk among them. But here and there the saplings thinned, or were young and limber, and he could see, plainly marked, a common trail. Other creatures had used it. Tracks crossed and crisscrossed. Wild-cat had followed deer, lynx had followed wild-cat, and all about were the paw-prints of the small things, 'coons and rabbits and 'possums and skunks, feeding cautiously aside from their predatory kin. |
The morning's trailing had been a leisurely business, a pleasant jaunting rather than a hunt. Now the dark bay thicket closed in over their heads, jorees flew from the denseness with an alarming whir of wings, the earth was soft and black, and there were scurryings and rustlings on either side in the bushes. On the trail, a bar of sunlight lay occasionally where the thicket parted. The scent, for all the comings and goings, was not confused, for the taint of bear hung heavy in the leafy tunnel. The short fur of the bulldog stood on end. Old Julia ran swiftly. Penny and Jody were forced to stoop to follow. Penny swung the muzzle-loader in his right hand, its barrel tipped at an angle, so that if he stumbled and the charge went off, he would not touch the running dogs before him. A branch crashed behind and Jody clutched at his father's shirt. A squirrel ran chattering away. |
Old Slewfoot was suddenly, deceptively, indifferent. He seemed to stand baffled, slow and uncertain, weaving back and forth. He whined, like a child whimpering. The dogs backed off an instant. The moment was perfect for a shot and Penny swung his gun to his shoulder, drew a bead on the left cheek, and pulled the trigger. A harmless pop sounded. He cocked the hammer again and pulled the trigger once more. The sweat stood out on his forehead. Again the hammer clicked futilely. Then a black storm broke. It roared in on the dogs with incredible swiftness. White tusks and curved claws were streaks of lightning across it. It snarled and whirled and gnashed its teeth and slashed in every direction. The dogs were as quick. Julia made swift sorties from the rear, and when Slewfoot wheeled to rake at her, Rip leaped for the hairy throat. |
Penny ran desperately into the heart of the fracas. He jammed the gun-barrel in the bear's ribs. Even in her pain, Julia had taken a grip on the black throat above her. Slewfoot snarled and turned suddenly and plunged down the bank of the creek and into the deep water. Both dogs kept their hold. Slewfoot swam madly. Only Julia's head showed above water, below the bear's snout. Rip rode the broad back with bravado. Slewfoot made the far bank and scrambled up its side. Julia loosed her hold and dropped limply on the earth. The bear plunged toward the dense thicket. For a moment more Rip stayed with him. Then, confused, he too dropped away and turned back uncertainly to the creek. He snuffed at Julia and sat down on his haunches and howled across the water. There was a crashing in the distant undergrowth, then silence. |
He slipped off his shoes and slid down the bank into the water. He struck out strongly. A few yards from shore the current laid hold of him as though he were a log and shot him down-stream at a fierce clip. He struggled against it, fighting for distance. Jody saw him stagger to his feet far down the run, wipe the water from his eyes and push his way back up the shore to his dogs. He leaned to examine the hound, then gathered her under one arm. This time he went some distance up-stream before taking to the creek. When he dropped into the water, stroking with his free arm, the current picked him up and deposited him almost at Jody's feet. Rip paddled behind him, landed and shook himself. Penny laid the old hound down gently. |
The feice dropped in at the end of the line. Jody tried to break trail, but fallen trees lay, thicker than his body, and would not be stirred. Bull-briers, tougher than his father's muscles, snared him, and he could only push his way around them or crawl beneath. Penny with his burden had to shift for himself. The swamp was close and humid. Rip was panting. The pancakes lay soothingly in Jody's belly. He reached in the knapsack for the sweet potato pone. His father refused his share and Jody divided it with Rip. The little feice, he thought, deserved nothing. |
It was good to clear the swamp at last and come into the open pine woods. Even the scrub that followed after for a mile or two seemed light and penetrable. Pushing through the low scrub oaks, the scrub palmettos, the gallberry bushes and the ti-ti was less laborious than crossing the swamp. It was late afternoon when the high pines of Baxter's Island showed ahead. The procession filed down the sand road from the east and into the clearing. Rip and Perk ran ahead to the hollowed cypress watering trough kept for the chickens. Ma Baxter sat rocking on the narrow veranda, a mound of mending in her lap. |
Penny returned to the veranda with an armful of crocus sacks to make a bed for the hound. Ma Baxter brought the surgical equipment. Penny unwrapped his blood-soaked shirt from the dog and bathed the deep gashes. Old Julia made no protest. She had known claws before. He sewed the two deepest cuts and rubbed pine gum into all of them. She yelped once and then was silent as he worked. A rib, he said, was broken. He could do nothing for that, but if she lived, it would mend. She had lost much blood. Her breath came short. Penny gathered her up, bed and all. |
Jody hurried to the wood-pile. Every blow of the axe on that fat pine brought him closer to the Forresters and his friend Fodder- wing. He split a plentiful amount and carried enough to the kitchen to fill his mother's wood-box. His father had not yet returned from the sink-hole with his load of water. Jody hurried to the lot and saddled the horse. If the horse were ready and waiting, they might get off before his mother discovered some fresh pretext for detaining him. He saw Penny coming down the sand road from the west, bowed under the ox-yoke with the two heavy wooden buckets brimming with water. He ran to help him ease the load to the ground, for a lack of balance would tumble the buckets headlong, and the tedious hauling would have to be done all over again. |
The sweet gums were in full new leaf. The flowers of red-bud and jessamine and dogwood had come and gone, but huckleberries and ti-ti and dog-tongue were in full bloom. The road ran to the west through a mile of tender green, of white and rosy blossoming. Wild honey-bees hummed in the small lacelike flowers of the St. Augustine grapes. The road narrowed past an abandoned clearing. Caesar slowed to a walk. The scrub closed in around them. Scrub oak and gallberry and myrtle bushes brushed their legs. The growth was thick and low and there was only occasional shade. The April sun was high and strong. Caesar was sweating and the stirrup leathers rubbed and squeaked. |
A sense of pleasure came over Jody that he felt with no one else. His friend's body was no more unnatural to him than the body of a chameleon or a 'possum. He took the word of grown folks that Fodder-wing was witless. He himself would have known better than to do the thing that had given Fodder-wing his name. The youngest Forrester had conceived the idea that if he could attach himself to something light and airy, he could float from the roof-tree of the barn as gently as any bird. He had attached great bundles of fodder, cow-pea hay, to his arms, and jumped. He had survived, miraculously, adding a few broken bones further to contort the hunch-backed frame with which he had been born. It was a crazy thing to do, of course. Yet privately, Jody felt, something of the sort might work. He had, himself, often thought of kites, very large kites. And some secret understanding was his of the crippled boy's longing for flight, for lightness, for a moment's freedom from his body, earth-bound and bent and stumbling. |
Ma Forrester came into the cabin and went to her pots and pans. Her sons trooped in behind her; Buck and Mill-wheel, Gabby and Pack, Arch and Lem. Jody looked puzzled at the dried and wizened pair that had bred these mountainous men. They were all much alike, except Lem and Gabby. Gabby was shorter than the rest and not unduly bright. Lem alone was clean-shaven. He was as tall as any of them, but thinner, and not so dark, and had the least to say. He often sat apart, brooding and sulky, while Buck and Mill- wheel, the most boisterous, caroused. |
Jody looked at his father, pleading mutely that this piece of heresy be not taken home to Baxter's Island. The Forresters made short work of the dishes. Fodder-wing hobbled after them, gathering the scraps for all the animals. Only by feeding the pack of dogs himself could he be sure of saving tid-bits for his pets as well. He smiled to himself, that there would be so much today to take to them. There was even enough cold food left for supper. Jody gaped at the abundance. The Forresters finished their work in a clatter, and hung the iron pots and kettles on nails near the hearth. They drew up their cowhide chairs and hand-hewn benches around Penny. Some lit corn-cob pipes and others shaved parings of tobacco from dark plugs. Ma Forrester lipped a little snuff. Buck picked up Penny's gun and a small file and began to work on the loose hammer. |
Talk went on into the afternoon. Buck had tightened up Penny's old muzzle-loader so that he thought it could be counted on. The Forresters were unhurried, unoccupied. Tales were told of old Slewfoot's smartness; of other bears before him; but none so clever as he. Chases were described in every detail. Dogs twenty years dead were called by name and by performance. Fodder-wing grew tired of them and wanted to go to the pond and fish for minnows. But Jody could not bear to leave this telling of old tales. Pa and Ma Forrester chirped and shrilled occasionally, then dozed off in between, like sleepy crickets. At last their infirmities took them over, and they slept soundly, side by side in their rockers, their dried old frames stiff even in their slumber. Penny stretched and rose. |
He ran to watch the 'coon. It was paddling about in a small pool of water, feeling with its human hands for something only instinct told it could be there. He played with Fodder-wing and the 'coon the rest of the afternoon. He helped to clean the squirrel's box and build a cage for a crippled red-bird. The Forresters had game chickens, as wild as themselves. The hens laid their eggs all over the adjacent woods, in brierberry tangles, under piles of brush, and the snakes ate as many as the hens hatched. He went with Fodder-wing to collect the eggs. A hen was setting. Fodder-wing gave her the eggs they had gathered. There were fifteen in all. |
They turned back toward the cabin. The 'coon came crying to meet them. It scrambled up Fodder-wing's crooked legs and back and snugged down, clasping his neck. It closed its small white teeth over his skin and shook its head with pretended ferocity. Fodder- wing let Jody carry it to the cabin. It looked up at him with inquiring bright eyes, aware of his strangeness, then accepted him. The Forresters had scattered over their land at chores which they took leisurely, in their stride. Buck and Arch drove the penned cows and their calves to the pond to water. Mill-wheel fed the string of horses in the corral. Pack and Lem had disappeared into the dense woods north of the cabin; perhaps, Jody speculated, to their still. There was ease and abundance here, as well as violence. There were so many of them to do things. Penny Baxter carried the work of a clearing almost as large as theirs, alone. Jody remembered guiltily the unhoed rows of corn he had left behind him. But Penny would not mind finishing them. |
Pa and Ma Forrester were still asleep in their chairs. The sun was red in the west. Darkness came quickly into the cabin, for the live oaks kept out light that would have been still bright at the Baxters' clearing. One by one the brothers trooped into the cabin. Fodder-wing started up the fire on the hearth to heat the left-over coffee. Jody saw Ma Forrester open one careful eye, then close it again. Her sons piled the cold food on the table with a clatter that would have awakened an owl in the daytime. She sat up and prodded Pa Forrester in the ribs and joined the rest at their supper. This time they cleaned every platter. There was not even food left for the dogs. Fodder-wing mixed a pan of cold cornbread with a bucket of clabber and took it outside for them. He swung crookedly from side to side, tilting the bucket, and Jody ran to help him. |
After supper, the Forresters smoked and talked of horses. The cattle-men in the county, and farther to the west, were complaining of a scarcity. Wolves and bears and panthers had raised havoc with the spring's colts. The traders who came usually from Kentucky with strings of horses had not appeared. The Forresters agreed that it would be profitable to go north and west and trade for cattle ponies. Jody and Fodder-wing lost interest in the talk and went into a corner to play mumblede-peg. Ma Baxter would never have allowed pocket knives to be flipped into her clean smooth floors. Here, a few splinters more or less could make no difference. Jody sat up erect from the game. |
He awakened with a start late in the night. Din filled the cabin. His first thought was that the Forresters were fighting again. But the shouts held a community of purpose, and Ma Forrester called encouragement. A door was banged open and several of the dogs were halloo-ed inside. A light shone in the doorway of Fodder-wing's room and the dogs and men poured in. The men were stark naked, and they looked thinner and less bulky, but they seemed as tall as the cabin. Ma Forrester held a lighted tallow candle. Her grasshopper frame was lost inside a long gray flannel nightgown. The dogs shot under the bed and out again. Jody and Fodder-wing scrambled to their feet. No one troubled to explain the commotion. The boys followed after the hunt. It led through every room and ended with a mad exit of the dogs through the torn mosquito netting that covered one window. |
"Jody, I'll declare. I ain't never had meat stand and wait for me, the way that buck stood in the road. He didn't pay the horse no mind. Jest stood there. My first thought was, ''Tarnation, and me with no shells to my new gun.' Then I unbreeched the gun and looked in, and bless Heaven, I mought o' knowed a Forrester would have ary gun full-loaded. There was two shells in the gun, and there stood the buck, jest waitin'. I cracked down and he dropped. Right in the road, handy as a sack o' meal. I h'isted him over old Caesar's rump and away we goed. Tell you what come to me. 'Me bringin' in venison,' I figgered, 'Ma won't crawl me for leavin' Jody with Fodder-wing.'" |
Jody examined the deer hide. It was large and handsome, red with spring. The game seemed for him to be two different animals. On the chase, it was the quarry. He wanted only to see it fall. When it lay dead and bleeding, he was sickened and sorry. His heart ached over the mangled death. Then when it was cut into portions, and dried and salted and smoked; or boiled or baked or fried in the savory kitchen or roasted over the camp-fire, it was only meat, like bacon, and his mouth watered at its goodness. He wondered by what alchemy it was changed, so that what sickened him one hour, maddened him with hunger, the next. It seemed as though there were either two different animals or two different boys. |
He was glad to go to the wood-pile, for if he did not do something to occupy his mind, hunger would force him to gnaw the dogs' alligator meat or pick up the chickens' scraps of cornbread. The time went slowly at first, and he was tormented with the desire to follow his father's activities. Then Penny disappeared in the mule lot and Jody swung the axe without distraction. He carried an armful of wood to his mother as an excuse to see how dinner was progressing. He was relieved to see it on the table. She was pouring the coffee. |
Soft rain fell in the night. The April morning that followed was clear and luminous. The young corn lifted pointed leaves and was inches higher. The cow-peas in the field beyond were breaking the ground. The sugar-cane was needle-points of greenness against the tawny earth. It was strange, Jody thought, whenever he had been away from the clearing, and came home again, he noticed things that he had never noticed before, but that had been there all the time. Young mulberries were clustered along the boughs, and before he went to the Forresters' he had not even seen them. The Scuppernong grapevine, a gift from his mother's kin in Carolina, was in bloom for the first time, fine and lace-like. The wild golden bees had found its fragrance, and were standing on their heads to guzzle its thin honey. |
For two days he had filled his stomach so richly that this morning he felt a little languid and was not truly hungry. His father was up and out ahead of him, as usual. Breakfast was ready in the kitchen and his mother was tending the sausages in the smoke-house. The woodbox was low and Jody idled outside to fill it. He was in a mood for work, but it must be something gentle and unhurried. He made two leisurely trips to fill the woodbox. Old Julia was dragging herself around in search of Penny. Jody stooped to stroke her head. She seemed to share the sense of well-being that filled the clearing; or perhaps she understood that she had been spared a time longer to run through swamp and scrub and hammock. She wagged her long tail and stood quiet under his petting. The deepest wound was still raw and angry, but the others were healing. Jody saw his father, moving across the road toward the house from the barns and lot. He dangled a strange object. He called to Jody. |
His face furrowed. Jody knew that the lack of abundant water was a trial to his father, and a greater hardship than for mother or son. Jody was held accountable for wood, but it was Penny himself who slung the ox yoke across his narrow shoulders, hung the great hewn cypress buckets at either end, and trudged up and down the sandy road from the clearing to the sink-hole, where seepage alone built pools of water, amber-colored from leaf-mould, and filtered by the sand. It was as though the labor were Penny's apology to his family for having established them on land so arid, when creeks and rivers and good wells flowed not many miles away. For the first time, Jody wondered why his father had chosen to inhabit this place. Thinking of the pools on the steep side of the sink-hole that must be cleared, he was almost tempted to wish that they lived on the river, with Grandma Hutto. Yet the clearing, the island of tall pines, made up the world. Life in other places was only a tale that was told, as Oliver Hutto told of Africa and China and Connecticut. |
The walk from the front steps to the gate needed hoeing, too. The walk was bordered with cypress slats, but the weeds crept under and over, and grew impudently among the Amaryllis that lined the pathway. The lavender petals of the chinaberry blooms were falling. Jody scuffed his bare toes through them and went through the gate. He hesitated. The barns were tempting. There might be a new hatching of biddies. The calf might have a different look from yesterday. And if he could think of a good reason to give himself for prowling about, the increasingly unwelcome job of cleaning the water troughs might be that much longer postponed. Then it occurred to him that if he finished the cleaning in short order, he might be through for the day. He swung the grubbing hoe over his shoulder and set off at a trot toward the sink-hole. |
The end of the world, he thought, might be like the sinkhole. Fodder-wing had said that it was empty and dark, with only clouds to ride on. But no one knew. Certainly reaching it must feel as it felt to reach the edge of the sink-hole. Jody wished that he had been the first to discover it. He turned the corner of the fence now. He left the road and took the trail. It was narrow, hemmed in by briers. He pretended that he did not know there was a sink-hole. He passed a dogwood tree. It was a landmark. He closed his eyes and whistled carelessly. He put his feet ahead of him slowly. In spite of his determination, in spite of squeezing his eyelids tight, he could not make himself go farther with his eyes shut. He opened them and walked with a sense of relief the last few steps to the edge of the great limestone sink. |
A small world lay at his feet. It was deep and concave, like a great bowl. Fodder-wing said that a bear as big as God had scooped out a pawful of earth to get a lily-root. Jody knew the truth from his father. It was only that underground rivers ran through the earth and swirled and eddied beneath the surface, and changed their courses. This was especially so where there were streaks of limestone, as here. The limestone was soft and crumbling before the air touched and hardened it. Sometimes, without reason, without warning, after long rains, perhaps, a section of earth sank in, gently and almost without sound, and a deep cavity marked the place where once had run, darkly and unseen, a river. Sometimes the sink-hole was a few feet only in depth and width. Baxter's sink-hole was sixty feet deep. It was so wide that Penny's old muzzle-loader could not hit a squirrel from one side to the other. The sink-hole was as round as though it had been dug so on purpose. Staring into it, it seemed to Jody that the truth of its fashioning was more fantastic than the tales of Fodder-wing. |
The hole was older than Penny Baxter. Penny said he could remember when the trees that lined its steep banks were no larger much than saplings. Now they were of great size. A magnolia that grew half- way up the east bank had a trunk as broad as the mill-stone with which the Baxters ground their meal. A hickory was as thick as a man's thigh. A live oak spread its branches across half the sink- hole. Smaller trees, sweet gum and dogwood, ironwood and holly, grew lushly up and down the banks. Palmettos thrust tall spears among them. Giant ferns grew from top to bottom. Jody looked down into a great cupped garden, feathered with green leaves, cool and moist and, always, mysterious. The sink-hole was set in the arid scrub, at the core of the pine island, like a lush green heart. |
The trail to the bottom of the sink-hole led down the west bank. It was worn deep into the sand and limestone by the years of Penny Baxter's feet, leading his stock to water. In the dryest weather, there was a continual seepage which dripped down the banks and came to gather at the bottom in a shallow pool. This water was stagnant, and clouded by the comings and goings of the animals who watered there. Only Penny's hogs used it for drinking and wallowing. For the other stock, and for his own family's use, Penny had an ingenious arrangement. Up the east, or opposite, bank from the trail, he had cut out of the limestone strata a series of troughs to catch and hold the filtered seepage. The lowest trough was shoulder-high from the bottom of the sink-hole. Here he led the cow and calf to water, and his horse. Here in his young manhood he had led the yoke of cream-colored oxen with which he had cleared his land. A few yards higher up, he had cut a pair of deeper troughs. Here his wife brought her block and paddle and came to do her washing. A portion of the bank bore a milky whitewash from the years of her soap-suds. For her annual quilt- washing, she caught rain water. |
Jody jolted down the trail, bracing himself against the steepness with the grubbing hoe. It made a clumsy stock, catching in the wild grape vines. The descent always excited him. Step by step the banks lifted above him. Step by step he passed the tops of trees. A breath of wind eddied into the green bowl, stirring waves of coolness. The leaves fluttered their thin hands. The ferns bent a moment to the ground. A red-bird swung in an arc across the sink-hole. It turned and dropped down to the pool, like a bright leaf falling. Seeing the boy, it whirred up and away. Jody knelt by the pool. |
The water was clear, for the hogs were feeding to the north in the marshy prairies, and had no need of the sink-hole. A small green frog eyed the boy from a partly submerged twig. The nearest water was a couple of miles away. It seemed amazing that frogs should travel so far, to settle in a small and distant pool. He wondered if the first frog migrants had known that there was water here, when they hopped to the rim of the sink-hole and hesitated on their green haunches. Penny said that once in rainy weather he had seen a line of frogs in single file, like marching soldiers, crossing the dry flat-woods. Did they move blindly or with knowledge? Penny did not know. Jody flipped a frond of fern into the pool and the frog dove and hid himself in the soft muck. |
He crossed the flat floor of the sink-hole and climbed a few feet to reach the stock trough. It was awkward, bringing the grubbing hoe over his shoulder and into the trough. He discarded it and went at his work with his two hands. An accumulation of leaves and sand had left a thick layer. He dug and scraped vigorously. He worked against the creeping moisture, trying to hold the trough dry and empty for an instant. The seepage had returned by the time he took his hands away. The limestone trough was white and clean. He left it with satisfaction and moved higher up the bank to the more laborious work of scouring out the larger wash troughs. Constant use kept these comparatively free from leaves, but the soap-suds in time made them slippery. He climbed a sweet gum and gathered an armful of Spanish moss. It made good scouring material. He scooped sand from a bare spot on the bank and used it with the moss. |
He was tired when he reached the drinking trough at the top. The incline was so steep that by resting his belly flat against the bank, he needed only to lower his head, like a fawn, to drink. He ran his tongue up and down the length of the trough. He darted it in and out and leaned back to watch the ripples. He wondered whether a bear lapped water like a dog or sucked it in like a deer. He imagined himself a bear and drank both ways, deciding. Lapping was slower, but he choked when he sucked the water in. He could not decide. Penny would know how a bear drank. He had probably actually seen them. |
"I declare," he said, "your Ma purely shocked me when she said 'twenty years'. I jest hadn't never set down and reckoned the time. The years has slipped by me, one by one, me not noticin' nor countin'. Ever' spring, I'd figger to git your Ma a well dug. Then I'd need a ox, or the cow'd bog down and perish, or one o' the young uns'd put in and die and I'd have no heart for well-diggin', and medicine to pay for. Bricks so turrible high--When I begun diggin' oncet, and got no water at thirty feet, I knowed I was in for it. But twenty years is too long to ask ary woman to do her washin' on a seepage hillside." |
"That I don't know. It depend, likely, on how young a creetur is scairt. They don't seem to be no rule for it. I mind me, oncet, I'd been huntin' all mornin'--this were over on Wild-cat Prairie-- and I set down under a live oak and made me a leetle fire to warm me and cook me a bit o' bacon. Well, whilst I was settin' there, a fox walked right up t'other side o' the fire and laid down. I looked at him and he looked at me. I figgered mebbe he were hongry. I takened a piece o' meat and I jobbed it on a long stick and I helt it out to him. I helt it right over his nose. Now a fox is mighty wild and I ain't never knowed one to git that hongry to where he wouldn't run. And you know that fox laid there right on, lookin' at me, and never et nor run." |
She left the room and he resigned himself to waiting for the sweat. Being sick was something of a treat. He would not willingly go through the first night again, when cramps had tied him in knots. But the convalescence, the solicitude of his mother and his father, was definitely pleasant. He felt a faint sense of guilt that he had not told about the brierberries. She would have given him a purge, and it would all have been over with by the next morning. Penny had done all the work of the clearing alone for two days. He had hitched old Caesar to the plow and plowed over the sugar-cane and hilled it up, had worked the corn and the cow-peas and the small patch of tobacco. He had hauled water from the sink-hole, cut wood, fed and watered the stock. |
But perhaps, Jody speculated, he did have the fever. Perhaps he was coming down with the measles. He felt his face and stomach. There was no rash yet, no sweat. He flounced back and forth in the bed to hurry the heating. He realized that he felt as well as ever; better, actually, than before the plenitude of meat had tempted him into over-eating. He recalled the quantities of fresh sausage and of venison that he had eaten without his mother's stopping him. Perhaps after all the brierberries had had nothing to do with it. He was sweating at last. |
They were in territory a little west of the prairie's rim where old Slewfoot had fed on fire-plant. Dry weather had sucked up much of the water and the marsh had broad areas that were now firm and dry. The ponds showed plainly. They had withdrawn from the saw-grass and only lily pads troubled the water's surface. A Blue Peter ran across them, bright with yellow legs and painted face. A slight breath of air rippled across the marsh and the water rippled under it. The lily pads tipped, an instant, their broad shining leaves to the glint of the sun. |
Penny left him to the struggle. His arms ached from the strain. He was afraid to tug too hard for fear of breaking the line. He dared not yield an inch for fear a sudden slackness would tell of the loss of the giant. He longed for magic words from his father, indicating some miracle by which he might land his fish and be done with the torment. The bass was sulking. It made a dash for the grasses, where it might tangle the line around their stems and so rip free. It came to Jody that if he walked around the edge of the pond, keeping a taut line, he might lead the bass into shallow water and flounder him at the edge. He worked cautiously. He was tempted to drop the pole and clutch the line itself and come to grips with his adversary. He began to walk away from the pond. He gave his pole a heave and landed the bass, flouncing, in the grass. He dropped the pole and ran, to move the catch to a final safety. The bass would weigh ten pounds. Penny came to him. |
Jody put the small fish back reluctantly and watched it swim away. His father was stern about not taking more of anything, fish or game, than could be eaten or kept. Hope of another monster dwindled as the sun finished its spring arc of the daylight sky. He cast leisurely, taking his pleasure in his increasing dexterity of arm and wrist. The moon was now wrong. It was no longer feed- time. The fish were not striking. Suddenly he heard his father whistle like a quail. It was the signal they used together in squirrel hunting. Jody laid down his pole and looked back to make sure he could identify the tuft of grass where he had covered his bass from the rays of the sun. He walked cautiously to where his father beckoned. |
The cranes were dancing a cotillion as surely as it was danced at Volusia. Two stood apart, erect and white, making a strange music that was part cry and part singing. The rhythm was irregular, like the dance. The other birds were in a circle. In the heart of the circle, several moved counter-clock-wise. The musicians made their music. The dancers raised their wings and lifted their feet, first one and then the other. They sank their heads deep in their snowy breasts, lifted them and sank them again. They moved soundlessly, part awkwardness, part grace. The dance was solemn. Wings fluttered, rising and falling like out-stretched arms. The outer circle shuffled around and around. The group in the center attained a slow frenzy. |
Suddenly all motion ceased. Jody thought the dance was over, or that the intruders had been discovered. Then the two musicians joined the circle. Two others took their places. There was a pause. The dance was resumed. The birds were reflected in the clear marsh water. Sixteen white shadows reflected the motions. The evening breeze moved across the saw-grass. It bowed and fluttered. The water rippled. The setting sun lay rosy on the white bodies. Magic birds were dancing in a mystic marsh. The grass swayed with them, and the shallow waters, and the earth fluttered under them. The earth was dancing with the cranes, and the low sun, and the wind and sky. |
Jody found his own arms lifting and falling with his breath, as the cranes' wings lifted. The sun was sinking into the saw-grass. The marsh was golden. The whooping cranes were washed with gold. The far hammocks were black. Darkness came to the lily pads, and the water blackened. The cranes were whiter than any clouds, or any white bloom of oleander or of lily. Without warning, they took flight. Whether the hour-long dance was, simply, done, or whether the long nose of an alligator had lifted above the water to alarm them, Jody could not tell, but they were gone. They made a great circle against the sunset, whooping their strange rusty cry that sounded only in their flight. Then they flew in a long line into the west, and vanished. |
Penny and Jody straightened and stood up. They were cramped from the long crouching. Dusk lay over the saw-grass, so that the ponds were scarcely visible. The world was shadow, melting into shadow. They turned to the north. Jody found his bass. They cut to the east, to leave the marsh behind them, then north again. The trail was dim in the growing darkness. It joined the scrub road and they turned once more east, continuing now in a certainty, for the dense growth of the scrub bordered the road like walls. The scrub was black and the road was a dark gray strip of carpet, sandy and soundless. Small creatures darted across in front of them and scurried in the bushes. In the distance, a panther screamed. Bull-bats shot low over their heads. They walked in silence. |
The fawns were being born. Jody saw through the scrub the delicate tracery of their small pointed hooves. Wherever he went, to the sink-hole, for wood into the black-jacks south of the lot, to the traps Penny was obliged to keep about for varmints, he walked with eyes on the ground, watching for signs of their comings and their goings. The larger hoof-marks of the does usually preceded them. But the does were wary. Often the doe-sign was in one place, where the mother had fed alone, and the wavering fawn-sign was some distance away, where the infant had been left in the greater safety of heavy cover. Often there were twin fawns. When Jody found the double set of tracks he could scarcely contain himself. |
Julia lifted her nose and Penny and Jody stopped short. There was a commotion ahead. Penny motioned Julia to heel and they crept close. An opening showed and they halted. Twin bear cubs were high in a slim pine sapling, using it for a swing. The sapling was tall and limber and the yearling cubs were rocking it back and forth. Jody had swung in the same fashion. For an instant the cubs were not bears, but boys like himself. He would have liked to climb the sapling and rock with them. It bent half-way to the ground as they swung their weight, swayed upright again, then low on the other side. The cubs made now and then an amiable talking. |
He lingered behind while his father took up the bucks' trail again. He thought once that the cubs were about to come down the sapling to him, but they only scrambled about from one limb to another and turned their heads to watch him. He ached to touch them. He imagined them sitting on their haunches and begging, as Oliver Hutto described trained bears as doing; nesting in his lap, warm and furry and intimate; sleeping on the foot of his bed; even under the covers with him, if the nights were cold. His father was almost out of sight under the pines. He ran after him. He looked back over his shoulder and waved his hand to the bear cubs. They lifted their black noses, as though the air might tell them, what their eyes had not, the nature of their observers. In their first sign of alarm, he saw them clamber down the sapling and slip away to the west beyond the gall-berries. He caught up to his father. |
Jody settled himself halfway up the live oak. Penny and Julia disappeared. The shade of the oak was cool. A light breeze moved through its leaves. Jody's shaggy hair was wet. He pushed it out of his eyes and wiped his face on his blue sleeve, then settled himself to quiet. Silence took over the scrub. Far away a hawk cried shrilly and was gone. No bird stirred in any branches. No creature moved or fed. No bees droned, or any insect. It was high noon. Everything living was resting in the heat of the sun's meridian. Everything except Penny and old Julia, who moved now somewhere among the scrub oaks and the myrtle. Bushes crackled below him. He thought his father was returning. He almost betrayed himself with a quick movement. A bleat sounded. A fawn was moving from under the protection of a low clump of palmettos. It must have been there all the time. Penny had known. Jody held his breath. |
A doe bounded over the palmettos. The fawn ran to her, wobbling on unsteady legs. She bent her head to it and made a low sound in greeting. She licked its small anxious face. It was all eyes and ears. It was spotted. Jody had never seen one so young. The doe threw up her head and tasted the air with her wide nostrils. A taint lay on it of the human enemy. She kicked up her heels and made a sortie about the live oak. She discovered the trail of hound and man. She followed it backward and forward, throwing up her head at every few steps. She stopped and listened, her ears pricked tall above her great luminous eyes. |
The fawn bleated. The doe quieted. She seemed satisfied that the danger had come and gone. The fawn nuzzled her full udders and began to nurse. It butted her bag with its knobby head and switched its short tail in a gluttonous ecstasy. The doe was not content. She broke away from it and moved directly underneath the live oak. The boughs below Jody obscured his view, but he could see that she had traced his scent to the tree and was lifting her head to locate him. Her nose followed the odor of his hands, the leather of his shoes, the sweat of his clothing, as surely as a man's eyes followed a blazed trail. The fawn followed, greedy for the warm milk. Suddenly the doe wheeled and kicked the fawn sprawling into the bushes. She cleared them in a great bound and galloped away. |
He pulled the trigger. At the instant that he did so, he realized that he had not made sufficient allowance for his height above the game. He had over-shot. Yet it seemed to him that he must have touched the animal, for it leaped into the air with something more than alarm. It cleared the gallberry bushes with a high bounding, making long cradled arcs. It passed directly under the pine-tree. If he had had his father's new double-barreled gun, he would have had another shot. In a few seconds he heard Penny's gun. He was quivering. He climbed down from the pine and pushed his way back to the patch of hammock. The buck lay in the shade of the live oak. Penny had already begun the dressing. |
Jody walked along the length of the glass case under the counter. There were sweet crackers and an assortment of candies. There were Barlow knives and the new Rogers. There were shoe-strings, buttons, thread and needles. The coarser wares were on shelves that lined the walls. Buckets and pitchers, lard-oil lamps and basins, the new kerosene lamps, coffee pots and cast-iron skillets and Dutch ovens, nestled together like strange birds, fledglings in one nest. Beyond the utensils were the dress goods; calico and Osnaburg, denim and shoddy, domestic and homespun. A few bolts of alpaca and linsey and broadcloth were thick with dust. There was little sale for such luxuries, especially in the summer. At the back of the store were the groceries, hams and cheeses and bacons. There were barrels of sugar and flour and meal and grits and green coffee beans; sacks of potatoes; kegs of syrup; barrels of whiskey. Nothing here was tempting and Jody wandered back to the glass case. A rusty mouth organ lay on top of a pile of licorice strings. He was tempted for a moment to trade in his deer hide and buy the mouth organ, so that he could play to Grandma Hutto or accompany the Forresters. But Grandma would probably prefer the deer hide. Boyles called to him. |
Jody glowed with a sense of virtue. He longed to be good and noble. He turned back of the counter to garner the reward of his character. He glanced up at a motion by the door. Boyles' niece, Eulalie, stood gaping at him. He was flooded instantly with hate. He hated her because his father had teased him. He hated her hair, hanging in tight pig-tails. He hated her freckles, more lavish than his own. He hated her squirrel-teeth, her hands, her feet, and every bone in her lank body. He leaned over swiftly and picked a small potato from a sack and lifted it. She eyed him venomously. Slowly, she flickered her tongue at him like a garter snake. She clasped two fingers over her nose in a gesture of malodorous disgust. He hurled the potato. It struck her on the shoulder and she retreated with shrieks of anguish. |
His spirits lifted. The menacing cloud moved away. They turned north up a path that paralleled the river. Magnolias were in bloom along it. Beyond, there was a lane of oleanders. These too were blossoming. Red-birds flew ahead down the lane. The oleanders led to a gate in a white picket fence. Grandma Hutto's flower garden was a bright patchwork quilt thrown down inside the pickets. Her small white cottage was bound to the substantial earth with vines of honeysuckle and jessamine. Everything here was dear and familiar. Jody ran down the path through the garden, through the patch of indigo, in feathery, rose-lavender bloom. |
She did not caution him against alligators or moccasins or against the river current. It was good to have it taken for granted that he had a little sense of his own. He ran down the path to the landing. The river flowed deep and dark. It made a rippling sound against the banks, but the great liquid heart of it moved silently. Only the swift progress of fallen leaves showed the current. Jody hesitated a moment on the wooden landing, then dove in. He came up gasping with the coldness and struck upstream. He kept close to the bank, where the current ran less swiftly. |
He made almost no progress. The dark vegetation towered on either side of the river. He was pinned between banks of live oaks and cypresses. He pretended that an alligator was behind him and swam desperately. He passed one spot and then, laboriously, another, dog-paddling. He wondered if he could swim as far as the upper landing, where the ferry crossed and the river steamers halted. He fought his way toward it. A cypress knee offered anchorage and he clung to it and caught his wind. He set out again. The landing looked far away. His shirt and breeches interfered with his freedom. He wished he had gone in naked. Grandma would not have minded. He wondered what his mother would have said if he had told her the Forresters had played and sung naked. |
He looked over his shoulder. Hutto's landing had disappeared around the bend. He was suddenly not happy in the fluid darkness. He turned around. The current caught him and he shot downstream. He struggled to approach the bank. Watery tentacles held him. He thought in a panic that he might be swept on to Volusia Bar, to great Lake George itself, even, perhaps, the sea. He fought blindly, reaching for whatever might be solid under him. He found himself grounding a little above the landing. In relief, he drifted cautiously down to it and climbed up on the wooden platform. He drew a deep breath. The panic left him and he was exhilarated by the cold water and the danger. Penny was on the landing. |
Jody smelled its familiar odor. He had never been able to disentangle its elements. The sweet lavender she used on her clothing was plain. There were dried grasses in a jar before the fire-place. There was the unmistakable smell of honey, which she kept in a cupboard. There was pastry, tarts and cookies and fruit cakes. There was the smell of the soap she used on Fluff's fur. There was the pervasive scent of flowers from the garden outside the windows. And above it all, it came to him at last, lay the smell of the river. The river itself was fluid through the cottage and around it, leaving a whirlpool of odorous dampness and decaying fern. He looked through the open door. A path led through marigolds to the water. The river shone in the late sunlight, Guinea-gold, like the bright flowers. Its flow drew Jody's mind with it to the ocean, where Oliver rode the storms in ships, and knew the world. |
He wandered back and forth from Grandma to his father. Penny sat sunk in quiet in a padded chair in the front room. Shadows lay over him and absorbed him. There was not here the excitement of a visit to the Forresters. There was instead a snugness that covered him like a warm quilt in winter. It was meat and drink to Penny, harassed at home by all his duties. Jody offered to help in the kitchen, but Grandma sent him away. He rambled into the yard and played with Fluff. Old Julia watched them wonderingly. Romping was as alien to her as to her master. Her black and tan face wore the solemnity of the work-dog. |
Jody heard the freight and passenger steamer pass the Hutto landing about daylight. He sat up in bed and looked out of the window. The lights of the steamer were pale under the early morning sky. The paddle wheels churned thickly through the water. The steamer blew its thin high whistle at Volusia. He thought he heard it stop and then go on up the river. Somehow, its passing concerned him. He could not go to sleep again. Outside in the yard old Julia growled. Penny stirred from his sleep. Watchfulness lived sentinel in his brain. Sounds no heavier than the wind aroused him. |
Grandma ran from her bedroom. She had on a long white nightgown and a white nightcap. She fastened a shawl around her shoulders as she ran. Oliver took the steps in one bound like a buck and Jody and his mother were on him in a whirlwind. He lifted his mother by the waist and swung her. She thumped him with her small fists. Jody and Fluff yelped for attention. Oliver swung them in turn. Penny joined them sedately, fully dressed. They pumped hands in greeting. In the dim light of dawn, Oliver's teeth flashed white. Grandma's eye caught another flashing. |
Grandma, he noticed, did not touch her plate at breakfast. She kept Oliver's filled. Her bright eyes hovered over her son like hungry swallows. Oliver sat tall and straight at the table. His skin was bronzed where his shirt was open over his lean throat. His hair was sun-burned, with a red light in it. His eyes were the color which Jody imagined was the color of the sea, gray-blue, with a flashing of green. Jody ran his hand over his own snub nose and freckled skin. He felt surreptitiously across the back of his head, where the straw-colored drake's-tails stuck out stiffly. He was immensely dissatisfied with himself. |
Jody's mind whirled in confusion. Oliver deserved it, for leaving the cottage and going to a girl. But three against one was never fair. Even when the dogs bayed a bear or panther, it seemed to him an uneven matter. The Forresters, his mother said, were black- hearted. He had never believed her. They sang and drank and frolicked and guffawed. They fed him lavishly and slapped him on the back and gave him Fodder-wing to play with. Was this black- hearted, for three to fight together against one? Yet Mill-wheel and Buck were fighting for Lem, keeping his girl for him. Was not that good? Was that not loyal? Oliver came to his knees, then wavered to his feet. He smiled through the dirt and blood. Jody's stomach turned over. Oliver was being killed. |
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Dataset Card for Guttenberg Austrlia Collection
This dataset card aims to be a base template for new datasets. It has been generated using this raw template.
Dataset Details
Dataset Description
- Curated by: Matthew Altenburg
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- Repository: Gutenberg-Data
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Uses
Direct Use
- Commercial Use with Acknowledgment: While commercial use is permitted, it is recommended that users acknowledge Project Gutenberg Australia as the source. This should be emphasized in the "Direct Use" section, especially for commercial applications.
- Research and Educational Use: The dataset can be freely used for research, academic, and educational purposes. These uses align well with the public domain status and should be encouraged in the "Direct Use" section.
Out-of-Scope Use
- Jurisdictional Compliance: Since the works are only guaranteed to be in the public domain in Australia, it's crucial to mention that users outside Australia need to ensure they are not violating copyright laws in their own countries. This means that out-of-scope use includes any activities that might infringe on copyright in jurisdictions where the works are not in the public domain.
- Misuse or Malicious Use: The public domain status does not inherently prevent misuse, but the license does request responsible use of the dataset. This includes avoiding the creation of harmful or deceptive content. Respect for Source Attribution: While not legally required, the license suggests acknowledging Project Gutenberg Australia. Therefore, using the dataset without appropriate attribution, especially in a commercial context, could be considered out-of-scope or at least discouraged.
Dataset Structure
This dataset consists of a single column called "paragraphs." Each entry in this column represents a paragraph extracted from various books and novels available on Project Gutenberg Australia. The dataset does not contain additional metadata such as author names, publication dates, or book titles, focusing purely on the textual content. [More Information Needed]
Dataset Creation
Curation Rationale
The primary motivation for creating this dataset was to collect a large corpus of Australian literature and other written works to support the development of an Australian Large Language Model (LLM). By focusing on texts that are culturally and historically significant to Australia, this dataset aims to enhance the performance and relevance of language models trained specifically for Australian English and the cultural context of Australia. The dataset provides a rich source of language data that can be used to train, fine-tune, or evaluate LLMs with a focus on Australian literature, expressions, and nuances. [More Information Needed]
Source Data
The source data for this dataset comes from Project Gutenberg Australia, a repository of texts that are in the public domain within Australia. The data was collected using a web scraping tool called Scrapy, which was employed to systematically extract paragraphs from a wide range of Australian novels and books available on the Project Gutenberg Australia website. The data primarily consists of literary texts, including classic and contemporary Australian literature, which are freely available and representative of the Australian cultural and linguistic landscape.
This dataset serves as a foundational resource for developing AI models that better understand and generate Australian English, contributing to the broader goal of building robust, culturally aware AI systems.
Data Collection and Processing
The data was collected using a web scraping tool called Scrapy to extract paragraphs from various texts available on Project Gutenberg Australia. The selection criteria for the data focused on texts that are in the public domain within Australia, primarily Australian literature and other culturally significant works. The scraping process involved identifying and extracting paragraphs from these texts, which were then compiled into a single-column format in the dataset.
Filtering and Normalization: The dataset did not undergo extensive filtering or normalization during the initial collection process. However, basic cleaning was performed to remove extraneous HTML tags and other non-text elements that may have been present in the raw data. The paragraphs were extracted in their original form, preserving the language, spelling, and grammar used in the source texts.
Tools and Libraries Used: The primary tool used for data collection was Scrapy, a popular Python library for web scraping.
Who are the source data producers?
The source data producers are the original authors and publishers of the texts available on Project Gutenberg Australia. These include a range of Australian writers, both classic and contemporary, whose works have entered the public domain in Australia. Since the texts are historical and literary in nature, the demographic information about the original authors may vary widely, covering different periods, genres, and perspectives within Australian literature.
In many cases, the texts reflect the cultural and societal contexts of their time, providing insights into the identity, values, and experiences of their authors. However, specific demographic or identity information about the authors is generally not included within the dataset itself, as the focus is on the textual content.
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Personal and Sensitive Information
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Bias, Risks, and Limitations
While the dataset is valuable for training models on Australian English, users should be aware of potential biases. The texts were selected based on their availability in the public domain, which may result in a skewed representation of Australian literature, favoring older, more established works. This could lead to an overemphasis on historical perspectives and underrepresentation of contemporary or marginalized voices.
Technical Limitations: The dataset consists of raw paragraphs without contextual information, which may limit its effectiveness in certain NLP tasks that require understanding of larger textual structures or metadata. Additionally, the lack of annotations or labels means that the dataset may require significant preprocessing before it can be used in specific applications.
Recommendations
Given the potential biases and limitations, users should consider complementing this dataset with more diverse and contemporary sources to ensure a balanced representation of Australian literature. Care should be taken when using the dataset for tasks that require sensitivity to cultural or historical context, as the texts may include outdated or biased language.
For technical applications, it may be necessary to enrich the dataset with additional metadata or annotations, depending on the specific use case. Users are encouraged to critically evaluate the dataset’s suitability for their intended applications, particularly if the model’s outputs will be used in sensitive or impactful contexts.
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Dataset Card Authors [optional]
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Dataset Card Contact
For any further details conatct Matthew Altenburg: Matthew.Altenburg@anu.edu.au
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