Chapter 22

 

By November, the Baxters and the Forresters knew the extent of the plague and what to expect, both of the game and the predatory animals, during the winter. The deer had been cut down to a fraction of their usual numbers. Where a herd of a dozen had fed across the edge of the clearing, a lone buck or doe leaped the fence into the cow-pea field in search of food that was not there. The deer became bold, nosing in the old sweet potato beds for undiscovered nubbins. The quail appeared in almost their usual numbers, but the wild turkeys were decimated. From that fact, Penny concluded that the damage indeed lay somehow in the polluted swamp waters, for the turkeys fed there and the quail did not.

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All the food animals, deer and turkey, squirrel and 'possum, were so scarce that a day's hunt might produce nothing. The unfriendly animals had suffered as heavy losses. At first Penny thought that this would be of advantage. It became plain almost at once that the result was to make the remaining killers hungrier and more desperate because of their own shortened food supply. He became alarmed for the Baxter hogs and built a pen for them inside the lot. All the family went together to the woods and gathered acorns and scrub palmetto berries for the hogs. Penny set aside a measure of the new corn for fattening them. A few days later a stamping and squealing sounded in the lot at midnight. The dogs, aroused, ran barking and Penny and Jody pulled on their breeches and followed with a torch. The fattest barrow was missing. The kill had been made so neatly that there was no sign of struggle. A small trail of blood led across the lot and over the fence. It had required a large animal to kill and carry a heavy hog so handily. Penny took a hasty look at the tracks.

"Bear," he said. "A big un."

Old Julia begged to take the trail and Penny himself was tempted, for the killer might be easily and quickly come up on, gorging. But the night was dark and the risk of an encounter if the bear should be shot and only wounded was, he decided, too great. The trail would still be fresh enough in the morning. They went back to bed, to sleep lightly. At daylight they called the dogs and set out. The track was that of old Slewfoot.

Penny said, "I'd as good to of knowed, him, of all the bears in the scrub, 'd live through a plague."

Slewfoot had fed at short distance away. He had eaten heartily and scratched a covering of trash across the carcass. Then he had gone south and crossed Juniper Creek.

Penny said, "He'll be back agin to feed. A bear'll stay a week with his kill. I've seed 'em fight off the buzzards even when they didn't want to eat, theirselves. If 'twas ary bear but this un, we could set us a trap. But no trap was made will fool him since he lost his toe in one."

"Cain't we come wait for him and ketch him at his feedin'?"

"We'll try."

"Tomorrer?"

"Tomorrer."

They turned back toward home. A light galloping sound came close and closer. Flag had broken loose and joined the hunt. He kicked up his heels and held his small tail erect.

"Ain't he a sight, Pa?"

"He's a sight, son, a'right."

The next day, Penny was down with chills and fever. He was in bed for three days. There was no use in trying to catch old Slewfoot now. Jody begged to go alone and watch for him in ambush, but Penny refused permission. The great bear was too wise and too dangerous, he said, and Jody was too rattle-headed.

Ma Baxter said, "Now I don't crave to feed them shoats to no bear, even if they ain't plumb fat."

When Penny was able to leave the bed, they agreed that it was best to kill the hogs without waiting either for the full moon, or for the animals to be properly fattened. Jody split fat-wood and built a fire under the syrup kettle and brought water from the sink-hole to heat in it. He tilted a barrel on its side and propped it with sand. When the water was exactly right, Ma Baxter ladled it into the barrel. Penny killed the hogs and scalded them one after the other in the barrel, twirling them by the legs with his quick deftness. Ma and Jody had to help him lift them to the cross-trees, for his strength suddenly failed him. All three worked furiously at the scraping, for the hair must come off before it set.

Again Jody marveled at the metamorphosis of live creatures in whom he had felt interest and sympathy, into cold flesh that made acceptable food. He was glad when the killing was over. Now, scraping away on the smooth firm hides, he enjoyed seeing the skin become clean and white. He began to anticipate the smell of sausage frying and of cracklings browning in the fat. Nothing was wasted, not even the entrails. The meat itself was dressed out into hams and shoulders, side-meat and belly-bacon, which would be cured with salt and pepper and brown sugar made from their own cane juice, and then smoked slowly over hickory coals in the smoke-house. There remained the hocks and feet, which would be pickled in brine; the ribs and backbones which would be fried and put down in crocks under a protective layer of lard; the heads and livers and kidneys and hearts which would be made into head-cheese and put down the same way. The trimmings of lean meat would be ground into sausage. The fat would be tried out in the wash-pot and the lard put down in crocks and cans and the brown cracklings laid away for shortening in cornbread. The stomachs and intestines would be scraped and turned and soaked, and then used for casings in which the sausage meat would be stuffed, and the sausages hung in festoons and smoked along with the hams and bacons. Odds and ends would be cooked with cornmeal for the dogs and chickens. Even the tails were dressed. Only one part, like a windpipe, seemed without use and was tossed away.

Jody asked, "What's that, Ma?"

"Why, that's his goozle. What's a goozle? Well, if he didn't have no goozle, he couldn't squeal."

Eight hogs in all were dressed. Only the old boar hog, two young sows, and the brood-sow, peace offering from the Forresters, were left to begin the cycle over again. These must take their chances in the woods. They would be fed the slops, and a little corn at evening, to toll them into their pen to be shut up at night for approximate safety. For the rest, they must root for a living, maintaining life if they could, dying if they must.

Supper that night was a feast, and the table seemed lavish long afterward. There would soon be collards in the garden behind the house, and wild mustard greens all about the clearing. There would be bacon to cook with them, and with the dried shelled cow-peas. Cracklings would hold out for crackling bread for months. The Baxters were in fair shape for the winter. The season was the most abundant of the year. The scarceness of game would not be so serious with the smoke-house full.

The flattened sugar-cane had sent out whiskered roots along the stalks and had to be torn free of the clutching earth. The stalks were like ragged mops. The extraneous roots had to be cut off before the cane could be ground. Jody drove old Cæsar around and around the small cane-mill and Penny fed the thin, fibrous stalks into the revolving gears. The yield was low, and the syrup was thin and acid, but there was again sweetening in the house. Ma Baxter dropped oranges into the last boiling of syrup and the result made a rich preserve.

The corn was not much damaged, even the ears that had stood in the field through the rains. Jody spent hours every day at the millstone. The lower stone had small grooves that waved out from the center like the spirals on a snail shell. The upper stone rested on it, and the pair sat in a wooden frame with four legs. The shelled corn was fed into a hole in the center of the upper millstone, and when the ground meal reached a certain fineness, it sifted out through the waste hole and was collected in a bucket. Swinging the overhead lever in a circle hour after hour was monotonous but not unpleasant. Jody dragged up a high stump and when his back was tired, sat on it by way of rest and variety.

He said to his father, "I do most o' my figgerin' here."

Penny said, "I hope you do a heap of it, for the flood's done you outen a teacher. The Forresters and me had it settled to board a teacher between us for you and Fodder-wing this winter. When Fodder-wing died, I still figgered I'd do some trappin' and git cash money that-a-way. But the creeturs is so scarcet now and the hides so pore, hit's no use."

Jody said comfortingly, "That's all right. I know a heap now."

"That jest proves your ignorance, young feller. I do hate for you to grow up and not know nothin'. You'll jest have to make out this year with what leetle I kin learn you."

The prospect was more than acceptable. Penny would start him on his reading lesson or his sums, and then, before either of them knew it, would be off on a tale. Jody went on with his grinding with a light heart. Flag came up and he stopped to let the fawn lick the meal at the waste-hole. He often took a taste himself. The stones became hot from friction and the meal smelled like popcorn or cornpone. When he was hungry enough, a mouthful was palatable, but it never tasted as good as it smelled. Flag was bored with the inactivity and wandered away. He was becoming bolder and was sometimes gone in the scrub for an hour or so. There was no holding him in the shed. He had learned to kick down the loose board walls. Ma Baxter expressed the belief, only because it was her hope, that the fawn was going wild and would eventually disappear. Jody was no longer even troubled by the remark. He knew that the same restlessness came to the fawn that came to him. Flag merely felt the need of stretching his legs and exploring the world about him. They understood each other perfectly. He knew, too, that when Flag wandered away, he moved in a circle, and was never out of hearing of Jody's call.

That evening Flag got himself in serious disgrace. The sweet potatoes had been cured and heaped in a pile on the back porch. Flag roamed there while every one was occupied and found that by butting the pile, the potatoes would roll. The sound and motion charmed him. He butted the pile until it was strewn over most of the yard. He tramped on the potatoes with his sharp hooves. The odor enticed him and he nibbled one. The taste pleased him and he went from one to another, nibbling. Ma Baxter discovered him too late. Grave damage had been done. She drove him furiously with a palmetto broom. The game was much the one of chase that Jody played with him. When she turned away, he turned as well, and, following, butted her in her ample rear. Jody came in from his grinding to a hullabaloo and a crisis. Even Penny upheld Ma Baxter in the gravity of the matter. Jody could not endure the expression on his father's face. He could not keep back the tears.

He said, "He didn't know what he was doin'."

"I know, Jody, but the harm's as bad to the 'taters as if he done it for meanness. We got scarcely enough rations now to do the year."

"Then I'll not eat no 'taters, and make it up."

"Nobody wants you should do without 'taters. You jest got to keep track o' that scaper. If you keep him, it's your place to see he don't do no damage."

"I couldn't watch him and grind corn, all two."

"Then keep him tied good in the shed when you cain't watch him."

"He hates that ol' dark shed."

"Then pen him."

Jody rose before day the next morning and began work on a pen in the corner of the yard. He studied its position with an eye to using the fence for two corners of the pen, and to having it where he could see Flag from most of his own work-spots, the millstone, the wood-pile and the barn lot in particular. Flag would be content, he knew, if he was in sight of him. He finished the pen in the evening, when his chores were done. The next day he untied Flag from the shed and lifted him into the pen, kicking and struggling. Flag was over the bars and out and at his heels again before he reached the house. Penny found him again in tears.

"Don't git in a swivet, boy. We'll work this out, one way or t'other. Now the 'taters is near about the only thing he'll bother, do you keep him outen the house. They'd ought to be under kiver, anyway. Now you take down that tipply-tumbly pen, and build a coop to kiver the 'taters. Like a chicken coop, with two sides comin' to a peak. I'll start you on it."

Jody wiped his nose on his sleeve.

"I shore am obliged, Pa."

With the potatoes bedded and covered, there was no more serious trouble. Flag had to be kept out of the smoke-house as well as the house, for he had grown so large that by rearing on his hind legs he could reach the hanging sides of bacon and lick the salt.

Ma Baxter said, "I don't want nobody but me lickin' the meat I eat, let alone a nasty creetur."

Flag was annoyingly curious, as well, and butted over a can of lard in the smoke-house to hear the cover fall and see what was inside. The day was cool and the thin loose lard was discovered before it had run out. But such intrusions could be taken care of simply by keeping the doors shut, as was desirable in any case. Jody developed a good memory for such details.

Penny said, "Hit'll do you no harm to learn to be keerful. You got to learn takin' keer o' rations comes first of all—first after gittin' 'em."