by James Still
Fester did not move. Only his eyes shifted, following the pen-hooker, attending the checkreins clasped between fourth and middle finger, the ramrod posture, angle of elbow, bend of knee, shoe in stirrup, the rakish sweep of Rafe Shank’s hat. Rafe rode as might the king of horsemasters.
That this was not a vision was attested by the sudden halt in activity. The pair were the cynosure of all eyes as they negotiated the length of the hollow in a single foray, wheeled, and strode out. As they disappeared from Fester’s view, his chin drooped and he slept.
The rider who failed to duck in running under a tree had brought the county agent off of his stump in a hurry. Unhorsed, the man lay straddle-legged, to appearances dead, while traders crowded ’round. But he had suffered nothing worse than having the breath knocked out of him and was on his feet within minutes and feeling for his bottle.
“If he hadn’t been drunk it would o’ killed him” was the repeated comment, and an apologist in the cause of strong spirits averred, “One of the several good things about likker is it limbers a feller and lets him down easy,” which encouraged the retort, “From my experience, the limber business is the worst thing to be said for drinking whiskey.” The assemblage chortled.
As the grease buyer began his departure and others were following suit, the county agent concluded it was now or never for the log-pulling. Yet Godey Spurlock delayed him by asking, “Do you know a couple of jaspers up Pawpaw on Ballard Creek called Doss and Gobel Colley?”
“I do,” responded the agent impatiently. Answering questions was originally his forte, and he shared information with such generosity a criticism of him was that should you ask him a thing he imparted more than you wanted to hear. Preoccupied at the moment, he gave Godey short shrift. “Great boys, the Colleys—hard workers—joined a project of mine—growing strawberries.”
“Strawberries,” hooted Godey, “my rusty ankles.”
The agent amended his statement. “Preparing the land, getting it into shape for a fall planting of a hybrid variety I’m introducing—fruits the size of hens’ eggs.” He whipped out a pamphlet.
“Aye gonnies, they’ve hoodwinked you plumb.”
Mal, in the dark, assisted. “They’ve put blinkers on you, them Colleys. They’re double-talkers, lie for a living.”
Godey went on, “The fact is Doss and Gobel have never thought a thought about strawberries. They were first aiming to raise peaches from seeds Riar Thomas hauled in from South Carolina when a bigger idea struck.”
Fidgeting, the agent said, “You’re ahead of me on the news.”
“I’m trying to wise you and you won’t stand.”
“I have irons in the fire, my young friends, and must go.”
Godey wagged his head mournfully. “They’re sinking a hole to China.”
The agent spun ’round like a teetotum. His mouth gaped.
Adjusting instantly and spurred by a nudge from Godey, Mal declaimed, “There they were into it, and us eyewitnesses.”
“Forty feet down and digging to equal ferrets,” said Godey.
The agent peered into the boys’ faces. He found them solemn enough. “At forty feet, probably at twenty, they would have struck water,” he balked.
“They picked a dry spot on a bench of the ridge.”
The strawberry pamphlet fluttered to the ground.
“Is this a put-up?”
“Doss is digging and Gobel hoisting the dirt in a bucket,” explained Godey, “and they prophesy they’ll reach China come Christmas.”
Singling out Godey as the leader, the agent endeavored to arrive at the truth. “You’re pulling my leg,” he accused.
Godey’s forehead wrinkled. “Are you saying I’m telling one?”
“No, no; no offense,” hurried the agent, falling over himself, “I mean . . . I mean . . .” But he gave up. With the traders melting away as he watched, he strove to end the conversation. Sputtering, “I’ll visit the Colley brothers shortly—probe into the matter—this week, the latest,” he turned to go.
“Hold your ’tater, swifty,” bade Godey, “for I haven’t finished. There’s a second job in your line you can handle while there.”
Facing the opposite direction, rattling his soles, the agent inquired, “What now? Speak it. I’m in a bad haste.”
“Epizoomicks.”
The word turned the agent again. “Epizoomicks?” He batted his eyelids. “Are you referring to an epizootic, an epidemic among animals? Be that the case, it is my province.”
“On Bee Tree, at Viney Snow Roseberry’s, it’s a-happening. Her turkeys are croaking like forty.”
The agent started once more, activated by another passing rider. “I’ll look into that as well. You have my word—my word.”
Of the sixteen traders remaining, three evinced willingness to have their mounts compete in pulling the log, and the agent saw at once a genuine contest was impossible because the roan stallion entered was a quarter larger than the mare-mule and twice the weight of the pony, the latter two committed by tipsy owners. And the rule must be adjusted to fit the terrain—the winner the animal drawing the log farthest in a minute.
Up pranced the owner of the roan, and while the agent adjusted grabs to the beech, he dismounted and harnessed his animal, hooked swingletree to the chain, and spying up at the gallery of onlookers from town, challenged, “You jaspers got any hats you want to bet?” The number of watchers had swelled until there were about as many of them above as traders below, and an earnest of their age was the total absence of hats. One jeered a reply, “Aye-o, Garfield, big doing, a stud horse battling yearlings,” and a companion censured, “Hain’t fair, Gar. Shame on you.” Having hitched their mounts aside for the occasion, the traders gathered, Godey and Mal in their midst, stepping over the sleeping Fester Shattuck when necessary.
Garfield collected the lines and addressed his beast: “Gee a little bit. Another bit.”
“Gee, gee,” clamored the gallery, welcoming any excitement.
Pocketwatch in hand, the agent inquired nervously, “Ready, are you?” and without awaiting an answer cried, “Go.”
Jerking the lines, Garfield commanded the roan, “Do it, Pete. Hip, hip.”
“Hip, hip,” echoed the onlookers.
“Come on, daddy boy. Show ’em. Let’s me and you show ’em.”
The gallery burst out together, “Daddy boy, come on.”
The roan dug hoofs into the earth and strained, and twenty-five seconds transpired before the log moved. In the time remaining, with stops and starts, he was able to drag the log a mere four-and-a-half yards, the uphill pitch of the ground a hindrance and the three-foot-through beech a greater burden than calculated. And at this juncture the owner of the mare-mule, addled though he was, withdrew from the competition.
“Coward,” rose a caterwaul. “Chicken-legged coward.”
The pony’s master was no quitter. That an effort to budge the log with so slight an animal was hopeless did not stop him. Yet he dawdled, postponing the showdown. Raising his bottle, he drained and pitched it, and then arranged the traces, which were too ample when buckled their tightest. He ignored the hecklers who had warmed up at the last spectacle, joshing, “She can’t stir it, Taylor,” and, “You ought to be allowed to push while she pulls.”
“Ready?” alerted the agent.
“I hain’t,” said Taylor Horne. He wouldn’t be rushed.
While the pony’s owner fiddled with chain and swingletree, a voice lifted among the spectators, ejaculating in mock wonder, “Why, bust my breeches if there ain’t Bad Hair from over on Ballard.” Godey whirled, intent on catching the culprit with mouth open, while Mal, scalp prickling, not daring to turn and look, stood like a post. With many clamoring at once, Godey could not discover from whose teeth had come the utterance, and no face seemed familiar.
“Ready, sir?”
“Pretty soon.” The whiskey blossoms on Taylor Horne’s cheeks burned. Casting a glance at his badgerers, he defied, “A
ny of you birds got money you want to lose? I say she’ll do ’er.”
“Money, huh?” somebody yawped. “You can’t even spell it, much less flash it.”
Again the agent spoke, “Ready?” and before a denial could be registered, called, “Go.”
“Hup, sweetheart,” cried Taylor, urging his pony forward. “Hup. Show ’em.”
The gallery mocked, “Sweetheart, hup! Show ’em,” and one of them added, “Sweetheart, huh? Now he’s gone and told it.”
The pony did her best. Her belly barreled, the muscles of her legs grew rigid, rear hoofs dug to the fetlocks in the earth. Her jugular vein swelled to a rope.
“Hup, sweetheart, hup!”
The skinned beech log stayed where it was for all the pony’s striving, and still the owner would not relent, pleading, “Jenny Peg, my ’possum baby, do it for me. Hup!” The gallery whooped and slapped thighs and chortled.
The minute up, the agent grasped the pony’s bridle, rubbed her nose, and praised, “For your size, you did splendid.”
An onlooker called down in derision, “She’ll do ’er, won’t she Taylor?”
“Go to hell,” said Taylor.
The traders moved toward their mounts, and the rabble on the slope arose and stretched and began to leave by the route they had come. So much of jockey day as there was going to be was patently over. Producing his wallet, the agent drew out a five-dollar bill and thrust it at the master of the stallion.
Garfield Wayland peered at the money. “What’s that for?” he asked. News of the award had missed his ears, and heretofore victory had been considered honor enough.
“It’s the prize,” explained the agriculture agent. “You won it, sir, won it fairly.”
Since the Red Cross donated him a twenty-four-pound bag of flour in 1933, Garfield had come by nothing free, and the only money he had ever won was pitching pennies in games of crack-o-loo as a boy. “I heard you,” said he, “but you haven’t talked yet.”
The traders paused; the watchers overhead halted in their tracks.
Hoping to pass the matter off with a jest, the agent cajoled, “If it won’t spend, I’ll give you another just like it.”
“Ah, take it,” came from the ridge, “you’re holding up creation,” and, “Grab it, and buy a gallon.”
“What I’m wanting to hear,” insisted Garfield, “is whose pocket it’s out of. Who put up the five?”
The agent grew earnest. From what he had heard during the morning, the truth would be unpalatable. He bought time before answering by a glance at Fester Shattuck napping in their midst and at the other sleeper sprawled down the hollow, and he saw himself as he surmised these hill farmers viewed him, an upstart who had never grubbed a new-ground or raised corn on land pitched at a forty-five-degree angle, a sharp tack who scoffed at the rural wisdom passed from father to son, who had gathered all he knew out of books, and whose salary was paid out of their sweat. When no solution occurred other than to make a clean breast of it, he said, “Judge Solon Jones, a friend of the people, donated the prize.”
Garfield stiffened as if slapped. “You want me to take money off of Judge Jones after how him and the rest of the Roscoe politicians treated us country fellers?” His jaw gripped, his eyes hooded. “Hear me, and hear me straight, I’m not for sale.”
“And listen to me,” a trader cut in. “We’re all for sweeping out the courthouse four years coming. To the bull-hole with them, say we everybody.”
“Amen, sky bo,” came a seconding.
The ridge rang with laughter.
In his confusion the agent found himself saying, “It’s yours, the prize, no strings attached, none whatsoever,” and, “You have the judge wrong. He argued for holding the trading in town and was overruled.”
Garfield Wayland was not listening. “Hand that five back to the old judge and tell him what he can do with it.”
From overhead came the prompting, “Give him the particulars, Gar. Plain speaking.”
“Tell him,” clarified Garfield, “to take it and ram it.”
The gathering broke up, and almost in unison the traders swung into saddles and made their departure, flowing around Fester into the natural roadway of the branch bed. The sleeper farther down was lifted, balanced across a saddle, and carried along. Collecting the grabs and swingletree, intent on deserting the scene himself, the agent referred to his timepiece. The affair had ended an hour short of noon.
With heads toward home, the animals hustled and the hollow emptied rapidly. The agriculture agent clanked after them with his gear. And though Mal relaxed, Godey did not. Godey continued to gaze up the slope at the vanishing onlookers who could be observed for some fifteen yards before the woods hid them. Godey was seeing the last of their heels when a cry rang down:
“I smell peaches
I’ve spied a jasper
With a hole in his breeches.”
Although Godey kept his eyes riveted to the ridge until the last of the onlookers had disappeared and the sounds of man and beast had died in Chicken Roost and nobody else was there save Mal and the slumbering Fester, he was unable to single out or guess his taunter. Then, without a word or a glance at Riar’s mule, he strode toward the mouth of hollow. Mal trailed him, not venturing to protest the abandonment of the animal, muttering instead, “Nowadays a body can’t spit without the world a-knowing.”
The boys were a quarter of a mile along the road toward Big Blue and had halted under a locust to await the bus, or perchance to hitch a ride earlier, when Godey broke his silence. He chuffed angrily, “I’ll level up with Riar Thomas if it’s the final thing I do on the ball of this earth. Dadburn him, and his old hen, and his snotty-nosed young ’uns.”
Mal wrestled with himself. The desertion of the mule was a rock in his chest. Dare he suggest they fetch Riar’s old gray, take the bypass around Roscoe, and at least turn the animal loose on Ballard? They could claim he had broken fence. “The mule—” he began.
“What about him?” Godey cut Mal off. His eyes were gimlets.
“My opinion,” reasoned Mal, “we’ve already hurt Riar a whole big heap.”
“Not half enough,” sputtered Godey. “Not by the half.” And as a gesture he knotted his fist and said, “If I hadn’t sworn not to, I’d warp you one. You . . . you . . .”
Mal’s hand raised by habit to shield his arm. His neck reddened, mottling like Tom Peeple’s. The color climbed, flushing his cheeks, invading his scalp. Flecks danced before his eyes like the heat devils wrinkling the highway. He gathered his courage to do what he had to do should Godey finish what he had started. The unspoken words hung in the air.
Snickering suddenly, Godey said, “You tickle me. Take your hand down, knucklehead. I swore I wouldn’t hit you, didn’t I? When Godey Spurlock swears he won’t do a thing, he’s not liable to.”
The tension broke.
His hand still in place, Mal said, “Me and you wouldn’t recognize a child of Riar Thomas’s did we meet one.”
“We wouldn’t, huh?” Godey cackled. His face brightened. He beamed. “After all of Tight Wad’s cow business? Why, someday we’ll see a calf and it’ll have a face pine-blank like a Thomas.”
“Might,” allowed Mal, dropping his arm.
“And speaking of that pinch-nickel,” Godey said, “I aim to get up with him right shortly and hear what he has to talk about. We have a right smart-sized crow to pick together.”
At midday the sun found the break between the trees shading Chicken Roost, lit the dry branch from mouth to head, and inched across Fester Shattuck’s face. He cracked his eyelids and was momentarily blinded by the light. Not a whinny or a knicker reached his ears, and the quiet baffled him. Nothing moved in the heating air. Shifting out of the sun, he let the world take form. Riar’s mule came to view, a spool of slobber dangling from its muzzle; horse apples steamed. The hollow was worn slick. When his sight was restored fully, he could discover no other beast or any trader. His tongue was dry, and on groping for
his bottle, he found it empty. He stared at the copper-trimmed saddle and could not summon the will to rise.
What brought Fester to his feet finally was the glint of a mason jar on the slope above him. He scrambled to it, the last yards on his knees, and although it was drained, kept it as a collecting vessel, for he now saw glass sparkling on both shoulders of the hollow. Working along the ridge, he caught up any container he found. The majority were dry when discarded, or had landed neck down; few were broken, spared by underbrush and leaves. He collected a drop here, a thimbleful there; a camphor bottle yielded half a gill. When he had enough to constitute a swallow, he upped the jar.
Fester had pressed along to the head of the hollow and was traversing the opposite side before his search was truly rewarded. Where his fellow sleeper had lain were two pint bottles, the first drained, the second three-quarters full with the cork bitten off. It was pure corn whiskey, distilled by the old method, as yellow as the sun. The remainder of the stopper was lodged in the bottle’s neck, and when he tried to extract it with his knife, it crumbled as he gouged. In a fever of need, he pushed the cork through and poured the contents into the jar.
The whiskey was too rare to be gulped. He had not encountered its match in years, and the wide-mouthed mason jar was the proper vessel to breath in the aroma as one supped. He imbibed slowly, taking his time.
The hollow began to wake. The beeches rustled. A snake doctor surveyed the dry branch; a towhee made the mast fly; an automobile hooted distantly. Fester himself began to liven. Observed from afar, the burnished brass of the saddle appeared golden. Even Riar’s mule acquired a stolid handsomeness. And Fester struck upon a plan. He would return the mule, trafficking along the way, using the saddle as barter, and with any luck be astride a nag of his own by the hour he reached Ballard Creek. Such a saddle should hook any eye. His hopes soared as he drank and presently set himself in motion.
