“You know this country like you do the back yard, don’t you, Caspey?” Narcissa said.
“Yessum, I ought to. I been over it a hund’ed times since I wuz bawn. Mist’ Bayard knows hit, too. He been huntin’ it long ez I is, pretty near. Him and Mist’ Johnny bofe. Miss Jenny send me wid ’um when dey had dey fust gun; me and dat ’ere single bar’l gun I use ter have ter tie together wid a string. You ‘member dat ole single bar’l, Mist’ Bayard? But hit would shoot. Many’s de fox squir’l we shot in dese woods.
Rabbits, too,” Bayard was leaning back against the tree. He was gazing off into the tree tops and the soft sky beyond, his cigarette burning slowly in his hand. She looked at his bleak profile against the lantern glow and moved closer against him. But he did not respond, and she slid her hand in his. But it too was cold, and again he had left her for the lonely heights of his despair. Caspey was speaking again, in his slow, consonantless voice with its overtones of mellow sadness. “Mist’ Johnny, now, he sho’ could shoot. You ’member dat time me and you and him wuz—”
Bayard rose. He dropped his cigarette and crushed it carefully with his heel. “Let’s go,” he said. “They ain’t going to tree.” He drew Narcissa to her feet and turned and went on, Caspey got up and unslung his horn and put it to his lips. The sound swelled about them, grave and clear and prolonged; then it died into echoes and so into silence again, leaving no ripple in the still darkness.
It was near midnight when they left Caspey and Isom at their cabin and followed the lane toward the house. The barn loomed presently beside them, and the house among its thinning trees, against the hazy sky. He opened the gate and she passed through and he followed and closed it, and turning he found her beside him, and stopped. “Bayard?” she whispered, leaning against him, and he put his arms around her and stood so, gazing above her head into the sky. She took his face between her palms and drew it down, but his lips were cold and upon them she tasted fatality and doom, and she clung to him for a time, her head bowed against his chest.
After that she would not go with him again. So he went alone, returning anywhere between midnight and dawn, ripping his clothing off quietly in the darkness and sliding cautiously into bed. But when he was still she would touch him and speak his name in the dark beside him, and turn to him warm and soft with sleep. And they would lie so, holding to one another in the darkness and the temporary abeyance of his despair and the isolation of that doom he could not escape.
2
“Well,” Miss Jenny said briskly, above the soup, “your girl’s gone and left you, and now you can find time to come out and see your kinfolks, can’t you?”
Horace grinned a little. “To tell the truth, I came out to get something to eat. I don’t think that one woman in ten has any aptitude for housekeeping, but my place is certainly not in the home.”
“You mean,” Miss Jenny corrected, “that not one man in ten has sense enough to marry a decent cook.”
“Maybe they have more sense and consideration for others than to spoil decent cooks,” he suggested.
“Yes,” young Bayard said, “even a cook’ll quit work when she gets married.”
“Dat’s de troof,” Simon, propped in a slightly florid attitude against the sideboard, in a collarless boiled shirt and his Sunday pants (it is Thanksgiving Day) and reeking a little of whisky in addition to his normal odors, agreed. “I had to fin’ Euphrony fo’ new cookin’ places de fust two mont’ we wuz ma’ied.”
Dr. Peabody said, “Simon must have married somebody else’s cook.”
“I’d rather marry somebody else’s cook than somebody else’s wife,” Miss Jenny snapped.
“Miss Jenny!” Narcissa reproved. “You hush.”
“I’m sorry,” Miss Jenny said immediately. “I wasn’t saying that at you, Horace; it just popped into my head. I was talking to you, Loosh Peabody. You think, just because you’ve eaten off of us Thanksgiving and Christmas tor sixty years, that you can come into my own house and laugh at me, don’t you?”
“Hush. Miss Jenny!” Narcissa repeated. Horace put down his spoon, and Narcissa’s hand found his beneath the table.
“What’s that?” Old Bayard, his napkin tucked into his waistcoat, lowered his spoon and cupped his hand to his ear.
“Nothing,” young Bayard told him. “Aunt Jenny and Doc fighting again. Come alive, Simon.” Simon stirred and removed the soup plates, but laggardly, still giving his interested attention to the altercation.
“Yes,” Miss Jenny rushed on. “just because that old fool of a Will Falls put axle grease on a little bump on his face without killing him, you have’ to go around swelled up like a poisoned dog. What did you have to do with it? You certainly didn’t take it off. Maybe you conjured it on his face to begin with?”
“Haven’t you got a piece of bread or something Miss Jenny can put in her mouth, Simon?” Dr. Peabody asked mildly. Miss Jenny glared at him a moment; then she flopped back in her chair.
“You, Simon! Are you dead?” Simon removed the plates and bore them out, and the guests sat avoiding one another’s eyes a little while Miss Jenny, behind her barricade of cups and urns and jugs and things, continued to breathe fire and brimstone.
“Will Falls,” old Bayard repeated. “Jenny, tell Simon, when he fixes that basket, to come to my office; I’ve got something to go in it.” This was the pint flask of whisky which he included in old man Falls’ Thanksgiving and Christmas basket and which the old fellow divided out by spoonfuls as far as it would go among his ancient and homeless cronies on those days; and invariably old Bayard reminded her to tell Simon of something which neither of them had overlooked.
“All right,” she returned. Simon reappeared, with a huge silver coffee-urn, set it beside Miss Jenny, and retreated to the kitchen.
“How many of you want coffee now?” she asked generally. “Bayard will no more sit down to a meal without his coffee than he’d fly. Will you, Horace?” He declined, and without looking at Dr. Peabody she said, “I reckon you’ll have to have some, won’t you?”
“If it’s no trouble,” he answered mildly. He winked at Narcissa and assumed an expression of lugubrious diffidence. Miss Jenny drew two cups, and Simon appeared with a huge platter borne gallantly and precariously aloft and set it before old Bayard with a magnificent flourish.
“My God, Simon,” young Bayard said, “where did you get a whale this time of year?”
“Dat’s a fish in dis worl’, mon,” Simon agreed. And it was a fish. It was a yard long and broad as a saddle blanket; it was a jolly red color and it lay gaping on the platter with an air of dashing and rollicking joviality.
“Dammit, Jenny,” old Bayard said pettishly, “what did you want to have this thing for? Who wants to clutter his stomach up with fish in November, with a kitchen full of ’possum and turkey and squirrel?”
“There are other people to eat here besides you,” she retorted. “If you don’t want any, don’t eat it. We always had a fish course at home,” she added. “But you can’t wean these Mississippi country folks away from bread and meat to save your life. Here, Simon.” Simon set a stack of plates before old Bayard and he now came with his tray and Miss Jenny put two coffee cups on it and he served them to old Bayard and Dr. Peabody. Miss Jenny drew a cup for herself, and Simon passed sugar and cream. Old Bayard, still grumbling heavily, carved the fish.
“I ain’t ever found anything wrong with fish at any time of year,” Dr. Peabody said,
“You wouldn’t,” Miss Jenny snapped. Again he winked heavily at Narcissa.
“Only,” he continued, “I like to catch my own, out of my own pond. Mine have mo’ food value.”
“Still got your pond, Doc?” young Bayard asked.
“Yes. But the fishin’ ain’t been so good, this year. Abe had the flu last winter, and ever since he’s been goin’ to sleep on me, and I have to sit there and wait until he wakes up to take the fish off and bait the hook again. But finally I thought about tyin’ a cord to his leg and the other end of it to the bench, and now when I get a bite, I just reach around and give the string a yank and wake ’im up. You’ll have to bring yo’ wife out some day, Bayard. She ain’t never seen my pond.”
“You haven’t?” Bayard asked Narcissa. She had not. “He’s got benches all around it, with footrests, and a railing just high enough to prop your pole on, and a nigger to every fisherman to bait his hook and take the fish off. I don’t see why you feed all those niggers, Doc.”
“Well, I’ve had ’em around so long I don’t know how to get shut of ’em, ’less I drown ’em. Feedin’ ’em is the main trouble, though. Takes everything I can make. If it wasn’t for them, I’d
