So I got in the saddle even if I couldn’t reach the stirrups, and Mister Ernest taken the reins and I must ‘a’ went to sleep, because the next thing I knowed a buttonhole of my lumberjack was tied to the saddle horn with that ere whang cord off the compass, and it was good and late now and we wasn’t fur, because Dan was already smelling water, the river. Or maybe it was the feed lot itself he smelled, because we struck the fire road not a quarter below it, and soon I could see the river, too, with the white mist laying on it soft and still as cotton.
Then the lot, home; and up yonder in the dark, not no piece akchully, close enough to hear us unsaddling and shucking corn prob’ly, and sholy close enough to hear Mister Ernest blowing his horn at the dark camp for Simon to come in the boat and git us, that old buck in his brake in the bayou; home, too, resting, too, after the hard run, waking hisself now and then, dreaming of dogs behind him or maybe it was the racket we was making would wake him.
Then Mister Ernest stood on the bank blowing until Simon’s lantern went bobbing down into the mist; then we clumb down to the landing and Mister Ernest blowed again now and then to guide Simon, until we seen the lantern in the mist, and then Simon and the boat; only it looked like ever time I set down and got still, I went back to sleep, because Mister Ernest was shaking me again to git out and climb the bank into the dark camp, until I felt a bed against my knees and tumbled into it.
Then it was morning, tomorrow; it was all over now until next November, next year, and we could come back. Uncle Ike and Willy and Walter and Roth and the rest of them had come in yestiddy, soon as Eagle taken the buck out of hearing and they knowed that deer was gone, to pack up and be ready to leave this morning for Yoknapatawpha, where they lived, until it would be November again and they could come back again.
So, as soon as we et breakfast, Simon run them back up the river in the big boat to where they left their cars and pickups, and now it wasn’t nobody but jest me and Mister Ernest setting on the bench against the kitchen wall in the sun; Mister Ernest smoking a cigar — a whole one this time that Dan hadn’t had no chance to jump him through a grapevine and bust. He hadn’t washed his face neither where that vine had throwed him into the mud.
But that was all right, too; his face usually did have a smudge of mud or tractor grease or beard stubble on it, because he wasn’t jest a planter; he was a farmer, he worked as hard as ara one of his hands and tenants — which is why I knowed from the very first that we would git along, that I wouldn’t have no trouble with him and he wouldn’t have no trouble with me, from that very first day when I woke up and maw had done gone off with that Vicksburg road-house feller without even waiting to cook breakfast, and the next morning pap was gone, too, and it was almost night the next day when I heard a horse coming up and I taken the gun that I had already throwed a shell into the britch when pap never come home last night, and stood in the door while Mister Ernest rid up and said, “Come on. Your paw ain’t coming back neither.”
“You mean he give me to you?” I said.
“Who cares?” he said. “Come on. I brought a lock for the door. We’ll send the pickup back tomorrow for whatever you want.”
So I come home with him and it was all right, it was jest fine — his wife had died about three years ago — without no women to worry us or take off in the middle of the night with a durn Vicksburg roadhouse jake without even waiting to cook breakfast. And we would go home this afternoon, too, but not jest yet; we always stayed one more day after the others left because Uncle Ike always left what grub they hadn’t et, and the rest of the homemade corn whisky he drunk and that town whisky of Roth Edmondziz he called Scotch that smelled like it come out of a old bucket of roof paint; setting in the sun for one more day before we went back home to git ready to put in next year’s crop of cotton and oats and beans and hay; and across the river yonder, behind the wall of trees where the big woods started, that old buck laying up today in the sun, too — resting today, too, without nobody to bother him until next November.
So at least one of us was glad it would be eleven months and two weeks before he would have to run that fur that fast again. So he was glad of the very same thing we was sorry of, and so all of a sudden I thought about how maybe planting and working and then harvesting oats and cotton and beans and hay wasn’t jest something me and Mister Ernest done three hundred and fifty-one days to fill in the time until we could come back hunting again, but it was something we had to do, and do honest and good during the three hundred and fifty-one days, to have the right to come back into the big woods and hunt for the other fourteen; and the fourteen days that old buck run in front of dogs wasn’t jest something to fill his time until the three hundred and fifty-one when he didn’t have to, but the running and the risking in front of guns and dogs was something he had to do for fourteen days to have the right not to be bothered for the other three hundred and fifty-one. And so the hunting and the farming wasn’t two different things at all — they was jest the other side of each other.
“Yes,” I said. “All we got to do now is put in that next year’s crop. Then November won’t be no time away.”
“You ain’t going to put in the crop next year,” Mister Ernest said. “You’re going to school.”
So at first I didn’t even believe I had heard him. “What?” I said. “Me? Go to school?”
“Yes,” Mister Ernest said. “You must make something out of yourself.”
“I am,” I said. “I’m doing it now. I’m going to be a hunter and a farmer like you.”
“No,” Mister Ernest said. “That ain’t enough any more. Time was when all a man had to do was just farm eleven and a half months, and hunt the other half. But not now. Now just to belong to the farming business and the hunting business ain’t enough. You got to belong to the business of mankind.”
“Mankind?” I said.
“Yes,” Mister Ernest said. “So you’re going to school. Because you got to know why. You can belong to the farming and hunting business and you can learn the difference between what’s right and what’s wrong, and do right. And that used to be enough — just to do right. But not now. You got to know why it’s right and why it’s wrong, and be able to tell the folks that never had no chance to learn it; teach them how to do what’s right, not just because they know it’s right, but because they know now why it’s right because you just showed them, told them, taught them why. So you’re going to school.”
“It’s because you been listening to that durn Will Legate and Walter Ewell!” I said.
“No,” Mister Ernest said.
“Yes!” I said. “No wonder you missed that buck yestiddy, taking ideas from the very fellers that let him git away, after me and you had run Dan and the dogs durn nigh clean to death! Because you never even missed him! You never forgot to load that gun! You had done already unloaded it a purpose! I heard you!”
“All right, all right,” Mister Ernest said. “Which would you rather have? His bloody head and hide on the kitchen floor yonder and half his meat in a pickup truck on the way to Yoknapatawpha County, or him with his head and hide and meat still together over yonder in that brake, waiting for next November for us to run him again?”
“And git him, too,” I said. “We won’t even fool with no Willy Legate and Walter Ewell next time.”
“Maybe,” Mister Ernest said.
“Yes,” I said.
“Maybe,” Mister Ernest said. “The best word in our language, the best of all. That’s what mankind keeps going on: Maybe. The best days of his life ain’t the ones when he said ‘Yes’ beforehand: they’re the ones when all he knew to say was ‘Maybe.’ He can’t say ‘Yes’ until afterward because he not only don’t know it until then, he don’t want to know ‘Yes’ until then.… Step in the kitchen and make me a toddy. Then we’ll see about dinner.”
“All right,” I said.
