It took only a few days for Lynn to settle into the routine of being back home again. The greening trees, the lawns that were a matching green, the borders of tulips, the great sheets of yellow daffodils dancing in the crisp, fresh breeze were all a part of her delight.
Ruth mentioned a meeting of her Ladies’ Aid one afternoon and invited Lynn; but the woods surrounding the small town were too enticing to make Lynn agree to be shut up in the church’s recreation room and she begged off.
“Just be careful, won’t you honey?” Ruth warned. “I think it may be a little too early for snakes to be about, but you never can tell.” Ruth kissed her lightly as she got into her three-year-old car and set off for her meeting.
Lynn, in dark slacks and a thin shirt, a sweater slung about her shoulders just in case the breeze turned cooler later on, set off from the house. To her left was the town; to her right, the woods and the narrow, swiftly rushing creek where she and her father had fished when she was a little girl. It was to the right that she turned.
She walked with her shoulders back, her head lifted, drawing in deep breaths of the fresh, cool, fragrant air.
As she reached the woods she paused, lifted her head and sniffed. And then she nodded. Yes, somewhere in the depths of those woods crab-apple was blooming. There could be no other scent like that of blossoming crab-apple. Suddenly she came to a halt, thrilled and enchanted, for there was yellow jessamine. Even when she was a child, yellow jessamine had always seemed spring’s own special signature.
She walked on, bemused, enchanted, glorying in all the loveliness, until suddenly she was stopped in her tracks by a low, moaning, whimpering, half-animal, half-human sound. It lifted the hair at the back of her neck, and her first instinct was to flee wildly. But she went on listening, and realized that it was the sound of heartbroken sobbing.
She moved cautiously forward, her heart hammering. And then she saw the grieving thing, a great, hulking creature, whose thick, tangled locks half-concealed the big, darkly tanned face. In the two huge hands, held as delicately as a butterfly, lay the limp body of a small squirrel, and the man was bent above it, sobbing.
Even as she moved, almost without a sound, the big head lifted and the tear-smeared face turned toward her, and she stood still.
“Why’d anybody have to do a think like that?” he whimpered, his eyes accepting Lynn as a part of the forest scene, and one huge finger gently stroking the small, limp, gray body. “He was just a little feller. He wasn’t bothering anybody; he just lived here and played and ate hickory nuts and acorns and minded his own business. Then somebody come along and killed him! Why did they? Who’d want to do a thing like that?”
Lynn said gently, “You’re Bert Estes, aren’t you?”
He scrambled to his feet like one of the wild things of the woods; but even in his shock and his uneasiness, his hands still held the small, furry body with a tenderness that was indescribably pathetic.
“Yeah, I’m Bert. Who’re you?” he muttered, his voice still choked with sobs, tears streaking his ugly face, his eyes suspicious and wary.
“I’m Lynn Carter, Bert — Judge Carter’s daughter. Don’t you remember me?”
“Judge Carter?” he repeated, and paused. “You ain’t somebody wants to lock me up somewheres?”
“Oh, Bert, of course not,” Lynn soothed him. “I’m sorry about the squirrel. Was he a pet?”
Bert seemed to forget his fear of her in a returning surge of grief for the small thing held so gently in his two great hands.
“He was one of my little folks,” he answered. “All the livin’ critters here are my little folks. They know me and I can talk to them.” He broke off and glared at her defiantly. “Well, I can, if you believe it or not.”
“Well, of course I believe you, Bert!” Lynn’s voice was very gentle, the sympathy and pity in it reaching through to the poor creature’s twisted mind. “Animals know when people love them. Why, I’ve seen dogs smile, even laugh, when somebody they loved spoke to them.”
“Well, I can set right here on this log, and be real still, and the little folks will come right up to me and let me feed ‘em. Makes no nevermind how scary they are of other people, they know me. Nutsy here was so little and so smart and now he’s all dead!”
“I’m sorry, Bert, truly I am! Who did it?” asked Lynn.
“Oh, a feller with a gun. Seems like there’s always fellers with guns going ‘round shootin’ helpless critters like Nutsy here — even the birds ain’t safe from ‘em.” There was a vast bitterness in his tone, and once more a big finger caressed the small, furry thing that he held in his hands. “I reckon I’d best go and bury him.”
He turned away and then looked back over his shoulder.
“You want to come to the funeral?” he asked.
“Of course I do, Bert,” Lynn answered, and followed as he went plunging through the woods, brushing aside the underbrush with his big feet, using his shoulders to push past the low-growing branches that whipped back at Lynn, his hands cradling the small, furry gray body.
Lynn followed him, well back so that she could avoid the whipping branches, and came out into a small clearing at the far edge of the woods. Through the trees she could glimpse an old farmhouse, surrounded by ancient, dilapidated buildings. But here in this small clearing, there was a quiet untouched by any sound from the farmstead.
Bert laid the squirrel down very tenderly, and from behind a huge live-oak brought out an old shovel. She watched as his powerful shoulders and huge hands plunged the spade deep into the ground and uncovered a hole that would accept the small body. He knelt beside it, lifted the small body and very gently laid it in the hole. Then before he filled the hole, he got up, walked across to a low-growing bush and plucked a handful of leaves. He came back and covered the squirrel with the leaves and then filled in the hole. He knelt beside it for a moment, looking down at it, tears once more sliding down his dark face.
When at last he stood up, he glanced at Lynn and said awkwardly, “Thank you for comin’ to his funeral; he would have ‘predated that.”
“Thank you for letting me, Bert,” said Lynn gently.
“I got to go get him a little stone, and Maw’ll give me something to put flowers in,” he told her over his shoulder. “You can come with me, if you want.”
“Of course I will, Bert,” answered Lynn, and walked behind him out of the woods and along a path across a small pasture that led to the house.
It was a typical tenant-farmer’s house, built of raw green lumber that had warped in the summer rains and the mild winter’s cold and that had never known the touch of paint. Its boards had weathered to a dark silver, and it had a touch of homely beauty because of the dooryard that was ablaze with snapdragons and tulips and daffodils.
As Bert went up the steps of the back porch, a woman appeared in the kitchen doorway, calling, “That you, son? Supper’s near ‘bout ready.” And then her eyes fell on Lynn, and Lynn saw her face go white and her eyes widen with fear. “Get in the house, son, and stay there!” she ordered.
“Maw, this here’s my friend, Lynn. Her Paw’s Judge Carter,” Bert said innocently. “Me and her’s been buryin’ Nutsy. Somebody shot him.”
Lynn heard the overtone of heartbroken grief in his voice as he spoke the last words and the woman hurried him into the house. Lynn waited, and a little later the woman came back out and across to where Lynn stood.
“Hello, Mrs. Estes,” said Lynn quietly.
“What you doing with my boy, Miss Carter? You nor nobody else is goin’ to have him locked up. He ain’t no danger to nobody, and there ain’t a mite o’ harm in him.”
Lynn put out her hand and laid it on the work-worn, twisting hands that were locked tight against the woman’s gaunt middle.
“Of course there isn’t, Mrs. Estes,” Lynn told her gently. “I happened to see him in the woods just after he’d found the dead squirrel. I was sorry for him, and when he said he was going to bury it and asked me to the funeral, of course I accepted.”
Mrs. Estes studied her with sharp suspicion.
“You’re Judge Carter’s daughter?” she asked warily. “I thought she was off to Atlanta.”
“I’ve come home for the summer, Mrs. Estes.”
Mrs. Estes glanced uneasily over her shoulder toward the house, and then back at Lynn.
“Wasn’t you afeared of Bert when you seen him?” she asked, as though the question had to be put.
Lynn’s eyes widened in honest amazement.
“Afraid of him? Mrs. Estes, how could anybody be afraid of him? Why, he was crying like a baby because the squirrel was dead …”
“Most folks is afeared of him, ‘cause he ain’t well, like other folks,” Mrs. Estes insisted stubbornly.
“Well, I’m not, Mrs. Estes — I couldn’t ever be!” Lynn said swiftly, and added, “How long has he been like this?”
“Since he was borned,” Mrs. Estes answered somberly. “And he’s near’ twenty year’ old. A man, in everything, ‘ceptin’ his mind.”
“And nothing can be done?”
“You think we ain’t tried, Paw and me? Doctors say only thing we can do is shut him up somewheres with other folks like him. And that we ain’t never goin’ to do, not so long as we live and breathe!”
“Of course not,” Lynn agreed with her so swiftly that the woman looked startled. “Why, it would be the most cruel, barbaric thing in the world to shut him up — away from the woods and the fields and his ‘little folks.’ ”
The wariness had vanished from Mrs. Estes’ tired, work-worn face, and her hands were no longer twisting themselves together in an agony of fear.
“That’s a mighty kind thing for you to say, Miss Carter,” she all but whispered, tears in her eyes. “It’s what your Paw said, and it’s the onliest way we be’n able to live here where folks is so afeared o’ him.”
“But I don’t understand why people should be afraid of him, Mrs. Estes,” Lynn said frankly. “Does he fly into rages or do anything to frighten them?”
“Nary a thing,” answered Mrs. Estes bitterly, “not even when hunters kill his ‘little folks.’ He just grieves and wonders why a body would do a thing like that.”
“As he did this afternoon, the poor soul,” Lynn said gently.
Mrs. Estes wiped her eyes on her apron.
“He was almighty fond o’ that squirrel he called Nutsy,” she said wearily. “He’s got names for near’ ‘bout all o’ the critters. Seems like he knows ‘em by name and they know him. Spends all his time ramblin’ and talkin’ to ‘em. And it near ‘bout breaks his heart when hunters get one of ‘em. Not enough game left in the woods to make real hunters want to go there.”
A man was coming up the path across the back yard from the direction of the barn, a tall, gaunt man in work-stained overalls and a ragged shirt, a battered hat drawn down over his head. As he saw Lynn his eyes narrowed and his thin-lipped mouth set hard, as he accelerated his pace.
“If you’re from the Welfare,” he began as he reached them, his tone harsh and rasping.
“Now, Paw, this here’s Judge Carter’s girl, Miss Lynn. Her and Bert’s friends,” protested Mrs. Estes quickly.
The man’s lean, worn face softened, and he took off his hat and wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his arm.
“Reckon I’m sorry, miss. Thought mebbe you might be one o’ them that’s allus tryin’ to git us to put Bert away,” he said roughly.
“I’m not, Mr. Estes. I think it would be a terrible thing to do to a gentle, harmless creature like Bert,” Lynn told him quietly.
“I’m thankin’ you, miss, for seein’ he is harmelss,” said Jed Estes. “Most folks seem to think jest because he ain’t quite like other folks, they got to be scared of him and lock him up somewheres. Hadn’t been for Miss Stella and your Paw, reckon they’d a done it, too.”
“Well, they’re not going to as long as Dad has anything to say about it,” Lynn assured him rashly.
“Well, now, that’s mighty comfortin’ to hear,” said Jed, and his wife chimed in. “Supper’s ‘bout ready, miss. We’d be mighty proud if you’d stay and eat with us.”
“Thank you, but my family will be worrying about me, so I’d better take a rain check on that,” said Lynn, and added smoothly, as she saw they were slightly puzzled by the expression, “Will you ask me again sometime?”
“Any time, miss, any time at all,” Jed assured her warmly. “Maw’s a mighty fine cook, and we raise all our own vittles, just about. So they’s allus enough for company, such as it is; and mighty good, what they is of it.”
She bade them good-bye and turned to walk back across the meadow and through the woods home.