CHAPTER THIRTEEN CHAPTER THIRTEENMr. Ben came out of the kitchen when they drove up, looking considerably surprised. He had been shaving; he held his straight-edge razor in one hand, and his face was still half covered with lather.
“Got an escaped convict here for you,” Ed Pitmire shouted, as he killed the engine. “A fugitive from the law. You reckon you can hide him for a while?”
Joey sat grinning delightedly at Mr. Ben as he came down the steps and walked over to the car, and he grinned back. “What’s the charge?” he asked.
“Burnin’ half the town down,” Pitmire said. “Anyhow, that’s the way I heard it. Richmond’s in ruins, or it would be if they left him there. General Sherman couldn’t done better. I’ll help you unpack,” he said to Joey and climbed out. Joey climbed out the other side and ran around to shake hands with Mr. Ben.
“I’m glad to see you back,” Mr. Ben said. “What’s all this about?”
“There was a little fire,” Joey said. “I’ll tell you about it when I carry my stuff in. I’m sure glad to be here, Mr. Ben.” He began to move back and forth between the car and the porch, carrying his gear and the food that he had bought at Pitmire’s store; Pitmire helped him, and when the back of the Model T was empty, cranked the engine and got behind the wheel.
“I’ve still got coffee, Ed,” Mr. Ben said.
“Can’t wait,” Pitmire said. “Liza got to get to Williamsburg and buy a hat. She’s goin’ to a christenin’.” He waved, turned the Model T, and as usual narrowly missed carrying the end of the house away. When the echoes of his rattling charge down the hill had died away they sat down on the steps for a moment.
“Now, then,” Mr. Ben said. “Before I finish this shave, tell me about the fire.”
Joey told him about the rocket and the narrow escape he had from staying home. “The fire engine came, and everything,” he ended up, “and my dad took me to the depot and we had to wait for the train.”
“Clearly the hand of Providence was in it,” Mr. Ben said. “I told you that you were born to hang. Well, I’d better get to my shaving.”
He went into the kitchen, and Joey began to carry the things inside. As he walked back and forth through the house he smiled with pleasure at being there again, and breathed deeply of its remembered smell of woodsmoke and gun oil, kerosene, and the mixed and ghostly masculine emanations of tobacco and damp woolen clothing hung over the stove to dry. It was faintly sour, like dry oak leaves dampened by rain—an outdoor, wonderful smell without face powder or cologne or anything scrubbed or female in it, dusty and casual, and when he had laid out his clothes and gear he took the turkey call into the living room. He peeped around the doorframe, saw Mr. Ben just drying his face, and pushed the plunger down twice. The old man whirled around and walked quickly into the living room. “Gentlemen, sir,” he said, “that’s it.”
Joey gave it to him to look at, and got the new rifle to show him. The old man tried the call several times, nodded his head in appreciation, and examined the rifle; as they talked Joey walked to the back window and looked out. Charley was in the yard, sitting in his usual place near the bottom of the steps, with his eyes on the back door.
“Charley’s here,” Joey exclaimed. “Excuse me, Mr. Ben.” He went out onto the back porch and greeted his friend; the dog flattened his ears and wagged his tail. He was looking a bit better, and as Joey went to the biscuit can he came a step or two closer to the steps. Joey sat on the bottom step with a biscuit and waited for him, and after sitting with his head cocked for a long moment, assaying the situation, the dog got up, moved within reach, and, stretching out his neck, daintily took the biscuit and ate it there without moving off. He ate three biscuits, standing there. This was much better than last time, but when Joey moved a little, thinking to pat his head, he moved off out of reach but with an expression that was almost apologetic; he seemed to imply that he wanted Joey to pat him and was sorry, but he wasn’t quite ready to allow it yet. All this indicated progress and Joey was pleased with it; it seemed to him that it showed more than cupboard love, that the dog wanted to be friendly and trusting with him. “You wait here,” he said, and went into the house and changed his clothes and got his rifle. He saw Sharbee’s package and decided to take it to the little house while he was hunting, and perhaps see the raccoon again. He told Mr. Ben where he was going and set out.
After a bit it occurred to him that he hadn’t targeted the rifle yet. He hadn’t even shot it; there hadn’t been time. He found a fairly open place in the woods and hacked a blaze on a pine tree with his belt knife, leaving four square inches or so of bark in the center as a bull’s eye, and shot at it a few times. This showed him how to line up the sights and where to hold. Charley came in to see what he was shooting at and went out again; presently he began to bay, but when Joey got to the place he found that the squirrel was in a pine tree, and he couldn’t see it.
There was no answer when he reached Sharbee’s cabin and knocked on the weathered door; Sharbee wasn’t home. He searched around in his pockets, found the stub of a pencil, and wrote, “Merry Christmas from Joey Moncrief” on the wrapping paper and propped the package against the door. He thought of waiting for a while, for he wanted very much to play with the raccoon again, but the desire to try the new rifle on game was too strong and he turned toward the Pond. He had lost track of Charley and walked for a long way before he heard the dog again. This time the squirrel was in a big oak, and after Joey located it he was soon made aware of the great difference between spraying the immediate vicinity of the quarry with several ounces of shot and hitting it with a single bullet. After making the bark fly several times but missing the squirrel, he began to grow impatient with the rifle and wish he had brought the shotgun instead. When the squirrel jumped up, ran about the tree (during which time he was powerless to hit it), and finally popped into a hole he was ready to give up the rifle forever.
He left the tree disgruntled and mumbling to himself, greatly disappointed with his new weapon. He almost turned back to exchange it, but he was near the head of the Pond by this time; it was a long way to the house and he decided not to go. After walking for a time he sat down in the leaves to wait for Charley’s bay, for he didn’t know where the dog was and thought he might have been moving away from him. He had leaned the rifle against a nearby tree, and as he sat looking at it he began to like it all over again. It was beautifully made for its work, clean-lined and efficient, and he recalled his father saying that it was time he began shooting squirrels with a rifle, that a shotgun was too easy. It was pretty easy, he admitted to himself; there certainly had been infinitely more satisfaction in hitting the quail or the duck or a bounding rabbit in the pine thicket. They had been difficult, moving swiftly and demanding a coordination as swift and difficult, and when he had almost instantaneously solved such a problem as they presented it was something to be proud of. There was no such problem about hitting a motionless squirrel with a scatter gun, and he had to admit that hitting them that way was not nearly so much fun as it had been at first, when it was a novelty.
As he sat there turning these things over in his mind he made the adjustment of moving from the status of pot hunter to the status of sportsman, who does things the hard way in a sort of game with himself and gives the quarry as much chance as he can. He didn’t do it by a logical progression of thought or all at once, for he was pretty young, but he was well on the way. When he heard the dog’s rolling bay in the distance, he picked up the rifle with new enthusiasm; when he reached the tree, found the squirrel, picked the best position, shot with care, and brought the squirrel down with one shot, he was proud of himself. He felt that he was close to joining the select company of Daniel Boone and the other frontiersmen who had shot the long rifle and either “barked” their squirrels or shot them only in the head. He knew that it would take a lot of practice to do that, but he intended to manage it.
He took the squirrel from Charley, who went off at once, and it seemed to him that he had hardly put it into his game pocket before a great snarling suddenly arose in the direction of the Pond. It was obviously a fight and he ran toward it, hurried on his way by a loud, chilling scream of rage that made the hair stir on his head and certainly hadn’t come from Charley. As he approached the shore he saw the dog and some large, dark creature that he couldn’t immediately identify rolling about wildly in desperate battle. They were so entangled, and their movements so swift, that his eyes could scarcely follow them; their darting heads and the white flash of sharp teeth blurred on his sight, and their snarling frightened him. In an instant when they separated Joey saw that the other animal was the otter, and then they leaped together again and rolled off the shore into the water.
It was soon apparent to Joey, staring at the two fighting animals and the flying water, that Charley was now at a serious disadvantage. The otter was more at home in the water than he was on land. He appeared and vanished, he struck from any direction, and now that he was in his element he showed no inclination to break off the fight and escape. The distance between the fighters and the shore began to widen, and Joey suddenly realized that the otter intended to get the dog out of his depth and drown him.
“Charley!” he screamed. “Charley!”
The dog was too engaged to hear him, but turned his head toward shore and tried to leap toward it; the otter rolled and vanished, struck from below, and pulled him under. His head emerged again; his eyes were wild and he was choking, but he was pulled under the second time. Joey didn’t have time to think, but he knew that the dog he wanted to love him, that had tried to apologize for not loving him sooner, was in terrible trouble. He jumped into the water. It came almost to his armpits and the bottom was soft and oozy, and when he reached them and as the otter rolled to the surface again he swung the rifle and hit it across the back with the barrel. It turned, snarling, stared at him for an instant with burning eyes, and sank away. Charley came up again, desperately flailing at the water; Joey grabbed him by the collar and half swam and half walked ashore.
He was trembling and felt as though he had run for miles; the cold of his soaked clothing bit into him. Charley, who had lain for a moment as though dead, swayed to his feet and, with head and tail hanging, coughed up water. When he was through he stood looking at Joey for a moment and then moved shakily over and licked the hand that Joey extended to pat him.
The loyalties of boyhood are blind and unthinking and complete in their season, and Joey’s loyalty to Charley was as blind as most. It had had a confused and intricate beginning, compounded of the excitement over his first killing of game and the feeling of guilt about killing and violence impressed upon him by his mother; he had turned to the dog, which had started it all, because the confusion of feelings made him lonely. He had wanted the dog’s affection as a support, a kind of vote of confidence, and the dog had been unable to give it. The reason why the dog had been unable to give it had enlisted Joey’s sympathy, made him more determined to win its reluctant affection, and bound him more tightly to it.
He didn’t ask himself how the fight had started or whether the dog was to blame for it or why there had been a fight at all; such questions never occurred to him. The otter had come close to killing his friend, and so the otter, which had once so engaged him that he had asked Mr. Ben not to trap it while he was there, had become his enemy. His rescue of the dog, which had brought Charley to accept him at last and lick his hand, was the final confirmation of his delusion.
He knelt and put his arms around Charley, crooning to him, and the dog relaxed against him with a sigh. They stayed that way for a long moment, savoring their pleasure and relief and the bond that was now between them. Presently Joey grew aware that Charley was shivering, and then that he was shivering himself. His teeth were chattering and his soaked clothes struck into him with an iron chill. “Have to go,” he said between his clicking teeth, and stood up. “Come on, boy.”
He started for the house with the dog at his heels, trotting occasionally until he was out of breath and then walking again. As he began to warm up from the exercise, he thought at first of his new relationship with Charley, and then he got around to the otter. He began by hating it, a direct and simple emotion, and then he thought of its vengeful scheme to get Charley into deep water and drown him. The longer he dwelt upon this the more malicious and evil the otter seemed to him. Once in the water it could have broken off the fight and gone away, but it hadn’t done that—it had stayed and plotted murder; and as he turned this over in his mind he grew sure that it would always be a threat to his friend, it would lie in wait for him, and so he would have to kill it.
By the time he reached the house he was fixed on this idea, and was already beginning to plan a campaign to do in the otter. He gave the dog several biscuits, went into the house, and rubbed himself warm with a towel and put on dry clothes. When Mr. Ben came from the outhouse behind the barn he found the pair of them sitting together and Charley taking biscuits from Joey’s hand; Joey’s other arm was around the dog.
“Gentlemen, sir,” he said, pausing nearby, “it looks as though you finally did it.”
“Yes, sir,” Joey said. “I rescued him from the otter.”
“What did he tangle with the otter for?” Mr. Ben asked. “I thought he had better sense.”
“It tried to drown him,” Joey said, and told Mr. Ben what had happened. “It really tried to drown him,” he ended up, “and it wasn’t fair.”
The old man had heard him out without interrupting, and then spoke up. “Maybe he got between the otter and the water, and wouldn’t let it pass. If he did, he had it cornered, in a way. Any animal will fight when it’s cornered, Joey.”
“Yes, sir. But after it wasn’t cornered it kept right on. It schemed against him, Mr. Ben. It’s mean. I reckon it aims to kill him if it can, and I’m not going to let it. I’ll go after it and get it first.”
This was said with such determination, with such an oddly grown-up air, that Mr. Ben was rather startled by it. It didn’t seem like Joey at all. “What?” he asked. “Are you really serious about this?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You’ll have to spend all your time at it. I doubt if there’s an animal in the country harder to catch up with. After all, Joey, the fight might have been as much Charley’s fault as the otter’s. Have you thought of that?”
“Yes, sir.”
“So,” the old man said. He saw now what the state of affairs was, and gave up argument. “Delenda est Carthago,” he said, and added, “You’ll have to get up early in the morning to get that one.”
“Yes, sir, I will. What does Carthago … what was it? … mean, Mr. Ben?”
“It means ‘Carthage must be destroyed,’” Mr. Ben said. “An old Roman got a bee in his bonnet about Carthage, and ended up all his speeches in the Senate by saying it.”
His mild irony was lost on Joey. “Yes, sir. I reckon I’ll learn it. Could you say it again, please?”
Mr. Ben’s expression didn’t change; he repeated the phrase several times until Joey knew it, and when Joey asked him if he knew the Latin word for otter he had to admit that his Latin was too rusty to supply it.
“I don’t really need it,” Joey said. “I’ll know what I mean when I say it. Delenda est Carthago.” He got up and brought several more biscuits for Charley, and pointed out to Mr. Ben the several cuts that the otter had scored on the dog. When Mr. Ben started to move closer to examine them, Charley got up and moved off a little; his trust in Joey was not going to be extended any farther. It was strictly a private affair between Joey and himself.
“It’s a good thing for his own sake that he’s not going to love the world from now on,” Mr. Ben said. “So you’re going to concentrate on the otter, are you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Are you going to take Charley along?”
“I reckon not,” Joey said. “It might catch him when I wasn’t near enough.”
“I think that’s wise,” the old man said. “But how about the new turkey call? I thought you were going to spend your vacation hunting turkeys.”
“I reckon I’ll just have to wait until I get the otter, Mr. Ben. If I roost some while I’m looking for him, then maybe we could go.”
“Good enough. I’m going around to see to my traps in a little while and you can come along if you want to hold off your crusade until the morning.”
Joey had been thinking of starting his hunt that afternoon, but the afternoon was getting on and he wouldn’t have a great deal of time before darkness came down; besides, now that Mr. Ben had invited him to visit his traps with him he felt that he should go. For some reason Mr. Ben wanted him along, and the old man had been so good to him, and left him so much freedom to do as he wished, that Joey was glad to defer to him. “Yes, sir,” he said. “I reckon I’d like to go.”
He gave the dog another biscuit, talked to him a little more, and then they went down the hill, started a fire in the boat stove, and pushed off. An overcast was slowly spreading across the sky and the wind had dropped; the water was still, with a faintly oily look, and reflected the gray, wintry trees along the shoreline with a mirrorlike fidelity. The bateau slid silently along at the head of its oily ripple, and they didn’t say very much to one another. The first few traps didn’t yield anything, and, seemingly suspended between the gray water and the gray sky, they both fell into different preoccupations. Joey sat quietly in the bow with his gun on his lap, watching the shoreline and gathering himself in his mind for the morrow and the days that would follow when he would think of nothing but the otter and his pursuit of it; a feeling of melancholy had descended upon Mr. Ben. He had enjoyed Joey’s enthusiasms and the feeling that had grown between them, the hints he could give the boy and the few sticky moments—like that with White and the teacher—that he had been able to smooth over. A good deal of the time his life was a lonely one, without very much in the future any more, and being a sort of mentor had been a pleasant experience. He knew that this was going to be taken away from him, at least for a while and perhaps for a long while; for the boy had suddenly withdrawn and changed, given over his careless and shifting explorations for a vendetta based upon a misconception. This disturbed the old man for it seemed too unboylike, too adult and concentrated, and he wanted Joey the way he had always been. Too many people in his life had suddenly changed, a quirk of personality hitherto unsuspected had taken them away from him, and he was depressed by the thought that it could happen again.
They were nearing the head of the Pond by that time, and Joey suddenly turned to him and pointed toward the shore. “It was right over there,” he said. “Mr. Ben, will you lend me your alarm clock when we get back?”
“Yes,” the old man said. “You’re welcome to it.”