Читать книгу When the Whipoorwill - Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings - Страница 6

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You can’t change a man, no-ways. By the time his mammy turns him loose and he takes up with some innocent woman and marries her, he’s what he is. If it’s his nature to set by the hearthfire and scratch hisself, you just as good to let him set and scratch. If it’s his nature, like Will Dover, my man, to go to the garage in his Sunday clothes and lay down under some backwoods Cracker’s old greasy Ford and tinker with it, you just as good to let him lay and tinker. And if it’s his nature, like Uncle Benny, to prowl; if it’s his nature to cut the fool; why, it’s interfering in the ways of Providence even to stop to quarrel with him about it. Some women is born knowing that. Sometimes a woman, like the Old Hen (Uncle Benny’s wife, poor soul!), has to quarrel a lifetime before she learns it. Then when it does come to her, she’s like a cow has tried to jump a high fence and has got hung up on it—she’s hornswoggled.

The Old Hen’s a mighty fine woman—one of the finest I know. She looks just the way she did when she married Uncle Benny Mathers thirty years ago, except her hair has turned gray, like the feathers on an Irish Gray game hen. She’s plump and pretty and kind of pale from thirty years’ fretting about Uncle Benny. She has a disposition, by nature, as sweet as new cane syrup. When she settled down for a lifetime’s quarrelling at him, it was for the same reason syrup sours—the heat had just been put to her too long.

I can’t remember a time when the Old Hen wasn’t quarrelling at Uncle Benny. It begun a week after they was married. He went off prowling by hisself, to a frolic or such as that, and didn’t come home until four o’clock in the morning. She was setting up waiting for him. When she crawled him about it, he said, “Bless Katy, wife, let’s sleep now and quarrel in the morning.” So she quarrelled in the morning and just kept it up. For thirty years. Not for meanness—she just kept hoping she could change him.

Change him? When he takened notice of the way she was fussing and clucking and ruffling her feathers, he quit calling her by her given name and begun calling her the Old Hen. That’s all I could ever see she changed him.

Uncle Benny’s a sight. He’s been constable here at Oak Bluff, Florida, for twenty years. We figure it keeps him out of worse trouble to let him be constable. He’s the quickest shot in three counties and the colored folks is all as superstitious of him as if he was the devil hisself. He’s a comical-appearing somebody. He’s small and quick and he don’t move—he prances. He has a little bald sun-tanned head with a rim of white hair around the back of it. Where the hair ends at the sides of his head, it sticks straight up over his ears in two little white tufts like goat-horns. He’s got bright blue eyes that look at you quick and wicked, the way a goat looks. That’s exactly what he looks and acts like—a mischievous little old billy-goat. And he’s been popping up under folks’ noses and playing tricks on them as long as Oak Bluff has knowed him. Doc in particular. He loved to torment Doc.

And stay home? Uncle Benny don’t know what it is to stay home. The Old Hen’ll cook hot dinner for him and he won’t come. She’ll start another fire in the range and warm it up for him about dusk-dark and he won’t come. She’ll set up till midnight, times till daybreak, and maybe just about the time the east lightens and the birds gets to whistling good, he’ll come home. Where’s he been? He’s been with somebody ’gatoring, or with somebody catching crabs to Salt Springs; he’s been to a square-dance twenty miles away in the flatwoods; he’s been on the highway in that Ford car, just rambling as long as his gas held out—and them seven pieded bird-dogs setting up in the back keeping him company.

It was seven years ago, during the Boom, that he bought the Model-T and begun collecting bird-dogs. Everybody in Florida was rich for a whiles, selling gopher holes to the Yankees. Now putting an automobile under Uncle Benny was like putting wings on a wild-cat—it just opened up new territory. Instead of rambling over one county, he could ramble over ten. And the way he drove—like a bat out of Torment. He’s one of them men just loves to cover the ground. And that car and all them bird-dogs worked on the Old Hen like a quart of gasoline on a camp-fire. She really went to raring. I tried to tell her then ’twasn’t no use to pay him no mind, but she wouldn’t listen.

I said, “It’s just his nature. You can’t do a thing about it but take it for your share and go on. You and Uncle Benny is just made different. You want him home and he don’t want to be home. You’re a barn-yard fowl and he’s a wild fowl.”

“Mis’ Dover,” she said, “it’s easy for you to talk. Your man runs a garage and comes home nights. You don’t know how terrible it is to have a man that prowls.”

I said, “Leave him prowl.”

She said, “Yes, but when he’s on the prowl, I don’t no more know where to look for him than somebody’s tom-cat.”

I said, “If ’twas me, I wouldn’t look for him.”

She said, “Moonlight nights he’s the worst. Just like the varmints.”

I said, “Don’t that tell you nothing?”

She said, “If he’d content hisself with prowling— But he ain’t content until he cuts the fool. He takes that Ford car and them seven bird-dogs and maybe a pint of moonshine, and maybe picks up Doc to prowl with him, and he don’t rest until he’s done something crazy. What I keep figuring is, he’ll kill hisself in that Ford car, cutting the fool.”

I said, “You don’t need to fret about him and that Ford. What’s unnatural for one man is plumb natural for another. And cutting the fool is so natural for Uncle Benny, it’s like a bird in the air or a fish in water—there won’t no harm come to him from it.”

She said, “Mis’ Dover, what the devil throws over his back has got to come down under his belly.”

I said, “Uncle Benny Mathers is beyond rules and sayings. I know men-folks, and if you’ll listen to me, you’ll settle down and quit quarrelling and leave him go his way in quiet.”

I happened to be in on it this spring, the last time the Old Hen ever quarrelled at Uncle Benny. Me and Doc was both in on it. It was the day of old lady Weller’s burying. Doc carried me in his car to the cemetery. My Will couldn’t leave the garage, because the trucks hauling the Florida oranges north was bringing in pretty good business. Doc felt obliged to go to the burying. He’s a patent-medicine salesman—a big fat fellow with a red face and yellow hair. He sells the Little Giant line of remedies. Old lady Weller had been one of his best customers. She’d taken no nourishment the last week of her life except them remedies, and Doc figured he ought to pay her the proper respect and show everybody he was a man was always grateful to his customers.

Uncle Benny and the Old Hen went to the burying in the Model-T. And the seven bird-dogs went, setting up in the back seat. They always went to the buryings.

Uncle Benny said, “Walls nor chains won’t hold ’em. Better to have ’em go along riding decent and quiet, than to bust loose and foller the Model-T like a daggone pack of bloodhounds.”

That was true enough. Those bird-dogs could hear that old Ford crank up and go off in low gear, clear across the town. They’d always hope it was time to go bird-hunting again, and here they’d come, trailing it. So there were the bird-dogs riding along to old lady Weller’s burying, with their ears flopping and their noses in the air for quail. As constable, Uncle Benny sort of represented the town, and he was right in behind the hearse. I mean, that car was a pain, to be part of a funeral procession. In the seven years he’d had it, he’d all but drove it to pieces, and it looked like a rusty, mangy razor-back hog. The hood was thin and narrow, like a shoat’s nose—you remember the way all Model-T Fords were built. It had no top to it, nor no doors to the front seat, and the back seat rose up in a hump where the bird-dogs had squeezed the excelsior chitlin’s out of it.

The Old Hen sat up stiff and proud, not letting on she minded. Doc and I figured she’d been quarrelling at Uncle Benny about the bird-dogs, because when one of them put his paws on her shoulders and begun licking around her ears, she turned and smacked the breath out of him.

The funeral procession had just left the Oak Bluff dirt road and turned onto No. 9 Highway, when the garage keeper at the bend ran out.

He hollered, “I just got a ’phone call for Uncle Benny Mathers from the high sheriff!”

So Uncle Benny cut out of the procession and drove over to the pay station by the kerosene tank to take the message. He caught up again in a minute and called to Doc, “A drunken nigger is headed this way in a Chevrolet and the sheriff wants I should stop him.”

About that time here come the Chevrolet and started to pass the procession, wobbling back and forth as if it had the blind staggers. You may well know the nigger was drunk or he wouldn’t have passed a funeral. Uncle Benny cut out of line and took out after him. When he saw who was chasing him, the nigger turned around and headed back the way he’d come from. Uncle Benny was gaining on him when they passed the hearse. The bird-dogs begun to take an interest and rared up, barking. What does Uncle Benny do but go to the side of the Chevrolet so the nigger turns around—and then Uncle Benny crowded him so all he could do was to shoot into line in the funeral procession. Uncle Benny cut right in after him and the nigger shot out of line and Uncle Benny crowded him in again.

I’ll declare, I was glad old lady Weller wasn’t alive to see it. She’d had no use for Uncle Benny, she’d hated a nigger, and she’d despised dogs so to where she kept a shotgun by her door to shoot at them if one so much as crossed her cornfield. And here on the way to her burying, where you’d figure she was entitled to have things the way she liked them, here was Uncle Benny chasing a nigger in and out of line, and seven bird-dogs were going Ki-yippity-yi! Ki-yippity-yi! Ki-yippity-yi! I was mighty proud the corpse was no kin to me.

The Old Hen was plumb mortified. She put her hands over her face and when the Ford would swerve by or cut in ahead of us, Doc and me could see her swaying back and forth and suffering. I don’t scarcely need to say Uncle Benny was enjoying hisself. If he’d looked sorrowful-like, as if he was just doing his duty, you could of forgive him. Near a filling-station the Chevrolet shot ahead and stopped and the nigger jumped out and started to run. Uncle Benny stopped and climbed out of the Ford and drew his pistol and called “Stop!” The nigger kept on going.

Now Uncle Benny claims that shooting at niggers in the line of duty is what keeps him in practice for bird-shooting. He dropped a ball to the right of the nigger’s heel and he dropped a ball to the left of it. He called “Stop!” and the nigger kept on going. Then Uncle Benny took his pistol in both hands and took a slow aim and he laid the third ball against the nigger’s shin-bone. He dropped like a string-haltered mule.

Uncle Benny said to the man that ran the filling-station, “Get your gun. That there nigger is under arrest and I deputize you to keep him that-a-way. The sheriff’ll be along to pick him up direckly.”

He cut back into the funeral procession between us and the hearse, and we could tell by them wicked blue eyes he didn’t know when he’d enjoyed a burying like old lady Weller’s. When we got back from the burying, he stopped by Will’s garage. The Old Hen was giving him down-the-country.

She said, “That was the most scandalous thing I’ve ever knowed you to do, chasing that nigger in and out of Mis’ Weller’s funeral.”

Uncle Benny’s eyes begun to dance and he said, “I know it, wife, but I couldn’t help it. ’Twasn’t me done the chasing—it was the Model-T.”

Doc got in to it then and sided with the Old Hen. He gets excited, the way fat men do, and he swelled up like a spreading adder.

“Benny,” he said, “you shock my modesty. This ain’t no occasion for laughing nor lying.”

Uncle Benny said, “I know it, Doc. I wouldn’t think of laughing nor lying. You didn’t know I’ve got that Ford trained? I’ve got it trained to where it’ll do two things. It’s helped me chase so many niggers, I’ve got it to where it just naturally takes out after ’em by itself.”

Doc got red in the face and asked, real sarcastic, “And what’s the other piece of training?”

Uncle Benny said, “Doc, that Ford has carried me home drunk so many times, I’ve got it trained to where it’ll take care of me and carry me home safe when I ain’t fitten.”

Doc spit halfway across the road and he said, “You lying old jay-bird.”

Uncle Benny said, “Doc, I’ve got a pint of moonshine, and if you’ll come go camping with me to Salt Springs this evening, I’ll prove it.”

The Old Hen spoke up and she said, “Benny, Heaven forgive you for I won’t, if you go on the prowl again before you’ve cleared the weeds out of my old pindar field. I’m a month late now, getting it planted.”

Doc loves Salt Springs crab and mullet as good as Uncle Benny does, and I could see he was tempted.

But he said, “Benny, you go along home and do what your wife wants, and when you’re done—when she says you’re done—then we’ll go to Salt Springs.”

So Uncle Benny and the Old Hen drove off. Doc watched after them.

He said, “Anyways, cutting the fool at a burying had ought to last Benny quite a while.”

I said, “You don’t know him. Cutting the fool don’t last him no time at all.”

I was right. I ain’t so special wise a woman, but if I once know a man, I can come right close to telling you what he’ll do. Uncle Benny hadn’t been gone hardly no time, when somebody come by the garage hollering that he’d done set the Old Hen’s pindar field on fire.

I said to Doc, “What did I tell you? The last thing in the world was safe for that woman to do, was to turn him loose on them weeds. He figured firing was the quickest way to get shut of them.”

Doc said, “Let’s go see.”

We got in his car and drove out to Uncle Benny’s place. Here was smoke rolling up back of the house, and the big live oak in the yard was black with soldier blackbirds the grass fire had drove out of the pindar field. The field hadn’t had peanuts in it since fall, but bless Katy, it was full of something else. Uncle Benny’s wife had it plumb full of setting guinea-hens. She hadn’t told him, because he didn’t like guineas.

Far off to the west corner of the field was the Old Hen, trying to run the guineas into a coop. They were flying every which-a-way and hollering Pod-rac! Pod-rac! the way guineas holler. All the young uns in the neighborhood were in the middle of the field, beating out the grass fire with palmettos. And setting up on top of the east gate, just as unconcerned, was Uncle Benny, with them two little horns of white hair curling in the heat. Now what do you reckon he was doing? He had all seven of them bird-dogs running back and forth retrieving guinea eggs. He’d say now and again, “Dead—fetch!” and they’d wag their tails and go hunt up another nest and here they’d come, with guinea eggs carried gentle in their mouths. He was putting the eggs in a basket.

When the commotion was over, and the fire out, and everybody gone on but Doc and me, we went to the front porch to set down and rest. The Old Hen was wore out. She admitted it was her fault not letting Uncle Benny know about the setting guinea-hens. She was about to forgive him setting the field a-fire, because him and the bird-dogs had saved the guinea eggs. But when we got to the porch, here lay the bird-dogs in the rocking chairs. There was one to every chair, rocking away and cutting their eyes at her. Their coats and paws were smuttied from the burnt grass—and the Old Hen had put clean sugar-sacking covers on every blessed chair that morning. That settled it. She was stirred up anyway about the way he’d cut the fool at the burying, and she really set in to quarrel at Uncle Benny. And like I say, it turned out to be the last piece of quarrelling she ever done.

She said to him, “You taught them bird-dogs to rock in a rocking-chair just to torment me. Ever’ beast or varmint you’ve brought home, you’ve learned to cut the fool as bad as you do.”

“Now wife, what beast or varmint did I ever learn to cut the fool?”

“You learned the ’coon to screw the tops off my syrup cans. You learned the ’possum to hang upside down in my cupboards, and I’d go for a jar of maybe pepper relish and put my hand on him.... There’s been plenty of such as that. I’ve raised ever’thing in the world for you but a stallion horse.”

Doc said, “Give him time, he’ll have one of them stabled in the kitchen.”

“Bird-dogs is natural to have around,” she said, “I was raised to bird-dogs. But it ain’t natural for ’em to rock in a rocking-chair. There’s so terrible many of them, and when they put in the night on the porch laying in the rocking-chairs and rocking, I don’t close my eyes for the fuss.”

Uncle Benny said, “You see, Doc? You see, Mis’ Dover? She’s always quarrelling that me and the dogs ain’t never home at night. Then when we do come in, she ain’t willing we should all be comf’table.

“We just as good to go on to Salt Springs, Doc. Wait while I go in the house and get my camping outfit and we’ll set out.”

He went in the house and came out with his camping stuff. She knowed he was gone for nobody knew how long.

We walked on down to the gate and the Old Hen followed, sniffling a little and twisting the corner of her apron.

“Benny,” she said, “please don’t go to Salt Springs. You always lose your teeth in the Boil.”

“I ain’t lost ’em but three times,” he said, and he cranked up the Model-T and climbed in. “I couldn’t help losing ’em the first time. That was when I was laughing at the Yankee casting for bass, and his plug caught me in the open mouth and lifted my teeth out. Nor I couldn’t help it the second time, when Doc and me was rassling in the rowboat and he pushed me in.”

“Yes,” she said, “and how’d you lose ’em the third time?”

His eyes twinkled and he shoved the Ford in low. “Cuttin’ the fool,” he said.

“That’s just it,” she said, and the tears begun to roll out of her eyes. “Anybody with false teeth hadn’t ought to cut the fool!”

Now I always thought it was right cute, the way Uncle Benny fooled Doc about the trained Ford. You know how the old-timey Fords get the gas—it feeds from the hand-throttle on the wheel. Well, Uncle Benny had spent the day before old lady Weller’s funeral at Will’s garage, putting in a foot accelerator. He didn’t say a word to anybody, and Will and me was the only ones knowed he had it. Doc and Uncle Benny stayed three-four days camping at Salt Springs. Now the night they decided to come home, they’d both had something to drink, but Uncle Benny let on like he was in worse shape than he was.

Doc said, “Benny, you better leave me drive.”

Uncle Benny pretended to rock on his feet and roll his head and he said, “I’ve got that Model-T trained to carry me home, drunk or sober.”

Doc said, “Never mind that lie again. You get up there in the seat and whistle in the dogs. I’m fixing to drive us home.”

Well, I’d of give a pretty to of been in the back seat with them bird-dogs that night when Doc drove the Ford back to Oak Bluff. It’s a treat, anyways, to see a fat man get excited. The first thing Doc knowed, the Ford was running away with him. The Ford lights were none too good, and Doc just did clear a stump by the roadside, and he run clean over a black-jack sapling. He looked at the hand throttle on the wheel and here it was where the car had ought to be going about twenty miles an hour and it was going forty-five. That rascal of an Uncle Benny had his foot on the foot accelerator.

Doc shut off the gas altogether and the Ford kept right on going.

He said, “Something’s the matter.”

Uncle Benny seemed to be dozing and didn’t pay no mind. The Ford whipped back and forth in the sand road like a ’gator’s tail. Directly they got on to the hard road and the Model-T put on speed. They begun to get near a curve. It was a dark night and the carlights wobbling, but Doc could see it coming. He took a tight holt of the wheel and begun to sweat. He felt for the brakes, but Uncle Benny never did have any.

He said, “We’ll all be kilt.”

When they started to take the curve, the Model-T was going nearly fifty-five—and then just as they got there, all of a sudden it slowed down as if it knowed what it was doing, and went around the curve as gentle as a day-old kitten. Uncle Benny had eased his foot off the accelerator. Doc drawed a breath again.

It’s a wonder to me that trip didn’t make Doc a nervous wreck. On every straightaway the Ford would rare back on its haunches and stretch out like a greyhound. Every curve they come to, it would go to it like a jack-rabbit. Then just as the sweat would pour down Doc’s face and the drops would splash on the wheel, and he’d gather hisself together ready to jump, the Ford would slow down. It was a hot spring night, but Uncle Benny says Doc’s teeth were chattering. The Model-T made the last mile lickety-brindle with the gas at the hand-throttle shut off entirely—and it coasted down in front of Will’s garage and of its own free will come to a dead stop.

It was nine o’clock at night. Will was just closing up and I had locked the candy and cigarette counter and was waiting for him. There was a whole bunch of the men and boys around, like always, because the garage is the last place in Oak Bluff to put the lights out. Doc climbed out of the Ford trembling like a dish of custard. Uncle Benny eased out after him and I looked at him and right away I knowed he’d been up to mischief.

Doc said, “I don’t know how he done it—but dogged if he wasn’t telling the truth when he said he had that blankety-blank Model-T trained to carry him home when he ain’t fitten.”

Will asked, “How come?” and Doc told us. Will looked at me and begun to chuckle and we knowed what Uncle Benny had done to him. I think maybe I would of let Uncle Benny get away with it, but Will couldn’t keep it.

“Come here, Doc,” he said. “Here’s your training.”

I thought the bunch would laugh Doc out of town. He swelled up like a toadfish and he got in his car without a word and drove away.

It’s a wonderful thing just to set down and figure out how many different ways there are to be crazy. We never thought of Uncle Benny as being really crazy. We’d say, “Uncle Benny’s cutting the fool again,” and we’d mean he was just messing around some sort of foolishness like a daggone young un. We figured his was what you might call the bottom kind of craziness. The next would be the half-witted. The next would be the senseless. The next would be what the colored folks call “mindless.” And clear up at the top would be what you’d call cold-out crazy. With all his foolishness, we never figured Uncle Benny was cold-out crazy.

Well, we missed Uncle Benny from Oak Bluff a day or two. When I came to ask questions, I found he’d gone on a long prowl and was over on the Withlacoochie River camping with some oyster fishermen. I didn’t think much about it, because he was liable to stay off that-a-way. But time rocked on and he didn’t show up. I dropped by his house to ask the Old Hen about him. She didn’t know a blessed thing.

She said, “Ain’t it God’s mercy we’ve got no young uns? The pore things would be as good as fatherless.”

And then a few days later Doc came driving up to the garage. He got out and blew his nose and we could see his eyes were red.

He said, “Ain’t it awful! I can’t hardly bear to think about it.”

Will said, “Doc, if you know bad news, you must be carrying it. Ain’t nothing sorrowful I know of, except the Prohi’s have found Philbin’s still.”

Doc said, “Don’t talk about such little accidents at a time like this. You don’t mean you ain’t heerd about Benny?”

The bunch was there and they all perked up, interested. They knowed if it was Uncle Benny, they could expect ’most any news.

I said, “We ain’t heerd a word since he went off to the west coast.”

“You ain’t heerd about him going crazy?”

I said, “Doc, you mean being crazy. He’s always been that-a-way.”

“I mean being crazy and going crazy, Pore ol’ Benny Mathers has gone really cold-out crazy.”

Well, we all just looked at him and we looked at one another. And it came over the whole bunch of us that we weren’t surprised. A nigger setting by the free air hose said, “Do, Jesus!” and eased away to tell the others.

Doc blew his nose and wiped his eyes and he said, “I’m sure we all forgive the pore ol’ feller all the things he done. He wasn’t responsible. I feel mighty bad, to think the hard way I’ve often spoke to him.”

Will asked, “How come it to finally happen?”

Doc said, “He’d been up to some foolishness all night, raring through some of them Gulf coast flat-woods. Him and the fellers he was camping with was setting on the steps of the camp-house after breakfast. All of a sudden Uncle Benny goes to whistling, loud and shrill like a jay-bird. Then he says, ‘I’m Sampson,’ and he begun to tear down the camp-house.”

Will asked, “What’d they do with him?”

Doc said, “You really ain’t heerd? I declare, I can’t believe the news has come so slow. They had a terrible time holding him and tying him. They got in the doctors and the sheriff and they takened pore ol’ Uncle Benny to the lunatic asylum at Chattahoochie.”

Doc wiped his eyes and we all begun to sniffle and our eyes to burn. I declare, it was just as if Uncle Benny Mathers had died on us.

I said, “Oh, his pore wife——”

Will said, “We’ll have to be good to him and go see him and take him cigarettes and maybe slip him a pint of ’shine now and again.”

I said, “The way he loved his freedom—shutting him up in the crazy-house will be like putting a wild-cat in a crocus sack.”

Doc said, “Oh, he ain’t in the asylum right now. He’s broke loose. That’s what makes me feel so bad. He’s headed this way, and no telling the harm he’ll do before he’s ketched again.”

Everybody jumped up and begun feeling in their hip pockets for their guns.

Doc said, “No use to try to put no guns on him. He’s got his’n and they say he’s shooting just as accurate as ever.”

That was enough for me. I ran back of the counter at the garage and begun locking up.

I said, “Doc, you’re a sight. ’Tain’t no time to go to feeling sorry for Uncle Benny and our lives and property in danger.”

Doc said, “I know, but I knowed him so long and I knowed him so good. I can’t help feeling bad about it.”

I said, “Do something about it. Don’t just set there, and him liable to come shooting his way in any minute.”

Doc said, “I know, but what can anybody do to stop him? Pore man, with all them deputies after him.”

Will said, “Deputies?”

Doc said, “Why, yes. The sheriff at Ocala asked me would I stop along the road and leave word for all the deputies to try and ketch him. Pore ol’ Benny, I’ll swear. I hated doing it the worst way.”

I scooped the money out of the cash register and I told them, “Now, men, I’m leaving. I’ve put up with Uncle Benny Mathers when he was drunk and I’ve put up with him when he was cutting the fool. But the reckless way he drives that Ford and the way he shoots a pistol, I ain’t studying on messing up around him and him gone cold-out crazy.”

Doc said, “Ain’t a thing in the world would stop him when he goes by, and all them deputies after him, but a barricade acrost the road.”

I said, “Then for goodness’ sake, you sorry, low-down, no-account, varminty white men, tear down the wire fence around my chicken yard and fix Uncle Benny a barricade.”

Doc said, “I just hated to suggest it.”

Will said, “He’d slow down for the barricade and we could come in from behind and hem him in.”

Doc said, “It’ll be an awful thing to hem him in and have to see him sent back to Chattahoochie.”

Will said, “I’ll commence pulling out the posts and you-all can wind up the fencing.”

They worked fast and I went out and looked up the road now and again to see if Uncle Benny was coming. Doc had stopped at the Standard filling-station on his way, to leave the news, and we could see the people there stirring around and going out to look, the same as we were doing. When we dragged the roll of wire fencing out into the road we hollered to them so they could see what we were doing and they all cheered and waved their hats. The word had spread, and the young uns begun traipsing barefooted down to the road, until some of their mammies ran down and cuffed them and hurried them back home out of the way of Uncle Benny. The men strung the fencing tight across the road between the garage on one side and our smoke-house on the other. They nailed it firm at both ends.

Doc said, “Leave me drive the last nail, men—it may be the last thing I can do for Benny this side of Chattahoochie.”

I talked the men into unloading their guns.

“He’ll have to stop when he sees the barricade,” I said, “and then you can all go in on him with your guns drawed and capture him. I just can’t hear to a loaded gun being drawed on him, for fear of somebody getting excited and shooting him.”

Doc wiped the sweat off his forehead and he said, “Men, this is a mighty serious occasion. I’d be mighty proud if you’d all have a little snort on me,” and he passed the bottle.

“Here’s to Uncle Benny, the way we all knowed him before he went cold-out crazy,” he said.

And then we heerd a shouting up the dirt road and young uns whistling and women and girls screaming and chickens scattering.

“Yonder comes Uncle Benny!”

And yonder he came.

The Model-T was swooping down like a bull-bat after a mosquito. The water was boiling up out of the radiator in a foot-high stream. The seven pieded bird-dogs were hanging out of the back seat and trembling as if they craved to tell the things they’d seen. And behind Uncle Benny was a string of deputy sheriffs in Fords and Chevrolets and motorcycles that had gathered together from every town between Oak Bluff and Ocala. And Uncle Benny was hunched over the steering wheel with them two tufts of goat-horn hair sticking up in the breeze—and the minute I laid eyes on him I knowed he wasn’t one mite crazier than he ever had been. I knowed right then Doc had laid out to get even with him and had lied on him all the way down the road.

It was too late then. I knowed, whatever happened, there’d be people to the end of his life would always believe it. I knowed there’d be young uns running from him and niggers hiding. And I knowed there wasn’t a thing in the world now could keep him out of Chattahoochie for the time being. I knowed he’d fight when he was taken, and all them mad and hot and dusty deputies would get him to the lunatic asylum quicker than a black snake can cross hot ashes. And once a man that has cut the fool all his life, like Uncle Benny, is in the crazy-house, there’ll be plenty of folks to say to keep him there.

It was too late. Uncle Benny was bearing down toward the garage and right in front of him was the barricade.

Doc hollered, “Be ready to jump on him when he stops!”

Stop? Uncle Benny stop? He kept right on coming. The sight of that chicken-wire barricade was no more to him than an aggravation. Uncle Benny and the Model-T dived into the barricade like a water-turkey into a pool. The barricade held. And the next thing we knowed, the Ford had somersaulted over the fencing and crumpled up like a paper shoe-box and scattered bird-dogs over ten acres and laid Uncle Benny in a heap over against the wall of the smoke-house. I was raised to use the language of a lady, but I couldn’t hold in.

“Doc,” I said, “you low-down son of a ——”

He said, “Mis’ Dover, the name’s too good. I’ve killed my friend.”

Killed him? Killed Uncle Benny? It can’t be done until the Almighty Hisself hollers “Sooey!” Uncle Benny was messed up considerable, but him nor none of the bird-dogs was dead.

The doctor took a few stitches in him at the garage before he come to, and tied up his head right pretty in a white bandage. We left Will to quiet the deputies and we put Uncle Benny in Doc’s car and carried him home to the Old Hen. Naturally, I figured it would set her to quarrelling. Instead, it just brought out all her sweetness. I can guess a man, but I can’t guess another woman.

“The pore ol’ feller,” she said. “I knowed he had it coming to him. What the devil throws over his back—. I knowed he’d kill hisself in that Ford car, cutting the fool and prowling. The biggest load is off my mind. Now,” she said, “now, by God’s mercy, when it did come to him, he got out alive.”

She begun fanning him with a palmetto fan where he lay on the bed, and Doc poured out a drink of ’shine to have ready for him when he come to. Doc’s hand was trembling. Uncle Benny opened his eyes. He eased one hand up to the bandage across his head and he groaned and grunted. He looked at Doc as if he couldn’t make up his mind whether or not to reach for his pistol. Doc put the ’shine to his mouth and Uncle Benny swallowed. Them wicked blue eyes begun to dance.

“Doc,” he said, “how will I get home when I’m drunk, now you’ve tore up my trained Ford?”

Doc broke down and cried like a little baby.

“I ain’t got the money to replace it,” he said, “but I’ll give you my car. I’ll carry the Little Giant line of remedies on foot.”

Uncle Benny said, “I don’t want your car. It ain’t trained.”

Doc said, “Then I’ll tote you on my back, anywheres you say.”

The Old Hen let in the bird-dogs, some of them limping a little, and they climbed on the bed and beat their tails on the counterpane and licked Uncle Benny. We felt mighty relieved things had come out that way.

Uncle Benny was up and around in a few days, with his head bandaged, and him as pert as a woodpecker. He just about owned Oak Bluff—all except the people that did like I figured, never did get over the idea he’d gone really crazy. Most people figured he’d had a mighty good lesson and it would learn him not to cut the fool. The Old Hen was as happy as a bride. She was so proud to have the Ford torn up, and no money to get another, that she’d even now and again pet one of the bird-dogs. She waited on Uncle Benny hand and foot and couldn’t do enough to please him.

She said to me, “The pore ol’ feller sure stays home nights now.”

Stay home? Uncle Benny stay home? Two weeks after the accident the wreck of the Model-T disappeared from behind the garage where Will had dragged it. The next day the seven bird-dogs disappeared. The day after that Doc and Uncle Benny went to Ocala in Doc’s car. Will wouldn’t answer me when I asked him questions. The Old Hen stopped by the garage and got a Coca-Cola and she didn’t know any more than I did. Then Will pointed down the road.

He said, “Yonder he comes.”

And yonder he came. You could tell him way off by the white bandage with the tufts of hair sticking up over it. He was scrooched down behind the wheel of what looked like a brand-new automobile. Doc was following behind him. They swooped into the garage.

Will said, “It’s a new second-hand body put on the chassis and around the engine of the old Ford.”

Uncle Benny got out and he greeted us.

He said, “Will, it’s just possible it was the motor of the Model-T that had takened the training. The motor ain’t hurt, and me and Doc are real hopeful.”

The Old Hen said, “Benny, where’d you get the money to pay for it?”

He said, “Why, a daggone bootlegger in a truck going from Miami to New York bought the bird-dogs for twenty-five dollars apiece. The low-down rascal knowed good and well they was worth seventy-five.”

She brightened some. Getting shut of the bird-dogs was a little progress. She walked over to the car and begun looking around it.

“Benny,” she said, and her voice come kind of faintified, “if you sold the bird-dogs, what’s this place back here looks like it was fixed for ’em?”

We all looked, and here was a open compartment-like in the back, fixed up with seven crocus sacks stuffed with corn shucks. About that time here come a cloud of dust down the road. It was the seven bird-dogs. They were about give out. Their tongues were hanging out and their feet looked blistered.

Uncle Benny said, “I knowed they’d jump out of that bootlegger’s truck. I told him so.”

I tell you, what’s in a man’s nature you can’t change. It takened the Old Hen thirty years and all them goings-on to learn it. She went and climbed in the front seat of the car and just sat there waiting for Uncle Benny to drive home for his dinner. He lifted the bird-dogs up and set them down to rest on the corn-shucks cushions, and he brought them a pan of water.

He said, “I figure they busted loose just about Lawtey.”

The Old Hen never opened her mouth. She hasn’t quarrelled at him from that day to this. She was hornswoggled.