IMPASSE
Harky Mundee shoved his fork deeply into the hay. He twisted the tinesto gather the biggest possible load; as long as a man had to pitch foolhay he might as well do so in as few forkfuls as possible and get themisery over with. Then he tumbled his load down the shute into the cowstable and leaned on his fork to indulge in some sadly-neededself-criticism.
Mun sat in the house with a broken leg and that was a bad thing, thoughon the whole it was easier to endure than Mun's ruptured temper.However, Mun's temper was an abstract affair that might erupt at anymoment, while a broken leg was distinctly concrete. Harky told himselfthat anything so indisputably tangible should never beset Mun.
Still, hadn't it been wrought by providence? If Mun had not tried toclimb Old Joe's sycamore, he wouldn't have fallen. If he had not fallen,he wouldn't have a broken leg. He should not have such a thing, but hehad it, and by all the rules of logic Harky should have achieved theultimate ideal.
With his leg splinted and bound, Mun's current living space wasrestricted to the chair upon which he sat all day long and the cot uponwhich he lay all night long. Harky had been prudent enough to removefrom the sweep of his father's arms all sticks of fire wood, dishes,hatchets, knives, and anything else Mun might throw. Let Mun roar as hemight (and did, whenever Harky was in the house), roaring broke nobones. For the first time since he could remember, Harky had no need tooutwit his father in order to do as he pleased.
Of course there were some tasks one did not avoid. Livestock wasincapable of caring for itself, and Harky was too close to the earth tolet any living creature suffer for lack of attention. It was far betterto butcher it, an idea Harky had played with, but no matter how long thewinter might be, two people couldn't eat six cows, four pigs, andsixty-nine chickens. There'd always be the horses left anyway.
Grimacing as he did so, Harky pitched another forkful of hay down thechute. Livestock should really be taught to eat coon meat so a man, withcomplete freedom of conscience, might spend all his time hunting coons.Maybe, if cows ate something besides hay, they wouldn't be such fools.
Harky thought suddenly of the last time he'd attended Miss Cathby'sschool, and shuddered.
One of Miss Cathby's unswerving goals embraced assailing the minds ofher students with literature other than that which their fathers mightexchange behind the barn, and to that end there was a daily reading.Most of it was not unendurable; all Harky had to do was think aboutcoons and look as though he were paying attention. On this particularday, however, he had been unable to think about coons and was forced tolisten while Miss Cathby read a poem all about new-mown hay on a brightJune day.
Harky shuddered again and pitched furiously until he had all the cowscould eat. He jammed his fork into the hay and scrambled down the ladderto the barn floor.
Formal education could mean the ruin of a man if he didn't watch out.Miss Cathby had enthused about the poem and its author, but in the firstplace, hay was not harvested in June. It wasn't even ripe until July,and whoever wrote so touchingly of new-mown hay had never stood under afurnace-hot sun and pitched any.
Duckfoot, who had been waiting in the chaff on the barn floor, sidled upto Harky. Harky let his dangling hand caress the big dog's ears, and hetried to do some thinking about Duckfoot. But thoughts of hay justnaturally started him to thinking about corn, and the Mundee corn wasstill in the field where it had been shocked.
Therein lay a major point of friction between Mun, who demanded that itbe brought in, and Harky, who wouldn't bring it. He'd long had his ownsensible ideas concerning the proper way to run a farm, and bringing inshocked corn did not come under the category of sense.
There were arguments pro and con, and pro was summed up by the factthat if it was not properly harvested, there'd be neither corn forwinter feeding of pigs and chickens nor husks for bedding. Thisargument, Harky admitted, was not without a certain validity. Butopposed to it was such an overwhelming weight of evidence that any valueit might possess was puny indeed.
Though unattended corn could not suffer as neglected animals would,Harky would endure untold agony if he first had to haul it to the barnand then husk it. If pigs and chickens had nothing to eat they couldalways be eaten, thus solving the twin problems of caring for them andsatisfying one's own appetite. Corn in the shock lured coons, but noteven Old Joe could break into a corn crib.
The corn would stay in the shock.
It was, or should have been, a cause for leaping in the air, clickingone's heels together, and whooping with joy. Unafflicted by any suchdesire, Harky stirred nervously and wondered at himself. There was nospecial age at which a man started slipping, and if he found no delightin ignoring tasks Mun ordered him to do, he was already far gone.
Suddenly it occurred to Harky that there had been no particular pleasuresince that night, a week ago, when they had Old Joe up and Mun fell outof the sycamore. Harky hadn't even wanted to go coon hunting, and thenhe knew.
Knowing, he trembled. Coon hunters of the Creeping Hills had flourishedsince the first hunter brought the first hound because they did thingsproperly, and the proper doing was inseparably bound to a proper respectfor the art they pursued. There just hadn't been any trouble.
Until the first time a girl horned in.
Raw Stanfield and Butt Johnson had helped carry Mun home. Then,understanding the fearful consequences of Melinda's heresy, they'dsummoned Queenie and Thunder to heel and hadn't been seen since.
Shaken from the tips of his toes to the ends of his shaggy hair, Harkyneeded another fifteen minutes before he could muster strength to startmilking. Melinda had put a hex on all of them that night she stoodbeneath Old Joe's sycamore, with Old Joe up, and declared so loftilythat the sycamore was not a magic tree but merely one that hunters weretoo lazy to chop or climb, and that Old Joe was nothing more than a big,wise, and rather interesting coon.
That accounted for the broken leg of Mun, the aloofness of Raw Stanfieldand Butt Johnson, and the unhappiness of Harky. He sat down to milk, buthe was still so jarred by the dreadful tidings he'd just imparted tohimself that when Old Brindle kicked the pail over Harky didn't eventhreaten her with a club. Affairs were already in a state so hopelessthat nothing Old Brindle did could complicate them further. Not even ifshe kicked Harky's brains out.
He finished the milking and the other chores and latched the barn door.Duckfoot trailed behind him as he walked toward the house, but Harky didnot have even his usual friendly pat for the hound's head when they cameto the porch. Duckfoot, who'd shed most of his puppyish ways, crawleddisconsolately into his sleeping box.
Gloom remained Harky's companion. Fifty-one years ago, or approximatelyat the beginning of time, his great-grandfather had settled this veryfarm. There'd been Mundees on it since, and hounds of the lineage ofPrecious Sue, and all of them had hunted Old Joe. Now the spell wasbroken because a mere girl, who had been taught by Miss Cathby, whodidn't know anything about anything, had considered it right to triflewith spells.
Harky recalled the night Melinda had brought Glory to the coon hunt. Hehad, he remembered, hoped Melinda would fall in the mud and had promisedto stamp on her head if she did. He could not help thinking that thathad been a flash of purest insight, and that all would now be favorableif Melinda had fallen in the mud and had her head stamped on.
Harky turned the door knob and made his decision as he did so. The newand radical, as represented by Melinda and Miss Cathby, must go. The oldand steadfast, as embodied in the immortality of Old Joe and theprobability that Duckfoot's father was really a duck, must be restoredto the pedestal from which it had toppled. But Harky needed Mun'sadvice, and he was so intent on the problem at hand that he only halfheard his father's greeting.
"So ya finally come back, eh? Of all the blasted, lazy, pokey,turtle-brained warts on the face of creation, I jest dunno of a one wustthan you!"
Harky said, "Yes, Pa."
Startled, but too much under the influence of his own momentum to stopsuddenly, Mun demanded, "Didja git
the corn in?"
"No, Pa."
The fires in Mun's brain died. Harky, who should have been sassing himback, was meekly turning the other cheek. Despite Mun's frequently andviolently expressed opinions concerning the all-around worthlessness ofhis offspring, Harky was his son and the sole hope of the coon-huntingbranch of the clan Mundee.
"Ya sick, Harky?" Mun asked suspiciously.
"No, Pa."
"Then what is chawin' on ya?"
"Tell me again when my great-grandpappy come here," Harky requested.
Mun said, "Nigh onto fifty-two years past."
"That's a heap o' time, ain't it?" Harky asked.
"A smart heap o' time," Mun declared proudly. "Not many famblys knows asmuch about themselfs as us Mundees."
"You sure," Harky went on, "that Sue come to no good end on account sherun in the dark o' the moon?"
Mun shrugged. "What else?"
"And Duckfoot's pappy was a duck?"
Mun looked puzzled. "Think I'd lie, Harky?"
"No, Pa," Harky said hastily. "Just tell me again that all us Mundeesbeen on the trail of Old Joe."
"How kin ya ponder?" Mun asked. "My grandpappy told my pappy, who toldme, who told you, that Old Joe's been hunted by every Mundee."
"What do you think of Old Joe's big sycamore?" Harky questioned.
"It's a witch tree," Mun said seriously. "I ain't rightly been able tofigger if'n Old Joe takes wings an' flies off it or if'n he does jump inthe slough. But I'm sure that if'n Old Joe gits in his witch tree naughtcan harm him."
"Ha!" Harky exclaimed. "Now we know!"
"Know what?" Again Mun was puzzled.
"All," Harky declared. "Mellie Garson gets mule-kicked; Melinda bringsGlory to horn in on our hunt; we get Old Joe up in his sycamore; Melindasays it ain't no witch tree and Old Joe's naught but a big coon; youbelieve her and try to climb; you bust your leg; Raw and Butt don't wantno more part of us--and," Harky wailed, "I can't even take pleasure onaccount you can't make me fetch the corn in!"
"By gum!" Mun said, "you got it!"
"Sure I got it," Harky asserted. "Why'd you let Melinda horn in on ourcoon hunt, Pa?"
"I don't rightly know," Mun admitted. "I wa'n't of no mind to have her,an' I know Raw'n Butt wa'n't. But she was of a mind to go, an' gol dingit, when a woman's of a mind to do somethin', they do it!"
"I would of stomped on her head if she'd fell in the mud," Harky assuredhis father.
"I know," Mun meditated, "an' it wa'n't a poor notion. But, gol ding it,men just don't mistreat wimmen."
"I still don't know why," said Harky.
"Nor I," Mun admitted. "They jest don't an' that's all. Your ma, shedidn't weigh mor'n half what I do, but she's the only mortal critterever made me take to the woods."
"Are women ornery all the time?" Harky questioned.
"'Bout half," Mun said. "Rest o' the time, well, they're wimmen."
"What else do you know about 'em, Pa?"
"Durn little," Mun confessed. "What ya drivin' at anyhow, Harky?"
"Melinda put a spell on us," Harky said. "But it ain't all her doing.Miss Cathby showed her how."
"I never thought of that," said Mun. "Never ag'in do I make ya go toschool, Harky."
"Good," Harky said. "But I got to get that spell off."
"How do ya aim to go about it?" Mun questioned.
"I'll ask Melinda to fetch Glory on another coon hunt," Harky declared."We'll run Old Joe up his sycamore again. Then I'll climb the tree andmake her climb with me. She'll eat mud when she finds out there ain't noden."
"Harky!" Mun said joyously. "Your great-grandpappy would be right proudof the way you talk!"