V

Now the thing that George wanted to laugh at, but he was so surprised at it he couldn't laugh, was the one building they put him in first had bars on the windows and no doorknobs just keyholes and a cyclone fence around it with five strands of barbwire on top leaning in and watchtowers at the corners and a small gate in the front with no knob just keyholes and a big gate in the back for trucks, it was a double set so the truck could go in one and get locked in, then they would open the second. The whole time he was there they never did close both sets and he never did see anyone up in the little corner watchtowers, but what was funny was the idea that anyone would want to run away from a place like that.

Everybody had a bed of their own with a clean sheet and a clean blanket and two shelves and a closet with a brown curtain for a door to put things in. Between every bed was a board partition so that except it was open at the end away from the window, once you were in there it was like a little room of your own. In between each two beds, out in the long hallways where the open ends were, was a little wash sink, no kidding, one for each two beds, and hot water as well as cold. For each four beds there was a toilet across the hallway and a stand-up urinal and even if there was no door on it who needs it? At night one guard and two trusties watched each hallway on each floor, six hallways altogether. They had soft rubber shoes but you could hear them coming all the same.

First thing in the morning big bright lights come on and everybody jumps up and puts pants on and comes yarnmering out to wash the face and brush the teeth and go to the john, with the guards and trusties spaced down the hallway with a pad and pencil to write your number if you horse around or skip the toothbrushing or forget to wash your hands again after you come out of the can. Downstairs you'd go two by two, no running no pushing, and there was like a damn big restaurant but with nothing to pay. You got to your seat and stood there until the matron, that was a fat woman, said grace and you bent your head down and when she was done you sat down and these trusties brought these big platters of scrambled eggs and whole buckets of hot cocoa to ladle into your tin mug. Barbwire? George thought right away it must be to keep people out, not in. Maybe the dried eggs, because that is what they were, did get old after a few months, but how many times did he go to school or off to the woods with no breakfast at all with the father passed out drunk and the mother sick and crying?

Downstairs along with the restaurant place--they could show movies in it too and church and all--there was a barber shop and a first-aid station like a two-room hospital and a whole row of what they called connies which were consultation rooms for when someone wanted to talk to a guy private like a doctor or a priest or a mother or some other stranger, and the kitchens and a row of offices. This was the one building, three stories high, with the fence around it, and that's where you went first. After a while when they figured you knew your way around they moved you to another building and it was only two stories and it had no fence. They had five like that, all alike. They had no offices in them and only a couple connies and a one-room first-aid station. In each one, one of the connies was made over to a library. Each building had a real piano and its own ball team and like that, with a world series every year. Every day was school from 8 to 12 and then lunch and then school from 2 to 4. Every day half of each building had to work in the fields 4:30 till sundown or 6 in winter. And if you want to know how they got the work done without any dogging-it, each building had its own field and they kept score on how much corn or tomatoes or whatever each one brought in and if you think that world series was fought, boy, you should see them kids pull weeds. There was also shop training for carpentry, electric shop, sheet metal and the bakery.

Now everybody in that place had to gripe because they took you for queer if you did not. But I will bet you the sweat off mine against the sweat off yours that not one in a hundred of those guys lived as good as that where he came from. It was like the fashion to gripe, that's all. Also to make as much noise as possible about how horny you were and where do they keep the dancing-girls. George wished he had a nickel for every ten thousand times those little punks talked about women, but you had to do it. And somebody was always in trouble for making grabs at the pansies or the ones they thought were pansies or the ones they wished were pansies. Most of them wouldn't know what to do if a pansy said yes even if they knew they wouldn't get caught which they would.

George really liked it there. Not that he ever said that, the whole place would macerate anyone who said that. Maybe it was just George. First of all he was big so he didn't get pushed around. Next, any time in his whole life he had been with kids they were all from his town and they all knew about him and his drunk father and his mother couldn't talk English so good, and him getting left back in school and all. In this place, nobody ever heard of him before and all they knew was he was up for burglary when most of them all they did was their parents didn't want them or died or something. Next thing, everybody wore the same kind of clothes and slept in the same kind of bed, so what did they have to brag about? While back home, this kid had a bicycle and that one new shoes and the other's father was personnel manager at the mine. Next thing: school. Any kid who was well along in school before he came just went right on with it. But any kid who was behind--especially kids like George who were really behind because they got pushed one way or another and not because they were natural born dumb, well a guy like that got special time in the connies and a real chance to catch up with his age. George was really surprised by this school thing, he didn't know school was that easy and that interesting too, he thought school was a place to tie you up out of the way most of the day and make it easy for them to catch you whatever you did. Here they showed him things he really did not know and should of, like just why it was the poles he used one time could lift a heavy tree off a deer, and also things he could use just as well as a figure-four trap, like how to wire six buttons and four bells so the buttons control the bells you want them to, and when to knock down bread when it was rose enough with the yeast. Last of all, why George liked it there, had a lot to do with George what he was and nothing or nobody else. George kept his mouth shut. George always kept his mouth shut from when he was a little boy, at first because he was scared or shamed to open it and later because it was just too much trouble to get people to understand and at last because he just got the habit. Now most of the people in the world who are in trouble are liars. The wisest thing anyone ever said about lying is this, that to tell the truth is the best because if you tell the truth you never have to remember what it was you said. Well even better than to tell the truth is to keep your mouth shut. If you lie someone is going to make you try to prove it. If you brag, even with the truth, someone is going to call you and you got to make good. If you say anything at all there is bound to be someone listening who don't understand you or who don't hear you right. There would be a whole lot less trouble for everybody if most people just did not talk so much. These are things that George thought a lot about when he was grown and not when he was fourteen in that place, but that's the way he acted anyway, he kept his mouth shut. He never got the habit of running with anyone special either, so he could keep himself to himself. So all the time if he figured out something was good for him he done it. He did not try it out on anybody else and he did not make speeches about it so somebody could maybe talk him out of it. Because there are a lot of people around who can talk real good but do not know very much, they could win an argument about if you should breathe.

Anyway, you can learn a lot more with your mouth shut. You open your mouth you block your ears.

About some things you should have some way to block your ears. If George was out by himself he would not have to listen to all that talk about screwing and everything. Every day, every minute somebody was talking about that. George had seen enough screwing to last him a good long time, he did not have to wonder about it which is what most of those guys were really doing. At the same time it was while he was at the school he changed from a boy into a man and he felt it. He felt it more than he should because of all that talk. He finally put his mind to it and thought it through, lying in bed nights. And it was a long time before be got that thinking finished, but the way it turned out was this.

Being able to shoot your load did not make you nothing special because every rabbit could do it.

Shooting your load maybe was more fun than crapping or peeing but when you come right down to it it is not so special because you don't have to make yourself do it--you can't help it. You wait long enough and it's just naturally going to bust loose, like when you are asleep; you couldn't stop it if you wanted to just like sooner or later you got to go to the john whether you want to or not. So it's nothing anybody has to work at or worry over, which is what all that talk does. If the pressure builds up and you don't want to wait, go get rid of it. You usually go to the john before you absolutely have to too.

But the number one top thing about sex is something that George always felt, somehow, but only figured out much later when he was grown. He figured out that everything that is alive in the whole world keeps taking things in and then working them over and then throwing out what it could not use. No matter what a living thing is doing, what it lives for is the taking in part. It does that first and then it works it over and then it gets rid of the exhaust. Taking in is why it goes and why it grows and how it grows too. No matter how good it feels or how much talk there is about it or how many laws get passed, you can't duck the one thing, that sex is part two not part one. It's one of the things you leave behind you while you go ahead. When they got General Science in the school and it come to Biology George memorized a line in the book, no living organism can exist in an environment of its own waste products. And thinking about that and trying to find words to hang it to, he come up with this and it finished the subject for always, that the first part, taking-in, gives you Satisfaction and the second part, throwing-out, gives you Relief. There is a whole lot of people in the world sick and crazy too who do not know that difference. They go all around looking for relief and then they get upset when it don't satisfy. Well of course it don't satisfy, it can't. Satisfaction is ahead, all what you need to keep you going if you are going to be alive. Relief is what you get by dropping what you don't need any more. It's behind you and if you want to go chasing back to pick it up, don't be surprised if you look a little crazy and get yourself stunk up some too.

Well George done his two-year stretch and worked in the fields and learned to carpenter pretty good and to bake some and what he really liked was the electric shop, by the time he left he could wind a squirrel-cage electric motor or shunt. And he could solder real good, not just wires but pipe wiring which damn few know how to do any more but it is good to know, and sheet metal joining, lapped or formed. Also auto shop. Also he was pretty good with math, by the time he left he had enough geometry to measure a field or a wall-to-wall carpet and enough trigonometry to figure the angles for a timber truck-ramp and enough algebra to last him the rest of his life, he didn't like it or English. He did not play ball but he liked to root for his building. Any job he could do by himself he liked best. He did not like to hold one end while someone held the other. From General Science the Physics part he got the word Resultant. Put down a weight and drop a rope against it, and you pull one end north and I pull the other end west, the weight will not move north and it will not move west but it will move in a resultant direction northwest. Now when George pulled north he liked the load to go north, not anything different. So whatever other people called cooperation George called Resultant and it made him uneasy until he could do it alone.

Almost two years and no hunting and that was a funny thing because after they let you out of the Cage--that was the big building with the barbwire they took you to first--you were not tied down. You had to be where they told you when they said, and that was most of the time, but there was woods across the fields to the south and if you wanted to slip away maybe and hunt a little you could. George just did not seem to want it. Well they kept you busy and there was never enough time to do all the things around the buildings you wanted to do. Hunting, he just never thought of it.

But then right at the end of the second year they called him to the office and he said to himself well this is it, I'm sprung. But that was not what they wanted to tell him. They said they were sorry about the news but his father was dead. He just stood there in the office and stared at them, Mrs. Dency the fat matron and Miss Grasheim the big ugly nurse although she was nice, and one of the typists who you could see was horning in to see if she could get a charge out of him breaking up or something. Well she had to do without as he kept standing there sort of blinking and trying to percolate the idea all the way in until finally Mrs. Dency said, "I'll tell you what, George, I'll phone your building and tell them to let you upstairs. Perhaps you'd like to lie down and think it over for a while." Which was just exactly one hundred percent what he wanted just then. Which was the good thing about that fat Mrs. Dency, about eight times out of ten she could hit it right on the nose, whatever you needed. As he walked away she told him he could come talk to her whenever he felt like it. When he got to his building she had phoned ahead so he went right up, which during the day was not allowed, and fell down on his bed. He was supposed to be thinking things over but for a time there he could not think of anything to think. When something finally came it was like a weak joke--well, if you're going to live at an orphange you might as well be one.

He got up after a while and took off his shirt and loosened his belt and pushed the front of his pants down below his belly button and stuck his stomach out over the buckle. He stood looking down at the stomach for a while and then shook his head and fixed himself up again. What he thought about just then was not the father squirting blood out of the mother's nose or hollering drunk coming down the cowpath or standing like lost in the courtroom while they sent him up. It was his face the time George stole that first bag of groceries, his face altogether with broken veins in the skin and mottled patches and the dirty-white blonde eyebrows and hair and the two red scoops of his lower lids and his little washed out pink and blue eyes and all the snaggly stinking teeth--the whole nothing mess of a face with all the messy nothing parts, put together for just once, for just one lousy second, in a way that pleased George to think of, surprised and proud, saying he'd amount to something.

George shook himself hard and lay down on the bed. He did not feel anything special, not even relieved. Well his father had not been any kind of a weight on him to feel good taken off.

So finally because of that it came to him what he was supposed to be thinking about. He never did have no real plans, just overall to learn a trade and be able to get a job some place, but he never thought before the someplace could be some other place than that one mining town or live in any other house but that shack on the cowpath. The father would be there and that is why he would go there. Now the father would not be there.

So all of a sudden it hit him. Not hit him, it was not like a blow at all. Like one time when he was a little kid he was over to the river and he lay down in an old rowboat tied to some willows and drowsed in the sun. And lying there he watched the grain of the dry gray wood where once was a knot, and the way the deep furrows of the weathered wood swirled in and around and out of that knot, you see things like that sometimes that though they do not move your eye keeps going into and out of and around and back again there are two spirals of hair on a cat's back that way. Anyway he watched that for a long time until he got to know it well and half asleep and he also got to know the feel of the side of the boat on his head and the bottom of the boat on his back and rump. And something made him sit up suddenly and there wasn't anything around him he had ever in his life seen before. The boat had slipped the rope and drifted down the current a half mile or more. But what tore him like a big pair of hands one pulling up one down was how strange it was out of the boat plus how familiar it was inside the boat. He could not move for a long time except to look out at the strange banks and look down into that selfsame knothole over and over again and feel that selfsame gray board grinding his hip. It was like he could take all new or all old not both.

George felt lost and ripped like that on his bed thinking about the father dead. Because here in the school was the most real living he ever done if living is going ahead into newer and newer things. It was here and now and real, but everything out there was all different and like it had never been what he thought it was last time he looked.

He got up off the bed and looked out the window. It wasn't but about four o'clock, a late spring day, and he had no place to be now till 6:30 anyway and even if he did not show then Mrs. Dency would not say nothing, not today.

Even if it was all right something made him be careful, he stopped halfway down the stairs to let two guys walk by down there and get out of sight, and then instead of striking off across the fields he went to the hay barn and through it and down that way.

Once he was in the woods he felt better right away. Up here it was mostly oak and maple and he missed the ragged skinny birches and without the jack pine it smelled way different. But the leaves were all new and hot growed yet. Right away he seen a red squirrel but he did not do anything about it, a gray squirrel he might but never a red, they can about jump over a bullet and duck down and peek up at the underside before its gone by. But he saw droppings on the new grass and just when he thought woodchuck he saw the torn maple leaves on a new sprout so it was hedgehog and he cussed, he couldn't catch up with old Porky without he had gloves and a knife which he had not, no knives in that place. The red squirrel paced him in the trees overhead yammering loudern two jaybirds and a dry axle.

Suddenly George fell down and lay still but he had the right cocked way back as he lay on his left side. He never tried this before but it was in a book about a gray fox in the library.

The squirrel spooked out to the outside hair of a maple where there wasn't nothing but two leaves and a breeze to hold him but he was held up somehow, and all the time chit-chitting and scolding and quarreling fit to drive everything from ants to elk three quarter miles. George never moved. The squirrel liked no part of that. He never seen this before and seem like he did not think it was right. He scampered back to the tree trunk and down and out again lower down and took to hissing and squeaking and clacking his teeth together even, but George never moved. The squirrel ran back to the trunk and flaked off a couple scales of bark with his teeth and brought them back and dropped them one by one on George, one hit him right on the cheek and eye, and he never moved. The squirrel cussed up a storm and ran back to the trunk and right down on the ground and stood there on three legs with on front paw on the trunk ready to scoot backup in case, but George never moved. The squirrel grounded the fourth paw and shut up a minute and still George lay there. The squirrel came forward the way a squirrel and specially a red squirrel never does, not jumping but squiggling along on his claws with his legs stiff and his tail straight out behind and for eight, nine inches or so he looked like he was on little wheels and then he hit dry leaves that rustled and scared him and he disappeared like in a trick movie and there was his head peeking around the tree trunk. And now when George did not move the squirrel came out in two big bounds and stopped a yard away and began giving him hell again, and made one small jump closer and George lashed down with that cocked right just in that split second while the squirrel was in the air in the one small jump; if the little redhead saw it coming which he certainly did there was not a thing he could do about it. George's fist slammed him down so hard if the squirrel wasn't there the fist would of gone into the ground up to the wrist but instead he killed that squirrel altogether flattening ribs and all between them against the ground. After that George felt lots better.

He stayed in the woods for another hour but did not see nothing but a brindle bat asleep upside down under an aspen crotch and who wants to bother with bats. He would of liked a large jackrabbit or a young possum but this woods seemed to be fresh out, anyway the squirrel had done his bit and that was a heck of a whole lot better than nothing.

After supper he went to see Mrs. Dency. She put him in a connie and went for some papers and then came heck with them and closed the door. "Sit down, George," she said because he had learned to stand up and wait.

"Thank you ma'am," he said because he had learned to say Thank you and Ma'am both.

"Feel better? Yes, I see you do. George, I'm awfully sorry."

"It's all right," George said.

She leaned back and pursed up her mouth the way she always wrapped small surprises. She had black hair with a patch of white on one side in front and round black-rimmed glasses with a snivvy fixed to them where they went behind the ears with a cord on so if they dropped off they would just hang. George said, "I always figured to go back but now I don't care."

Mrs. Dency unpursed the mouth and smiled. "How--about--your aunt?" She handed over the idea like it was a chocolate-covered thousand dollar bill. The smile went away because George just sat there. "Wouldn't you like that, George?"

George said No.

Now this aunt, the mother's sister, had put in for George a couple times before. The two sisters never did get along and Aunt Mary was the oldest and was real mad that George's mother got married first and things like that. Then when the father took to drinking and things got bad and she found out, she would ask to take George every once in a while but just to put on the dog or rub George's mother's nose in it, but not that she wanted George. Then she married this two-bit hillside farmer in Virginia and more than ever the best way she could think of to put her sister down was to ask for George because it was a way of saying he would be better off with her, which was a way of saying she was better off. Now that the mother was dead George did not trust this offer one bit because he could not see no reason for it. Also George did not get along with Aunt Mary's husband the little he had seen of him. Also George knew the both of them would hold it against him he got sent up for breaking and entering and attempted burglary, and never let him forget it. But George did not say any of this because he never did say much of anything and besides he thought it was his business, he just said No.

Mrs. Dency talked it around a whole lot and the upshot was George just asked to stay right where he was. This was a big surprise to Mrs. Dency but she thought it over and then said okay, because George was only fifteen then and his two years was up but in another year he would be sixteen and the school could turn him loose without he had to go to no relative.

George was wrong on a couple of counts here but he never found that out until later, how could he if he would not talk it over but just sat there.

So he stayed at the school for one more year and you would not know there was any difference, he worked in school and in the auto shop and in the fields and rooted for the ball team and his building won a corn shuck and George won the only thing he ever won in any kind of a race, it was eating blueberry pie with your hands tied behind your back.

But there was a difference all the same. The two years, that is what the court said and the court and the school had a hold on George. If he went over the wall they would of dragged him back and it would be the cage for him and no movies or ice cream till hell froze over. But in this other year, he done his stretch already and he was there because there was not no place he would rather go to although he never said that, they would have maccrated him. He never did think serious of going over the wall but if he did it would not be like capturing a escaped criminal it would depend on this and that and the other thing like was he in any more trouble and did he have a clean place to live and all that, and if he was not in no trouble they would of left him alone without even bringing him back. And somehow this all made a big difference to George and it was not a good difference, it was worse.

He was smart enough not to let it show but a thing like that is all in the way you feel. The only thing he did different from before was he slipped out into the woods all the time. He never took nobody with him and he did not do much except once a whole litter of foxes and that was practically an accident. Otherwise it was not too much good because you do not club rabbits without you can get to a meadow edge in the dark to wait for sun-up and you do not like to set a real big deadfall or a figure-four without you are sure you can leave it where no one can come and also get to it whenever you want to. It was nice getting away every once in a while but on the other hand it was never enough and it was never right. Like if you want something real real bad it is better if you do not get none at all than if they keep feeding you a little tiny bit all the time.

But the big mystery to George is how come he could go two whole years without even thinking about the woods and all of a sudden for a year he missed it so much there was a hot place in his belly for it all the time. And the two years went by like nothing but the number three was like forever with its feet dragging.

About the end of it, George got a message to go see Mrs. Dency and he did, and she took him in her office and closed the door and there stood Aunt Mary herself. She was a little woman and George always knowed that but not as little as this, probably because he got so big in the meantime. She looked like the mother but not much. She had a very long nose that was always red at the tip and he thought wet under that, and when she talked she had one of those soft voices like pigeons or something so she could tell you what time it was and make it sound good. George knew the minute he seen her he was not mad at her if he had ever been. She should of come the year before, it would of been the same. But how can you know something like that?

Mrs. Dency like had it all thought out what she would say and what Aunt Mary should say and you can bet she had Aunt Mary in that office a whole hour before, to tell her just how to handle George. So once George was in and he and Aunt Mary said hello and all, and the women sat down and George said, thank you ma'am no thanks and just stood there, Mrs. Dency took a deep breath and started in at the far edge and come around and around what she was trying to say, while Aunt Mary sat straight up on the front rail of the wicker-seat chair looking bright-eyed like a dog when you got meat in your hand and he thinks it is for him but is afraid to say so yet. So in a way it was funny when finally Mrs. Dency got around to saying Aunt Mary still wanted George to come live at the farm, you could see she was like going to touch it and then bounce way off and come in again slow, but George said, and it was the first peep out of him since the hello, he said, "Why sure I will. "

Mrs. Dency could not no more stop than if she had fell off a cliff and was halfway down, she went on for almost a minute explaining all about blood is thicker than water and the advantages of a home and family and the only thing stopped her was Aunt Mary got up and came over to George and took hold of both his hands. So that settled that. was a long ride on the bus and Aunt Mary did not talk too much and George like always talked hardly at all but by the time they got to the farm George understood a lot of things, one was that nobody held it against him he got sent up because when you get right down to it he did not get sent up for no breaking and entering and attempted burglary, at least not no two years-worth, it was mainly because the court and the priest and the welfare woman figured he would be better off at the school than in a shack with the town drunk after the mother died. Also that maybe after all she wanted him to come just because she wanted him to come and not to spite nobody like the mother always used to say. So the only thing to worry about was her husband, a tarheel name of Grallus, Jim Grallus, Uncle Jim. At first sight he was not nothing to worry about being only five four and skinny but like a lot of little guys, he had a mad at all big guys especially when he could tell them what to do, you run across that all the damn time in the army. But even when he was sixteen years old George knew about that and like everything else it is not so bad if you expect it. And anyway it did not show very much on Uncle Jim not for a very long time anyway.

Living on the farm at first was hard on George it was so different from the school, for one thing they gave him a room all to himself and that was much better but for the longest time he could not get used to more than three walls around his bed, it was like your mouth was taped up and half your nose, you could breathe all right but never enough. But in time George got to like the room to himself real good. Also there was always this about George, put him in a new place with new people and he clammed up even more than usual and for a long time he could see Aunt Mary and Uncle Jim thought he was simple, just Yes and No and All right and when they said to tell them something like how was it at the school or back home, just sort of smile and spread out your hands and don't say nothing.

So for the first part of the time, eight, nine months, while George was like settling in, he had to go into the woods a whole lot and long as he done his work which he did, they let him. There was real good woods around there better even than Kentucky, he even seen bears a couple of times although he never did get one. But you never seen such possum, big and fat, and coons and rabbits and even beaver but not much. So at first George went hunting because somehow he had to and then he went just to keep making sure he could and then he met Anna and cut it out altogether, why it was like the first two years at the school, he did not even think of it no more.

He was past sixteen when he met Anna and she was older maybe eight years. Her old man had close to two hundred acres where Aunt Mary had but 46 and that mostly clay pasture, rocks and wood hillside. Anna's pa's place was worse even, and seven kids. George always thought how nice that must be, all those folks like belong to each other, here he was with nobody to talk to. But talking to Anna he found out how she used to think all the time, how nice it must be for him, a small place, so quiet, only thirteen head to milk night and morning, and a room of your own. It was really funny how they envied each other.

George met Anna at the creamery one time when her pa was laid up with a wrenched shoulder falling off a hay shredder. She drove a team to the creamery and he helped her get the forty-quart cans off the buckboard on to the stage. They did not talk very much at first, she was not what you would call good looking which is why she was stuck so long on that farm, nobody was about to marry her. She had a wide pink face and brown eyes and hair, and carried her head sort of forward the way women do who have that lump up between their shoulders they call the widow's hump. She was big around the upper arms and thighs both but very small in the waist and forearms and ankles and feet. Somehow a woman built like that did not get George all excited but it made him feel comfortable.

He said to her about the third time he saw her that it was close to twelve miles by road from Aunt Mary's around to her pa's place, but did she know it was not more than a mile and a half through the woods. She thought about it and gave him a smile and said yes that's so, and it was because the two farms was around the mountain shoulder from each other, and the roads followed the valleys. Well he said maybe some time he was out hunting he would see her in the fields. She said maybe and that was all just then because the next time he went to the creamery it was her pa. He never did talk to her pa.

So not long after, it was in the summer time and light for a couple hours after milking, sure enough he went out into the woods and struck off up the mountain and down again and before you know it there he was.

And she was sitting outside the barb wire at the edge of the woods by her pa's north pasture.

And he said, What are you doing sitting out here? And she laughed and said, I reckon I was waiting for you.

And that was the beginning of it, how they used to have long talks about how lucky she was with all that big family, how lucky he was without no family, and all that. He never was with a girl before but she knew a lot, but always careful, fellows working through with the threshing machine and like that, that did not live around those parts. You might think that would make George mad to find out about that but he did not mind. Those fellows was all part of the past and that was gone, she did not have no steady fellow then but she did now and it was him. She showed him what to do pretty much. You would not believe it but George never pushed her to do it. They done all what she wanted to do and he was glad to do it, but it was for her. It was always for her, the way she wanted it. He was always afraid he would hurt her hands or something. It was not until maybe the third week he kind of took over. A warm night and more than anything she smelled good to him. She smelled good the way a cow's breath smells good, the way cut hay smells good, or the milkshed on a warm morning before any spills get to souring. He got that burning in his stomach like when he needed to hunt, but that was always part angry and this was not angry at all. She told him no at first, this wasn't right, but he kept on, and soon she just let him. Well, she knew he would never hurt her and also that he would never talk about it.

That was the best time of George's whole life, better than the army or the school or anything else. Sometimes Uncle Jim was real rough on him depending on how he felt, and sometimes George would do something wrong, just not knowing any better, like the time he built a haystack so it fell over and the time he let the chickens run in the old shed where they got the coccydiosis or however you spell it, the first day they droop, the second day they can't walk, the third day they're dead, it's a wonder they didn't lose the whole flock. George did not like to make mistakes, it made him feel bad and mad at himself. If only Uncle Jim could understand that but he could not. He had to yammer and yell. And sometimes it was bitter cold and sometimes hot and sometimes he had to work two days and nights without stopping like when the calf got born crosswise the same time the windstorm took out more than half the fencing. And his axe jumped off a knot one time and sliced right down through the side of his shoe and into his foot. But with all the trouble and arguments and hard work and all, it was still the best time of his whole life. Nothing ever happened to set him out roaming the woods again with a club or a trap, he just did not need it. He went out a whole lot and they thought it was to hunt, but it was to see Anna. Even not seeing her sometimes was wonderful, like letting yourself go hungry on purpose to make the next meal taste better, which you can do if you are awful sure of the next meal. Anna liked it too, nobody paid her much mind around her place long as she carried her chores. Which she did.

And the funny thing was nobody ever found out, and George and Anna never much tried to keep it a secret. It got like a habit, that's all, for them to meet all alone in the woods and a kind of cave they knew about. Sometimes they saw each other at the grange or in town and talked, but everybody knew everybody and no one thought anything of it. And the way people like to talk, to do matchmaking and all, they still never thought anything about George and Anna. He was only fifteen when he come there first, and she twenty-four or so, and he was big and good looking enough that some of the girls in town used to kid him and yell at him and all, and Anna was one of those people who are in crowds, you know they are there but you can't see their face. So even when folks saw them together in town nobody thought anything of it and nobody ever saw them anywhere else. George he was too young to think about marrying and besides he had no money, and Anna she probably never even thought about it, there are some people who say to theirselves, well, I guess that is not for me, not ever, and they never think about it again, well, Anna had passed that long ago. Two and a half years that way, and you know it is, you think whatever it is you are doing is just naturally going to go on forever. Well it ain't.

There was a time when George and Uncle Jim Grallus had a real bad blowoff, it was in November and it got dark early, and after milking and supper George slipped off in the woods and went over the hill and him and Anna spent a long time fixing up the kind of cave they had up there near her pa's north pasture. It was not much but it was out of the wind. Well what with the work and then fooling around with Anna it was pretty late when he got back.

He did not find out until much later what it was happened while he was gone, but there was something stealing chickens every night or so and it must be Uncle Jim heard them worrying in the middle of the night or something, anyway out he come in his pajamas and a lantern. There was this big skunk outside the chicken run, when it seen him it went into the harness room under the barn. Uncle Jim was mad at that skunk and he took off after it and with his lantern he could see it scrunched up in the corner looking at him. There was a hay fork there and he was so mad he snatched up the hay fork and lunged at the skunk, well one of the tines went through the skin on the skunk's side and stuck into the wall, and there it was caught and there was uncle Jim caught too because everyone knows about a skunk how it smells, but nobody ever seems to mention it has pretty fair claws and a face full of teeth as sharp as a cat and as quick and strong as a wolf. And this was a big one. So Uncle Jim could not turn loose the fork and the skunk could not get loose either, it must have went crazy. Well Uncle Jim hollered a lot but what with being round the other side of the barn from the house, and the wind--it was one of those cold fall nights with a half a moon and a half a gale--Aunt Mary did not hear. And George was not even there but Uncle Jim did not know that.

Well he yelled his self, hoarse and he was cold to boot, and how he stunk too. Maybe he thought to let the skunk bleed to death but it was not bleeding much so he just leaned on the fork and kind of dozed. And woke up and shivered and dozed.

So about this time George come back. In the moonlight he seen the back barn door open, but no light because the lantern had long gone out. So George he just walked that way instead of straight past. He bumped the door shut and dropped the bar and went on into the house. The sound of the bar just naturally snapped Uncle Jim out of it and he hollered and jumped for the door but by then George turned the corner and with the wind in his ears and thinking, I guess about Anna, he did not hear nothing. So there was Uncle Jim in the pitch black with the skunk and when he jumped for the door he dropped his fork. They went round and round in there a whole lot. In about ten minutes the noise fretted the big Holstein bull, well, mostly Holstein, that was in stanchions on the main floor of the barn, the bull got to tossing against the stanchions, the cows got restless, it woke the hogs, maybe the sow lay over on a shoat, but anyway the shoat started to squeal. By this time there was noise enough for George Smith to hear and George Washington to boot. George run out there and was all over the yard and barn before he finally heard the cussing and banging from the harness room. He run down there and opened up and the first thing comes out is smell, like a wall falling on you, like something solid. Then the skunk so mad it could not touch the ground, it just flew and they never did get that skunk, George he just blinked and let it go by. Then come Uncle Jim.

And all he wanted to know was who shut the door and dropped the bar on him. And George said he did but...

But nothing. Then and there Uncle Jim started in and he cussed George out up and back and down again. If George had anything to say Uncle Jim did not want to hear it, he got through all he could think of about George is stupid and clumsy and lazy and if he thinks he is wise well he has another think coming. And the more he yelled the madder he got, it was like he had a pot full of hate for George and everything about George with the lid screwed down tight and the lid blew off and everything exploded out. Maybe if George was as handy with his mouth as some guys it would not have been so bad, but all he could do was stand there like a dummy and every once in a while, smile. This was not really a smile, he sure did not feel like smiling, but it come out like that. It seemed to put Uncle Jim crazy. He started in on a whole new line of stuff, like he brung up another layer. He said about George's mother and father they were never married, George was a bastard. He said about George he was a queer, what he meant was I guess George did not have a girl that he knew about, just liked to go off by himself in the woods. He said George's father was a no good drunk and his mother would of been a whore if she was not too goddam ugly and George was a robber and a burglar and a jailbird and he was sick and tired of his face around.

George still did not feel like smiling but he could not think of nothing to say so he smiled. Uncle Jim begun to yell even more, it started to be words, but spit was coming out of his mouth and like sudsing up, his eyes was real crazy, one of them cocked to one side. He started to hit George. He was so little and George was so big he had to reach up to get to his face. George had fists half the size of Uncle Jim's head, and he never even put them up. George had a sheath knife on his belt and he never even thought about it. Uncle Jim hit and hit at him, he was not strong enough to finish it with any punch but just kept cutting. George like pushed at him a little and backed away but the screaming, the way the suds kept flying off Uncle Jim's mouth, it kept him lost. He felt blood on his mouth and tasted it. He hollered, just a great big whoop of a holler, and run away. Uncle just stood there yelling And don’t come back And don’t come back.

George did not rightly know where he was going, he really did not know which way he was headed until he was in the sort of cave him and Anna had fixed up. He crawled in there, he was breathing hard like running or crying and blood dripping off him and water in his eyes, he smelt all over the old blanket they had in there and lay down and rolled back and forth. He needed something real bad he did not know what. Mostly it was Anna but Anna was by now in bed asleep and no way to get to her without making trouble for everybody. Now if he could of gone to Aunt Mary maybe she could of helped but there was no way of doing that without being next to Uncle Jim. And he thought about Mrs. Dency but she was miles away, he would never see her again. His stomach was hot and his face and head hurt. In the moonlight he could look down and see the blood drip down from his chin to his hand, it looked black, he thought it was his mother's blood.

He hollered out again like he did down by the barn. Then he sat still for a long time not even thinking. Then he got up and cut out through the woods, heading along the north fence of Anna's pa's place and away at the corner and downhill through the woods to the road. On the way he stopped at the brook and cleaned up. It was very cold. He did not care about that, it felt good. He went to town.

He cut off the road near town and come to it through woods like he liked to. There was a factory there where they made paper boxes and kraft bags out of yellow pine that grows like a weed on worked-out cotton land. There was a railroad siding. There was a little shack there with a watchman. That there watchman had George's father's face. That watchman was drunk, he smelled of sweat and dirty skin and cheap liquor just like the father, he yelled at George sudden the same old way, like he did not have to draw breath, it was there ready for yelling.

That whole thing was too much for George and so he slid back into the woods and he roamed around in there for a long time, three, four days. He never did remember. He did not eat sleep probably not even a drink of water. One thing came clear later like a picture, it was the cave and the smell of their blanket and Anna sitting by him crying. Whatever else really happened is only what he was told. Anna brought him back to Aunt Mary's place. He was weak and sick and he had a bad fever, and how she took him so far is a miracle but then she was pretty strong.

He was sick a week, just laying there in his room and not saying nothing even when he got well enough to. Aunt Mary explained about Uncle Jim as much as she could, especially when he was not around to hear her. She said he was a little man through and through and always was mad at a big man just for that. She even told him they had quarreled, her and Uncle Jim, about George. He never really said there was funny business but he said she looked at big old George with his yellow hair and his muscles in a way that she should not even if she did not know it herself. And also Uncle Jim was no spring chicken no more. So when you added it up it was a high heap, Uncle Jim was mad at him because he was young, because women thought he was good looking, because he was strong, because his wife liked-him, and on top of all that because he could not figure him out, you cannot when a guy never says anything. So to cream it off on the top is, Uncle Jim thought that night with the skunk he was laughing at him. George was not laughing at him. A thing like that is funny but not when you are there.

Uncle Jim never said he was sorry or anything but Aunt Mary said he was and George believed her. Uncle Jim just never mentioned it again and you would not believe it but things went on like before. But you have to remember George was used to all hell breaking loose and then everything just going on again, from he was a child. Maybe things was even a little better than before. Uncle Jim, he had shot himself a big lump and it was slow to fill up again, also he must be trying to hold off from that type thing he was not proud of. It did not really make much difference to George, he was used to it, and Aunt Mary was as kind as she could be while scared of what Uncle Jim said about liking George too much. But it really was better and no fooling with George and Anna, because it done Anna a lot of good to take care of him that once when he could not help himself, and it done George good too. There was many a time when George thought back to that, cuts and fever and the whole thing, it was what a guy really wants all the way down inside--to have your fill, to be safe with someone taking care, and just to quit thinking.

Everything smoothed over like that until George was nineteen and Anna got sick.

The only good thing about it was George knew why she was sick, she was knocked up, that is why. If she just did not show up and he got to hanging around her pa's place asking, it would of been even worse a mess. Because he was never sure but he thought they knew what was wrong with her and you can bet they were crazy trying to figure out who was the guy. They was a stiff-neck bunch, her folks, and they would not let it get around but all the same, any guy around asking after her would of been on the spot. So it was a good thing he knew and could stay away. She was sick already when she told him. She was throwing up all the time, they call it morning sickness but this did not need mornings, she could not hold nothing on her stomach any time. She missed her period two times already, well, he knew that really before she did, she never used to keep track. So when she stopped showing up after chores it was because she had to stay in bed sick That was only a nuisance at first but when it got to be two weeks, four and six and seven, it was hard to take. George had grew to need Anna, he could not get along very easy without he saw her. And he begun to worry either she was so sick she would not get better and then what would he do? or she was getting better or was even better already but she was mad and not taking no more chances with him. Either one of these ideas he could not stand and he hopped from one to the other all the time. And he had to admit in spite of these years he was seeing her he really did not know her well enough to know if she would dump him over such a thing as that.

What he did besides worry was to hate that little bugger inside her. Even if it was only a baby or less that made it worse. There it was warm and fed all the time with nothing to do or even think about while George had to do without. Like if Anna had some other fellow and George had to lose out to another guy that was stronger or smarter or richer or something, well he might be sore and sad too but at least the guy who beat him out was something, was more some ways than George. But this animal in her, growing like some sort of big wart or something inside her, it was a real nothing, but it beat him out hands down without even trying, without even knowing he was there. And it was the only thing he ever got mad at her for, what did she want to get herself knocked up for, he could have done without that, it was just her wanted it and now look.

He used to see to his traps, he went back to hunting again a whole lot, and then he would go to the cave and set there and whittle with his sheath knife and the only thing he did was hating that thing inside of her.

Which is how he come to join the army, because things got so bad he could not sleep or nothing, he had that hot in his stomach almost all the time and it was harder and hard to get rid of. It was like word got around in the woods, everything gone from there, rabbits, coons, chucks, even chipmunk and mice, and what was left was skinny and runty. But he was kidding himself. One time with the biggest fattest possum he ever did see he felt the same way.

Still he took to looping out wider and wider, he did not know what he was looking for but just thought he might find it somewhere else if he could not find it around home. And it was in the middle of the summer he found a beaver lodge way up the hills and went to work on a deadfall, it would have to be a big one because beaver is hard to hold. And he always always set traps where nobody ever went, this was not to save anybody any trouble, it was just no sense at all to set traps where people was slamming around yelling and jabbering. There is not one man in eight hundred dozen knows how to be quiet anywhere, let alone woods, that is what is mostly wrong with people. So anyway he come back the next day to this deadfall by the beaver lodge and here was a damn little snotnose kid caught up by the leg. Well this made George so damn mad it is funny but so damn mad he felt better. You get that mad when you are all like lost and mixed up, you do not feel lost any more at least while you are mad. He clobbered that kid good for tripping the deadfall, the kid was for him the kid growing in Anna and pushing him out of the way, he could hit out at the kid at last.

The next day he went to town and saw the man at the post office and the first thing Aunt Mary knew about it was when he brought back the papers for her to sign, he was on his way. It come so sudden she and Uncle Jim did not know what to say even, she kind of puddled up and Uncle Jim just kept on saying Well whaddaye know, well whaddaye know, and when George was in his store clothes he said Son all we did was the best we could. George he just smiled that smile he had when he did not know what to say, and he took off.