Sounder (4 page)

The boy hated the man with the red face with the same total but helpless hatred he had felt when he saw his father chained, when he saw Sounder shot. He had thought how he would like to chain the deputy sheriff behind his own wagon and then scare the horse so that it would run faster than the cruel man could. The deputy would fall and bounce and drag on the frozen road. His fine leather jacket would be torn more
than he had torn his father’s overalls. He would yell and curse, and that would make the horse go faster. And the boy would just watch, not trying to stop the wagon….

The boy would like to see the big red-faced man crumpled on the floor with the crumbs. Besides the red face, the boy had noticed the fat, bulging neck that folded down over the man’s collar and pushed up in wrinkled circles under his chin. The bull neck of the man reminded the boy of the bull he had seen die in the cattle chute at the big house where his father worked. The horse doctor had been trying to vaccinate the bull in the neck, but the rope through the ring in the bull’s nose didn’t keep the bull from tossing his head from side to side, knocking the horse doctor against the side of the chute. Then the horse doctor had gotten mad and said, “Get a chain. I’ll make him stand still.”

When the chain was snapped around the bull’s neck, the farm hands pulled it over the crossbar of the chute posts and hooked it. But when the horse doctor stuck the bull in the neck, he lunged backward, set his front feet with his whole weight against the chain, and choked himself to death before one of the farm hands could jab him with a pitchfork and make him slacken the chain. The legs of the bull folded under him and the chain
buried itself in the fat of his neck. When the farm hands finally got the chain unhooked from the crossbar, the bull’s head fell in the dirt, and blood oozed out of its mouth and nostrils….

The bull-necked man would sag to his knees, the boy thought, and crumple into a heap on the floor. Just the way the bull did, the boy thought, and blood would ooze out of his mouth and nose.

“Get up,” the red-faced man said, “you wanta take all day?” The boy stood up. He felt weak and his knees shook, but there were no more tears in his eyes.

The red-faced man took a big iron key on a ring as big around as the boy’s head and unlocked one of the iron gates. He pushed the boy in and said, “Fourth door down.” Passing the three doors, the boy could feel eyes following him. He saw men, some sitting on cots, some standing behind the iron gates with their hands on the bars, looking at him. Each step echoed against the iron ceiling and made him sound like a giant walking. Far down the long iron-grated corridor a sad voice was singing:

The boy’s father stood with his hands on the bars. He did not have his hands and feet chained
together. Seeing the hands that could handle a hot pot lid without a pot rag, open the stove door without using a poker, or skin a possum by holding the hind legs of the carcass with one hand and the hide with the other and just pulling, the boy knew his father could have choked the cruel man with the bull neck.

The father looked at the boy and said, “Child.” On the way, the boy had thought about what he would say to his father. He had practiced talking about his mother selling kernels at the store and buying the cake makings, his little brother and sisters being all right, no strangers coming past, not finding Sounder’s body. And he was going to ask his father where Sounder came to him along the road when he wasn’t more’n a pup. He practiced saying them all over and over to get the quiver and the quiet spells out of his voice because his mother had said, “Whatever you do, child, act perkish and don’t grieve your father.”

But the boy was full of mixed hate and pity now, and it addled him. There was an opening in the bars with a flat, iron shelf attached on the inside. The boy had left the lid of the box on the floor. Now he pushed the box through the opening and said, “This was a cake, before—” But he couldn’t finish. An awful quiet spell destroyed all his practice.

“Sounder might not be dead,” the boy said. He knew his father was grieved, for he swallowed hard and the quiet spells came to him too.

“I’ll be back ’fore long,” said his father.

From somewhere down the corridor there came a loud belly laugh, and a loud voice called out, “Listen to the man talk.”

“Tell her not to grieve.” His father was almost whispering now.

“Sounder didn’t die under the cabin.” But the boy couldn’t keep the quivering out of his voice.

“Tell her not to send you no more.” The quiet spells were getting longer. The man stopped looking through the bars at the boy and looked down at the cake.

“If he wasn’t shot in his vitals,” the boy said, “he might get healed in the woods.” Then there was a long quiet spell that was split in the middle by the loud clank of an iron door banging shut.

“Tell her I’ll send word with the visitin’ preacher.”

The big red-faced man with the bull neck opened the corridor door and yelled, “Visitin’ over.” The boy felt numb and cold, like he had felt standing outside the jail door. He choked up. He had grieved his father. He hated the red-faced man, so he wouldn’t cry until he got outside.

“Come on, boy,” the man yelled, swinging the big key ring.

“Go, child,” the father said. “Hurry, child.”

The boy was the last person through the big iron door. The bull-necked man pushed him and said, “Git, boy, or next time you won’t get in.”

THE BOY MOVED
quickly around the corner and out of sight of the iron door and the gray cement walls of the jail. At the wall in front of the courthouse he stood for a while and looked back. When he had come, he was afraid, but he felt good in one way because he would see his father. He was bringing him a cake for Christmas. And he wasn’t going to let his father know he was grieved. So his father
wouldn’t
be grieved.

Now the sun had lost its strength. There were only a few people loafing around the courthouse wall, so the boy sat for a spell. He felt numb and tired. What would he say to his mother? He would tell her that the jailer was mean to visitors but didn’t say nothing to the people in jail. He wouldn’t tell her about the cake. When he told her his father had said she shouldn’t send him again, that he would send word by the visiting preacher, she would say “You grieved him, child. I told you to be perk so you wouldn’t grieve him.”

Nobody came near where the boy sat or passed on the street in front of the wall. He had forgotten the most important thing, he thought. He hadn’t asked his father where Sounder had come to him on the road when he wasn’t more’n a pup. That didn’t make any difference.

But along the road on the way to the jail, before the bull-necked man had ruined everything, the boy had thought his father would begin to think and say “If a stray ever follard you and it wasn’t near a house, likely somebody’s dropped it. So you could fetch it home and keep it for a dog.”

“Wouldn’t do no good now,” the boy murmured to himself. Even if he found a stray on the way home, his mother would say “I’m afraid, child.
Don’t bring it in the cabin. If it’s still here when mornin’ comes, you take it down the road and scold it and run so it won’t foller you no more. If somebody come lookin’, you’d be in awful trouble.”

A great part of the way home the boy walked in darkness. In the big houses he saw beautiful lights and candles in the windows. Several times dogs rushed to the front gates and barked as he passed. But no stray pup came to him along the lonely, empty stretches of road. In the dark he thought of the bull-necked man crumpled on the floor in the cake crumbs, like the strangled bull in the cattle chute, and he walked faster. At one big house the mailbox by the road had a lighted lantern hanging on it. The boy walked on the far side of the road so he wouldn’t show in the light. “People hangs ’em out when company is comin’ at night,” the boy’s father had once told him.

When court was over, they would take his father to a road camp or a quarry or a state farm. Would his father send word with the visiting preacher where he had gone? Would they take his father away to the chain gang for a year or two years before he could tell the visiting preacher? How would the boy find him then? If he lived closer to the town, he could watch each day, and when they took his father away in the
wagons where convicts were penned up in huge wooden crates, he could follow.

The younger children were already in bed when the boy got home. He was glad, for they would have asked a lot of questions that might make his mother feel bad, questions like “Is everybody chained up in jail? How long do people stay in jail at one time?”

The boy’s mother did not ask hurtful questions. She asked if the boy got in all right and if it was warm in the jail. The boy told her that the jailer was mean to visitors but that he didn’t say nothing to the people in jail. He told her he heard some people singing in the jail.

“Sounder ain’t come home?” the boy said to his mother after he had talked about the jail. He had looked under the porch and called before he came into the cabin.

Now he went out, calling and looking around the whole cabin. He started to light the lantern to look more, but his mother said, “Hang it back, child. Ain’t no use to fret yourself. Eat your supper, you must be famished.”

“He said not to come no more,” the boy finally said to his mother when he had finished his supper. “He said he’ll send word by the visitin’ preacher.” He poked up the fire and waited for his mother to ask him if he had been perk and
didn’t grieve his father, but she didn’t. He warmed himself and watched a patch of red glow the size of his hand at the bottom of the stove. He could see the red-faced man lying on the jail floor with blood oozing out of the corners of his mouth. After a long quiet spell the rocker began to squeak, and it made the boy jump, but his mother didn’t notice. She began to rock as she picked out walnut kernels. She hummed for a while, and then she began to sing like she was almost whispering for no one to hear but herself:

In bed, the pressure of the bed slats through the straw tick felt good against the boy’s body. His pillow smelled fresh, and it was smooth and soft. He was tired, but he lay awake for a long time. He thought of the store windows full of so many things. He thought of the beautiful candles in windows. He dreamed his father’s hands were chained against the prison bars and he was still standing there with his head down. He dreamed that a wonderful man had come up to him as he was trying to read the store signs aloud and had said, “Child, you want to learn, don’t you?”

In the morning the boy lay listening to his
mother as she opened and closed the stove door. He heard the damper squeak in the stovepipe as she adjusted it. She was singing softly to herself. Then the boy thought he heard another familiar sound, a faint whine on the cabin porch. He listened. No, it couldn’t be. Sounder always scratched before he whined, and the scratching was always louder than the whine. Besides, it was now almost two months later, and the boy’s mother had said he might be back in a week. No, he was not dreaming. He heard it again. He had been sleeping in his shirt to keep warm, so he only had to pull on his overalls as he went. His mother had stopped singing and was listening.

There on the cabin porch, on three legs, stood the living skeleton of what had been a mighty coon hound. The tail began to wag, and the hide made little ripples back and forth over the ribs. One side of the head and shoulders was reddish brown and hairless; the acid of the oak leaves had tanned the surface of the wound the color of leather. One front foot dangled above the floor. The stub of an ear stuck out on one side, and there was no eye on that side, only a dark socket with a splinter of bone showing above it. The dog raised his good ear and whined. His one eye looked up at the lantern and the possum sack
where they hung against the wall. The eye looked past the boy and his mother. Where was his master? “Poor creature. Poor creature,” said the mother and turned away to get him food. The boy felt sick and wanted to cry, but he touched Sounder on the good side of his head. The tail wagged faster, and he licked the boy’s hand.

The shattered shoulder never grew together enough to carry weight, so the great hunter with the single eye, his head held to one side so he could see, never hopped much farther from the cabin than the spot in the road where he had tried to jump on the wagon with his master. Whether he lay in the sun on the cabin porch or by the side of the road, the one eye was always turned in the direction his master had gone.

The boy got used to the way the great dog looked. The stub of ear didn’t bother him, and the one eye that looked up at him was warm and questioning. But why couldn’t he bark? “He wasn’t hit in the neck” the boy would say to his mother. “He eats all right, his throat ain’t scarred.” But day after day when the boy snapped his fingers and said “Sounder, good Sounder,” no excited bark burst from the great throat. When something moved at night, the whine was louder, but it was still just a whine.

Before Sounder was shot, the boy’s mother always said “Get the pan, child” or “Feed your dog, child.” Now she sometimes got the pan herself and took food out to Sounder. The boy noticed that sometimes his mother would stop singing when she put the food pan down at the edge of the porch. Sometimes she would stand and look at the hunting lantern and possum sack where they hung, unused, against the cabin wall. …

The town and the jail seemed to become more remote and the distance greater as each day passed. If his father hadn’t said “Don’t come again,” it wouldn’t seem so far, the boy thought. Uncertainty made the days of waiting longer too.

The boy waited for the visiting preacher to come and bring word of his father. He thought the people for whom his mother washed the soft curtains could certainly write and would write a letter for his mother. But would someone in the jail read it for his father? Perhaps none of the people in jail could read, and the big man with the red face would just tear it up and swear. The visiting preacher might write a letter for the boy’s
father. But how would it get to the cabin since no mailman passed and there was no mailbox like the boy had seen on the wider road nearer the town?

The boy wanted to go to the town to find out what had happened to his father. His mother always said “Wait, child, wait.” When his mother returned laundry to the big houses, she asked the people to read her the court news from their newspapers. One night she came home with word of the boy’s father; it had been read to her from the court news. When the younger children had gone to bed, she said to the boy, “Court’s over.” And then there was one of those long quiet spells that always made the boy feel numb and weak.

“You won’t have to fret for a while about seein’ him in jail. He’s gone to hard labor.”

“For how long?” the boy asked.

“It won’t be as long as it might. Folks has always said he could do two men’s work in a day. He’ll get time off for hard work and good behavior. The court news had about good behavior in it. The judge said it.”

“Where’s he gonna be at?” the boy asked after he had swallowed the great lump that filled up his throat and choked him.

“Didn’t say. The people that has the paper says
it don’t ever say wher’ they gonna be at. But it’s the county or the state. Ain’t never outside the state, the people says.”

“He’ll send word,” the boy said.