The month was April, and the day was blithe, with no blotch in the sky.
The country was rough, the road was pebbly in the bottoms and flinty on
the hills, but there was a leaping joy everywhere; in the woods where
the blue-jays were shouting, down the branch where the woodpecker tapped
in an oak tree's sounding board. It must have been a low-hanging
ambition to be thrilled with the prospect of teaching school, or was it
buoyant health that made me happy? I eased down my trunk, and boyishly
threw stones away off into an echoing hollow. A rabbit ran out into the
road and stopped, and with a stone I knocked it over. Tenderly I picked
it up, felt its fluttering heart, and groaned inwardly when the little
heart was stilled. I called myself a murderer, an Anglo-Saxon brute, to
kill a harmless creature merely upon a devilish impulse, and in the
gravelly ground I began to dig a grave with my knife, and I was so much
taken up with this work and with my grief, that I heeded not the
approach of a wagon.
"What are you doing there?" some one called.
I looked up. A farmer had stopped his blowing horses and was looking at
me. "I'm digging a grave," I answered.
"Diggin' a grave? Why, who's dead?"
"A rabbit." He moved uneasily, and gave me a searching look. And I saw
that he took me to be insane. "I killed the poor thing," I explained,
"killed it out of mere wantonness, and I am so grief-stricken that I am
going to do the best I can for the poor thing--going to give it a
Christian burial."
The man laughed. "I wish you would kill the last one of them," he said.
"Set out as nice a young orchard as you ever saw last winter, and the
devilish rabbits killed every one of the trees."
"Then I am not so much of a murderer after all," I replied. "I might
have known that rabbits are not altogether harmless. How far do you go
on this road?"
"About ten miles."
"Will you let me ride with you?"
"Yes, be glad to have you."
I put the rabbit into his grave, raked the dirt on him with my
foot--hardly a Christian-like way, I admit--placed my trunk into the
body of the wagon, and took a seat beside the man. And there was
something about him that at once interested me. His hat was off and the
breeze was stirring his grizzly hair. His nose was large and thin, and
when he turned his face square upon me, I saw that his eyes were gray
and clear. He wore no coat, his shirt sleeves were rolled back, and
though he must have been more than fifty years old, I could see that he
had enormous strength in his arms. And he was looking at me admiringly,
for he said, "You must be pretty much of a man."
"I am not a child except in my lack of wisdom," I answered.
"Gad, you talk like a preacher. Which way are you going?"
"Over to Lim Jucklin's house."
He gave me another square look and remarked, "That's my name."
"You don't tell me so?"
"Didn't you hear me tell you so?"
"Yes, but----"
"Well, then, I did tell you so."
"I am delighted to meet you, sir. I am a school teacher, and I hear that
one is wanted in your neighborhood."
He looked at me from head to foot, and replied: "I shouldn't wonder but
you are the right man. What's your name?"
I told him and after a few moments of silence he asked, "Any kin to the
Luke Hawes that fought in the Creek war?"
"He was my grandfather."
"Ah, hah, and my daddy fit with him--was a lieutenant in his company.
Let's shake hands. Whoa, boys." He stopped his horses, got up, shook
down the wrinkled legs of his trousers and reached forth his hand.
"You are a stranger in North Caroliny," he said when he had clucked to
his horses.
"Yes, I am a stranger everywhere you might put it," I answered. "I am
from Alabama, but the people made so much fun of me in the community
where I was brought up that I am even a stranger there."
"What did they make fun of you about?"
"Because I was overgrown and awkward."
"Whoa, boys! Let's shake hands again. I got it the same way when I was a
boy, and I come in one of never gettin' over it."
We drove on and had gone some distance when he asked: "Do you know all
about 'rithmetic?"
"I at least know the multiplication table."
"It's more than I do. Get up there, boys. And down in my country they
think that a man that don't know all about 'rithmetic is a fool. I have
often told them that there wan't no record of the fact that the Saviour
was good at figgers, except figgers of speech, but they won't have it
that a man is smart unless he can go up to a barn and cover one side of
it with eights and sevens and nines and all that sort of thing. I've got
a daughter that's quicker than a flash--took it from her mother, I
reckon--and I have a son that's tolerable, but I have always been left
in the lurch right there. But I can read all right, and I know the Book
about as well as the most of them, but that makes no difference down in
our neighborhood. The pace down there is set by Old General Lundsford.
He knows all about figgers and everything else, for that matter, but
figgers is his strong holt. He owns nearly everything; is a mighty
'ristocrat and don't bend very often; lives in the house that his
grandfather built, great big brick, and never had no respect for me at
all until I wallowed him in the road one day about thirty odd years ago.
And along about ten years after that he found out that he had a good
deal of respect for me. What do you know about game chickens?"
"Not very much; I simply know that they are about the bravest things
that live."
He gave me another one of his square looks and replied: "There is more
wisdom in such talk as that than there could be crowded into a wheat
bin. But, do you know that people make fun of me because I admire a game
rooster? They do. I don't want to fight 'em for money, you know; I'm a
good church member and all that sort of thing; I believe the Book from
one end to the other; believe that the whale swallowed Jonah, I don't
care if its throat ain't bigger than a hoe-handle; believe that the vine
growed up in one night, and withered at mornin'; believe that old Samson
killed all them fellers with the jaw-bone--believe everything as I tell
you from start to finish, but I'll be blamed if I can keep from fightin'
chickens to save my life. And I always keep two beauties, I tell you.
Not long ago my wife ups and kills Sam and fed him to a preacher.
Preacher was there, hungry, and the other chickens were parading around
summers on the other side of the hill, but my wife she ups and kills
Sam, a black beauty, with a pedigree as long as a plow-line. And, sir,
while that man was chawin' of my chicken he gave me a lecture on
fightin' roosters."
"You spoke of your son and daughter. Do they attend school?"
"Oh, no; they are grown long ago."
"Then how is it that the teacher usually boards at your house?"
"I don't know; but they do. Reckon they jest fell into the habit. My
house is handy, for one thing; ain't more than three miles from the
school--jest a nice, exercisin' sort of walk. Whoa, boys! Sorter have to
scotch 'em back goin' down here. Saw a man get killed down there one
day; horse kicked him, and do you see that knob over there where them
hickory trees are? I had a hard time there one night. A lot of
foot-burners come to my house one night durin' the war and took me out
and told me that if I didn't give them my money they would roast my
shanks. I didn't have any money and I told them so, but they didn't
believe me; and so they brought me right over there where them hickories
are, tied me, took off my shoes and built up a fire at my feet; but
about the time they had got me well blistered, along come some Yankee
soldiers and nabbed 'em. And a few minutes after that there wasn't
anything agin their feet, I tell you, not even the ground. Well, we are
gettin' pretty close to home now."
"But we haven't come fifteen miles from the station, have we?"
"Well, you had come about five mile before I overtook you and we have
come nearly ten since then. These hosses are travelers. Oh, I reckon
we've got about three more miles to go yet."
The country was old, with here and there a worn-out and neglected field.
A creek wound its way among the hills, deep and dark in places, but
babbling out into a broad and shiny ford where we crossed. One moment
the scene was desolate, with gullied hill-sides, but further on and off
to the right I could see poetic strips of meadow land, and further yet,
upon a hill-top, stood a grim old house of brick and stone. We turned
off to the right before coming abreast of this place, and pursued a
winding course along a deep-shaded ravine, not rough with broken ground,
but graceful with grassy slopes and with here and there a rock. My
companion pointed out his house, what is known as a double log building,
with a broad passage way between the two sections. A path, so hard and
smooth that it shone in the sun, ran down obliquely into the ravine, and
at the end of it I saw a large iron kettle overturned, and I knew that
this marked the spring. I liked the place, the forest back of it, the
steep hills far away, the fields lying near and the meadow down the
ravine. I hate a new house, a new field, a wood that looks new; to me
there must be the impress of fond association, and here I found it, the
spring-house with moss on its roof, the path, a great oak upon which
death had placed its beautiful mark--a bough of misletoe.
"You hop right out and go in and make yourself at home, while I take
care of the horses," said the old man. "Go right on," he added, for he
saw that I was hesitating. "You don't need an introduction. Jest say
that you are Whut'sname and that you are the new school teacher."
"But I don't know yet that I am to be the teacher."
"Well, then, tell 'em that you are Whut'sname and that you don't know
whether you are to be the teacher or not."
"But won't you stop long enough to introduce me?"
"Oh, I reckon I mout. Come on. There is wife in the door, now."
He did not go as far as the door; he simply shouted: "Here's a man,
Susan. He can tell you his name, for blamed if I ain't dun forgot."