The Jucklins: a novel

Chapter I

The neighbours and my own family began to laugh at me about as far back as I can remember, and I think that the first serious remark my father ever addressed to me was : ' Bill, you are too lazy to amount to any thing in this life, so I reckon we'll have to make a school-teacher of you.' I don't know why he should have called me lazy ; I suppose it must have been on account of my awkwardness. Lazy ! why, I could sit all day and fish in one place and not get a bite, while my more industrious companions would, out of sheer exhaustion of patience, be compelled to move about ; and I hold that patience is the very perfection of industry. In the belief that I could never amount to anything, I gradually approached my awkward manhood. I grew fast, and I admit that I was always tired ; and who is more weary than a sprout of a boy ?

My brothers were active of body and quick of judgment, and I know that Ed, my oldest brother, won the admiration of the neighbourhood when he swapped horses with a stranger and cheated him unmercifully. How my father did laugh, and mother laughed, too, but she told Ed that he must never do such a thing again. With what envy did I look upon this applause. I knew that Ed's brain was no better than mine ; and as I lay in bed one night I formed a strong resolve and fondly hugged it unto myself. I owned a horse, a good one ; and I would swap him off for two horses — I would cheat someone, and thereby win the respect of my fellows. My secret was sweet, and I said nothing. By good chance a band of gipsies came our way ; I would swindle the rascals. I went to their camp, leading my horse, and after much haggling I came home with two horses.

It was night when I reached home, and I put my team into the stable, and barred up my secret until the sun of a new day could fall upon it. Well, the next morning one of the horses was dead, and the other one was so stiff that we had to shove him out of the stall. My father snorted, my poor mother wept, and for nights after wards I slipped out and slept in the barn, burrowed under the hay, that I might not hear the derisive titter of my brother Ed. We lived in Northern Alabama, in a part ofthe country that boasted of the refinement and intelligence of its society. When I was alone with boys much younger than myself I could say smart things, and I had a hope that when I should go into formal ' company ' I would, with one evening's achievement, place myself high above the numskulls who had giggled at me.

The time came. There was to be a ' party ' at the house of a neighbour, and I was invited. I had a suit of new clothes, and after dressing myself with exceeding care, I set out, strong of heart, for the field of victory. But I weakened when I saw the array of blooded horses hitched without, and heard the gay laughter within, a merriment rippling and merciless ; and I stood on the porch, sick with the sense of my awkwardness. I was too big, and I knew that I was straining my clothes. Through the window I could see a trim fellow laughing with a girl, and I said to myself, ' If I can catch you out somewhere I will maul you.' I was not acquainted with him, but I hated him, for I knew that he was my enemy. To an overgrown young fellow, ashamed of his uncouth, steer-like strength, all graceful youths are hateful ; and he feels, too, that a handsome girl is his foe, for girls with pretty mouths are nearly always laughing, and why should they laugh if they are not laughing at him ?

Long I stood there, stretching the seams of my clothes, angry, wishing that the house might catch fire. I heard footsteps, and, looking about, recognised a member of the household, an old and neglected girl. I was not afraid of her, and I bowed. And I felt a sudden looseness, a giving away of a part of my gear. She called me Mr. Hawes, the very first time that anyone had called me anything but Bill ; she opened the door and bade me go in. I had to duck my head as I stepped forward, and there I was inside the room with the light pouring over me. I took one step forward, and stumbled over something, and then a tittering fool named Bentley exclaimed : ' Hello, here comes little Willie !' I don't know how I got out. I heard a roar of laughter, I saw grinning faces jumbled together, and then I was outside, standing with my hot hand resting in the frost on the top rail of a fence.

Someone was urging me to come back — the neglected girl — but I stood there silent, with my hot hand melting the frost. I went out into the moon-lighted woods, seized a sapling, and almost wrenched it from the ground. Down the road I went toward home, but I I — turned aside and sat on a log. I felt a sense of pain and I opened my hands— I had been cutting my palms with my nails. But in this senseless fury I had made up my mind. I would waylay Bentley and beat him. Hour after hour I sat there. Horses began to canter by ; up and down the road there was laughter and merry chatting. The moon was full, and I could plainly see the passers-by. Suddenly I sprang from the log and seized a bridle-rein. A girl shrieked and a man cut my hand with a whip, and I jerked the horse to his knees. Bentley shouted that he would kill me if I did not let go, but I heeded not ; I jerked him off his horse, kicked his pistol across the road, mashed his mouth, slammed him against the ground.

The shrieking girl cried out that I was a brute, and I told her that I could whip her whole family, a charming bit of repartee, I thought ; but afterward I remembered that her family consisted of herself and an aged grandmother, and I sent her an abject apology. Bentley's horse cantered away, and I left the fellow lying in the road, with the girl standing over him, shrieking for help. It was all done in a minute, and with jolting tread I stalked away before anyone came up. Of course there was a great scandal. My poor mother was grieved and humiliated, ashamed to meet any of the neighbours ; and my father swore that instead of becoming a school-teacher I ought to turn out as a highwayman. My brothers thought to have some fun with me, but I frightened them with a roar, and for a time they were afraid to smile in my presence.

I was almost heartbroken over my disgrace. Without undue praise, I can say that I was generous and kind-hearted ; even as a child I had shown almost a censurable unselfishness ; I had given away my play things, and my sensibilities were so tender that I could not bear the sight of a suffering animal, and I remember that an old man laughed at me because I could not cut the throat of a sheep when the poor thing had been hung up by the heels. And now I was put down as a heartless brute. Bentley's face constantly haunted me. I was afraid that he might die, and once when I heard that he was not likely to get well, I was resolved to go to him to beg his pardon. Two weeks had passed ; it was night, and rain was pouring down, but I cared naught for the wetting. I found Bentley sitting up with his face bandaged.

His mother frowned at me when she opened the door and saw me standing there under the drip, and it was some time before she asked me to come in, and I have thought that she would have driven me off had not the sight of me, wet and debased, aroused her pity. Bentley held out his hand when I entered the room, and he said, ' I don't blame you, Bill. It was mean of me, but I wanted to be smart.' I was so full, so choked with emotion, that it was some time before I could say a word. But after a time I spoke of the rain, and told him that I thought that I had heard a wild-cat as I came along, which was a lie, for I had heard nothing save the wind and the rain falling on the dead leaves. He laughed, and said that he did not suppose that I would have been very much frightened had the cat jumped at me.

Then I told him that I was the biggest coward on earth, and sought to prove it by offering to let him kick me as long as he might find it amusing. I told him that everybody despised me for the way I had beaten him — everybody, including my own family — and that I deserved the censure of all good people. We talked a long time, and he laughed a great deal ; but when I told him that I was coming over to work for him three weeks, his eyes grew brighter with tears. This filled me up again, and I could do nothing but blubber. After a long time I asked him if he would do me a favour, and he said that he would. Then I took out a watch that I had brought in a buckskin bag, and I said, ' Here is a thing that used to belong to my grandfather, and it was given me by mother when I was ten years old. It is a fine timepiece, and is solid.

Now, I want you to take it as a present from me. You said you would do me a favour.' But he declared that he could not take it. ' Why, I would despise myself if I did,' said he. I told him that I would despise myself if he did not. His mother, who had left us alone, came in smiling, and said that I must not think of parting with so valuable a watch, the mark of my grandfather's gentility ; but I put the watch on the table and plunged out into the rain and was gone. Bentley's mother re turned the watch the next day, and then there went about the neighbourhood a report that I was so much afraid of Bentley's revenge that I had tried to buy him off with a watch. Bentley had said that I should not work for him, but when the time for breaking up the land came, I went over and began to plough the field.

His mother came out and compelled me to quit, but I went back at night and ploughed while other people slept ; and thus I worked until much of his corn-land was broken up. The neighbours said that I had gone insane, and a few days afterwards, when I met a woman in the road, she jerked her old mare in an effort to get away, and piteously begged me not to hurt her. I made no further attempt to get into ' company,' and thus, forced back upon myself, I began to form the habits of a student ; and to aid me in my determination to study law, I decided to teach school. So, when I was almost grown— or, rather, about twenty-three years old, for I appeared to keep on growing — I went over into another neighbourhood and took up a school. And they called me ' Lazy Bill.' I couldn't understand why, for I am sure that I attended to my duties, that I played ball with the boys, that I even cut wood all day one Saturday ; but they called me lazy.

I spoke to one of the trustees ; I called his attention to the fact that I worked hard, and he replied that the hardest working man he had ever seen was a lazy fellow who worked merely as a ' blind.' To sleep after the sun rises is a great crime in the country, and sometimes I sat up so late with my books that I had to be called twice for breakfast. And no amount of work could have offset this ignominy. I taught school during three years, and found at the end of that time that I was no nearer a lawyer's office. Once I called on an old judge, the leading lawyer in a neighbouring village, and told him that if he would take me I would work for my clothes, and the humorous old rascal, surveying me, replied : ' I have not contemplated the starting of a woollen mill. Why don't you go to work ?' he asked.

I told him that I was at work, that I taught school, but that I wanted to be a lawyer. He laughed, and said that teaching school was not work — declared it to be the refuge of the lazy and the shiftless. I then ventured to remark that the South would continue to be back ward as long as the educator was put down as a piece of worthless rubbish. I went away, and a few days later one of the trustees called on me and said that I had declared their children to be ignorant rubbish, and that therefore they wanted my services no longer. I returned home. My brothers were gone, and my parents were in feeble health. My father died within a year, and soon my mother followed him. The farm was poor and was mortgaged, and empty-handed I turned away. I heard that a school-teacher was wanted up in North Carolina, near the Tennessee line, and I decided to apply for the place.

I walked to the rail way-station, twenty miles distant. I have said that I went away empty-handed. I did not ; I carried a trunk, light with clothes but heavy with books. I had put my trunk on the railway platform and was striding up and down, when I saw two men, well-dressed, rich-looking, standing near. This amounted to nothing, and I would not mention it but for the fact that it was at this moment that I received my first encouragement. One of the men, speaking to his companion, remarked : ' Devilish fine-looking fellow ! I'd give a great deal to be in his shoes, to have his strength and his youth.' I turned away, eager to hear more, yet afraid lest the other man might say something to spoil it all. But he did not. ' Yes,' he replied, ' but he doesn't know how fortunate he is. Gad ! he looks like an imported bull.' The train came, and I was whirred away over streams, below great hanging rocks ; but I thought not of the grandeur of the rocks nor of the beauty of the streams, for through my mind was running the delicious music of the first compliment that had ever been paid me.

And I realized that I had outgrown the age of my awkwardness, that strength was of itself a grace to be admired, that I should feel thankful rather than remember with bitterness the days of my humiliation. I observed a woman looking at me, and there was interest in her eyes, and I knew that she did not take kindly to me simply because she was an old and neglected girl, for she was handsome. Beside her sat a man, and I could see that he was eager to win her smile. He hated me, I could see that ; but he couldn't laugh at me. I noticed that my hands and feet were not over-large, and this was a sort of surprise, for I recalled hearing a boy say that my foot was the biggest thing he ever saw without a liver in it. I reached back and wiped out the past ; I looked out at a radiant cloud hanging low in the west, and called it the future.

Fool ? Oh, of course. I had been a fool when a boy, and was a fool now ; but how much wiser it was to be a happy fool ! I was to leave the train at Nagle Station, and then to go some distance into the country ; which direction I knew not. I made so bold as to ask the handsome lady if she knew anything of the country about Nagle, and she smiled sweetly, and said that she did not, that she was a stranger going South. I had surmised as much, and I spoke to her merely to see what effect it would have on the man who sat beside her. Was my new-found pride making me malicious ? I thought it was, and I censured myself. The lady showed a disposition to continue the talk, but the man drove me into silence by remarking : ' I suppose there is some thing novel about one's first ride on the cars.' How I did want to reach out and take hold of his ear ! but I thought of Bentley, and subsided.

When I arose to get off at my station, I thought that the lady, as I passed her, made a motion as if she would like to give me her hand. This might simply have been the prompt ing of my long-famished, but now over-fed, conceit, my bloating egotism ; but I gave the woman a grateful thought as I stood on the platform gazing at the train as it faded away in the dusk. I had expected to alight at a town, but the station was a lonely place : a waggon-maker's shop, the com pany's building, and a few shanties. I asked the station-master if he knew where the school-teacher was wanted, and he answered that from the people there abouts one must be needed in every household. ' And I should think,' I replied, giving him what I conceived to be a look of severe rebuke, ' that a teacher of common decency and politeness is most needed of all.' ' I reckon you are right,' he rejoined. ' Is he the man you are looking for ?' ' I don't want to get into trouble here,' said I ; 'but I insist upon fair treatment, and I'm going to have it.' ' All right, sir. Now, what is it you want to know?' ' Why, I was told that there was an opening for a school-teacher in this neighbourhood.' ' And so there is ; but don't you know that no neighbourhood could be proud of such a fact ?

Therefore, you ought to be more careful as to how you make your inquiries.' I saw that he wanted to joke with me, and I joked with him. And I soon found that this w7as the right course, for he invited me into his office, and insisted upon my sharing his luncheon — cold bread and meat, and a tin pail of boiling coffee. I soon learned that he was newly graduated from a school of telegraphy, and that this was his first position. He had come from a city, and he gave me the impression that he was buried alive. He said that he had entered an oath in his book that if someone didn't get off at his station pretty soon he would set the whole thing on fire and turn train robber. ' Don't you think that would be a pretty good idea ?' he asked, laughing. ' It would be a pretty dangerous one, at least,' I answered. ' Yes, but without danger there is never any fun.

My old man insisted upon my taking that night-school course, and the professor of the institution held out the idea that I could be a great man within a short time after graduating, led me to believe I could get charge of a big office in town ; but here I am stuck up in these hills. No rags about here at all.' 'No what?' ' Rags, calico, women. Catch on ?' 'You mean no society to speak of?' ' That's it. Oh, away off in the country it's all right ; but I can never go more than three miles from this miserable place. You'll have to go about fifteen miles.' ' How do you know ?' ' Why, an old fellow from a neighbourhood about that far away came out here the other day and sent off a despatch, telling some man off, I don't remember where, to send a teacher out there.' 'And one might have come by this time,' I suggested, with a sense of fear. ' No, you are the only one that has put in an appearance, and the only one that is likely to come.

I under stand that they don't treat teachers very well out there.' ' How so ?' ' The boys have a habit of ducking them in the creek, I hear.' ' Oh, is that all ? Be fun for me.' ' You won't think so after you see those fellows. Let me see. Take the Purdy road out there, and go straight ahead to the east, and when you think you have gone about fifteen miles, ask for the house of Lim Jucklin. The last teacher, I understand, boarded at his house.' ' You appear to know a good deal about it.' ' Well, the truth of it is, I do ; for the last teacher came and went this way. And he told me like this : " The thing opened up all right, plenty of rags, but that evening some of the young fellows came to me and said that unless I brought some sort of treat the next morning they would put me in the creek ; said that they hated to do it, but that time-honoured customs must be observed.

I didn't bring any treat, and I went into the creek. Then I left." Yes, that's what he said, and I concluded that as for me I would rather be here. It isn't so lively, but it is a good deal dryer. But you can't get there to-night. Better take a shake down here with me till morning, and then you may catch some farmer going that way with a waggon.' I thanked him for this courtesy, and readily accepted it. And the next morning, with my trunk on my shoulder, I set out upon what I conceived to be my career in life. «

Chapter II

The month w7as 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 on an oak-tree's sound ing-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 waggon. ' What are you doing there ?' someone called.

I looked up. A farmer had stopped his panting 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. 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 it — 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 way7, I admit — placed my trunk in the waggon, and took a seat beside the man.

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 neigh bourhood.' 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 Indian war ?' ' He was my grandfather.' ' Ah, hah ! and my daddy fit with him — was a lieu tenant 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 neighbourhood. 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; isa 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 jawbone — 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.