Authors: John Steinbeck
Jody looked hard at the ground. “Billy,” he began nervously, “Billy, you’ll call me when it’s getting born, won’t you? You’ll let me be there, won’t you?”
Billy bit the tip of Nellie’s ear with his front teeth. “Carl says he wants you to start right at the start. That’s the only way to learn. Nobody can tell you anything. Like my old man did with me about the saddle blanket. He was a government packer when I was your size, and I helped him some. One day I left a wrinkle in my saddle blanket and made a saddle-sore. My old man didn’t give me hell at all. But the next morning he saddled me up with a forty-pound stock saddle. I had to lead my horse and carry that saddle over a whole damn mountain in the sun. It darn near killed me, but I never left no wrinkles in a blanket again. I couldn’t. I never in my life since then put on a blanket but I felt that saddle on my back.”
Jody reached up a hand and took hold of Nellie’s mane. “You’ll tell me what to do about everything, won’t you? I guess you know everything about horses, don’t you?”
Billy laughed. “Why I’m half horse myself, you see,” he said. “My ma died when I was born, and being my old man was a government packer in the mountains, and no cows around most of the time, why he just gave me mostly mare’s
milk.” He continued seriously, “And horses know that. Don’t you know it, Nellie?”
The mare turned her head and looked full into his eyes for a moment, and this is a thing horses practically never do. Billy was proud and sure of himself now. He boasted a little. “I’ll see you get a good colt. I’ll start you right. And if you do like I say, you’ll have the best horse in the county.”
That made Jody feel warm and proud, too; so proud that when he went back to the house he bowed his legs and swayed his shoulders as horsemen do. And he whispered, “Whoa, you Black Demon, you! Steady down there and keep your feet on the ground.”
The winter fell sharply. A few preliminary gusty showers, and then a strong steady rain. The hills lost their straw color and blackened under the water, and the winter streams scrambled noisily down the canyons. The mushrooms and puff-balls popped up and the new grass started before Christmas.
But this year Christmas was not the central day to Jody. Some undetermined time in January had become the axis day around which the months swung. When the rains fell, he put Nellie in a box stall and fed her warm food every morning and curried her and brushed her.
The mare was swelling so greatly that Jody became alarmed. “She’ll pop wide open,” he said to Billy.
Billy laid his strong square hand against Nellie’s swollen abdomen. “Feel here,” he said quietly. “You can feel it move. I guess it would surprise you if there were twin colts.”
“You don’t think so?” Jody cried. “You don’t think it will be twins, do you, Billy?”
“No, I don’t, but it does happen, sometimes.”
During the first two weeks of January it rained steadily. Jody spent most of his time, when he wasn’t in school, in the box stall with Nellie. Twenty times a day he put his hand on her stomach to feel the colt move. Nellie became more and more gentle and friendly to him. She rubbed her nose on him. She whinnied softly when he walked into the barn.
Carl Tiflin came to the barn with Jody one day. He looked admiringly at the groomed bay coat, and he felt the firm flesh over ribs and shoulders. “You’ve done a good job,” he said to Jody. And this was the greatest praise he knew how to give. Jody was tight with pride for hours afterward.
The fifteenth of January came, and the colt was not born. And the twentieth came; a lump of fear began to form in Jody’s stomach. “Is it all right?” he demanded of Billy.
“Oh, sure.”
And again, “Are you sure it’s going to be all right?”
Billy stroked the mare’s neck. She swayed her head uneasily. “I told you it wasn’t always the same time, Jody. You just have to wait.”
When the end of the month arrived with no birth, Jody grew frantic. Nellie was so big that her breath came heavily, and her ears were close together and straight up, as though her head ached. Jody’s sleep grew restless, and his dreams confused.
On the night of the second of February he awakened crying. His mother called to him, “Jody, you’re dreaming. Wake up and start over again.”
But Jody was filled with terror and desolation. He lay quietly a few moments, waiting for his mother to go back to sleep, and then he slipped his clothes on, and crept out in his bare feet.
The night was black and thick. A little misting rain fell. The cypress tree and the bunkhouse loomed and then dropped back into the mist. The barn door screeched as he opened it, a thing it never did in the daytime. Jody went to the rack and found a lantern and a tin box of matches. He lighted the wick and walked down the long straw-covered aisle to Nellie’s stall. She was standing up. Her whole body weaved from side to side. Jody called to her, “So, Nellie, so-o, Nellie,” but she did not stop her swaying nor look around. When he stepped into the stall and touched her on the shoulder she shivered under his hand. Then Billy Buck’s voice came from the hayloft right above the stall.
“Jody, what are you doing?”
Jody started back and turned miserable eyes up toward the nest where Billy was lying in the hay. “Is she all right, do you think?”
“Why sure, I think so.”
“You won’t let anything happen, Billy, you’re sure you won’t?”
Billy growled down at him, “I told you I’d call you, and I will. Now you get back to bed and stop worrying that mare. She’s got enough to do without you worrying her.”
Jody cringed, for he had never heard Billy speak in such a tone. “I only thought I’d come and see,” he said. “I woke up.”
Billy softened a little then. “Well, you get to bed. I don’t want you bothering her. I told you I’d get you a good colt. Get along now.”
Jody walked slowly out of the barn. He blew out the lantern and set it in the rack. The blackness of the night, and the chilled mist struck him and enfolded him. He wished he believed everything Billy said as he had before
the pony died. It was a moment before his eyes, blinded by the feeble lantern-flame, could make any form of the darkness. The damp ground chilled his bare feet. At the cypress tree the roosting turkeys chattered a little in alarm, and the two good dogs responded to their duty and came charging out, barking to frighten away the coyotes they thought were prowling under the tree.
As he crept through the kitchen, Jody stumbled over a chair. Carl called from his bedroom, “Who’s there? What’s the matter there?”
And Mrs. Tiflin said sleepily, “What’s the matter, Carl?”
The next second Carl came out of the bedroom carrying a candle, and found Jody before he could get into bed. “What are you doing out?”
Jody turned shyly away. “I was down to see the mare.”
For a moment anger at being awakened fought with approval in Jody’s father. “Listen,” he said, finally, “there’s not a man in this county that knows more about colts than Billy. You leave it to him.”
Words burst out of Jody’s mouth. “But the pony died—”
“Don’t you go blaming that on him,” Carl said sternly. “If Billy can’t save a horse, it can’t be saved.”
Mrs. Tiflin called, “Make him clean his feet and go to bed, Carl. He’ll be sleepy all day tomorrow.”
It seemed to Jody that he had just closed his eyes to try to go to sleep when he was shaken violently by the shoulder. Billy Buck stood beside him, holding a lantern in his hand. “Get up,” he said. “Hurry up.” He turned and walked quickly out of the room.
Mrs. Tiflin called, “What’s the matter? Is that you, Billy?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Is Nellie ready?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“All right, I’ll get up and heat some water in case you need it.”
Jody jumped into his clothes so quickly that he was out the back door before Billy’s swinging lantern was halfway to the barn. There was a rim of dawn on the mountain-tops, but no light had penetrated into the cup of the ranch yet. Jody ran frantically after the lantern and caught up to Billy just as he reached the barn. Billy hung the lantern to a nail on the stall-side and took off his blue denim coat. Jody saw that he wore only a sleeveless shirt under it.
Nellie was standing rigid and stiff. While they watched, she crouched. Her whole body was wrung with a spasm. The spasm passed. But in a few moments it started over again, and passed.
Billy muttered nervously, “There’s something wrong.” His bare hand disappeared. “Oh, Jesus,” he said. “It’s wrong.”
The spasm came again, and this time Billy strained, and the muscles stood out on his arm and shoulder. He heaved strongly, his forehead beaded with perspiration. Nellie cried with pain. Billy was muttering, “It’s wrong. I can’t turn it. It’s way wrong. It’s turned all around wrong.”
He glared wildly toward Jody. And then his fingers made a careful, careful diagnosis. His cheeks were growing tight and gray. He looked for a long questioning minute at Jody standing back of the stall. Then Billy stepped to the rack under the manure window and picked up a horseshoe hammer with his wet right hand.
“Go outside, Jody,” he said.
The boy stood still and stared dully at him.
“Go outside, I tell you. It’ll be too late.”
Jody didn’t move.
Then Billy walked quickly to Nellie’s head. He cried, “Turn your face away, damn you, turn your face.”
This time Jody obeyed. His head turned sideways. He heard Billy whispering hoarsely in the stall. And then he heard a hollow crunch of bone. Nellie chuckled shrilly. Jody looked back in time to see the hammer rise and fall again on the flat forehead. Then Nellie fell heavily to her side and quivered for a moment.
Billy jumped to the swollen stomach; his big pocketknife was in his hand. He lifted the skin and drove the knife in. He sawed and ripped at the tough belly. The air filled with the sick odor of warm living entrails. The other horses reared back against their halter chains and squealed and kicked.
Billy dropped the knife. Both of his arms plunged into the terrible ragged hole and dragged out a big, white, dripping bundle. His teeth tore a hole in the covering. A little black head appeared through the tear, and little slick, wet ears. A gurgling breath was drawn, and then another. Billy shucked off the sac and found his knife and cut the string. For a moment he held the little black colt in his arms and looked at it. And then he walked slowly over and laid it in the straw at Jody’s feet.
Billy’s face and arms and chest were dripping red. His body shivered and his teeth chattered. His voice was gone; he spoke in a throaty whisper. “There’s your colt. I promised. And there it is. I had to do it—had to.” He stopped and looked over his shoulder into the box stall. “Go get hot water and a sponge,” he whispered. “Wash him and dry him the way his mother would. You’ll have to feed him by hand. But there’s your colt, the way I promised.”
Jody stared stupidly at the wet, panting foal. It stretched out its chin and tried to raise its head. Its blank eyes were navy blue.
“God damn you,” Billy shouted, “will you go now for the water?
Will you go?
”
Then Jody turned and trotted out of the barn into the dawn. He ached from his throat to his stomach. His legs were stiff and heavy. He tried to be glad because of the colt, but the bloody face, and the haunted, tired eyes of Billy Buck hung in the air ahead of him.
On Saturday afternoon Billy Buck, the ranch-hand, raked together the last of the old year’s haystack and pitched small forkfuls over the wire fence to a few mildly interested cattle. High in the air small clouds like puffs of cannon smoke were driven eastward by the March wind. The wind could be heard whishing in the brush on the ridge crests, but no breath of it penetrated down into the ranch-cup.
The little boy, Jody, emerged from the house eating a thick piece of buttered bread. He saw Billy working on the last of the haystack. Jody tramped down, scuffling his shoes in a way he had been told was destructive to good shoe-leather. A flock of white pigeons flew out of the black cypress tree as Jody passed, and circled the tree and landed again. A half-grown tortoise-shell cat leaped from the bunkhouse porch, galloped on stiff legs across the road, whirled and galloped back again. Jody picked up a stone to help the game along, but he was too late, for the cat was under the porch before the stone could be discharged. He threw the stone into the cypress tree and started the white pigeons on another whirling flight.
Arriving at the used-up haystack, the boy leaned against the barbed wire fence. “Will that be all of it, do you think?” he asked.
The middle-aged ranch-hand stopped his careful raking and stuck his fork into the ground. He took off his black hat and smoothed down his hair. “Nothing left of it that isn’t soggy from ground moisture,” he said. He replaced his hat and rubbed his dry leathery hands together.
“Ought to be plenty mice,” Jody suggested.
“Lousy with them,” said Billy. “Just crawling with mice.”
“Well, maybe, when you get all through, I could call the dogs and hunt the mice.”
“Sure, I guess you could,” said Billy Buck. He lifted a forkful of the damp ground-hay and threw it into the air. Instantly three mice leaped out and burrowed frantically under the hay again.
Jody sighed with satisfaction. Those plump, sleek, arrogant mice were doomed. For eight months they had lived and multiplied in the haystack. They had been immune from cats, from traps, from poison and from Jody. They had grown smug in their security, overbearing and fat. Now the time of disaster had come; they would not survive another day.
Billy looked up at the top of the hill that surrounded the ranch. “Maybe you better ask your father before you do it,” he suggested.
“Well, where is he? I’ll ask him now.”
“He rode up to the ridge after dinner. He’ll be back pretty soon.”
Jody slumped against the fence post. “I don’t think he’d care.”
As Billy went back to his work he said ominously, “You’d better ask him anyway. You know how he is.”