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Black Fawn, The

<h2>chapter 3</h2> The oil lantern that hung from a hook in the ceiling of the cow stable cast a progressively weaker glow as the light of a summer dawn became stronger. Bud sat on a milking stool, his head pillowed against the soft flank of the same red and white cow that he had tried so hard, and so futilely, to milk when he had first come to live with Gram and Gramps Bennett. Milk did not surge into the pail as it did when Gramps milked; Gramps milked a cow almost as though the animal's teats were spigots that he could turn on at will and with no effort on his part. But there was no comparison between this and Bud's first sorry attempt to coax milk from the same cow. Her name was Susie, and when he gave her an affectionate pat she turned and looked at him with mournful eyes. As Bud began to strip the last few squirts from each teat, he thought about the day ahead. He had slept soundly and the dawn had been so faint that his bedroom window was almost black when Gramps had awakened him. Bud had sat up hastily and a bit guiltily. His dream of a mother was still with him and in that uncertain moment between sleep and wakefulness, he half believed the dream was real. Gramps had said, "Time to get under way, Bud," and then left. Bud had dressed and gone at once to the window to stare toward the place where he had left the black fawn. As he stood there, he had heard a thousand faint scrapings, rustlings and murmurings of an entire world that seemed anxious to greet a new day, and he had whirled around to go down the stairs, through the empty kitchen and on out to the cow barn. He was coaxing a final trickle of milk from Susie when Gramps said, "Let me have your pail and turn 'em out, will you?" Bud wondered again that a man of Gramps' age and bulk could move so stealthily. Bud had not known Gramps had been beside him in the woods last night until the old man had spoken, and now Gramps had surprised him again. Bud surrendered his pail proudly for this was the first time he had been able to milk one cow while Gramps was milking three. Then he freed the cows from their stanchions and walked behind them as they lumbered out the open barn door and down the lane to the pasture. "See you at the house," Gramps bellowed. By the time Bud came into the kitchen, Gram had transformed it from the empty, silent and forbidding room it had been when he had walked through it earlier. Now the big stove cast a warm glow, hotcakes were browning on a griddle, bacon sizzled in a skillet, the coffeepot steamed and Bud's milk was poured. Gram glanced up and the corners of her eyes crinkled. "My land, Allan. It's really going to be a big day." "Yes, ma'am," he said stiffly. Her smile became wistful and Bud flushed and looked away. It was easy to fight back when the enemy had a ferocious scowl and charged with clenched fists. It was hard when the weapons were glasses of cold milk and big wedges of pie, smiles, tender glances and soft words, and when the enemy seemed to know exactly what you were thinking. But Bud had no intention of letting himself be deceived. Gramps, who was nowhere in sight when Bud entered the kitchen, appeared presently with a jointed fly rod that had a reel attached to the reel seat. "Try this on for size," he said. He placed the butt end of the rod in Bud's hand, and the boy tightened his fingers around the cork grip. The tip swayed downward. When Bud jerked it up, it collided with a chair and the rod bent in an arc before he could swing it away. Bud stood there frightened, not knowing what to do and not daring to move. The rod undulated and quivered like a live thing that had a mind and a will of its own. It seemed to defy control. "It ain't a club," Gramps said. "Don't grab it like one. Let me show you." He took the rod from Bud. Tensed like a hunting cat about to pounce, the rod still seemed to have a life of its own. But it had surrendered its will to Gramps. He was master of this delicate rod just as he was master of so many things, and Bud could not help admiring. "I'll string her up and let you try her out." "Not in my kitchen you won't," Gram said firmly. "I'll have no more dishes broken by practice casts." On the point of arguing, Gramps reconsidered and said meekly, "I'll show you when we get on the crick. Take her and hold her this way." He put the rod back in Bud's hand, placing it with Bud's palm just back of the seated reel and arranging his thumb and each finger for proper balance. Bud remained afraid to move it, or to shift even one finger, for now he commanded the rod. If he made one wrong move, and any move he made might be wrong, the rod would again command him. Gramps stepped back for a critical study. "It'll do," he pronounced finally. "I pondered on starting you out with one of the old seven-ounce rods but what the dickens. You're going to fish for trout, you ought to begin right and you can't begin right 'thout the right tackle. Four and a half ounces this rod weighs 'thout the reel, and you'll be put to it to find a better. It took me a solid six weeks, working every night, to put her together the way I wanted her." "Do you make these, too?" "Yup. Something to do on long winter evenings." "Breakfast," Gram announced. "They're only good while they're hot." Bud laid his rod across two chairs and sat down to golden-brown griddle cakes, bacon and milk. He couldn't help looking at Gramps. At the other meals they had eaten together, Gramps' table manners had been correct enough. Now he didn't even seem to be thinking about food, as he put two pancakes together, laid two strips of bacon on the topmost pancake and doused everything with syrup. Then he rolled the bacon in the pancakes and ate the rolled mixture with his fingers. It was plain that in his thoughts he was already out on Skunk Creek. Gramps was no blasé sophisticate who had tasted all he could stomach of life by the time he was thirty. His eye to the grassroots, Gramps had long ago understood that everything was as old as creation itself and yet was eternally new. Nothing ever lost its sheen; some eyes just couldn't see it. Gramps finished and looked meaningfully at Bud's place. Bud hastened to finish as Gramps rose. "It isn't polite to eat and run, Mother, but the day's getting no younger. Ready, Bud?" "All ready," Bud said, forebearing this time to add "Gramps." "Bring me back at least one to eat, Delbert," Gram said. "I haven't had trout in almost three weeks." "How'd you like Old Shark?" Gramps asked. "I wouldn't," Gram sniffed. "In the first place, I'll believe you have him when I see him. In the second, if you should get him, who's going to eat him after you're through showing him to everybody in Dishnoe County? I want an eating fish, not a showing trout." "Sure," Gramps said. Gramps brought another rod that was not jointed but had a reel on the reel seat. He gave Bud a leather-bound case similar to the one from which he'd taken dry flies last night, a limp leather case containing wet flies, and two leader boxes. "Your flies and leaders," he explained. "If you're going to be a trout fisherman, you need your own tackle. Get your rod and come on." Gingerly, hoping Gramps would carry it for him but taking it up himself when Gramps told him to, Bud tried to place his hand exactly as it had been when Gramps showed him how to balance a fine fly rod. After a little experimentation he found the proper grip, but his hand remained stiff on the butt. After looking appealingly at Gramps, who saw the look but pretended not to, Bud clenched his teeth and grimly resolved to carry through. Gramps went out first and Bud wondered how he would open the door after Gramps had closed it but Gramps stopped and held it open. "'Bye, Mother." "Have a good time," Gram called. "Good-by, Allan." "Good-by, ma'am." To Bud's relief Gramps continued to hold the door open as if he had something else to say to Gram. Thus the first major hurdle was taken; Bud was out of the kitchen without either breaking his rod or anything else. Then, apparently forgetting what he intended to say, Gramps let the door close. Shep rose to join them when they emerged onto the porch, but Gramps ordered him back. Ears drooping and looking abused, Shep sat down in front of the door and watched. When they were fifty yards away, he barked hopefully. "It'll do you no good," Gramps said firmly. "Can't have a dog along when you're trout fishing," he said to Bud. "Why?" "He scares the trout." "How can a dog scare trout?" "'Cause trout are scary, Bud. A shadow'll send 'em scooting and a dog can cast a shadow." When they started down the path Bud had followed the night before, Bud's interest mounted. The black fawn lived there. Maybe he would see it again today. But as they walked along, resentment welled up in him, too. Gramps' rod was disjointed, which made it easy to carry. Bud's, however, had been left jointed so that he had constantly to be alert for every branch, every bush, and even every twig on every branch and bush. Bud thrust the tip of his rod into a hemlock tree and the rod bent alarmingly. Gramps, striding ahead, did not even bother to look around. Disgruntled, Bud disengaged his rod and hurried to catch up. He would have liked to carry a disjointed rod, too, but he didn't know how to take his apart and he wouldn't ask Gramps to show him. Ten minutes later he was glad that Gramps was so eager to fish for Old Shark that he thought of nothing else. He was finding his rod easier to handle and he stopped gripping it desperately. He was becoming accustomed to its feel and balance, and beginning to understand it. And he hadn't called for help. As they neared the thicket where the black fawn lived, Bud grew excited. But just before they came to it, Gramps swerved from the path into the woods. Bud kept his thoughts to himself. As much as he wanted to see the black fawn again, he wasn't going to ask Gramps to go out of the way for him. The trees among which they threaded their way were mostly second-growth yellow birch but now and then there was a grove of aspens, a solitary black cherry or a copse of laurel and rhododendrons. It was such hard work to keep from tangling his rod in the twigs and branches that Bud almost bumped into Gramps before he was aware that the old man had stopped. Gramps stood absolutely motionless and, without speaking, pointed. About a hundred yards away, a very dark-colored doe was leaping toward a copse of sheltering rhododendron. Behind her, matching his mother's every leap, ran the little black buck. Now, Bud knew the fawn had not been abandoned. Just as Gramps had promised, his mother had come back to look for him and he was in safe care. And between last night and this morning, he had learned to use his legs. Not again, or at least not easily, would any human lay hands on him. The doe and fawn disappeared, and Gramps turned to Bud. "There's your pal. After seeing his mammy, I know where he gets his color." "Yes." Bud's eyes danced. "I figured she'd take him away from that tote road after you and Shep found out where he was." "Tote road?" "The path we followed used to be a road. The lumbermen who cut the pine and hemlock that was in here made it and a hundred more like it." "Why do they call them tote roads?" Gramps shrugged. "I reckon 'cause they toted things back and forth on them." "Were you here when the lumbermen came?" "Saw the tail end of it but took no part. I wasn't much bigger'n that little black fawn. Been here ever since." "When they cut the forests . . ." Bud began. "We'd best get moving," Gramps said. Gramps swerved at right angles to the direction they had been following and Bud wondered. Had Gramps brought him this way so Bud could see for himself that the black fawn was safe? If he had, what lay behind it? Bud was forced to concede that, if Gramps had deliberately set out to find the doe and fawn, he had shown wonderful woodcraft. Never once had he faltered or been at a loss as to the route to follow. He had known exactly where to find the doe and her baby. Ten minutes later they reached Skunk Creek, a beautiful little woodland stream with pools of various sizes and depths and with sparkling riffles. Except for the larger pools, some of which were forty feet wide, the stream was less than a dozen feet wide. Most of Skunk Creek was bordered with willows and other trees, but the pool to which Gramps led Bud had almost no growth on the near bank and only scraggly willows on the far bank. Gramps laid his tackle on a moss-grown rock and turned to Bud. "This ain't where Old Shark lives, but it's a darn' good place to show you how to lay a fly on the water. Let's have your rod." Bud surrendered his rod. With skill honed to a razor's edge by vast experience, Gramps strung line through the guides, whipped the rod back and forth and paid out line from the reel as he did so. As he was keeping the line in the air, he said, "See that little hunk of grass, maybe thirty-five feet out and a little up? I'll aim for it." The rod described a graceful backward arc and an equally perfect forward sweep. The line glided forth as though it was not a flexible object at all, but a solid thing that Gramps was somehow shooting from the tip of his finger. The extreme tip of the line settled perfectly over the bit of grass. Gramps twitched it free, retrieved his line, and turned to Bud. "Got it?" Bud was flabbergasted. "Try it and find out," Gramps said. Bud took the rod, now strung and with a bit of line the length of the eight and a half foot rod dangling from the tip. But where the rod was a live thing in Gramps' hands, in Bud's it unaccountably went dead. He whipped it back, then forward, and the dangling line splashed at the very edge of the pool. "You forgot to pay out line," Gramps said patiently. "You didn't use your reel. Let me show you." He took the rod a second time, and once again laid the line smoothly on the water. Although Gramps had named no target, Bud knew that he was laying the line on the water exactly where he wanted it. Gramps returned the rod and Bud tried again. He remembered to pay out line as he cast, but the line slapped the water only about a dozen feet from shore and a full eight feet downstream from the target Bud had selected. "You're throwing it," Gramps said, "and you're throwing with your whole arm. Here." He pressed the upper part of Bud's right arm against his ribs. "That's as much as you need and use your wrist. Let the rod work for you; don't you do everything." Forty minutes later, although he couldn't come close to Gramps' distance or, unless the wildest luck was on his side, lay the line within two feet of any target he picked, Bud felt that he was improving. At least he was able to lay the line on the surface instead of whipping it into the water. Gramps tied a nine-foot tapered leader, a spiderweb at the thick end and like gossamer at the thin end, to Bud's line and showed him how to attach a dry fly to it. Then Gramps put a drop of oil on the fly, greased ten feet of line, and took the rod. "Watch." The fly soared out, hovered over the pool, settled on it precisely as a live insect might have, and began to float downstream. Gramps pulled the fly away from a small trout that rose and handed the rod to Bud. "Go ahead." Bud's first cast snagged a ground-hugging bush twenty feet behind him. The next time the fly bellied back to float beside the floating line. Then he hooked the only willow growing on the near side of the pool. But all the same Bud was elated. He forgot that the object of this wonderful art was to catch fish and, trying to remember all Gramps had told him, he kept on casting and learning through trial and error. When, after another hour, he was able to make ten successive casts and lay his fly reasonably well, Gramps pronounced judgment, "Guess we can try now." Without another word he turned and led the way downstream. Bud followed, knowing that his casting had not won the old man's approval but that Gramps had not wholly disapproved either. Bud did not care or at least he tried not to think about it, for he had discovered another new world. In time, he promised himself grimly, he would be a dry fisherman equal—well, almost equal—to Gramps. Ten minutes later, Gramps slowed to a turtle's pace. He stole stealthily toward a twenty-foot-wide rock ledge that overhung a deep pool. When he came to the near border of the ledge, he turned and whispered, "Leave your tackle. We'll crawl the rest of the way." Bud laid his rod down carefully and, dropping to all fours, crawled beside Gramps toward the water. Five feet from the edge, Gramps dropped to his belly and began to inch toward the pool. "No fast moves and show no more of yourself than you have to," Gramps whispered. Bud nodded and wriggled toward the water. He peered down from the ledge and saw a broad, long pool formed by the ledge and fed by rushing riffles that curled around the upstream end of the ledge. On the far side the water was relatively shallow, or perhaps it only looked shallow because there was white sand on the bottom there. Schools of shiners and minnows swam lazily in that part of the pool and the white sand was pock-marked with driftwood that had floated down in flood time and, having become waterlogged, gone to the bottom. At first glance the water at the near edge of the white sand seemed almost black. This was partly because the white sand ended and partly because the water was deeper there. Actually, it was green-blue, and the high-riding sun bored well into it. Presently Bud saw a school of fish almost directly beneath him. The fish ranged in length from about five to nearly eighteen inches, and they lay very still in what appeared to be a quiet pocket of water, the biggest fish at the head of the school and the smallest at the end. Farther out, Bud saw more fish. The deepest part of the pool was too deep for the sun to penetrate it, and its invisible depths were tantalizing. Toward the foot of the pool, just before it was gathered in by the riffles that drained it, the trunk of a leaning sycamore jutted out about six feet over the water. The water near the sycamore was sun-sprayed, too. Bud saw flat stones on the bottom away from the bank, but in closer the bottom was in shadow and he could see nothing. "The fish 'neath us are trout," Gramps whispered. "Those farther out are suckers and mullets. The shallows 'cross the pool are loaded with minnows and shiners. Down there Old Shark hangs out 'neath that sycamore trunk." He spoke as reverently as a fanatic Moslem referring to Mecca. "Stay here and watch. Don't move. You do, you'll send every trout in the pool kiting under the ledge." Gramps wriggled backward and disappeared. A few minutes later Bud saw him near the foot of the ledge standing behind a rock spire that hid him from the pool and at the same time gave him freedom of action. Gramps made a perfect cast. The fly floated lazily toward the leaning sycamore and gathered speed as the water became swifter. Old Shark rose and Bud saw him, a great, dark shadow that left the shaded bank and rose into the clear water upstream from the leaning sycamore. Old Shark did seem more like a shark than a trout as he paused within an inch of the fly and then sank back into the shadows from which he had come. Almost unable to tear his eyes from Old Shark's lair, Bud's attention was distracted for a moment by a ripple in the water beneath him. It was a grasshopper struggling toward the ledge; before it reached safety, a twelve-inch trout from the school rose and took it. Twenty minutes later Gramps called, "Your turn. Take it slow and crawl away, mind you." Bud took his place behind the spire of rock and cast. He knew how clumsy he was in comparison with Gramps, but he didn't care, for now he knew why Gramps spoke so reverently of Old Yellowfoot and Old Shark. When Bud's second turn was over, he went back to where Gramps was sitting well back on the ledge. "We didn't get him," Gramps said, but if he was disappointed he did not show it. "There's always another day and we'll come again. Reckon we'd better go in after this last try, though. Mother's all alone." Bud stayed where he was and watched Gramps walk down to cast. A grasshopper the old man's feet had disturbed came to rest on Bud's left arm. He clapped his right hand over it and held the grasshopper until Gramps shrugged, reeled in and indicated that he was finished by hooking his fly in the cork butt of his rod. Then, taking up his own rod, Bud strung the grasshopper on over the fly and crept across the ledge. He eased his grasshopper onto the water near the school of trout and a trout, which might well have been the one that had taken the other grasshopper, darted upward and sucked in the grasshopper. Bud struck, and his rod bent and his line grew taut as the hooked trout tried frantically to escape. "Keep the tip up! The tip up, Bud!" Gramps shouted. With a heave that bent his rod double, Bud jerked the trout from the water and sent him ten feet back on the ledge, where he lay flapping. Bud raced back to get his catch. "You did it!" Gramps shouted deliriously. "You did it! Your first trout on a dry fly!" "I caught him on a grasshopper," Bud panted. "What'd you say?" Gramps asked blankly. "I caught him on a grasshopper." "A hopper?" "Yes." "Surely you're not going to keep him?" Bud looked at the ground without replying. "Well," Gramps said with an effort, "I guess that's your business." Without another word the old man turned to start homeward. Bud followed, miserable in the knowledge that he had betrayed Gramps. But even though it was abominable to take a trout on anything except a dry fly, he couldn't have done otherwise. Gram had asked them to bring her one trout. <hr style='width: 45%;' /> They took old shark on their seventh trip to the ledge. Gramps did it with a cunningly placed midge. Bud knew he would never forget the battle that followed or the plucking of Old Shark from shallow water when Gramps had finally worked him there. They bore their prize proudly home, showed it to Gram. Then, in Gramps' asthmatic pickup truck—a vehicle that, until now, Bud had not even suspected was on the farm—they carried the trout to Pat Haley's store at Haleyville. Old Shark was a sensation and Pat Haley began at once to freeze him in a block of ice. "What now?" Bud asked, as he and Gramps started home. "Find us another big trout." "I mean, what about Old Shark?" "Oh, him. Even if he had any flavor and wasn't tougher'n a shoehorn, he's too much for us to eat. Nobody else'll want him for the same reasons." Gramps drove in silence for a while and then said, "Tell you what we'll do. When Pat's finished and everybody who wants a look at Old Shark has had it, we'll send him down to the orphanage. They don't often have trout there." <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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