Easy, Trixie—”

He moved aside from the cow and went to the stall in the shed, where her calf was tethered.

“Here, Trixie. Soo, gal—”

The cow lowed and came to her calf.

“Easy, there. You greedy as Jody.”

He stroked the pair and followed the boy to the house. They washed in turn at the water-shelf and dried their hands and faces on the roller towel hanging outside the kitchen door. Ma Baxter sat at the table waiting for them, helping their plates. Her bulky frame filled the end of the long narrow table. Jody and his father sat down on either side of her. It seemed natural to both of them that she should preside.

“You-all hongry tonight?” she asked.

“I kin hold a barrel o’ meat and a bushel o’ biscuit,” Jody said.

“That’s what you say. Your eyes is bigger’n your belly.”

“I’d about say the same,” Penny said, “if I hadn’t learned better. Goin’ to Grahamsville allus do make me hongry.”

“You git a snort o’ ‘shine there, is the reason,” she said.

“A mighty small one today. Jim Turnbuckle treated.”

“Then you shore didn’t git enough to hurt you.”

Jody heard nothing; saw nothing but his plate. He had never been so hungry in his life, and after a lean winter and slow spring, with food not much more plentiful for the Baxters than for their stock, his mother had cooked a supper good enough for the preacher. There were poke-greens with bits of white bacon buried in them; sand-buggers made of potato and onion and the cooter he had found crawling yesterday; sour orange biscuits and at his mother’s elbow the sweet potato pone. He was torn between his desire for more biscuits and another sand-bugger and the knowledge, born of painful experience, that if he ate them, he would suddenly have no room for pone. The choice was plain.

“Ma,” he said, “kin I have my pone right now?”

She was at a pause in the feeding of her own large frame. She cut him, dexterously, a generous portion. He plunged into its spiced and savory goodness.

“The time it takened me,” she complained, “to make that pone—and you destroyin’ it before I git my breath—”

“I’m eatin’ it quick,” he admitted, “but I’ll remember it a long time.”

Supper was done with. Jody was replete. Even his father, who usually ate like a sparrow, had taken a second helping.

“I’m full, thank the Lord,” he said.

Ma Baxter sighed.

“If a feller’d light me a candle,” she said, “I’d git shut o’ the dishwashin’ and mebbe have time to set and enjoy myself.”

Jody left his seat and lit a tallow candle. As the yellow flame wavered, he looked out of the east window. The full moon was rising.

“A pity to waste light, ain’t it,” his father said, “and the full moon shinin’.”

He came to the window and they watched it together.

“Son, what do it put in your head? Do you mind what we said we’d do, full moon in April?”

“I dis-remember.”

Somehow, the seasons always took him unawares. It must be necessary to be as old as his father to keep them in the mind and memory, to remember moon-time from one year’s end to another.

“You ain’t forgot what I told you? I’ll swear, Jody. Why, boy, the bears comes outen their winter beds on the full moon in April.”

“Old Slewfoot! You said we’d lay for him when he come out!”

“That’s it.”

“You said we’d go where we seed his tracks comin’ and goin’ and criss-crossin’, and likely find his bed, and him, too, comin’ out in April.”

“And fat. Fat and lazy. The meat so sweet, from him layin’ up.”

“And him mebbe easier to ketch, not woke up good.”

“That’s it.”

“When kin we go, Pa?”

“Soon as we git the hoein’ done. And see bear-sign.”

“Which-a-way will we begin huntin’ him?”

“We’d best to go by the Glen springs and see has he come out and watered there.”

“A big ol’ doe watered there today,” Jody said. “Whilst I was asleep. I built me a flutter-mill, Pa. It run fine.”

Ma Baxter stopped the clatter of her pots and pans.

“You sly scaper,” she said. “That’s the first I knowed you been off.