4

Jack Hodge 4

"I had 'em trained so they could whoop any rooster. They had spurs."

Each of his chickens had a name, some common name, easy to remember:
Jim, Bob, Cora, Gertrude. I reminded him of the names, and his jug-face
smiled in its stingy way, but I knew he would not talk as freely and boldly
of his eccentricities as he had done to the boys.

"You can't raise no chickens in the woods with the hawks and things
to kil 'em. But one of them game roosters fought a hawk all one Sunday."

"You get your pension, Hodge?"

"Nah; they killed it deader than a stuck hawg. I never did get but
twelve dollars, but that was a heap, I'm telling you! Some of the fellers
got more'n I did that didn't even git to France. I ain't saying that I
fought, or anything like that, but I did git over ... They took it away
from me all right. I never got it but a couple of years, too."

"You lost the new ground and clearing and all?"

He knew I knew the answer, but I didn't know how. He did not enlighten
me at the moment, but hinted at the work he was doing. "I gotta git enough
to eat working around. It was just for my wife and kids, I tried to git me
something. But they got 'nough without me. Somehow, though, I'd like to
have them up from Florida with me. I was thinking kinda like that, when I
got old man Hall to let me have the strip of woods. I thought I'd git a
little ahead and she---" he stumbled over "she" and the word shook his voice---
"she'd come up. You couldn't ast her and you not having nothing for her.
I was down there in Florida with her. I didn't have nothing for her, and
I figgered she'd git 'long better without me. So I came up here to Red Bay.
When I git enough, I told myself, I'll send for the old lady."

There was a long silence, as he appeared to be reaching out into the
past for something, but he seemed to know that he was making futile efforts.
He had lost out forever. I looked at his overalls, the denim of his shirt.
He was worn and dirty. His mouth was too big, his nose too fleshy, and too
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