Timey's Conscription

He knew he was leaving, and had bragged about the crib on one of the walks he and Timey took; they took a lot of walks, and Timey knew it was all for him to learn. Daddy had tried to cram a whole lot of learning into the short while between knowing he was leaving and being too far gone to teach. It had lasted about three seasons; the fourth season, the winter, was his Daddy’s dying time. Daddy had taught him how to peel logs, which lumber to use to make what, what kind of clay for chinking log walls and what kind for a stone chimney, how to split shingles and set posts, when to plant corn and when beans, and all that time pale-sickly, and being able to walk and talk less and less. Mostly what Daddy had taught him, at the age of eleven, and shaking scared of Daddy dying, was how important it was to accept your responsibilities; the first sense of how to be a man. “Timey,” he had said one day in late September when the leaves were turning and the deer were rubbing their horns shiny, “I’m goin’ afore long. Ain’t nary a day now I don’t e’spect it.” Daddy was a serious man, and even more so now. He sat on the splitting stump watching Timey scrape a hog. It was hog killing time and he was teaching Timey how to scald and peel. They had the iron pot boiled up, and they had killed the hog with an axe and scalded it in the pot. Daddy had showed Timey how to tell when the water was hot enough, and the hog scalded enough, standing shakily by the pot. He now sat on the stump, panting and pale, directing the scraping. “Yer nigh on a man, now,” he said evenly, looking with his red-rimmed eyes into Timey’s, who had stopped scraping to listen, “and I ‘spect you’ll be actin’ like one. You’ll be a doin’ without me soon enough, and you’ll get on or not by yer own hand, like ‘ary a man has to.” Timey was deep-bone scared of his Daddy dying; of being left for the man of the house all on his own, and he started to cry. Soon his body shook with quiet sobs while he listened to the strongest, wisest, most important man he would ever know tell him what was expected of him. He was terrified to be alone and accountable for so much. “Don’t take on so,” Daddy had said, showing no signs of breaking down himself, “It’s a man’s lot to die sometime. It’s jest my time is all. Tain’t no more’n that hog when all’s said.” Timey stood trying to quiet his crying, and for all the world it seemed to only get worse for his efforts. He was scared of having to be a man. “I reckon you’ll make out alright, you and yer ma, ‘an David. I ain’t a showed ya ever’thing, but I reckon ain’t nary a man has been showed ever’thing. Ma’ll help ya with the rest. She’s a power of a woman, Timey, an’ smart, an’ ya cain’t be left with no better, nor her with better than you.” Daddy was paler than he had been when he had started talking, and breathing more heavily. “Timey, he’p me to my bed,” he said. Timey did, and his Daddy never got up again. Ma and David had cried (David was only seven) in December when the local men had taken Daddy off for burying, but Timey was all cried out, and weighed down heavy with trying to be a man. The grave had been dug a long time before harvest so as not to take away able hands when they were needed the most, and Timey had been careful to avoid the burying grounds so he wouldn’t see the earth opened up for his Daddy; if he had, he thought, the manhood would all slough off of him, and only a little boy would be left, bawling next to a frozen hole in the ground.