Behind him's the fawn. Before him's the buck.

The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, first published in 1938

Spoiler Alert: Plot Summary

The Yearling is a tender tale of hearts being full to the brim, broken in two, and the intensities of affection and longing in the wilds of Florida in the early 1900s. Our cast of characters is listed below. 

The People:

The Baxters (Ezra/Penny/Pa, Ory/Ma, Jody)

The Forresters (Ma, Pa, Lem, Buck, Mill-wheel, Fodder-wing)

The Huttos (Grandma, Oliver)

The Creatures:

Flag (a deer/the yearling), Old Julia, Rip (hunting dogs), 

Old Slewfoot (a persnickety and mean-spirited bear)

The Florida Scrub:

A particular corner of the universe that includes Jody's home (Baxter's Island) and a few neighbors near the town of Volusia

This story is, I think, rather well known, so you may well know what happens, but I'll share a few pertinent details anyway. Jody is a young boy, about 12, I think, living a homesteading sort of life in Florida with his parents, Penny (Pa) and Ory (Ma). They are a happy trio, for the most part, though life is rough, and they largely live hand to mouth. They hunt for their meat, grow their own crops, keep their own livestock, and get water from a local sinkhole, as they don't have a well. They have one set of neighbors a few miles away, the Forresters, who are a rambunctious bunch, and are all men (or boys) except for Ma Forrester. The youngest Forrester, Fodder-wing, so named because of an ill-fated attempt at flying that left him crippled, is Jody's best friend. We follow Jody through a year or so of his adolescence, as he learns to hunt and track with his father, how to tend the crops, and the hardships and difficult choices that need to be made when living so close to nature. Jody longs for a companion, as an only child (his siblings all passed when they were young), so he eventually manages to get his parents to allow him to adopt a baby deer when it is stranded without a mother. He raises the fawn as his own, and eventually names it Flag. They are bosom friends, and Jody feels a joy he has been seeking his whole young life. As Flag ages, though, he becomes more and more like the buck he is growing into, and his shenanigans, once considered cute or annoying, become downright life-threatening to the family. Flag eats the seedlings of the family's crops not once, not twice, but three times, and when a six-foot fence fails to keep him out, Jody's father tells him he must kill the deer. They can't afford to lose another whole season of crops, Penny is ailing, a flood devastated the local game, and Flag is too attached to the family and to Jody to survive in the wild. Jody refuses, of course, and desperately looks for a way out. When he is unable to find one, he returns home with Flag, and his mother, frustrated and feeling like she's out of options, tries to shoot Flag herself. She's a poor shot, though, so she only injures the fawn, and in the end, Jody must race after his injured best friend and kill it. There's a clear symmetry between Jody coming of age and the fawn becoming a yearling, and the brutality that life hands us sometimes as we come into maturity.

Spoiler Over: Continue Here

Well, blobbists, 

 I finished this book about a week ago, but I needed an emotional break before I could even consider blobbing about it. Real talk, I cried for about an hour after I finished the book. I made the smaller and cuddlier of my two cats, Pixie, sit with me for a long time, and I marinated on why it was hitting me so hard. I mean, the book is a work of art, imho. If you haven't read it, even knowing how it ends, I STRONGLY recommend you pick up a copy. It's one of the tenderest stories I've ever read. Finishing it felt a bit like having my heart and soul bared for all to see, and I felt so vulnerable and raw. 

I think part of what hit me was reflecting on the intensity of affection we can develop for pets or fur family, and I thought, well, at least I didn't have to kill my pet! But then I kind of did, because I had to make the difficult decision to put down my previous cat, Suzy Chubsters, after a serious illness and an extended period of her not eating or drinking. It wasn't as violent or graphic as Jody's situation, but he also only knew Flag for a year, and Suze was my girl for 10 years. 

Whew. Tearing up. Anyway, it's not a bad thing to be reminded of her, or of how much I loved her and still love her. It's just emotional, is all. That said, here are the rest of my thoughts on the book, in no particular order. This is another long one, and I won't apologize. (I will not apoloGize for what I have aWOken in you, Sookie!) The book deserves it. <3

The book of LOLS and aws

If you follow my blob, you likely know that I like to write in my books, a habit I started in emulating my cool next-door neighbor. ;) Some people find it distracting that I've written in my books, but I think every book I read is a conversation between me and the work, and I love knowing that I've left the mark of how a book made me feel along the way. Common margin notes of mine include "HMPH" or "BARF" when something is racist/misogynistic/icky, but if I had to summarize the notes of this book, it would be the book of "LOLs" and "awws". There are so many funny zingers and so many great characters, and there are even more moments of expected and then wholly unexpected tenderness in this harsh wilderness. 

The Florida scrub, an essential character in the novel

I read a bit about Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings after I finished the book (I don't like to know much in advance), and it seems that she was writing for a long time, but really sort of came into her writerly self when she moved to a 72-acre orange grove in Florida. She got really deeply connected to the land and its natural flora and fauna, and developed close relationships with its human inhabitants. Some of the people she met were the inspiration for the novel. I have to say, I've never considered myself a big Florida girl, what with my exceedingly pale skin and my visceral dislike of heat, but this book made me want to frolic and ramble in the Florida wilds. Here are a few lines that I think capture the Florida scrub and the Baxters' homesteading lifestyle well. I do want to take a moment to acknowledge that the indigenous inhabitants of this present-day part of Florida have been wiped out, the Timucua and Mayaca peoples, and remind my readers that homesteading was not started on a blank slate of land uninhabited by others, as romantic as that notion may be. 

• The peace of the vast aloof scrub had drawn him with the beneficence of its silence.

• The Baxter's smokehouse: The smoke-house was dark and cool, odorous with the smell of hams and bacons, dusty with the ash of hickory. The rafters, studded with square-headed nails for the hanging of meats, were now almost bare. Three shoulders of ham hung, lean and withered, and two bacon sides. A haunch of jerked venison swung beside the smoked alligator meat. Just in case you forgot we were in Florida, there's that GATOR MEAT!

• The clearing, the island of tall pines, made up the world. Life in other places was only a tale that was told, as Oliver Hutto told of Africa and China and Connecticut. This resonated with me, as I feel like my hometown felt like the whole world for a long time.

• Jody, to his Dad, on choosing the land to settle on: 'How come you to pick it, Pa?'

• Jody's dad: 'I jest craved peace, was all.'

• Human beings were a stranger sight in the lonely place of live oak islands and saw-grass ponds and prairies than the creatures.

• The sun came out. The clouds rolled together into great white billowing feather bolsters, and across the east a rainbow arched, so lovely and so various that Jody thought he would burst with looking at it. The earth was pale green, the air itself was all but visible, golden with the rain-washed sunlight, and all the trees and grass and bushes glittered, varnished with the rain-drops. Don't you just want to be there with Jody, and live in that day?

Jody Baxter, our protagonist, a tender-hearted, frolicsome boy

I think it's interesting that this book has been cast as a YA novel in today's world, though YA wasn't a genre when it was first published. I have a lot of complicated feelings about that. I guess my most prominent thoughts are: 

• I would be terribly sad to think that only young people would ever read this novel. I think people of all ages could have incredible reading experiences with it, and I read it at 37, and it was deeply powerful. 

• I don't want to underestimate what young people can process or handle, as I know that the reality is our young people are fierce, talented, incredible, multi-layered humans, and they have immense capacity for feeling and art. That said, this book is heavy. It wrecked me, and I'm not sure I would have been emotionally prepared for it when I was a typical YA reader's age.

That said, here are some of my favorite lines about Jody, to sketch out his character for you. 

• He would like anything that was his own. This motif is so poignantly painted, and it's underscored by the fact that Jody's siblings have all died when they were young, leaving him the only child, but also the only young thing, in his home, a fact which makes his heart ache with loneliness.

• He lay for a moment in torment between the luxury of his bed and the coming day. Ooh, that's me every day.

• His father was the core of safety. Jody's connection to and love for his father is another critical part of this story, and I think Rawlings does such an incredible job of showing how precarious this thread can be in a life as rough and wild as the one the Baxters were living. Penny survives the novel, but he has several extremely close calls, and as a reader, you wonder how Jody would learn the essential wilderness skills his father is teaching him were something to happen to Penny.

• Again Jody longed for something of his own. Fodder-wing would give him the fox squirrel, even, he believed, the baby 'coon. But past experience had taught him not to aggravate his mother with another mouth, no matter how small, to feed. 

• Jody, reflecting after hunting and killing a deer with his father - He wondered by what alchemy it was changed, so that what sickened him one hour, maddened him with hunger the next. It seemed as though there were either two different animals or two different boys. This was one of my favorite passages in the book.

• Jody's exchanges with his mom are so great. Here's one of his first efforts: "Ma, we got milk a-plenty. Cain't I git me a leetle ol' fawn for a pet for me? A spotted fawn, Ma. Cain't I?'
• Ma: "I should just say not. What you mean, milk a-plenty? They ain't a extry drop left from sun to sun. Ma is painted perfectly; she's hard, and sometimes seems hard-hearted, but she is a practical woman living a hard kind of life, through and through.

• Jody does NOT like to be teased about girls, and he very adorably and hilariously gets annoyed when some of the older boys have big battles over women. Here's Jody just before he throws a potato at a girl he has been accused of liking. "Jody glowed with a sense of virtue. He longed to be good and noble. (throws potato) He was humiliated. Yet if he had to do it over again, he would throw another potato at her, a larger one. lololol. This was so well done. 

• Pa, to Jody, after throwing the potato: How on earth come you to do it? 
• Jody: I just hate her. She made a face at me. She's ugly.
• Pa: Well, son, you cain't go thru life chunkin' things at all the ugly women you meet. LOL.

• When Oliver asks Jody to get a message to Twink, his girl, and Jody initially says no. Oliver: I thought you were my friend. Being friends, Jody thought, was a nuisance. heheheheheh. Here's the note he writes back to Oliver:

Dear ollever; yor ol twinkk has dun gode up the rivver. im gladd. yor frend jody. He read it over. He decided in favor of a greater kindness. He crossed out 'im gladd' and wrote in its place 'im sorry'. He felt virtuous. I love this note so much.

• Without Penny, there was no earth. 

• But Flag lived in a secret place in his heart that had long been aching and vacant.

• Without Penny, there was no comfort anywhere.

Fodder-wing, Jody's bestie and youngest of the Forrester clan, tender and parent to many animals

Okay, so I know I've mentioned this elsewhere in the blob, but my spoiler alerts are not really a perfect system. In order to tell you how I felt about a book and share it's most beautiful nuggets with you, I am invariably going to spoil parts of the plot. So, #sorrynotsorry

• Fodder-wing dies in the book. It's painfully sad, and I cried for a solid half hour at this part, too. Jody comes to visit his friend, knowing he was sick, but not knowing he has died, and then he ends up helping the family grieve, though he has no idea how to go about it. Jody whispered 'Hey'. Fodder-wing's silence was intolerable. Now he understood. This was death. Death was a silence that gave back no answer. Fodder-wing would never speak to him again.

• Pa Forrester: 'The one we cain't spare was the one was takened. And him a swivveled, no-account thing, too.' The Forresters, a sturdy, boisterous, often troublesome brood, are broken by the loss of Fodder-wing, and it's absolutely heartbreaking to witness. 

• Ma Forrester, to Jody: 'You pore lamb.' She began to cry again. 'Wouldn't my boy of loved to seed your fawn. He talked about it and he talked about it. He said, 'Jody's got him a brother.' Jody has brought Flag with him (in fact, Fodder-wing is the one who ends up naming him, having thought of Flag before his death) and there's something so desperately poignant about these two boys connecting over their devotion to woodland creatures.

• Jody, reflecting on Fodder-wing's death after watching a family of raccoons: Suddenly it seemed that Fodder-wing had only now gone away with the raccoons. Something of him had been always where the wild creatures fed and played. Something of him would be always near them. Fodder-wing was like the trees. He was of the earth, as they were earthy, with his gnarled, frail roots deep in the sand. He was like the changing clouds and the setting sun and the rising moon. A part of him had always been outside his twisted body. It had come and gone like the wind. It came to Jody that he need not be lonely for his friend again. He could endure his going. Well, and just when I had stopped crying this set me going again. I think I'd like this line read at my funeral. It's just so cyclical and natural and moving. I would like to be where the wild creatures feed and play.

• Jody, on seeing Eulalie Boyle flirting with a ferry boy - Jody was swept with resentment, not of her, but of the ferry-boy. Eulalie in a remote fashion belonged to him, Jody, to do with as he pleased, if only to throw potatoes at her. LOLOLOLOL. 

Penny Baxter, short and sturdy, sure-footed and star tracker and huntsman, humble and brave

I think the ending of the novel, where Penny tells Jody he has to kill Flag, is so gut-wrenching in part because we have spent the novel idolizing Penny with Jody. He is kind, he is so sweet to Jody, he humors his fancies, and he takes his side when Ma is being hard-hearted or overly practical. He doesn't make decisions lightly, and he loves the wilderness he shares breath with, and so when he is the one to make this proclamation, we know, deep in our hearts, that there must really be no other way. Here are some of my favorite Penny bits.

• 'Tell the truth, Jody,' he said, 'and shame the devil. Wa'n't the bee-tree a fine excuse to go a-ramblin'?' The opening scene is Jody having gone 'a-ramblin' as his dad puts it, aka basically ignoring his chores and frolicking in the woods. I think all children should get to go 'a-ramblin', and I would like to do more of it myself. :)

• But Penny's bowels yearned over his son. He gave him something more than his paternity. He found that the child stood wide-eyed and breathless before the miracle of bird and creature, of flower and tree, of wind and rain and sun and moon, as he had always stood.

• His father was stern about not taking more of anything, fish or game, than could be eaten or kept.

• Jody, to Penny, after a terrible snake bite: How you comin, Pa?
• Pa: 'Jest fine, son. Ol' Death gone thievin' elsewhere. But wa'n't it a close squeak!' I love this line so much. Death gone thievin' elsewhere. But a close squeak!

Ma Baxter, voice of reason, arbiter of the milk rations, maker of delicious pone and biscuits

Ma is definitely cast as the 'bad cop' of Jody's parents quite often, but I loved her character, and thought she was really artfully and thoughtfully fleshed out. 

• Jody's mother had accepted her youngest with something of detachment, as though she had given all she had of love and care and interest to those others. Like this - what an intricate detail to show the intensity of loss borne by a mother who buried so many of her previous children. 

• Her good nature rose and fell with the food supply. Let's be honest, so does mine, and mine is nowhere near as precarious as the Baxter's. I went camping with my sisters once on a road trip, and when it was suggested we share a can of lentils for a dinner one night, I went ballistic. I'm probably not the best candidate for wilderness living, at least not without the ability to stockpile crops, canned goods, etc. ;)

• Jody: Ma, Pa says I kin go bring back the fawn.
• She held the coffee-pot in mid-air. 
• 'What fawn?' Lololol. I love the image of the coffee-pot floating mid-air.

• Jody: 'Ain't his eyes purty, Ma?'
• Ma: 'They see a pan o' cornbread too fur.'
• Jody: 'Well, ain't he got a cute, foolish tail, Ma?'
• Ma: 'All deer's flags look the same.'
• Jody: 'But Ma, ain't it cute and foolish?'
• Ma: 'Hit's foolish, a'right.' lolololol.

• Jody waited eagerly for the rest of the tale, then understood that was all there was to it. It was like all his mother's tales. They were like hunts where nothing happened. LOL. I loved this line.

• She would not have gone empty-handed even to the house of an enemy.

Grandma Hutto, not actually Jody's Grandma, but kin nonetheless, and Ma Baxter's nemesis

It's not totally clear what the connection is between Penny and Grandma Hutto, but they have a deep affection for each other, and Ma Baxter does NOT share this warm and fuzzy feeling for her. Their interactions are hilariously spicy.

• She drew gallantry from men as the sun drew water.

• Something about her was forever female and made all men virile.

• Jody: 'You'll love Flag, Grandma. He's so smart, you kin learn him like a dog.'
• Grandma Hutto: 'Course I'll love him. Will he git along with Fluff?'
• Jody: 'He likes dogs. He plays with ourn. When they go on a hunt, he slips off another way and meets up with 'em. He loves a bear hunt good as the dogs.'
• Penny: 'You tell her all them things, you'll leave nothin' good for her to find out about him. Then she mought find out some o' the bad.'
• Jody: 'They's nothin' bad about him,' he said passionately. 
• Ma: 'Only jumpin' on the table and knockin' the tops off the lard cans and buttin' oer the 'taters, and into ever'thing worse'n ten young uns. heh heh heh heh heh

• Penny asks after Grandma Hutto, to which she replies: 'You know I'm made outen whalebone and hell.'
• Penny: 'Ain't the whalebone gittin' a mite limber?'
• Grandma Hutto: 'Tis, but the hell's hot as ever.' God, I love this exchange. I would like to tell people I'm made out of whalebone and hell. Maybe I'll start. ;)

The crane dance - Magic birds were dancing in a mystic marsh.

If you read my blob, then you probably know that I've become an avid birder. If I'm not reading, I may well be out in the marshes, watching the birds. Since this is the case, I had a particular affection for this scene, when Jody and Penny come upon a crane dance.

The cranes were dancing a cotillion as surely as it was danced at Volusia. Two stood apart, erect and white, making a strange music that was part cry and part signing. The rhythm was irregular, like the dance. The other birds were in a circle. In the heart of the circle, several moved counter-clock-wise. The musicians made their music. The dancers raised their wings and lifted their feet, first one and then the other. They sunk their heads deep in their snowy breasts, lifted them and sunk again. They moved soundlessly, part awkwardness, part grace. The dance was solemn. The outer circle shuffled around and around. The group in the center attained a show frenzy. 

And then after: They had seen a thing that was unearthly. They were in a trance from the strong spell of its beauty. 

Flag, our titular yearling, Jody's bosom buddy, affectionate, mischievous, loving, and wild

• The fawn was alone in the night, as [Jody] had been alone. The catastrophe that might take his father had made it motherless. It had lain hungry and bewildered through the thunder and rain and lightning, close to the devastated body of its dam, waiting for the stiff form to arise and give it warmth and food and comfort. I'm only now realizing the symmetry here also, in that Jody worries he'll lose his crucial parent, just as Flag has lost his. 

• Suddenly Jody was unwilling to have Mill-wheel with him. If the fawn was dead, or could not be found, he could not have his disappointment seen. And if the fawn was there, the meeting would be so lovely and so secret that he could not endure to share it. 

• Jody, on getting the fawn to trust him: His heart thumped with the marvel of its acceptance of him. Haven't we all felt this as pet owners or parents? This marvel that a creature would trust us, accept us, love us?

• He remembered his father's saying that a fawn would follow that had been first carried. He started away slowly. The fawn stared after him. He came back to it and stroked it and walked away again. It took a few wobbling steps toward him and cried piteously. It was willing to follow him. It belonged to him. It was his own. He was light-headed with his joy.

• Jody: 'Look, Ma, I found him.'
• Ma: 'I see.' LOL.
• Jody: 'Ain't he purty, Ma? Lookit them spots all in rows. Lookit them big eyes. Ain't he purty?'
• Ma: 'He's powerful young. Hit'll take milk for him a long whiles. I don't know as I'd of give my consent, if I'd knowed he was so young.'
• Penny: 'Ory, I got one thing to say, and I'm sayin' it now, and then I'll have no more talk of it. The leetle fawn's as welcome in this house as Jody. It's hissen. We'll raise it without grudgment o' milk or meal. You got me to answer to, do I ever hear you quarrelin' about it. This is Jody's fawn jest like Julia's my dog.'

• When Jody first gives his milk to Flag: The fawn blew and sucked and snorted. It closed its eyes dreamily. It was ecstasy to feel its tongue against his hand.

• When Jody brings Flag inside the cabin after a bear attacks their livestock: Its sharp heels clicked on the wooden floor. Its ribs lifted and fell with its breathing. He had been cudgeling his wits for an excuse to bring the fawn inside at night to sleep with him, and now he had one that could not be disputed. He would smuggle it in and out as long as possible, in the name of peace.

• It had to be shut in the shed when the Baxters ate. It butted and bleated and knocked dishes out of their hands. 

• Jody, on his mother: She could not understand how clean the fawn was, and would not admit how sweet it smelled.

• He loved him more than ever, in his sin.

Referents and Reverberations

I suppose some of these aren't surprising, but some of them caught me unawares. The notes reminded me of Joe in Great Expectations (wot larks!), the parental relationships reminded me of the young boy in Winesburg, struggling to connect with his mother, the southern dialects and somewhat mischievous young boy antics reminded me of Huck, and the intensity of the relationship between Flag and Jody reminded me of how important the garden feels to Mary.

Great Expectations, Charles Dickens

Winesburg, Ohio, Sherwood Anderson

Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain

The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett

Lines I Loved

• The afternoon was alive with a soft stirring.

• He was addled with April. He was dizzy with Spring.

• A mark was on him from the day's delight.

• He stood now in the close odorous dusk of his store like a captain in the hold of his ship.

• Watchfulness lived sentinel in his brain.

• It was all the better for being secret.

• They had seen marvels, and the older they were, the more marvels they had seen. He felt himself moving into a mystic company.

• They sat smothered under the thick air of sorrow that only the winds of time could blow away.

• Dinner and supper had both been meager and indifferently cooked, as though she took her revenge from behind her own citadel, the cook-pot.

Words That Were New to Me:

clabber - noun - milk that has naturally clotted on souring. verb - curdle or cause to curdle.

feist - a small hunting dog, descended from the terriers brought over to the United States by British miners and other immigrants

fetter-bush - an evergreen shrub, Lyonia lucida, of the heath family, native to the southern U.S., having clusters of fragrant, white flowers

furbelow - noun - a gathered strip or pleated border of a skirt or petticoat. verb - adorn with trimmings.

mumbledepeg - a game in which the players try to flip a knife from various positions so that the blade will stick into the ground

tar-flower - (Bejaria racemosa) a woody evergreen shrub that produces fragrant and showy white to pinkish flowers

Well, blobbers, we've done it! I've cried at least two more times while crafting this, but I have MADE it to the end of this entry. I'll leave you with a few closing lines.

Pa to Jody, on wishing Grandma Hutto really was his grandmother. Folks that seems like kin-folks, is kin-folks. Yes. Folks that seem like kin-folks is kin-folks. Period. Friendfam, foundfam, bosom buds. Kinfolk, all.

He could go neither forward nor back. Something was ended. Nothing was begun. This is how Jody feels at the end of the book, and it feels so relatable.

It was unbelievable, Jody thought. He was wanted. Jody tries to run away after Flag's death, but he gets overwhelmed and frightened, and then begins to worry his parents actually aren't looking for his return. But he finds his father waiting with open arms, and he aches with warmth, knowing he is wanted. 

And so I'll leave you to your beds, dear readers, hoping that you have kin-folk of your own, whether real or imagined, and that you lay your heads on the pillow tonight knowing you are wanted, at least by me. Sweet dreams, keep each other safe, keep passing the open windows, and keep safe. Good night.