Sadie

A STORY

by PETER MATTHIESSEN

HELL, it ain’t the nigger beat Pentland to death, it’s Floyd. Dewey Floyd, sure as anything. One of these days he’ll come back out of the woods, and that stick right in his hand. The way that man looks at things, I reckon he’d as soon be strung up as not.

I was over in Cady last February to see about their dogs, which they say is the best in Georgia. I was told to see this Mister Pentland, and if he weren’t there, a feller name of Dewey Floyd.

That morning I come into the stable yard about, half past eight, and they had the mules all ready, and two wagons rigged out. A couple of stable niggers was throwing the dogs into the wagons. Over against the wall a man was leaning where the sun was, switching pebbles with a stick and talking to a big nigger boy with boots on. The nigger saw me coming and spoke to the man leaning on the wall. I said good morning when he looked up.

“Mornin,” he Said. He squinted out from under his hat.

“You Mister Pentland?”

“Nope. My name’s Floyd. Dewey Floyd.” “Mine’s Fes Webster. I come about the dogs.” “Well, I’m pleased to know you, Mister Webster. We’s fixin to run the dawgs now. Want to get out while the coveys is still feedin in the open.” He nodded toward the wagons, which were pulling off down the road. The nigger nodded toward the wagons, too, but when I looked at him, he looked down, grinning, to slap the dust off his boots. You could see he hadn’t had them boots too long.

Floyd was rolling a cigarette with his free hand. “Time we get you rigged out with a woods pony, you can fuller us down that road. Mister Pentland is meet in me an’ the rigs over to Binny’s Churchyard, an’ we’re workin out from there.”

The nigger boy snickered at the way Floyd said “Mister” Pentland. Floyd looked at him a minute.

“This here’s Buster,” he said finally. “Buster’ll get you a pony an’ take you out to Binny’s. I reckon Mister Pentland’s the one to see if you take a likin to any of the dawgs.”

Dewey Floyd switched a stone with his stick, then pushed himself away from the wall like he was tired and walked slowly across the yard. He was tall and skinny, dressed in a white field jacket and soiled khakis which hung out over his knee boots. There was something funny about the way he moved, just like the way he talked—sort of soft and quiet and not really getting any place, and that stick switching back and forth, slow, like the tail on a cat.

Buster come out of the stable now with two horses. I climbed on and headed after Floyd, and Buster right behind me, hollering at the other niggers to get out of his way.

Now he was prancing all over that red clay road, grinning like a damn fool. “Mistuh Dewey say ah’s to take you out to Binny’s Hant-yard.”

“Yeah, I heard him.”

“Yessuh.”

Buster was making his horse prance by slapping the reins. He kept looking over at me to see if it was okay to talk. “Ah guess you-all ain’ acquainted wid dese heah hants out to Binny’s?”

“Who said there was ghosts there, Buster?”

“Mistuh Dewey Floyd. Mistuh Dewey, he live a long time in de swamp. He say dev ain’ no foolin’ wid hants, an’ ah don’ truck wid ‘em no time.”

“Maybe he’s ridin’ you.”

“Whuffo’ he wan’ go foolin’ Bustuh? He ain’ got no call to do dat.”

Buster was staring at me, real uncertain. I didn’t say nothing, only grinned.

“Now Mistuh Pentland, he say dey ain’ none. He say Mistuh Dewey ain’ no diff’rint den black folks. Don’ seem like no hunt gwine fool wid a Yankee man, ainyhow.”

I looked at him then, and he turned away like he’d said something wrong, “He your boss?”

“ Yessuh.”

“How about Mister Floyd?”

“Yessuh. Bofe of ‘em. Leastways, de Yankee man’s de boss o’ de outfit, an’ ah kinda wuks fo’ him, but mos’ly ah wuks wid Mistuh Dewey Floyd. It’s him dat got me de job. Ah’s de spottah. When a dawg is p’intin’, ah hollers, an’ when a dawg is los’, ah fines him.”

Buster was grinning again, and slapping the reins on the horse’s neck. He stretched his legs out in the stirrups so’s both of us could get a look at his boots. We rode along and didn’t talk no more.

2

I SAW the dogs first, in the cornfield on the left past the Churchyard, running in among the broken stalks. There was a black-and-white setter paired off with a little lemon pointer. The two wagon rigs were lying back on the road, a nigger driving each, and two men on horses were watching from the edge of the field. One of them was Dewey Floyd. The other headed over to me and the nigger.

Buster stopped whistling. “Heah he come,” he whispered. He swung his horse wide and galloped for the wagons, the man yelling at him all the way.

“Talk about your shiftless niggers! I’m surprised he got you out here, Mister Webster. My name’s Joe Pentland.”

Pentland turned his horse around and fell in beside me. “ Both rigs are out, so you’ll get a chance to see pretty well what we got. There’s plenty of birds, so there’s no trouble that way.”

“You got a couple of nice-lookin’ rigs there, Mister Pentland.”

“Joe’ll do fine. I guess first names are okay in the same business, huh?” Pentland laughed loudly, even for a big man. “What the hell,” he said.

“Yeah, I said. He looked at me. “My name’s Les,” I said.

“Okay, Les. Yeah, the rigs are okay. Twelve dogs to a rig, two out at a time, and each rig’s got a special dog for singles. The owner wants the best, and I guess I got it for him, all right. Les, you’re gonna like these dogs. Just look at that Sadie bitch out there and tell me I ain’t got a right to be proud.”

Somebody had a right to be proud, for sure. The lemon pointer come out real pretty from behind a pile of stalks and swung into a light point, and the setter right behind her.

“Pint!” hollers the nigger.

I watched Floyd.

“I guess you see how the setter dog’s honorin’ her point,”said Pentland. He laughed and spat on the ground.

Floyd was talking soft to the dogs: “Whoa-a-up, Sadie, eas-y, eas-y, whoo-a-up, Caesar, eas-y, boy, eas-y, eas-y. . . .”

Then the quail got up, and the way he handled the gun I knew he wouldn’t miss: he took a bird off each side of the covey rise, neat as anything, and then he was talking again. “Daid, Caesar, daid, day-ud bird, Sadie, eas-y, eas-y. . .”

“He’s good with the dogs,” I said. “Damn good.”

“Hell, it’s not him, it’s the dogs.” Pentland spat again, only a different way.

“Maybe, but they mind him good. And he’s handy with that gun.”

Pentland looked at me like I’d shot a dog by mistake, “He ain’t been poachin’ twenty years for nothin’! I ain’t never seen the bastard miss a bird, but that don’t mean nothin’. But for Joe Pentland, he’d be layin’ up his time in the pokey. Wanted in three states for poachin’, and when it ain’t poachin’, it’s gettin’ so cocky-eyed mean drunk that Jesus couldn’t help him!”

Pentland was all red in the face and glaring at me. I didn’t say nothing.

“Floyd’d do any damn thing when he’s like that! A man like him should stay in the woods with the rest of the animals, that’s what I say. Meaner’n hell. What are you goin’ to do with a troublemaker like that, especially a goddamned redneck!”

I was surprised to see him getting so hot about a man, especially before a stranger. “I guess it ain’t none of my affair,” I said. “I just like the way he takes them dogs.”

Floyd was walking slowly down the furrows to the horses, and the niggers let a new pair of dogs out of the rig.

“What in hell you let ‘em do that for?” yelled Pentland, waving at the fresh dogs. “You know damned well I want to put Buddy and Tex onto the singles so’s Mister Webster here can see ‘em.”

Pentland turned to me. “You see what I mean, Les?”

I didn’t look at him.

Dewey Floyd looked at Pentland kind of funny. Buster come up behind him. He spoke to Buster, still watching Pentland. “Busier, tell ‘em to pull on around and put down Tex and Buddy.”

That quiet way of speaking, like there was never anything wrong. He just walked over to his horse and slid the gun into the saddle holster, and Pentland rode out after the dogs and the nigger. The quail was mostly scattered along a ridge of loblolly pine over at the other side of the cornfield, and I headed after them.

Dewey Floyd rode up alongside. He yanked that stick of his out of the gun holster and took to swatting the dry stalks in half as he rode. His horse was used to that funny sound a stick makes, but mine’s ears stuck up sharp, and he was all shivery under the saddle.

“Pentland’s all riled about somethin’, ain’t he?” I said.

“Ain’t, he.” Floyd repeated it softly. He took an extra hard cut at a cornstalk, and my horse jumped sideways. “Take keer on that pony,” he said, not looking over. “He don’t like no weight back o’ the saddle, even yore hand.”

“I guess it was the stick. What do you keep that around for?”

“Don’t know for sure. Time I was livin in the woods, I kinda liked the feel of it in my hand.”

I could feel he was looking me over, out from under his hat, and still switching the stick.

“I figger Pentland told you some about me?”

“Yeah. Yeah, he sorta did.”

The way he was talking made me feel kind of funny.

“That’s okay, Mister Webster, don’t trouble yoreself none. He allers tells ever’body right off ‘bout how he’s the las’ thing ‘tween me and damnation.” He laughed quietly, still looking at me the way a coon looks out of a tree. “He ain’t told you nothin that ain’t so, I guess. A feller’d never catch on that him and me’s brother-in-laws. Maybe he ain’t told you that part yet.”

“Nope. What I mean is, you don’t have to It’ll me nothin’.”

“I reckon I don’t, no. Don’t pay me no mind, Mister Webster. I jes feels like talkin. Thing is, my sis has got herself married off to this here Pentland, an’ that’s how come I’m here. They don’ want no poacher fer kin to the bes’ dog trainer in Georgia, which folks say Pentland is, an’ so they took me on long as I’d keep my nose clean. He’s worry in hisself to death about that.”

He laughed again. “Never knew a Yankee yet wasn’t worry in on somethin,” he added.

“It looks like you’re doin’ a good job,” I said.

“Eatin’s good. Job don’t pay nothin to speak of, an’ it ain’t news that me and Pentland got no use fer the other. Hell, I’d go back to the woods but fer the dawgs. I’m gittin mighty attached to them dawgs. How’d that li’l Sadie ‘pear to you?”

“She’s good. You handled her good.”

Floyd nodded his head. “She’s a right fine dawg, Sadie is. I done all the work on her an’ I’d like a lot to have her fer mine. These two ain’t bad neither.”

We were coming up behind Pentland. The sun was right back of the pines in front of us, so bright I could only just make out the dogs. They were close to twenty yards apart, both on nice points.

“Two sets of birds,” said Floyd.

Pentland walked in fast, yelling at the setters to hold. He flushed two birds over the near dog, taking one, and swung over and killed a single that got up wild in front of the other dog after the first shot. He made it look harder than Floyd did, but a nice double all the same. Then he was yelling again, dead, dead, and they found the birds fast, only they brought ‘em right over to Dewey Floyd.

“What do you want to go callin’ ‘em in like that for?" Pent land hollered at Floyd. “ Dammit, you’re goin’ to fix these dogs so’s they’ll come to nobody else!”

He come stomping over toward us, and Buster behind him with his eyes bugging out.

“He didn’t call ‘em, Mister Pentland,” I said, kind of uneasy.

“Seems like them of dawgs jes took a min’ to come to Mistuh Dewey Floyd,” whispered Buster, looking scared, and then Floyd had his horse over between Buster and Pentland.

“You Buster, get to hell back to them wagons,” Floyd said. He cut Buster’s horse across the rump with his stick, and the nigger lit out down the ridge and over the cornfield, all arms and legs and flapping leather.

That was it, right there. Talking soft and slow all the time, nice as hell to the dogs and niggers, and then he takes and cuts a horse like that. No reason, you know, just for the hell of it. I believe he’d as soon take that stick to himself if he couldn’t find no other place to use it.

Floyd didn’t look at Pentland at all. He came back past me, grinning a funny grin, and saying, “Look at that nigger boy ride, Mister Webster, jes you look at that nigger boy ride.”

Then he was trotting away, switching his stick in the dew grass, and the dogs right on his heels.

Pentland jammed his gun back in its saddle holster. He wasn’t saying a thing. I turned my horse back, and pretty soon he caught up. He was glaring like I was supposed to say something.

“ I’d like to get a look at some more of your dogs,” I said.

The rest of the day there wasn’t much trouble, and I got to see the whole of both rigs. I never seen two men handle dogs like Floyd and Joe Pentland; there wasn’t much to be said between them except they run the dogs different ways. Maybe it come from being a poacher, but Floyd knew the country like he was a part of it, and right where the birds was every time. That takes a man that’s lived in the woods alone.

3

I GOT back there a few weeks later with an order for the three best setters Pentland was selling and the lemon bitch pointer if I could get her.

You could see right away that things was different. Dewey Floyd was leaning against the stable like before, switching dust with the stick, and there was the nigger right beside him. I didn’t know it was Buster right off because he didn’t have no boots, and niggers generally look pretty much the same. But he said “Mawnin’, Mistuh Webstuh,”and I knew it was him, only he sure looked different without the boots.

Dewey Floyd peered out from under his hat.

“Mornin’,”I said. “I come to take that pointer away from you.”

“No you ain’t.” He said it like it didn’t need no explanation.

Buster stared at Floyd, kind of fidgety. “Mistuh Webstuh, we-uns ain’ wid de dawgs no mo’.”

“Buster, you go on up to the house an’ say that Mister Webster done come, you hear me?”

Buster shambled off, looking back over his shoulder. Floyd watched him go.

“Looks kinda sorry without them boots, don’t he?”

“What happened?”

“Hell, I don’t know. . . . One night las’ week I lit into some rotgut, some o’ thet sour mash, an’ come back an’ — well, there was a kind of a ruckus, an’ now me’n Buster is workin here in the stable.”Floyd was staring at the ground all the time, kind of tired and tight, watching the end of the stick fooling in the dust.

“I’m sorry to hear it. I sure liked the way you run them dogs.”

Joe Pentland was coming down the road to the stable. Floyd was watching him all the time he was talking.

“You see, Mister Webster, a man like me ain’t got no place with dawgs. A man what would do what I done, he’s a sight better off in the woods. Some of these days I aim to go back, ‘cause when I’m here, ain’t nothin seems to go right.”

Pentland said good morning. “I’m goin’ right down to the pens and get them setters for you, Webster.”

He went ahead, then stopped and looked at Floyd. “You ain’t paid to lean on that wall, Floyd, but since you’re so busy shootin’ off your mouth, why not tell Mister Webster why I can’t sell him the pointer bitch? Why don’t you tell him that?”

Pentland turned to me. “You remember the dog I mean. Sadie. The dog Mister Floyd liked so well — liked so damned well that last week he come home here drunk and beat her to death with that stick there.” He spat on the ground and walked off.

I didn’t feel much like looking at Dewey Floyd right then, so I looked at the ground. All I could see was the stick switching back and forth, back and forth, in the dust in front of his shoes. It made me jumpier’n hell, and I glanced up at him.

Floyd was looking after Pentland in that funny way of his, not angry at all, just sort of funny. He went right on talking as if Pentland had never come by, but he didn’t take his eyes off him a minute. “You see, I was mighty close to them dawgs, an’ that li’l one were my fav’rit. Sadie were a real stylish dawg. I jes don’t know rightly what it was, how I could come to doin it. But I sure’n hell did it.”

Dewey Floyd put his stick up under his arm and took out some paper and tobacco. He was talking so quietly I could hear the soft blowing and shifting of the horses through the wall behind him.

“Sober,” he said, “I couldn’t take this stick to no dawg that way, no more’n I Could a pony nor a nigger. But a man . . .”

He paused a minute to fix the tobacco in his cigarette.

“Now you take a man. . . . Time conies, I reckon I could do that easier’n nothin.”He ran his longue along the sticking edge of the paper, squinting out at me from under his hat.