Mun sat in the house with a broken leg and that was a bad thing, though on the whole it was easier to endure than Mun's ruptured temper. However, Mun's temper was an abstract affair that might erupt at any moment, while a broken leg was distinctly concrete. Harky told himself that anything so indisputably tangible should never beset Mun.
Still, hadn't it been wrought by providence? If Mun had not tried to climb Old Joe's sycamore, he wouldn't have fallen. If he had not fallen, he wouldn't have a broken leg. He should not have such a thing, but he had it, and by all the rules of logic Harky should have achieved the ultimate ideal.
With his leg splinted and bound, Mun's current living space was restricted to the chair upon which he sat all day long and the cot upon which he lay all night long. Harky had been prudent enough to remove from the sweep of his father's arms all sticks of fire wood, dishes, hatchets, knives, and anything else Mun might throw. Let Mun roar as he might (and did, whenever Harky was in the house), roaring broke no bones. For the first time since he could remember, Harky had no need to outwit his father in order to do as he pleased.
Of course there were some tasks one did not avoid. Livestock was incapable of caring for itself, and Harky was too close to the earth to let any living creature suffer for lack of attention. It was far better to butcher it, an idea Harky had played with, but no matter how long the winter might be, two people couldn't eat six cows, four pigs, and sixty-nine chickens. There'd always be the horses left anyway.
Grimacing as he did so, Harky pitched another forkful of hay down the chute. Livestock should really be taught to eat coon meat so a man, with complete freedom of conscience, might spend all his time hunting coons. Maybe, if cows ate something besides hay, they wouldn't be such fools.
Harky thought suddenly of the last time he'd attended Miss Cathby's school, and shuddered.
One of Miss Cathby's unswerving goals embraced assailing the minds of her students with literature other than that which their fathers might exchange behind the barn, and to that end there was a daily reading. Most of it was not unendurable; all Harky had to do was think about coons and look as though he were paying attention. On this particular day, however, he had been unable to think about coons and was forced to listen while Miss Cathby read a poem all about new-mown hay on a bright June day.
Harky shuddered again and pitched furiously until he had all the cows could eat. He jammed his fork into the hay and scrambled down the ladder to the barn floor.
Formal education could mean the ruin of a man if he didn't watch out. Miss Cathby had enthused about the poem and its author, but in the first place, hay was not harvested in June. It wasn't even ripe until July, and whoever wrote so touchingly of new-mown hay had never stood under a furnace-hot sun and pitched any.
Duckfoot, who had been waiting in the chaff on the barn floor, sidled up to Harky. Harky let his dangling hand caress the big dog's ears, and he tried to do some thinking about Duckfoot. But thoughts of hay just naturally started him to thinking about corn, and the Mundee corn was still in the field where it had been shocked.