Georgia Boy by Erskine Caldwell

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    Just then Ma came running through the gate. She stopped dead in her tracks when she saw my old man and the calf.
    “Pretty Sooky,” he said, stroking the calf. “Pretty Sooky.”
    Ma moaned just then, and everybody turned around and saw her.
    “Martha!” my old man said, coming to the side of the shed and looking at Ma. “What on earth is troubling you, Martha? You look sick.”
    Ma straightened up and stumbled over the ground towards us.
    “Morris—” she said weakly, “What on earth, Morris?”
    Pa went back to the calf and held the timothy for her to nibble.
    “It was a funny thing, Martha,” he said. “I was down at Briar Creek fishing early this morning, and I couldn’t get a single solitary bite. I decided to come back home and try again some other morning. On the way I crossed a patch of the finest-looking timothy I’ve seen in a long time, and I pulled a few bunches, just because I admired it so. It wasn’t long after that when I was walking along the road and I just happened to turn around and look behind me, and there was a calf following me. It looked like it was lost. I didn’t pay much attention to her until I got home, and then I turned around again and looked behind me, and there she was, the very same calf. I was here in the yard behind the shed by that time, and so the natural thing to do was to give her some of the timothy I’d stuffed into my shirt just because I’d admired it so. It sure was a funny thing, wasn’t it, Martha?”
    Ma came over and looked at the calf. The calf went on eating the timothy and paid no attention to anybody.
    “William,” Ma said suddenly, turning around and looking at me, “you go inside the house and shut the doors and pull down the window shades. I don’t want you to come outside until I call you.”
    Every time Ma told me to go inside the house like that it meant she was about to give my old man a scolding. I always hated to go away and leave him when Ma had her dander up, but I had to do what she told me to do.
    When she had finished talking to me, she turned and looked up at Handsome on top of the fence. Handsome jumped down as fast as he could without being told.
    “Handsome, go on off somewhere and stay until I send for you.”
    Handsome started walking across the garden right away.
    “And if anybody says something to you about a calf, I don’t want you to open your mouth, Handsome Brown,” Ma said. “The first thing you know you’ll be telling fibs on your own account, if you don’t watch out. You just stay out of people’s way until I send for you. Do you hear me, Handsome?”
    “Yes’m, Mis’ Martha,” he said. “I’ll do just like you said. I always try to do just exactly what you and Mr. Morris tell me to do.”
    Handsome went on across the garden, but I stayed behind the fence out of sight.
    “Now, Morris Stroup,” Ma said, wheeling around towards my old man. “What have you got to say for yourself now? After going off and stealing Jim Wade’s young calf, you ought to have had time to cook up some sort of wild tale. The worst part of it was that you even got Handsome Brown, a poor innocent colored boy, mixed up in your thievery by making him tell a fib for you.”
    “Now, wait a minute, Martha,” he said. “Don’t jump at conclusions so fast. This calf just naturally followed me home. I couldn’t help it if she—”
    “You couldn’t help it after you’d gone and cut some of Mr. Wade’s timothy to entice her with by tying it on the end of that fishing pole of yours and dangling it in front of her nose every step of the way here.”
    My old man looked pretty sheepish while he was trying to think of something to say and wondering at the same time how Ma knew so much about how he had cut the timothy and all the rest.
    Ma looked at him real hard, but she did not say anything just then. She watched the heifer nibble the bunch of timothy.
    “The only thing I can lay it to,” my old man said, “is that the calf