Sounder: Chapter VIII

In the winter he seldom came because it took “more’n a day’s walkin’ and sleepin’ on the ground.”

He read the story of Joseph over and over and never wearied of it.

The heat and drought of dog days had parched the earth, and the crops had been laid by.

The heat and drought of dog days had parched the earth, and the crops had been laid by.

As the figure on the road drew near, it took shape and grew indistinct again in the wavering heat.

Suddenly the voice of the great coon hound broke the sultry August deadness.

Taking what might have been measured as a halting half step and then pulling a stiff, dead leg forward, dragging a foot turned sideways in the dust, the man limped into the yard.

Sounder seemed to understand that to jump up and put his paw against his master’s breast would topple him into the dust, so the great dog smelled and whined and wagged his tail and licked the limp hand dangling at his master’s side.

The mouth was askew too, and the voice came out of the part farthest away from the withered, wrinkled, lifeless side.

The mouth was askew too, and the voice came out of the part farthest away from the withered, wrinkled, lifeless side.

The woman in the still rocker said, “Lord, Lord,” and sat suffocated in shock.

But he resolved he would not die, even with a half-dead body, because he wanted to come home again.

“You been mighty natural and considerate,” the mother said to the younger children later when she went to the woodpile and called them to pick dry kindling for a quick fire.

As the days of August passed and September brought signs of autumn, the crippled man sat on the porch step and leaned the paralyzed, deformed side of his body against a porch post.

Then the great muscles would flex in dreams of the hunt, and the mighty chest would give off the muffled whisper of a bark.

Then the great muscles would flex in dreams of the hunt, and the mighty chest would give off the muffled whisper of a bark.

He had been cutting and dragging timber all day.

In the early darkness the halting, hesitant swing of the lantern marked the slow path from fields to pine woods toward the lowlands.

It was still night, but the first red glow of dawn was rising in a faint crescent over the pine woods.

“Sounder just couldn’t poke slow enough for your father,” the mother said to the boy as they stood in the doorway, straining and sifting the dark for some movement.

Across the stalk land, into the pine woods, into the climbing, brightening glow of the dawn, the boy followed the dog, whose anxious pace slowed from age as they went.

Fear had always prompted him to talk to himself.

Deep in the pine woods, along a deserted logging road, the boy and dog came to a small open space where there had once been a log ramp.

“When life is so tiresome, there ain’t no peace like the greatest peace—the peace of the Lord’s hand holding you. And he’ll have a store-bought box for burial ’cause all these years I paid close attention to his burial insurance.”

A harvest moon would cast shadows forever of a man walking upright, his dog bouncing after him.