There were few men more trusty than Jo, and he always made a round in the plough-field after my father had turned out, as if to convince him that he was mistaken in the opinion that boys were good for nothing. When there was corn to gather, he took the slowest team and the lazy hired man, and brought in more loads than my father and I, and if I found any way to aid him in this I always did it. They seemed to hate each other in secret, for the master disliked a boy who was able to equal him in anything, as if his extra years had availed him nothing; and I confess that my sympathies were always with Jo, for the grown people picked at him because of his ambition to become a man, in all other respects than age, a few years sooner than was usual. While nobody disputed that he was a capable fellow, he was always attempting something he could not carry out, and thus became a subject of ridicule in spite of his worth and ability; if he was sent to the timber for wood, he would volunteer to be back at an impossible time, and although he returned sooner than most men would have done, they laughed at him, and regarded him as a great failure.
It was said of him that he exaggerated, but I think that he was only anxious that it be known what he could do if he had an opportunity; and as every one thought less of him than he deserved, he kept on talking of himself to correct a wrong impression, and steadily made matters worse. His activity kept him down, for another thing, for thereby he raised an opposition which would not have existed had he been content to walk leisurely along in the tracks made by his elders. He accepted none of the opinions of the Fairview men, and it was said of him that he was a skeptic for no other reason than that everybody else was religious, and I am not certain but that there was some truth in this.
If the truth of a certain principle was asserted, he denied it, not by rude controversy, but by his actions; and by his ingenuity he often made a poorer one seem better, if the one proposed happened to be right, as was sometimes the case—for the Fairview people had but two ways to guess, and occasionally adopted a right method instead of a wrong one, by accident.
I believe there was nothing he could not do. He shingled hair in a superb manner for any one who applied, and charged nothing for the service. And I helped him learn the art, for he practised on me so much that I was nearly always bald. He made everything he took a fancy for, and seemed to possess himself of the contents of a book by looking through it; for though I seldom found him reading, he was about as well-informed as the books themselves. When the folks were away at camp-meeting, he added my mother’s work to his own, and got along very well with it. I never heard of anything a Fairview boy could do better than Jo Erring, and he did a great many things in which he had no competition; therefore I have often wondered that the only young man there who really amounted to anything was for some reason rather unpopular. Jo was unfortunate in the particular that he seemed to have inherited all the poorer qualities of both his father and mother instead of the good qualities of either one of them, or a commendable trait from one, and an undesirable one from the other. I have heard of men who resembled the less worthy of their parents—I believe this is the rule—but never before have I known a boy to resemble both his parents in everything they tried to hide. His tendency to exaggeration he got honestly from his mother, who was a fluent talker, but Jo was not like her in that. In this Jo was like his father, who would not say a half dozen words without becoming hopelessly entangled, and making long pauses in painful effort to extricate his meaning.
Jo was often sent to a water-mill in the woods with a grist, and while waiting for his wheat or corn to be ground, he regarded the machinery with the closest attention, and at length became impressed with the idea that after he had become a man, and whipped my father, he would like to follow milling for a business. The miller, an odd but kindly man of whom but little was known in our part of the country, admired Jo’s manly way, and made friends with him by good-naturedly answering his questions, and occasionally inviting him to his house for dinner; and Jo talked so much of his ambition and his friend, that he came to be called “The Miller,” and spent his spare time in making models, and trying them in the rivulets which ran through the fields after a rain.
His father’s farm was skirted by Big Creek, and here he picked out a site for his mill when he should be able to build it, at a place called Erring’s Ford (the location really did credit to his judgment), and having hauled a load of stones there one Saturday afternoon for a dam, the circumstance gave rise to the only pleasantry ever known in Fairview. When any one spoke of an event not likely to happen, he said it would probably come about when the sky rained pitchforks on the roof of Jo Erring’s mill; but Jo paid little attention to this banter, and hauled more stones for the dam whenever he had opportunity, in which work I assisted, in preference to idleness without him. He hoped to become apprenticed to his friend the miller to learn the business, and to complete his own enterprise by slow degrees from his small savings. And he never lost sight of this purpose, pursuing it so steadily that a few of those who at first laughed at him spoke at length encouraging words, and said they believed he would finally succeed, although it would be a long time in coming about.
I was secretly very fond of the mill enterprise, and admired Jo more than ever, that he was bold enough to attempt carrying it out. Our plan to run away was altered by this new interest, and we agreed that it would be better to wait patiently until the mill was complete, and buy our liberty from its profits; for Jo had generously agreed to ransom me as well as himself as soon as he was able.
Jo’s mother, a very large woman who was the acknowledged head of the House of Erring, and doctor for half that country, lived four miles from Fairview church, on Big Creek, in a house of hewn logs, the inside of which was a marvel for neatness. Of her husband the people knew nothing except that he was a shingle-maker, and that he was probably a very wicked man, for he was about the only one in the settlement who did not profess religion, and attend the gatherings at the church. The calling of shingle-making he followed winter and summer and he never seemed to raise anything on his farm except a glassy kind of corn with a great many black grains in every ear, which he planted and cultivated with a hoe. After it was gathered, he tied most of it in bunches, and hung it up to dry on the kitchen rafters, where it was understood to be for sale as seed; although I never heard that it was good for anything except to parch, and the only use he ever made of it, that I knew anything about, was to give it to Jo and me with the air of a man conferring a great favor.
My father liked nothing about Dad Erring except his one virtue of attending to his own business, such as it was; and said of him that he selected his piece of land because it was near a spring, whereas the exercise of a little energy would have dug a well affording an equally good supply of water on vastly superior land.
Indeed, no one seemed to like him, and the dislike was mutual, for if he was familiar with any one except Jo, my mother, and myself, I never knew of it. He seldom spoke even to my grandmother when I was about, and I think only very rarely at any other time, for they seemed never to have recovered from some old trouble. There was this much charity for him, however—the people said no more than that he was an exceedingly odd sort of a man (a verdict true of his appearance as well as disposition, for he was very large, very raw-boned, and clean shaven), and let him alone, which of all things he probably most desired.
The people frequently met him walking along the road swinging a stout stick, and taking